One year complete/One year to go

It has been an awesome semester, an awesome year at school, and an awesome year for our family!
This semester was very hands-on, with a lot of work bending metal and making cool projects (see pictures below), taking apart struts and other hydraulic components, rigging flight controls, and treating corrosion.

The highlight has to be the very end, when Erin and the kids came to see the airplanes and hang out with me for the afternoon after finals were over.  Elsie just had to see the 'band-aid' I put on the airplane (left and below).  We hopped into several airplanes and let her and Sammy pretend to fly.  Elsie was scared when we sat in the newest addition to the school's fleet: the former Detroit Piston's (basketball team) DC-9.  She felt like she was so high up while sitting up in the flight deck.  So what does she do next?... She points to the older DC-9 in our hanger and wants to look at the tail section, which is up three flights of scaffolding with little to no guarded rails on the sides!  Apparently, this is not scary, but sitting cozy in the flight deck on cushy seats and tons of buttons is just too much.

After finals were completely done, we took the kids to a water park in town and had a blast!  The internship with the Fargo Jet Center begins on Monday, May 20th.  It looks like it will be a very hands-on internship as well.  We are so blessed by all the open doors we see God unfolding before us.  Thank you for praying for us and thinking about our family as we continue pursuing the call God has placed on our hearts!  We are looking forward to a fun summer close to family, and hope you will all be able to enjoy quality time with your friends and family.

 Elsie beginning to get scared...

 Elsie running out the back of the plane...

Elsie climbed next to the top of this scaffolding (with me guiding her.  No big deal apparently.



















In just one year, we hope to be showing up in Idaho for our big interview with Mission Aviation Fellowship! We are excited to arrive at that point, but we are also enjoying where God has us here and now.

Bless you all in Christ!

Here are some more pictures of some the fun projects in sheet metal...

 This is a curved piece with three different bended supports attached (the outer two are common rivets and the center are countersunk or flush)

 This is called a pulley bracket, and it is an actual part from a Boeing 727.  This combines pretty much everything we learned in the class, and was a lot of fun to make!

This was just an extra fun project that I worked on outside of class.  It's a spark plug holder, which will come in handy down the road when working on engines.