Brian and Bailey Pruett Serving in the Philippines with Aviation We rely very heavily on email these days to help you stay in-touch and involved in our ministry. Because of this we have added a side bar, “Join the List,” to our website to help us stay in touch. Would you take a minute to fill in the blanks to make sure we have your latest information? Thanks so much! You are as much a part of this ministry as we are – we’re just the team members that wake up to the sounds of roosters and pigs every morning.
We Are All Home Again
Thank you to all of you who have prayed for us and Dylan as he was in the hospital fighting an infection. It was an exhausting 4-day event for us, but well worth it as Dylan is doing very well in his own bed now. We are still tethered to the hospital because Dylan needs to get three injections every day until Tuesday. It is still way better than being in the hospital and much CLEANER too!
Thanks again for holding us up in prayer through all of this. We are still doing our best to protect Dylan from outside sources of germs and are staying alert to any complications he may develop from his stay in the hospital So far so good.
Back to the Hospital
We sure are getting to know the local hospital these days. On Tuesday we took Dylan to the hospital to get some tests because he was running a slight fever. After the tests they decided that he should be admitted right away and start on an IV for hydration and antibiotics. It’s now Friday and we are still in the same hospital room waiting to be released. Dylan’s fever went away on Wednesday night at 11pm but we have needed to stay there for observation and are expecting to be released today.
Please pray that Dylan will recover from this infection, whatever it was, and be able to work through the remaining doses of antibiotics from home. It is a lot of work to be in the hospital here, a lot of work. We are both tired and anticipating a very busy flight week and would appreciate your prayers for strength and wisdom as we try to reinsert ourselves into normal life. Through all of this Maycie has done a tremendous job of rolling with the punches and being a helpful big sister. We were concerned (as are all parents) about how she would handle someone else in the family who would steal the show. She has such a sweet heart and caring spirit that has been fun to watch come out through Dylan’s ordeal. Thanks for all your prayers!
A Moment to Brag
Hospitals here aren’t like hospitals in the States. In the States, the nurses wait on you hand and foot and you can feel pretty well taken care of even if you are there alone. Here, you have to have a “watcher.” The staff aren’t here to GET the things you need, only to implement the things you need. So the watcher must be with you to do the “getting.” When I was in the hospital after delivering Dylan, Brian was my watcher. This means he had to get prescriptions from the doctor, take the prescription to the pharmacy here at the hospital, get a bill for the prescription, take bill to cashier and pay, take receipt back to pharmacy and pick up prescription, take prescription back to the doctor so that she could then give it to me. It works this way for everything and this is if everything here at the hospital is open. Unfortunately, things aren’t always open. I gave birth to Dylan on a Wednesday morning. Wednesday is the day off for the hospital so no cashier, no pharmacy…Brian had to take all my prescriptions into town to the local pharmacy and do the same thing there. It can be quite a frustrating process and Brian did it all with a a two-year-old on his hip and a smile on his face. Read the rest of this entry »
Dylan James Pruett is Born!
Bailey and Dylan just a couple hours after the delivery. They are both doing very, very well.
Last night we went to bed early anticipating an early morning supply flight into one of the tribal locations that we are flying for. It is a particularly challenging flight so I make sure I’m extra well rested before going in there. We knew that we needed a backup plan for the flight incase Bailey went into labor and we were sure glad we had one! At about 12:30am Bailey started having mild, consistent contractions. By 1:30am she was confident it was time to call off the flight and have the other pilot, Garry, fill in. We weren’t very excited about spending much time in the provincial hospital, so we waited in our home for as long as we felt was wise. Read the rest of this entry »
First Flight as a Missionary Pilot
Loading the cargo pod on our C185 in preparation for the flight.
When I was a three year old (or thereabouts) I still remember sitting in an airplane at the SIL mission center in Mindanao and hearing its big engines roar and the Aero Commander start to roll down the grass airstrip. I couldn’t contain my excitement and yelled out, “Weee!” My parents still laugh about that flight to this day. I was hooked from then on and couldn’t think about much else other than being a missionary pilot in the Philippines.
I’m a little older now and my dreams and focus have changed many times as I’ve grown up, but God returned me to that dream on April 26, 2010 at 7:30am. Just 3 minutes after takeoff I flew right over that little grass airstrip that hooked me as a 3-year old. I was en route on my first operational flight as a missionary pilot! Read the rest of this entry »
Dealing with Weather
No Joke. This was one of the better weather reports I could find for our flight yesterday. If you look close, you can see the yellow arrow points at our approximate route. They didn't waste any words!
Yesterday I soloed on the last airstrip that we are currently using. It feels so good to be at this point, but I am realizing quickly that I find landing and taking off to be the easiest part. In fact, I feel a sense of relief when I circle to land at any of these airstrips because for me right now, that is the easy part. What is a challenge is flying in all the weather here. There is no real weather reporting between where we takeoff and where we land and all of our airstrips are located right in the middle of what our chief pilot calls “the weather factory.” It is always changing and keeps us on our toes.
Bailey is a big help in this area because she is now using the HF radio to call our missionaries and get weather reports. She then relays the weather to me in the airplane via the HF radio. Some days the HF works great, other days it is just a bunch of distracting static. However, it is the best thing we have right now so we are making it work for us. There is a lot for Bailey and I to learn these days about how to deal with all the radio calls and weather.
We recently had a flight planned to shuttle supplies between two locations, but when the rain came we had to throw off some extra weight and give up on our plans so that we could deliver the important cargo to the missionaries who were waiting for it at their airstrip. We took off in the rain and as you can see from the video, had a good time navigating around clouds to get to the most challenging airstrip I’ve ever experienced.
Tags: Airplane, airstrip, brian, Ministry, training, video, weather, work
Maycie The Two-Year-Old
Maycie pretending her doll house was having rolling blackouts just like our real house.
We wonder where the time has gone… Maycie just celebrated her second birthday, and it was her second birthday here in the Philippines as well. We have sure enjoyed watching her grow up here and all the new and fun things she does. From time to time we are clearly reminded that no matter how hard we try to raise her in a way that she will still be an American she is experiencing things very unique to life in the Philippines that will no doubt mold who she is. We think this is a good thing and are thankful for the experiences she is able to have here.
See Maycie’s 2-Year Old Photos Here
This was very clear after her birthday party when she was playing with the doll house that her grandma sent her. She was playing “blackout” with the people in the house. She would exclaim, “Oh no! No power!” and everyone would pretend that the power was out. Then a few moments later she’d exclaim again, “Yay! Power!” Can you tell what our days are like? It was really cute, but should a 2-year old really be playing that game? She is no doubt going to have a rich storehouse of experiences as she grows up. We took some pictures of her just before and during her birthday and have posted them on our gallery.
Advanced Potty Training
Maycie discovered that potty time is better with a book. She did this all on her own, and chose an Aircraft Spruce catalogue of all things!
We bought a book not too long ago and attempted to potty train Maycie in “3 days or your money back.” Amazingly it worked and she doesn’t even wet the bed unless we let her tank up on water before bed. It is really nice to have her able to do her business on her own.
Recently we got a shipment of parts from NTMA in the states and in it was an Aircraft Spruce catalogue. Maycie has sure enjoyed flipping through the pages of that catalogue and looking at airplane parts. I promise, I had nothing to do with it! Today, all on her own, she told me that she had to go potty and wanted a book. I asked which one and she said, “airplanes.” So I guess she has moved on to the advanced state of using the potty that so many of us have already attained.
Generation Gap is Bridged
Thank you so much for all your prayers regarding our current blackout situation. The blackouts continue their schedule every single day for about 3 1/2 hours and often longer and more frequently than that. However, we are now looking forward to having our own generator – thanks to the generous help of many of our supporters we are able to purchase, ship and setup a generator for our house! News of our need for backup power reached a brother in Alabama who owns a Honda power tools dealership. He offered to sell us a generator at his cost plus whatever it costs to ship it here to the Philippines. While discussing this with him, several of our supporters and one of our supporting churches rallied together to raise enough money to purchase the generator, wiring kit and freight to the Philippines!
The other generator we are borrowing should be in the Philippines any time now, so we eagerly await putting it to work while we wait for ours to arrive. We are incredibly thankful for the part so many have played in helping us deal with these blackouts. There is still no end in sight to the power crisis here and many of our missionaries are beginning to lose their water supplies as well. It has been raining more often than it was, but not enough to restore the springs, wells, and reservoirs that so many are dependent on here. Please continue to pray for the drought here, and specifically for the missionaries who are having to begin hauling their water now.
Licensed to Fly
Even with the missionaries away on furlough, the tribal people were still eagerly awaiting the arrival of the airplane as they always do.
Brian received his license in the mail this week and was able to resume his checkout. The flight we did this week was to a tribal location where the missionaries are not currently living because they are all on furlough. We flew in to check on the condition of their hydro-electric power system and to fix the lighting in the tribal church building. It was a beautiful day to fly and the Lord gave us clear skies and calm winds which was a huge blessing because we were flying in without a weather report.
Garry Barkman, our chief pilot, did the flying there and I did the flying on the way home. Garry is showing me around and introducing me to each of our airstrips so that I don’t have to go in “cold-turkey” like he did when we first opened up the Mindanao flight program. I managed to get a video of the flight and while it isn’t the best video quality, I hope to get some better ones in the future. For now, this should give you an idea what it was like to land in this location.