NTM

Throughout the last several months we have been through a lot emotionally, spiritually and physically. Sometimes we thought we had exceeded our breaking point, but through the grace of God and several of our friends from church, Arizona and a family or two in the Philippines we have been able to pull through. And because of a group of incredibly generous friends in Alaska we were sent to a retreat center at the foot of Pikes Peak in Colorado, SonScape Retreats. For an entire week we were treated like royalty, given the best they could offer. The organization is set up to provide counseling, help and healing to ministry persons who have been drug through the mud. We, along with 3 other couples were shown to our rooms, beautiful rustically decorated cabins with an incredible view of Pikes Peak from our couch, and the hot tub just outside of our door. Each day we spent a few hours with the group talking about specific things that our counseling couple, highly trained, would teach us. Then in the afternoon we spent 2 on 2 time with them talking about our specific issues in our lives and ministries. If it wasn’t our scheduled time, we were given free time to read, pray, wander the mountains or whatever we wanted. Jonie and I took much of our time reading scripture, books on keeping our dreams alive, forgiveness, my personal study of the life of King David, and being still and silent hearing whatever the Lord would like to tell us.

By the end of the week we were free of the bondage that certain people held on our lives. We were renewed in our vision and calling, refreshed in our physical state, and reconnected with God in a way that we would never have had outside of this place of discipleship.

One of the most incredible days was a Day of Prayer. I was able to hike a mile or so out into the snowy mountain trail. Once I found a quiet place where I couldn’t hear any cars, barking dogs or anything besides birds and wind, I hunkered down against a rock. The 20 degree day was bright and clear with a little bit of wind. As I sat there and began to get into my quiet place, so many things were running through my mind that I couldn’t concentrate on not concentrating. I needed to fill my mind with the things of the Lord and release the things of this world. After taking some pictures, collecting some wood for my small fire and eating a bit of lunch, I was able to come down to a place where I could be still and hear God.

At first I was praying, but that didn’t last long. Soon it wasn’t much of a prayer, but very much a conversation. There was a reverence, but now putting wood on the fire or opening a pack of crackers didn’t distract me from my talk with the Lord any more than it would if I was camping with a buddy. He was just there, and it wasn’t just me talking non-stop like we do in church. An observation here, a thought there. It was great.

I read a few recommended chapters in Psalms. Though I learned a lot more than I will write here, one thing I found to be quite applicable. Psalm 65:3, “My iniquities are ever before me, as for our transgressions, You will purge them away.” Earlier I had a moment of panic when I felt that God isn’t listening to me. My sin has separated me from Him. There could be no restitution. Immediately I calmed when I heard this verse with my own ears from my own mouth. My sin will always be reminded to me. My guilt, Satan reminding me of my short comings, several things could remind me of the things that I’ve done wrong in my life, even that very day. In this state, there is no hope for me. But the rest of the verse brought a thrill to my heart, my transgressions will be purged away!

All these things that threaten to separate me from the love of Christ are just that, an idle threat. My sins are gone. Purged. In my line of work, the word “purge” brings a vivid mental image. I think of a fuel tank in a jet. That jet takes Jet A fuel, basically kerosene to operate. It burns so slowly that it takes high pressure to make it explode in a controlled environment where it will turn the turbine blades propelling the aircraft safely through the sky. 100 Octane Aviation Gasoline, AvGas, will do the same thing at a much lower pressure with a much more explosive burn in a piston engine aircraft. But if you put that same AvGas in the jet there would be a catastrophic explosion that would injure or kill everyone on or near that aircraft.

If, by mistake, a fueler puts the wrong fuel in the aircraft a purge must be done. Not just a flush where you trickle some good fuel through. First, all the contaminated fuel must be removed. Every last drop. Then, after opening the tank you need to mop up whatever remaining fuel is left in little puddles in the tank. This may require you to jam your body into a small hole, wearing a gas mask with oxygen being supplied to you directly. The fumes are toxic. Deadly. But it’s required to risk your health and life to make sure all the fuel is removed. Finally, the tank is shut up and good fuel is pumped through the tank until the mechanic is certain all the bad stuff is gone. It’s a time consuming, expensive mess but necessary for the greater good. Just like our life. These things happen to us because we are filled with sin, iniquity, transgressions. But God is in the process of purging that out of us. This isn’t an afternoon project. He’s going to devote a huge amount of time, personally donning the mask and mopping up the bad stuff in our lives to clean us up. To do a good job will require a lifetime of work. But eventually we will be standing before Him the person that He wanted us to become, imperfect on earth but pure holiness in eternity.

One of the things that Mom has always wanted to do was to visit the Focus on the Family campus in Colorado Springs. Due to the fact that she’s always given up her dreams to see ours fulfilled, she had never lived her dream and been to Colorado. The timing was perfect since Jonie and I would already be there for our meetings, it seemed a good time that we would have a car and could be free to wander the area as we willed.

Thursday afternoon we picked them up from the airport in Denver and stopped by Summit Ministries in Manitou Springs. Another one of the things she paid for us to do when we were in high school was to spend two weeks here at Summit under the teaching of Dr. David Nobel. Summit is a worldview seminar that equips young people, high school and college age, to be able to discern life from a Biblical worldview and also to see the differences that others view the world through secular humanism, socialism, atheism and others. His book, ‘Understanding the Times’ was a standard textbook in both Jonie and my Christian high schools. Mom and Dad were pleased to spend some time walking the cold vacant halls of the old hotel that Summit uses for their summer sessions. It was a very rundown place, though I don’t think that it’s changed at all since I was there. I guess when you’re a teen your standards of living are pretty low. It’s changed so little I was able to find my room by the marks in the closet door from hours of laying on my bed with my throwing knives, chucking them at the door. That was 1998. Over 11 years later, the “marks” I left on that place were still there!

On Friday morning we left our hotel for the Focus Center. Arriving just after opening at 9, we were informed of the monthly chapel service at 11. While Mom and Dad met with some of the staff there to ask questions about the ministry, Jonie and I stepped into the radio show recording studio to watch a taping of a broadcast. The topic of the day posted on the door said “Vampires.” I thought this would be a neat subject. Who doesn’t like to talk about vampires? I was disappointed though to find that they were talking about the Twilight book/movie series that’s drawing teen girls by the droves. Though I could see why this would be alarming to parents, I didn’t really find myself attracted to the main character so I didn’t really identify. There really wasn’t much talk about vampires. Oh well.

At 11 we joined the staff and a few hundred guests in the Chapel for chapel. Seemed to be a fitting place to do that! The guest singer that week was Rebekah St. James, and Jonie was so excited to listen to her and meet her at the end. The speaker was the father of one of the girls who was killed in the Colombine High School Shooting. It was an emotional service, but very well done.

By the time the service was over we were hungry, and what more natural place to have lunch than Whit’s End! This was always something Jonie wanted to do, and as a personal fan of the show I was very much enjoying the surroundings. Yes, I know it’s a kids show, but Biblical truth is Biblical truth, and they have found a very neat way to dramatize life lessons, and I enjoy listening and learning from them.

After lunch we toured the rest of the facility, made our way back over to Whits End for ice cream, which for you other hardcore Odyssey fans would include of course a Wodfamchoksa. Don’t know what that is? That’s too bad. It’s better than I imagined!

The whole downstairs of the Visitor Center was dedicated to their kids radio programs. Whits End was just a corner of the place. There was a replica of a B17 from the Last Chance Detectives show, an old mining tunnel, scenes from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, including a wardrobe, that when you go in, pushing your way through the fur coats, brings you into a winter wonderland with pictures, characters and props from the series.

After an hour or so in the book store, they were closing up for the day. We certainly got our days worth of Focus, and had a great time doing it!

Saturday we had just the morning and early afternoon before dropping Mom and Dad at the airport. We had planned to drive to the top of Pikes Peak, but a snow storm the night before closed the roads, so instead we spend several hours at the Garden of the Gods park (we like to call God’s Garden). Throughout the park, red rocks jut up at all angles, a testament to the power a lot of water can do over a little amount of time, like 40 days and 40 nights and the ensuing year of waiting for the Flood to dissipate. Though it was cold and windy, we found shelter in some of the rocks and really enjoyed the beauty that God gave us there. Nothing like it for miles around!

This afternoon, January 10th, 2010 marked the end of the beginning. The end of 10 years of waiting, planning, waiting, fund raising, waiting, hoping for the arrival of the Quest Kodiak airplane. It’s the end of a constant, often unproductive search for 100 octane aviation fuel. It’s the end of a question of what to do with a fleet of aging aircraft which a suitable replacement wasn’t available. It’s the beginning of building new hangers, runways, and flight programs changes to handle this. It’s also the beginning of a new sort of fund raising for fuel and flight costs to help the missionaries not have to pay so much for their flights. It’s the beginning of waiting for the next 13 and answers of which countries flight programs will need them the most.

It was quite an emotional experience to see the plane fly over and land on our gravel runway. The crowd was quite large as many people from the mission and the community waited to greet it. Piloting was our current chief pilot, and in the co-captain chair one of our retired pilots. It’s taken many generations to bring the flight program to where it is now. It’s absolutely incredible to hear the stories of God’s grace and goodness through the years.

Now we’re working towards getting this aircraft ready to send to Indonesia. There are two pilots back from Indo to train in it. One is a friend who went through the training with Jonie and I. We are so thrilled to spend time with him and his wife and girls. A couple of years ago we were saddened that our closest friends we may never see again, even though we worked for the same organization. We were all moving to different places, Bolivia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea. However, through several different reasons, five of us were together again in Arizona just last week at the same time. What fun we had catching up on the last two years, the joys and the sorrows. There was a lot that has happened, but we were together again, and it was great! And for each of us, it’s another beginning, new ministries, skills, homes. We’re all in a period of transition, and though it’s terrifying, it’s good to walk through it together.

Though we were not expecting to be on this continent for Christmas, we were so happy to be able to spend it with my (Jason’s) mom and dad, my brothers, their wives and the nephew and niece that we’d never met.

The trip to PA from Arizona was just as eventful as the rest of our lives. We arrived at the airport at 6 am to leave at 7:30 and be in PA by 5. However, 3000 men in uniform that were sitting at the terminal waiting on standby for seats to see their families. We decided to give up our seats and go on a later flight so at least 2 could get out that morning. However, our luggage would stay on the plane and meet us there at our final destination. We finally left Arizona almost 4 hours later, arriving in Dallas to find out that our connecting flight was cancelled because of snow in PA.

For 4 hours we tried to get out of there, running to every terminal checking every airline, trying to get on another flight. Finally, hot, sweaty, and rejected by every airline going to every airport within a 6 hour drive of home we put our powers combined into figuring out how to get out of Texas. I spent over an hour on the phone. I had to call 2 airlines and Orbitz travel agency. Since I didn’t have the time to spend on hold with each of them individually I hogged two pay phones, with one on each ear trying to sort things out. Meanwhile, Jonie got online and got directions from NY Laguardia airport which seemed to be our only possibility, if I could work out the flights, as well as rental cars.

We did arrive in NY about 10:30pm to find that rental cars and connecting flights weren’t going to work, so my brother had to drive over 3 hours to come and get us. We finally arrived at his home at 4 am. The most annoying part of the whole thing was our flight was delayed because it was supposed to snow, however it didn’t actually start snowing until 14 hours AFTER our flight was to arrive, and now all of our luggage was stuck at another terminal. For 3 days we had no clothes to change into until we realized they were never going to deliver it, and I just drove down and picked it up.

But we did get snow! We did have a white Christmas. We couldn’t go out and play in it since all our warm clothes were in our lost luggage. But it was well worth being there for the 16 inches we got. Being stuck at Mom and Dad’s with the family and the kids was great. We played lots of games and bribed the kids, with food, well at least Gabe. He’ll eat anything!

Christmas Day as an adult is very different than it was 20 years ago! The best thing about it this year was Gabe and Hayley. Though Hayley just kind of laid there, Gabe was a lot of fun. It didn’t take long for Gabe to be accept me as a part of his little life, including my name in his scant vocabulary. What a riot he was! A daily part trip was hours and hours of games that we played together, including Farckle, Settlers of Catan (in many forms and varieties) and enough video games until 3 or 4 in the morning that I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing the crosshairs of my alien annihilating scope.

But it wasn’t all fun and games. We were able to spend time with hundreds of our supporters through three church services, three open houses, a few dinners, lunches and/or breakfast’s. We’ve now shown our picture show more than a few dozen times. We’ve got two more that we know of, but as we come across individuals they seem to get a private showing. We’re certainly looking forward to getting new pictures!

Though the snow delay at the airport ruined the tradition of all of us going to get the christmas tree together, we found time to partake of another tradition, the neighborhood Christmas caroling tour. Those of the neighbors who are young enough to walk around town will brave the cold and ice to bring sounds of the season to the elderly and shut-ins of our community. It’s been several years since I’ve participated in this tradition, and I couldn’t believe that for the most part we were singing to the same people that we did when I was a kid. How old are these people now? Though singing (for me) is about as much fun as a sinus infection, hanging out with my brother was definitely worth it. Pushing each other in the snow, hiding in the bushes to see if the rest of the group would see us as they walked past (they never did), it was like we were kids again except that now we each had wives to add to the chastisement of our mother to cool it and grow up. Phooey on all three of you! Christmas is a time for slush balls mixed with gravel hurled with precise accuracy at the center of your siblings back, the shrapnel of which may cause collateral damage, but that’s the price people pay to be part of our traditions!

We were also able to go out with an old friend for lunch at Cracker Barrel. What a good friend and supporter he’s been over the years! He, more than anyone I know, is my example of unconditional love taking care of his wife, paralyzed by MS for maybe 30 years, until he couldn’t even lift himself off the bed. Though it’s very difficult for him to get around, and needs care himself, he still spends every day for her. What an incredible picture of Christ!

Recently a local rancher paid for us to do an annual on his Robinson R44 helicopter. After the inspection he offered to a couple of the guys to use it to build time for basically the cost of fuel, about $45 and hour. The normal rental cost to cover maintenance and stuff is about $120 an hour so this was a very good deal! So what do you do when you need to build 50 hours of flight time and you have a cheap chopper at your disposal? Fly every moment you can! As my friend worked to build his time, I got to ride around just for the fun of it.

I must say it’s really cool to be able to jump in and fly a helicopter. It’s totally different than flying a plane. Flying backwards and sideways is great, but hovering, there’s something about it that blows my mind. Everything that I learned about aerodynamics is challenged when you’re hanging by two 1 1/2 inch bolts 20 feet off the ground. It’s an incredible feeling!

Despite the cool temps, we decided to fly with the doors off. What else could we do to boost up the thrill? At slow speeds it’s no big deal, at 500 to 1500 feet there doesn’t seem to be much to get your heart going. But up at 2500 or 3000 feet at 120 miles per hour you start to wonder just how well that little seat belt will hold. Then into the mountains we go where updrafts start shaking us around quite a bit. Combined with whipping in and out of rock formations and following trails on the ground, it gets quite heart stopping…or pounding. And the only thing there is to grab onto is this little lip over the door.

Though it’s good to get my adrenaline up again, (I noticed it takes more and more danger to get my heart rate up now) the best part of the chopper is being able to land wherever we want. We landed out in the desert for no reason at all but to land there. We did pinnacle approaches, where we would land on the very tip of a mountain peak. And we hovered over some vertical mine shafts trying to see into the bottom. When we couldn’t see, we decided to land, just there in the desert and explore the area. It’s such a cool feeling to set down and walk away, not needing a runway! What in incredible tool this aircraft will be to the missionaries who don’t have the ability to build runways whether due to the terrain or the inability to get the necessary permits to cut down that many trees. We already have helicopters operating in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and soon to be in the Philippines, getting the missionaries and the Gospel into the most remote places in the world.

As soon as we returned from Alaska I had to hit the hanger hard. The Cherokee 140 was becoming a “hanger queen” (a term we use to describe an aircraft that never leaves the hanger) and we already had two or three of those! While I was waiting for a few parts still, I cleaned and painted individual parts of the engine. Not only are we going for a reliable, airworthy engine, but one that looks good as well. It was one of my most enjoyable jobs as I was able to shut the doors to my engine rebuilding/wash room, and listen to the series I’ve been studying on David, A Man of Passion and Destiny. What an enjoyable time that I had there, and was quite sad to get to the end of my project. But the job wasn’t over with the rebuild, I had to install it on the airplane, again making sure the wires, hoses and cables were routed and secured neatly. Repairing and painting baffles used to direct cooling air over the cylinders, and building new exhaust parts. I usually spend 10-12 hours a day at the hanger, something that’s easy to do when there’s no kids to take care of and the wife is happy to come down and work on the computer, write thank you notes, or work on a knitting project while I work. Once all the correct parts arrived and after an entire week, it was time to start it up.

Before you start up an engine you need to turn it over with the battery until there’s oil pressure on the gauge. By the time we got pressure and were ready to start for real, the battery didn’t have enough juice to turn over the engine, so our shop manager had to turn the prop by hand to get it to start up. And it started right up and ran beautifully, smooth as a… really smooth thing. It was a thing of beauty, and the owner was very pleased with the end result!

Though “business” took up a lot of our time up in Alaska, we sure didn’t skimp on fun times with family and friends! We went through dozens of games of Settlers of Catan with Jonie’s brother and sister in law, spent an evening at Chena Hot Springs with uncles, cousins and their spouses, and made a trip to see Dads lake house he bought several months ago. It took patient people and lots of schedule juggling and intense time management to fit in everyone that we possibly could without anyone feeling ripped off. Thanks everyone for your patience and working to spend time with us! We sure had a blast!

One of the best times I had was several hours in the mountains on four wheelers. Riding 4 wheelers has been one of the things I’ve missed the most over the last few years. There wasn’t enough snow to let us use snow machines, but enough to make the four wheelers even more fun! It was a warm 15 or 20 degrees and sunny a perfect riding day. That is, until Canadian craftsmanship let us down and my friends Polaris quit running. We were pretty far behind everyone else since I turned around to see what happened to him. After towing him up and down the hills a valleys, across frozen swamps, we got out to the road. All was well until I tried to shift from 3rd to 4th gear and went to 2nd instead thanks to Honda engineering and my big fat gloved thumb.

Well, Honda engineering failed us too, and the piston separated form the connecting rod inside the engine. This is what we, in the aviation world, call catastrophic engine failure. It’s currently at the repair shop and I’m feeling really bad about that! Why does this kind of stuff always happen to me? But it was still a good day, I’d do it again, I’d just be more careful shifting.

Another of my goals was to make friends with a year old moose that had been hanging out in the yard. He was pretty grouchy, spent much time out in the front yard and chased me twice when I went out to take pictures. It was a bit of a touchy process, but eventually he let me pet his nose. Then, after that, disappeared never be seen the rest of the time I was there…

Being at a “stuck” point while waiting for parts and an invitation from our Alaskan churches, we felt that would be a good time to make a trip to Alaska. Though visiting churches wasn’t the reason for coming back to the States, as a furlough would be, a couple of our churches in Alaska requested that we come up there. Though we couldn’t dedicate the kind of time to them that we really wanted to, we agreed to spend a few weeks there.

We knew that there would be a couple of church meetings and maybe some time with pastors and missions committees, but in the end it turned out we has 11 official meetings/get-togethers within 2 1/2 weeks and the final 1/2 week was at a 4 day pastors conference, so “relaxing” wasn’t really the name of the game.

On the way up we had a plane change in Seattle. As I stood at the counter of the Seattle Terminal Burger King there was conversation going on amongst the employees that none of the customers could understand, but me. Six or seven Filipina’s were working there chatting amongst themselves until the dayuhan (foreigner) ordered in Tagalog. All of a sudden everyone’s attention was on me. There is a standing joke amongst the Filipinos, every dayuhan can be sold until he knows enough of the language to understand that he’s being sold off. It’s always good to hear them say that I can no longer be sold, and it was especially good to hear that on my own soil, to understand part of a culture that is not my own.

We had two pastors that we hadn’t met yet in Alaska, one being our home church pastor and so spent a LOT of time with him. If he wasn’t so lonely while his wife was in Colorado, he certainly would have gotten sick of us! Since our trip really wasn’t planned we had to scramble to make contact with friends and family. Many adjusted their schedules for us, and we got to see just about everyone through our church meetings, home groups and individual times.

At one open house we met a filipino guy who invited us to speak at his Filipino church the following evening. It was so good for us to be surrounded by Filipinos again, some of whom were from the very remote places we’d visited and showed pictures of a place that was as special to them as is was to us. For a couple hours we prayed with them, told them our story and conversed in Tagalog. It was so special for us to be prayed for in Tagalog!

We certainly had a busy time, but also a great time with friends and family…

The only thing more important than rebuilding this 185 is just about, a lot of things. I was grateful for a diversion from drilling thousands of rivets. Each tuesday a gentleman, and frequently his wife, bring us donuts and day old bread from Safeway 40 miles away. He flies his Piper Cherokee each time and spends the day volunteering around the hanger. To thank him, we do his maintenance for the price of parts as well as his annual inspection. This year, however, all did not go well as we found a little tiny piece of bearing in his oil filter. Yes, we do cut open oil filters and look for little things like that! That little piece told us that something was coming apart in his engine. I removed the engine and began to tear it apart. It turned out to be a main crankshaft bearing, which meant by the time I found it, it was totally torn apart.

Some of the parts had to be shipped out for inspection at a certified engine shop, and now after 4 weeks of waiting, I’m starting to put it back together. Going together is much more involved than ripping it apart. Much care has to be put into it to make sure that everything works properly when it’s done. The safety of our donuts counts on it! And of course the Nelsons.

Now I’m working on it mostly in the evenings and weekends since there’s new priorities in the shop right now.  But what happened during those weeks of waiting? Surely we weren’t just sitting here waiting for parts and pieces… Of course not! We went to Alaska. What else could we do?

Since Jonie and I got married only four years ago, we’ve packed up and moved almost 10 times with countless smaller trips in between. I have no idea how many times I’ve woken up wondering where I am, maybe for a single night or a whole week. Someday if I have nothing else to do I’ll figure it out. Maybe on my next 20 hour flight across the ocean…

However, through all that moving there has been one constant, one place I keep coming back to. Here at NTMA Arizona we’ve lived in 3 different trailers and stayed with 3 different families while visiting. But there’s a corner of the hanger that has been mine almost constantly for what amounts to a year and a half. Since I’ve left home I haven’t been anywhere else that long. Those two squares on the hanger floor have been part of my life for all this time. My tools are there and my 185 rebuilds. This is the 3rd rebuild/repair I’ve been part of, though this one is definitely the worst  one I’ve worked on. Right now the wings are being rebuilt from the ground up. They are in really bad shape. The engine pushed into the firewall causing lots of damage to both. While skidding down the runway on it’s roof the ceiling windshield and tail suffered extreme damage. The propeller is a goner, but the engine should be able to be rebuilt. Thankfully though, I’ve got a couple other projects, the first more important than the Cessna.