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Dear Friends and Family,
I want to share with you first hand some experiences that I have had over the past week. There are some things that I knew about living outside of the U.S. that have come into sharp (and personal) focus in the last few days. We have walked through Tropical Storm Ketsana and it’s aftermath with friends who have lost everything, and had the opportunity to help in some of the hardest hit areas.
What we are realizing is that regardless of the emergency, the rapid, professional assistance that we expect in the U.S. is simply not available. The slight training and resources that we had available were taxed to the limit as we watched a man being carried by friends through chest deep water while having a heart attack, mothers trying to hold infants above filthy flood waters and stronger young men and women wading kilometers through deep treacherous currents and debris just to find food and water for family members still trapped on top of their houses.
Even in everyday life, traffic is so thick and quality medical services spread so thin that an ambulance is simply not an option. Our desire is that we would be prepared for these situations, not only for our own safety, but in order to help others in need. Please pray for us as we consider what this preparedness should look like. We are praying about adding to our medical training and equipment as well as possibly some basic rescue equipment. We covet your prayers in this. Please also let us know if the Lord lays it on your heart to be a part of this project financially, or with counsel and advice on what direction to go with all of this.
Another related need is those who have lost much or everything in this disaster. Most of our language teachers were affected to some degree, while one (a mother of three) lost her entire house with most of the contents. They cannot afford to simply replace everything at once. It will be a slow, difficult road over years for them to recover everything. There are also a number of missionaries whose houses were full of water. They will face the burden of replacing or repairing furniture, vehicles, electronics, and many other belongings. Let us know if you would like to be a part of meeting these needs and we can help direct funds to the right places.
Thanks so much for your prayerful partnership.
In His Service,
Josh
For the Daltons
Serving with New Tribes Mission
in the Philippines.

Greetings from Texas! We arrived back in Texas the last week of April and hit the ground running. I don’t think we ever knew what busy was until now! We have been very blessed to be able to be back with our friends and family and have been very encouraged by all of them.

We are currently still planning on heading for the Philippines in the Spring of 2009 and were officially assigned there shortly before we left Arizona. We have begun the lengthy process of corresponding with the Philippine field and getting all our paperwork together for our visas. Thank you for all your prayers because so far, it has gone smoothly.

We are also hard and heavy into Partnership Development. We have our first official speaking engagement with a local church this Sunday. Josh has been working very hard on getting all our tools and materials together as we begin the process of partnering with churches and individuals who want to be a part of getting the Gospel to tribal people in the Philippines who’ve never heard. God has already blessed us with several financial and prayer partners. We are currently at about 20% of our recommended support. If you or someone you know would like to meet with us or have us share at your church, please contact us so we can set something up!

God has also really blessed us with a new sending church that we have been able to get involved in. It is a country church where our preacher wears jeans and boots and most of the congregation is involved in rodeo in one way or another. Josh & I are both involved in the praise team and we were both able to teach in Vacation Bible School last week. We have been very encouraged by the way they have jumped right in and got involved with what God has called us to.

We have also been able to do a bit of traveling since we got home. We were able to attend Josh’s brother’s wedding in Delaware in May as well as do a little sight-seeing. The kids really enjoyed their first trip to the beach!

I hope to keep the website updated more frequently, so please visit it again soon for new updates on what God is doing and what you are doing in helping to expand the reach of the Gospel to the Philippines!

We are waiting for our final interview and official field assignment. I also have several flights that I would like to do in preparation for my Flight Instructors License. I have been encouraged again to pursue The Instructors License because it may be a means to building time in a helicopter in a few years. There are many areas of the Philippines that are becoming more difficult to support with traditional aircraft, so we are praying about the use of helicopters in these areas. Stay tuned over the next few months to see how all of this plays out, and please keep praying as these decisions will involve a lot of expense for New Tribes Mission as well as us personally as we pay for the helicopter flight time neccessary to get licensed and proficient in an entirely new type of aircraft in the future.

The last week of March, we decided to make a flying(pardon the pun) trip home to Texas, and visit friends and family who are still at the training center in Missouri. We drove to Texas pulling a trailer, then on to Missouri a day later. After spending the Weekend in Missouri, We drove back to Texas, spent the night, and drove on to Arizona the following day for a total of 3500 miles and 56 hours in the car. We thank the Lord for safety and (overall) good attitudes from the children on the trip. 

Our training is almost over and are preparing to leave for the Philippines. You have walked through this with us and we are at this point because the Lord used you to get us this far. Thank each of you for your encouragement and prayers. Thank you for choosing to invest in the ultimate goal of bringing the gospel to tribal people across the world.

"Are you sure we can make it?" This was the question of the day. And even though he was sure, I wasn’t so sure.

I have flown with my husband many times, but this was a new experience for me. He decided to take me up in the Cessna 185 to show me what he had been learning and to land on some of the training strips. Now, it is one thing seeing a nice long paved runway out the front windshield and it is quite another to see a short little dirt strip coming at you very fast. As we were descending the last few feet, I tried putting myself in his shoes.

Now, on these short, little strips, it is of the utmost importance to land exactly in the right spot every time. And if at all possible, he also must fly the route and pattern the same way every time. He must pay attention to every detail and be prepared to abort at the last minute when you see a cow or pig run down the airstrip. He must be prepared to fly whenever they need him because you never know when there will be a medical emergency and someone’s life depends on him getting there in time. He must be prepared to be unloaded on by the missionaries in the tribe who have not seen another person who speaks English for weeks. He must be prepared to encourage them. He is the grocery man and he may get blamed for not delivering the right groceries because the supply buyer bought the wrong ones. He will be carrying people’s children back and forth to school. He will be delivering God’s Word to people who have never had it in their own language. He will be taking families out to live among tribes that have never heard of Jesus Christ. He will be responsible for the lives and well-being of many people. He will have to keep the aircraft in good condition and perform the maintenance required to do so. He also has a wife, two little children, and a home to look after. He is the leader of the family, the daddy, the husband, the friend, the pilot, the mechanic, the mailman, the missionary.

As this all flashed through my mind and we safely landed on the short, bumpy dirt strip, I sat in awe of the man seated next to me. This godly man, who is willing to do what God has called him to, to use his talents to bring God’s Word to those who have never heard- is my husband.

Please pray for him as he has an awesome responsibility. Let’s just say that I’m glad it’s him and not me!

Click here to see a short video of flying on the 1100′ training strip.

Thank you so much for your prayers!

Since we started Missions training in Missouri in the Summer of 2006, I have only been able to fly about 3 hours, so it almost felt like an early Christmas present when I was able to start my flight training 2 days before we left to go to Texas for Christmas. During our two weeks of “vacation”, we traveled over 3,000 miles and spent over 50 hours in the car with two toddlers. Thankfully, the Lord blessed both of them with cheerful attitudes for most of those hours, and we were able to have some good time with our families. We arrived back in Arizona on Monday evening, and I started flying again Tuesday morning. After a couple of flights just to get familiar with a new type of aircraft (a Cessna 185, the same aircraft I will be operating in the Philippines) we started focusing on landings, probably the most important and most difficult part of the type of flying we do. We marked a box on the runway that is 14 feet wide and 90 feet long, and our goal is to touch down inside that box every time. Once we can consistently touch down in the box, we move to shorter and more challenging airstrips that will prepare us for what we will face overseas.

On November 17th, we were able to travel home to Texas for a week to be with our families for Thanksgiving. A friend of ours from Texas has a Cessna 205 and offered to fly us home and back. The flight went very smooth and took about 5 hours there and 5 hours back. It sure beat driving for 14 hours each way!

We got to spend alot of time with our families and friends. Our friends, the Majors, from Missouri came and spent 4 days with us and my brother was also able to drive down too. We had a full house at my parents on Thanksgiving Day!

The day after Thanksgiving, my family has a tradition of decorating the house for Christmas, making homemade pizza, and watching the classic, "It’s A Wonderful Life." Josh and I were also able to go out by ourselves for a whole day, something we haven’t done in over a year! Yea! It was a blessing to be able to spend some time together.

We are back into the groove of things here and Josh will start flying within a couple weeks. We are looking forward to going home again in 3 weeks for Christmas break!

Thank you all for your prayers and support of our ministry!

Over the holidays, we will have lots of people to see and meet with. Pray that we will have wisdom and that God will orchestrate events so we can meet with those He wants us to.

Please pray for Josh’s safety as he beings to fly.

Pray that God will begin to prepare our hearts for a new place of service in the Philippines and we would not be afraid of the unknowns.

Pray that God will continue to grow us as we seek Him and His heart and our passion for Him and for the lost would lived out in our lives.