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Smooth Landing

I came across Ministry Gives Ecuadorian Evangelists Smooth Landing Among Villagers">this article the other day. It's a bit exagerated, in that there really aren't that many Shuar evangelists using MAF planes, just one or two.

Kayak School

Hard to believe it's been a week since Dustin and I were in Tena for our three-day kayak school with Rios Ecuador. We had a great experience, improving on our skills as well as having a blast. Photos are in the gallery. Saturday morning we went over on the bus and met our guide. That day we did the upper Rio Napo, also called the Jatunyacu. A class III section with big waves. I think I flipped eight times, and rolled back up every time. Dustin didn't go over as many times as I did. Sunday and Monday we did the same section on the Rio Misahualli, a class III introduction to creeking. Sunday I flipped about eight times, but Monday did much better. Dustin swam in one of the last rapids on Saturday, and banged his knee. Then, after getting back in the boat, he flipped on the very next rapid and clanged his head very hard. We only noticed today that he actually cracked the edge of his helmet. That experience made him a bit nervous as he repeated the same section on Monday, but he did fine, with Tarquino, our instructor, helping him through those rapids. Guess that all sounds a bit scary, flipping over in rapids, but we're enjoying the learning process. Even though I can roll when I need to, the goal is not to flip over so much. We came home late Monday afternoon, very tired.

Christmas In Shell

A belated Merry Christmas to everyone. We've just enjoyed a very, very relaxed day after Christmas. Let me back up a bit. As has become our tradition, we opened our gifts on Christmas eve, after reading the Christmas story. Christmas morning we slept in a bit. Taylor woke up first, and he wanted to open his stocking, but he waited until Dustin was up, so we could all do that together. We shared our Christmas meal with several other families--two MAF pilot families, and an HCJB doctor family. The wife of the doctor, is Carol, who grew up with Ellyn and me in Papua New Guinea. Who would have thought that over twenty years later we'd end up together in Shell, Ecuador. Christmas day was very warm, and by 5 PM I headed to the river with six of the boys. Oldest was Loren, who is graduating from the Alliance Academy in Quito at the end of the school year, and who was in my class as an eighth grader my first year here in Shell. Youngest was Taylor, who is rapidly approaching the age of ten. He has, just in the past few months, really started to enjoy the river. Our oldest, Dustin, has always enjoyed the water more than Taylor. This morning we all slept in. I have no idea when Taylor got up, but he was up playing Xbox when I got out of bed at 10:30 AM. Ellyn and Dustin got up about 11:30 AM!! As you can tell, our family is a bunch of night owls who love to sleep in. I made breakfast, which I guess you could say was really lunch, and while we ate we listened to our Sierra Vista Presbyterian Church service. In the middle of the afternoon I took the boys up to the swimming hole in Mera to cool off a bit. Today was another hot day. And, just as I started writing this, the rain began to hit the roof. That'll cool things off a bit. Ellyn was hoping for a cloudy, rainy day so it would feel more like Christmas.

Maintenance Update

Dan just took off and landed a few minutes later, doing an RTS (Return to Service) flight on HC-BXB. Planes coming out of maintenance always go through a short test flight prior to being returned to service. Now that just leaves HC-BQV on the hangar floor, and everyone can focus their attention on that. The prop was installed yesterday, and soon the new pod will be installed. We've come from this all the way to this since March 12, 2004.

Vacation Time

The boys both started their vacation on Monday. I took Monday off also, as Dustin and I were in Tena over the weekend for a three-day kayak school. More on that later. Yesterday I was back and work, and went for water in the morning. It was raining, and it's been a long time since I had to get water in the rain. In the afternoon I upgraded the content filtering program on the server. That went without any difficulty, largely due to the fact that I tried it out first on a test server, and wrote up some documentation for the install. I'm still tweaking things a bit today, and I'm pleased with the the way the transition went. I use a program called DansGuardian, and it does a great job of scanning and filtering each web page that is requested.

Almost There!

This news from Dave McCleery, the MAF Ecuador Program Manager -
Fred Schmidt and I just returned from Quito where we both passed our commercial check rides with a Civil Aviation examiner. Praise the Lord that all our pilots, with the exception of Chad Irwin who is on furlough, now have Ecuadorian licenses! It has been a lot of work and preparation time but great to have it done. Thanks to those that have been praying so faithfully.

Contract Update

Thanks for your prayers. After making many trips over the past two weeks to the offices of the Ministry of Public Health, our Quito office manager finally was given a payment check which covers the month of July. That helps, but we still are waiting to be paid for Aug-November. And, we're still waiting for the contract to be signed.

A week ago I was in Quito to do some IT work, and had lunch with our Quito office manager. I found out the reason for the delay in the signing of the contract. In the past, the contract has not listed a money amount. Somehow, the new contract was written with a dollar amount included. Any government contract over $150K must be signed by a government controller office. That is the hold up right now. If that dollar amount would have been left out, we'd have a signed contract already. But the controller is stalling on the contract. Pray that this office would approve the contract.

Termite Swarm

The termites are absolutely AWFUL tonight. And, they were last night too! It's the season when they fly. As insects they gravitate towards light. Then once they land they lose their wings, and then find some wood to bore into. I'm sitting here in the dark, with the fan going, hoping they'll leave. A few are attracted to the computer screen, but I turned on the bathroom light hoping they'll go in there. Of course, I try to kill as many as I can. But, I'd be doing that non-stop, and get nothing else done, if I try to kill them all. Then, top top it off, a big (and I mean big) spider crawled across the floor. I ran and got some TP before he crawled into my closet. He was fast, but I was faster!

I was up in Quito on Monday and Tuesday. I managed to avoid a bus ride this time, and went with John and his son. The purpose of the trip was to do IT work in the Quito office. I was able to complete several things, but wasn't successful as far as the main reason I went. It wasn't urgent, and that's the good news. I'll head back up right after the new year and try again.

We had great weather today, with lots of blue sky. Nice! We're still flying, but again are getting low of fuel. Apparently the supplier does have 500 gallons in Quito that we can purchase, but the price has once again risen since our last purchase. To top that off, 500 gallons won't last us even a week, and we really need a shipment of at least 2000 gallons.

No Air Ambulance Flights

This place can seem like a battlefield at times. But then, I don't have to tell you we're in a spiritual war, do I? I want to let you know of our latest situation regarding MAF in Ecuador. MAF has a contract with the Ministry of Public Health to do the Air Ambulance flights in the Oriente (eastern jungle). Well, we did have a contract. The five year contract ended in June '04. In March '04 we began the process of renewing the contract, and it's still not signed. I'm not sure anyone here can tell you why, except to say 'bureaucracy'. Even without a contract, MAF was paid for the months of May and June. A check for July is supposed to be forthcoming any day now. We don't know when they will pay us for the flights done in August-November. Typically the bill to the Ministry of Public Health is $10-13,000 a month, and if you do the math you'll see that at least $50,000 is owed to MAF.

We didn't want it to come to this, but as of today, December 1, we will not make any Air Ambulance flights unless they are a matter of life or death. This is how MAF will need to operate until we get a check from the Ministry of Public Health, even if it is for only one month worth of flying. Please pray that the Ministry of Health people will sign the contract, and that they will be able to quickly pay for the emergency flights of July through November. Pray for the runway doctor (who has an office here at the MAF hangar), that she will have wisdom in deciding whether or not a plane should be sent on an emergency flight. Pray for those Indians in the jungle who will suffer from this, that this situation will end quickly for their sake.

Hangar Happenings

Catching up on what's going on around here. Yesterday the guys made three flights out to the Waorani sector--not sure exactly which communities. They took out some college students who are in Ecuador to look at missions, be involved in missions, get a vision for missions. We always consider it a part of our ministry to make these kinds of flights, because it's a way to be an instrument to get people headed in the directions of foreign missions.

The engine is on HC-BQV as of Monday afternoon. That's the plane that was damaged on landing in Kuakash earlier this year. It stands a decent chance of being ready to fly again in January. Work has stopped on that for now, and the mechanics are focusing on HC-BMO, which is out of hours, and needs an inspection before it can fly again.

The Kelley family is returning to Shell tomorrow. They've been in the US for the past couple weeks to be with Curtis's dad, who had major heart surgery. They were to be back in Shell by today, but the plane wasn't able to land in Quito on Monday night due to weather, and instead had to divert to Guayaquil. Then there was also the question about whether or not the road would be open, as there was that paro going on since Friday or Saturday. All traffic that had to go from Quito to Shell was going through Baeza and Tena, and longer route, and therefore more costly. At any rate, they have a ride down to Shell on Thursday, and the paro is now over. It will be good to have Curtis back as a mechanic again.

I've been working on a database that will in in flight planning and scheduling. I don't know the program at all, so that's been slow going. I'm going to e-mail someone in the US who uses the program extensively and see if they might lend a hand. The servers are continuing to function well, with no major problems, and that's always a good thing. Oh, let me take that back. We been having a rain storm the last half hour, with some scattered lightning. One strike was within a half mile, and the power went off for five minutes. I was deciding whether to shut down the computers due to risk of damage from the lightning, when my UPS cut out. I've got to see what happened there, because it should last a lot longer than a couple minutes. I've got ten batteries in the system.