“We want to go where the need is the greatest, other than that we don’t really care what country we go to.” That has been our answer for the last couple of years when people have asked what country we plan to serve in. We have tried to keep our fingers on the pulse of needs worldwide, but they change so rapidly that it has been impossible to decide on a specific location, until now.
We recently heard that New Tribes in the Philippines is operating with only one pilot right now! They have three flight bases and several airplanes, but only one pilot. In order to operate at 100% they need to have a total of 7 pilot/mechanic families join the work there. Before Bailey and I heard about the need for the Philippines God had laid it on both of our hearts as somewhere we would want to go, but we didn’t know if it met our “biggest need” criteria. A couple days after we found out about the needs in the Philippines, we were in contact with New Tribes Aviation about it, and they commited with us to do all we can to prepare for serving in the Philippines.
Because of the urgent need in the Philippines, we are going to try to do all we can to get there as soon as possible so we can start learning the language and serving the missionaries. This coming August we will start our last phase of training in Arizona where Brian will recieve specific flight training geared toward flying in the Philippines. It normally takes around 6 months to complete. At it’s completion we hope to fly directly to Manila where we will start language training.
So what about raising support? In order to leave as soon as we hope to, we have already started raising support. We still have full-time responsibilities to the program here in Missouri, so we cannot put a lot of time into it. Starting in May, when our training here is over, we will begin traveling and raising support full-time. Our goal is to have our support raised by the time we start the final flight training this coming August.
Normally it takes missionaries the better part of a year to raise their support, but we feel the needs in the Philippines are so great that we are asking the Lord to provide for us to go by the end of our training in Arizona. It is a huge task, but we don’t see any reason why we should wait to start. If you or someone you know is interested in joing our team, you can get more info by contacting us.