It doesn’t take long to notice that we’ve been silent for about three months. We apologize. This would have been a very fun and interesting time to be sharing all the exciting things going on in our ministry, but after Dylan came home from the hospital we entered “survival mode.” On top of our normal, full-time ministry here and taking care of a newborn and a 2-year old, we had a few extra highlights in the last three months:
- Dylan was born and hospitalized in a provincial hospital for three days
- After we were all home from hospital Jenny Brennan (Bailey’s mom) came to visit and help out.
- We moved to our own house and unpacked just our essentials.
- Our only vehicle, our truck, needed a new engine and it took over 6 weeks (instead of the normal 2 weeks) to have a shop install one.
- Brian traveled to help prepare one of our planes to be flown from Northern Philippines to Southern so we could sell it and import a helicopter.
- Brian flew our Cessna 180 across the Philippines to Mindanao and worked hard with our partners at cleaning it up to sell.
- Brian and Garry (our chief pilot here) met with a buyer for our plane and negotiated its sale.
- The flight program on Mindanao got quite busy and Brian had an above average number 0f flights while Bailey flight followed.
- We installed a radio antenna on the house so Bailey could flight follow from home while watching the kids.
- We traveled as a family to Manila to process paperwork for Dylan and get some rest.
- The night we arrived in Manila, Brian took Maycie to the emergency room with a high fever and heart rate. It ended up just being nothing and she is back to normal now.
- Brian flew a lot more…
- We hired contractors to work on our house. They were more of a pain than a help and ended up stealing from us in the end.
- We picked up our truck and Brian had to spend a few days fixing what was overlooked or done wrong. Now we’re almost happy with it.
- We hired new contractors who another missionary here has had great sucess with. They worked nonstop for 3 weeks and did a great job.
- Just as flights were picking up our airplane received propeller damage in one of our airstrips during a training flight while our chief pilot was demonstrating a landing into an airstrip we hadn’t been to in months. No one was hurt, but the plane is grounded in the tribal location for several weeks.
- Brian and Garry hiked out of the tribe and got home the same day as the plane was damaged. It was a long day!
- We worked hard at organizing and preparing to make our scheduled flights “overland” in our Landcruiser. We are so thankful we had the engine replaced!
- Brian drove 620 miles, 190 of which was off road, to bring missionaries and tribal people in and out of two locations. The trip took 3 days and 35 hours of driving. (17 MPH average speed). Had we flown it would have taken about 1.5 hours of flight time.
- Bailey watched the kids and supervised the workers while Brian was away.
- The workers finished their work and we were finally able to unpack our office and put things away.
- We are organizing and preparing to change the engine and propeller in the tribal location where the airplane is sitting now. Needless to say this will be no luxury camping trip!
- Brian is keeping our truck prepared to drive supplies into the tribal locations that are accessible by road. It is rainy season and one of the roads is quite bad and very remote. An unmodified truck wouldn’t stand a chance at reaching these tribal locations when the roads are bad. We will likely make these trips a few more times before we are flying again.
We are most certainly forgetting some big details, but needless to say, we have been surviving and taking life one day at a time. With the kids at the stage they are in, it makes it even more difficult to be in such turmoil, but Bailey is amazingly holding everything together at home. However, we are still in survival mode and apologize for falling silent on communication. We will dig ourselves out and have some great stories to tell, even if it’s when we see you for Christmas in 2011!