The Grand Finale

These last few months have been stressful to say the least. We’ve had a lot on our plate and had to adapt our schedule around several changes that we couldn’t have seen coming. This has meant that I have had to fly a lot closer to our departure for the States than we’d planned. In the end we were delayed enough that Brian was unable to finish Joel’s checkout so he shifted his attention to working with Garry, our chief pilot. The task was to fly with him and make sure he was current in all the airstrips so that he could take over checking Joel out on the last two airstrips.

During this process, Garry and I landed in our most challenging location and made a tough decision to cease flying there until repairs could be made. It simply didn’t seem wise to check someone out in there with the very pronounced bumps that have worsened throughout the year, thanks to a particularly wet year and earth quakes. Landing there has really been wearing on me because it has been nearly impossible to land without bouncing a couple of times just after touchdown – something that you don’t like to do on a 900′ airstrip where the first half of it is downhill.

We decided that it was best that I try to do the last flight to that location since I was already familiar with the idiosyncrasies of the airstrip. I would deliver the necessary supplies for the missionary to get to work on it right away. There are enough problems associated with a “last flight” of any sort, but this was a particularly stressful one as it was coming at the end of an already exhausting season in our lives. The challenges were compounded by a request for me to do a solo-airdrop in another location on the return flight – this is the highest risk operation in our playbook. All this was challenging enough and then we found out that our paperwork for the airplane’s annual inspection still hadn’t been signed at the government office so if I didn’t get the flights done on the 26th we’d have to wait until the paperwork was finished.

I was well aware of the risks on this flight and tried to focus on just flying like I always do. The Lord gave us a beautiful day and I was able to accomplish all the objectives safely and with a smile on my face. It was a great feeling to park the plane in the hangar, unload it and empty it of all my personal effects because that was the end of my flights here until we return from the States. It was a fitting last day and very typical of our time here. We are so thankful for the prayers and encouragement we’ve received from those who were aware of our need for stamina and clear thinking. God delivered.

We now turn out attention to packing up the house and making sure we’ve transferred our to-do’s to our coworkers and tidied up any open projects or loose ends. We have just a little over a week left before we move out of the house and to Manila.