It looked like it was going to be a long night, and that did not bode well for a long day of flying the next day.
In the morning, Missionary pilot Brian Pruett was scheduled to fly missionaries Chris and Lynn Strange to a Banwaon village in the Philippines. He was to stay with them there until they were ready to head out later in the day. With a front moving in, he anticipated nasty weather and the stress that brings to flying.
Yet just before bedtime, one of his children got sick. Brian and his wife Bailey went into action.
“We cleaned her up, changed her bedding and held her on the couch in the living room,” Brian wrote. “I had to start thinking, ‘If this continues I’ll be in no shape to be flying in the morning.”
Continue it did.
“While I was taking her clothes and other dirty stuff to the laundry room Bailey gathered her own pillow and things for the night,” Brian wrote. “She knew that if I had to help in the night it would mean I’d have to cancel the flight and the Stranges, who had waited a long time to be reunited with their tribal friends, would have to wait for another opportunity.
“It wasn’t even a discussion. Bailey barricaded herself in the bedroom, and I got a good night’s sleep and woke up fresh for the flight.”
When Brian reached the village airstrip the next day, he called Bailey on the radio to let her know he was landing soon. What he didn’t know was that when he called his daughter was sick again.
“Bailey stayed at the radio, mess and all, until I was on the ground and safe. I had no idea anything had happened until I got home later that afternoon,” Brian wrote.
“It was never more clear … that I can’t do this job without her, and the missionaries can’t do their jobs like they do now without her,” Brian wrote.
I am so glad to be able to serve in ministry with my wife, and I know our role is important to the work that we do, helping plant churches among the world’s unreached people.
Leave a Reply