Flight Training
With just over two months of training under out belts, Travis is done with ‘ground school’ and has been doing flight training the past 3 weeks. He’s mostly been working on accuracy landing on short airstrips. There are lots of cattle ranches around here, most of the airstrips are fenced off from the cattle, but the airstrip Travis was practicing on last Friday wasn’t and he had to do two ‘go arounds’ to avoid a cow that wasn’t in a hurry to get off the runway. ‘All part of the training’ as we like to say.
Fueling
When Travis isn’t flying he’s doing maintenance and electronics projects around the hangar. One project that he has been working on for a few weeks is a remote fueling pump. Often when helicopters or planes are delivering supplies to missionaries overseas they are shuttling supplies from a remote location reachable by roads to a more remote location reachable only by aircraft. They are often refueling from 55 gallon drums at the first location. This requires a pump that works off of a motorcycle battery. Sometimes that battery runs out just short of completing the refueling. Travis is designing a battery box that will allow the pump to auto-switch between the battery and the helicopter’s own electrical system to complete the fueling. (see photo below).
Flight Following
The first week of October we had our Flight Following class. Every training flight that happens here is followed by someone so that we always know the location of the aircraft. Each of the pilot/mechanic trainees’ wives are responsible for one day a week. Becky’s day is Wednesdays. A few decades ago this was done on short wave radio, now it’s done through Garmin gps, cell phones, and the internet. It’s a fairly easy task as long as all the technology is working.
Family
How is our family doing? We’re all enjoying the cooler fall weather. Nathan is still loving Kindergarten. Nathan and Hannah are able to participate in Awana club on Thursday nights only 6 miles away. We feel like we’re settled in now and enjoying life in rural south eastern Arizona.
Ethnos360 Aviation (sorry I ran out of F’s)
In our last newsletter we mentioned getting to see the new helicopter take off on it’s way to Brazil. Praise God it made it there safely, and as far as we know the paperwork to have it registered legally in Brazil has been going fairly smoothly.
Today we’d like to ask you to pray for the Maliyali people of Papua New Guinea. They live in a remote location serviced by Ethnos360 Aviation. The three missionary families living there have finished translating the gospel story into the Maliyali language and began teaching the last week of August. They are currently up to the story of John the Baptist. Here is a quote one of the missionaries shared, “Today the Maliyali walked away saying, ‘The people of Jesus’s time were so blind to what God’s one true road was. Even the religious men of Jesus’ day, they thought they could just obey the Law and they would be good, but no, that was not His one true road. God said, “Here He is ya’ll! This is my son, I am happy with Him.” He has shown us, that’s our road too!’ ” Please pray for this people group and the missionaries there as they finish the gospel lessons over the next several weeks. You can read more about their story here: https://ethnos360aviation.org/stories/story/news-you-wont-read-in-the-papers
Praises + Prayer Requests
Thanks for holding us up in prayer! We want to give thanks to God for the good fellowship we have here on campus and at our local church. We feel like this is home (for now). We also praise God that we are currently at 62% of our targeted support level. Our goal is to be at 100% next summer so that we can leave for the field.
We would love if you would pray with us for safety and good weather during the training flights, for wisdom in parenting our children, and for good health for the kids (overall they are a lot healthier than last year, but Hannah has been sick a few times already.)
Peace in Christ,
The Lesickas
