Wednesday, November 29, 2006

From the logbook...

As expected yesterday, I flew a lot once again. At the rate I am going, I am flying about 15-20 hours a week, which by flying standards is a lot. Not to mention I am landing on average every 20 minutes into something somebody calls a runway. But it is so fun!

My first flight yesterday involved moving around a medical team, and taking back some patients to some villages about 40 minutes from Shell. I was able to come home for lunch, which is always nice. During my lunch break I also went and bought a real Christmas tree. Ya, I know, Christmas in the jungle feels weird to me too, but we are going to fake it and give it a try.

After lunch I took all the seats out of the plane except the co-pilots seat, and loaded up two full 55 gallon drums of avgas to take to Makuma. We use Makuma for a staging area sometimes, and like to have extra gas there. Also, when we have to divert there like I did on Monday, sometimes it is nice to be able to put on extra gas if we need it to get where we are going.

En route to Makuma I got the famous "call." The doctor at our hangar was wondering if I would go to Iwia afterwards to pick up a mom, and her 23 day old daughter that was having respiratory problems. I didn't plan on any extra stops, therefore I didn't have a lot of gas, and I only had 1 extra seat. Fortunately I didn't have to use any of the gas I had just brought to Makuma, and I had the one seat for the mom and her baby. So, after Makuma I flew 10 minutes to Iwia and picked up the awaiting patients. Combined the baby and mom probably weighed 120 pounds dripping wet. Shortly thereafter we were on our way to Shell, and 25 minutes later we landed, and the mom hopped into the awaiting ambulance taking them to the hospital.

When I arrived home, I was bushed, and so was Becca. Dealing with two little kids, and trying to unpack would have whupped me to. That crazy lady has just about the whole house unpacked and organized, she did some painting, and she even sewed some slip covers for one of our chairs. I know without a doubt that I would fail miserably and quickly if we were to trade jobs for even a day. I got me a keeper!

2 comments:

Barry Bertin said...

Hi Sean,
It is nice to see that the Lord Jesus Christ is taking care of you and your family. I was do doing some web sruffing and came across MAF, through mission network news. I wanted to say thank you for your help the night Kenny was hit by the car, but I never had the chance to, so thank you. It was nice to see someone who, was like Christ on the scene. It does not happen much. I will keep you and your family in my prayers. I was able to get a laugh off of your blogs. And thought what an Awesome God we serve, and that he is truely that, Awesome. You guys take care.
Barry Bertin Alamosa, Colo.
God bless, and God speed.

Rebecca said...

Barry, thanks for the thanks, and for reading as well. We do serve an AWESOME God, He is so faithful. Have a great day...Sean