From the Logbook...Sunday Patient Pickup

A few weeks ago I was the on-call pilot and got a request to pick up a woman having trouble in child birth, about an hour from PalangkaRaya.  While waiting for the passengers to arrive at the airplane, I sat through a large rain shower and then noticed the town's big bridge appear in my wing mirror.  Flying float planes takes me to large "easy" rivers all the way down to VERY small more challenging rivers.  It is lots of fun!

From the Logbook...Jujang Parit

One of the other places we went to for my advanced checkout was called Jujang Parit.  Again, this location was challenging but a LOT of fun.  We are glad to have re-opened this water strip because a pastor and his family serve there.  The place is one of the most isolated we serve and it's surrounding mountains and hills are beautiful!  Wish you could see it.

From the Logbook...Marikoi

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Recently I was able to undergo some training to get me checked out into some of our smallest places.  We are glad to be able to serve Marikoi again because a pair of German nurses serve there and have for over 30 years!  Takeoff and landing there are what we call sporty, but it also translates into a lot of FUN!  I can't wait to go back.

Speaking of Thanksgiving...it's just a "normal" day at the office for me here in Indonesia.  However, we will celebrate with our friends this coming Saturday, complete with turkey!  Pictures to come.  Happy Thanksgiving to you all.  I know my family could be busy for a while describing all of the things we are thankful for.

From the Logbook...Flight of Two

We've had the opportunity again recently to do some formation flying while heading to the same destination.  Always fun to see thousands of pounds of aluminium, fuel, people and cargo break the rules of gravity and fly a mile over the surface of the earth.  Flying is awesome!

Flying float planes a mile over the surface of the Earth is even awesomer!

Birthday Party

Last week I was asked to speak at a birthday party for a local evangelist missionary/professor.  It's common here to have a small church type service for many different reasons, birthdays being one of them.  I'm defiantly out of my comfort zone to speak at that level in another language but I felt honored that I was asked.

Afterwards, we took a picture with some of the people at the party.  The man standing on my right side was the birthday boy.  He served 30 years in the Philippines as a missionary, has traveled the world speaking, and now at the young age of 75 years old is a professor at a small bible school.  What an example he is to use everyday of this short life for something (or Someone) much bigger than himself!

From the Logbook...Lawang Kama

I checked out our other pilot into a small village called Lawang Kama recently so we could pick up a patient.  While waiting for the patient to arrive at the airplane, I snapped a few pictures of the people in that village.  The woman above is wearing a skin whitening face mask that is very common here.  Ironically, most Asian cultures go to great lengths to look whiter...while my culture goes to great lengths to look more tan.

As usual in villages that we don't land in often, most of the village shows up on the river bank to see what all the excitement is about.  It amazes me how even school is temporarily put on hold while the airplane in in their village.  After we leave, I'm told the kids (and teachers) all return to class.

About 5-10 minutes after arriving at the dock in Lawang Kama, the patient was brought to us in another boat.  We made room for the boat between the airplane float and the dock and quickly put her, her husband, and another man on board.  She didn't look very well after giving birth just hours before.  But she was unable to deliver the placenta and it was obvious she didn't have a chance of recovery without being taken to a hospital.  We were grateful to be able to serve in that manner that day!

Road Trip...

A few weeks ago I had to travel to our other base in Kalimantan for a meeting.  The irony of that trip is our other MAF location is 400 miles away, but it takes a three commercial flights and a whole day to get there on the airlines.  Becca and I had been planning for a long time for me to bring Brooklyn.  She has a few good friends her same age at that MAF location that we knew she would enjoy seeing again.  She had a blast, and on the way home, we got to go to the cockpit for two of our three flights home.  The cockpit crews were all real nice and welcoming.  It was sure a different view in the cockpit of a Boeing 737-900ER at 36,000 feet from what I'm used to at 3,000-6,000 feet.  Either way, one thing is still the same...airplanes and flying are AWESOME!

From the Logbook...Long Bangun

A few weeks ago we received a call from the neighboring province asking if we could pick up a patient there.  After looking up the coordinates of the village, I realized it was far away; at the C185's maximum range.  But, thankfully the weather was good and I set off to a new place.  After landing in Long Bangun I took a boat ride up river about 5 minutes to see if the dock in front of the patients house would be suitable for the airplane.  It was.

So, we returned to the bigger dock where I had left the airplane and ferried it further upstream to make it easier to transport the patient from his house to the airplane.  After taking off from Long Bangun, we landed in PalangkaRaya two hours later where we took him straight to the hospital.