Alaska- Kingdom Air Corps.

Like every mission trip I have been on, the blessings on the Alaska trip were to numerous to count. Hopefully, I can give a decent summary of what I experienced.

I suppose that I will begin with the lessons learned. I have been avoiding sending out my resume since before the trip, because I felt like the Lord was telling me to wait till after the trip. I believe that there was something on the trip I needed to hear from him. The first thing I learned is that I am as content working on small airplanes as I am working on helicopters, and the device I am working on is not nearly as important as the people I am working with. I learned this by getting the opportunity to work on Dave King's AS 350 helicopter for a couple days. The maintenance I performed was very cosmetic.
This topic segway's nicely into another hard truth I learned (I should say relearned). My occupation is not important at all, living in and sharing God's kingdom is priority number one. I tend to loose sight of that. The Lord through Dwayne King did a good job of reminding me of that (he spoke from Phillipians 2: 1-3). My prayer coming off this trip is that I will be able to continually visualize kingdom living for our lives; be less consumed with what I am doing and more consumed with who I am doing it with and for. There are many other little lessons but I will try to keep this brief.

As a guy I have to compartmentalize, but understand that everything sort of blended together on the trip. The personal reveleations, the scenery, the good hard work, the fun adventures; all of them sort of fused.

The maintenance portion of the trip consisted of about 70 hours of pracitcal experience on Cessna aircraft. The purpose of the trip was for me to pass my required aircraft inspections course. The course was three credit hours and I knocked it out in what was without doubt the least painful two weeks of class I have ever taken. It was easy, essentially the class portion was just looking up and memorizing FAA regulation locations. The lab portion consisted of performing annual inspections on Dwayne's airplanes a C-172 and C-170 in my case. It was good fun and didn't seem like work.

As far as the fun portion goes, we got to experience the fourth of July (Alaska style) almost immediately after we got there. The pictures say it all for this one. It was awesome. To sum up though... Tractor parade, moose and bear potluck, cars being launched off a cliff and a bowling ball cannon launch (empty metal tube, orange bowling ball, black powder you get the picture). That very next Saturday we went to Seward and floated the Kenai National Park. Also, awesome. We ate dinner on Fox Isand in the bay. This was to the tune of prime rib, salmon and king crab. Later the following week we took a trip down to the river and shot guns and had caribou brats on the camp fire. The last Saturday we hiked the Matanuska glacier. It was a amazing little trek. It's really fun to try to hike without ice cleats.

I think this gives a pretty good summary. I need to cut it off either way since it is becoming too long. The trip was fantastic. I would love to post more about Kingdom Air Corps. ministries, so we will see if I can get to that later.

Smugmug link to pictures. Let me know if you need the password.

Zoom out on the map to see where the boat ride went and all the places I visited.
Map

fabric and the ladies that sell it

One of the missionary ladies (she's hard core - doesn't own a car so she knows public transit insanely well) mentioned that there was a cheap place to buy nice fabric. It's cheaper than most of the stores downtown because it's where the locals shop so we would be less likely to be charged a mzugu price. So us wives went with Angie (the lady that was with us with the police officer incident). We had no idea what was in store for us.

The little 5 ft by 30 ft room was lined with a shelf like thing and with the only window in the very back it was dark-ish and smelled dusty. All along this shelf was columns and columns of nicely folded pre-cut fabric. It went up about 5 ft tall. Every three or four columns had a Kenyan woman standing next to it. From the way they cattle called us ("Sista, do you like this?" "Sista, look at this, buy this" "Customa, how about this?") we figured very quickly that each woman only made money off of the fabric that she sold in front of her. (Without giving away surprises for certain family members I will be vague.) I asked about a certain type of animal. "Does anyone have a ____ on their fabric?" Five women pull out random fabrics and ask me if it works...all at once. While, I'm shopping Clarissa and Beth are also shopping and being eagerly convinced to buy things as well. Not to mention the other one or two Kenyan customers. The noise level made me feel pretty tense. I felt very very very confined.

Okay, back to the story. My _____ fabric question. I was being shown random African fabrics - nothing to do with the animal I requested! I had to chuckle with myself. I was also self-conscious because I have learned that "No." is rude to a Kenyan. So I didn't want to offend them and their fabrics but at the same time I'm not going to buy every single one that is shown to me. So I started saying, "that's not what I had in mind." and that seemed to be received well enough. After many tries I gave up on this particular animal and switched to another one. I was shown fabrics that at least made sense this time! I ended up picking one. In the course of all of this I also found a beautiful giraffe printed fabric that will be made into a table cloth. Nick is super excited about it!

I wanted to buy my sister some fabric. So I kept searching. A little bit later Beth calls out, "Melissa, I found the animal you were looking for!" She was right. It wasn't what I had in mind, but it will work and make a little girl that love dearly very happy. I finished my purchasing, paid, and walked out the door. I stood in the hallway and tried to keep Serenity (she's 2 years old now!) occupied. Ended up taking her to the van to wait since Beth was still looking for fabrics.

I gave all but one of my choices to James' wife here at Mayfield. Word has it she is quite the seamstress. (I should clarify - there are 2 James-es working here. Big James and little James. Little James is only little in size. His heart is huge. He and I are working together to raise support for his church's school when I get back home. Big James is at least 300 pounds and very quiet... until I asked him about sewing. Then we had this lengthy discussion and he took me to his home on the Mayfield plot. I have never seen where the workers live - it's small but clean! I met his family and had a lovely conversation with his late teenage daughter, Esther and his seamstress wife, Jessica.) Even though I know James is well paid by Kenyan standards, I also know that all the workers here are believers and if I support them outside of their Mayfield job they will use the money here far better than I could. So I gave Jessica specific instructions as to what I want. She promised to have it done before we leave and said that I pay here when I pick them up. I can't wait!!!!

a post because i think i should post something

Life in Kenya is getting better for me. I recognized that I was in the "fighting" stage of culture shock. The "acceptance" stage is slowly making it's way in now but I am also looking forward to our departure in 9 days. Taco Bell. mmmmmm. Nick amazes me with how he handles this. Sometimes I envy him for his ability to adjust so easily. He admits the Marines did a great service to him in that sense but I think his personality helps as well. Other times I feel like a failure or a disappoint to him as a wife for struggling in adjusting. He is sweet as always and assures me that I do not disappoint.

Thus far, my two strongest memories of this trip are quading on Saturday and trying to talk to a giraffe. It was so nice to get out of the city! I found myself saying, "this is Africa!". I wish I could upload pictures. but alas, you will have to wait till we are moved into our new apartment in Texas. Nick took a video of me saying, "JAMBO!" to it. The giraffe looked at me and walked away. It was funny and we both laughed.

My second memory is when we went to a school in the slum. Us wives brought some soccer balls, books, and jump ropes. It didn't feel like much but was received with so much gratitude you would have thought we gave them millions of dollars. One of us was asked to "share from the Word". Somehow I got picked or volen-told...or something. I was so nervous. so nervous. and had only 5-10 minutes to prepare. Clarissa found me a Bible verse - Phil 4:7-10 and I read it and thought, my Dad's cancer. I can share how this verse helped me through that! So I did. James (one of our dearest friends at Mayfield) translated in Swahili. I watched the teachers teach the kiddos games. They had all 100 3- 5 year olds get in a circle by singing a chat. Then the teacher in the middle would call animals. If it was an animal safe to eat the kids jumped. If the animal was not safe to eat they shouldn't jump. if they did they went in the middle.

the baby just spit up on me. gotta go! :)

update JUL 17

Hey friends,

I just wanted to leave a quick note and let you know that Africa is wonderful! I had a good week at work. I ended up getting to know a few of the Kenyan Maintainers, and they are all pretty awesome. The week went well at work, and though it is exhausting it is also valuable. Today is the fun news, though, Melissa and I got to go outside Nairobi to do quading of all things. We saw Girrafe, Zebra, Antelope and Wildabeast. We quaded for four hours and then had lunch. It was great.

Ya'll can keep praying that our health stays up. We love ya and can't wait to see you all again.

It's Africa!

A missionary family was taking us home after dinner last night. (we had Ethiopian food for the first time!) In a car that seats 5 we had 5 of us...plus 4 in the back. Hey, it's Africa! The missionary, Kurt, decided to take the back way so as to avoid police, not because it's illegal but because they would say it is illegal. So guess who we run into on the back way? Yup. Two police officers stopping traffic. The first van made it through (they were 5 minutes ahead of us) because the officer was busy with another car.

Sadly, we were not so lucky. We all were belted in the seats but he said the guys in the back were not ok. He told our missionary driver to pull forward and Kurt politely said, “No, I'll stay here.” this discussion continued for 5 or so minutes. On the inside, I was thinking, “Don't make trouble I don't wanna go to jail in Kenya!” Eventually, the officer asked the guys in the back to step out. This included Nick. I started praying for safety. They stepped out and the officer once again tried to get Kurt to move the car forward again. Kurt politely declined again.

Our car decided that the guys in the back should just walk back to Mayfield. We were only a 15 min walk away and there were 4 of them anyway. The officer talked to them a bit on their walk and came back to us and told us to go ahead. He even said we could pick up our walkers as long as it was down the street a bit!

Kurt informed us of the following for the remaining of the drive. The officer had no car. So if he were to take us in he would have to ride with us...and be the 4th guy in the back. Not so good. Officers usually only want bribes but they won't do it in front of each other. That's why he wanted us to pull forward and that's why Kurt refused. Once our walkers started walking the evidence was gone and he knew that we weren't going to pay him. So he let us go. He also didn't want the other officer to see us picking up our walkers so as to “save face”. Saving face is something we have been learning a lot about while here.

Lesson learned.

summary of week one

Most of the e-mail I sent to my family. Thought you would enjoy it as well!

Nick has actually been able to work on airplanes! Naturally, he only
brought nice clothes since they told us otherwise. OH well. He loves
the guys at the hangar and even when the work is tedious (Thursday he
got to change the ID numbers on the side of a plane) he comes back
feeling like he did something helpful. He hasn't gotten to fly anywhere yet, but
there was money in our budget for him to buy a flight if we can't find
a free one. (It would be free if a pilot was already going and he had
room for him.)

We spent Saturday through Tuesday getting transportation lessons,
meeting missionaries, going to meetings to help us adjust to local
culture, and meeting some of the higher ups of AIM here. So Wednesday
was when we actually started serving. Public transportation is
interesting. We can choose between a bus or a matatu (Ma-ta-too). A
Matatu is an old style van that holds about 13 people. It has a driver and a tout. The tout
collects money and deals with passengers. They share routes with the
buses and then some. Nick takes one with the guys to the hangar every
morning and home in the evening. We have been told to be very aware
while riding public transit and to never ride it at night. Thus far,
there haven't been incidents. The drivers here are just as crazy (if
not more so) than the ones in Romania. Their theory is: if there is an
empty space I can use it. It doesn't matter if it's the other lane or
not. They run red lights if there is room. There are no stop signs –
they wouldn't understand the wasted road space. I have seen my life
flash before my eyes every day. I'm getting used to it now. It's
really funny to see the missionaries drive like crazy Kenyans. They
tell us how hard it was to get used to at first but now they have a
hard time driving in the States when they have home leave.

We are staying at Mayfield. So many people come and go. We met a
Canadian team doing VBS in the slums. There are 3 slums in Nairobi.
Between them they house more than half of the 3 million people in the
city. Because of the slums the city doesn't take all that long to
drive through. Anyways, us wives went with them on Wednesday because
they were doing a craft with paints and expected 400 kids and could
use the extra hands. While they did the non-craft stuff, we helped out
in classrooms. They use the British educational system here and rote
memorization. The majority of Kenyans are never taught critical
thinking skills. The slums stink because they throw their sewage on
the dirt paths they walk on. The paths are covered with trash (esp old
shoes). It's quite an experience. I gagged a few times walking through
it.

Thursday we declared reflection day for the wives. We felt so
overwhelmed by our slum experiences that we needed a day to rest. So I
journaled, prayed, and read my Bible. In the afternoon we walked the 1/2
mile or so to the local market and bought that huge avocado. On Friday
we went to the weekly prayer meeting of the missionary wives and then
some of them took us to the toi (pronounced "toy")market. The toi market is thousands of
vendors selling second hand items from the States that look brand
new. You can also bargain down the prices but they usually never give
it to us for the same price as a national. We call it the skin tax.

Saturday we went to an elephant orphanage and watched them
feed the baby elephants. SUPER CUTE! We then went to a giraffe park
and feed giraffes up close. Some people put the food in their mouths
so the giraffes will kiss them. I didn't have the guts to do that. But
I did pet the head and neck. They feel very coarse. There were also
some warthogs wandering around getting the food the giraffes dropped. And
a little area of tortoises. We didn't look at those for very long for
obvious reasons. Nick and I joked that my parents have a zoo. (They own a tortoise.) We had lunch at the Karen museum. (you know the
lady from “Out of Africa”). We walked around her plantation and house
too. It's super pretty. They even named that whole area of town
“Karen” after here. It's where the really rich Kenyans live.

I wish I could send pictures but the internet is so slow. I'm going to
try Facebook later and see if I can get a couple up there. If not, WE
will have to wait till we visit you or go back to TX. The computers in
NY are super old they don't have USB drives.

We made it!

In response to my earlier posted prayer request about the medicine- it made it just fine. YAY! I asked the flight attendant to put in their cooler during the flights and security in NY didn't question it while the security in Amsterdam asked me about it and let it pass! I handed it off to one of the pilots when we arrived (after taking 2 hours to get through VISAs and customs) and heard it finished it's journey Saturday morning!


We are adjusting semi-well to the time change. Not as fast as I remember adjusting for Romania – but I blame that on being a few years older this time. We still wake up at 3am and fall back asleep. Luckily, we are falling back asleep faster these days.


We are staying in AIM's huge missionary guest house called “Mayfield”. It's a huge hub for missionaries in Africa. We are fed all our meals and have accommodations somewhat like a hotel. It's very nice, esp for Africa. The workers here are all Kenyan believers and they have helped us learn the public transportation system and language. Very sweet guys. Many have worked at Mayfield for 15+ years! They have apartments next to the hotel area where they live with their families.


In 30 minutes we are being picked up by some missionaries to go to the hangar and get a tour! All of the guys are pretty excited. Our team consists of the “LeTourneau 4” Justin B (18, from New York), Michael (21, Michigan) & Nick/me. The Moody 5: Alyssa (early 20s, Washington), John (late 20s, mechanic teacher from Moody) Clarissa (late 20s, married to John, English teacher), Andrew (mid 20s, mechanic with Quest and finishing BA with Moody, Iowa), and Beth (mid 20s, full time mother of Serenity who turns 2 next week, and Lexi who is 5 months). Then there is Justin D. He turns 40 next week and is a mechanic that travels a lot for his job. He is currently in Seattle. Rob is a mid 20 something from Reedley/Fresno, CA!!! He is a mechanic and pilot too. He wrote AIM asking them what they have for him to serve and they told him to join our team!


We all get along splendidly. Laughter and joking are common among us. Well we are off! I hope to write at least twice a week, but internet is super slow and we share 2 computers with the 60+ residents. More later!!!