Fun things from the last few weeks.....

Here are some misc. pictures of events from the last few weeks. The first 2 pictures are of a friend of mine, Flora. She works at Tumaini Counselling Center, as a cleaning lady, the lady in the white t-shirt is Margaret the main cleaning/cooking lady there, and the lady onthe far left is Flora's mother.

Flora was hit by a car, Aug.2. A man was teaching his child to drive and he hit her, then they got out and switched places so it looked like the dad was driving and not the boy. In the mean time he literally ran over her with the tires and then thought she would have been too badly hurt, so they backed over her to finish her off! It is such a sad story. If she would have died, then the man wouldn't have to pay for her medical bills. But God was with her! The man did take her to the hospital. It the next few weeks she learned she had many broken bones. She said she layed in bed for 3 weeks without being moved or turned. She said she cried and cried as the pain was so bad. After about a month she was transfered to another hospital for better care. Finally when she could sit up she was able to go home. Only thing was, was that she had to pay all of her bill before she could leave. The man didn't pay most of it. We all at Tumaini chipped in to help her. :) So, here she is about 6 weeks after all that happened. She just kept saying how fatihful God is and that she thought so many times she would die, but He didn't let her. My oh my, their are so many people here with stories like this....

Next is Ruth Roberts first birthday party! Can you believe that she didn't even get messy eating her first piece of cake (even first real sugar!!)

Today we went bowling for the first time. It is about 30 minutes away when their is no traffic. Let's see....I won't tell the scores as Micah doesn't want anyone to know. :)

Lastly, a few weeks ago on Sat. Kurt, Micah and some friends all went Go-Carting. I think the pictures say it all.....Micah is in the green suit and Kurt is in the blue.

Ostrich Farm

Hi! Last Monday was a muslim holiday - Eid al Fitur - so Kurt was off for the day. So we decided to go with 2 other families about 45 min. away to the Ostrich Farm and "Resort". The farm raises ostriches from babies up. They had a few in the different ages, but not that many. They also had ostriches to ride, a pool and restaurant. We enjoyed the pool - it was cold - but refreshing after our tour. It has been warming up and very dry now. We also had lunch there. Kurt had Ostrich filet, Micah had an Ostrich roll (like filet rolled up with onions in it) and fries, I, well...I had fish! ha, pretty safe! It was a great to get away to something we haven't seen yet. Micah had some fun playing with the kids that were with us that day. Micah thinks he should have a little sister!! help! Like that's gonna happen! That is Ruth in the picture with him. She turned 1 year yesterday.

Rainy Season in South Sudan

Yes, it is the rainy season in Southern Sudan where I do a large part of my flying. I thought it would be nice for everyone to see what kind of airstrips and freight I am dealing with on a week to week basis. I just can’t seem to fly the DC-3 without coming back looking like a mess. Angie has the difficult task of getting all of the grease and mud out of my tan pants and white shirts. We carry lots of tires, cement mixers, welding units, generators, truck parts, quads, food, medicines, and just about anything else you can think of when it comes to supporting the guys in Sudan who are building churches, clinics, schools, and running a hospital in Kurmuk. I heard the other day that we have rebuilt something like 260 churches and now they are starting to branch out to some more areas so there are more to go yet. It’s really interesting work that always seems to come up with something new that I haven’t seen before or been part of. We also do a lot of flying around Kenya supporting missionaries in the remote areas of northern, eastern, and western Kenya.

We often have to fuel out of drums because there aren’t enough fuel depot’s scattered around south Sudan. Here you can see one of the SP guys (Chase) standing on the wing fueling. But also we have to often pre-position fuel to some outlying remote airstrips for when the Caravan’s or the King Air need to stop by for fuel. We have 5 or 6 places where we do this. One of them is Pieri which is a small airstrip in the middle of South Sudan surrounded by swampland. (in the rainy season at least) This is one of the areas I used to fly into back in 1994-95. Back then it was normal to land and not see many clothed people, but today pretty much everybody is clothed and you don’t see the spears and jewelry like we used to. Storing our fuel under a tree like this picture is typical of how we do it. There is usually a guy who watches it for us and for payment we either give him the empty drum or pay him a stipend. Empty fuel drums bring a pretty hefty price in this place. Usually around $50 per drum. On this trip we loaded 7 drums onto the DC-3 (as you can see us doing) and dropped them in Pieri. That should keep us going a few more weeks.

Our King Air is finally about ready to start flying again. It has been down for some extended maintenance for the last month so yesterday I flew it on a test flight. It went very well and just a few small adjustments and it’ll be ready to start flying again. That’s good because the DC-3 is scheduled to start maintenance at the end of this month and will be out of commission for about two months. That means that we’ll be flying the King Air hard again during that time. There are a few trips already scheduled.

Weekend fun

Last weekend we went to the Nairobi National Museum with the Roberts. We walked around looking at all kinds of bird species, reptiles, and other animals. It was fun to see all of the different kinds of animals and some of the history of Kenya. Then when we went outside there was a boxing exhibition going on. We watched for a little bit before we left. After the museum we enjoyed a new restaurant called Acapulco.

This weekend we went ahead and got a bike for Micah. He has enjoyed riding it around the housing community where we are living.