All Things Pink

I've been a little overwhelmed lately with flowers and frills, princesses and everything pink. I was outnumbered all week long until Joy's brother Brian showed up with his family for the Fourth of July. And not only that, we've been shopping for baby girl nonstop! Joy had another baby shower with many of her friends down here. We got lots of nice clothes and books.

Aside from that, we spent a lot of time in "Grandma's" pool over the weekend. There was a lot of ganging up on Uncle Chris! We even got to go to Disney Land. It was my first time in the magical kingdom--we had loads of fun! I got to indulge in some cotton candy--mmm!!

Finished Up

Just wanted to let you know we finished our orientation training in Idaho. I was approved for field service in flight as well as maintenance! We drove back to southern California on Friday, and now we are feverishly packing both for Canada and Africa! We are here until the middle of July and then we will be traveling on to Ohio, New Jersey, and finally Sherbrooke, Quebec. I'll get some pictures up here a little later, when I have a little more time. Thanks for your prayers and encouragement! Be looking for our next newsletter, it should be out in the next few weeks.

Breathing Right

We had a long weekend here at MAF...Thursday and Friday were "Family Conference" days so there was no flying, just a long weekend to spend with family. On Saturday we went to a Lamaze class at a hospital in Boise. I'm convinced Joy knew all the material they went over, but me on the other hand...I felt a little overwhelmed at times. One of the interesting things they had some of us husbands do was try on the "Empathy Belly." This suit consisted of a gallon pack of water, a 10 lb sandbag and two lead cannon balls. Overall it weighed about 40 lbs and we had to get a picture of our bellies. I'm not sure it exactly portrayed being pregnant, but it was interesting nonetheless!

"Approved"

That's right! I've been approved by the Maintenance Training department for field service. I finished up my last day of maintenance on Tuesday with the OK from my instructors to work on MAF airplanes overseas! I could definitely tell I was a little out of practice and a bit rusty in a few areas--after all, I haven't worked on an airplane for quite a while. Some of you may be thinking to yourselves, "Boy, Chris really goes through a lot of technical training to be a missionary, doesn't Joy have any training that she goes through?" Well, that's a wonderful point! And the answer is YES. On Monday, Joy spent the whole afternoon learning to cook entirely from scratch! She worked feverishly on a huge chicken potpie. Here she's diligently working the edges of the crust before baking it. I can't pronounce all the ingredients that went into that pie, but let me tell you...it was GOOOOOD!! Joy is a fantastic cook, and I have no doubt that one day all this yummy food will catch up with me!

To the left is the finished product, two chicken potpies, lots of dinner rolls, and a huge bowl of exotic fruits. Although in Africa, I don't think they will be all that exotic. Interestingly enough, the lovely lady on the left was our ministry partnership counselor; she guided us through the process of raising our ministry support for the past 10 months.

Since Wednesday, I have transitioned from maintenance to flight training. Just like the maintenance, I can tell I'm a little rusty, but it's coming back quick. I've been pretty sick the past two days, but today I felt much better, and it showed in my flying. So far I have put to good practice many of the principles we learned in ground school over a month ago. Hopefully by early next week I will have some flying pictures and maybe even some video up for you to see what it's all about. Have a wonderful weekend!

Header Photo

I can't remember if I explained the header photo before or not, so I'll just do it now. The airplane pictured is actually THE one that I will be flying when we eventually get to Congo. It is set up exactly the same as the airplane I flew when we were in the ServantWings program. 9Q-CUI I'm sure will become a very intimate friend and take me safely over many many miles of dense jungle so the love of Christ can be spread!

"Strutting" Around

Here's what I was up to on Friday. We took the nose strut off the airplane, disassembled and cleaned it, and replaced a bunch of o-rings. The strut works much the same way a shock absorber does on a car...it absorbs shock. And because MAF operates on pretty rough and dirty airstrips all the time, they require a little more TLC and attention. It can be a pretty dirty and and nasty job unless you do it right. In the picture, all I'm really doing is sticking my hand up in the "tunnel" for theatrical effect. I have two more days of maintenance before I start flying on Wednesday. Hopefully I'll be able to get some good pictures and even a little video so you can have a better idea of what we do here and why we do it. The good thing is that I'm learning a lot and it's been a great reveiw for me as well.

Baby Showers, Alternators, and Long Walks

This past weekend Joy and I drove 7 hours to Vancouver, Washington, to attend our church there. They were kind enough to throw Joy a baby shower--we got lots of wonderful gifts and useful items for our little girl--we were so blessed! We were also blessed by a surprise offering the church collected for us on Sunday morning! We stayed in Vancouver until Monday morning and headed back to Nampa with a carload of baby things.
Speaking of babies...here's ours! This is the latest picture of our baby girl...she's so cute already! Both mom and baby are doing just fine, and I can even feel her doing flips and kicks and punches in there!

I'm still working on the shop floor until Wednesday; here I'm inspecting a magneto, which is an engine accessory that provides the electricity to fire the spark plugs. Without it, the engine would not run. Right now I'm working on overhauling an alternator, and just like a car, it provides the electricity to run all the electrical systems in an airplane. In fact, the alternator I'm working on right now says "Ford" on it!

We're keeping ourselves busy with plenty of training and paperwork. Well, time for dinner, yum yum!