Our planned route is in a large 7,000 mile loop

On January 18th we leave to take a road trip around the US visiting with friends who we haven’t seen in a long time. We are really looking forward to visiting with folks and we’re praying that wherever we go we will be an encouragement as we share what God has been accomplishing in the Philippines. Please pray for us as we travel for a little less than a month in a big 7,000 mile circle.

Please pray for safety as well since much of our driving will be in snow country. Pray also for the car to run well and for the kids (and us) to really enjoy the adventure of it. Thankfully, we have been able to break the trip up into fairly small chunks so it shouldn’t be as bad as it sounds. However, we are aware that it could be a disaster with a 3 year-old, a 1 1/2 year-old and Bailey 6 1/2 months pregnant. Needless to say, your prayers would be appreciated.

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We will soon be very well acquainted with this little grey car. We plan to spend over 120 hrs driving in it over a period of 30 days.

We are so blessed to have found a car for our road trip. It’s a used Honda Accord and we think we’ll be able to fit everything in it for the trip, but if not, we’ll just have to leave some things behind. During the next few weeks Brian will be making any necessary repairs to the car in hopes that we’ll have a breakdown-free trip – especially since it’s going to be cold in the Northwest during January. We’re also getting mentally prepared for that rude awakening!

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Jet engines are easily restored from a flame out with a simple resuply of fuel flow and a restart.

A few years ago I took my motorcycle on a long ride in the Arizona desert. I was nearing the end of a very tiring 100 mile ride when the engine began to sputter. No problem, I thought, I’ll just select “reserve” on the fuel tank. I reached for the reserve lever only to discover that it was already there. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to limp an engine along that is in the initial stages of fuel exhaustion, but it can be quite a challenge. I swerved all over the place, bounced up and down, rocked back and forth – anything to try to slosh just a few ounces of fuel back into the carburetor so I could continue. Even 100 yards extra means a lot when the alternative is walking the bike home in the desert sun.

The bike finally died, 5 miles from home. In a final attempt to eek all I could out of the fuel tank, I laid the bike over on it’s side with the fuel valve down, I methodically and carefully sloshed all the fuel I could to the left side of tank and was able to start it up again. I rode home with the bike leaned to the left and was careful to go slowly over any big bumps lest I splash the minuscule amount of remaining fuel away from the tank outlet. I made it home without pushing the bike, but the last 5 miles nearly ruined the previous 95 mile stretch of pure enjoyment.

This is how we’ve felt the last couple of months as we approach the end of a 3 1/2 year term. We are in a ministry which doesn’t have any tolerance for fatigue and one in which we’re not allowed to be tired or make mistakes. Recently it feels like every day, or half-day that we have off of flight and radio duty is an opportunity to slosh more fuel into our tank so we can get through the next stretch. It’s in these times that Satan is eager to discourage us and knock us down. Please continue to pray for us and our strength in these final weeks. We have set our minds and hearts on finishing well, but we need your prayers now more than ever. There is still a lot of flying to do and a lot of decisions to make in the flight program before we can really focus on the decisions needed for moving to the States for 9 months. Bailey just finished her responsibilities with NTMA, one month before we leave Mindanao to head home. Brian will be finished on the 26th and spend a week getting ready to leave.

“A flameout refers to the failure of a jet engine caused by the extinction of the flame in the combustion chamber. It can be caused by a number of factors, including fuel exhaustion; compressor stall; insufficient oxygen supply; foreign object damage (such as birds, hail or even volcanic ash); severe inclement weather; and mechanical failure. Flameouts occur most frequently when the engine is at an intermediate or low power setting (such as during the cruise and descent phases of flight). Most of the time, they are recovered from uneventfully. To recover from a flameout, the pilot should ensure the engine’s fuel supply has been restored and then simply perform an engine restart.”

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Here's the helicopter on one of it's first operational flights into the jungle. It's number is "2-6-1-niner." "6-1-niner" was the Supercub that used to fly for Brian's parents on Palawan and many, many others.

It is hard to believe that this coming summer marks three years since we first arrived here in the Philippines. Where does the time go? When we arrived the situation was a bit bleak. There was only one functional airplane (one of three) and one active pilot, Ben Hart. Our Chief pilot/program manager was leaving for home assignment shortly after we arrived so there wasn’t a lot happening except on Palawan where Ben was working. The Philippines was in need of three functional flight programs with pilots to cover the whole of the work load in both flight and maintenance.

Several years ago we brought this need before our support team and asked for prayer and encouragement as we moved forward with a sense of urgency to see if the Lord would bless our efforts and allow us to set up the aviation programs again. Through many setbacks and hard times God has been faithful and it is with great joy and thankfulness that we get to announce, “Mission Accomplished!”

Just this month our helicopter carried its first passengers to and from the tribe in the Northern Philippines. Also, this month Josh Dalton was checked out on the active Palawan airstrips and is flying missionaries and their supplies in and out of their locations. This gives us two pilots for the Palawan region which has allowed the Harts to go home for a home assignment after several years of slugging it out alone. Bailey and I are continuing to do the flight program for the Mindanao region which now gives us three pilots and three aircraft!

In just a few weeks the second pilot for Mindanao, Joel Davis, will be arriving and I’ll be helping get him checked out so that he can run the program and allow us to return to the US for a 9 month visit. Then, at the end of the summer our second helicopter pilot hopes to complete his language studies and begin working in the helicopter program. Shortly after he starts, the second pilot family for Palawan will return from their furlough in Canada. Amazing what the Lord has done to bring all of this together.

Our current team:
Garry and Cynthia Barkman
Ben and Suzy Hart
Josh and Candy Dalton
Joel and Missy Davis
Brian and Katherine Schaadt
Zach and Jane Keller

Thank you so much for all your encouragement along the way as well as the many, many financial gifts that have helped this happen. God has been hard at work in the technical details. This gives us two pilot/mechanics in each region plus Garry, our chief pilot/manager, who is overseeing the training and logistics in all three programs.

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It’s crazy how fast time flies and how much change just a few weeks can bring.  Just two weeks ago I would have been sitting on the couch watching tv next to my sisters in the good ol’ USA and today, I’m back across the world, at home with Brian.  It feels crazy that I was even there!  But, as crazy as it feels, I WAS there and I had a truly wonderful time.  It was a bit surreal to be back with my family, most of them I hadn’t seen in 2 1/2 years. It was hard to see my nephews again because they were so different and I realized just how much I had missed. The three of them are so so precious and sweet and just a complete joy to be around.  They had fun loving on Maycie and Dylan and Maycie had fun being loved on  It was a sad day when I had to take her away from her cousins again but I found excitement in knowing that Lord-willing, we’ll be back again in just 10 short months.

In addition to seeing my nephews, I was also able to spend a lot of time with my sisters. It was strange to have us all in one place again since we’ve been scattered across the world for the past 10 years.

Anyway, what I really want to say is THANK YOU to all of you who prayed for our flight!!!  Many of you know that the flight to the States didn’t quite go so well and I was dreading and stressing about the flight back here. We were going back exhausted and sick and cranky and it was 4 hours longer than the flight to the States PLUS a stop in Honolulu for refueling.  Needless to say I was not very optimistic about how this flight was going to go and it literally made me sick to my stomach to even think about it.

BUT…GOD IS GOOD!!!  I prayed and prayed and prayed and had many other people praying for the trip and I am so grateful I can say that it couldn’t have gone better.  I could see God’s hand in every detail of the trip-it was just incredible. Here’s how it went:

Because I had booked tickets so last minute, there were no baby bassinet seats available for us. That meant that Dylan had to be on my lap the WHOLE time and Maycie was left to squeeze into her tiny seat to sleep.  That did not make her happy on the way to the States!  Well…when we arrived at the airport at 6 o’clock PM  we got in line behind the 50+ people  checking in for my same flight.  A man who worked at the airport approached us out of ALL the people standing in our same line and asked if we’d be interested in an earlier flight.  My heart skipped a few beats as I knew, even though this didn’t mean anything good but an earlier flight, that God was going to take care of us and maybe even blow me away as He often does. Before I said yes to the man, I asked if there were any good seat available. The man left and returned with good news that there were “good” seats available.  I didn’t know what that meant but it was enough for me to say “Yes! We’ll take them!” All we had time for was for my mom to run up to McDonald’s to grab us some dinner while I finished checking in. We gave some quick hugs to my parents and almost had to run to our gate to get there in time. We arrived just as people were starting to board the plane. What a blessing to not have to wait a few hours in the airport!!!  I boarded the airplane and when I finally found our seats, my heart skipped a beat again as I saw that we had bulkhead seats with a baby bassinet!!!  We were first in our row to board so as we got situated we waited to see who our neighbors would be (we had the middle two seats of a row of 4.) Eventually one older lady sat down next to me and another next to Maycie. As we said our introductions, I found out that they were BOTH grandmas and were excited to sit next to some babies! One of them held Dylan for the first FOUR hours of the flight even though the bassinet was available for him!  They held Dylan whenever Maycie needed to go to the bathroom and hung out with Maycie whenever Dylan needed a diaper change. They helped Maycie eat her meals and even played with her when she started to get cranky.  This is all in the middle of night even!

Ok, back up a little bit.  Before the airplane even took off BOTH of the kids were fast asleep and stayed that way until our stop on Honolulu.  They slept most of the way and when they weren’t sleeping they were happy – I never even used up the battery on our dvd player and that is miracle in itself!

So we arrived in Manila without a hitch around six in the morning.  Our flight home wasn’t until 12:30 that afternoon so we had a long time to wait. I went to the check-in counter just to see about the possibility of getting an earlier flight. The man looked at me with a hopeless look and said “It’s possible but it will not be cheap. Do you want me to check anyway?” I said I did because at that point I might have been willing to give him right arm to not have to wait in the airport for 6 hours!  He came back and said that it would cost p200 (about $4) a person excluding Dylan to change to an earlier flight.  My heart should have stopped completely by now with all this beat-skipping and excitement!  I had a few things I still needed to do at the airport so I rushed off to do those and when we finally made it to our gate, we had only 30 min to wait before we boarded.  Maycie fell asleep while I fed dylan and when we got on that plane, our last leg, I was beyond relieved and incredibly grateful to my God Who made our trip as easy as it could have been and threw in little surprises all along the way.

So THANK YOU all who prayer for us and our trip home!  We are so happy to back home with Brian and back in the Philippines.  We are only mildly jet-lagged and are working at getting back into the swing of things. It was a wonderful trip and a blessing to see those of you who we were able to.  I apologize to everyone we missed seeing and look forward to catching up when we’re ALL back for furlough.

Click here for more photos of our trip.

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One week after I flew Aysa to the hospital, I returned to the tribe to deliver her dead body to her family.

On November 28th rainy season started here with a round of weather that made flying nearly impossible. We were also alerted by Chris and Lynne Strange and Albert Castelijn that they had an emergency medical situation in their tribal location. The most critical patient was a man whom they were not certain if he would make it through the night. The other was a 16 year old girl who was dying of Tuberculosis. We woke up early the next morning and I headed to the airplane while it was still dark. Bailey started getting weather reports and coordinating with the missionaries at the airstrip. Weather was terrible and we knew we had our work cut out for us.

Just before lunch, it appeared that we had a window of opportunity in the weather and I took off and headed for the tribe. I never saw the ground from shortly after takeoff to the time I was overhead the airstrip. I could see the airstrip down through a very small hole in the clouds but I was nearly 9,000′ above the airstrip and the clouds were moving too fast that to descend through the hole among the mountains was not possible. I spent a considerable amount of time exploring the area for holes in the clouds to get down to the airstrip. I made it close, very close but had to call it off as the hole I descended through started to close me in. I had to get out while I still had options. I returned to our home airstrip after Bailey called me on the radio to report that the tribal location was experiencing heavy rain and overcast skies.

We watched the weather all day and never again had an opening to get to the tribe. It was the worst weather I had seen yet. We all went home a little discouraged and prepared to try the next day. We woke up and Bailey ran “communications central” again and I started down the dark one hour commute to the hangar. Along the way we learned that the man had in fact died and that everyone in the tribe was incredibly thankful that he died at home where they could have the funeral and his family could care for the details. It was a sad time, but we had to move past it quickly because Aysa, the 16 year old, was still in need of care.

The weather pattern from the day before had carried over into the morning and we knew we were up against some nasty weather again. Thankfully a large enough hole opened up in the clouds that I could get out of our home airstrip and into the tribe. It was a fight with weather the whole way, but we made it. The weather was closing in quickly so I didn’t waste any time on the ground. We loaded up 5 passengers – three patients and friends to take care of them. We took off just as the weather was closing in and made it back home and got the girl on her way to the hospital. She only weighed 57 pounds!

This is the video of the flight to get Aysa to the hospital…

One week later we loaded the airplane with Aysa’s dead body. It was a tough week, two deaths and the stress of  the busiest flight schedule I’d worked through to date mixed with these emergencies. It worked out that we could fly Aysa’s body back to her family which was a huge testimony to her parents who were not believers. She had only recently placed her trust in Jesus as her Savior during an outreach by the Banwaon church leaders – the tribal church runs the outreaches now. The weather was still giving us challenges and we were delayed a couple of hours before we could takeoff. I tell you what, a two hour delay with a corpse in your plane is a LONG delay!

Finally the weather cleared and we flew back to the tribe. The believers there met us at the plane. There were over 100 of them. They took the body and had a sweet funeral service for her which was, again, a testimony to her parents who know nothing of hope beyond the grave. There was still more flying to be done that day so I hopped in the plane and flew the rest of the day’s route.

Just this week I learned that Aysa’s parents are now attending the teaching in the church and are eager to learn about the Savior their daughter came to know just before her death. The love of the missionaries, the efforts of the flight program, and the comfort and counsel of the Banwaon believers have impacted them greatly. We are praying that the Lord will bring her parents to Him and that God will use her death to bring eternal life to the village she came from. It is a display of Love that the unbelievers have a hard time reconciling and are looking for explanations. Let’s pray they find their answers.

1 Peter 2:12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

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We got help from the people in the tribe with securing the airplane until we can get an engine and propeller from the States to install. This is likely the place we'll be doing the work.

We have been working at full throttle the last few months in the flight program on Mindanao. We have been really excited to see first hand the work the Lord is doing among tribal people here in all our locations and how their love for the Lord compels them to reach out to neighboring tribes. It is an exciting time and we were just ramping up into a fully functioning program when things came to a screeching hault.

Brian is checked out on all but one of our airstrips and has been waiting to get checked out in the final location until the missionaries who live there returned from furlough. A few weeks ago, they returned so Brian and Garry, our chief pilot, set out to finish that checkout. Garry flew the airplane to the airstrip and we carefully evaluated it from the air by making a couple of low passes. No missionaries had been there for months so we gave it a really good look before we committed to land.

This airstrip is pretty simple compared to our others, but it is short (930′) and in a box canyon so there is a “point-of-no-return” where we are committed to land no matter what happens. Garry was flying the approach and I was looking carefully for anything amiss before we got to the committal point on the approach. After passing the committal point, we were finally close enough to see that someone had planted a corn field right on the end of the runway and we would be forced to land longer than planned. Normally we would have gone around and tried again, but we were already committed to land. Garry flew an approach to a point just beyond the normal touchdown zone.

When we crossed the corn field we got a slight updraft that pushed us a little further and caused us to touch down about 150′ from the end of the runway (110′ longer than normal). A combination of soft mud from a downpour the night before and a thick layer of grass clippings on top of the mud caused us to have abnormally strong braking performance. This caused the tail of the plane to come up rapidly and the propeller cut into the mud. Garry was able to get the tail back down under control and we rolled to a stop with the engine still at idle. We were praising God that the airplane didn’t flip over!

We knew that what took only a split second to occur would take several weeks to fix. We secured the airplane and took some pictures on our cell phones and hiked out of the tribe to where we could catch a bus. It was a long day and really discouraging to see things stalled out for a couple of months but we thank God that is wasn’t worse. Please pray for us as we work through the logistics of replacing the engine and propeller in the jungle location. Also pray for us as we try to service missionaries overland with our Landcruiser. Brian will spend many, many hours on less than ideal roads trying to keep everyone supplied.

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Thank you to all of you who have prayed for us and Dylan as he was in the hospital fighting an infection. It was an exhausting 4-day event for us, but well worth it as Dylan is doing very well in his own bed now. We are still tethered to the hospital because Dylan needs to get three injections every day until Tuesday. It is still way better than being in the hospital and much CLEANER too!

Thanks again for holding us up in prayer through all of this. We are still doing our best to protect Dylan from outside sources of germs and are staying alert to any complications he may develop from his stay in the hospital So far so good.

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We sure are getting to know the local hospital these days. On Tuesday we took Dylan to the hospital to get some tests because he was running a slight fever. After the tests they decided that he should be admitted right away and start on an IV for hydration and antibiotics. It’s now Friday and we are still in the same hospital room waiting to be released. Dylan’s fever went away on Wednesday night at 11pm but we have needed to stay there for observation and are expecting to be released today.

Please pray that Dylan will recover from this infection, whatever it was, and be able to work through the remaining doses of antibiotics from home. It is a lot of work to be in the hospital here, a lot of work. We are both tired and anticipating a very busy flight week and would appreciate your prayers for strength and wisdom as we try to reinsert ourselves into normal life. Through all of this Maycie has done a tremendous job of rolling with the punches and being a helpful big sister. We were concerned (as are all parents) about how she would handle someone else in the family who would steal the show. She has such a sweet heart and caring spirit that has been fun to watch come out through Dylan’s ordeal. Thanks for all your prayers!

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Thank you for praying! Within a day of asking for your prayers on our behalf for a generator to use during the power crisis here, a good friend and co-worker of ours responded and offered to lend us his generator for the months we will be without power here. The great thing about this is that he and his family are actually moving here to start up the helicopter program in just a few months so he was planning on shipping the generator here anyway. However, he won’t be needing it for a few months as they will be living in Manila getting settled in their new country. It seems pretty convenient and serendipitous to us…or just God’s perfect wisdom! While we still feel like it would be a wise thing to buy our own generator, this one will get us through until we can save up for one. Thank you again for all your prayers and thank you Zach and Jane for lending us your generator! This will truly make for a much cooler, much more comfortable dry season and last trimester of pregnancy!

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