I unloaded the plane and loaded the truck for the last time this term. We plan to return next August and pick up where we've left off.

These last few months have been stressful to say the least. We’ve had a lot on our plate and had to adapt our schedule around several changes that we couldn’t have seen coming. This has meant that I have had to fly a lot closer to our departure for the States than we’d planned. In the end we were delayed enough that Brian was unable to finish Joel’s checkout so he shifted his attention to working with Garry, our chief pilot. The task was to fly with him and make sure he was current in all the airstrips so that he could take over checking Joel out on the last two airstrips.

During this process, Garry and I landed in our most challenging location and made a tough decision to cease flying there until repairs could be made. It simply didn’t seem wise to check someone out in there with the very pronounced bumps that have worsened throughout the year, thanks to a particularly wet year and earth quakes. Landing there has really been wearing on me because it has been nearly impossible to land without bouncing a couple of times just after touchdown – something that you don’t like to do on a 900′ airstrip where the first half of it is downhill.

We decided that it was best that I try to do the last flight to that location since I was already familiar with the idiosyncrasies of the airstrip. I would deliver the necessary supplies for the missionary to get to work on it right away. There are enough problems associated with a “last flight” of any sort, but this was a particularly stressful one as it was coming at the end of an already exhausting season in our lives. The challenges were compounded by a request for me to do a solo-airdrop in another location on the return flight – this is the highest risk operation in our playbook. All this was challenging enough and then we found out that our paperwork for the airplane’s annual inspection still hadn’t been signed at the government office so if I didn’t get the flights done on the 26th we’d have to wait until the paperwork was finished.

This is me landing on the airstrip a year ago. You can see it isn't the kind of place you want to be bouncing around in. In this photo the plane is just transitioning down the steepest part of the downhill. It's still traveling fast enough that it naturally wants to float off the airstrip. It used to be that we could force it down the hill to follow the transition, but as it is now, that is a very difficult thing to time properly.

I was well aware of the risks on this flight and tried to focus on just flying like I always do. The Lord gave us a beautiful day and I was able to accomplish all the objectives safely and with a smile on my face. It was a great feeling to park the plane in the hangar, unload it and empty it of all my personal effects because that was the end of my flights here until we return from the States. It was a fitting last day and very typical of our time here. We are so thankful for the prayers and encouragement we’ve received from those who were aware of our need for stamina and clear thinking. God delivered.

We now turn out attention to packing up the house and making sure we’ve transferred our to-do’s to our coworkers and tidied up any open projects or loose ends. We have just a little over a week left before we move out of the house and to Manila.

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I love Apple's simple language and how they make the complex seem so easy and simple. This is the symbol I was given when the iMac died instead of the normal Apple logo. Simple enough, "Don't enter. Time to move on with your life". It says so much with so little.

It was tragic to hear this week about the death of Steve Jobs. What an amazing inventor, businessman and communicator. He really made a lot of advances in the world today and many of his inventions are helping us in our ministry to work more efficiently and with less time staring at blue screens and syntax errors. One could even say he helped advance the Gospel, though he never believed it himself.

We use two Apple computers, an iMac and a MacBook. Neither are new, but both are vital parts of our ministry. We use them to communicate with supporters, write email, bookkeeping, flight scheduling, publishing safety data, presentations, inspections, research, networking, Skype, photos, videos editing, weather, etc etc… In other words, we really depend on our computers.

That is, until a couple weeks ago. I remember distinctly when it all started. After returning from a long trip to Luzon we found our iMac unable to boot up. Through the display’s backlight I could see fog and knew that our computer was in trouble in the tropics. After leaving the computer on for 24 hours in “boot up mode” it finally warmed up enough to dry out. It booted up but has never been the same. It would often crash without warning and without any discernible pattern. These crashes became more and more frequent until finally it wouldn’t boot any longer.

I was sad at the loss of the computer and saw it as merely a major financial hurdle for us at this point in our lives. I wasn’t worried about losing data or how long it might take to get the data back. I am fanatical about backups and keep two redundant copies made by two separate programs on hand all the time. One backup occurs hourly, the other occurs weekly. It’s a good system, but as often happens, I ran out of hard drive space for doing good backups. To get a large enough drive here is prohibitively expensive and in the end you question what quality you’re really getting. So, I found a good deal on a drive in the US and had it shipped here. Then I got busy and a few months went by without doing my redundant backup – only the hourly ones.

I still wasn’t concerned. I began troubleshooting the computer and the backup was working fine. Then a funny thing happened – our neighbor started welding and when he does our whole house’s power surges like crazy. You can actually hear the 60Hz hum in the walls. I’m not sure if it was the power surges, or the way in which the computer gave one final “crash” but whatever it was, the backup drive lost its identity and was never to be recognized by a computer again. This has set us back even further than we already were. I lost some important documents I was working on and weeks of work on other projects that can’t be recovered. Moreover, we’re down to using a 5+ year-old laptop as our primary computer and it has a tiny hard drive…not good for bringing it all home to the States with us.

We are reminded of how fleeting things are here and how we need to make sure that the things we are truly relying on are eternal or at least not plugged into the Philippines’ power grid. The tropics has no concern for expensive things, no favorites between Macs or PCs, new or old – it destroys them all equally. It’s quite remarkable really.

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It's been a real challenge to keep up with all the normal flying in addition to teaching Joel how to do it. Thankfully we're getting a little bit of a breather this week as we wait for Joel's check ride.

It feels like I’ve only just begun flying here in the Philippines, but by the time we head to the States for home assignment in November I’ll have flown almost 300 hours, nearly 1,000 landings and 600 flight legs. It doesn’t sound like much, but under these conditions and on these short flights, that is a lot of flying and loading and unloading! We’re now working with Joel and Missy Davis to hand responsibilities off so that they can run things by themselves while we’re gone. It is also important that Joel and I be able to fill in for each other when we are both working together after we return from the States.

This means that I have been flying as a flight instructor once again and working with Joel to get him ready to fly into our jungle airstrips. We have some very challenging weather with thunderstorms, typhoon winds, fog, haze and afternoon rains putting together an unpredictable cauldron of nastiness. Joel has been riding along on my normal flight routes and learning about the weather patterns and various routes and methods of dealing with the ever-changing weather conditions.

One day he told me he was actually praying that we would get bad weather so that he would have a better “learning experience.” I almost pushed him out the airplane door! God in his sovereignty has granted Joel’s request and we have had some very challenging weather to deal with – it couldn’t be a better environment for Joel to learn the idiosyncrasies of our small region of the South Pacific.

This week, Joel will take his check ride with an examiner from the Philippines and he will acquire his permanent Philippine pilot’s license. With that in hand we will polish up some of Joel’s techniques and skills and head for the tribal airstrips. It will be the most challenging thing I think I’ve ever done in my life. I am confident in our ability to carry out the flights safely or I wouldn’t be doing it. However, I would appreciate your prayers as we land on some of the most difficult Cessna 185 airstrips in the world. Pray for safety, good weather, good decisions, and if necessary that I’d have good and appropriate reactions as Joel lands on these airstrips for the first time.

Here’s a Video of Some of the Airstrips We’ll be Flying to:

Three Tricky Little Cessna 185 Airstrips

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So here I am, in a hotel room in the city still trying to change my rear brake pads. Let me explain what’s going on…

Normally changing brake pads on my truck takes me about 30-40 minutes per axle and in my past experience it’s done every 50-80K miles depending on driving style etc. etc. But the brake pads that are available locally last about 6K miles so they get changed with every tire rotation. It was getting expensive so this time I decided to try some pads from the US and see if they last longer. I ordered them last April and just got them. When I went to install them I ran into trouble that I knew would require spare parts – something I can’t get quickly (it can take months) and due to the extreme rate of brake pad consumption I can’t wait that long. This means taking it to a shop.

There is a good shop here that I have enjoyed using, but things aren’t done the same here due to a lack of resources. Basically what has happened is that the brake calipers needed to be overhauled-a very easy job in the States. In fact all you do is hand your worn out parts to the guy at the parts counter and for about $60 he hands you an overhauled one. It’s a fair trade. No such resource here.
Once I knew an overhaul was in order, I hurried to a hotel to book a room as quickly as I could because hotels in the city run at about 80% occupancy and the 20% that are vacant aren’t places you’d want to go near. I’ve learned that once things start to get complicated on a repair I need to start arranging to stay for a night or two.
Once booked in a room I rode public transportation back to the shop, approved some other repairs and hung out to make sure the work was done how I wanted. In the end the parts that arrived were the wrong ones, so it will be late tomorrow before I get to drive home on a new set of brake pads.
Our vehicle is a 1990 model Landcruiser 70 series and is as suited to this environment as any vehicle in the world is. However, I have to be realistic-it is almost 22 years old and has lived a hard life. I am tremendously thankful for it and am reminded how incredibly blessed we are in the States to have the infrastructure that we do. After all, a job that could easily be done by the end of my second cup of coffee back home has taken me since April to plan and execute!

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Watch video: The helicopter lands in the Isnag tribe right behind the missionaries' houses.

When we first arrived here in the Philippines I hiked with a couple of other NTMA guys into the Isnag tribe to do some repairs on the solar panels and other odds and ends. It was a couple years ago but if I remember right we drove a car for 8 hours, rode a bus for 6 and slept 2 hours in a gross hotel. Keep in mind this wasn’t freeway driving, but crazy Philippine 2-lane provincial highway driving through the mountains. We then rode a van on a dirt mountain road for 5 hours before hiring a 4×4 for 4 hours – the 4×4 overheated prematurely so we started hiking. Then we hiked roughly 8-10 hours crossing the river about 37 times in flood stage. Once we arrived, I was dehydrated and hadn’t slept since we left Manila – the hotel was too gross to sleep! The next morning we had to get to work right away because our time there was limited.

Watch the Video by Jonathan Bamford >>

When it was time to leave, we hiked 30 minutes up to the airstrip (crossing the river several times) to meet the plane. We flew 40 minutes back to where we had parked the car. What a difference! Now, with the addition of the helicopter, missionaries can land in the tribe, 20 minutes after leaving the hangar. It nearly brought me to tears to see the missionaries moving back to the tribe after being without a flight program for so long. Praise God for such an amazing provision.

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During an extremely busy flight schedule we received word that two patients were critically ill in the Banwaon tribe. This is the video of my flight to take one of the patients to the hospital. It’s a pretty typical flight during this time of year and without a doubt, I feel relief when I get to do the easy part of the flight…land the airplane. Negotiating weather is far and away the most difficult part of flying here as you can see from the video. If you want to read the story behind this flight you can read the article Here.

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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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This post is for all the pilots and dreamers who enjoy this kind of stuff. I filmed some landings and takeoffs at three of our more interesting airstrips. We are getting into rainy season now and I am learning that these airstrips are completely different when wet. It’s not only the slippery surface that’s a challenge, but all the rainy weather and low clouds make for a challenging trip as well.

Learn More about New Tribes Mission Aviation: www.ntm.org/aviation

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Was it my sin nature, or just being "one of the guys" that made me do it? I don't know, and we'll never know.

Yesterday I learned that I am known in the Banwaon tribe as the “Mischievous One.” Dumbfounded, I asked, “how did they come up with that?” Of course what I was wondering was, “how did they know, I can’t even speak their language?!” I had forgotten all about a little something that happened a few months ago that had earned me that name.

So there I was, flying into the Banwaon airstrip while the missionaries who live there were out of the area. I had received a message that the airstrip would be mowed and ready for me to land on it. I flew over the airstrip and noticed that one of the Banwaon men was still mowing the grass. “No big deal,” I thought, “someone will hear me and have him move.” I continued my approach and as I got closer it was clear that he hadn’t realized I was there. I couldn’t land, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t have a little fun with him. I continued my approach with the intent of breaking it off just before landing and flying low over the runway to have a good look at it – and scare the living daylight out of my Banwaon friend.

It worked! I got about 100′ from him and 10′ over his head before he saw me. I knew he probably wouldn’t hear me over the mower noise so I had the element of surprise on my side. His eyes were huge and he and the mower dove off the side of the runway. I circled back around and landed, but I was just there to practice that day so I never got out of the plane to say anything. I hurried off to beat the rain showers and that was the end of it.

I soon forgot about the experience, but they didn’t. Yesterday, I was delayed from taking off by a sliced tire tread on our airplane. The missionaries were waiting for the plane to come in and didn’t know I was delayed. They had some time to talk at the airstrip with their Banwaon friends. They told the story for about thirty minutes and were laughing about it the whole time. The Banwaon people are a very happy and fun people who love to joke around so this quickly earned me a place in their hearts. As they told the story they talked about me as “their pilot” and introduced me to the missionaries as if they might not know me as well as they do. It was a cool realization that an act of immaturity was actually a huge step into their world and I am now “their mischievous pilot.”

Disclaimer: I do not condone reckless flying, nor do the people at NTMA. This was a routine aborted landing procedure…I just waited a little longer than was absolutely necessary to abort the landing…and I laughed out loud while aborting the landing, but that doesn’t make it reckless.

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Once the crate made it to the airplane it was time to unpack it and try to get it installed before the rain came.

We have been without an airplane since August and it has had a drastic affect on everyone in our region. Every tribal team that we serve with the airplane is currently in a bind waiting to see when the airplane will be able to fly again. They all had plans for translation checks, deadlines, furloughs, construction projects and moves in mind when the plane was grounded and all of those have come to a screeching halt. Not a day goes by that we don’t feel the burden of these folks who are stranded without a good line of transportation to and from their tribal homes.

In an effort to speed the process of getting the airplane back in the air, we determined it would be safe to fly the airplane out of the tribal airstrip where it has been sitting if we could borrow and install an airworthy propeller on it. This would allow us to transport the airplane to our hangar where we could remove and replace the engine in a much more sterile environment. The question was, “how do we transport a 3 bladed, 80″ diameter x 21″ tall, 250 pound propeller and crate across the Philippines to our island, then North on a 4×4 trail and then straight down the slippery, muddy tribal trail and across the river to the airplane?” Then of course, we’d have to get the old propeller back out again.

Through a concerted team effort we were able to remove the airworthy propeller from our other airplane during a lull in the Palawan flight schedule. The guys in Palawan made a crate for it and shipped it to us. In preparation for it we took the cargo rack on our truck apart and made a special wood rack that would allow us to rigidly anchor the crate to the roof and position the propeller so as to minimize how much it hung off the sides of the truck. The roads are narrow going into the tribe with lots of busses and logging trucks. It would be catastrophic to have the propeller swiped by a passing truck!

Loading the Propeller onto our homemade cargo rack in the freight company parking lot. It got a lot of discussion from bystanders.

It was a long 4x4 drive but we successfully brought the propeller to the end of the logging road where it then had to be hiked into the tribe.

Once we loaded the propeller we drove into the tribe and took the 4×4 section very, very slow. We were thankful for the ultra low range gearbox and diff locks on the truck that allowed us to travel at a speed just over a baby crawl without slipping on the wet rocks and roots thus causing extra jarring on our precious cargo. It goes without saying that the truck was a bit top heavy so slower was safer.

There is even a section of the 4×4 trail that is so narrow you have to B.Y.O.B. (bring your own bridge). The road is on the crest of a ridge and washed out on both sides. It is only wide enough for a motorcycle to drive over. So we placed a plank over the washout and drove with two wheels on the trail, and two wheels hanging over the cliff riding on the board.

Once we got to the end of the 4×4 trail our stress really began because now it was time to hike the propeller from the top of the ridge where we parked down to the river where the airplane was sitting on the airstrip. For a job like this you want to have the best men for the job so we hired some of the guys from the tribe to carry it. They are amazingly sure-footed and able to carry extreme loads. That’s a lot more than I can say for myself!

We unloaded the propeller from the truck and they took a quick look at it and had a discussion about how to carry it. Then a couple of them went off and scavenged a couple of wood poles and borrowed some rope. After a short while they were on their way with four of them carrying the propeller on their shoulders. The four of them grunted, yelled, laughed and sighed as they fought the awkwardness of that propeller all the way down the mountain. It was amazing to watch them work together.

Once we had the propeller at the airplane it was “go-time”…and afternoon thunderstorm time. We could see the rain in the distance-devouring one mountain at a time as it worked its way closer and closer to us. The missionaries living in the tribe helped us open the crate while we quickly removed the old propeller from the plane. We prepped the new one for the engine and put it on in the rain. It was quite the operation with a huge audience of tribal folks who enjoyed the spectacle and had a good time discussing the probabilities of making a propeller out of wood if this one didn’t work.

We got the prop onto the crankshaft just before a downpour. A few seconds later and we would have had to wait until the rain stopped to avoid getting water into the engine's oil system.

We got the propeller back on, test ran the engine just as it was getting dark and determined we had a “flyable” airplane. We got an early start the next morning, did a couple more tests and flew it away. Garry flew it back to our hangar by himself according to our protocol and I got ready to do the trip in reverse.

Garry was home in 25 minutes while I still had over 11 hours before I'd make it home. Garry would arrive home rested, but after this trip I would feel like I had just tapped out of a UFC fight.

By the time I had gathered my things and hiked from the airstrip to the missionaries’ houses (about 25 minutes) we heard that Garry was “overhead and landing” at our hangar. Never before has the efficiency of that red and white airplane been so clear as it was that morning. I still had a solid 11 hours of misery and treacherous roads to go with the most awkward load imaginable strapped to the roof…but we were one huge step closer to repairing the plane and helping get work back into full swing here for the missionaries.

For More Pictures Click Here

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