No Joke. This was one of the better weather reports I could find for our flight yesterday. If you look close, you can see the yellow arrow points at our approximate route. They didn't waste any words!

Yesterday I soloed on the last airstrip  that we are currently using. It feels so good to be at this point, but I am realizing quickly that I find landing and taking off to be the easiest part. In fact, I feel a sense of relief when I circle to land at any of these airstrips because for me right now, that is the easy part. What is a challenge is flying in all the weather here. There is no real weather reporting between where we takeoff and where we land and all of our airstrips are located right in the middle of what our chief pilot calls “the weather factory.” It is always changing and keeps us on our toes.

Bailey is a big help in this area because she is now using the HF radio to call our missionaries and get weather reports. She then relays the weather to me in the airplane via the HF radio. Some days the HF works great, other days it is just a bunch of distracting static. However, it is the best thing we have right now so we are making it work for us. There is a lot for Bailey and I to learn these days about how to deal with all the radio calls and weather.

We recently had a flight planned to shuttle supplies between two locations, but when the rain came we had to throw off some extra weight and give up on our plans so that we could deliver the important cargo to the missionaries who were waiting for it at their airstrip. We took off in the rain and as you can see from the video, had a good time navigating around clouds to get to the most challenging airstrip I’ve ever experienced.

NTMA's first Kodiak Taxis to runway enroute to Arizona where it will be used for training purposes before being sent to Indonesia.

It’s not really about a plane … by Ian Fallis

The Kodiak is really just a big hunk of metal.

As cool as the Quest Kodiak airplane is – and it really is a cool plane – it’s little more than a bunch of aluminum with an engine stuck on the end.

What’s really great about the Kodiak is the lives it will help save. And I’m not just talking about physical lives.

New Tribes Mission took delivery of their first Kodiak off the Quest assembly line in Sandpoint, Idaho. Then NTM pilots taxied to the airstrip and flew it to NTM Aviation’s center in southern Arizona. Eventually, the plane will head to Indonesia, where air service has been lacking for years for ministries in some remote villages.

Without flight service, it can take missionaries a week or more to get into or out of the villages. Getting supplies and equipment is often sporadic and spotty. Should an emergency arise, there is no quick way out. This greatly hinderes efforts to plant churches among those remote people groups.

While no airplane will ever share the Gospel, the Kodiak will go a long way toward helping missionaries do just that.

As you hear stories in coming years about how Kodiak airplanes are helping expand the reach of the Gospel – saving lives for eternity – remember that you helped make that happen by your involvement in our ministry. Thanks!

Click to See a Movie About the Kodiak and NTMA

We are tracking the plane as Garry flies it across the Visayas region to its new home in the South Eastern Philippines.

For the last few weeks Brian and the other NTMA guys here have been working hard to get one of our Cessna 185s, “405″, ready for service in a new flight program in the Southern Philippines. As I write this, 405 is enroute to its new home where it will once again carry New Tribes Missionaries to and from their tribal works. It has not flown in a missionary capacity since 2003 so this is an exciting day for us. Many pilot/mechanic teams have had a hand in getting the plane ready for this flight, and it was great to join that effort.

The Philippine flight program is in a startup phase and this is the first of many steps to rebuilding flight service to the tribes in the Philippines. It is very rewarding to see these “benchmarks” along the way that are measurable progress of the work we have been about. The plane is going to arrive in a few hours and will be put into service almost right away for missionaries. We will be moving in just under a week to join 405. Our main task will be to help with many of the administrative tasks necessary for starting and running the flight program. Hopefully early next year Brian will begin the process of getting his Philippine pilot’s license, get “checked-out” at our tribal airstrips and begin flying for the missionaries too.

We are also working at importing a helicopter, securing another flight center in the Northern Philippine region where the helicopter will serve. We also need to streamlining much of our inventory and record keeping as our program grows. Pray for us in these very busy days of juggling so many tasks. We are the busiest we have been in a long time and the most  unsettled too. It is hard to work in an organized way out of the chaos and we would covet your prayers as we try to keep our heads through these exciting and difficult times. We know the impact that these efforts will have on tribal church planting is far reaching and that makes it worth it all.

The airplane was in pieces when we received the call, but the Lord led us earlier in the day to limit how much we took the airplane apart.

Thank you so much for your prayers for the emergency flight yesterday. Ben and Garry were able to take off early in the morning and encountered only minor rain showers along the way. They said the airstrip was quite slippery, but still well within our minimum requirements. They took Isol out of the tribe and got him to a nearby town where he was taken to the hospital. The missionary team did a fantastic job of cleaning him up and preparing him for the flight out. He did continue to pass out periodically but had stabilized and should be in good hands now.

Thank you for all your prayers surrounding this flight. When we received the call I was reassembling the airplane after the inspection while Ben and Garry worked on the paperwork. Ben came over to the plane with a sheepish smile on his face and said, “How soon can this plane be flying again? A man in the tribe has stepped on a pig trap and…”

I thought it was a joke to get me all worked up. They always did that sort of thing in my training to “simulate” the pressure one might feel to get the job done in a safe way and make decisions to accomplish the imminent without creating a new iminent emergency. I didn’t know Ben well enough yet to know if he was joking or serious because the story was pretty elaborate. He was serious, and it was for real.

We quickly gathered our thoughts and evaluated the status of the airplane. There were many decisions to make in a very short time about what was left to repair and what was still disassembled. It is in those times that we are so thankful for a team of prayer partners who we know are praying for us everyday. The Lord really led us earlier in the day to avoid starting some of the larger, deferrable projects on the airplane and to focus on the more minor things first. It was this decision that kept us from opening up the fuel system and making it near impossible to get the airplane flying again in time for the early morning flight.

Bailey and I are going back to Manila today to work on some paperwork for my pilot and mechanic licenses and to ship our things. There are several other adminisrative tasks we are going to work through in the next couple weeks. We will return to Palawan for another three weeks after that to finish some the larger preventative aircraft projects that we postponed. Thank you so much for all your prayers for us as a team here. God is working and leading us even when we don’t feel it. Thanks so much!

Isol's friends carrying him to the clinic

We were hard at work today on the second of two annual inspections on the aircraft here in Palawan when we received a call at quitting time from some of our tribal missionaries on the island. They had a seriously injured man in their clinic and needed an emergency flight first thing in the morning. Below is the prayer request from the missionary team:

“About 4pm, we got word that some guys were carrying Isol to us, a young man, who had stepped into a pig trap in the jungle. The traps have a spring-loaded bamboo blade, which had gone right through one of his calves, and into the other calf. This happened in the morning, and it was 3pm before he was able to crawl to the nearest people for help. They carried him here. We think he probably lost a fair bit of blood, but praise the Lord, the bleeding had stopped by the time he reached us, though he was in terrible pain and kept passing out.

Julie and Ginny calmly took care of him, and though he was crying out in pain earlier, he is resting well now, well medicated. Dave called the plane for the morning, but it’s undergoing a regular service. The pilot and mechanic are going to work through the night to get it finished in time to leave to come here early in the morning. Please pray for them that they will be able to finish putting the engine back together without having a really late night, and that they are able to get an early test flight. Also for clear, calm weather. And of course please pray for Isol, that he will be comfortable as possible tonight. His family will look after him at the clinic building tonight, and we’ll be on call.”

We were able to finish the inspection at a reasonable hour and the plane is ready for the flight tomorrow. Please pray for Ben as he will be negotiating the unpredictable rainy season weather in order to pick up and fly this tribal man to a hospital. Due to the difficulty level of the airstrip in this tribe, he cannot land if it is raining. Also, the airstrip gets very slippery, so pray for a nice surface to land on, and no rain.

The team working with this tribe runs a clinic that helps meet the physical needs of the tribal people. It is our prayer that through this clinic and the love displayed by the missionaries, that the tribal people will hunger for Jesus as they see His love displayed by the missionaries. The team is learning the language so that they can teach and disciple the people of this tribe. We pray that Isol and others will be able to get the care they need so they can live to one day know their Savior.