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.