NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

Being at a “stuck” point while waiting for parts and an invitation from our Alaskan churches, we felt that would be a good time to make a trip to Alaska. Though visiting churches wasn’t the reason for coming back to the States, as a furlough would be, a couple of our churches in Alaska requested that we come up there. Though we couldn’t dedicate the kind of time to them that we really wanted to, we agreed to spend a few weeks there.

We knew that there would be a couple of church meetings and maybe some time with pastors and missions committees, but in the end it turned out we has 11 official meetings/get-togethers within 2 1/2 weeks and the final 1/2 week was at a 4 day pastors conference, so “relaxing” wasn’t really the name of the game.

On the way up we had a plane change in Seattle. As I stood at the counter of the Seattle Terminal Burger King there was conversation going on amongst the employees that none of the customers could understand, but me. Six or seven Filipina’s were working there chatting amongst themselves until the dayuhan (foreigner) ordered in Tagalog. All of a sudden everyone’s attention was on me. There is a standing joke amongst the Filipinos, every dayuhan can be sold until he knows enough of the language to understand that he’s being sold off. It’s always good to hear them say that I can no longer be sold, and it was especially good to hear that on my own soil, to understand part of a culture that is not my own.

We had two pastors that we hadn’t met yet in Alaska, one being our home church pastor and so spent a LOT of time with him. If he wasn’t so lonely while his wife was in Colorado, he certainly would have gotten sick of us! Since our trip really wasn’t planned we had to scramble to make contact with friends and family. Many adjusted their schedules for us, and we got to see just about everyone through our church meetings, home groups and individual times.

At one open house we met a filipino guy who invited us to speak at his Filipino church the following evening. It was so good for us to be surrounded by Filipinos again, some of whom were from the very remote places we’d visited and showed pictures of a place that was as special to them as is was to us. For a couple hours we prayed with them, told them our story and conversed in Tagalog. It was so special for us to be prayed for in Tagalog!

We certainly had a busy time, but also a great time with friends and family…

The only thing more important than rebuilding this 185 is just about, a lot of things. I was grateful for a diversion from drilling thousands of rivets. Each tuesday a gentleman, and frequently his wife, bring us donuts and day old bread from Safeway 40 miles away. He flies his Piper Cherokee each time and spends the day volunteering around the hanger. To thank him, we do his maintenance for the price of parts as well as his annual inspection. This year, however, all did not go well as we found a little tiny piece of bearing in his oil filter. Yes, we do cut open oil filters and look for little things like that! That little piece told us that something was coming apart in his engine. I removed the engine and began to tear it apart. It turned out to be a main crankshaft bearing, which meant by the time I found it, it was totally torn apart.

Some of the parts had to be shipped out for inspection at a certified engine shop, and now after 4 weeks of waiting, I’m starting to put it back together. Going together is much more involved than ripping it apart. Much care has to be put into it to make sure that everything works properly when it’s done. The safety of our donuts counts on it! And of course the Nelsons.

Now I’m working on it mostly in the evenings and weekends since there’s new priorities in the shop right now.  But what happened during those weeks of waiting? Surely we weren’t just sitting here waiting for parts and pieces… Of course not! We went to Alaska. What else could we do?

Since Jonie and I got married only four years ago, we’ve packed up and moved almost 10 times with countless smaller trips in between. I have no idea how many times I’ve woken up wondering where I am, maybe for a single night or a whole week. Someday if I have nothing else to do I’ll figure it out. Maybe on my next 20 hour flight across the ocean…

However, through all that moving there has been one constant, one place I keep coming back to. Here at NTMA Arizona we’ve lived in 3 different trailers and stayed with 3 different families while visiting. But there’s a corner of the hanger that has been mine almost constantly for what amounts to a year and a half. Since I’ve left home I haven’t been anywhere else that long. Those two squares on the hanger floor have been part of my life for all this time. My tools are there and my 185 rebuilds. This is the 3rd rebuild/repair I’ve been part of, though this one is definitely the worst  one I’ve worked on. Right now the wings are being rebuilt from the ground up. They are in really bad shape. The engine pushed into the firewall causing lots of damage to both. While skidding down the runway on it’s roof the ceiling windshield and tail suffered extreme damage. The propeller is a goner, but the engine should be able to be rebuilt. Thankfully though, I’ve got a couple other projects, the first more important than the Cessna.

It’s some kind of twisted humor or something that we keep coming back to the desert. Though the city life of Manila didn’t suit my personality very well, being close enough to the jungle to get out of the city on the weekends was great. Here, in Arizona, there’s no escaping the dry and arid surroundings that greeted us. We didn’t have the money to fly all the way to Tucson, so we rented a car and after 20 some hours on a plane from Manila, drove another 9 to our next trailer at the NTM Aviation headquarters. It was a bittersweet reunion with the many friends we made here during the training and then the rebuilding of one of the Philippine 185s. We settled in fairly quickly since we really didn’t bring anything with us from the Philippines, and started right into meetings, job assignments and figuring out where to begin. And, we began dreaming of getting back to our home in the South Pacific, where our friends, our dog and our calling from the Lord still kept our hearts yearning for that place.

It was a sad day moving our things out of our apartment. We had been looking forward to moving, but only because it meant moving to another town to begin our aviation ministry there, not because we had to go back to Arizona. The guards and janitors of our condo complex were very sad to see us go and many of them stayed after their 12 hour shift to help us carry our boxes and stuff down to the moving truck. We sold some of our things, but mostly we stored them at a friends house, including the dog. She hates Arizona and was much happier with the huge yard of grass and swimming pool at our friends’house that are watching her.

Saying goodbye to all of our friends there wasn’t easy, we had grown close to many over the last year. One of the cultural things they do with good friends, is giving a remembrance. Jewelry, clothes, shoes, anything that is special to the owner makes for a good remembrance. I gave necklaces, sneakers, sunglasses, my swiss knife, t-shirts, shorts and flip flops, as well as my Xbox. And we received many remembrances, as well. They told us, “So you don’t forget us, wear/use this!” We will miss them and look forward to seeing them again.