Ella goes to work

Ella celebrated her 13th birthday, and the title of the book she received says it all!

Last week I had a self-proclaimed Bring Your Daughter to Work Day.  I thought Ella would enjoy hanging out with me and experiencing what my day is like.  It also happened to be the week of her birthday, so it turned out to be a special way to commemorate that as well.  Ella has recently shown an interest in photography (she even already has a name: Ellagant Photography).  She brought the camera and I told her to try and get some action shots of me at work.  She clearly enjoyed herself.  Understandably, she was more interested in taking pictures than learning about the components of an amphibious landing gear system, but I tried anyway.  

Here are some of her shots:

As in the U.S., meticulous records must be kept of any maintenance done on an airplane.   Here Ryan explains one of the many forms to Andrés and me.

Andrés and I working on the landing gear of the Caravan.

Inspecting the wheel hubs.

It so happened that Ella also witnessed a more serious side of our ministry.  The coordinator of our flights had received a call about the desperate need for an emergency evacuation of three children of a church worker that had been severely burned by an explosion. Complicating the situation, they were in a remote community and very far from a hospital.  The details were rather unclear at first but the gravity of the situation obvious.  Our ministry exists for these types of purposes. However,  the Caravan was in the middle of a 100 hr inspection and the 206 had left earlier in the morning for a flight in the opposite direction.  It pained us to think of the children suffering and we were at a loss to help. At lunch we prayed for the family asking God to provide some other means.  Later we learned the family hitched a ride with an IBAMA (Brazil's DNR) boat that was close by and arrived at a hospital 20+ hours later.  The kids suffered major burns over much of their bodies due to the explosion of gas that also leveled their house and hospitalized their mother.  They are currently intubated and in intensive care.

This very sad situation served as a reminder, to me and Ella, as to why aviation has such value in this region.  There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Brazilian and foreign missionary families that are living in remote locations throughout the Amazon.  Aviation is a modern transportation option that can be used to make remote work more accessible, more efficient, and more safe. I learned that first hand after 4 years of working on the Xingu.

   I think about that long boat ride those kids must have suffered through and how a short flight in an airplane could have prevented much of that suffering.  A sober reminder of why we do what we do.