An unexpected trip.

After a couple weeks of painting our hangar and 60th anniversary party prepping (see previous post), it was nice to be called away to help on a good ol' airframe repair.  The day before our anniversary party, I was asked if I could leave in 2 days to travel to another base to help with repairs on one of our airplanes that had suffered some damage to its landing gear.  With Brin's blessing I gladly accepted.  Not knowing if it was going to be a 2 day or 2 week project, I boarded the bus with my collegue Victor for the 10 hour bus ride north.  

Fortunatly we found the damage to be minimal and the part that we feared might need to be replaced turned out to be airworthy.  We were able to make the repair in 3 days and get home before being missed too much.  It was encouraging to spend time with some of the pilots and their wives, getting a look at their lives and ministry.  

Here are some pictures of the work, followed by some pictures of what the girls have been up to recently. 

While I was away life went on mostly as normal, here are a few recent pictures from our everyday life...

After school Mia and her friends will often play with clay scavenged from the river, here she and her friend are making volcanoes.

Another recent activity has been watching iguanas bury their eggs in the sand.

Brin's 7th and 8th grade reading class wrote prayers on paper airplanes and flew them into the river. Inspired by the book they are reading, "I am Malala".

Trying our hand at cottage cheese after the fresh milk we got had curdled.

The girls on a dress up day.

Turning 60

We served breakfast to about 300 people from the community, partnering churches, and ministries, followed by a program.

60 years is pretty old in NGO-years.  I'm not sure if it is quite like dog-years, but it's got to be up there. It seems like there are trendy NGOs that pop up all the time, they are much more vogue with their "buy our product and we'll give one away to the needy" model, but I'll be impressed when you've been doing it for a few decades, or a half dozen if you can imagine.  A friend of mine who works for a large NGO once told me these young up and comers are called boutique charities, a cute name for a cute movement.

I'm only kidding of course (apologies if you work for one of these new NGOs, I am being facetious and clearly the age of the organization has nothing to do with its effectiveness).  It just so happens that our mission organization, Asas de Socorro (Wings of Rescue) is celebrating 60 years since the first missionaries came to Brazil from Missionary Aviation Fellowship and started a chapter here.  Asas de Socorro has since grown to include a medical and dental ministry which serves in the remote communities of the Amazon.  

As the vision and mission of Asas de Socorro has grown over the years, we still have our identity rooted in Aviation, and specifically using it as a tool to further the reach of the Gospel.  Aviation has become more and more expensive in recent years, forcing many missionary aviation organizations around the world to close their doors or find creative ways to make ends meet.  I truly don't know what our organization will look like in another 60 years.  But I hope and pray that its main focus remains on helping the Gospel be heard by those who have no way of hearing on their own.