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Thursday, February 12, 2009

Medevacs Galore!

It's been a wild week of mission flying. Sunday I got called in for a medevac flight. Since there was room for an extra person, I took Britton along.

We try to rotate through the kids, giving each one a chance to ride along as the opportunity arises. It's a great opportunity to see what Daddy does out there, and I think it makes it more personal to them when they pray for the "orang sakit" people that I bring to the hospital. Plus, if we're empty going out to pick up the patient, like we were this time, then they get a chance to "fly" the plane!

Monday I had two more medevacs. Tuesday was a full-mix of missionary type flying. Along with the usual passengers and stuff that I carried, I also had a group of pastors going to a conference, a body flight to an interior village (died in the city and wanted to be buried in the home village,) two more medevacs, and 20,000 fish! The fish were little minnows, being delivered to a village to raise for food. I've carried tons of dried fish to villages, along with rice, sugar, and other food supplies, but I can't say that I've ever carried 20,000 live fish before!
Wednesday and Thursday saw more of the same, with several more medevacs, pastors to villages, food supplies etc. I also managed to kill three dogs this week while landing. Wow! It's been a full week.

One of the neet things to see and be a part of is when the local village pastor leads everyone in prayer for the medevac patient before we take off for the hospital. That's what's going on in the picture above.

4 comments:

hondacubber said...

When it rains it pours medevacs!
That is neat you get to bring a family member along when the occasion arises. What village did you take the fish to? Is it a government project? They do need more protein in their diet and also calcium for their teeth.
I flew a bunch of tea plants into Long Ampung. Is there any tea bushes growing on the hills South of the airport still?

Tuhan memberkati

theda said...

This is certainly what you were made for, Dave. What a great use of your life.

Dave said...

Eric, the fish were for the village of Long Alango. As for the tea plants, to be honest I haven't seen any near Ampung. Their hills are covered with pineapples, but no tea plants.

Rebecca Conduff Aguirre said...

Wow! Sounds like you did have a busy week flying. So interesting to read about. I like it that you can take a kid along sometimes, that is really, really cool!

I had to laugh about the dogs (although not really a laughing matter, eh?) because it reminded me of a time when the tribal people in our station had a "pet" pig (we never could convince them that pigs were food, not pets). We knew a flight was coming and we were so afraid that pig would wander onto the airstrip during the landing-this thing was huge! So my dad warned them that the airplane would "eat" their pig and they ended up leading it way off into the jungle to avoid such a tragedy! We did try to buy it from them (good meat!), but they refused because they never eat their pets! rats.