Heading to Ecuador (Eventually!)

After much prayer and seeking God's direction, the big news this week is that we will be heading to Ecuador. I know, it seems like we came full circle, but we had much to learn on the way and we are heading there for much different reasons than when we first started out.

First off is to say that we feel very privileged to have spent the last 4 months here at JAARS and have made some life-long friends here. We hope the relationships we have formed will last forever. But we have realized that indeed God has prepared us uniquely for serving in Maggy's home country (and soon to be mine!).

Since the Ecuadorian government is no longer allowing any more foreign pilots to fly in Ecuador, MAF is really in a tough spot to supply Godly pilots and mechanics to support the mission effort. Praise God that the operation is able to sustain itself so far with some commercial flights to help with income. We will be applying not to MAF-US as originally planned, but to ADSE (Alas de Socorro - Ecuador) the MAF branch in Ecuador.

We will be heading to Ecuador probably about the January 2010 time frame to start the paperwork for my residency and eventual citizenship. While I am waiting for all of that to go through, I will be doing whatever I can to be helpful in the MAF hangar doing maintenance primarily and anything else that needs to be done. I can also start to work on transferring my pilot and mechanic certificates to Ecuadorian ones. Exactly how far I am going to be able to get with that with only resident status is still a little unsure.

Since we are headed in that direction, we feel God's leading also to head back to Tampa a little earlier than originally planned to begin preparing. We will be getting back to Tampa August 11th right after our family reunion. I did get JAARS's blessing to cut the internship short in preparation for our move, but we will miss this place! We have had such an incredible time here.

Another one of our goals in Ecuador is to be part of an effort to train Ecuadorian nationals, including indigenous, to work in the aviation department. It is prohibitively expensive and pretty much way out of reach for most folks who live in and near the jungle to pay for either mechanic or pilot training. I have been doing quite a bit of research to figure out a way to make it possible to train them to do the work now being done mostly by Americans. There are options that put it within the grasp of willing, dedicated people who want to put the effort into completing the training. The details are long and probably boring to most, but it includes taking a very inexpensive airplane to buy and operate down to Ecuador to do most of the training in. We will wait on the Lord to see how he provides.

I do have more information about the project available if anyone would like to know more. I really enjoyed my time working at the flight school as a flight instructor while I was going through my mechanic training, and I really feel God is leading me in the direction to not just fly for others, but to do training as a principle part of our ministry as well. The primary goal of the training will be to make disciples of Christ and that will be one of the ways we will try to assure retention of the training candidates.

Maggy and the kids are expected back on Saturday. Maggy's younger brother (who is Karina's age) will be coming to spend time with us as well. I am very ready to have my family back. The house is so empty and quiet!

Please pray for us as we prepare for this move. We are so excited about it and we see God's hand in so much as we prepare. We are thankful to all of you who prayed with us while seeking God's will in this decision.