Scenes From Another Week

This week I had the privilege of flying one of our waterstrip agents from his village to PalangkaRaya. This is Yanno and his wife. You can't really see in this picture, but sitting behind Yanno is the first gun shot victim that I've carried. The man sitting behind Yanno was shot in the shoulder with a shotgun. Nobody could explain to my why or how he got shot.

Click on this image to see it sharper and bigger. This is a map of everywhere in the world that MAF operates, and how many airplanes we have.

Often times I find myself landing in places that I haven't been to before. Usually these places don't present any challenges with landing or takeoff, but we just don't have a reason to go there often. It's probably been at least three years since MAF landed at this location. I'm assuming some of these kids had never seen the airplane before and that is why they came running when I pulled up to this dock.

This week I had to go to Jakarta to get a flight physical. Nothing like dealing with Jakarta traffic. Even if it is from the back of a taxi.


Newspaper sellers take advantage of the traffic jams as well as people selling food and drinks.

Random Scenes From My Week.

MUD SLIDE (as in the game and not the natural disaster)

Just after I landed at the village of Tumbang Kunyi last week, it started to rain. It was one of those rainstorms that just dumps all over the place. So eventually, after it stopped raining in the village I decided to go for a walk to see what everyone was doing. I had plenty of time since I still wanted the rain to completely clear out of the surrounding area.
I found these boys had taken advantage of the muddy situation. They cut the side out of a five liter jug of oil. This makes a recessed place where you can sit. They also tied a rope to the jug so they could pull it. Then the big kid pulled the little kid in his make shift mud sled. For some reason I never saw the little kid pull the big kid anywhere. Go figure.

Not everything that I do in Indonesia is related to flying or a foreign culture.
I spent a good chunk of time one day trying to fix our American oven. By the way, you can't buy an oven this size over here. We are so thankful for the oven which we shipped over from America. However, the oven pilot light refused to stay lit, and sometimes the oven would just go off while cooking. So, I consulted the owners manual to find that it said not to fix it yourself, but to call a professional. I probably could call a professional, but I would be hard pressed to find a professional from America willing to make a house call to Indonesia. I also knew that if I needed parts it would take about a month to get here.
So, I did the only reasonable thing I could do. I took it apart completely trying to discover the cause. After removing everything and cleaning all the little holes for the gas to travel through I'm proud to announce that the pilot light has not gone out once in the last two days. I'm hoping that I have it licked.

This is a picture of my sister, Jill, and her family. Hannah is the one in the front on the right. I'm happy to say that Hannah is more than half way through her treatments. She is doing really well. The only side effect is that she has a sore throat and that food doesn't really taste very good to her. She still has a good appetite thanks to the steroids that she has to take. Please keep praying that God will completely heal her of cancer. Thanks.

Nanga Bulik

When I start a new week here in Palangka Raya, I usually have no idea what adventures that the week is going to have for me. Yesterday I found myself flying to a village called Nanga Bulik. Nanga Bulik is a bit larger than most villages, and it is actually a capital of a small province in Kalimantan.
Nanga Bulik is about 1 1/2 hours away from Palangka Raya by air. I had never been there before but it's a big wide river so landing there was not a problem. When I got there and my passengers left about a hundred kids started to crowd around the airplane. Everybody wanted a glimpse of the white pilot.
I didn't get my camera out until about an hour later once the kids started to get bored and disperse.

When I wait for passengers I usually never leave the floatplane. When I flew a wheel plane I didn't mind leaving it alone, but with a wheel plane we always flew to the same places so the kids and people were used to us. Since I fly a floatplane now, I find that I can land at dozens of places that may have never had a float plane land there. I have to be a lot more careful, because the airplane would be easy to damage by a boat wanting to dock next to it for example. People here generally don't understand how easy a floatplane could be damaged.

All the kids in the pictures would just stare at me and ask me all kinds of questions. So, even though it would be easy for me to be annoyed by all the attention, I decided that this would be a great opportunity for them to see who I really was. I engaged these kids and answered most of their silly questions. After all, I had to wait for 1 1/2 hours for my passengers to return for their flight home.

Too bad I didn't take a picture right away when this whole dock was almost completely full of kids.

I know that some of you are getting tired of construction pictures, but today was a really big day for us. The steel structure for the hangar finally started to go up. Praise the Lord.

This picture is the beginning of our new office which is the part which will be on dry ground.

Hannah Update

As of yesterday Hannah had her second radiation treatment. Now she will have the weekend off and will start the daily treatments again on Monday. She will have a total of 20 of these treatments.
After the first day her tumors reacted by swelling. This gave her a severe headache with nausea so she began taking steroids to counter the swelling. After her second day of radiation she felt much better than she did the first day so the steroids must be doing what they are supposed to do.
Hannah has had such a great attitude through out this whole ordeal. We are so thankful for such a large group of people that we know are praying for Hannah.

Construction Update

This week Chris has been busy building us a set of scaffolding to use. Because we can't just go down the street and buy or rent scaffolding, Chris has been building it himself. We waited weeks for our ordered steel to arrive. As of today, I think we only have a few pieces left to weld and then we will have a complete set. After we have our scaffolding finished we can finally start to erect the steel for our hangar.