Birthday Bash and Dog Biscuit Baking

This past weekend we were blessed by friends visiting from Pennsylvania. Jack, Renee, and Joelle drove down, brought their own birthday surprise for Karen, and baked Tucker and Tanner some home-made dog biscuits! Everybody down here likes biscuits!

Happy Birthday, Karen!

Rolling the dog biscuit dough

 Cutting and sheeting the raw biscuits

The cooks and the baked dog biscuits!

While the girls were in the kitchen, Tanner guarded the baby doll.

Missionary Air Group's newest missionary pilot?

A Busy Month For MAG

October is proving to be a busy month for Missionary Air Group with three teams in and out of Rus Rus, Honduras and with a village outreach and continued flight program development in Guatemala. There are many things to be excited about, many things to pray about, and much to be thankful for.

Today's post will focus on excitement.

We're Excited About God's Work In Honduras

• Carlos (our Director of Pastoral Ministries) is on the ground in Rus Rus with a team of three

  

  Carlos

  men (Matt, Bob, and Craig) taking on several construction/renovation projects at the hospital. Over their two week stay, they will perform electrical work, tile an operating room floor, and take care of some carpentry issues. Carlos will also visit the village of Mahbita to encourage and minister to the Believers there.

• Sean (our President) is in Atlanta as part of a ministry conference facilitating organizational networking in Honduras. Sean departs for Rus Rus tomorrow (Saturday) and will spend two weeks in the village assisting Carlos's team, and working with two other teams scheduled to arrive over next week.  

• Shortly after Sean's arrival, a team of medical personnel is scheduled to visit the hospital for

  

  Sean

  meetings with our missionary staff and hospital staff in order to gain a better understanding of the medical needs and opportunities in Rus Rus. Carlos will interpret for the team.

• A good friend of MAG, Jim, has arranged for a Honduran team from Tegucigalpa to conduct a full site survey of our Rus Rus airbase and hospital facility. They should arrive shortly after the medical team departs. Jim, a US architect, is funding the entire survey effort and providing us with structural, physical, and topographical information critical to our long range planning and the continued development of the grounds, hospital, buildings, and air strip.

Paul

We're Excited About God's Work In Guatemala

• Paul (our Guatemala Program Director) deployed last month. Paul is working closely with Hospital Shalom to lay the groundwork for our new flight program supporting their medical efforts, is becoming acclimated to the county and culture, and is visiting villages to survey for possible air strip locations. Paul will be the pilot/mechanic of our Guatemala airplane once it's deployed.

• After his two weeks in Rus Rus, Sean plans to spend two weeks with Paul for meetings with hospital staff, to assist Paul in developing a base for aviation operations, and to conduct our first village outreach into the Peten region of Guatemala.

We're Excited About Westley & Denise

• Of course of this doesn't happen without Westley and Denise (our missionaries in Rus Rus) and the Cessna 206. Denise provides all the food, care, and hospitality for everyone visiting our base while Westley takes care of everything else including all the flying back and forth, north and south, east and west, required to handle three teams in two weeks and the logistics of operating a challenging ministry in a difficult and remote setting. And without the airplane, our trusty Cessna 206 "one-niner-zulu", none of this would be happening.

Preparing to depart for Rus Rus in 19Z.

Thank you for your gifts and prayers that make this ministry possible!

In The MAG Office And In MAG The Hangar

Reality

Okay, things are starting to fall into place. We don't work in a big green hangar on top of a hill anymore, we're blessed to work in a little brown building on the corner of Maple Avenue and Monroe Holt. We don't live in Ohio any more, we actually are living in North Carolina. Instead of having a pizza place on every corner like we did in Coshocton, we have a Biscuitville on every corner here in Burlington/Graham. Everyone should eat a Biscuitville at least once. I did. Biscuits truly are a way of life down here.

We're adjusting our lives from a rural mode (bicycling/walking around town, watching out for Amish buggies) to an urban mode (driving EVERYWHERE in heavy city traffic). We finally have a dog door in the back door but now Tucker and Tanner are waiting for their fence to appear so they can have unsupervised access to the back yard. They have, however, successfully tested the functionality of the doggie door as we consistently found them in the front yard during its installation! Those two dogs can be rather tricksie.

The house is nearly together, Karen's putting stuff up on the walls, and we're both integrating more into the daily operations of Missionary Air Group.

MAG Daily Operations
Now, these next photos will scare the CFO of MMS Aviation, Mary Sattertwaite (my partner for 16 years in the administrative office at MMS) no end, as they are of me reciepting donations and preparing the bank deposit! Mary, please take a chill pill--I really CAN do something related to numbers and money! And in just one deposit, I made sure MAG received a million dollars...oops...now where did I put that decimal point?

Carol (one of MAG's faithful volunteers) trains me in receipting MAG's donations and organizing the bank deposit.

Turned loose to receipt and organize deposits all by my self!

Video, Video, Video
We recently received three pallets of assorted medical clothing to be distributed to medical clinics in remote areas of Honduras and Guatemala. We needed help with the huge job of sorting, inspecting, and inventorying the clothing and New Covenant Fellowship Church's youth group responded to the task. See if you can find Karen in this video! As Medical Services Coordinator she was rather involved in the process.

Thanks so much for your continued prayers and gifts as we continue this transition!

The Mayor And Me

Prayers For Our Friends
Leaving Coshocton, Ohio and moving to Graham, North Carolina has not unfolded without its emotional, physical, and spiritual challenges. But many of our dear friends, family members, prayer partners, and financial supporters are facing life situations and decisions far more challenging than anything we've experienced over the past month. Please know our prayers are with each one of you. We hope our renewed communication will be a source of encouragement in the midst of life in this less than perfect world.

Keith Meets The Mayor Of Graham
In one of Karen's and my trips "up town" we stopped in at the Graham Municipal Building to ask directions. One gentleman in particular was very helpful. He was casually dressed (T-shirt, blue jeans, tennis shoes, baseball cap) but went out of his way to provide the assistance we needed. He took me inside "behind the scenes" to provide the answers we sought, and even tracked down contact information for a person who could assist us with a specific need we shared. I was having a great time with this guy, totally having fun inside the municipal building, and carrying on like we owned the place. He was totally personable, very helpful, and was honestly interested in us as new residents of Graham. As I talked with one of the municipal staff members they mentioned that the guy I was hanging around and joking with was the Mayor!

No way! Yes, way! I immediately asked to have my picture taken with him. What could be cooler than that? He was somewhat reluctant and apologetic as he'd been outside working on a project and wasn't in his usual mayoral garb. But, for the fun of it, he relented. Here I am with The Mayor of Graham, Jerry Peterman.

The Mayor and Me

Over The Past Month

The Hultins came to visit.

(Bradon & Lydia also came to visit but we didn't take a picture!)

We received our NC drivers licenses and new plates for the cars.

Tucker and Tanner had their first NC baths...

...with gentle towel dry finish.

And we found a very dog-friendly bank!

Tanner makes a biscuit withdrawal from Community One Bank.

Ministry Update
Believe it or not, I'm in my second week of full-time service in the MAG office, Karen nearly has the house pulled-together, and there's a lot going on in Honduras and in Guatemala as we move into October! We look forward to adding in MAG news and field reports as the days go by.

Thanks for your continued interest and involvement in our lives and in our ministry. We couldn't be here doing what we're doing without you being there doing what you're doing. We can't do this by ourselves, nor do we wish to. We cherish each of you as precious participants on this journey as God transforms us through this new ministry and this new location.