Greetings from Florida

Hello all! Gavin here from Tampa, Florida. We flew down here from the JAARS Center in Waxhaw yesterday.

I first of all want to thank my beautiful bride, Carrie, for allowing me to do this. That last post was wonderful to see (as are all of them)!  She and her family are fully behind me as I come on these trips, so that is a great encouragement to me. The volunteers and other workers that help extra with Carrie and the babies are immensely appreciated as well. It is important for me to keep flying as much as possible to keep current and proficient. The flying opportunities in Dallas have not presented themselves as we had hoped and prayed, especially with the flexible schedule I need to have in these early days with the quints.

Yesterday and today we landed the helicopter at two different Christian schools. We were able to share with hundreds of kids from kindergarten to 12th grade about overseas missionary work and especially about Bible translation and the needs for it around the world. We really feel that it is important to get the kids thinking now about how God might use them for His glory with the gifts He has and will give them. (I was six years old when I knew I wanted to be a missionary helicopter pilot.)

           The kids watching the helicopter come in for landing.

                      The kids were excited to see the helicopter and full of questions.

At one school we participated with some of the students in an on-air radio show. Inspiration 1110 AM did the interview with myself and another pilot as well as a few other missionaries. We actually picked up Pete O'Shea, the radio host, at the first school and flew him to the second for the interview.  Him being afraid of heights as well as a comedian, he kissed the ground when he got off the helicopter.  It was an easy, smooth flight, so I don't think it was a comment on my flying abilities.  

            Pete kissing the ground as I am shutting down the helicopter after landing.

You can listen to the interview here (there is a bit of a lengthy musical introduction, but the interview does happen about a minute in).

               We had the on-air interview in the library with the seventh and eighth graders.

Though we may never know what impact our words and actions have when we speak to these youth, The Lord has some wonderful plans for them. It was wonderful this morning to meet the mother of a pilot who is planning to serve with us in Papua New Guinea in a few years. He heard about mission aviation and Bible translation from us when we visited his school several years ago. I may have been one of the guys who spoke to him when I was there in 2008. The Lord is working and it's exciting to be a part of it.

This is Our Life- Jones 3 in PNG

This is a video that we put together of our lives and ministry over in PNG.

Great Time for a Mechanical problem

A couple weeks back, I and my co-worker, Bev, went out to the far West Sepik, near the Indonesian border. We were spending several days doing some more work flying school building materials into two remote villages with the helicopter. Each night we stayed with Murray and Carol Honsberger, translators in Baiberi, a small village near where we were working. It was a neat time of fellowship with them in the evenings.

While we were out there, we used the helicopter to fly two large water tanks into their village. These are needed all over the country to set up fresh rainwater supplies for the people. In most villages, all the water comes from nearby rivers and streams and often it is unclean and the source of much sickness and disease. These plastic water tanks that catch rainwater off of corrugated iron roofing bring water close by and save many from sickness.

The morning after I got the tanks into the village, we were getting ready to go to work moving the school materials, but the helicopter would not start. It was a simple problem, but we needed to have an airplane and mechanic fly all the way out to a nearby airstrip (3 hour hike away) with the part to get us going again.

This mechanical failure allowed us to spend all that day getting the water tanks positioned and plumbed, ready to receive fresh water off the Honsbergers' house. We got a good bit of rain that night and the following morning people from the village were gathering their water from the tanks instead of the muddy river nearby.

When the helicopter did not start, it was a real frustration and totally changed our plans. God knew exactly what He was doing though. Proverbs 16:1 says, "We can make our own plans, but the Lord gives the right answer." What a great reminder to submit ourselves to the Lord in all that we do!