Forgive Us Our Sins

The other day I was thinking of the passage in Luke 11 where Jesus prayed. When he finished praying, one of his disciples asked for Jesus to teach them how to pray. So Jesus responded, “When you pray, say this,” and he recites the Lord’s Prayer.  I thought it might be fun to come up with my own prayer using the main ideas from each line. So I tried it out, paraphrasing the concepts to learn better how to pray. But I stopped when I came to this line:

“Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us” (Luke 11:4, NLT).

A thought suddenly came to me - what if God had not given us the gift of Jesus, who died to forgive us of all of our sins? What if, each day, we were only forgiven as many times as we forgave others? Harsh reality! I am just thankful that the Lord’s forgiveness is not limited to my acts of grace.

Nearly each Saturday, Kevin and I have the same little “spat.” Kevin wakes up bright and early and is ready to tackle his “Honey-Do List.” I wake up and want Kevin to make up for all the hours he missed out with our little girl during the week but was at work. We say the same words, playing the same cards in our pile of trumps, and always conclude the “discussion” the same way, with a frustrating draw. Kevin resenting the fact that at the end of the weekend there will still be things that need to be done, and only he can do them, and me begrudgingly realizing there aren't enough hours in the day to spend together as a family.

But what about forgiveness; what if at the end of the day God only forgave me of my transgressions as long as I had practiced mercy to others? I certainly didn't apologize and neither did Kevin, our stubbornness adding to our pile of stresses (let’s face it, life here isn't easy). There are many adages and sayings about people wishing they had just one more day or if they had just said sorry or if they could have done things differently. Maybe we should practice more clemency and hold less grudges. Maybe we should open our hearts to generosity and let in the Lord’s will for our lives instead of holding onto our own.

“The wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and good deeds. It shows no partiality and is always sincere.” (James 3:17, NLT).

Goat + Missing Passenger + Weather = Another Day at the Office

One of the last blogs I wrote, I went to Djolu. I went there again several Saturdays ago.The traffic was very light on the way to the airport, which gave me a bit of time to study the clouds. There was a high, thin overcast with low, scattered rain clouds. Not a problem, and the satellite image looked good too. Here is a link to our only weather resource here, for those interested in how we get our weather.

Because it is such a long flight, the timing is critical or else we cannot make it back before sunset. So I got to the airport early and prepared the airplane. While I was filing the flight plan, I got a call that weather was great at my fuel stop, but my first passenger hadn't showed up yet; nor could he be reached by telephone. The check-in process for passengers can take an hour, or longer, and it was already 7 so this was a problem. He was just going to be along for the ride and the true purpose of the flight was the passengers in Djolu waiting to come back. So we made the decision to leave without him and arrange something in the future.

I was able to get out of Kinshasa in a very timely fashion, breezed through my first fuel stop, and then on to Djolu. After landing, checking the fuel and a few other things, I turned my attention to my 3 passengers and their growing stack of bags. On the way, I was able to find a great tailwind and landed about 20 minutes ahead of schedule. The problem is the engine burned 20 minutes less fuel. Therefore I landed with more fuel than I had originally anticipated and thus had less available weight. Either way, it should not have matter. I had 250 kilograms (550 lbs) available. Unfortunately, they brought 280 kg (620 lbs). An hour later (now 40 minutes behind schedule) we got the weight down and then came the puzzle of where to put it in the airplane.

Finally we were loaded, started it up, finished the checklists and radio calls and proceeded to add power for takeoff. As I continued the takeoff roll, I noticed the goat who was grazing at the edge of the runway was now in the middle of the runway. I hoped he would move when he heard me coming, but nope. As part of our training in Nampa, we spent a whole day practicing takeoff aborts which are trickier than they sound. So I got to do my first aborted takeoff with passengers...fully loaded....on a hot day. We stopped quickly, turned around and taxied back. Someone started to chase after the goat on foot. Then another guy going to help the first guy. Then a guy on a motorcycle...then 50 other guys running down to chase 1 goat off the runway. So 10 minutes later, after the goat was long gone, everyone else finally cleared the runway and we were able to take off (1 hour and 10 minutes behind schedule).

After a long slow climb to 10,000 feet I was able to find another great tailwind and started making up significant time. I noticed some clouds building just on the horizon. The closer we got, the bigger they grew and the darker they became. I began deviating around them hoping they wouldn't put me too far off course, but alas no matter how I weaved, I had to go several miles out of the way to safely navigate around them. Even the most experienced seamstress would have admired at the weaving I had to do for the next 75 miles. Finally with all the clouds and rain behind me, the race to sunset was back on. I called back to base on the HF radio, and we determined a very quick fuel stop in Semendua would get me back with about 30 minutes of sunlight remaining.

After an incredibly quick re-fueling and bathroom break, we were back in the air. Air traffic Control was able to help out, and I actually ended up landing with about 40 minutes to spare. Add up another 9 hours of flying and 1050 miles to the log book.

Did I mention I love my job?

Pondu

Pondu is a Congolese dish that is big part of the diet. It is a dish made from the leaves of the cassava plant.

1000 Fc worth of greens (about $1.10 USD)

 First you take the stack of greens and you pick all the leaves off of the stem.

Cassava leaves

After separating the leaves, you need to rinse any dirt off of them.

Slowly adding the boiled water

After cleaning them off, you add an entire tea kettle full of boiled water to scald them.Once they have cooled off enough to touch, you squeeze as much water off of them as possible.
They are then added to a giant mortar and pestle to be ground down into tiny pieces.

Papa Didier begins to "piler" (pound) the leaves by lifting
the heavy pestle and bringing it down repeatedly. 

Sweetpea gets in on the action

Just when you think you are done pounding, you add your raw seasonings (onion, garlic, etc.) and pound some more. Depending on how many hands you have, the whole process takes about 2-3 hours.

Finished product

Now you get to sautée the pounded leaves in palm oil and serve over rice. Don't forget to top with fresh toasted peanuts for protein!

Congolese meal

 Yum!!

Dirty Feet

Africa is a dirty place. There is dirt and dust everywhere! The dirt and dust which lives among the streets and by the water banks culminates into mounds that get swept everywhere by the wind. The wind manages to push the dust into every nook and cranny and every crack and crease. It never fails, if you spent a few hours sweeping your home and then moping, you can walk barefooted across the floor and your feet are going to be dark with the dust. The doors and windows don’t have good seals so the dirt just seeps in through all the cracks. All of this worsens right before a storm when the winds fill the air with a cloud of dust. And after the storm, all that remains is mud everywhere. And at the end of each day, before going to bed, you must wash your feet.

But I am learning to not be upset by seeing my own dirty feet or the never-ending task of scrubbing them. They are becoming symbolic to me. I used to read the story about Jesus washing his disciples’ feet and it didn’t mean much at the time. What was the big deal? In America our feet are clean. I would almost be willing to volunteer to wash a stranger’s feet. They usually have socks and shoes on to protect their feet anyway. But in Africa, it is not that way.

Many people don’t own shoes, or if they do, they might just be borrowed. But because feet are the main source of transportation, protecting them are important. They will make their own coverings or find two different colored and sized flip flops and make them work. But as with other customs in many other countries, the Congolese take their shoes off when entering a home as a sign of respect, even if the floor is just as dirty as the outside ground. In fact, our sentinels don’t even wear shoes on our porch!

Bringing all of this around full circle, image washing a stranger’s feet. Not just any feet, but feet that have been wearing open sandals. Open sandals that do not block out the dirt and dust. Feet that have been a person’s livelihood, taking them to and from their destinations. Feet that have become harden by so much walking and dirt. And then image Jesus willingly washing those feet to show us His love. Perhaps the holy ground God was referring to when He asked Moses to remove his sandals, were the feet, and God was getting ready to wash them.

A day in the life of...

Happy early Valentines day y'all. First things first, if you venture to the bottom of the page, you will see we've added yet another "gadget" to the blog. My miles flown have started to add up quickly! It doesn't hurt though when you get trips that cover over 1,000 miles in a day.Monday my first passenger was a young lady originally from Great Britain, her family now lives in Canada, but she is studying in Scotland, and would be spending 5 months working along side of a university from Japan studying the Bonobo Monkeys, teaching forest conservation, and generally helping improve the living conditions there.

This trip was about as far into the jungle we take the Cessna 182.

The three tiny "pins" from left to right/south to north are Kinshasa, Semendua and Djolu.

I got to the airport early, had the fuel tanks  topped off, and took off for our first fuel stop in Semendua, about an hour and a half flight. After being on the ground 20 minutes, we were off again for Djolu. The flight was just at three hours, including crossing the equator (but there was some cloud cover so I couldn't see the line on the ground like all the maps show). Once we landed, I off loaded her luggage, and prepared the aircraft for my next passenger. Except we had 3 passengers show up. Once was a researcher headed home to Japan, and the two other were medical patients. Unfortunately with the three of them and all their luggage, it was too much weight and I had to inform them one of them would need to stay behind. Once I payed the landing fee ($50...for a grass airstrip, literally in the middle of the 2nd largest jungle in the world) loaded the bags and briefed the passengers, we were off again. This time however, we were racing the sun.

 As a new pilot on the program I have to be on the ground 1 hour before sunset. In essence, I had to cram 9 hours of flying, roughly 30 minutes at each stop along the way into 11 hours of sunlight. It was going to be tight. Then if you subtract the hour of sunlight we burned getting to the airport and readying the aircraft, we were really cutting it close.

The ridiculously vast jungle. Nothing but trees as far as you can imagine.

Oddly enough, we frequently have a tailwind going out AND coming back from Kinshasa. Going east, we try to stay below 5000 feet, and we typically have a few knots of wind on our tail. Coming back west, we attempt to stay above 6000 feet, and we usually will get 5 to 10 knots of tailwind.

Fuel stop at the old MAF base in  Semendua

So I decided to climb. I went up to 10,000 feet and got a nice twenty knot tailwind. We were able to touch down in Semendua about thirty minutes early. After a quick splash of fuel, we were off again. By the time I leveled back off at 10,000 feet, it was getting later in the day and most of the winds had died down. But, almost exactly one hour before sunset, the wheels gently chirped on the broken asphalt at Ndolo, and after offloading passengers, bags, and a little paperwork I was able to go home and spend the evening with my girls.

Rich Blessings

Another lovely MAF wife made the statement about having shock over the level of poverty seen around them, but her shock came from the realization that she was wealthy. And with her realization came the reality that she has always been wealthy and never realized it.

Did you know I was richly blessed? I don’t mean I am sitting on a nest egg ready to retire or that I own gold tucked away in Fort Knox. And in this context I’m not referring to the number of our wonderful friends and supporters we have blessing us beyond measure. No, I mean I am wealthy and so are you. Don’t believe me?

• I have never had to go outside with a spoon to eat dirt in an attempt to take away the hunger pains. I know what it feels like to be full, even too full.
• I have access to enough water to bathe/wash on a frequent basis.
• We own more than one set of clothing, and are able to clean them.
• My baby owns at least one toy.
• I have never had to send my child to bed hungry.
• I own shoes.
• Not only do we have plumbing, we have the ability to filter our water and not worry about getting sick from it.
• I had the luxury of being able to afford to attend and complete (primary) school.
• I own a bed.
• I have never watched my child laying sick in a hospital bed while the doctors refuse to treat them until more money comes first.

We have been in Congo for just over three months now; some of the honeymoon period is starting to wear off, and some of the realities and struggles are starting to set in. As we are trying to learn various things to which we can cling to keep us motivated, we have reflected on these things. But sometimes this list is actually discouraging. It’s tough to be inside a house (with a roof) knowing that some people walking down the street outside have to deal with not having some or any of these "blessings".  But take a look at Matthew 5 and what Jesus said:

"…and He began to teach them. 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven...'"

In French, and in some English translations, it even says, “happy are those…” In my minds eye, I think of the faces of Congolese Christians I know. I smile when I read these verses, because I know for them there is hope. Their blessings do not rest in material things, or things to make their lives easier. Their hope, many times their only hope, is embedded in these promises of Christ. At first, I must admit, it stung when I thought of it this way. But the more I think about it, they too are blessed. Richly blessed. Lord, reveal yourself to the Congolese who don't know you, so they can learn how great of a reward and  true blessing is found in your love, grace, and righteousness.

....Ndolo Tower.....Say Again???

As I completed the final items on the before takeoff checklist and prepared to call the flight follower in Vanga, I heard Ndolo Tower come on the radio with a very strong accent. Her voice gave almost no distinction from one word to the next.

"Nine Mike Echo, taxi back runway eight, ATC clearance as follows, clear to Vanga via Ulvas, after departure maintain runway heading, climb two-zero-zero-zero, right turn, pass over Kilo Sierra Alpha three-five-zero-zero minimum, climbing zero-five-zero, intercept zero-four-six degree radial, report passing two-zero-zero-zero right turn, next call ready for departure"

Huh?

I heard my call sign "Nine Mike Echo," and fortunately I had written down the basic pattern they use and made out enough numbers that I could fill in the blanks.

I repeated the clearance, "Nine Mike Echo, back taxi runway eight, cleared to Vanga via Ulvas, runway heading after departure, climb two thousand feet right turn, pass over Kilo Sierra Alpha three thousand five hundred feet, intercept zero-four-six degree radial, climb to and maintain five thousand feet. Will report passing through two thousand feet right turn, next call ready for departure."

Hey, that sounded good! Then, there was a long pause...I could almost hear her thoughts, almost word for word: Huh? (Except in French, "l'huh.")

She came back on, and repeated her clearance, inferring she did not understand me. This time her transmission was broken, but I was still able to pick out the pieces. The rule of primacy was becoming a problem from all of my time spent in the American Air Traffic Control System. All of the flows, speech patterns and phraseology that I would use stateside, I must forget...or at least shove in the back corner of the hangar in my brain.

I wondered, what could I do differently to help her understand, that I understand the instructions. Oh Yeah! I have to repeat it exactly. I can't say two thousand, or three thousand five hundred. I can't say things in the order I'm used to, I have to repeat it back exactly as I heard it.

Quite frequently, the actual flying-the climbing, turning, descending, and landing- this is the easy part of what we do. It's all the other stuff to get us in the air that proves to be the challenge.

Finally, we were on the same page. A quick check of the time, passengers, hand brake and wind, add the power, a touch of right rudder, and we are airborne, on the way to Vanga to deliver 120 kilos of cargo and two of our national Internet Tech staff to install a new VSAT internet satellite system for a ministry in the middle of the African bush. I love my job.