Idaho to Utah

Heh Fellow travelers,
We left the Ward's home, full of a delicious breakfast, and followed Brian over to MAF (Missionary Aviation Fellowship) headquarters, where he works. MAF just moved to Nampa a few years ago, from Redlands, CA. It was just too expensive there for poor missionaries to live. The facilities are on the grounds of the Nampa, ID, airport, and are fabulous. Many built by volunteers like SOWERS (Seniors On Wheels Ever Ready Servants - for you RV buffs looking for something useful to do), who first built a little RV park for them to stay in, then build some buildings like these dorms for new recruits.

One of the awesome exhibits they have at MAF, is this salvaged frame from Nate Saints little yellow Piper Cub. (if you click on the picture to enlarge, you will see a picture of it on the sand bar in the Amazon River, in Equador)

It was recovered from the site of the massacre of 5 missionaries in 1959, including Jim Elliot. If you saw the recent movie "End of The Spear", you are familiar with the incident. Nate Saint was with MAF.

Some of the more recent work that many may know of, was in response to the tsunami in the Indian Ocean. The pictures to the left are from work they were doing in Sumatra, following the tsunami, to establish communications for many disaster groups, and to fly in supplies.

Brian's group is the non-flying side of MAF. He's involved in Distance Learning Technologies. For instance, they were one of the first groups into Russia after the fall of the Iron Curtain, to provide Russian pastors with much needed resources, such as Bibles, and literature. They had had none for years. They did that by digitizing resources, and sending them on CD's and DVD's. Can you imagine the joy? They're continuing similar work today. (note the Russian hat to the left??)


I tried to get them to let me take their new STOL turbo jet, the Kodiac, out for a spin, but as you can see, they were installing some special avionics, and getting it ready for the field.

So, I had to settle for one of their Cessna 208's that they use for training. Now I'd need some training, since despite having private, twin engine, and instrument ratings, I haven't flown in 20 years.....so, I had to only sit in the pilots seat and dream of those days of pushing the throttle to the wall and soaring like a bird.

Speaking of soaring like a bird, we made it to Provo, Utah today, and I'm not sure any birds fly that high, but we enjoyed an unbelievable variety of terrain again today, but our favorite is to the left,

here in Provo, Utah.

Tomorrow, we head to South East Utah, the desert country, where we hope to camp for a few days, do some hiking, and some RESTING.

We're ready!

"The heart of every problem is the problem of the heart, and ONLY God's Spirit and God's Word can change and control the heart" Wiersbe