The Plan for Now

We thought it would be a good idea to let people know what the plan is for us as far as overseas missions and a timeline. It seems like we have been talking about going overseas and preparing for years and years (and we have!) and yet we are still here! Is there an end in sight? The answer is yes.

We plan on applying with MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) but in order to apply with them, Matt has to have enough flight hours built up first. Missionary aviation can be very dangerous as they are usually flying into and out of the middle of nowhere (jungle terrain, runways that go uphill etc.). Mission organizations take the experience of their pilots very seriously.

Right now we are with Proclaim Aviation. Proclaim helps missionary pilot's prepare and build enough hours to be able to apply to go overseas. He is working (on loan from Proclaim) at Moody Aviation as a flight instructor, building his flight hours and preparing other young pilots for overseas service. He almost has enough hours! The contract with Moody goes through next Spring.

Matt is scheduled to take his big Technical Evaluation (TE) test with MAF next April. This is a HUGE deal. It occurs in Nampa, Idaho at the MAF headquarters and is a two week, vigorous test of both his flying skills and his knowledge of maintenance. The whole family will go for these two weeks. Part of the two weeks is a wholistic evaluation of us as a family, so Ellie and Blake are not off the hook for this TE!

Upon passing the TE, we will officially be MAF missionaries and will start orientation with them next July. During orientation we will be assigned our country of service and will begin preparations for our language studies. How exciting!!! Of course before leaving we will need to have 100% of our support raised as well. As far as where we will go, we are open to where God leads us, but our top two areas of interest are Africa and Indonesia/South Pacific. Anything can change however so we will see!

Though this preparation phase has taken a very very long time (8 years since Matt first began at Moody Aviation!), it's exciting to see how close we actually are to being able to serve our God overseas. On this journey we have learned a lot about faith, trust, and perserverance. It has also been a challenge for us to remember that we cannot just live in the future. While our ultimate goal is and always has been to go overseas to serve God, we need to be giving God our best every single day, even here in Spokane. So thanks to all of you who are going on this journey with us. Hopefully we can be as encouraging to you as you all are to us. We love your emails, blog posts, and prayers, and we'll do our best to return the love!