I've really been enjoying being busy helping with the MAF flight operations in Liberia.  Shortly after I landed at a remote location one day, our other aircraft, piloted by Ulrich Müeller, also landed (below) at the same airstrip. I was about to load up two medical patients into my aircraft. But since Uli had just arrived, he gratefully offered to help with the loading, so that I could take some photos. Don't worry... we had previously already acquired permissions from all involved to be photographed. Personally I do not like to 'stage' photos, and I don't like to ask people to slow dow ..read more

A few weeks ago I was asked to pop over to Liberia (on the west coast of Africa) to help with their flying for six weeks. Our Liberia program has been short on pilots and very busy with flying, so of course I was happy to help! Above is a shot of a bunch of Covid vaccines and other medicines and medical supplies that I delivered to a remote hospital in a town at the very southeastern tip of Liberia. Below I'm unloading cargo before picking up two serious medical patients (you can see the stretcher behind me.) This is one of the airstrips that we frequently fly to... as you can see it is ..read more

Here's some random shots from the flight line. First, one of our Cessna 208B Grand Caravans taking off from our home airstrip in Kajjansi, Uganda. This aircraft is now serving in Liberia. I've always loved watching the sky and the weather. Last week I was out of the city and had a chance to see the milky way in all it's glory. Maybe sometime I'll share some of those pics too. But in the meantime, here are a few shots related to the sky/weather, from the flight line, as I was pre-flighting airplanes in Kajjansi. These first two are photos of the rising son, through fog. I obviously took (and ..read more

A few weeks ago we (fellow MAF pilot Andrew and I) landed at Amudat airstrip for the first time in a very long time (below). Over the past year and a half quite a few of the upcountry airstrips in Uganda (especially in Karamoja) deteriorated so badly that we had to stop using them. There were several contributing factors, mostly related to the Covid lockdown and lack of flying for so long, but also due to various organizations and users  being short of staff and funding. The next two photos show the Amudat runway from the air (from both directions) during the time that it was closed. It ..read more

Well, it's been forever since I've posted and I won't even begin to make excuses. But before I try to start posting stuff from East Africa, I figured I'd finish that series I had started over a year ago about Way Back When we used to live just north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska. In the small village where we lived, subsistence living was the way of life. There was a small store in the village, but it had very limited items--canned or pre-packaged stuff that had no shelf life, or at least a very long shelf life. There was rarely fresh produce available, or anything like fresh milk or stu ..read more

Today I'm returning to the "Way Back When..." series, highlighting some of the surreal beauty we enjoyed in the boreal forests of the far north. Obviously most of these photos feature frigid beauty. That's because it was cold and snowy/icy much of the year. Also, there were no roads going anywhere outside of the village itself. So during the very short summer, we were basically trapped in the village, since we didn't have a good boat with a reliable motor. So the long winters was when I was actually able to get out and about. During the cold months I could go just about anywhere on my sn ..read more

Two years ago, on October 17th, this happened... Long story short, I got knocked off my motorcycle by a drunk driver, and then a different vehicle, a large Toyota Landcruiser (SUV) promptly drove over me, right across my torso. I should have died right then and there, and many other times in the minutes and hours that followed. But for some reason, God chose to keep me around here on this earth a bit longer. Those were tough days on my family. Joy and the kids carried a HUGE burden in making many decisions related to my care, that could literally mean the difference between life and death ..read more

Here's a shot of the little village where we lived for several years. It was nestled on the banks of the Koyukuk River, just above the Arctic Circle, not too far South of Gates of the Arctic National Park. There were no roads to the village. You could only get there by airplane from Fairbanks. Or, if you had many days, I guess, you could have theoretically taken a boat upriver from the Yukon, hundreds of miles to the south. And this was our home, a little 490 square foot, one-room log cabin on the edge of the village. It was pretty rustic at first... not much furniture, not well insulate ..read more

I'm taking a quick break from the series I was doing about our past, to update you on what's going on here right now.  I mentioned a while back that I would update you regarding our summer plans when we knew more. Well, the uncertainty has persisted throughout the summer, so I kept delaying any sort of official announcement that we had given up on our plans to go the U.S. Yet here we are in August, and the international airport here is still closed, and there is no sign that it will open any time soon. So I think it's now safe to say that we are stuck in Uganda for the duration of summer ..read more

As promised, I'm continuing from my previous post about way back when...  After I graduated from University and flight school, we briefly moved to Oregon as we prepared for future, cross-cultural work/ministry. That fall I had the opportunity to go on a short vision trip to a very remote part of north central Alaska, to an area where we felt that God was leading us. Joy had spent several summers up there, volunteering at a small Christian camp. But I had never been there. I spent a few weeks with this wonderful family, who kindly hosted me and took me all over that part of Alaska. Sin ..read more