Chronicling Ricky's Missions Work at MARC
I wrote last time to inform you of the board meeting that was held this weekend. I still have not heard the results of the meeting but will post as soon as I know. I appreciate all of your prayers for the board, our director, God’s leading, and me.
To those of you on the East Coast, congrats on survive quite a week. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods…you got most of the disasters I can think of! I have been praying for you all during and with the clean up. God Bless.
Hello all, so sorry it has taken me so long to update this blog…again. In an effort to be more on top of this (still new to me) technology, my brother Greg has helped me set up an application on my phone. This way, whenever I have an update I can quick post it and not have to wait till I find a computer, remember the password, etc. So here goes!
I am happy to report that today I finished writing a report on the feasibility of starting a flight school at MARC. You remember last fall when I was home I shared the vision of training native youth to become pilots and mechanics in their villages, and eventually to work ourselves out of jobs at MARC. The board approved a feasibility study, which myself and a fellow MARC staff member have been working on since last January.
If you would all join me in praying for the board who will be voting on this proposal in two weeks. They may decided to go ahead at this point, to wait until more staff are available, or to scrap the plan all together. Pray that God will lead them to His decision and His timing.
Thank You.
To change the song, The Weather its a changing. All of us in the Norther Hemisphere now have more daylight then night time. Here our days are changing rapidly! In NJ the sun is up for 12 h 30 min, with 13 h and 24 min of daylight. Here we have 13 h 03 min of sun and a staggering 14 h 30 min of sunlight. Hard to imagine that a little over a week ago both locations had 12 hours of sun, we are adding daylight at a rate of 6-7 min per day.
The snow is melting, the car is “warm” in the afternoons (if I leave the windows rolled up), and we will have to change to summer tires in 2 weeks. It did snow for an hour or 2 yesterday, but the residue was quickly melted. It is the dawn of a new summer!
The school is progressing. Currently we are working on a bunch of paperwork required by the FAA for the flight school. We have created Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) that we now must polish and get team input on. We are also working on making the Forms required for enrollment, data collection, and tracking the students progress. It is all time consuming, but we are making head way. We hope to have the information complete before the FAA asks us for it officially, but we don’t know when that will be yet. Thanks for all of your prayers and support! I’ll keep you up to date on the progress as we finish each step.
One of the guys at work found these articles about MARC on the web.
The first is from the local newspaper and is about MARC’s founder.
The second is from the Nome Nugget and is about a crash MARC had in the early 90′s. It is incredible to see how God used so many circumstances to provide for the passangers to surive.
Hello all,
I have good news. Many of you were praying for the Board Meeting this month where I was to present the information on the school. Unfortunately that meeting did not happen; however, I have been given the go ahead to keep moving with the paper work.
So…I have sent the “Letter of Intent” to the FAA telling them we are interested in starting a school! This is for a Part 141 Pilot school. Both directors decided when I came back, that they were interested in doing the flight as well as the maintenance. This is a change from w hen I was down sharing with you all. The good news – the flight school will be much quicker to get set up then the maintenance school. So we will be hopefully starting this summer, with students by this fall 
!!
This is still far from a done thing, just a first step, but it is THE FIRST STEP! Please keep praying with me that the FAA can respond quickly, that we will have all the pieces in for a quick and easy application process, and that the end product honors the Lord and serves his people!
I am back in Alaska after a very busy and productive trip “Outside”. I enjoyed visiting and sharing with all of you while I was down. If I missed you I am sorry, hopefully you received a copy of the newest info on my work assignment. If not, please contact me and I will send you one!
The weather here is cool and snowy. We are down in the single digits most days with several inches of snow on the ground. I expect sometime in the next month for the weather to drop down into the Negatives, but until then I am enjoying the “Nice” winter weather.
I am also happy to report that I had a meeting with the Directors of AEC and MARC this week. I got a better understanding of what they want from me, so after Christmas I can hit the ground running with the school paperwork. Step one is to create a business/ministry plan to present to the boards end of January. Please pray with me that I am able to acquire and assimilate all of that data into a good report for them.
Hello all! Its good to be back, even if just for a month. I hope to see you all again at the various church’s and other events where I have the privilege of sharing. On the newsletter page I have a calender of where I will be speaking. If you can’t make it to one of these, or if you would want me to come share personally I would love to! Contact me and we will put it on the schedule.
A quick glance for where I will be on Sundays:
Oct. 10 AM – Calvary Baptist
PM – Immanuel Baptist
Oct. 17 AM – 1st UM of Avalon
PM – 1st UM of CMCH
Oct. 24 AM – 1st Baptist of CMCH
Oct. 31 AM – Immanuel Baptist
Does your church, youth group or Bible Study have an opening? I’d love to come share the new direction the Lord is taking my ministry at MARC with you!!
Well the summer is almost over. We have not had much of a summer here with all the rain and very very few days of sun. With summer comes lots of work for customers who have “emergencies” on the few sunny days. An oil change they forgot was due, a flat tire, or some other quick project. This summer Travis took his furlough and that has left me running the shop. During his absence I have had the privelage of working with two of this years Moody Aviation graduates. Tim came during the first half of July and Kyle arrived August 1. Both of them will be here for 8 weeks learning what actually happens in missions maintenance shops around the world.
I have very much enjoyed getting back into the role of the teacher as I have shown them many tricks I have learned as well as allow them to see in practice what was only hypothetical classroom projects. In the picture below they are removing an engine from a Cessna 182 that had a prop strike on a beach landing. Over 2 days they removed and dissassembled the engine. Next week we will start the inspection and repair procedure.
In this update I hope to show you what I have been working on for the last couple of weeks. The following three pictures are from different airplanes. Click on them for a MUCH LARGER view.
The first is a six cylinder engine that failed in flight. The pilot was able to fly it back to the airport and asked me to investigate why he had an “unrequested decrease in power”. Turns out three of the six cylinders had the heads coming off. He is lucky to be alive as there was fuel spraying all over the engine and exhaust. The plane should have been on fire!
Second is an exhaust stack. The owner came in with an “exhaust leak”. I found where it was leaking, and even though he was hoping we could weld the “crack” I was forced to get an entire new piece.
The third problem is and exhaust valve failure. This plane was flying overhead when his engine stopped making power. He glided to the airport and I found the following. On the left you can see the valve is missing several pieces. One piece destroyed this cylinder and piston, which we replaced. Luckily for him I decided to pull all the intake pipes and look for the missing piece. I found it waiting to get sucked into a different cylinder, which would have caused the same problems all over again.
We also have our own aircraft down for maintenance. I am happy to report that the engine issues with one of the Navajo’s now appears to have been fixed, and the King Air is only a part away from having the landing gear reinstalled. More on that next time!
I am taking this blog entry as an opportunity to inform you all of what I have been doing in my free time. Many of you have heard that I have been training for and participating in triathlons. The first one I did was Tri-the-Kenai. It is a fun, local, low pressure event. Since then I have been training for the HammerMan. It is in 2 weeks, on July 17, and will be much more intense. All three events are longer and in more difficult terrain then Tri-the-Kenai was.
To practice a few of us have been going every night there is not practice to bike and run on the local trails. On Saturday morning we were in for a surprise. We spooked a moose who was on the trail, and after we turned around she apparently finally decided to leave the trail and head through the woods. We circled around and tried to take a different trail. The moose came out of the woods with her ears back and running full bore for us! Needless to say, I found the “Second gear” that I had not been able to find earlier. Luckily for us one of the ladies finally scared her and she wandered back into the woods. We on the other hand went strait back to the parking lot.
I have also started to play rugby again. I played in college, and tried to join the team last year but was never able to actually make it to a practice. I hope the tri training will have me back in shape enough to be effective. I have learned that while triathlon is good exercise and the group is fun, it is a solo sport. I can be exhausted after tri practice but still have enough energy to show up to rugby practice and run for 2 more hours. There is something that is just extra fun about team sports.
If you want to read about any of these events here are a few links:
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