"We Miss You Daddy!"

Andy left yesterday at 6.30am in very snowy conditions, heading for a three week trip to Papua New Guinea. Andy was with Mark Beckwith who is another MAF UK apprentice and Jim Newman who is leading the trip. They will be staying in Ukarumpa at a JAARS base (Jungle Aviation And Radio Services). There they will help a former MMS graduate restore a plane as quick as possible.

After a flight delay at Columbus airport, it was a mad dash to reach their connection in Chicago to Tokyo, Japan. I believe they were the final passengers on a very tightly packed airplane. From Japan they had another six and a half hour flight to Papua New Guinea. I had a quick email from him tonight to say they, and all their luggage arrived no problem and they were at the guest house awaiting a bed for sleeping! I believe they are approximately 15 hours ahead of us here in the Ohio, so they arrived early Sunday morning. On Monday they will get a flight to their final destination - Ukarumpa.

The rest of the Swanson's have been pretty much homeward bound due to snow and ice. Abi's school was cancelled on Friday due to snow. It did improve towards the afternoon and we were ale to get out to an MMS farewell dinner at a church in town. There were weather warnings about freezing rain later that evening but when we arrived at the church around 6pm everything looked okay. A little snowy but the main roads were clear. Two hours later, as we left the church we could hear the freezing rain hitting our car and I crawled home for twenty minutes at 25 mph in darkness (no street lights) ice and snow covered roads. I was thankful when myself and the kids got back home safely! It truly is amazing how fast the weather can change here. Overnight there was another four inches of snow so needless to say, we had another day in the house. Please pray I get out to church tomorrow as the children (and I) are very much needing a change of scenery :0) I had a few little surprises up my sleeve to entertain the children while Andy was away in the odd chance of a snow day - I was not planning on using all my surprises within the first two days! : 0)

We did lots of crafts today which was fun, and I managed to make a big pot of soup, dinner for tonight and tomorrow. While getting the children ready for bed I had a surprise call from my landlords who had acquired a second hand cooker for us and they would like to come by and deliver it in ten minutes. A few hours later ( and some paracetamol! ) the children were in bed, the new cooker was in, the snow was dried from the kitchen floor, the new cooker wiped down and the dinner dishes washed. A bit of a hectic evening but feeling very blessed. Most of our fellow Brits will be used to a ceramic hob, as we were in Scotland. I have hardly seen any over here. Most of the cookers I have seen in Ohio have the old fashioned rings, as did ours earlier! We are very fortunate to have such good landlords and I am looking forward to trying out this new stove tomorrow!

As many of you will know, I am trying to set up a parent and toddler group in Coshocton. Unfortunately it is not going to be allowed to operate out of the Family Services department as it is not linked to a government project. I have since been to my church and we have a large room attached to a kitchen and have also managed to locate some storage space to store the toys etc. It does mean that I have to build up the toys from scratch so I have been busy trying to get donations for this. I have filed the appropriate paper work for the church and just need the leadership to approve and we are good to go!

Please keep praying for Andy and the team that they will have good health and safety as they work out there. I am thankful the pregnancy is going well and nausea has gone. Continue to pray for us and Mark and Jim's families who are all coping with the demands of children and winter weather and the rest.

Thank you for your support.

Heatherx

2012!!

We're in 2012!! Happy new year to you all!

We drove home from North Carolina last Saturday, in time to see in the new year at home here in Coshocton. We got back here around 7:00pm (midnight back in Scotland), and decided we were happy to call it 2012, and have an early night instead of waiting up a few more hours for the EST midnight to strike!

As always, we had a great time in North Carolina, catching up with our friends and relaxing in a wee break from the normal routine. The kids had a great time catching up with their "American cousins", and the weather stayed nice enough for them to get plenty of time outside. We stayed around the house for most of the week, only venturing out for one day trip. We went to Charlotte and had our first visit to an American Ikea since we got here! You will be pleased to know that the meatballs here taste exactly the same, and the bookcases all have the same strange names!

The Christmas gathering!

Monday saw me back at work for the annual inventory check - you might remember the blog post from this time last year. My first job when I started in the hangar in 2011 was the stock-take, so it really felt like a full circle, and the start of my second year here. Unfortunately my week went downhill after that! I have been nursing a cold for the Christmas week, and it got the better of me yesterday morning - hopefully I'll be back to work tomorrow, but I have needed the last couple of days to get myself back to better health.

Gabon 207

Those of you who followed all the work we did last year on the Gabon 207 will be pleased to know it has now made it "home" to Gabon, where it will soon be back in service with the Bongolo Hospital! It left Coshocton last November, and spent December at Weaver Aero, in Kansas being fitted out with auxilliary fuel tanks. These tanks extend the plane's endurance to 15hrs, giving it the range needed to complete the journey across the Atlantic to Africa. Even in this day and age, when flights between Europe and America are as easy as catching a bus (if a little bit more expensive!), the flight this little plane was taken on was quite an expedition! It was a big enough deal loading our wee family into the car for the 8hr journey down to NC, without thinking about climbing into a little plane (with a huge tank of fuel behind you!) and setting off alone out over the Atlantic in the middle of winter!! John from Weaver is a brave man!

John is greeted in Libreville by Steve Straw. (The big silver box in the plane is the extra fuel tank!)

You can look back over the journey on Steve's blog at http://gabonpilot.blogspot.com/ from when it left to Coshocton to arriving in Gabon, and I am sure he will be updating it over the weeks ahead as the 207 gets back to doing what it is intended for. Thank you for all your prayers as we worked on this aircraft last year, and as it returns to service in Africa.

As I said in my last post, January should be bringing a trip to Papua New Guinea for me and two of my coleagues here. We are waiting for our passports to come back to us from the PNG embassy with our newly issued visa's, then we will be ready to book flights, pack bags and head off to the other side of the world for 3 or 4 weeks. I am really looking forward to it, but as you can imagine it is a big deal to leave a pregnant wife and two kids at home while I jet off, so we would really appreciate your prayers on this.

Thanks again for all your support, messages, & prayers - they are really appreciated!