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!