Thankfulness

        This past week our family celebrated our first American Thanksgiving on American soil!  So staying true to what most women do I spent the first few days this week cleaning my house from top to bottom before my parents arrived for the big event. My parents were able to come on Wednesday night and stay with us until mid-morning on Saturday.  Then my brother arrived like all true college students around 1:30 AM on Thursday morning for a couple days.  Since my brothers bed is on our couch he made a great landing site for three very excited children when they woke up on Thursday morning.  Which I might add that meant that Greg and I got to sleep in because the children where busy with their uncle and grandparents and never noticed that their parents were missing. Then much to the children's great joy my sister and her husband came up for dinner and topped off the meal by bringing two tasty chocolate pies.  As we were about to thank our God for the wonderful food my mother pointed out that this was the first time in thirteen years that all of her children were under one roof for a Thanksgiving meal. As most family dinners go we spent the day eating wonderful food, watching a football game, and laughing at the children as they tried to figure out games that their uncle had brought for them to play.  And of course walking into the kitchen and facing down the mountain of dishes that always appear at the end of a meal!  Then on Friday we braved the crowds and entered a mall and then got even braver and entered my brothers college apartment (shared with two other guys) and decorated it for Christmas. And then we headed over to were my brothers new job (Arby's) and watched him make us all supper for a change! Over all it was a great time for our family as we spent time sharing time with each other and being thankful for everything and everyone that God has brought into our lives.  Since I have never lived close to my family I will cherish these memories and always be thankful to God for allowing this precious time with family before we head overseas. With our minds focusing on thankfulness our family wants to extend a heart felt thank you to all of those that up hold us in prayer and invest in this ministry, as we continue to study and serve here in Michigan. Our family could not do what God has asked us to do without all the wonderful support that you have shown us and our family.  We are so thankful for each and everyone of you that God has brought into our lives and are so blessed by how you have enriched our own lives!  Thank you and God bless!!

Quick before Dad sees us with his computer

Our First Michigan Christmas Tree

Grandma Time

The life of "some" college students

Arby's right hand man

Working hard or hardly working?

Lookout Michigan, now have wings and ready to use them

Preflight complete, ready for departure.

Stop at Plainwell for lunch.

Support Changes

This past week God has open the door for our support team to grow even more than before.  You may have noticed that our support levels appear to have lowered however they have rather changed due to the following letter we received from our head office this weekend.

As we march forward with the commission to which we have been called, we are taking measures to ensure the health and sustainability of our missionary support system. Our Ministry Partnership support target is currently $6,000 per month for our families and $4,000 per month for singles. During the last five years that these targets have been in place, the costs of most goods and services have risen. We have also consulted with MAF-US which recently raised their targets to $7,200 per month for families and $6000 per month for singles. To address the increased cost of doing mission, we at MAFC have decided that it is prudent to adjust our missionary partnership targets by ten percent to $6,600 a month for families and $4,400 a month for singles, effective January 1, 2012.

In general our family is doing well.  The kids are done with school now for Thanksgiving holiday.  Julie is working hard at getting our house ready for thanksgiving as we have the honor of hosting Thanksgiving supper with Julie's family.  I have had the chance to do a little fling recently, it's felt good to be back in the air again.

Thank you for being apart of our team, blessings
Greg, Julie, Franklin, Isaac & Jaclynn
  

Crunch Time

Well it's hard to believe that we have been here almost 3 months now.  And in a couple weeks from now we will have the General portion of the course complete and will be able to get the first of our three written exams done and out of the way.  I'm looking forward to finishing up the General as we move into the Air-frame course I believe we will find ourselves in the shop more doing hands on projects and less in the classroom working through theory related things.  Some of the different things we have been doing over the past couple weeks.  We have been weighting a lot of different types of airplanes and calculating their empty weights and where the centre of gravity is on each one.  Also just finished up a drawing class which is not a strong subject for me other than it was more of a old fashion drafting course so I didn't have to do any free hand drawing thankfully.  I ended up doing okay in the class as drawing straight lines with a ruler isn't so bad after all.  Thank you for all your prayers and support this couldn't be possible without you standing with us.

Getting the helicopter ready to weight.

Someone forgot to tell Phil that Empty Weights don't include the removable ballast.

Our drawing assignment.

A beautiful sun rise a couple mornings ago.

Blessings