Flying with My Main Man Stan

Today I am in Tarakan, Indonesia. John Coleman, Jim Bossler, Brian Marshall, and I have all come to provide a conference for a group of missionaries here in Indonesia that call themselves HCC Cafe Indonesia. They are mostly Missionary Aviation Pilots.That means they fly to most remote areas in the world. Missionary pilots are considered to be some of the best pilots in the world. Yesterday we all had a chance to find out why. The four of us were divided up and each went with a pilot on his runs for the day. It was wild. Indonesia has one of the largest rain forests in the world. All day we were swooping in and out of the rain forest landing on grass air strips. It had rained the night before so there was some flooding and the grass air strips were slick like glass. One run Stan (my pilot who was also in my youth group when I was a youth pastor in Charlotte)and I took was to a very short air strip in the middle of the jungle next to a pretty fast flowing river. If we overshot the runway we would end in the river. As we approached Stan said matter of factly,"Wow, I have never seen the river that high. The strip looks pretty dry, I think we'll give it a shot". I think it was the "give it a shot" that made me pay attention. Stan had also told me earlier we would be slowing enough to have the emergency alarm go off but not to pay attention since we needed to be going very slowly in order to not end in the river. We swooped in over the river, blind to the airstrip as we cut power and got lower and lower. Just over the last tree that I swear I could have touched if my window would have been open, we came into the clearing and the strip. Stan set the plane down on the wet grass and slid us to an expert stop. Very cool. When I got into the ministry 25 years ago or so I expected that God would lead me to do some interesting things but I way underestimated the adventure God had planned. I hope as you follow God you are experiencing the adventure he has for you. There is nothing quite like it.