Poems, Prayers and Promises

The King Air. I didn't take this picture, I just stole it off the avtech websight. I actually totally neglected to get a picture of anything relevant to our flight. Although I did get some pictures out there..... 

Actually, that house was in Papillion (population 17,432 according to their sign). And here is the Papillion water tower! I can just hear your excitment growing, so I'll give you one other exciting fact.....according to Brian, the butterfly on the water tower is because good old papville is home of the Papillion Monarchs! Or however you spell that butterfly's name. Actually, now that I think about it, it's kind of ironic that I took a picture of a water tower with a butterfly on it on this trip, 'cause our passenger was some kind of Entomology dude.  

Brian's house. Yeah I know you don't care but I didn't get any other pictures in Omaha and this house is near Omaha so it's all cool. That's genuine Nebraska snow in the front yard. 

Wow, it's been awhile y'all, sorry 'bout that. Life just kind of gets going and........well y'all know.

I had my first King Air flight today! That was just way to much fun. Brian, one of the TFO captains down at hangar 5, and I flew one passenger out to Epply field in Omaha, Nebraska. The flight out was so cool.... We took off out of Lafayette just as the sun began to rise and the literally wasn't a cloud in the sky. Once we leveled off at flight level 280 (28,000 feet) you could see for miles.

As we got towards Omaha the clouds started filling in and pretty soon we were flying over a solid deck of clouds. Before plunging into the clouds for our decent into OMA, we brought it right down on the top of the cloud deck and leveled off for awhile. You don't really get a good feel for the fact that you’re going upwards of about 300 miles an hour till you're near something like clouds that let you see just how fast you are moving. It was really awesome! You get the same feeling that flying about 2 feet off the ground would give you except when you hit the clouds they don't hit back.

We got into Omaha at around 9:30 our time and our passenger went off to do his thing. He wasn't due back till around 4, so we had a lot of time to burn. We sat in the pilots lounge for awhile, he updated some chart books and I did some reading, planned the trip home, and got on IM.

Sitting around got old real quick, so Brian and I jumped in the airports courtesy car and ran off to find some lunch. Since Purdue was buying, we decided we should find someplace slightly spendy, but somehow ended up at this little hole in the wall dinner named simply "DINNER" in big fluorescent letter over the stainless steel structure. After cutting our way through the cigarette smoke looking for the non-smoking section in vain, we made it to a little table in the corner, where we sat down and kind of exchanged glances like "what did we get ourselves into". But actually, I think that was the best Philly cheese steak sandwich I've ever had and those onion rings would make a blooming onion shake in it's boots. And besides the great food, it became pretty clear that Brian was a Christian when we both ended up talking about God's will for our lives and how great it is to just be able to trust in that. So not only was he a great guy to fly with but he was one seriously cool dude.

After finishing lunch and still looking at 4 hours of sitting around, we decided to go check out Brian's old house down on the south side of town. I guess he had lived out there for a couple years not to long ago. So we "took a wrong turn" and ended up down at his house. I got some pictures of the house and the neighbor hood so he could show his kids when we got back. Actually that's the only pictures I got on the whole trip, so I might put one or two up here lol. I forgot my digital camera in the airplane, so I had to use my cell phone's camera. It actually wasn't too bad, I was surprised.

Summery of the trip back: 80 knot tail wind. So in other words awesome. Although my landing wasn't the greatest. I wanted to flare to make it smooth but in that airplane that just succeeds in making you float for two decades. But over all, good. His wife and kids met him out at the airport so they could see the pics on my cell phone and then all go out to dinner together. His kids were awesome too, well behaved and polite and all.

So that's enough about my king air trip. I'll try to get some pictures on here...... and I promise, no wait, how 'bout I'll try to post more often.

Well, this is just kind of a quick update based on the premise that it would be better to say little than to say nothing at all. Life is evening out a little now, I'm still pretty busy but I'm learning more and more to just lean on the Lord. And besides that it's still easier than last semester.
There has been an encouraging part to this last week; I started out the week wondering if I was going to be able to get any students in my new flight instruction job (just because you get the job doesn't mean you get students and if you aren't flying with students you aren't getting paid), but now I have more students that I know what to do with interested in starting. That's a real answer to prayer for me. There's been a serious lack of green stuff in my wallet of late so it's really cool to see how God is using this new job to provide.
Oh and hey, speaking of great Moms, I just made a pot roast off a recipe that mom gave me, and it was awesome. There's just something about getting to smell that thing simmer all afternoon mmmm. I was a happy man.
Well, this has been a pretty worthless post. There's more to say, but I guess I'll have to leave the saying for later.

Sorry for my serious lack of posts y'all. That's one of the reasons I don't like blogger is because I feel back when I can't get time to keep everyone updated. But don't worry, it's not just you I've been ignoring, I haven't had much contact outside of work and school after the CYA thing this weekend, which was a ton of fun by the way. I came back Sunday instead of Monday because I had students Monday and it's been crazy ever since......oh wait it's only Tuesday. Hopefully it will all even out once I get through this week, but until then please pray that God would give me a peace about it all and the strength to accomplish it all, as he promised he would when we stay within his will. Isaiah 40:27-31 is a great verse I ran across dealing with that. I thought this was supposed to be my easy semester..... Alright off to go pursue two very treasured things right now......food and sleep.

Well, when I looked out my back window this morning, there was a noteable lack of cars on river road and the river was just about as big as I've ever seen it. No this isn't our house, but it's just down the hill from our house. That's the back of the cabin now surrounded by the river it once overlooked. Before class this afternoon I figured I would go and check it out......here are some of the pics...... 

I was greated at the south end of river road by these signs and the water passing over the bridge.....I figured I better find another way.... 

This is the first part of river road I looked at....pretty much right down the hill from my house. That cabin is just down the road a peice. 

The stop sign still grimly performing his duty. 

looking south at the water treatment plant thing now underwater. 

After winding my way through the old vets home I was arrived at the north side of the flooded portion of river road. 

The pedestrian bridge in the background and the skating rink on the right above the hood of my truck. That's a walking path that leads right into the water in the foreground. 

The north side of the section of road that was covered in water. 

Just had to post this and say: yeah right. Please refer to the billboard half underwater in pictures above. This was on the bag from the book store that I got when I bought my single textbook, which I have since returned. 

Alright, well multiple people have told me that I need to update my blog and this time pictures won’t count. So here goes….

Well, I’m back up at school now (man it has been awhile since I’ve posted), first week of classes is going pretty well so far. Actually, this is going to be my easiest semester yet school wise. I only have like 15 credit hours of classes and every other semester I’ve had no less than 18 or much more. So not bad at all.

The main reason for the light class load is so that I would have time to work a good bit at my new job down at Lafayette Aviation and start catching up to some of these school bills. Man, they add up quick! But it’s all in God’s hands and that’s the great part. It’s encouraging to me to see how he provides when I’m within his will, or guides me another way by not providing. Just tonight when I was down at the corec (campus sports complex thing up here at Purdue, free to students) he brought one of the guys that I knew from the Aviation Maint school up here across my path. We were talking and he mentioned that he wanted to start flying out at Lafayette Aviation and I was like hey, I work there now. This guy is kind of cool anyway, he’s a Christian and was home schooled in a large family, so yeah definitely an awesome dude.

Oh man, speaking of dysfunctional families, well ok I guess we weren’t talking about that but we are now. I’ve been reading through Genesis with that reading through the bible in a year chronologically thing and I just finished reading the part about Jacob. Ok, so he deceives his own father and brother in a plot devised by his mother and then runs off to his mother’s brothers place to hide out. While he there he decides to marry his cousin, wait a second, anyway so Laban tells him he can marry his daughter Rachel if he works for him for awhile. So he does and then the big wedding day comes and after a whole day of crazy feasting Laban gives Jacob Leah instead of Rachel and I guess he couldn’t tell the difference ‘cause he and she seemed to get along pretty well all night until the next morning when Jacob was like “whoa, your not Rachel” and he goes to Laban and demands to know what’s up. Laban was just like “hey, around here you can’t marry the younger one till the older one is married off”. Yeah, well it sounds like he was making that up to me, but none the less Jacob works another seven years to get Rachel and now he’s not only married to one cousin, he’s married to two. Now that’s really asking for trouble there, I mean one wife…….but two! Yikes. So then the two wives get into this “I can have more kids with Jacob than you” thing and do all this bartering for bed time with Jacob. Apparently he can marry them both but he can’t sleep with em both at the same time. Well, that doesn’t really work out well for Rachel ‘cause she can’t have children and is falling behind Leah in the kid count. So what’s he solution? “Hey Jacob, sleep with my servant so that I can say I have as many kids as Leah”. Great idea. Or not! But apparently to Jacob it was no biggie. I mean, he already had two wives, what’s a servant or two.

And so the story goes. They have many kids with like four different mothers and it all causes trouble later. So what’s the point? Well, for one thing it’s interesting to note Abram did the same thing with his servant when he couldn’t wait on God’s timing for a kid with his wife, so it’s a good example of the fact that we tend to struggle with what previous generations in our family have struggled with. But probably even more than that it’s a perfect example of what happens when you don’t do things within God’s will and wait on his timing for things, and also when the man isn’t the spiritual leader that he needs to be in his family. Oh, and one other thing. Be sure to keep things with bright stripes out of view of your sheep when they’re breeding. Apparently it does weird things to them, or at least it did back then.

Bla bla bla bla ok so no ones reading now anyway and I need my sleep. ‘night all.

Ice storm on the corner of Kingston and Rose (aka, right in front of our house). I just thought this pic was cool with the bright sign against the dark trees. 

view from the porch 

close up of those branches 

girls house with huge branches laying in yard 

Pine tree in front of our house that dropped branches LOUDLY all night due to the ice. 

stupid focus. who thought auto focus was a good idea anyway? 

why I shouldn't be home alone in an ice storm...get a little scary 

alright so back in Lafayette, this is the same trail I posted a picture of when it was still warm out. This was after the bad ice storm last night 

The next morning, all a little tired but not too tired for pancakes. Stacey and Carrie even made a "2005" in pancake form. I failed to get a picture. 

New years eve, er, morning about 3:30 am. Only those annoying people that won't go away are left. (yeah I was one of them, taking the picture)