Coming Home

16 Aug 06

I got back to Lopit safe and sound this afternoon, but not without some bush missionary troubles.

We flew in a little mosquito of a plane and had to leave half of my stuff in Loki so we could make weight. Then we landed on this absolutely gorgeous mountaintop about halfway between here and Loki. We were dropping off supplies for another missionary. I don’t want you to get the idea we’re landing at full-blown airports here. Heck, these aren’t anywhere near that. They’re just cleared strips of grass and dirt—our one here in Lopit can’t even handle a plane big enough to carry our entire team. Anyway…

Our landing was fine, but as we were taxing down the airstrip, all of a sudden the back of the plane just sunk to the ground. Apparently, we’d hit a soft spot—probably ants had hallowed out the ground underneath—and the entire left wheel of the plane was in the ground. Eek. (I’m sort of convinced it was because of all the weight I’ve gained since I got here.) Praise God, though, AIM AIR pilots are amazing and really good at what they do—they need to be just to land on these kind of airstrips—so they calmly accessed the situation and borrowed some of the locals’ machetes to dig the wheel out.

But it was a funny thing, just knowing we were in the middle of no where and would have probably been stuck there for a while before we could get out. But God is good and got me back to Lopit only an hour late for our team meeting.