A disturbing quote by Samuel Zwemer (missionary to Africa and Asia) Year 1911: Does it really matter how many die or how much money we spend in opening closed doors if we really believe that missions are WARFARE and that the KING’s glory is at stake?”

We are reading Acts as a class right right now. It is interesting to think about Moses and his life before leading the children out of bondage. Did God “call” him while he was living in Pharoah’s house and Moses tried to do it on his own? Thought he could kill one Egyptian and start a riot? When he fled to the wilderness, got married, got a job and life got in the way, did he sit and ponder ‘what could have been’? Did he continue to cry out to God for direction while he was herding sheep? or did he totally run away from God and God continued to seek him but Moses rejected God until He started some brush on fire and got his attention.  Moses’ life: “I am he!” (when he was a prince). “Here I am.” (when God called him from the bush). “Who am I?? (when God called him to do His work).

As I mentioned in previous posts, around Christmas the school was donated a Cessna 182 from California that had been sitting for 20+ years. Many of the planes we work on are mock-up– they were used as drug runners in the past, confiscated by the government, and then given to the school as long as they are never flown again. This one from California is different because the school plans to get it airworthy and then use it for flight instruction. Our group was assigned to patch a hole in the fuselage left by an out-of-date antenna. We decided it would look better if we removed that whole section of skin (sheet metal) rather than stick an ugly patch over the hole. However, once we removed the section that had the antenna hole in it, we saw there was corrosion in the next…. and then the next piece! So we ended up removing them, fabricating three new pieces from aluminum stock, priming them to resist corrosion and then riveting them in place.

 Original skin with antenna hole.

Removing first section

First section removed.

All three sections removed. Cleaning seam areas.

Applying anti-corrosion treatment to the new sections.

Installing the new sections.

Alligning the new pieces so the old holes line up.

Skin on and clecoed into place. Clecos are the spikey looking things. They are spring-loaded tools that hold the pieces in place until you begin riveting them permanently on the plane.

The aluminum is riveted in place. This requires a riveting gun to be placed on the head of the rivet (outside the airplane) and then someone has to hold a bucking bar (heavy piece of metal) on the other side of the rivet. The gun then smashes the rivet in place. Guess who got to crawl inside the tail of the airplane to hold the bucking bar.  They kept telling me there was a candy bar in there, but I could never find it….