It's too late to back out now . . .

No pictures this time, but I'm sitting in a hospital room watching Rena sleep.  We got up at 4:00 this morning and drove about 36 miles to Zanesville (Ohio) to Good Samaritan Hospital where she underwent surgery this morning.  I'm not too knowledgeable in medical language, but she had a colon resection something-or-other. 

The surgeon was pleased with the result of his work and expects a normal recovery.  Rena will be in the hospital at least into early next week and I'll be spending my days with her.  In addition to the pain, she's kind of dopey and has a bitter taste in her mouth; but, if it was fun, everybody would want to spend New Years in the hospital.

We're grateful for the many, many people encouraging us and assuring us of their prayers.  Most of all, we're grateful for our Heavenly Father's care.  We trust Him fully with all the events of today and the days that follow.

A Second Christmas in Pennsylvania



The appointed Turkey Carver  


Having already celebrated Christmas with our children and grandchildren, we had the opportunity to make a quick trip to eastern Pennsylvania to visit my (Rena's) parents for Christmas. As you can see in the pictures we didn't lack for good food and fellowship.

Mashed potatoes in the making

 

Almost ready

 

Yum



Family Christmas



Looks like something good in here

We had an early Christmas this year. Our first time trying that. This gave our kids less stress trying to be with us and in-laws at the same time. It also gave us the opportunity to go to PA on Christmas to spend time with Rena's parents.





Cuddling with Mom and Dad.





Chanelle with "Sophie"- Scott and Stephanie's dog






Yay, Phineas and Ferb shirt





Glad Uncle Scott and Aunt Stephanie are here

Javin has had four months of piano and was eager to show us his stuff



The Floats go on the Cessna 206 for Brazil

The last major hurdle for the Cessna 206 for Brazil is being completed. Watch this video (by Keith Dodson) to see how we put floats on an already completed airplane! You may remember we posted a video on the arrival of the floats in November and information on the ministry this airplane is will be used in.
 http://jarboesinmissionaviation.blogspot.com/2010/11/floats.html
It will be an exciting day to see this airplane fly away, ready for ministry in Brazil.

From Gabon, Africa to Our Hangar

At the end of August three MMS mechanics went to Gabon, a country in Africa, to put a damaged Cessna model 207 in a shipping container.  MMS staff, Dale Coates, and apprentice mechanics, Paul Jones and Andy Porter, quickly disassembled the plane and secured it in the container for shipment to the MMS Aviation facility.

Paul, Andy, and Dale on the job in Gabon.

Following a rather lengthy MMS Board of Directors meeting last evening, I went to work a little late this morning.  When I got there the shipping container the fellows sealed in Gabon in early September was being unloaded in Hangar C.  It had traveled by ship across the Atlantic to New York; then by rail to Columbus, Ohio; and to Coshocton by truck, as you can see.

Fortunately, we haven't disposed of the old fork lift yet.  It joined its newer replacement to lift the fuselage which was balanced by the fellows at the tail bulkhead so the truck could pull forward to free the plane from the container.

There was no further damage to the plane during shipping, which proves the guys did a superb job loading it.  Our Gabon crew were all smiles as the truck with the empty shipping container pulled away.

Andy, Paul, and Dale - not in Africa any more and dressed for December.

The airplane's normal use is in support of a mission hospital in Gabon and the vast majority of its flights are as an airborne ambulance.

More Meat for the Freezer

The phone rang this evening and as soon as I answered it a young voice said, "Hi, Grandpa.  Guess what.  I got my first deer."  While hunting with his dad and uncle, Javin shot a young male deer called a "button buck".  He shot the deer just before sundown and after field dressing and tagging, Jason, Javin and Javin's Uncle Joe drove by our house so we could see the deer and take some pictures.

I don't know who was more pleased, the successful hunter or his father and mentor.

Jason, our son-in-law, began hunting at an early age and he's teaching Javin to handle firearms and hunt safely.  Much of their annual meat supply comes from their harvest of wild game, including turkey and goose.

After Thanksgiving jobs to do

It's pretty normal for me to do some domestic maintenance items when we visit our parents.  My mother had two projects on her list for after Thanksgiving, one of which was to clean and paint an electric heater cover with high-temperature paint.  Upon removing the cover, I saw that the wiring wasn't in very good condition.  Consequently, the whole heater was replaced.

Replacing the wall heater

The pull-cord on a window blind failed, so Dad and I put in new cord and took care of Mom's other maintenance item.

Re-hanging the blind with its new pull-cord

Thanksgiving 2010

We celebrated Thanksgiving with Dwight's family in KY. Our turkey was delicious. A slow cooked turkey in a metal trash can - better known as Trash Can Turkey. If you check the Internet, you will see that this is getting to be a very popular method of cooking a turkey.  If you want to try it for yourself check it out here.

Trash Can Turkey in the making. Dwight's brother, Eric, cooked the turkey at his place in Indiana and brought it to the family gathering in Kentucky.



Dad and Dwight peel potatoes



Dwight's sister Pam, with our Scott and Stephanie

 

Thirteen of us Jarboes were able to get together.

We are truly grateful for the blessing of family. We missed our daughter and her family who were celebrating back in Ohio with Jason's family.



A father and two of his sons (Marvin, left, and Eric)



Darren (our niece Brittany's husband ) takes his turn on the Wii.



Floats

We are excited! This week the floats arrived for the Cessna 206 which will be used in Brazil for His Kingdom. With the many rivers in Brazil such as the Amazon and it's tributaries, this airplane will be well used in ministry.

Check out the web page for Asas de Socorro (Wings of Help)  Although it is in Portuguese, you can tell a lot from the pictures  http://www.asasdesocorro.org.br/html/index.php. Ryan Joy, their maintenance director in Manaus, Brazil, is a graduate of the MMS program.

Here's a video of the arrival of the floats at MMS.

Friday

In the MMS Aviation engine shop there was a decidedly English tone to wrap up the work week.  Andy Porter and Mark Beckwith measured parts of the Continental O-300D engine they had just disassembled.  Andy and Mark are from England and are here through the partnership MMS Aviation has with Mission Aviation Fellowship of the UK.  They're from different parts of England, and even we tone-deaf "Yanks" can hear they speak with different accents.  They were working under the supervision of staff member, Ian Hengst.

Andy (left) records data as Mark measures parts with a micrometer.

In the afternoon, friends we knew in Bolivia (with Wycliffe Bible Translators) stopped by the hangar for a short visit.  Steve worked in the print shop and Betty taught in a missionary kids' school.  This was in Cochabamba, Bolivia in the late 1970s and early '80s.

Rena, Steve, Betty and me at the MMS outreach map in the conference room

It is GroundCrew Time

Late this afternoon we headed to Zanesville, OH (65 roundtrip) to the Franklin Printing Company.  The latest MMS GroundCrew newsletter was ready to be picked up.  This company does a great printing job and we are happy with the quality work they do. There will be a few more steps before you receive it in your mailbox. The MMS Ladies are busy sticking labels on envelopes and will have a final "push" just after Thanksgiving to get those envelopes stuffed (approx. 5,000).

We're pretty sure this company was not founded by Benjamin Franklin.



Dwight loads the last box



Mid-Air Repair

Our guys at MMS know how to change airplane tires, but none of them have ever done it like this!  Just for fun we thought you would enjoy this old video clip of Gladys Ingall installing a wheel during flight.

Gladys Ingles was a member of a barnstorming troupe called the 13 Black Cats in the 1920s. Ingles was a wing walker; in this film, she shows her fearlessness in a classic barnstorming fashion to save an airplane that has lost one of its main wheels. Ingles is shown with a replacement wheel being strapped to her back and then off she goes as "Up She Goes," a duet from the era, provides the soundtrack. In the video, Ingles transfers herself from the rescue plane to the one sans main gear tire. She then expertly works herself down to the undercarriage only a few feet from a spinning prop. It's certainly a feat many mechanics wouldn't even try on the ground with the engine running.

They Come and They Go!

Busy, describes the activities in the MMS hangars.  This past week a Piper Navajo flew in from Alaska needing some repair and modification. The complete list of work lined up is on the MMS Blog. This airplane is used by Arctic Barnabas Ministries in Alaska. They provide pastoral care to remote pastors and missionary families.


The Piper Navajo (Arctic Barnabas Ministries) arrives from Alaska

As you can see, our guys didn't waste any time getting down to work on the Navajo

At the same time, MMS was also putting the finishing touches on the Cessna Skymaster for LAMP, a North American Ministry to Indigenous Peoples in the US and Canada.This particular airplane is used in Canada. Below is the test flight video. The final departure was early Sunday morning.

Colonial Trade Fair

Javin and some colonials

We went back to the Eighteenth Century again.  This is our final time travel this year and it was only a fifty-minute drive from our home in the Twenty-first Century.  Geographically, it was at Schoenbrunn Village State Memorial - New Philadelphia, Ohio.  My brother, Frank Jarboe, and his wife, Carol, attended the trade fair there October 16 & 17.  (They were at The Fair at New Boston near Springfield, Ohio over the Labor Day weekend.)  So when "Parson John" and "Maggie" are in our area we go see them.

Rena watches the almost lost art of weaving in the 17th century.



Chanelle learns to make a pomador.

 

Dwight talks with his brother - aka Parson John, an itenerate preacher.  A tailor and his wife (left) join the conversation.  The tailor remarked that my clothing was very odd and certainly not in style, but he could clothe me properly for a reasonable fee.



Javin, Chanelle, Stephanie and Scott watch our sister-in-law, Carol - aka Maggie Delaney (indentured servant) do a laundry demonstration.



Javin stands with a Delaware Indian.

A website describing the restored village gives this bit of history.

Schoenbrunn Village was founded in 1772 by a group of Moravian missionaries and Indian converts from Pennsylvania, and was the first white settlement in what is now Ohio. The War for Independence spelled the end of the prospering little community of 60 cabins, church, school, and cemetery. The Moravians had renounced war and refused to bear arms for either side; as a result, they suffered raids from both sides. Reverend David Zeisberger, the leader, decided in 1777 to abandon Schoenbrunn and concentrate all the Ohio missions elsewhere. Members of the Moravian Church relocated the forgotten village in the twentieth century by means of a map preserved by the mother church at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society acquired the site in 1923 and soon reconstructed a number of buildings on their original sites.

The Cessna Skymaster

We have been anticipating the completion of this Cessna 337 for LAMP. Notice the two engines - one in the front and the other in the rear. The test pilot will be arriving soon to fly it and return it to service in Canada.

Belleville

Rena and I spent the weekend visiting my cousin Joy and her husband Tom in New Hudson, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit.  Joy's father and my mother grew up in the Detroit area, children of Oscar and Ruth Schulert.  All of my lifetime, Grandma and Grandpa lived on Belleville Road not far from the Ypsilanti Airport, where the Ford Motor Company built B-24 bombers in World War II. 

Grandma's and Grandpa's house on Belleville Road as it looks today

Sunday afternoon we drove by the house where our grandparents lived and then visited the cemetery where Grandpa's and Grandma's earthly remains are buried.  They were born in the 1880s--it boggles the mind how technology has changed since then.

Joy (my cousin) and I at the Belleville cemetery at our grandparents' headstones

On our way back to New Hudson we drove to Willow Run Airport.  The Yankee Air Museum is there and although there wasn't time to visit the whole museum, we stopped by a storage area and looked through the fence at some of the museum's aircraft.

As an Army Air Corp aircraft mechanic, my dad attended the B-24 school at Willow Run during WWII, and that allowed Dad and Mom to meet.

Tom and I looking at museum planes

Where's Waldo?

No doubt, you remember the series of books filled with intricate drawings of a multitude of tiny people asking "Where's Waldo?"  Well, today we found Waldo.

Rena and I drove to Michigan today on a personal and business trip and made a brief stop in Waldo.

So, now we know where Waldo is.  Do you?

Birthday and the Fair

Bill and Mae

 This past weekend we enjoyed a family visit with my (Rena's) parents in Wyomissing, PA. My brother, Bill, and sister-in-law, Deborah, also made the trip from Vancouver, BC Canada as we helped Dad celebrate his 87th Birthday. My parent's small group from church that meets together regularly, also helped him celebrate the day before, with cake and cards and loads of love. 


Back row: Bill and Deborah Tarter, Rena and Dwight Jarboe
Front row: Mae and Bill Tarter

This will be the last time that the six of us will be together for a while. Bill and Deborah are leaving for India in November to be on the staff of a missionary kid's school.  You can follow their journey by checking out their blog at http://www.billanddeborah.blogspot.com/ 
Meanwhile, back in Coshocton, the County Fair has been in full swing.  We left PA very early on Wednesday, and got back just in time to see our granddaughter sing with her school choir at the fair. Grandpa also got in some mini-golf time with our grandson.



Chanelle, front row, blue shirt/pink boots

 

Dwight and Javin



Fork Lift

The other day MMS Aviation's Facility Maintenance Manager, Dave Shelly, and I were in Hangar C.  MMS recently purchased a good used forklift and Dave was showing me the seat upholstery that was just replaced.  He moved the forklift outside so I could take some pictures of it.

This forklift replaces an old MoToLift from the early fifties that had become very difficult to maintain because many repair parts are unavailable.  Our "new" one is a 2000 Daewoo forklift rated at 4,000 pounds lifting capacity which will serve MMS very well for many years.  A grant from the Tyndale House Foundation provided the funds for this machine which is critical to the maintenance of our facility and our service to the mission aviation community.

Standing by to unload airplanes and parts arriving at MMS by truck or trailer.

Jarboe Reunion

Saturday we left the house at 6:15 AM in order to go eat lunch - in Kentucky.  It was time for the Annual Jarboe Reunion in Wilmore KY. We had a great noon potluck and plenty of time to visit with Jarboe cousins and their families.  Some of us stayed the night in the area and traveled two more hours east, to Jackson, KY to attend church where Dwight's cousin, Sam, is pastor. We returned home Sunday evening - glad to sleep in our own beds!



It was also Mom's birthday. Here she and Dad are enjoying her giant musical (chicken dance) Birthday card.

                                                   Dwight and some of the cousins


Marvin (Dwight's brother) and Paula



Cousins Esther and Carolyn





 



For additional pictures click here