Remembering Chris

Dana with Dwight looks on while Joanna spreads ashes

After the work day on Monday, the 20th, the MMS families gathered on the southeast side of the MMS facilities. It was exactly 2 years since Chris Abernethy, MMS team leader, friend and coworker had left us for his heavenly home.

Dana and the children expressed a desire to plant an Azalea bush in Chris' memory and spread some of Chris' ashes there. Dwight (and Shawn) planted the Azalea and led our time together. We had a blessed time as we shared memories of Chris and sang praises to our Lord. We followed that with a great time of fellowship at a pot luck meal.

Please continue to pray for Dana and her children. If you would like to follow the activities of the Abernethy family, just check out their blog . You will be blessed!

Trip to Tennessee

Some years ago I was asked to join the board of directors of a mission aviation service organization named Mission Safety International (MSI). This year MSI celebrated its 25th anniversary. In conjunction with the fall board meeting a banquet was held with special speaker Steve Saint.

MSI 25th Anniversary Banquet

The 25th anniversary celebration/board meeting came just a week after MSI conducted a safety audit of MMS Aviation, as you can see from a previous post. Rena and I drove to Elizabethton, Tennessee Thursday and returned yesterday. At home, our wonderful golden maple tree made sure I'll have something to do as it puts the leaves it no longer needs on the ground for me to pick up.

Breakfast Visitors

This morning I had the pleasure of being joined for breakfast by Chanelle and Javin. This was Javin's day off from preschool and I volunteered to take Chanelle to school so that Jen could get an early start on her work day. Five year old Javin informed me that most of the kids in his class were still four (Javin missed the cut off date for kindergarten by 4 weeks) so that qualified him to be the first in his class to go to Kindergarten! I am glad, however, that his preschool schedule still offers me some Grandma time with him.

What a Week!

Monday morning a team arrived to conduct a safety consultation. This audit-like review of the MMS Aviation facility and procedures was scheduled months ago and would take all week. The consultation team was put together by Mission Safety International (MSI) and included representatives of School of Mission Aviation Technology and Moody Aviation.

Cary, MSI Research & Development Coordinator, conducts my four-hour interview.

Thirty-one interviews (some four-hour and some two-hour) were completed by Wednesday afternoon. The real work for the consultation team then began. They had to collate and condense the interview information and write a report. The first draft of the report was shared with the MMS Senior Management Team for comment, then the report was put into its final thirteen page form.

Steve has just handed me the "official" safety consultation report.

The safety consultation report was shared with the whole MMS team at 3:00 PM today. After going over the report, Steve, MSI Vice President of Field Operations, presented me with the official report signed by each member of the consultation team. The report contains commendations about things we are doing safely as well as observations and recommendations of those things we can improve. All in all, it's a pretty valuable document, worth a full week's work.

Milestone Birthdays

Bill Tarter and Dwight

Today is Dwight's 60th Birthday. Two days ago was my Dad's 85th Birthday - so who can blame us for celebrating big this past weekend! My folks drove over from eastern PA so that we could celebrate together.

We had a small family celebration time together on Saturday; and on Sunday afternoon invited our MMS Aviation family over to help us celebrate. We had a good time and feel so blessed to have a loving family (also a wonderful MMS family).

All work and no play . . .

Last Saturday John, a friend of ours, had a fly-in and hog roast at his private airstrip. John has pipeline patrol contracts for which he uses a small airplane, but much of the aviation at Graham Field is fun flying.

Mark arrived in (or on) his Breezy. It is a home built airplane that only has the bare essentials for flight.

A couple weeks before the fly-in, Mark sent a magneto from another plane he has to MMS Aviation for repair. Mark, a mechanic friend of his and I were discussing the installation of that magneto and I used the Breezy for an easy explanation about the magneto timing.

Rena and I had another event to attend, so I told Mark we had to be going. His response was, "Well, you have time for a ride don't you?" I immediately said, "Sure."

So we strapped ourselves in (or on) the Breezy and went for a ten minute flight over the corn fields, just above the tree tops. It was a gorgeous day, not chilly at all, but it was a really cool ride!