A Little Background...

I guess the best way to begin this new blog adventure is to start at the beginning. Not the beginning of time, but...never mind. A lot of people have read my other blogs and know a bit of background on Camille and I. I'll give you a brief rundown here so that we can make this whole process orderly (very unlike the office I am sitting in while I type this).

Camille and I were married in September 2006. Without trying to be too cheesy, I'll just say that it really was a match made in Heaven. If we had met on eHarmony, I'm pretty sure that the CEO of the company would have flown out to personally introduce us. We really couldn't be any more compatible. I'd never been a big subscriber to the 'one true love' idea - until I met Camille. God pretty much gave us all of the same interests, personality traits, you name it. I'll just conclude that we are VERY happily married!

For the past fifteen years or so, I have made my living as a commercial helicopter pilot. I'm another person you know who has never used his college degree for even one day. However, an indirect consequence of that college degree was that I have known for the past two decades that God has something bigger for me than just being a glorified taxi-cab driver. My degree is in ministry, specifically missions work and anthropology. At nineteen years old, I had my first taste of sharing Christ with others of another culture when I went on a summer trip to the Soviet Union (yes, it was still the U.S.S.R. back then). The next summer I travelled with my professor to his former 'stomping grounds' in Indonesia. In the jungles of Paupa New Guinea, I realized that I would never be satisfied staying in the good 'ole U. S. of A. and leading a normal, 9-to-5 life. The excitement and satisfaction of helping someone who REALLY needed help and being able to show our Creator's love to them was just too much to walk away from.

After college, I joined the Army to become a helicopter pilot. My mentors had impressed upon me the great need for missionary pilots and I figured that I would let Uncle Sam pay for my training. As I'm sure you are all painfully aware - life happens. I got to see the world as a pilot, for sure...and get shot at while doing it! I had some fun years living in Europe and seeing a lot of the world, some on purpose and some not. As my commitment to the Army became close to becoming fulfilled, I started to become disillusioned with the lack of leadership and general disorganization of our military and decided to throw in the towel. Little did I know how much God's hand was in this - I exited the Army exactly two weeks before September 11, 2001! I'll just say that my prayers go out to all of the families of my friends and fellow pilots and crew members who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since that fateful day. There are so many of them...

I won't go into a lot of personal detail here, but when I left the Army, I ended up back in the Seattle area and eventually went to work in Astoria, Oregon flying for the Columbia River Bar Pilots. It was pretty much the most dangerous helicopter job on the planet...and the most fun! Plus, I love living on the Oregon Coast because the surf is great here and I get to do it almost every day. All this time however, those closest to me were wondering if I remembered that I had business elsewhere on this planet. I spent a few years recovering from some incredible tragedies and bonafide hurts that I won't go into here and generally pleasing myself. Inside, I knew the whole time that God was about to do something big - if I would just listen.

The first big thing that He did was bring me to Camille. The next big thing was to 'pull the rug out' from beneath us! Remembering my promise not to get too 'preachy', let me digress here for one second. I'm a Christian (I hope that much is obvious). One of the big enemies of being a Christian is simply being comfortable. I don't mean that we should all go join an ascetic monestary and spend our days saying 'Hail Mary's' while we walk over broken glass and flog ourselves. It's just that Camille and I have known for a while that living in Seaside, OR was always only supposed to be a temporary gig. The problem was that we were comfortable. We make enough money. We enjoy our jobs (mostly). We live in a nice house. We have plenty of free time for surfing. Life has been...comfortable. That was all about to change.

I'll make this short - a few years back on a routine FAA Flight Physical, I found out that I had a heart murmur. One test led to another and we quickly discovered that I was born with a defective aortic valve in my heart that would eventually need to be replaced. Well - 'eventually' ended up being a lot sooner than we thought. This past April, I underwent open-heart surgery and had a shiny new carbon-fiber valve put in my heart. Through it all, God's hand was guiding the process. Example: One of my closest friends who I had known for years before I knew anything about my heart condition is the leading surgeon at installing these new valves. I got to have my heart fixed by not only the best in the business, but by one of my best friends who loved me through the whole process! I've said it before and I'll say it again - our Creator can be trusted.

In the meantime, I temporarily lost my FAA Medical License to fly. After heart surgery, a pilot is 'grounded' for six months, and after these six months can then re-apply to get their Medical License back. The re-application process can take several months as well, so after surgery, I was looking at being out of work for close to a year. My boss assured me that my job would be there for me when I could return, but didn't exactly follow thought on that little promise. Long story short - I was permanently replaced while I was still in the hospital! I guess I should have been angry when I found out about this - but I immediately felt a peace that I cannot describe. Camille and I looked at each other and right then I think we both knew that this was meant to be. I said, 'Honey, we're pretty comfortable here aren't we?' She agreed and the realization sunk in that God was 'pushing us out of the nest'. We had talked for a couple of years about wanting to spend time in Indonesia and other places helping the less fortunate and spreading His love. We both had to admit that if things had continued as 'comfortably' as they had been, we may never had pursued those dreams.

Which leads me into my next blog entry. For the past few months, Camille and I have struggled to discover just what and where our ‘next step’ will be. Through a series of nothing-short-of-miraculous circumstances, we have found that step and this blog will be the diary of what happens next!

To be continued…