Surprise: We are having a baby!
Stephanie and I found out about three weeks ago that she is pregnant and is due in December. Praise the Lord! We are extremely excited and very much looking forward to meeting our precious gift from Him!
I'm midway through school and midway through the Airframe Structures section in it; right now we're learning to construct and repair parts out of sheet metal. Riveting and drilling are fun, but it's such a precise job to get them 'just so' that it takes five weeks of shop and classroom instruction in the course.
We have seen the Lord providing for us quite a lot through our journey into aviation missions, and I'd like to put a few things down here for encouragement to other disciples as well as for posterity. We didn't know how school was going to be paid for to begin with: It's not an expensive school by any means, but my cost was going to be $922 every three months, on top of purchasing required tools, toolbox, and uniforms. The grand total is estimated just shy of $10,000 for a student to graduate. A month before school started last year, I found out that I was receiving a partial scholarship and would only need to pay $322 up front to begin school. Since I was quitting my full time job, I had accrued vacation hours to cash in, and the total amount was right at $350. That went to my first trimester, and I started school without being in debt for it.
Tennessee also sponsors people to go to eligible schools, and I was eligible for their aid. Not only did the state pay for the next trimester's tuition, but it also bought me a professional toolbox full of tools, all of my uniforms and all of my books!
In addition, we are leasing a home and our lease expires in April of next year, which coincides closely with the end of my formal aircraft mechanic (A&P) training. The Lord hasn't specifically told us where to go or what to do after I am done with the program, but we believe He may be calling us to an aviation job that will allow us to be debt free and possibly purchase our own light aircraft. He spurred my interest in aviation missions partly using Missionary Aviation Fellowship, a nonprofit which we are currently looking into but not yet 100% sure is where He has planned for us to go.
One of my instructors from an earlier class was going to take me flying last weekend but weather ended up canceling the flight. He has a Piper PA-22, which is a light fabric-and-tube two seater aircraft. We ended up talking for a couple of hours about aviation and small planes - it was definitely worth the drive to get to his hangar!
