In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
God was born in the flesh so we could be born of the Spirit.
Jesus was born because we die, and he died so we could live.
God came and lived with man so that man my live with Him forever.
It was God, who out of his great love for every person that He left his
throne and all its glory above and was born a baby in a manger to live a life
unto a cruel death so we could be resorted into a personal relationship with Him, which is the greatest gift of all.
Have a very merry Christ centered Christmas.

Praise The Lord, We got the bus done and it works great!! Thans for the prayers!!

Things are picking up as we get closer to Christmas and I am finding myself down at our shop helping to put an automatic transmission in our bus. It had a five speed manual that was starting to show signs that it is thinking about quitting. So here we switching it out, trying to have it all done by the time we leave this coming Saturday Morning. We are hoping to have the engine and tranny set back in the bus by tomorrow evening. That would give us Thursday and Friday to hook every thing up and make sure it all works. You can pray that everything goes well and that we will get it done in good time.

And just for fun, here is some facts I researched on the internet:

As I have talk with people about my flying I have ran across two types of people, those that love flying and those that are scared to fly. Now there is some middle ground, as there are few who are not scared to fly, they just do not like it, which is the case with one of my sisters. However, for the most part, fear is why most people who do not like fly, do not like to fly. Nevertheless, it does not take long to find out that flying is not what scares people; it is crashing, and being injured or killed. So I decided to do some research and find out, just how safe is flying, what are the odds of being injured or killed. What I found was that chance of being killed in an airplane accident was approximately 1 in 350,000. That is quite safe considering that your chance of being killed in an auto accident is almost 19 times greater at 1 in 18,585. Yes, the only thing that scares me about flying is the drive to the airport. Then I found something that really got my attention, and that was that chances are 1in 4,745 that you die falling out of bed, no wonder we say bed time prayers. You can sleep good though, because the odds of a meteor falling on you house is only 1 in 182 trillion, at least we don’t have worry about that. However, you had best be careful taking a shower as the odds of fatally slipping in the bath or shower is 1 in 2232. And whatever you do, do not go to the hospital, as the odds are 8 out of 10 that you will die in a hospital. So if you can make it out of bed, through the shower, and survive the drive to the airport you have the worst behind you, and are in good shape.

Habits, What are they? Do we make habits or do we simply change our habits to make better use of the time? Lets say someone goes to the coffee shop every morning and gets a donut and coffee. Then he decides he wants to start running to get rid of some of them donuts. So instead of going to the coffee shop he goes and runs a couple miles. Know the question is, did he (a) Make a new habit?
(b) break an old habit?
Or c) simply change his habits?
We could say he has made a new habit, because he is doing something he was not doing before. We could also say he broke an old habit because he is not doing something he always used to do. Also, instead of eating donuts and drinking coffee and gaining weight, He is now running and getting in shape. Therefore he changed his habits. So tell me, Which is it?

Ps 90:12 So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Ok, here is a little riddle that I came up with. I hope you like it.
Last winter we were down in Florida at a having breakfast at a restaurant, the date was March first and we were celebrating my brother Andrew’s birthday. For on March first Andrews birthday was yesterdays tomorrow, but it was not on that day, that day being march 1st. How can that be? And when is Andrews birthday?

After being gone for three weeks we were home for to days, and then we are on the road again, but just for the weekend. Getting Christmas music worked up for the season seems to be a lot of work for just one month, but somehow, it always seems worth it. Here is a bumper sticker I thought was good, considering how Christmas has become so commercialized. It read,

“The best things in life, are not “things.” ”

Last Friday evening our family had the privilege to go to a musical up in Grand Blanc Michigan, which is right near Flint Michigan. One of the sons of the family we are staying with was in it. It was entitled “Our Flag Was Still There,” it was a patriotic musical. There was a Children’s choir, adult choir, and some power point video presentations. Over all it was pretty good.
It was put on by the local character council, which teaches character apart from the Bible, so that they can go into public schools and teach. In there program booklet they had pages with character qualities such as, honesty, kindness, courage, ect.. After the whole deal I was over herd some one say in visiting that they loved the program booklet with all the character qualities and that could change the country, oh, and that it was nice that they slipped a little faith into the musical.
Faith and a living relationship in the almighty God is what give sinful people as myself the grace and strength to live out the character of Christ in my own life. You can teach character apart from Christ, but it will only end in frustration. For just like trying to hold your arms above your heart, most any person can do it for a time, but the flesh gets tired and I do not care how strong you may be, your arms will tire and come down after enough time. Apart from the Holy spirit at work in ones life, one my be able to be good for a time. Then the flesh tires and trying to “be good” becomes, or ends in a frustrating cycle of continual failed attempts to “be good.”
Lets get this straight, I have nothing against having accountability partners, other than you can fool a person, you can’t fool God. So lets do accountability partners. look at the story of Moses and when he kept his hands up, the children of Israel would prevail. So when Moses hands get tiered what did he do, he got should we say, accountability partners to hold his hands up, and that worked for the time being, but even with that, when the battle was over his hands came down. Of our own power, no matter what we try or resolve, there is no way to be a good person as defined in God’s law,(Rom 7:9-12) even in the from of character qualities.
The only way one can be a “good person” is being crucified with Christ. (Gal 2:19-20) Back to this analogy of holding up your arms. The thief that was crucified with Jesus, who believed. When he died his arms were still up, and he had a new life in Christ. In that new life in Christ is the grace to live lives that are honest, kind, full of courage. (Rom 6:4-11) When you think about it, as people we are incapable of being a good person. We must be surrendered to Christ and let him live through us. Therefore any goodness in me is not me, it is Christ, in his goodness. When I blow it, that is me.
But lets just say humans had the power to be good people of their own will power. Christ gave the commandment to go and make disciples, not good people, that will follow. The devil has nothing against good morals. It is Jesus he is opposed to. We may be able to have lots of good people that are still lost and going to hell.
What better reason to live for. To live and share with others the way of escape, and of the new life in Christ, undisputable evidence that God is real and true to his word.

Here is my story untold about spilling milk. Now I can tell this one because it happened years ago, ok so it was only four years ago. We like whole milk straight from the farm and with so many of us we get it in five gallon buckets from a dairy close by. so I was on the way back from the dairy with two five gallon buckets of milk and I took a turn to fast and well, one of the buckets tipped over in the back of the pickup and the lid pop off and all five gallons of milk spilled all over the pickup bed. As I begin to lament over it my brother Andrew, who always seems to have the right thing say pipes in, "its no use crying over spilled milk". Although I haven’t had a problem with spilling milk at the table, as one of my friends, (I’ll not say who, If you know him, you will probably know who I am talking about.) That’s cause I figured I spilled my share of milk all at one time.

Well, today I put up Christmas lights. What, Christmas lights already? You my think I am really ahead of the game. The fact is that we are leaving Tuesday and will be gone till December 5th and the lights at the park will be open by then. So we had to have them up before we left. The big tree down at the park get a little taller every year and in another year or two our 55ft boom truck is not going to be able to reach the top of the tree. It’s a big tree alright. We just did 2/3 of the front side and put on 1,125 of the C9 7watt light bulbs. That’s well over 7500 watts of power just to light the tree. What else have I been up to? Well this past weekend I got checked out in a Cessna 182 and got my high performance endorsement. For those of you wondering what a high performance endorsement is or means. It means that an instructor gave me training, and singed off that I am competent to fly a airplane with more than 200 rated horse power. We were going to fly to North Dakota but snow moved in up there, so we couldn’t go. I know have just over 216hrs of 250 needed for the commercial license.
A verse for the day Lamentations 3:24-26 The Lord is my portion saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him. The Lord is good to the soul that seeketh Him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.

It can be funny or should I say, humiliating how a “smart” person can do something “really smart”, and prove that they are not all that smart after all, or at least still do dumb things. And well, I found that out first hand. At work we have the blast rig mounted on a semi trailer with the blast pot on the back, over the back axels. When we fill the blast pot up there is about 40,000lbs of weight on the back axels. In case you have trouble wrapping your head around that much weight, well lets just say…..you would not want it to run over your toe. Well any way about a week ago we had just filled it up and I was moving it to were we were blasting and as I rounded a corner I saw a big mud puddle and mud around it. So I swung the truck to miss the mud, but, (ya, “but“, that’s right, things don’t always happen as planned, so we say, “this is what I was trying to do, “but” this is what happened”) I did not swing wide enough and the back axels, the ones that had the blast pot on that we had just filled, the ones with about 40,000lbs on them, just caught the edge of the mud and slid down into the mud puddle, and everything stopped moving. I was about to learn what it takes to get a over loaded semi trailer, stuck up to its axels in mud, unstuck. Plan A: Where we were working had a big four wheel Cat loader, Surely that could pull us out. Ten minuets later and a broken chain we could see that although all four wheels were spinning on both the loader and the semi, we were going nowhere. Plan B: Where we were working also had a cable winch truck. That will surely pull it on out. Fifteen minuets later we saw the winch truck trying to pull the semi out, only instead of the semi getting pulled out toward the winch truck, the winch truck was getting pulled in toward the semi. Plan C: Well if you need two, and all you have is two ones, what do you do? That’s right, you add them together. So now we have both the winch truck and the four wheeled Cat loader hooked up to the front of the semi. With the winch pulling and doing all it could to keep from moving, the Cat loader and the semi spinning all four wheels, ever so slowly the semi starts to move. And that’s what it took to get a overloaded semi trailer, stuck up to its axels in mud unstuck. So you may ask me what I learned from the whole ordeal? I learned a lot of things, such as, semis are not good in the mud. When a semi is stuck up to its axels in mud getting out and pushing does not help. Your boss/dad wonders what in the world you were thinking, and you also wonder the same thing. And last of all, getting a semi stuck up to its axles in mud does not make ruts, it make trenches, to the tune of two and a half to three feet deep. So drive safe, and don’t cut your corners too short.

Josiah's Cockpit

This trip to Wyoming has been a blast. Some friends the Atnips had two 4-wheelers, and thanks to their neighbors who had three 4-wheelers we were able to have some great fun wheeling in the foothills of Wyoming. So the past few days have included trips up in the hills. Trying something new us boys went to a Motorcross track for a couple of laps. Motorcross is for dirt bikes, and it had some steep ramps. But through the first lap everyone got the hang of how to take the ramps. You approach the ramps at a speed that will keep you move‘n and gun it as you go up the ramp, up you pop over the top and land nice and square. (landing on you front tires was not a good thing) As we started the second lap one of the party found just the perfect speed for going over the first and second ramps. Up he went on the first and second ramps, and came down nicely, just perfect. But apparently he forgot that the third ramp was quite a bit steeper than the first two, and up he went. I thought, oh boy he’s really high, too high, this is going land hard. Next thing you know his face is plastered against the speedometer. It slammed his goggles into his face, cut under his right eye, and popped his lip. His tooth put a scratch on the speedometer. He says his tooth is still sore and mom said I was lucky it didn’t chip my tooth.

Where we sang this past Sunday night we had just started the song, "If it was'nt for my Lord what would I do", all the sudden a cell phone begain to ring, and it sounded to close for comfort, yes it was dad's. But with it being a louder faster song it was somewhat drowend out, but you could still hear it, and what you can hear the microphone can also hear. So everybody hears the faint ring of a cell phone and quickly reaches down to get their cell phones. So through the second half of the first verse and the chorus we were the ones being entertained, watching everyone reach down and check their cell phones, but alas, in vain. (I had a hard time keeping myself from laughing) And by the time everbody had checked their phones, dad's phone had quit ringing and nobody even knew that it was dad's phone that had rang.

Home at last!
After six weeks out on the road we are home. The trip down south was good as we got to be a part of some prison crusades, sang at diffrent chruches, and thanks to some friends, went to Sea World. We then sang in Indiana Saturday the 11th, drove through the night to go to our church in west Omaha Ne, the next mornning. After church went home, unpacked, then Dad Andrew and I packed back up went to church and picked up some men from church and drove straight through to New Orleans to help with the cleanup for the week. We left yesterday afternoon and got home mid morning, and boy is it good to be home. There is no place like home.

This is after I passed the IR checkride. c172, the checkride was ay KTOP.

“Watch your altitude,” “get that needle back to the bulls eye.” I have been learning to fly with the goal of becoming a missionary pilot, and have obtained my private pilot certificate. Now I just obtianed my instrument rating, so now I can fly through the clouds, and those were just a couple of the words I heard from my instructor when I first started working on my instrument rating.
The first time I went up with the instrument instructor we did some basic flight maneuvers with the hood on. The “hood” is a view limiting device, basically, goggles painted over then the lower third or forth cut out, so you can't look outside and have to look at your instruments. As we flew the maneuvers we talked about the dangers of flying in weather where you can’t see outside references. He told me to close my eyes and fly what I thought felt straight and level, and in less than 45 seconds, when I thought I was flying almost level, he told me to look at my instruments. I was nose down descending at 800-1000 feet per minuet, and in a 45-55 degree right bank, and picking up speed. Chop the throttle, level wings, and pull the nose up, back to safe level flight. They say if someone enters a cloud and does not fly by their instruments, it takes an average of about 30 seconds before they are out of control, and less than 138 seconds before they are a smoking hole in the ground. That made me think, in a world where there seems to be no truth, or all truth is “relative,” what, or how do I make my decisions? Do I make them on how I feel? Or do I go to God’s word, the ultimate source of truth. The Psalmist says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.” If I make my choices on how I feel, my life is going to turn into a wreck. I had to look at and study the instruments to regain control of the airplane. How can I make decisions based on truth if I’m not reading and studying God’s word?
I remember on one flight with my instructor I took off, put on the hood, then made a long 180 degree bank to the right, got to my heading and leveled off. All of a sudden I felt like I was in a left bank, looked at my instruments and they said I was flying level, but I was sure I was in a shallow bank to the left. What do I believe? The instruments... or my feelings? Remember the parable of the wise and foolish builder? They both heard truth, one applied it, and the other did not. So what happens when I know what God‘s word says, but my feelings tell me something else? I must make my decision on what God’s word says. Knowledge without application is foolishness.
My instructor often tells me, “It’s not the single task that makes instrument flying so hard, but the many different tasks.” Power, pitch, bank, trim, tuning the com radios, tuning the nav radios, flaps, mixture, on and on. One time I forgot that I was supposed to descend at a certain place while doing an approach. I ended up coming in too high. I messed up the approach, because of one detail. See, flying straight and level is not that hard, but how would I know where I was... where I want to go... and how to get there? That's where the radio instruments and charts come in, another task. To fly in cloudy weather you have to use them, and well. Radio instruments need to be tuned to a certain station set up a certain way to do specific tasks. God wants a relationship with us. He has specific tasks for us, which we will only discover by having a relationship with Him. This means spending time not only in his word, but in prayer.
My instructor is always telling me, “Keep your eyes moving... always be scanning all the instruments... don't let your eyes spend too much time in one place or on one task.” 2Tim 3:16 says, “All scripture is profitable.” I have my favorite scriptures, books of the Bible, etc. I also have certain areas in my life I prefer to work on than others, they are easier. However, just like flying on instruments, we need to make sure we read and apply all of God’s word. So despite the uncertainty of fog and the trying storms of life, we can go through life with confidence in Christ.