Turning Wrenches... Still

Turing Wrenches... Still         Life here in Bolivia is a lesson in patience. We make our plans and they never seem to go as we planed. Our characters are being polished, and we hope to come out more usable by God.         As part of the lesson in patience, we are still in Santa Cruz working hard to finish the work on the planes here so we can move to Guayaramerin. Even though we would rather be gone already, much good progress has been made on the planes. Much needed maintenance and repair. Here are pictures showing what has been happening in the hangar.            The Mooney is getting a face lift painting! It was looking really sad and faded from sitting in the sun for so long, and from flying through rain. A new coat of paint is making it look real sharp. Johannes and Gabriel have been faithful workers on the planes. Johannes is from Austria and Gabriel from Argentina. The Mooney is also getting her landing gear sanded down and painted. The landing gear has many hard to reach parts and in spite of the guys best efforts sanding by hand, there were little corners that still had paint and rust. Steven wanted to sand blast them, and asked about where that could be done. He was told no one in Santa Cruz did that anymore and so, even though he didn't really believe that no one sand blasted things here, he decided that he would build his own sandblaster. It was a learning experience, and in the end it worked! Top Left: Version 1.0                               Top Right: Version 2.0 Steven's  version 1.0 was a 0.5 L bottle and just too small. The sand emptied out real fast. Version 2.0 was a 2 L bottle. It was much better, but too much sand came out with the air and a lot of the sand ended up hitting its own sand instead of coming in contact with the metal. It worked, just slow. Top Left: Version 3.1                                    Top Right: Version 4.0 Version 3.1 was a bucket with straps to hold down the lid. (version 3.0 was without the straps and the lid of the bucket went flying. There were some guys who thought that was really funny) Version 4.0 worked great, although another air compressor had to be added  to have a fairly continual flow of air. Now they are finishing sandblasting the last of the Mooney's landing gear and will then have the gear painted with a paint that is baked on. This paint job will hopefully last a long time. The other plane that has been receiving a lot of attention is the normally aspirated 182. Here the guys had to loosen the wing strut to be able to get the fuel lines hooked up to the repaired fuel bladder in the wing tanks.  Left: My work in progress                            Right: The old interior pieces layed out       Even I have been pressed into service! The 182's interior was really not nice. The carpet on the floor was a nondescript color and even though it had been washed, it was questionable if the blood and vomit really came out. The wall panels also had carpet, and it was disintegrating. I think the carpet was original from the 1960's. There were parts of the interior that were still the original 60's green/blue. The rest had been repainted to a grey. So out came the paint, my sewing machine, and some new fabric, and we replaced all the interior that was not easily cleanable with something that was. Vomit and blood are no longer hard to clean up! The seats were left as they were. They are still in good, usable condition.  Bottom Left: The panel as it was                Bottom Right: The panel all painted up      The top picture is of the new flooring and interior. All the interior plastic pieces were painted one shade of grey, and the instrument panel was sanded down and painted black again (thanks Johannes!). I sewed up the new head liner, and all together it looks real sharp (and did I already say easily cleanable?) You can also see some of the many cargo tie down rings that were added to make cargo safer and more secure to transport.      The instrument panel was loosing its paint in big flakes, making the instruments hard to see easily. It still had some of the original colors, and didn't look so great anymore. Now it too looks sharp and its instruments easily read. More views of the new interior. Wilson Family News: Midwife Course: God answered my question about whether or not I should study the course on becoming a midwife. God provided the tuition and a part of the text book cost in time for me to meet the $800 discount promotion. The course is the long distance midwife course. It gives the book knowledge, which I can study at my own pace.  After this, with two years of clinical experience after this I can write the NARM exam in the US. The school is called Mercy in Action (mercyinaction.com)    (A special thanks to Clint and Mindy, the Weaver family, and the Flinkers!)      Baby: The bump is growing! Sara, Steven, and Timothy are having sympathy symptoms. Their watermelon or papaya bumps were eaten fairly quickly. Mine is still there!       To the right is a sneak peak at Timothy's little brother. Daddy's Helper        There have been a few empty flights going up to Guayara, and we sent what we could. Here Steven is flying some of our living room furniture.         Our dog Beulah enjoyed checking out the comforts of the stretcher with Timothy. Thank you to all of you back home for all your prayers and support. You are a big part of the reason anything can be done here. God Bless You! We are volunteer missionaries entirely funded by donations. 100% of your donations go directly to us and our project in Bolivia. If you'd like to be a part, we accept tax-deductible donations through Gospel Ministries International, Inc. Donate via: 1.  PayPal  (timt@gospelministry.org) 2.  Check:  P.O. Box 506, Collegedale, TN 37315 With either method, please include a note stating:  "Bolivia Aviation Services - Wilson" Thanks for your support!

Overhauling the Aviation Project in Bolivia.

A medevac to the city of Trinidad Bolivia.

The aviation project is flying in Bolivia, and is helping people in some towns and cities that are difficult to travel to during the rainy season due to bad roads. Medivacs are being made, missionaries being transported, and supplies are being hauled.
 However, the aviation project is still limited. The airplanes that the aviation project has in Bolivia are still U.S. registered. This means that they are currently limited to airports with control towers. Bolivia actually has quite a few control towered airports in remote towns. The control tower may just be a wooden shed with a solar panel, battery, and radio next to a grass strip at the town. But, this still limits the aviation project because there are vast areas of jungle that do not have control towered airports. The planes are not able to help the people who live in extremely remote areas who would benefit the most from the airplanes. It is the very remote, and hard to get to by land places, that we want to go and serve. 

This is the Rio Beni in northern Bolivia. People live in communities along rivers like this, often with no road access.

In the past, the airplanes were allowed to fly freely anywhere in Bolivia with their U.S. registrations. They helped many people in the very remote parts of Bolivia. Once, when the planes still had permission to fly anywhere in Bolivia, I returned to a community that I had previously flown to which was five days by boat up river from the closest medical care.  There are no roads to that community. The planes had been not flying due to maintenance and customs temporary importation paperwork. When I landed in that community I found fresh graves there, some large, and some small. Without the help of an airplane some of the sick people had died in the village before they could be transported to medical help. Things that are easily treatable become life threatening when treatment is five or more days travel on the river. It took me only half an hour to fly there.

An example of the type of graves along the runway in a community.

When someone is going to die from something that is easily treatable and you spend one hour taking them to the hospital where they receive the help needed, they are very grateful and open to you. Opened hearts mean beautiful opportunities to share about the God who rescues us in more than just a physical sense.
 We also took doctors out to the communities, saving the doctors many weeks in travel time. . Another example of how the planes have helped was once we were camping out in a warehouse at an ADRA building in northern Bolivia. They received a call that a woman had been bit by a venomous snake and she had six hours before she would die. They said it would take seven hours for an ambulance to take her to the closest hospital where there was anti venom. She would die in the ambulance. We rushed to the airport in an ambulance and after a 20 minute flight we were picking up the snake bitten woman. She was at the hospital within an hour being treated. If we had not been ready to jump in the plane, she would have been dead. It only took an hour of our time, and she was a life saved.

The airplane that is designated for the jungles of northern Bolivia.

In order to return to this kind of operation there are some things that need to happen. This is what we are praying about.

1.       I need to become a Bolivian pilot.

a.       People have been very generous and we currently have enough to cover the cost of obtaining a Bolivian pilot certificate. I will have to go back to flight school here to learn how airplanes fly in Bolivia.

2.       The plane needs to become a Bolivian registered and certified plane.

a.       $1,500 Paper work for registering and certifying the plane.

b.      $6,500 to $7,000 Engine overhaul will be required.

c.       $2,000 Propeller overhaul will be required.

d.      $600 Emergency Locator Transmitter

e.      Inspection for Bolivian airworthiness certificate. Cost undetermined at this time.

f.        Undetermined costs.

g.       If you are impressed to help fund this process include a note that says “N3538F Bolivian registration and certification”

3.       Helen and I are planning on moving to the jungles of northern Bolivia.

a.       We currently have enough to cover the cost of moving.

We plan to push the plane through this process, get a Bolivian pilot certificate, and then move up to northern Bolivia. At the Richard Gates Technical School in northern Bolivia where we will be based, they recently built a new church, and we are planning on moving into the old church.

God Bless,

Steven Wilson

The Rest, of the Rest of the Story

“What do you need?” asked the colonel.

                “I need an investigator to inspect my plane.” I said. I was back at international airport the morning after the boy died in the plane. If you missed that part of the story you can read about it here.

I had just spent the past hour and half trying to get the drug police to stamp my flight plan so that the flight planning office would accept it. There had been nobody in the drug police office to stamp my flight plan. I went back out to the platform where the K-9 drug police were and told them that there was nobody in the office and asked them to call somebody. Back I went into the office and still nobody was there. This took place a number of times. Each time I would have to go through security. I needed a drug police investigator to inspect the plane with the K-9 drug police, but there had been nobody in the drug police office. The police were busy with airline flights.

A colonel was inspecting the airport drug police. I told the colonel about the mother that was waiting at the domestic airport with the coffin on the platform. I showed him some of the pictures from the day before and he said that he would go look at the plane with the K-9 drug police. I don’t know if this had some effect on when we were later investigated by the drug police. You can read about when we were investigated.

There is no aviation gasoline at the international airport, so I had to make the five minute flight to the domestic airport to fuel the plane. I landed and pulled up to the fuel pumps and told the guy there to fill the plane with fuel. I turned around and found fuel running out of the wing onto the asphalt. The plane has four fuel tanks, but only two usable. The two long range auxiliary tanks had been disconnected from the main fuel tanks to work on resealing them. The long range tanks had a placard stating “Inoperative. Do Not Fill.” in English. The fuel guy only spoke Spanish. The placards did not avert the tank being filled. I had forgotten to tell him which tanks to fill, and he filled the long range tanks.

It was surprising how well the unsealed tanks held fuel. If the tanks had leaked any slower, I may not have noticed the fuel dripping out and got in the plane to move it across the platform. That would have been very bad. When this model of airplane engine is started hot it often shoots some flame out the exhaust onto the ground under the belly. That would have most likely have ignited a large fire at the fuel pumps.

I was relieved to have noticed the fuel leak. The plane was pushed to a spot on the platform off by itself. The fire fighters came out and we watched as the fuel leaked out of the long range tanks onto the ground and evaporated. Now I had a problem. They would not put fuel in the operational main tanks, and the mother was waiting on the other side of the platform with her son in a coffin. I amde a quick trip to the cargo section of the airport and bought a permanent marker and wrote a placard over the long range fuel tanks in Spanish. This calmed the worries of the authorities and we waited for the plane to dry out before pulling it over to the fuel pumps for a second try.

The mother with her deceased son returning home.

The boy loaded into the ambulance in Guayaramerin.

Those two days were very exhausting stressful days for me, but they were great days for God. The rest of the story was uneventful. I flew the mother with her dead son back home to the rest of their family. They were very grateful. I want to thank everybody who makes it possible for us to help people in need. Thank you for your prayers, they help a lot (i.e. not going up in smoke at the fuel pumps ect.). Thank you for your financial support to make this happen.

God bless,

Steven Wilson

The Rest of the Story

“Please don’t leave me here! I have nothing here, and I know nobody here! Can you fly me back to Guayaramerin tomorrow? How much do I owe you for the flight?”, the woman sobbed. We were on the general aviation platform at the international airport in Santa Cruz. They were loading the body of her son into an ambulance. He had died as the sun was setting over the Andes Mountains half an hour before we landed.

                I told her that I could fly her the next day and that she did not need to worry about money because we had enough money to cover the cost of the fuel for the flight. They had spent all the money they had, and racked up a debt trying to save their son. The last thing they needed was somebody else telling them that they had to pay more money. We want to thank everyone who has been supporting us and made it possible for us to help people. I had not written about this for a while because I was emotionally and physically exhausted. Helen send out an email called “Sad Medivac”, but now I’m going to tell you as Paul Harvey used to say, “The rest of the story.”

                The day started with a trip to the market at five in the morning to buy food. While at the market Herman told me there was a medical flight and asked if I could make the flight. On the way home there were people protesting and blockading the roads. Then the flight was 440 nautical miles long with a quick stop in Trinidad to drop Herman off where the T182 was. I made it to Guayaramerin about 3 in the afternoon.

                When I landed the ambulance was there waiting at the airport. I parked the plane and told the doctors to wait a few minutes while I filed a flight plan back to Santa Cruz. Then I went back and fueled the plane, added some oil to the engines, and did a walk around. Then we got in the plane. When they took the boy out of the ambulance they forgot his IV hanging in the ambulance and ripped the needle out if his arm. The boy was conscious and talking when we got in the plane. He was asking for his brother and his father. There was only room in the pane for the boy, the doctor taking care of the boy, and his mother.

                By the time we got in the plane and started the engine the control tower told me that it was too late in the afternoon to head to the domestic airport in Santa Cruz. They told me I would have land at the international airport. I taxied out the runway and took off. Then once I had the plane in a steady climb on course I had some time to think. There had been many distractions at the airport; the doctors had been asking questions and I now could not remember if I had put the engine oil dipstick back in the engine or if I had forgotten it sitting on top of the engine cowling while I added oil to the engine.

                At that moment as the plane climbed over unbroken jungle the stress level rose really high. Turning back possibly could mean the death of the boy because of delays. However, continuing with the engine possibly losing oil out of the engine could mean the death of all in the plane. Some times in this sinful world we are faced with situations where there is no good answer, all the options are bad, you have to pick the best option.

I had one last resource to check before I had a bad situation. If I had forgotten the dipstick on the cowling then it would have fallen on the ground where the plane had been parked when I started the engine. So I called the control tower and asked them to go check the ramp for the dipstick where I had parked. They told me there was no dipstick on the ramp. The stress level dropped, I had put the dipstick back in the engine.

Halfway through the flight back to Santa Cruz I contacted Trinidad and gave them my estimated time of arrival in Santa Cruz and told them that I would need an ambulance to meet the plane at the airport. At this point the boy’s condition had gone downhill. He was no longer conscious and the doctor had him on oxygen. At that point I told the doctor that we were 20 minutes from Trinidad and 1 hour 20 minutes from Santa Cruz. He told me to continue to Santa Cruz.

Half an hour from Santa Cruz the boy died. The doctor tried to help him but could not. The boy died at about sundown. Here they only allow instrument flights at night. As the boy was dying beside me I had to concentrate and prepare for an instrument approach in case I had to fly an instrument approach. However, the weather was good and an instrument approach was not needed. When we were about 70 miles out I contacted Santa Cruz control I advised them that I needed an ambulance to meet the plane at the airport. So when we were handed over to the control tower they cleared me direct to the downwind leg of a visual approach and sent an airline jet approaching the airport out on a DME arc.

After landing, parking, unloading, and securing the plane the experience was only half over. There was the return flight the next day. That is another story in its self to be continued next time, when I will tell, “the rest of the story.”

God bless,

Steve

Plans to Move!         Our family is soon planing to move to Guayaramerin, Bolivia, (which is very close to Riberalta on the map) to expand the aviation project there. We will be based at the Richard Gates High School, and will be building a house and a hangar there. The director of the high school has already done a lot of work on getting a runway cleared and graded right there at the school. Our house and hangar will be right beside the runway. An aerial photo of the runway at the school.         Why are we interested in moving to northern Bolivia? The two most northern departments of Bolivia, Pando and Beni, are part of the Amazon basin. Parts of the Beni and all of Pando is very thick jungle and very wet during rainy season. The roads are dirt and are flooded for months.       Pando, especially, only has one dirt road going into it. The rest of Pando is accessible by river or air. There are many rivers and many runways along the rivers. Traveling by river takes a long time because they are very winding and the boats are slow. That is fine for normal travel, but what happens when there is an emergency?      Helen has traveled into the Pando, and it was by boat. It took 5 days to reach the village we were going to, sleeping on the sandbars at night, being told not to bathe in the river after dusk because the caiman (a type of alligator) and the anaconda come out to hunt after then. There were some who had heard big jungle cats calling out at night on a previous trip.   The village that the boat was going to was not very far into Pando, but it still took 5 days. A couple of nurses were in the group and started giving medical aid as they could because the Doctors that serve the region have such large districts that they can not visit each village more than once every three months or so. There were post nurses who served smaller areas, but were not able to be in each village more than once every week or two. The clinics out there had little more than one small suitcase of supplies that was expected to cover all the needs encountered.     So what happens when there are labor complications, or a snake bite, or some other serious emergency? The boat takes many days to get to the nearest hospital. Sadly, the reality is that many people die in these situations.       And that is where the plane comes into the picture. You know that village that takes 5 days by boat to get to? Guess how long it takes the Cessna 182 to go from Riberalta,  which is 60 km by road from where we will be based, to that village?            Twenty minutes.   (Riberalta and Guayaramerin both have hospitals) Within a short time a plane can go and get the patient and deliver them to a hospital.       Most of the villages of any size (more than a dozen families) have HF radios to call out with. We plan to put an HF radio in our house and so we can be contacted by the people and respond quickly.      People are touched when someone shows they care, and the goal of the Richard Gates High School is to also train the students in service and evangelism. Students learning basic nursing skills can practice on people with real needs. Students learning to share the gospel can spend a weekend helping with spiritual needs. All soon possible because the villages will be less than an hour away by plane.   So here are some pictures of what we have been able to do lately to get the plane ready to give medical service to the jungle people.        One of two light weight aluminum stretcher we were able to buy thanks to some generous donors.  The stretcher all folded up We were also able to buy quick release hinge pins for both of the Cessna 182's. Pull two pins and the door is off allowing easier loading of a stretcher into the plane . A view of the stretcher in the plane and Steven and Timothy doing a functionality test. Just a few weeks ago there was a real medivac where they used the stretcher.      There are a few projects Steven needs to finish before we can move. He is in the process of inspecting the Cessna 182, and has been guiding willing hands helping him get it airworthy. They also have to seal the Mooney's wing tanks and do some maintenance on its landing gear.      Much progress has been made and it looks like it won't be long until we will be making the move!  Thank You! We want to thank all our generous supporters for all their prayers and help. It has meant food to eat, student loans payed, parts for the airplane purchased, and also extra improvements to the planes that help make them more useful in service. I also have half the funds needed for a propane stove for our new house :) (No hauling and splitting firewood in rainy season)                        All this was possible because of you.   Please keep these things in prayer... -Funds to overhaul the engine and propeller of the Cessna 182 that we will be flying in Pando -The Bolivian registry of the 182 to allow it to fly into uncontrolled airstrips -Our plans to move and set up a new home, especially with my growing belly (baby is doing fine!) Life at our new location will be a lot less plush, as laundry is done by hand in the creek, and we will be starting with just a roof with half walls to live under. We will need to put up more walls and netting and buy a stove, kitchen sink, etc. An outhouse and some running water will hopefully be soon be installed. -For courage to keep going when Satan keeps trying to stop all progress. Satan does not have to stop a project that is making no progress, so I guess we are moving in the right direction.                                                                                    The Wilson Family We are volunteer missionaries entirely funded by donations. 100% of your donations go directly to us and our project in Bolivia. If you'd like to be a part, we accept tax-deductible donations through Gospel Ministries International, Inc. Donate via: 1.  PayPal  (timt@gospelministry.org) 2.  Check:  P.O. Box 506, Collegedale, TN 37315 With either method, please include a note stating:  "Bolivia Aviation Services - Wilson" Thanks for your support!