Pre-Field Orientation Is Complete!

June 29, 2025

Well, it came fast, but Brad's 4 months of pre-field flight training are done. This past Friday JAARS held a graduation ceremony for Brad and the 10 other orientees who finished the training as well. The orientation culminated in a 10-day trip to the mountains near Spruce Pine, North Carolina. There, we all learned the JAARS mountain flying techniques and methods. These will come in handy for Brad flying in the mountains of Papua New Guinea! Brad says it was great learning, and also lots of fun. Stay tuned for another update with more details and pictures from "Mountain Week."

We were greatly blessed to have a wonderful class for orientation training, and we and our families quickly became good friends. We're doubly blessed that some of us will be together in PNG! It's great to get to know and train with families here in North Carolina whom we'll work with overseas, so we'll already have built-in friends when we get there. But the rest of our class is scattering around the world to work among the peoples. It is sad to already be saying good-bye to our new friends. Some have already left! And others are leaving this coming week. Pray with us for them as they set up new lives in a completely new setting.

So What's Next?

Over the next 5 weeks both of us will participate in a few more JAARS classes. We'll do a 4-wheel and off-road driving course and a motorcycle riding course. These are important as we're told that the number one cause of serious injuries on the field are vehicle accidents. And Brad will likely be riding a motorcycle daily to and from the airstrip in PNG.

After the driving courses we'll do the last of the major trainings JAARS has for us, the Intercultural Communications (ICC) class. ICC is both a course in living cross-culturally and preparation for our family moving overseas. We hear it's fairly intense training, so please pray that it will be of great benefit in preparing us as a family.

Life After Training

Our current direction from JAARS is that following all our training we will remain at JAARS HQ in Waxhaw for around 7 months. That puts our planned launch date to PNG in March or April of 2026. In the mean-time we'll be plugging into and working here. Brad will likely do a flying transition from the Robinson helicopter to the Bell helicopter he'll be flying in PNG. Our family is also planning to participate in a few JAARS outreach activities around the northeast this fall.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your prayers, partnership, and encouragement for our family.