Where the burden was birthed...

The year is 2002.  The place is Northern Haiti, where the road ends and the hike begins.  A medical missions team that John is accompanying is ready to make its way to a remote clinic.  The team loads up in bed of the pickup truck to begin the four hour drive.  The roads are less than passable.  Huge pot holes and much mud and debris make the road almost inpassible.  The "potholes" make for a journey in themselves.  The team unloads so the truck can move through the deep hole in the road that is half full of water.  The team walks around and then reloads in the truck on the other side.  Finally the teams gets to the end of the road.  The hike begins here on foot for a few miles to reach the clinic.  Upon arrival at the clinic, hundreds of Haitian families surround the clinic waiting for their turn.  The doctor summons the team to come with her.  After getting them set up, she begins to tell the leaders a story:

Over the last few years this doctor had taken one of the Haitian nationals under her wing.  She began to train this lady in nursing skills and clinic management.  This lady was well equipped to keep the clinic running in the absence of this doctor.  She did a great job for this doctor.  The doctor continued saying that this lady had recently become pregnant and the time for delivery was near.  During the delivery process, the baby was breech, and they could not get the baby to turn.  They had no other choice but to hike her out and load her on the back of that pick up truck DURING the delivery process.  They knew the closest facility that could help would be about 2 hours away, but they had to try.  The lady did not make it.  She bled to death in the back of that truck.

At this moment, John looks up and prays out, "God, there is a clearning right here at the clinic.  A perfect place for a helicopter to land.  A helicopter could have gotten that lady to the facility within 20 min."

That is the moment that God birthed a desire to bring the helicopter to Haiti permanently.  We finished our term with the mission we were serving with and begin all the necessary steps to obtain enough helicopter flight time and maintenance experience to be able to take a helicopter into Haiti on a permanent basis. 

Though John has gone into Haiti on numerous occassions over these past few years with short term mission teams, our time has come to see the dream become a reality.

We are humbled and blessed to be given the opportunity to serve others with such a tool as the helicopter.
The helicopter is the tool we use to literally multiply time. A two day hike, a four hour car ride or a fourteen hour boat ride is transformed into ... a 30 minute flight to deliver food, medical supplies or a transport to the hospital.