God, Our Protector

The Lord will keep you from all harm—

he will watch over your life;

the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

Psalm 121:7-8

The one word I would use to describe our flight operations for this past year at LAMP, is tumultuous.  As much as we had prepared and tried to get things ready for our busy flying season throughout the spring, summer, and fall, there were many days where it felt like everything that could go wrong, did.

It started early in the spring with a failure of an alternator belt on our Piper Lance. Only a couple of weeks later, shortly after I took off in our other aircraft, a Cessna 182, I noticed the landing gear didn’t fully retract to its up-and-locked position. Worse than it not going all the way up, it wouldn’t come back down either. 

After some troubleshooting, we were able to get the landing gear back down, but were uncertain as to any potential damage that may have been done or if it was truly in the down-and-locked position. I landed safely after declaring an emergency. Having fire trucks and ambulances chase me down the runway was a new experience; hopefully, one I won’t have to repeat anytime in the near future! The culprit in this case turned out to be a piece of wiring that had come loose and shorted out the gear motor.

If the mechanical issues weren’t enough to deal with, nature decided to take its toll as well. Early in July, as we were based in Flin Flon, I was woken up at two in the morning as the house shook from the rumbling thunder. I watched out the window as a massive thunderstorm approached the town.  There wasn’t much I could do at that point, but I took solace in the fact that I had secured the plane to some concrete tie-downs.

The next day, we went to the airport to check on the condition of the plane, except the plane wasn’t where I had left it. Instead of being parked on the apron, it had been blown into the adjacent grass field, and it took those concrete tie-downs with it! Though there was no visible damage, we had a mechanic look it over, just to be safe. Miraculously, even though just about every other small aircraft parked outside that night had incurred some sort of substantial damage, ours was completely unscathed, other than being relocated.

Where I parked the plane (notice the not-quite effective yellow chocks) versus where it ended up after the storm

We continued flying, however, just a short time later, while I was with Gord, one of LAMP’s missionaries, visiting our VBS team in Brochet, MB, we received word that our Piper Lance had broken another alternator belt. The pastor/pilot of that aircraft was now stranded in Thompson. I flew there the next day to pick him up. We stopped in Little Grand Rapids, MB to check in on the VBS there, and then made our way to Sioux Lookout, ON, where he was basing for the summer.  

After we landed, I taxied to the fuel pumps to refuel the airplane, but as I walked toward the front, I noticed the tiniest streak of oil along the side of the engine cowling. I wanted to tell myself that it was nothing, but I knew I couldn’t do that. I hung my head, dejected, and muttered to myself, “you have got to be kidding”. We couldn’t seem to go more than a week or two without having to ground one of the airplanes for one reason or another, and now, in the midst of our busiest time of year, I needed to ground both airplanes.

What a disaster it felt like the summer had been. A mechanic took a look at the engine and quickly found the problem. An oil line had chaffed up again a bracket and caused a small pin hole in the aluminum tube. The mechanic looked at me and said, “Good thing you noticed it when you did. With just a little more chaffing, that tube could have cracked completely and you would have lost all of your oil very quickly”.

I stopped to think about that. My next trip would have been a four-hour long flight back to Flin Flon, flying over the vast wilderness of the Canadian Shield. There would be nothing but dense forest and lakes; not exactly a place you want to experience an engine failure. Had I not noticed that small streak of oil, the situation could have turned much worse.

As frustrated as I felt, I had to thank God in that moment for His protection and safety throughout the summer. Despite my aggravation with everything that had been going on, and despite all the issues, no one was hurt and nothing had happened to the airplanes that couldn’t be fixed. On top of that, our ministry was still going and even if it was a little less convenient getting people where they needed to be while the planes were grounded, in the end it all worked out.

I'm so thankful that the Lord "keeps us from harm" and watches "our coming and going". He watched over us when the landing gear was having issues. When there was a storm, He protected our plane. He was there protecting us during that oil leak as well. 

It reminds me also of just how important your prayers are. Your prayers for our safety while travelling have not gone unanswered, as God watched over us and protected us from harm. God cares about the big things and the little things, and this is a beautiful reminder to us that sometimes we cannot clearly see and understand what God is doing, but He always has a plan.