| | Hello everyone. I have some great news. As of last week, all but $400 of my MBI tuition for next semester is paid through donations! I still have to pay for the mechanics classes that I'll be taking next semester through Spokane Community College (SCC), but hopefully I'll be able to get federal grants for most of that. There seems to be some confusion as to why I'm taking classes outside of MBI. The aviation program here includes one year of Bible and General education that i just finished up, which is done through MBI. There are two years of Airframe and Powerplant Mechanics, which MBI has arranged to be taken through SCC, as well as one Bible class per semester, which is taken through MBI. finally there are two years of flight training which is done entirely through MBI. so for the next two years, I will be attending both MBI and SCC. Thats the overview of the program. I also realized that I haven't told you much about the church i am attending, Shiloh Hills Fellowship. It is a large (700-ish) church that doesn't have a large church feel. It is very friendly and the people there are quick to make you feel welcome. More importantly, it has a pastor who is Biblically grounded, who says it like it is, and is truly concerned about the people in the church. I have been volunteering every Wednesday night to help lead worship for the church's youth group. That has been a ton of fun. I started work two weeks ago as a farm hand at a farm north of Spokane. The farmer is Loren Lentz, and he mainly produces hay, but also raises a few cattle on the side. The hours are a little crazy, but I don't have much else I have to do this summer, so I figure i can use the money. I worked 65 hrs last week, and 55 hrs this week. it sounds like there will be a few weeks right at the peak of cutting time that 100hrs/wk won't be unlikely. I get one day off a week that I can choose, so obviously, I'll be taking Sundays off. So far I've helped repair machinery, feed cows, fix irrigation systems, dig ditches, and just about anything else Loren needs done. One piece of advice, don't head-butt heavy farm equipment, it hurts. Loren was using a gigantic roto-tiller to till up one of the fields, but every time you hit a large enough rock, the bolts that hold on the teeth would simply shear right off. The bolts are also quite large, and to tighten them, I had to put all of my weight into turning the wrench. as i was doing this, the wrench rounded off the bolt and slipped off, sending me flying face first into the trailer hitch. I got an instant black eye, and the next morning my eye was swollen shut. that of course was the day we were picking rocks out of the field that had just been tilled. So i had to try to pick rocks, that are covered in dirt and look just like the other clumps of dirt, without any depth perception. talk about an interesting first week. I also managed to let the entire herd of 50 cows out of the pens last Friday. I had been told to feed the cows by using the tractor to haul a bunch of hay. No one bothered to tell me that you have to have two people to do this... when I opened the gate, all the cows walked right out past the running tractor. I tried to block the gate with the tractor, but the cows stood right under the bucket that had all the hay in it, so i couldn't lower it to block the gate. every last one, except one calf, walked right out. Loren's dad, who helps out occasionally, jumped on a four wheeler and started rounding up the cows. they have a dog, but i guess it's trained to round up the cows, not to drive them any where. every time we'd try to drive the cows toward the pens, the dog would go to the front of the herd and keep them from moving forward. In spite of all this, it only took us about half an hour to get all the cows back into the pens. we all had a good laugh afterwards.
So that's kind of what's been going on here. In Christ, Aaron Stocks |
