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texasflyboy
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Name: Eric
Gender: Male
Interests: Jesus Christ, first and foremost. But also politics, mountaineering , martial arts, writing, hiking, rock climbing, history, flying...........
Expertise: Flying, History
Occupation: Aircraft Broker and Pilot
Industry: I guess Aerospace?
Message: message me
Member Since:
9/24/2006
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| BrazilJust got back from Brazil on Sunday. Absolutely loved the trip! It was awesome, encouraging and fulfilling. My only regret is that I couldn't stay the full four weeks. We were in the central part of Brazil, south of the Amazon. Actually most of land in that area is ranch land, the two main crops being cattle and sugarcane. We were building a house for a staff family at Shekinah, New Tribes Missions language school there in Brazil. Here are some pictures that will help me explain what all we did:
This is the jobsite as we were just getting started. The entire house is built out of brick, no framing, no insulation, and most important, no a/c. They had the footers poured when we got there then we filled the foundation with dirt then water it and tamp it down by hand. Then we poured a fairly thin concrete slab.
Whenever we needed dirt or sand we would take the truck down the dirt road until we got to a place where the grader had dumped a pile then just load and go!
The land looked more like Texas than Brazil to me! Except of course for the macaws, toucans, anteaters and monkeys...
This was a cultural excerise that the staff put on the for the students. They portrayed a tribal people and the students had to learn the language and culture, who was related to who and what that meant in that culture.
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| It's Groundhog Day!!At least that's how I feel. Every day is essentially the same: get up early, study, brief the flight, fly for 3-4 hours, workout, eat and go to bed. Then get up and do it all over again. But at least I should be done in another 2 weeks or so...
Instrument flying is difficult because it consists of doing many simple tasks at the same time to close tolerances. It's kind of like threading a needle....on a pogo stick....while blindfolded....for three hours at a time. It's so hard it makes my ears hurt  . But my instructor says I am progressing well so that's good to hear and I passed my progress test this week.
I am still praying a lot about what God would have me to do but now instead of no ideas, there seem to be several directions that God may be leading me. It's exciting to see him at work.
Well, that's about it for now~ Eric
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| ChangesWell, since the last time I updated I've gotten my multi-engine rating, changed flight schools and moved into an apartment in Sanford up near Orlando. The school is smaller, still professional but a little more relaxed mindset. The planes are older but my instructor is good, a thirty-something British girl. But for the most part I liked Vero Beach better than Sanford, particularly the proximity to diving, surfing, etc.....
Haven't really gotten a chance to meet anybody here and I didn't get to go to church today since I had to fly but I am going to look for a church next week. I am supposed to fly twice a day next week so that should keep me out of trouble. I was supposed to fly twice today but between smoke from nearby wildfires and a thunderstorm that rolled in right as I was ending my first flight, that just wasn't going to happen. We had about ten interesting minutes trying to enter the traffic pattern at the end of the flight trying to dodge others student pilots, with just the bare minimums for legal VFR flight (that's visual flight without radar telling you when you are about to bump into somebody).
On another note, I'm wrestling with some issues of what I should do once I finish training here. I've been praying about it a lot and am trying to determine if God wants to take my life in a different direction. We'll see. The Christian life is like flying in instrument conditions, you walk by faith not by sight. Also you have to trust your instruments and not feelings. And like an Air Traffic Controller, God often times will give us vectors that we weren't expecting or won't give us the whole flight plan at once, after we get to the next point then he'll tell us where to go next. Right now my routing is to be the best pilot I can be. After that......
~Eric
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| Diving I went diving yesterday and also today after church. I figure I may as well get it in while I can. Yesterday on my first dive I shot at a snapper and my spear went through the fish and stuck in the coral, I wound up losing both the fish and the spear point. That's why I was carrying the camera on my second dive. I saw a large green Moray Eel and a Loggerhead Turtle that was about the size of a coffee table, but I also saw four large fish that I would have loved to take a shot at except I wasn't carrying my speargun! But all in all it was a fun dive.
Today I tried a different church in West Palm Beach. It was pretty good, not overly glitzy, the people were very friendly, there were actually some young people (there average age in the churches here in Vero is about 70!) and the sermon had some meat to it. So I'll probably wind up going there again. One reason I like going to church in West Palm is that it makes it easy for me to go diving afterwards. That's what I wound up doing today. I actually hauled my gear down to the boat while still wearing my church clothes. Every was making cracks about that, asking if it was the latest style of wetsuit. I told them I trying to give them a little bit of class. I did change and had two great dives. Speared four snapper on two dives so that felt pretty good. On the last dive, I had shot a fish and while I was reloading I separated from the others and wound up diving by myself. So I'm swimming along by myself, with a bloody fish on the stringer, when I see a five foot reef shark. I wasn't worried that he would actually attack me just that he would try to steal my fish and might take my gun and a few assorted body parts in the bargain. Fortunately he was up current from me, so I hunkered down behind a reef and waited until he passed. After that I spotted another good sized snapper so I popped it and headed for the surface with a little extra air in my tank but all my fingers and fish.
Dive through life, don't just float,
Eric
AGreen Moray Eel
Yellow Snapper
A squirrel fish
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