I (Renae) cannot tell you how many ups and downs I have had this past year. Where I used to think I was a fairly stable person, I have become unstable. Where I used to keep an even keel emotionally, I feel like my emotions are more like a yo-yo. I used to spend more time trying to help friends and hosting people, where as now I am the one asking for help and never having an organized enough house to really host a family over. (and believe me, I'm pretty laid back about that last one, but it seriously is hard to have room when there are always a couple big projects going on along with the normal everyday messes!). It has been a stretching year and humbling to realize that some of the things I "prided" myself on I can no longer claim as part of who I am, at least not for the time being. I am still in the midst of learning to let go of what I think should be my "normal" self, and our "normal" life, because what we are embarking on for our family is far from "normal"! Thankfully, God doesn't lay out what normal should look like in this life. He only requires that in everything we do, whether we eat or drink, we do it all for the glory of God.
We have had the closest to a settled and "normal" life here in Spokane that we'll have for the next couple years. Yet, even though we are settled at the moment, I don't feel settled. The anticipation of our coming trips over the holidays, then moving from Spokane to Nampa, then moving to Indonesia keeps me constantly thinking and planning for the future. Often it overwhelms me to discouragement, but God continues to teach me how to take it one day at a time, and try not to worry about the future. I am so thankful that He has everything under control even when I can hardly keep our daily life in control.
We are doing our best to enjoy our last couple months in Spokane, as well as the seasonal changes that we won't have once overseas. Here are some snapshots of what has been keeping us busy lately.
Peach picking at Greenbluff
Hay maze and pumpkin donuts at Greenbluff fall festival
Support is coming in and we only need 17 more monthly gifts! Thanks to all of you who have responded with monthly pledges. If you are wanting to join our financial team with a monthly gift of any amount or just a one time gift you can follow this link www.maf.org/tschmidt, leave a comment here on the blog or contact us via email at tschmidt@maf.org.
Here is a current chart of where our support leave is at.
Our weekly update on the 25x50 challenge. We are getting closer and it has only been two weeks! We look forward to see how God will move in people's hearts this next week.
Here are some fall pictures that we have taken the past month:
Cuddle time with Dad
Harvest party with family
Sometimes even Daddy needs to suck his fingers
Caleb and Aaron having fun in the hay bale maze
The beautiful Schmidt women
Renae and Jocelyn enjoying the leaves together
Our sweet little Jocelyn is growing up
Leaf Time
This will be the last time in a while to play in autumn leaves...
Both Aaron and Caleb loved to run and jump into the pile we made
Even Jocelyn was getting into it and kicking leave around
Playing in the leaves you can find all sorts of interesting things..
...including a baby!
Some use a rake...
others a dump truck
Jocelyn doesn't seem so sure about all the attention
We wanted to update you that we are only needing 22 more individuals, Praise the Lord!
Now just a little disclaimer; you don't just have to limit your gift to $50. If we did the math we would only need 11 people at $100 a month, or 5.5 people at $200. I don't know where we will get half a person but mathematics didn't factor that in. We just want to say thank you to those that responded and are praying that God will lead others to respond too.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact us via the comment
section or email us. If you would like to become a ministry partner
follow this link www.maf.org/tschmidt
What does your support do?
It is used by MAF to share:
Hope
Healing
Compassion
Christ's Love
MAF continues to serve, bringing aid physically and spiritually to the isolated and difficult to reach.
We are so close to being fully supported and we want to thank all of you who have been supporting us these past few years. Without you we would not be in the position we are in to go overseas with Mission Aviation Fellowship to Indonesia.
To reach the 100 percent mark we are needing 25 individuals to join our monthly financial ministry team.
Would YOU prayerfully consider joining our team?
If you have any questions please feel free to contact us via the comment section or email us. If you would like to become a ministry partner follow this link www.maf.org/tschmidt
Many of us have heard the song “Refiner’s Fire”, by Brain Doerksen.We may sing it in church, hear
it on the radio, and make it our prayer.Here are just a few words of the song that sum it up:
“Refiner’s fire; my heart’s one desire, is to be holy.Set apart for you, Lord, ready to do Your
will.”
Until recently, I (Renae) don’t think I have felt the pain of that
“refiner’s fire” quite so intensely.The
process of being refined and made holy to be like our Lord comes not only with
sacrifice, but with pain, as if truly sitting in a fire and feeling the
scorching pain on our skin.Only this
pain is an internal pain.The daily challenge
of submitting my stubborn will to God’s.The sacrifice involved in both little and big things:Having a pleasant attitude with my family
after a sleepless night.Showing grace
and serving my family when I am overwhelmed and tired.The tears and sorrow of knowing that seeing
our families this holiday will be our last holiday in the states with them for
a long time.Enjoying my favorite
season, fall, but grieving because there won’t be seasons where we are
going.Accepting that our kids will grow
up without the experiences I had and feel were so influential in my life.
I want to be holy, truly I do.Many days, though, I resist because this
process is so painful, and will continue to be so as we experience so many
transitions in the next year.And yet,
when I do finally submit my will and let God start His refining process, there
is more joy.I am starting to accept
that it is not about where we live, whether or not I’m tired, if we get to
experience all four seasons, living near or far from family, or about our kids
getting every “American” experience.But
it IS about God making us more like Him in whatever situation we live in.As God slowly helps me let go of all the
worldly things I cling to, He gives back His joy and peace in abundance.I am not there yet, it is a hard process and
I still am learning to relinquish control, along with my worries and
fears.But I am thankful that He is with
me every step, and that in the end I will maybe reflect Him a little bit more.
As I type this, this song is so fittingly playing from one
of our children’s praise CD’s:
“With Him, and in Him, and through Him, I can do all things
through Jesus my Lord.
With Jesus in me, I’m free indeed, so I will not be
afraid.When troubles and fear, start
coming near, I lift my voice and say, With Him, and in Him, and through Him, I can do all things
through Jesus my Lord.”
I prayer you, too, will find strength to do all thing through Him!
Ever wonder what it would look like to be a missionary pilot in Indonesia? So do I! So I asked one of the Mission Aviation Fellowship pilots and this is what Isaac from Palangkaraya gave me.
Palangkaraya is a city located in the interior of the Island of Borneo
-A Day with a Missionary Pilot-
Story used with Permission
Morning pre-flight of the aircraft
By
the time I got to the hangar at 7 a.m. on Monday things were in full swing for
me to cancel the days scheduled flights and pick up two different patients.
The plan was to fly an hour north and pick up a stroke victim in the town of
Puruk Cahu, then fly the 1 ½ hrs south to the big city of Banjarmasin and meet
the ambulance there. Fly home, refuel, then fly 50 minutes northwest to
the village of Tumbang Miri to pick up an old man who was critically ill and
bring him back here to Palangkaraya. The weather started off ok, but
quickly turned ugly but workable. I landed at the first destination and
we loaded the patient into the plane. A pretty large group of people were
there helping and saying their goodbyes. Most (if not all) were
Muslim. Just before I got into the plane to start up I decide to ask if
it was ok if I prayed for him. They heartily agreed and so I prayed:
Me-
“Father, thank you for good weather so that I could get here to pick up this
sick man.”
The
crowd- “Amen, amen!”
Me-
“Father please give us good weather and bless our flight to Banjarmasin.”
The
crowd- “Amen, amen!”
Me-
“Please bless this man so that he will get healthy quickly.”
The
crowd- “Amen, amen!”
Me-
“And thank you for new life in Jesus Christ, and in his name I pray, amen.”
The
crowd- (silence…)
Ha! I think that last part threw them for a loop. After departing, I had to wrestle
with the weather a bit as it kept getting worse the farther south I flew.
I was worried that I wasn’t going to have good enough weather to land in.
The river we use in Banjarmasin is huge! It’s like the Columbia River
near Astoria. But for the second time now, God blew the weather away
right over the section of river I use.
Weather moving in
Seriously, this is the second time
I have been down there with a patient in my airplane, completely surrounded by
rotten weather and massive rain, commercial airliners circling in a holding
pattern waiting for the rain to clear away from the paved airport 15 miles
away,
Glorious area of calm amid the rain storms raging around
and I have this weird glorious area of calm to land and taxi in! I
wish you could see it! So after getting the patient loaded into the
ambulance, saying goodbyes to the folks on the rickety little dock (it starts
to sink when too many people are on it), getting my picture taken with
however-many people and kids, I blasted off and headed back home.
Kids love getting their pictures
Patient getting helped to the ambulance
Blasting off for home again
I landed back at Palangkaraya and, thanks to our amazing Indonesian staff, I
was able to takeoff 15 minutes later. The weather was a lot better going
northwest which was nice after battling bad weather for the last 2 ½
hours. I landed at a Tumbang Miri, a challenging little village on the
corner of a quickly flowing river.
Self-docked on the opposite side of the river
The dock that I have used in the past
wasn’t there (I learned later that it was sold and moved down river a few
villages), so I self-docked on a nice dock on the opposite side of the river
from the village. After yelling across the river to explain that I couldn’t
park at the their dock (because my wing and tail would hit the outhouse on the
dock) they decided that they could use a boat to bring the patient to me.
A few minutes later an old man was brought in a boat over to my side of the
river, I had them tie up on my float, and we quickly got him loaded into the
boat.
Patient being carried to the boat so he could cross the river to the float plane
Part of loading and unloading patients is removing the door of the
airplane. This is easily done as only three pins need to be removed to
get the door off. However, this time I had to walk across the little
cable bridging the front of the floats with each other, with the door in my
hand.
River Water...can't see below 4 inches.
One of the dudes on the dock suggested, “Don’t fall off and lose
the door.” Right, don’t fall off. And don’t drop the door into the
river with zero visibility…. Good.
Ok, so we finally got everyone
ready, I prayed again as before, then took off for Palangkaraya. On my
way home the weather in Palangkaraya went very bad; thunderstorms, huge rain,
and angry wind.
"Working" the weather and trying to get to back to Palangkaraya
When I was about 20 minutes from home base I ran into the
wall of angry weather charging at me from the southeast! I quickly turned
around and headed northwest again. I was right over the Rungan River and
was able to find a nice stretch of river to land on. I had seen a
dock/house earlier (I was scoping out places and ideas the closer I got to the
wall of rain and clouds) and landed near it in the hope that we could park
there to wait out the weather. I landed, unlatched my door (standard
procedure), and began to taxi towards the house.
The wall of rain has arrived
At least it is dry inside the aircraft
All of a sudden my door
blew open, the water went rough, and the trees bent and waived like crazy in
the just-arrived wind! I knew I couldn’t dock at the house now, and I
couldn’t beach the plane (plan B), so I turned around and started a slow taxi
down the Rungan River. I’ve been on this river before in a boat. It
was so peaceful and beautiful and calm and serene that day, with tea-colored
water reflecting the green rainforest on both sides. Now, I am taxiing an
airplane down the brown wind-waved river being battered by wind, huge rain, and
watching the treetops disappear in fast moving cloud.
Taxiing on the brown wind-waved river
With a dying man
lying on the floor. And his very concerned wife, son and sister looking
at me. I ended up taxiing on the river for about 40 minutes, when finally
I felt that the wind had died down enough and the overcast had risen enough to
depart the river for home.
The patient endures the long taxi to wait out the storm
Taking off and trying to reach home for the second time
I took off and enjoyed about 10 minutes of
comparatively nice weather. Then I hit a second wall of angry clouds,
rain and wind. This time I was 4 miles from our river. I slowed
down and took my time probing into the mess, ready to turn around any
second. I was able to get to our stretch of river (our “runway”) but the
crosswind and rain were too much.
Stretch of straight river
I opted to fly away from home (again)
and was able to land on a straight section of river very close to home (as the
crow/floatplane flies) but a jaunt as the river winds its’ way around. I
was able to step taxi (high-speed taxi) for about 7 minutes until I was finally
able to park in our slip and unload my poor patient. The planned
50-minute flight ended up being 1 hr and 45 minutes, with 2 landings and an
unplanned “scenic” tour of the Rungan River.
God is wild and
amazing! I love his weather, the display of his power! I also
appreciate when he gives me safe haven on stretches of his rivers! I am
blessed to be here doing what I know I can’t do without his strength and
protection. Why did he put a fire in my heart to serve him
overseas? I have no idea, but I am so thankful that he has given me the
faith to follow him wherever he leads us. Please pray for us as we serve
Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior in Central Kalimantan. And know that he
has a plan for you too; ask him what it is and be open to whatever he says to
you.
-End-
Here is a great video of the float plane operations in Palangkaraya
This is just one part of the larger program that Mission Aviation Fellowship has in Indonesia. Even though we don't know where we will be assigned yet we are excited to see where and how God is going to use us to further His Kingdom with the tool of aviation.
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