Our First Family Road Trip

Last week we embarked on our longest family road trip to date ... we foresee a lot more in our future! Mark is currently on another Rapid Response Trip for about 3 weeks to Missionary Flights International (MFI), about halfway down the east coast of Florida. Unlike Papua New Guinea, the Beckwith girlies got to come along too.

We drove 1,060 miles from Coshocton, Ohio to Fort Pierce, Florida over three days, arriving on Saturday afternoon. To put it in perspective, it is roughly the same distance from London, England to Rome, Italy or Melbourne to Brisbane in Australia. We shared the drive, just taking it in turns ... while the girls were either being incredibly goofy or snoozing away the miles in the back.

The speed limit in America on the Interstates is generally lower than at home in the UK. One big difference that we had found up until now is that the majority of the time Americans tend to stick to it too. This trip has shown us that the further south you drive the less likely people seem to keep to the limit ... progressively getting faster! We only really travelled on 3 main roads the entire time. Crossing 7 state lines ... Ohio to West Virginia, to Virginia, to North Carolina, to South Carolina, to Georgia, and finally into Florida.

Spring was just beginning to show it’s true colours in Coshocton. We found it interesting to see that the further south we travelled the more advanced ‘spring had sprung’. On arrival in Florida, it was well underway, an entire season in just 3 days!! On the way we drove through tunnels and mountains, over bridges and past many many water towers ... real American landmarks! 

We decided in advance to break our journey in Rock Hill, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia. Rock Hill was more of a stop, eat and sleep break ... eating homemade chilli on the floor of our hotel room!

It made days 1 and 3 longer, with a bit of a break in the middle on day 2 with the chance to explore Savannah which was gorgeous. An opportunity to spend time in the ‘South’ ... even if it was just for a few hours! 

The trip went really well, we just took it mile by mile and we didn’t even have to get out our secret weapon of the DVD player to keep the girls amused. Family road trip number one, a success ... it bodes well for the years of travelling to come!!

Fixing Planes

Most of you know Mark is training here at MMS Aviation so that he can be an aircraft engineer for MAF on one of their 30+ programmes worldwide. When the world training it mentioned there is often the tendency to think we haven't quite made it 'there' yet, wherever there is!!

Thankfully the partnership between MAF UK and MMS Aviation means that Mark can be hands on working on mission aircraft and actually fixing planes throughout this so called 'training period'. In fact the work he is doing now will have a much larger impact on worldwide mission geographically than once he has qualified and works specifically for MAF ... as we mentioned last October in Mission Aviation! MMS is truly a hidden treasure!

Keith, a good friend and one of the senior management at MMS regularly makes short videos of work or staff up in the hangar, to help those not able to see it all in person get a better understanding of what's going on. Recently he made a slightly different clip where you get to see and hear from Mark. (You can also see this and many more on the MMS Blog.)

Each month a letter is sent to MMS supporters from Dwight Jarboe, the President and CEO of MMS. Here is an excerpt from the March letter which further highlights the global impact of this great organisation.

Having completed three major airplane restorations in our facility late last year and early this year, we are able to respond to a few more requests. Already in 2012, our mechanics have been "on the road". Jim Newman, Mark Beckwith and Andy Swanson were in Papua New Guinea repairing the aft fuselage of a King Air 200 for SIL. Terry McClary and Scott Grote spent consecutive stints in Florida assisting with in-depth wing inspections on two Embraer 110 aircraft for Agape Flights.

More Rapid Response trips are planned. Mike Dunkley is building a new radio package for CMML in Zambia. Later this year he will go install it in a Cessna 207 there and will be accompanied by an MMS apprentice mechanic who will assist him. Even the CEO has gotten the travel bug. The first week of this month finds me in Honduras performing an annual inspection on a Cessna 206 with the pilot/mechanics of Missionary Air Group. 

A full schedule of work continues at our Coshocton facility which, along with our Rapid Response trips, assures that MMS Aviation will keep Preparing People and Planes for Worldwide Mission Service.

In the big scheme of things, we will only be here as part of the MMS family for a short period of time, just 3 years. But what a privilege to part of something that does such great stuff with the ability to impact so many!

A Big Week for Abigail!

Last week was a BIG week for Abigail for so many reasons. She just had way too much fun ... so we thought we'd share a snapshot of it with you!

On Saturday night, our church took over the entire local bowling alley ... over 150 of us! We took some of our good MMS friends with us, the Gettles and the McClary's and had lots of fun together.

Of the 10 of us who bowled (Naomi was the only one who didn't!), Abigail's score of 138 placed her in second place beating both her mummy and daddy by about 20 points!! Yes, she did have the bumpers in place ... but so did the rest of us. With every strike and spare she bowled, she came running back for high-fives from everyone! As you can see below, it's all in the technique!

On Sunday's Abigail has morning and evening Sunday school which she loves. It had been a shame that we weren't able to get her into a pre-school for this academic year (long story!). Anyway, the previous week we had been to an open-house evening at a preschool we'd only just found out about in preparation for September. The short version of the story is that she started in the younger class immediately for the remainder of the school year on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

Abigail was so excited on her first morning (above, just before we got in the car to go!) and has loved it each time she's been there ... full of stories of what she's been up to and what the teachers have been telling her! The class focus on one letter of the alphabet a week and Abigail's first week was the letter T. She very proudly showed off some of her handiwork when she got home! (The purple and red thing is a toothbrush in case you were wondering)

Wednesday morning's is Storytime at the library and has been since September last year. Abigail loves to go and take part, listening to the stories, sometimes singing a song and most weeks do a craft too. It's only for half an hour but she looks forward to it and then enjoys picking out new books and dvd's to have at home afterwards. This week instead of a craft, the kids had Oreo cookies and sang Happy Birthday to Oreo's as they were 100 years old ... they all thought that was great fun! We even enjoyed some special Birthday Cake Oreo's at home too.

On Thursday evening Abigail went to her first ever Bridal Shower. Her eyes nearly popped out of her head when she saw the chocolate fountain! It was extra special as it was for one of Abigail's favourite people, Kyla and Abigail is going to be her flowergirl at the wedding! Kyla came to stay with us last week too (more smiles from Abigail!) ... and will be with us between now and her wedding to Adam in April!!

Friday morning was the monthly MOPS meeting so while the mummy's get to hang out, the kids get to play! For the first time ever Abigail had no problem going off to play for a couple of hours and had lots of fun! On Saturday we rounded off the week with a trip to Columbus for shopping and a quick trip to the zoo. So as you can see it has been non-stop fun for our biggest munchkin recently! As well as the usual giggling and cuddles with her little sister, of course!