Latest / The Ethnos360 Podcast / Giving Up College Football to Become a Missionary Pilot
Transcript
- Ethnos360: This dude just became a believer and his boy is dying and he's able to go, God, I trust you. I don't know why you're allowing this to happen. I'm not telling you to save my boy, I'm asking you. Whereas if that would have happened a year ago, he would have had the witch doctors dancing around his boy and trying to rip the bad spirits out of the boy. I heard you were one of the best football players and you could have gone to any college. Why did you choose Ethno three sixty Bible Institute? I've always wanted to be a missionary pilot and with that being said, when this new opportunity of a different career path came up in my life, you know, possibly kicking in college and then most likely not, but possibly the league, that just wasn't something appealing to me. Like my purpose of serving God overseas with the airplane has always been something that I've wanted to stay true to. But before I even can continue on to that journey of becoming a missionary pie, I need a biblical foundation to base my training on. And yeah, 'cause if you hit the field without a good understanding about who God is, what his word says, you're setting yourself up for failure. When did you know that you wanted to become ⁓ missionary pilot. Because it seems like you were already set in that direction. Right. Before you started kicking. Growing up in South America in the middle of the jungle, the only way in and out of that of that location as a missionary kid was the airplane or by boat. So I we took the boat trip our first time going into the village and then after that we use the airplane. So you I saw the difference the airplane made for us as a family. It brought us food, it brought us a medicine and stuff like that. And it also saved the lives of a few indigenous people, the people group that we were working amongst. So at a very young age, I was exposed to or taking this gospel to the unreached, people that need the gospel. And part of that process is you need to get into that village. And seeing the airplane and how useful it was was something that really clicked for me. It began with a love for aviation. Like going up to that airplane for the first time at like five, four or five years old, that was with the moment I kinda knew that okay, I want my life to be around this cool, cool airplane thing. You know, thinking at thinking like a little kid. Mm-hmm. And then as I got older, I started to get convicted of, man, I really I really want to serve God. I really want to do what my parents are doing. But even at a young age, like seven, maybe eight years old, I knew, okay, the language thing, what my dad is doing is not something that I'm I'm really feeling like I'm called to do or something that I'm good at, period. But I really wanted to serve God and my thinking at the time was the only way you can serve God is by being a missionary in the bush because that's all I knew. But as I got older, I realized, no, you can you can be in a support role and those roles are just as important. And that you can combine these two loves, a love for God and a love for aviation. And as far as the kicking thing goes, I've played soccer my whole life from you know a little one year old kid. We got a soccer ball for my first birthday or something like that. Just kicking it around all the way till tenth grade. Yeah, just that's just kind of my sport that I love and I still that's still my favorite sport. But then my eleventh grade year, I was like, Hey, I just wanna go and try football. And I knew I probably wasn't gonna get a position anywhere else other than kicking because there's a lot that goes into football where it's kinda hard to get into it your first year and be a superstar, even though some people can do that. So I went for the kicking job and kicked it once in front of the coaches and they're like, Well, yep, that's that's our guy. What was your best record in kicking like what was what would be like the thing that is impressive for a high school kicker. 'Cause I don't know much about football. Yeah, yeah, I know that's that's right. So it's it's it's kind of subjective what somebody thinks is the most impressive. So my first year of kicking, I I remember just a little story time. I remember after the game, you know, you're kinda giving your family hugs, your friends hugs, taking pictures, we won the game, all that stuff. And this was by week three, maybe four of the season. And there's a guy on the staff side of things who he puts every individual player's stats into this thing called max preps, which if you're an athlete, a high school athlete, that's where that's where you go. Everybody who's a high school athlete, that's where they upload their stats for whatever given sport, soccer, track and field, football. And he comes up to me, he's like, You know you're number one, right? And I'm like Like the okay. I was like, ⁓ so in our conference, like there's four teams in our little area and he's like, No, the nation. And I was like, What? So I kinda just blew him off. I kinda laughed. He was probably like, What the heck's wrong with this guy? He's just laughing at me. So I take my pictures with my buddies and, you know, go to the locker room, take a shower, go home. And it hits me what that guy said, so I was like, ⁓ I'll just look it up. So I look my name up on Max Preps and it has my name and then right next to it's like number one in the nation. So I was like, what the heck? Click on the chart and it has, you know, Breck Miller, Jerry Shore, PA with my kicking points, some other kid, you know, parentheses Texas, next kid, parentheses Oklahoma. So I was like, ⁓ holy moly, this guy, you know, wasn't blowing smoke. And that was kind of crazy. So a lot of people found out about that and then a bunch of hype started to build around that. 'Cause we're where I'm from, jury shore, football is everything in that in that culture. It's a very football minded society. That's kind of what people love to do on their Friday nights. You almost felt like a little bit of a celebrity there. And so that was like my first like whoa big achievement. And that I carried that number one lead for pr the whole year until the last game we lost in the semifinals. So all the two, three, four got to play an extra game 'cause they're they probably went to the state championship. Nice. And then I dropped down to whatever I dropped down to. So yeah, I was leading number one in that category, number two in another category, number three in in another category of of kicking. So kicking kick scoring field goals and kickoff yards. So a kind of a lot of hype there. And then after the season ended, I'm doing a Bible study at my at my house with some of my football friends and some of my soccer friends. And I get a call from my coach. I'm pretty clueless in the football world at this point. So he's calling me and he's like, Well, you just got the All American Award. And I was like, What is that? You know? So I was like, Thank you, coach. All that kind of good stuff. Totally not knowing what he's talking about. Then I hang up the phone and my buddy, who's a football player, he's like, You idiot, you don't know what that means? I'm like, I don't So I got the small town All American Award, where that means In all the small towns in America, there's an A team and a B team or number one or number two. I got number two as kicking. So in all the all the small towns, there's like twenty one thousand small town football teams or something like that. ⁓ according to Max Preps, they mark me down as the number two guy. But none of that stuff really it didn't really matter to me all that much. Don't get me wrong, everybody wants to be seen. Everybody wants to, you know be said to them, good job. And I'm a man, so I I s I'm susceptible and I and I totally understand those feelings because I have those feelings. I want to be seen. I want people to say good job. And it did stroke my ego for a little bit and I did kind of get big headed from it. But at the end of the day it was kinda like, ⁓ it it didn't really matter to me 'cause I know my direction and I and at the time I knew my identity. that it was not in anything on this earth. It's in Christ. So it it really didn't shake too too much my direction in life, even though I had all these successful achievements or whatever, if that makes sense. But maybe to the people around you, they were thinking, wow, he's sacrificing a lot. Yeah. Even though to you it wasn't like that big of a sacrifice. Right. Yeah. People were like, what are you doing, dude? My coach really, really wanted me to to upload my film. He always wanted somebody to go D one and maybe go to the league. I think that was something that he desired as a coach, which totally makes sense. He's a coach. But for me it was just like I'm not sacrificing this because this life is not appealing to me. And that kind of it it was weird for a lot of people. And there was an article written about me and my desire to not go to a big college and kick. But instead serve the Lord overseas. So it was kinda cool to see God use that all these accolades and all these achievements that I personally didn't care about and I still don't really care about for honoring his name and bringing glory to him. So that was really cool to see. Okay, so you mentioned going into the tribe and comparing going in with a boat and then going in with an airplane. Could you give like a more Like play by play of how different that is to somebody who's never been in that experience. I don't have a a bunch of details of the the boat trip because I only took it once as like a four year old, five year old kid. But it but it still impacted me a lot, so I do remember a decent amount. The the boat trip took six days. ⁓ wow. That was longer than I thought. Yeah, it's ⁓ it's a long boat trip. But you're not on the boat for, you know, six full days at a time. You're doing probably eight to twelve hours on the boat and then you stop at these different sites where the indigenous people have already built these little makeshift, I guess it might be the right word, houses where you hang up your hammocks and you go fishing or cook your food or whatever. Just kinda take a chill pill, take a night off, and then in the morning you hit the river again. So doing that process It's fun the first day and it's even more so fun for for us as boys when we were little kids, like this is awesome. It was my first time legitimately in the jungle. It was my first time on a river system in the jungle. It was my first time I caught a fish, first time with indigenous people. When it's your first time and you're a little kid, it's fun. But even as even as a little kid and it's your first time, day three and four and five and six kind of suck. Yeah. So you're like, I just wanna get I just wanna get to the village and not be on the boat all the time. So that that aspect was kind of sucky in comparison to the airplane ride where it's fun and it's faster. And then you loop in the fact that if you need groceries, you don't wanna be waiting an extra six days or if there's a medical emergency, you better get that person hauling out of out of the village as soon as possible with the boat. Because they only have six days and if they're on their deathbed, they're probably gonna die on the river. Whereas an airplane more more likely than not is gonna save that person's life. How long is the airplane ride? Yeah, so it's two hours of flight time, but that's not factoring in the pre flight and all that. Those things that go into making the the airplane airborne. So if you're waiting for the airplane to come to you, takes another two hours. Yeah, probably one to two hours if you You radio out and you say, Hey, we have a medical emergency, we need you ASAP. If they're quick on it, an hour of waiting and then they get up in the air and then there's two hours of flight time. But versus six days, that's yeah. You can't even compare that. So you could do missions work without a support missionary helping you. Yeah, you could Yeah. You're gonna risk your family's life right in that way. Which you said ⁓ we talked earlier your brother has ⁓ Type one diabetes. So how did that happen and how had that been like in the jungle? Right. That's a great question. So yeah, my brother Parker, he has type one diabetes, which is the kind you can't get rid of. You have that insulin pump to bring your blood sugar down and all that kind of stuff. So that happened luckily here in America. He had been getting pretty sick. He had, if I remember correctly, Lyme's disease at the time. So took him to the doctor, had these bullseyes on his body, and we're like, what the heck is going on with this dude? He's getting skinny, he's drinking a lot of water, and they they diagnose him with Lyme disease because he he legitimately had Lyme disease. But put him on that medicine, he still was kind of going downhill. Yeah, we're like, what in the world? We thought this medicine would help. What's going on? So by s some reason or another, my Dad and my mom came up with this idea. Okay, maybe has diabetes, because I have two cousins on my dad's side that were diagnosed with diabetes really early on, which is from my understanding pretty typical of type one diabetes. You get it when you're pretty young. It's not something you get older like type two diabetes. He was getting worse and worse and he called my dad called my aunt and said, Hey, you you have two children that are type one diabetic, what were the signs that they had when they were right before they got diagnosed with type one and she said drinking a lot of water and a few other things. So that's kind of what he was doing. He was drinking a lot of water, a lot of brisk, a lot of just milk and anything that was liquid, 'cause his body was freaking out. His sugar was blood sugar was going up and down and he's trying to regulate that, not knowing that his body's telling him, Hey, you need water to bring your sugar down milk or j you know juice to bring it up. So he didn't know any of that. And my aunt said if he throws up, take him to the hospital right away. Like this is bad. He threw up one of the nights and my dad had to rush him to the hospital. They were going probably eighty miles an hour, flying through the highway. That was pretty eye-opening because if he were in the village, he probably would have died. And that hit I think all of us super hard, like, dude, that's my brother. He could have died. The airplane probably would have saved him, depending upon, you know, what time of day that happened. It happened at night, so it would have been really, really close if it happened in the village, 'cause he had to wait till the morning and take him out and it would have been it would have been cutting it pretty close. Death would probably probably would have happened. But if there was no airplane then there would have been zero hope. But you just kinda see God's hand and all that where the original plan was for us to be in South America in the bush at that time. Had that original plan happened, I think my brother probably would have passed away. But God was working and all that to have us stay home in America where yeah, he he was able to get to a hospital and survive and now he's doing he's doing great as a wife and kids, so things are pretty awesome when God's in control. That's incredible. ⁓ when you see the sacrifices your family made, because they are going into a remote location where you can't get medical access, let's say, when something like that happens, like do you feel like you're ready to make those same sacrifices or do you are you like looking back was like how d how did you feel your parents did? That's a wonderful question. My parents did a super great job. with I think just being wise in their decisions but also knowing okay God has called us to serve him and take the the good news of the gospel to the ends of the earth. And so balancing that those two things, serving God but also not compromising the safety of my family, that's kind of hard. But no matter where you go, you're gonna encounter danger. Here in America, you're you're always in danger. You have you get in a car, you're way more likely to die than you are in an airplane. You're always constantly on the edge of death when you get behind that wheel. So you kinda think to yourself, is it all that different living in a different culture? And yes and no, 'cause if you do get hurt or you get really sick in the in the village, you have to wait those two or three hours and if it's at night, maybe even more. So there is a little bit of you know, it's a little scary. You think, man, I'm in the middle of nowhere. If s if I break my bone, I'm gonna be in pain for a long time. Or if I get sick, I could die if it gets really bad overnight. So I think my parents did a really good job at yeah, balancing those two things. You know, trusting in God. Because if they were going on their own strength, yeah, that's that's a different ball game. But they were trusting in God. But they were also being wise with how they did it. So they weren't the as much as they could, they weren't gonna put us in compromising positions where, you know, I don't know, if if if there's something happening in the village that could really get us hurt, ⁓ dad would probably say, Hey, let's not do that 'cause you don't wanna get in a position where you're really hurt or something and you have to wait for the airplane. So that's a tough question. I don't I don't know the full answer. We're all safe, we're all alive, so praise be to God for that. Yeah. But I think no matter what you do, whether you stay here in America or whether you go overseas, we live in a sinful world. So death is knocking all the time, no matter where you are. So you had a good experience. Yeah, I had a wonderful experience. I love love growing up in the jungle, learning different culture. Don't get me wrong, it sucked at times you wanted to be home with your friends and Yeah, I think it just depends on the kid. It's not like every kid loves being a missionary kid. Not every kid hates being a missionary kid, but for me personally, I loved it. I really if I could have a thousand lives every life that I lived, I would I would choose to be a missionary kid where I grew up. What was some of your favorite things about being a missionary kid that people might not expect? Number one would probably be the exposure to just so many things that The American doesn't get exposed to, whether it's death, like I I nobody wants to be exposed to that, but it opened my eyes to how nasty sin is. Because here in America we we do funerals and we you know we we set the person in a casket. But in the village I grew up in, you see the way that the handle death is so is so unique, and you see holy moly. Like sin is ugly and you can't you you constantly see that. Would you say that death here is more hidden? Yeah. So how how would it be more exposed in where you grew up? You see the severity of death a lot more in the village because when January first hits, you know looking around, somebody's gonna die. And that's kinda hard because when you're living in a village context, you know everybody really well. So somebody gets sick, malaria. Anything like that, that would that's probably the biggest cause of death. Tuberculosis is something that's really prevalent in in the village at at at this point. Nothing too crazy as far as warfare or you know, another village and this village are fighting with each other. That doesn't really happen. It's more so revolved around people getting sick and so preventable things. Yeah, preventable things. My dad has some medical experience. I believe he took EMT training. I think that's the right ⁓ word or whatever. I think he took that back in community college. So he has some background. When somebody gets sick or somebody gets bit by a snake, he jumps in there and he's he's very he's one of those people that is very cool, calm and collected where most people like myself would probably be like, ⁓ freak out. He just jumps in there, calms the situation and and fixes people up. But as far as like long longer sicknesses, not something like a broken bone or a snake bite where you need immediate attention. The longer things, they they do know how to diagnose some of those things. But a lot of those types of sicknesses that come up, they they need a certain type of medicine that we don't have. So no matter how good you are at diagnosing somebody, you might not have the medicine available. So my parents they do know quite a bit, but they still rely on other doctors back home. Texting them, messaging them, calling them, just trying to get a good idea how to help the the village people. So they have a pretty good understanding and they do help as much as possible with the medicine that they do have. I remember one year in a village of about two hundred five babies died and it was all preventable. And we did have medicine and knew the right things to do, but it would be the belief systems of the people. that would set them on a path of n either not receiving the medicine because they believe s ⁓ an evil spirit was behind it or ⁓ they just weren't taking care of their baby in the right way and they refused to do it the medically right way to do it because of their ⁓ world view. And so but that was tough to see, yeah. Almost every year people would die. Yeah. Yeah, there there's a situation in the village where a lady got pregnant and she wasn't she was in labor but wasn't able to give birth to the child. And we were telling the lady, if we get this girl out into the city, they could do a C section, deliver the baby, and both mom and baby will probably be fine. But they just were like, No, no, if if she dies in the city, that's not good. It it just I don't remember what the what the reasoning behind it was. I believe they thought that the spirit wouldn't go to the afterlife because they're not in the village where they're supposed to die. So they would not let the the girl be taken in the airplane. But eventually they kinda came to their senses were like, Okay, yeah, this person's gonna die. So we caught in the airplane, they they said, Bring it in and got her on the airplane, but by the time they decided to do that it was too late and she died ⁓ right before the airplane landed into the city, she passed away. So you do see this this messed up world view has actually caused the death of quite a few people, kinda like what you're saying with the village you grew up in. It stirs up this sort of anger of like, this is not how life should be. This is not how God created the world to be and it it It didn't encourage me, but it motivated me then and it motivates me now to I gotta go take this message of the gospel to these people and I need to do it yesterday. Like these people are being born, they're living a life, very short life, 'cause they don't have the kind of medicine we have, like forty years old, fifty years old. That's a pretty solid life in the life of a indigenous person, at least where we're from. And like that's their life and they're they're not thriving, they're surviving the whole time. And then they They live all that without hope and die without hope. And man, you and then when when they do die, people are just hopelessly wailing for these people. Yeah. How have you seen ⁓ your parents bringing the gospel, learning the people's language and and sharing God's word? How have you seen that change people's lives day to day? I had a lot of buddies who were not believers and then they did become believers and our friendship changed because there's a just a different kind of connections. Like you are now a child of God and so so my like we are legitimately brothers in Christ now. And that was cool because even though I didn't know how to speak the language too well and I didn't yeah, the communication wasn't super good. We still were able to have kind of God, God centered conversations despite that language barrier. The way that they lived their lives was different. The way they played soccer, they're more gracious, they were more kind. It was just, yeah, their their whole demeanor changed. Not not like that, but you could see a transformation happening. And one of the the the sad stories, but you could see, okay, these people really are trusting in God, was this dude. Who's really good friends with my dad. His son got cerebral malaria and they sent him out to the city. He went with his boy and his wife and they're trying to fix this little boy. They're trying to, you know, get rid of this cerebral malaria. But even though they were out in the city, they couldn't figure it out. So he called my dad. He's like, Jamie, please, please send me back. I want my boy to die here in in the village. Not because of any animistic ideas or anything, but because he wanted just to he wanted to have his son pass away in the village. So my dad would spend a lot of like the last two nights that boy was alive 'cause he was in like a comatose state where he wasn't really there, but he was still alive, his vital organs were still working. My dad would be just spending all night with with this guy and His son that was passing away slowly, and he'd be like, Jamie, I want to pray. And he'd be like, Yahweh, and then he would pray in his in his native tongue. And he just kept doing that. Jamie, I want to pray. In one of his prayers, he says, God, you are all powerful. You know what is good, what is right. I'm not asking you, or I'm not telling you to heal my son. I'm asking you. But you know what is good, and I can't wait for a day where where everything is good, everything and and all bad is gone. And that was like this dude just became a believer a month or two ago and his boy is dying and he's able to go, God, I trust you. I don't know why you're doing this. I don't know why you're allowing this to happen. I'm not telling you to save my boy. I'm asking you. And yet through all of that he still had immense faith in God and and in Jesus and that was so cool to see just a complete transfer of mentality and worldview. Whereas if that would have happened a year ago, he would have had the witch doctors dancing around his boy and trying to rip the bad spirits out of the boy and all that stuff. But no, he's like, I don't want witch doctors. I want I want to talk to Yahweh. Do you have any other interesting stories ⁓ from the tribe and Yeah, growing up. One that was, I guess, more aviation related, which I kinda like. We were in the city for a long, long time waiting to get into the village, and it was taking forever because the nation at the time was struggling with getting a certain type of fuel for the certain type of aircraft. And we were just like, Come on, we want to get in the village. And eventually, after a few months, there was some gas and the airplane was able to get up in the air and there's enough fuel for us to get into the village. But before me, my parents and my brother could get into the village, there was priority of another missionary team that they needed to come out and do some paperwork or something like that. So the airplane had to t pick them up, bring them out, and then we'd get on that airplane and go into the village. So that was the plan. The airplane flies into that village. The husband stays back because the husband didn't have to do paperwork or whatever the case was. The wife and two kids get on the airplane, they take off, and they're supposed to arrive into the city by like three o'clock, something like that. So three o'clock comes around and they haven't landed. So we're like, this is a little weird, but not too abnormal. He he made his state for lunch or Maybe it was bad weather, so he was staying and didn't take off yet. So not not too any not too crazy, nothing to worry about. Four o'clock rolls around. They're like, Okay, this is weird, because we would have gotten a radio call from the village saying, Hey, we might be late. So my dad radios in and he's saying, Hey, where you know, is the plane still on the airstrip? And the guy goes, No. They took off at, you know, one or twelve o'clock or whatever the time was. Meaning they should have been there at three. And it's now four, getting close to five. And we're like, what in the world happened to this plane? So Jamie, my dad, he he he radios in again, Hey, the plane's not here. Are you sh like are you sure they didn't go anywhere else? And he's like, No. And then the guy starts breaking down. He's like, That's my family. Like, where are they? And man, you could just hear the the just terror in that guy's in that guy's voice. It was so sad. Cause his wife and two little kids got on that airplane. We get contacted with the American military. We're trying to get a ping as as to where that airplane is, 'cause you can ping w if it crashes, there's a signal that the airplane it's kinda like when you crash your car. Kinda like that. But it's orange or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So no black boxes on those little airplanes. But you know when you get in a car crash, your airbag goes off. There's no airbags, but the same rule kind of applies when you are in an airplane crash, when you impact it'll send out a signal to hey, this is where I'm where I crashed. So we pull that signal and it's showing really close to the village. So we're like, what? Is it s is it actually on the airstrip? But we're like, the guy said it's not on the airstrip. Maybe he bumped it 'cause you can actually manually turn it on to test it. But we're like, there's no way. This pilot is super, super skilled. He wouldn't make a mistake like that. So we're like, What is going on? And we're like, Well, the o the only thing we can do really is go to that spot and figure out what the heck happened. So We go and do that, but before I get to that point, it's good to jump into the point of view of the pilot and the family. So what actually happened is they took off and as they're climbing, all of a sudden, the propeller just stops. It wasn't like, ⁓ we're we're we're spinning a little bit. Maybe the engine ran out of fuel or, you know, I ⁓ messed something up. No, it completely stopped. And what had happened is the crankshaft inside the engine split. Which means your engine is cooked and you can't do anything about that. So he immediately tries to bank and turn back to the village, but when you're climbing you don't have a whole lot of altitude, nor do you have a whole lot of airspeed, which means you can stall the plane, which also means you're gonna fall like a rock. So turn out a gas card. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you don't want to turn that plane too hard. You wanna be very careful. And as he's turning, he's Nope, I'm probably gonna stall here in a bit. So now he's just a million things are going through his head. What am I gonna do? And he's looking at the water. He's going, Okay, I could land there, that's probably our safest bet. But he's looking in the he's thinking, Okay, no, there's a little kid. If we crash, maybe the the lady and the older boy can get out and and really, you know, swim away, but the little boy's gonna drown. Can't do that, and that's not a good option. So he's thinking, Man, what do I do now? and he's running out of time. You don't have a whole lot of time when you're that low without engine power. So he sees a gagnito, which is a tributary. You have the main river and then you have a little creek like thing, a tributary that splits off. And he decides, I'm gonna try to crash into that because those are usually like knee deep and it's way better than crash into the canopy where You might hit the branches at first, but eventually you're gonna hit a tree trunk and then you're really in some big trouble. That's how a lot of people die when they crash into the jungle. So he's like, That's not a good option. We're gonna hit the tributary because even though it looks like green carpet, the trees are leaning over the water and you're gonna hit the branches and then when you go through the branches then you'll hit into the water. So that's what he did and he landed that sucker, kind of. I mean he crash landed it and it was all wonky hanging down, but everybody got out, nobody died, nobody got hurt. There was That's incredible. Yeah, no scratches. I don't think anybody shed any blood. Wow. And a day or two later, this guy who's who was doing some humanitarian aid w using a helicopter, he actually was able to come rescue them in one of these weird God moments. It was either a week or a few days prior to this event that him and a staff member learned how to belay from a helicopter and rescue people. And they just got certified for that for whatever reason. They just wanted to learn that. I don't know what the reason was for that. So they just learned that skill. Wow. This airplane crashes and he's the only one that we know that has a helicopter and he so happens to just learn this skill. So they fly over where this ping is that we got from the military and they say smoke, they see a flare, and they fly over the spot and they belay down and they can you know they can kind of see the pilot and he's going like this, like you know, all three passengers okay. Like we're all we're all okay. They belay down, pick ⁓ up, and then they're probably no more than a mile or two from the the village. So they just They have ⁓ hooked to the helicopter and they pick ⁓ up and they're on the string and then they drop ⁓ down and that's that's that. Wow. So they're only a mile away. Yeah. So they they got up and they're pretty much like that's it. It was pretty it was pretty insane. But you could see God working through that whole thing for sure. Yeah. I'm sure that was really inspiring for you. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. To become a missionary pilot. Yeah. You know, it's one of those scary things. You're like, ⁓ I hope that doesn't happen to me. But it's also like that dude was awesome for thinking that quickly, making sure everybody was gonna survive and making the right choice by flying into that tributary type thing. So it was cool. It was one of those like he's a maverick type of a guy. And yeah, it encouraged me to really get on my horse when I train to be a pilot to make sure that if I do end up in that situation that I've received the training to be able to do that. And think that quickly. Not just pass your grades with Chat GPT. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, so last question. How did you get saved and did you right away become want to become a missionary? I got saved pretty early on, probably five, give or take a year. This was after we went up the river and we entered, you know, living 'cause we we we entered the village through the boat. Stayed there for a number of months and then we took our home assignment shortly after just to kind of get accustomed to the culture, get our stuff set up before we left. But in that time frame, my mom was taking me and my brother through the Lamb, this children's book where it takes you from what I remember chronologically, the beginning, Genesis, all the way to the end of the Bible. Yeah, it's like the kids' version of Stranger on the Road for ⁓ by this name. Yeah. I believe it actually might be the same author, but I Yeah, John Cross. Yeah. So that book was super amazing for a little kid. You get to see so many examples, so many things in the Bible early on that's pointing to Jesus. So by the time you get to Jesus, I mean it's like the whole book the whole Bible spoils the climax of the Bible itself, Jesus. So by the time we did get to the gospel I knew, you know, that there needs to be a payment for sin, that I can't pay for my sin and and I need a savior. So when we got to the Jesus part of it, all of it made sense. Like Jesus is the Lamb of God. I can't pay for my sin. I need to put my faith in. That's all I have to do is believe in Jesus. And when I made that connection and my mom explained the gospel super clearly through this book, it was just like just a completely change of life. I don't really remember too much what life looked like or what life was like prior to Christ, putting my faith in Christ. Your fact. Yeah, exactly. But I do remember this overwhelming sense of peace that came over my life when I put my faith in Jesus. So it was just like, whoa. And then We were I think we were dancing or jumping up and down saying, Jesus save me, Jesus save me and then that was super excited. But then I was like, Whoa, wait, hold on, mom. Do I have to do I have to what if I do something bad tomorrow? I need to ask for forgiveness again, Jesus. And she's like, Nope, you you have been born again. You're saved. Jesus paid for your for your sin. And that was super encouraging to me because I was like, I don't have Do some sort of ritual every day and combine works and faith. It was no just all faith in Jesus. And that was like He gave me this amazing gift of salvation, something I do not deserve. And the older I got and the more mistakes I made, the more I realize how loving, how kind, how awesome that gift is. And my heart posture in response to that is I want to pay Jesus back. with my life. I don't have to. He's not forcing me to. And I'm not doing it out of, you know, hopefully I get a goody goody out of this. But truly you gave your life up for me and I want to do the same for you. Well be cool to have you on the podcast maybe after you become a missionary. That'd be really cool. Yeah, dude, that'd be so awesome. See if I make it