I originally wrote this on the flight home from Alaska at the beginning of August, so it’s several weeks outdated being that we are now in Nebraska and Stephen is an official certified instrument pilot.

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There’s something about it– the hum of an airplane thousands of feet in the sky with a miniature world down below, the vibration of the window seat and the melodies that whisper through my earbud headphones. There’s a stillness up here, and something about it in which I can find myself again..

Alaska has been hard. I have struggled all summer to know what to say, and flying home in the very back seat of the plane with rugged terrain below me, I leave this place knowing Alaska has grown me.

Evening sun casts shadows on the mountain range. Blue meets white long in the distance of a vast, vast world. The sight leaves me breathless. 

Summer has taught us a lot… about ourselves, about each other, about faith and trust and surrender to the One who knows best. We have been stretched beyond our limits, faced to confront the selfishness, pride, and doubt that easily grows within our hearts. We have been left amazed by Alaska, and the One who breathed it into creation. We’ve been challenged to be clay in the Potter’s hands, more ply-able as the days and seasons pass.

The beauty is always in the looking back… at least, the deep and raw kind that I’ve come to love. Always in the looking back.

In many ways it feels as though we have limped through the summer, crossing the finish line barely able to say “We survived.” Two and a half months are a blur of days and experiences and hurts and challenges and joys I feel I will find myself sorting through during the months to come. 

It’s been a summer of flight training and aviation talk and attempting to grasp what it means and causes and costs to be a pilot’s wife. It’s been a summer of flight lessons and a busy husband and me crying, overwhelmed at the thought of this being the rest of my life, and can I be okay with that? 

Surrender has been a bitter taste on the back of my tongue this summer. Because suddenly I am left with the weight of the thought: what if this costs everything I am, everything I want, everything I deeply love and dream big about? What if this.. this being a pilot’s wife.. costs everything?

Whispy thin clouds pass beneath us, and through the haze you can see the water cutting though the jagged mountains down below. Alaska, in all its beauty, overwhelms me.

I still wrestle with the question. I still fight and I still struggle. The core of it is my heart, struggling to make Him my everything, begging Him amidst the fight, “Do not let me leave here unchanged..” 

Stephen has worked some very long and very hard hours this summer, something I fail to fully appreciate again and again. He’s given this instrument training thing 110% of what he’s got, while still trying to keep up with me and keep up with life and keep his heart fixed on why he’s doing all the training and the flying. He’s been a bleary-eyed, nose-in-the-books, aviation junky this summer, and while he has SO enjoyed the training and we are thankful for it, I think we are both ready for the change of pace and focus that awaits us in Haiti.

The horizon blurs in a hue of colors– the purples and yellows and blues each running into the other. The snow caps are less and less on the mountaintops that begin to hide beneath the fog. The sun sets behind us.

At the time I originally wrote this, Stephen had his checkride scheduled for a Friday. Since then, the weeks have passed and so have his long study days. He’s officially instrument certified, and has successful passed his big oral test and actual flight test! This means he can fly in the clouds now, using the gauges and instruments on the plane to navigate. It’s no small accomplishment; in fact it’s a pretty big and difficult one. He leaves me impressed and amazed, thankful to call him mine. He has many stories from the summer, much different than mine. So maybe once he re-coops from his whirlwind of a summer, he will be able to have the time to find his voice here on this little blog.

Until then, we are enjoying Nebraska, seeing sweet and dear people, road-tripping, and warm summertime weather. 

-Anna

The day’s chilly wind and gloomy skies are a stark contrast to the Caribbean heat and bright sunshine we’ve known since September..

Where do we even begin?

Here in the silence, the memories flood my mind. 20 kids with pink eye. Endless knocks upon the door. Jovenal’s back injury that left us googling signs of internal bleeding. It seems like a lifetime ago. The whisper of praise in seeing Jovenal up and walking by the time we left Haiti. The tug-of-war in leaving those 33 kiddos. The sheer exhaustion. The traveling. Colorado mountains and the celebration of a sister’s high school graduation. A heartache trip to Chicago. Us sitting on the living room floor, talking of memories through the tears; saying goodbye to my grandpa, sent home on hospice and dying from liver cancer. Attending his funeral last week, in all its surrealness. Alaska. So many new faces. Such a new way of life.

8 short weeks have held so much.

We are here. Nestled into a quaint little camper where our refrigerator is in the shower and towels line the windows because Alaska never grows fully dark in the summer. I double check my math, making sure it’s our 3rd week here. 

It is hard to describe our days, because each day is its own kind of different. 7:30 breakfast, 12:30 lunch, and 6 o’clock suppers are dependable. Stephen’s groundschool lessons faithfully begin at 9:30 each morning- something he has really enjoyed and learned a lot from. Some days there are sight seers. Some days Stephen is off for an unexpected flight to Palmer. Other days he surprises me by walking into the camper in the middle of the afternoon. Some days the air is still and silent; other days, the rumble of airplanes taking off and landing is seemingly non-stop. 

Regardless, life is busy here at Kingdom Air Corps. 

Moose walk the woods behind our camper- a sight better enjoyed indoors rather than out. Alaska’s mountains are an altogether different kind of beauty. Before we left Chicago, someone described Alaska to us as God’s land.. and from whispering winds to breathing-taking mountain views to wooded tree areas, that description has stuck with us.

We are adjusting to a new rhythm of life here on “the ranch” as they say. Stephen’s time and purpose fills much quicker than mine, as there is often something to work on, something to study, or a project to lend a hand with. In all honesty, I’ve felt quite lost the last few weeks. For what seems like the first time in a long time, there are no children to tutor or classroom plans to make, no nanny responsiblity to fill, no family to cook supper for, no Mikey to cuddle or kids to give attention to. After spending time giving and helping a ministry, this summer we find ourselves on the other end- we are now the ones receiving someone’s hard work and time and energy. 

This is life. And we are adapting to the changes. Right now Stephen is back from ground school, studying and reviewing things he learned this morning. More instructors have come in during the last week, as well as teams from Texas and other places in the States. The pace is picking up here, and more dinner tables fill as the days go on. The pine cones that were just babies on the tree outside our window are nearly full-grown now. The heater has kicked on, easing the chill of a drafty camper. The sky threatens rain. 

Now that we are settled, we are planning to post more regularly once again. I have a video of Stephen’s first takeoff here on the grass runway, but despite my numerous attempts, it just won’t upload. It may have to wait until we are back home.. but slow internet and water that turns to ice cubes mid-shower keeps us from forgetting where we came from 🙂  

You’ll have to follow us on facebook (Stephen has an album on his page) or my Instagram to get our photo updates, the files seem to large to upload to the blog. 

-Anna

It has been a busy month as we made the transition from Haiti to Alaska.. but we are here now in Sutton, Alaska where moose walk around our camper/RV, the mountains are breath-takingly gorgeous, the sound of flying airplanes can be heard overhead, and it is so cold (it’s really only like 50 degrees. Haha)

We arrived late on Saturday night and are adjusting to the rhythm of life here at Kingdom Air Corps. There are so many stories and experiences from the past month we have to share with you, but for now we’ll leave you with this view from our bedroom window 🙂 

-Anna

A year ago, the weather was perfect. The skies were sunny and blue with just-budding trees, a picture-perfect spring day.. Today we find ourselves with 33 kids, here with the humidity stuck to our skin. An endless flood of knocks not the front door. Here, where we woke up to a grasshopper crawling up the wall behind our heads. With days ever-so frustrating, and ever-so full. I have come to know you in a much deeper way over the course of a year. And you.. me. 

Sometimes it seems we couldn’t be more opposite.. you, the lover-of-breakfast and practical thinker, the one who is 5 minutes early for everything and has a bit of a sugar addiction. And me. Coffee lover and please-don’t-give-me-anything-to-eat-before-ten, please. The one who is usually scrambling to find her shoes when we’re already 5 minutes late, and likes making low-sugar, gluten free desserts whenever she can.

You deal with my crazy. My funny-random crazy that dances in the kitchen and eats ice cream cake for dinner. And my terribly obnoxious kind of crazy, the kind where I should learn where the line lies and that jumping out from behind the dark hallway door isn’t funny. And then there’s just plain crazy.. where 4 innocent words at the dinner table are taken so personally, and the next hour of your life feels like mayhem. 

We rented our very first house together. The one on 1st street, back when your commute to work was 2.5 minutes long. We’ve unpacked and repacked countless times, it seems. Now our things are stored in my parents basement. We’ve planted a garden; watching it fail, succeed, and then die early. We’ve spent a lot of hours on the road. A lot. We know how to maneuver the airports and which bags to pack what luggage in; we learned our lesson about holiday embargo. 

A lot has changed over the course of a year. More memories than this page can hold. Looking at you, sitting across from the table, I think of all the changes that have taken place. 

I think we both worried the first year would break us.. that marriage and house-renting and moving to Haiti and then to Alaska would be something that would ruin us. We knew how crazy it was. And if we ever forgot, there were people to remind us. 

But there was one thing we got wrong. One thing I wish we could go back and tell ourselves as we worried over decisions and was this the right one?

God is so much bigger than either of us can fathom. 

Not only is He bigger than our hearts can know, but He will hold us and go before us and keep us. April 23, 2017 has come. And here we are, sitting at the kitchen table while the noise from the country of Haiti floods into our windows and the kids knock on the door and the humidity sticks to our skin and there are receipts for Alaskan Airline tickets in our email boxes.. we are here, and it is only because He is too. 

Despite the changes, despite the differences between us, despite us ourselves.. He is faithful. And good. He is the reason, the sustainer, the provider. 

One year later, and I still think you are cute with your hair sticking up in the back and your eyes that light with a mischievous secret. One year later, we have had many a hard moments and many, many highlights. One year later, it is still you I want to crawl into bed next to (and I don’t mind it if you’ll kill the spiders and set the rat traps).

All my love,

Anna

Also, let me apologize in advance for the way I will probably smell like pee by the end of today. If that’s not romantic, I don’t know what is. 

There’s a ziplock bag full of poop sitting on my shelf, and I wonder if it’s really only been 2 weeks that we’ve been back. Meds litter the countertops- children’s Tylenol, eye drops, Pepto, antibiotics, ibuprofen, and Gatorade packets creating a new medicine station. Wildaneise lays sleeping on the couch across the room. Yesterday it was Jantzy who fell asleep in the same spot after crushing his fingers in the door. Two days before that, Maria. Shaggy goes to switch the laundry. One more knock on the door. Water boils on the stove for macaroni noodles. 

Ray and Bonnie are out for the month, their absence strongly felt. 

We got back two weeks ago (May 31st) after stopping in the Bahamas, Port-au-Prince, and Pignon. We flew in MFI, the old DC-3 inching its way back to Haiti.. back to the kids we’ve come to love.. back to the humidity.. back to our class of 7.. back to the loud and the crazy.. back to some of the fullest, and yet most draining, days. 

To call the last 2 weeks a whirlwind seems like an understatement. I carry a ziplock bag full- of Joshua’s antibiotics and iron supplements, of ibuprofen pills, of pink-eye drops, children’s tylenol and antifungal cream. And never, ever forget the tissues. To and from, across the compound, every morning at 8 a.m. and every night at 8 p.m. We fall into a rhythm, Shaggy and I. Our heads hitting pillows by 10 o’clock, our eyes awake by 6. Day in and day out, until it all starts to blur together.

With 16 children on eye-drops for pink eye, we’ve made countless runs to the sketchy, road-side ‘pharmacy’ in the last week. Every day a new name is added to the calendar hanging on the kitchen wall, one more ‘welcomed into the family’ (as the kids are saying whenever someone gets the dreaded ‘peesh peesh’). They welcomed me Monday, something that seemed inevitable. 

The word ‘busy’ takes on a whole new meaning these days. More often than not, I am looking for ‘just a minute’.. but the interruptions seem unending. I count the 15 days we have left here, remembering there is grace for just this one. The busy, quite honestly, is exhausting. But there is a beauty with in it, for the way we’ve come to know these kids in a new way. 

Our house is full– of kids coming for movie nights, the air heavy with the smell of popcorn.. and boys at the kitchen table, practicing their reading and math skills in the morning, a more relaxed version of school.. of kids, who maybe just need a quiet place for an hour to actually sleep in quiet.. of little ones coming to count the money in their envelopes and buy lollipops from our little shop we’ve acquired.

This afternoon I sat on the trailer out front, watching Stephen practice the motorcycle driving with some of the kids. Half a dozen kids hanging out, each waiting their turn. There is a parade of children wherever we go, even for the most mundane of tasks. Joshua and David (the orphanage’s two youngest) each hold onto either side of my shorts anytime I’m at the orphanage (making the fear of being de-pants-ed very real. Haha). 

We went into Cap yesterday to go to the airport to pick up the mail. Because Hannah and Shaggy don’t know how to say no, we brought along 8 of the boys for a fun outing. They all enjoyed the ride, and we brought some snacks and music speakers to pass the time (it’s a 2-hour drive in, and a 2-hour drive back because the roads are so bad). While we waited to get the mail, we happened to see 2 airplanes take off. Talk about an exciting event! I’ve never seen 8 boys jump out of a vehicle so fast! Haha. It was a long day, but it was a day filled with much laughter and fun memories.

The time is so full and so busy, there isn’t much chance to think about how it is winding down.. as much as the crazy gets to us at times, there are moments that make us think ahead to summer, and how we are going to miss these kiddos. Having both Ray and Bonnie, and Lou and Deb gone makes us realize the relationships and sweet company we took for granted, and how we will be missing them too. We also never realized how many sick children and grandmouns (old people) there were until both Bonnie and Deb were gone. 

In the distance, the dogs bark. Beside me, Stephen catches up on the ever-growing emails and to-do’s. I’ve a new-found appreciation for the mosquito net tucked around our bed, after Stephen and Abel killed a spider literally the size of my hand in the kitchen today. I’m trying not to think about the rat I saw scurrying in the rafters at the entrance of the house. When we left the orphanage after nighttime devo’s, all the children were still alive, no one was hanging from the ceiling fans, and we only had to take 2-ft long spanking sticks out of two of their hands.

All in all, we’ll call that a pretty good day.

-Anna