Well, it is March again in North Carolina.  Buds are beginning to appear on the trees and Spring is expected but nightly temperatures are forecast below freezing again this weekend!  Time for Winter to leave!  This is the South!  We wanted to give everyone an update regarding fundraising and nearing events, but first a milestone!

I finally took the time and spent the funds to obtain my Commercial Multi-Engine Rating.  I am right at 1,000 hours of flight time but it has all been in single-engine aircraft.  Now I am rated to pilot aircraft with more than one engine!  I started this process last fall but on the day of my checkride, Hurricane Florence hit.  This delayed things a few days and when I called to reschedule, the flight school where I was training had sold the airplane!  They were in the process of buying another model of multi-engine airplane (a Beechcraft Baron).  Well, I put things on hold as flying these aircraft is expensive and I would need a few more hours of flight training to get comfortable in the new plane.  I finally got around to doing this last week.

The first half of my checkride was on Friday, but the weather was too bad to fly.  I finished up the flying portion of the checkride the following Wednesday.  Now, I can fly the Piper Chieftain with Harvest Aviation.  Here is a pic of the Baron I flew for the checkride:

It is also time for Bensen Days and Sun N’ Fun.  Bensen Days is a gyro fly-in that I attended last year and wrote about held in Wauchula, Florida.  This is the same location where Harvest is headquartered and is where I met the Harvest personnel last year.  Talk about divine appointments!

I will be headed down on Sunday or Monday and will spend the week in Wauchula with Bensen Days.  I will then relocate to Lakeland for the next week of Sun N’ Fun.  I will be promoting “Now Generation” training for Harvest, as well as the Belize/Honduras missions of Missionary Support and “Reach and Teach” training.  I will also be assisting the light-sport industry again as I do every year.

These will be the first big aviation events without Chris Lord around.  There will definitely be a missing piece to everything going on.

Finally, fundraising.  Guys, we need help in this.  We still need to raise approximately $6,500/month to reach our minimum funding.  Please pray about financially partnering with us in this endeavor.  A team is forming up in Wauchula to start this training program and we need to be there.  We need the funding to get there.  Can you sacrifice one meal out a month to help?  Please visit www.continuetogive.com/greatcommissionaviation to support.

Hope everyone has a great Spring and we will keep in touch.