Prayer is awesome!!

This week God has just been working in me a lot. I was a bit down, frustrated, mad, annoyed, and what not and I just prayed that God would lift my burden and just help me to trust in Him alone. I prayed that I would be able to forgive, forget, and not let this issue consume my thoughts. I was so stressed and could not even focus on studying. I prayed through my whole run in the rain and stopped at the river crossing to just take in God’s beautiful creation and pray some more. I was still a little frustrated later that night, but I could feel my spirit lifting. In the morning I woke up with a smile on my face and said, “today is going to be a good day” (which has been a common theme this week between my roommate and I). I went to school just like normal and continued to pray that God would help me to block any negative thoughts and help me to be happy. God answered my prayers for sure! My spirit was light and I was not frustrated or mad. Often when I am sad or frustrated or down I listen to By Your Side by Tenth Avenue North. The song is as if God is talking to us.. “why are you striving these days… why are you crying let me lift up your face….why are you still searching as if I’m not enough”. I think about these words every time I feel subpar. God reminds me that it is about Him and not about the little things in life! I rejoiced, praised, and thanked God for answering my prayers and through that God showed me Romans 2: 4, “Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?

I needed to repent of my sins and ask forgiveness and trust in God that he will make straight my path -Proverbs 16:3 Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.

God answered my prayers and made my heart cheerful and I thank Him for everything! Proverbs 15: 13 and 30 say just that “ A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit. 30 Light in a messenger’s eyes brings joy to the heart, and good news gives health to the bones.” So whenever you are down and out, pray and God will answer your prayers.

SMAT has been such a blessing to me. My class is full of Christ seeking people all with a gung ho spirit to spread the gospel. It is so refreshing to be in a school where we read the Bible every day, discuss it, and even bring it up in class when talking about simple things. In our Publications and Regulations class we were talking about some of the regulations and one of my classmates brought up Proverbs and how it related to the situation! Wow! That is so cool. We take talking freely about Christ for granted and yet even in schools you can’t do what we do at SMAT. It just energizes me to be more excited and want to share about what God is doing through me and through my fellow classmates. 

Stay tuned for blogs about what my next step will be in flying and after I am done with SMAT and where God is leading me (ps I’m still staying tuned too to hear what God has in plan for me). And stay tuned for more updates on classes and what we are studying next, and an update on our adoption process.

Here's a few of my favorite songs that I haven been listening a lot to lately. Listen and enjoy!

Scandal of Grace 

Tears of the Saints 

Kings and Queens 

 

 

Fly with Christ,

Helen

Finally an update!

Lots of things have been happening in the past few weeks!! 

Maintenance hangar with all the projects/ planes we work on.

Work area

Other half of the lab. The classroom is at the far right corner.

The multimeter that I soldered together from scratch!

 

CLASSES update: 

In Electricity class we learned how solder and made multimeters by attaching all the components to the PC circuit boards and learned how to troubleshoot circuits. Today we had our final for electricity and I think it went well and are moving on to rules and regulations.

Troubleshooting circuits and seeing how they work.

Safety wiring

We finished Math, Safety & Ground Operations, and moved on to complete Physics as well. We are now are into Cleaning and Corrosion class and Tools & Hardware class. In cleaning class we are in groups and working on different cleaning projects. My group is working on a rusted old landing gear from a PT19 military training plane. We spent a day cleaning it with soap and water, another day taking the tire and wheel off, another day for beat blasting and wire brushing off the rust from the nuts, bolts and the strut, cleaning off paint, priming it, and now we are almost done painting it.

Being fancy for the banquet.

Some of the other projects we have been working on include, de-riveting (taking out the rivets) on damaged plane wings and cleaning airplanes to get ready for our banquet. The banquet was for all the sponsors of SMAT and those who are connected and support the school. A few of us students served at the banquet as tour guides, and clean up crew so we go to dress up and be fancy.

In hardware class we’ve been working on have been identifying nuts, bolts, cables, rivets, and much more. Some of the fun things we get to do is safety wiring, crimping cables, and installing helicoils.

 

 

FLYING update:

SMAT planes all lined up

Fying with Caleb

A week or two ago I got checked out with Benz Aviation and now am able to fly in their plane and so I can take it up when I go flying. I also got to fly in one of the SMAT planes. Caleb, one of the other A&P students who is a pilot, wanted to practice some instrument approaches and so I flew as his safety pilot along with 2 other students who just came along for the ride (and to reduce the cost). It was neat to fly in the SMAT plane- it is a regular Cessna 172 but they add a missionary checklist box that helps you to go through the procedures methodically and safely. In the next few weeks/ month I will explore the area more, do a night flight or two, and get up to date on instrument flying. Tomorrow I’m flying to Grand Haven which is right on the lake.

 

FIXING update:

So I noticed my coolant was leaking in my car about a week ago. I checked the fluid level and noticed it was a little low, so I added new fluid. By the next day everything I had poured in was on the ground (at least ½ a bottle). Hmmm. Something is wrong here. I asked around and some of the guys in my class thought it might be the water pump that was bad. Since I’m a mechanic student, I figured it would be a good experience to try and fix it myself. So I called up AAA and got my car towed to school so I could fix it there and use any tools that I might need. I ordered the parts (water pump, gasket, and radiator hose), and with the help of some knowledgeable friends we got it fixed! Now it does not leak anymore! This was the first major project I have ever done and was a neat experience to learn how things work and how to fix them.

School is going great even when it’s long, tiring, and tough. But God provides us strength and energy every day.  

Fly with Christ,

Helen