The Jonah

For those of you who have seen the movie Master and Commander you will remember that "the Jonah" was the term used to describe someone who brought bad luck. In the case of the movie the bad luck was a spell of no wind, which is important for a large vessel that only has sails as its form of locomotion, which lasted until the "Jonah" jumped overboard with a cannon ball in his back pocket. While I neither endorse "luck" or swimming with cannon balls in your back pocket, I will take this opportunity to thank a volunteer named Terry who worked at SAMAIR for 3 weeks and at the same poke fun at the weather which coincided with his visit.

Terry came to us from Atlanta, Georgia. A pilot and mechanic, he spent his whole time working on the wiring and instrument panel of our rebuild aircraft. A master electron chaser, Terry was able to install all of the radios, instruments, and wiring in our panel without letting any of the smoke out of the wires!

Being rainy season, there was plenty of rain just about every day. I had the chance to take Terry on two flights where he got to see first hand what a day in the life of a missionary pilot was like. We saw a fair amount of rain, the inside of clouds, rain showers not 1 mile from our jungle landing sites, rain, soak-your-tennis-shoes-wet airstrips, more rain, and even a little blue sky.

Of course the moment that Terry left not only did the rain stop, but nothing else got done on the airplane because he was the only person who was not being interrupted all of the time by phone calls, meetings, or flights. Terry, thanks for coming and working along side us in Peru! You are welcome anytime, just don't bring the rain.