2017

January has already flown by and even though writing on the blog has been on my mind quite a bit, but haven’t taken the time to sit down and write. I think part of this is because there are a few topics I really would like to write about, but they are not yet completed thoughts. So since it was a while ago since I wrote, I will mostly give you a couple highlights of my Christmas break and a rundown on roughly what the year 2017 will look like. 2017 has been very exciting so far, and it looks like it will continue that way.

Just days after I passed by private pilot check ride I flew back to Sweden to celebrate Christmas with my parents and sisters. I also got to meet many members of my extended family and many friends who live in that area. There were many who showed me a lot of support and were curious about how things were going with training and future plans to go out in missions. It was very encouraging to see how people want to be a part of my mission in various ways. I just need to mention here as a little shoutout to many of you (you know who you are) that I was very touched by the money that so many of you had helped in collecting to support my studies. There will be more on this in later posts on how you can continue to support as I step into the more expensive part of training.

As it is my father’s 60th birthday this year, we as a family wanted to make sure to spend some time together once again as a family vacation. On that trip I got to meet my brother and his little family again for the first time since the summer of 2015. It was great to meet my niece for the first time and realizing that my brother now actually is a dad and I’m an uncle. Needless to say maybe, but it was a great joy to have those days together and I am very proud of my brother and his wife.

On that same trip, I had invited a very special friend to come with us. I had met her at a best friend’s wedding earlier that year and since then we had stayed in contact. When the opportunity came that she could possibly meet up at the place where me and my family were staying, she took the opportunity and came to see me there. As you may have seen announced in public, we are now officially dating and she is now my girlfriend. We live right now big distances apart but slowly knitting together a way to close that geographic gap. I will probably write more about her and this later on, but it is really exciting to have her being more and more involved in my life and for me being part of hers.

The semester started almost as yearly as the year started and I have already been in school since January 3rd. I know, this is not much to compare to you Swedish folk out there, but while aviation students start the semester in January the main campus students just started this week. In the beginning now it has mostly been repetition and more in-depth studies in aircraft maintenance. Before flight starts we will go through training in wilderness survival, water emergencies, and some more maintenance.

The flight portion of this semester will be very exciting since we will start flying some more powerful and complex aircraft. For you flight nerds out there, we will start training in the models (all Cessna) 206 (high performance and just a lot of power), 185 (high performance with a tail-wheel design), and 182 (complex aircraft with retractable landing gear). Although it will be fun and challenging to fly these birds they also burn more gas than the ones we used last semester for private pilot training. Burning more gas means that I need to pay more for every flight hour. Any financial support that I can receive will be most welcomed from here on. I will set up a system (hopefully soon) so that you more conveniently can donate money, but in the meantime you who have already donated can still do so using the same system as previously used.

There will not be much of a summer break this year since we must take as much advantage of good summer weather as possible. So I will not be able to travel across the Atlantic to visit those of you there for quite some time. However, I am very happy to host for guests to come and visit here.

The fall semester will kick off with some more maintenance seminars as well as preparations for an extended cross country flight trip that will start at Spokane and take us all the way down the west coast to southern California, Arizona and up inland over some mountains back to Spokane again. This is one of the greatest highlights of Moody Aviation Training and will be just as demanding as it will be exciting.

Towards the end of the year and the end of fall semester I should be ready to test for commercial pilot certification which means that I then could take pay for flying people or goods around. This is a requirement to fly with missionary organizations like MAF, JAARS or NTM.

As this year goes by and step by step I will be lead through training, I will really need your prayers and any financial support you out of the goodness of your heart can give. Many of you have been very loyal and steadfast in you prayer commitments for the benefit of success my training. I have no doubt that it is because of you and God with his grace has let me go down this road.