Christian Aviation Ministries

Driediger August newsletter

Summer 2011 – A flight in the life…
This summer has seen Wings to Northern Canada begin a couple of different partnerships with groups doing ministry work in northern Manitoba. That fact has meant that our little airplane has been into a few communities on a more repetitive basis, which is exciting because as the airplane and pilot keep coming back, slowly some amount of rapport is built between both the people that are coming in on the airplane, and also myself and Wings to Northern Canada as well. Both in Garden Hill, which is 500km north-east of Steinbach, and in Pauingassi – a bit closer at 290km to the north, relationships are beginning to be formed between us and a few people in these communities.

As I wrote in our last letter, our presence in Garden Hill has been in support of Frontiers Foundation. Frontiers recently held the first graduation of their Standing Tree to Standing Home program in which local people are trained in the process of harvesting lumber from surrounding forests and processing it right to the point of building a home out of that material. They have a sawmill and kiln in the community and are able to supply their own framing and siding material and supply the labour to build the house, which in turn reduces the cost of building a house by one third.

Other than the activities of the various groups working in the community, another encouraging thing is that I’m beginning to be recognized by some of the community leadership as the pilot who brings in, (in this case), Frontiers Foundation.

Pauingassi is the other community that I’ve visited a few times this summer, and it’s been good to see a partnership developing between a local church here in Steinbach and that community. One of the main contacts in Pauingassi is the CFS (Child and Family Services) worker there. As the head CFS worker in this community, Eric is responsible for the welfare of children and families. As a part of fulfilling his role, he works with a number of different arms of government services, and Mennonite Church Manitoba. He’s chosen to partner with the church conference because over time this particular conference has shown a commitment to working in the various communities they have started in.

The progress in Pauingassi has been great, and yet there is still an enormous task ahead for the families in the community to function as families should. A number of years ago a large percentage of the residents of the community were regularly abusing solvents (sniffing gasoline). After few years of work, Eric and his organization have been able to work with the people to all but eliminate the problem. There are still many other issues to work through.

The first time I visited Pauingassi, they were preparing for a funeral service for a nineteen-year-old man who had committed suicide earlier in the week. This caused the plans of the team to be somewhat altered as a tragedy like this completely throws the schedule of the community.

The following week I returned to the community with another team from the same church, and there had been another suicide. This time it was the mother of the man who’d died the week previous.

Hopelessness runs very deep in this, and many other northern communities. Many people have numerous different ideas on how to deal with the problem, but we know that the only hope for a true healing of these communities is through Jesus Christ.

As we continue to bring in people to work in these communities, it is our hope and prayer that the workers will be a light of Christ’s love and hope in a world of pain. It is also our goal that as they do the work that God has called them to do, we will also be a light and encouragement to not only the people of the northern communities, but also to our passengers and the people we rub shoulders with at the various airports we visit. Please join us in praying for these things.

There are many of you whom we haven’t seen for quite a long time, (and those of you that we’ve never met at all), and I’m sure that our little family has changed quite a bit since we last met – no this isn’t an announcement of further expansion of our family – we just thought we’d give you a bit of a picture of what each of the kids are up to these days.

Jacob turned four in May. He has always been our big little boy, and people still ask if he’s 5 or 6 years old. It’s been really fun to watch and listen as he has developed his verbal skills a great deal in the past six months. He is also our cautious child. Although he has had access to a tricycle for two years now, he’s still taking his time in transitioning to the two-wheeled bike that we just got for him about a week ago. (Yes, it does have training wheels). At times we find our-selves taking lessons from him as he is almost always eager to say “oh, phank you!” for whatever is given to him.

Kaeden will be one year old by the time this is read, and has only just begun to threaten to crawl. He’s been a very happy baby, just like Jacob was. As seems to be the common thread with all three of our kids, he’s wearing clothes that are sized for kids six to twelve months older than his age. (I think some of this is just that when the clothes sizes were invented kids were smaller). He is the size of many 18 to 24 month old kids at church. Among his recent achievements are graduating to eating table food (Pablum no longer interests him), and getting his first hair-cut.

Alyssa is our little runner. Almost everything she does is at full speed, strength, or intensity. She is a great example of doing her best at whatever she does – even when she doesn’t want to do something, she does her best to not do it. She is also very sweet in her two-year-old way. When there is an opportunity to help Annie feed Kaeden, she’s right there to feed him the crumbs that dropped on the floor. Her vocal skills are almost as devel-oped as Jacob’s and it’s rare that we need to wonder what she is asking us for. Some of her favourite things is playing in the kitty pool in the back yard, and colouring. She is also very good at entertaining Kaeden, making him laugh by doing all sorts of silly things.

Praise Items:
-Praise God that He continues to meet all of our needs.
-Praise Him for the safe flight operations to date here in Manitoba.
-Praise Him for the lives that are being affected through the techni-cal ministry of MAF in Canada and world wide.
-Praise God for the provision of the funds for MAF to purchase the hangar here in Steinbach.

Prayer Requests:
-that Nathan will be a light in the various communities that he vis-its, and that we can be an encouragement to all those we serve by providing a transportation link.
-that God will provide an ongoing (or final) solution for our flight and maintenance training loans.
-for wisdom for us and the program leadership as we continue to work to develop MAF’s operations here in Canada.
-Pray that we’d be able to find another house to rent soon that does-n’t have flooding/mould issues.
-Pray that God will provide an airplane for us that perfectly meets the needs of this operation.

As spring creeps northward in Manitoba and the ice and snow disappear, the start of another phase of life in the north be- gins. This part of the yearly cycle, while much brighter and more filled with life in terms of plants and animals – is the isolated part of the year as the winter ice roads no longer are available for travel. The trucks that bring fresh supplies into communities have stopped coming, the fuel tanks are as full as they’re going to get until either freeze up, or a much more expensive option, more fuel is flown in to meet demands. With the thaw also comes some of the most challenging travel conditions of the year, (matched only by freeze- up before the ice is thick enough for travel), in which communities that don’t have an airstrip are only accessi- ble by helicopter. For the month of April these few communities cannot cross the lakes to get to the airstrips by boat because the ice is blocking the way, and they can’t get across the ice either because it is unsafe to travel on top of due to the thawing conditions.
After the thaw the boats will run again and normal sum- mer life will resume. This means that even as the sound of air- planes is common in the winter – now the only way of getting supplies into most communities on the east side of Lake Winnipeg is by air. This also means that the only way that pastors, lay minis- ters, and other ministries can access the isolated people in these communities is – yup, you guessed it; by air.
Through this past winter Wings to Northern Canada has had the privilege of transporting a few new organizations that have discov- ered our little mission flight service. We have also been discovered by more of the larger Christian community here in Canada, and with that will come further opportunities to broaden the scope of our services.

Some of the highlights of this past winter were flying groups from MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) and MDS (Mennonite Disaster Service), as they explored what their roles might be in helping with the potable water distribution systems in the Island Lake region of Mani- toba. We also flew a small group from Mennonite Church Mani- toba to Cross Lake to continue to build relationships in that com- munity, as well as to firm up plans for the summer ministry programs there. Another highlight that we wrote about already to many of you was a day I spent in Garden Hill with Frontiers Foun- dation touring the work that they are doing in partnership with the community. Frontiers has a program called standing tree to stand- ing home. I was able to see each phase of this as we saw where local people were selecting timber from the bush, cutting it and bringing it to town where a saw mill, run by community members, is set up to mill the trees into usable lumber for building. From there we went to a building site where a couple of First Nations framers were building a house using the lumber that was cut, milled and dried in town!

Now as most of the snow is gone down here in Stein- bach, and the snow line continues to move northward, we look forward with anticipation at what this new season will bring for us and Wings to Northern Canada. One of the things that we’re look- ing into is researching the possibility of a larger airplane to better be able to meet the needs of larger groups going north to minister in the communities. Right now we are looking at a possible part- nership with a local air operator here in Winnipeg that would allow us to use their Piper Chieftain, a twin engine airplane seating up to ten people, to meet some of these needs. If this proves to be suc- cessful, we would then look at raising the necessary funds to pur- chase one like it.With a larger aircraft we would have the ability to greatly increase the work that we are able to do. Please continue to pray for us as, alongside of MAF, we explore the future that God has planned for this ministry!

Since returning home from our mid-term break in BC this win- ter, our family has been on a bit of a roller-coaster ride. There have been a number of changes within Wings to Northern Canada, the largest of those changes being a change in leadership. As of January 1st, Willie Enns, of Winkler, MB has taken over responsibility for MAF Canada’s northern
Canada program. We are thankful for all that Jeff Plett (Who has now moved on to take MAF Canada’s role of director of train- ing) invested into both us as a family and the program here, and will miss the regular contact we had with him.
The major contributing factor to the roller-coaster ride is that in the beginning months of the year we explored the possibility of relocating the flight base – and our family, north to Thompson, Mani- toba. We spent approximately three months not knowing whether we would be staying in Steinbach for another year or packing up and moving up north on short notice. While we still believe that there is merit to being based in Thompson, we (MAF leadership and our family) feel it is best to remain on in Steinbach for another year, and plan toward relocating next winter/spring. Had we moved up north this spring, it would have been the 6th move in 5 years of us being married. Needless to say we are happywith the prospect of staying another whole year in the same place!

We are thoroughly enjoying involvement in our church in Grunthal and are blessed to be a part of that church family. This past winter I (Nathan) was volunteered to sing on one of the worship teams, and have been very much enjoy- ing being able to serve in this way. We have been loved and ac- cepted here and are so thankful for God’s provision of our church family.  To use an expression my mom used to use regularly, “our kids are growing like weeds”, to which my response was “mom, I’m not a weed!” – but it’s true – they’re growing like crazy and we’re regularly surprised by what they are saying or doing that they weren’t doing the week before. Jacob will be four next month, Alyssa turned two in November, and Kaeden is a whopping twenty-five pound nine- month-old, with a full head of blond hair. God has blessed us a beautiful family and we’re looking forward to the night that they all sleep right through without waking (us) up at different points through it.

We are blessed by your continued prayer and financial support of this ministry of MAF!

As our time in Manitoba creeps on and we look back to see what has been accomplished in the past 21 months, it can look a bit dismal. Thank God that His work is rarely measurable by our standards. As we are faithful in what He has called us to do, He will bring the increase in the work! The past couple months have been some of those times when we have seen some more of that increase. As summer approaches and we look for- ward to being in more northern communities, there are more and more organizations that are finding out about MAF‟s little mission flight service, and we are getting involved in more avenues of ministry.
Last week I had the privilege of transporting and accompanying three members of the Frontiers Foundation in touring one of the projects that is going on in Garden Hill, Manitoba. The project is called „Standing Timber to Standing Homes‟, and it enables the local First Nations people to become involved in a solution to the problem of housing shortages in many of the northern reserve com- munities. Through this program, First Nations people are trained and enabled to go into the forest, cut appropriate trees, bring them back the community to a saw mill that has been set up for milling the logs into usable lumber, and then to build houses for themselves using the skills and material that they‟ve developed! It was an honour to be able to witness this.

Another development that has come about this spring is that we‟ve felt God calling us to the work in the Canadian North-country on a long-term basis. Up until this time our plan was to spend some time here in order to build the necessary experience before going to an over- seas posting to serve there for the rest of our careers. We are excited about this new direction and know that God has great plans for the people of the north. We believe that God‟s glory will be proclaimed throughout the earth and that includes the reserve communities in northern Canada.

As we contemplate this new direction and work with MAF leadership to develop this program further, we have a renewed sense of urgency and drive to see the gos- pel change lives amongst the First Nations people. One of the things that we know is crucial in order for this to happen is prayer. We believe in the enabling work of prayer along with the Holy Spirit‟s calling of people to Jesus. A burden that God has placed on our heart is to see churches “adopt” a community in prayer first, and then as God leads, to go and build trusting relationships in the community that will lead to mutual learning and building up of the body of Christ as the Gospel is declared and spreads throughout the communities. While we know that God has gifted and enabled us to use aviation in this we are also excited to see how we can be of service in getting this vision out to churches across the country to mobilize a prayer-force. Please pray for us and MAF as we ex- plore what God has for us to do. Pray that God will raise up people with a burden to pray that the Gospel will per- meate the very fibre of every First Nations community here in Manitoba.
We are blessed to be enabled by our support team to be a part of God‟s work here in Manitoba!
Nathan, Annie, Jacob, Alyssa & Kaeden Driediger

Please see the attached PDF from the Driedigers!

Driediger Christmas-2010

Where did this summer go so fast? We have thought that many times over the past few weeks as we see the leaves de- parting from the trees and the road-killed skunks accumulating here on the roads of southern Manitoba. As we shared in our last letter, while the flying that we expected didn’t materialize, there has still been no lack of work for us to do. The inspection on the donated Cessna is progressing (albeit at a slower pace than was originally ex- pected due to other northern flying opportu- nities), and during a season when nature seems to be going to sleep, Wings to Northern Can- ada seems to waking up as it were.

Not more than a week after the official Wings to Northern Canada application form was finalized, I started getting a trickle of phone calls from interested people enquiring about the flight service. Now I need to qualify this a bit here. When I say a trickle of phone calls I mean that one week I got the first call, and then the week following,    a couple more. These calls are what    we’ve been waiting on for months now and the first time I talked to a gentleman who had seen the website and wanted to know more about it I about hit the roof with excitement (after I hung up of course – we do want to keep the confidence of the peo- ple wanting to fly with us).

Along with the website and other means of get- ting the word out down here in the south, MAF has also seen fit for me, ac- companied by one of MAF’s staff and a guide who has been a missionary in the north for many years, to make a number of flights north to visit with community leadership in an number of different villages so that we can introduce Wings to Northern Can- ada and listen to hear what some of the needs are in the communities that we might be able to serve.

The latest flight took us into five reserve communities where we met with Chief and Counsel members to introduce ourselves and our services. After spending some time letting the community leadership know what we are doing, we then went ahead and talked with the church leadership in the community (if there was any). In God’s River we met with Pastor Marcel.

When we met Pastor Marcel and explained to him that we were from MAF and that we were now beginning a mission flight service in the north, he was immediately excited and shared with us that for two years now he and his church have been waiting and praying for an airplane that they could use for ministry around the north. He was excited about Wings’ ability to come to God’s River, pick up an evan- gelist, and be able to go directly east or west to other communities to share the gospel without having to take a scheduled airline from God’s River to Winnipeg, and then the next day from Winnipeg back up north to a community only 70 or 80 miles away from God’s River. This will save the church paying commercial airfares for two or three people, and the four days of traveling needed to go on the airline’s schedule. Instead we will be able to accommodate the schedule that the missionaries need, while at the same time saving the church money – allowing them to do more ministry! Even now as I write this I find myself get- ting excited. The real excitement comes from working toward one of God’s goals, and that is that His glory would fill the North! That is the one and only reason for Wings to Northern Canada, and that is the reason that we are here in Manitoba.

As our official time with this program approaches the two-year mark, we are looking ahead to our mid-term break. This means that we will have five weeks in December during which we will be traveling to and from the Chilliwack area. We would love to get together with you during that time to catch up on what your lives, as well as to share with you more of what God is doing through Wings to Northern Canada here in Manitoba and surrounding area. We are planning on being in Three Hills, AB, arriving on Dec. 16th, and leaving for Chilliwack on the 21st. After that we plan on spending some time in the Fraser Valley and will be in Midway, BC from Dec 28th – Jan 4th. Then we will be back in the Fraser Valley until Jan. 19th when we will return to Manitoba. We look forward to visiting with as many of you as possible!

We can’t say enough how blessed we are by everyone who so faithfully gives to our ministry with MAF and prays for us so that we can follow the Lord’s leading here in Manitoba. He is at work here and His name is being proclaimed in the North- country. We look forward to seeing many more of Canada’s First Peoples come to know Christ, and we are privileged to be able to have a part to play in that!

Nathan, Annie, Jacob, Alyssa & Kaeden Driediger

If we were to go back and re-cap our time here in Manitoba, it would look something like this:

• July ‘09 – arrive in Grunthal to begin flying.
• August ‘09 – MAF‟s airplane arrives in Steinbach for me to use for serving mission work in northern Manitoba. I was able to carry out a few flights before the summer ministry season came to a close, and then we went to the drawing board to rework MAF‟s plans for the northern project.
• November ‘09 – I start the two-month process of officially im- porting the airplane into Canada, and our family spends those two months living in Three Hills Alberta again while I work on the airplane in Prairie‟s hangar.
• February ‘10 – we all pack up again to spend two more months away from home, this time in Nampa Idaho, for MAF‟s flight and maintenance standardization training.

Since returning from Idaho, we have been working on completing the necessary steps so that the separate corporation that MAF has set up can operate as planned.

Wings to Northern Canada is a ministry of MAF Canada and was formed so that MAF could legally serve any mission or church organization here in Canada by providing flights at cost. One of the things that we didn‟t expect was that the incorporation documents would be held up on Ottawa for six months instead of the expected six weeks. To make a long story short, the busy summer flight schedule the we were expecting didn‟t materialize.

Some of the things that did happen though, was that we were able to find a more permanent hangar facility for the air- plane where I can now begin to set up to do maintenance on the airplane without being in the way of other tenants/owners of the hangar. Also the previous hangar arrangement that we had involved us from time to time, having to move the airplane to a different hangar (owned by the same land-lord) which was not fully enclosed. We are very happy with what God has provided.

Another blessing that has come to this program are shop supplies and tools being donated by a local charter company that is in the process of closing down their business, and instead of auctioning off or just selling their supplies and equipment, have chosen to donate much of it to MAF. This not only saved MAF a considerable amount of money, but it also saved me the time running from place to place to find all these little things that we will need.

As many of you are aware, most things in Northern Manitoba come to a grinding halt when winter comes, and this leaves us with not a lot of flying to do over these winter months. One of the advantages of having our own hangar now is that I can work on different projects through the winter that will help further the work here in Manitoba. Two such projects arrived at the end of July. The first is a Cessna 172 that was donated by a donor in Springbank, AB. This airplane is a 1976 model, but while it is 34 years old, it only has 1200 hours of use in that time, meaning that it is in effect a very young airplane. My job is to do a thorough “acceptance inspection” on it and then this airplane will be used in training the next generation of mission pilots.

The other project comes in the form of another airplane which has never flown before. Back in October of ’09, I spent a weekend moving an airplane from one hangar to another in Ontario. This same airplane has at last, arrived here in Steinbach for me to complete the work on it. It is a kit airplane that requires a few final assembly items, paint, and certification flying before it will be ready for use here in northern Manitoba. While it is not an especially fast airplane, it’s load carrying capabilities are respectable, and it will make a great cargo/people hauler at a northern MAF flight base in the future.

All this to say in spite of low flying hours there have been a variety of activities involved in setting up this new program. We want to thank you for your faithful part in sustaining us in this ministry with Wings To Northern Canada through your prayer and financial gifts.

And Baby Makes Five!!!
After a somewhat difficult pregnancy for Annie, we are excited to announce the arrival of Kaeden Erik Driediger. Kaeden was born on July 13th at 7:35 in the morning in St. Boniface General Hospital in Winnipeg. It seems that our children like to keep us on our toes by giving us a scare now and then, so Kaeden decided to wrap the umbilical cord around his neck, not once, but twice, before he was born. We are thankful though that after what seemed like forever (which we‟re sure wasn’t very long) the team of nurses and doctors were able to get him breathing and there are no lasting effects that we can tell from it.

Kaeden is a happy healthy baby that does all the things that babies are supposed to do. (To our knowledge those things are confined to eating, sleeping, crying, filling diapers, and looking cute, with the odd bit of wiggling thrown into the mix.) Although we‟re sure that deep down Jacob and Alyssa love him, they have cloaked ways of showing it. Especially Alyssa has had a hard time accepting that she is no longer the baby in the family. Jacob has been more indifferent, and confines his interaction with Kaeden to the odd prodding or poking in the eye.

Again, for the third time, we are getting used to not sleeping as much and looking forward to that new normal that we know is coming when life settles out back to the dull roar that a little family our size makes!

Thank you all so much for praying for us as we prepared for and are getting used to having Kaeden around the house.

Praise items:
-The safe arrival of Kaeden and that the pregnancy is now over!!!
-That the Wings to Northern Canada incorporation documents have finally arrived and we can continue pursuing partnerships with other missions serving here in Canada.
-For the donations of TEN airplanes to MAF Canada this year. We look forward to seeing how God will have us use these air- planes!

Prayer requests:
-For wisdom for us as parents as we raise the children that God has given to us.
-For wisdom for MAF leadership and Nathan as they continue to move forward with the development of Wings to Northern Canada.
-For God’s guidance as we make plans for our continuing career with MAF.

May God Bless,
Nathan, Annie, Jacob, Alyssa & Kaeden Driediger

After another period of waiting for things to be organizationally ready for MAF to begin operations, we have again come to a point of increased activity.  With the formation so Wings To Northern Canada, a not-for-profit corporation set up by MAF Canada, we are in the process of building the membership of this corporation which will in turn build MAF Canada’s northern flight program’s user base.  The reason for the formation of a separate entity is so that our flight program can remain a private flight operation and therefore avoid some of the complications inherent to running a commercial air service.  The other reason is so that we are not in direct competition with the existing airlines serving the North.  This is an exciting step as we continue to build a new mission flight service for one of the most isolated areas in North America.

One of the things that MAF has been doing in Canada for a number of years already has been to provide sight-seeing flights for kids attending the teen camp week at Gimli Bible Camp in Gimli, Manitoba.  This is a chance for teens attending to experience flight (some of them for the first time), and also for us as MAF Canada to share the need for mission aviation around the world.  In doing this, seeds are being planted for the next generation of mission pilots, as well as giving us a chance to minister to the kids through an avenue of interest that is a little bit of a novelty.  Yesterday I had the privilege of making 9 flights, taking 45 campers on a short sight-seeing flight to show them their home from a perspective that many had never seen before, and also to share with them how airplanes are used to spread the gospel here in Canada, and around the world.  It truly was a privilege.

Also this month, two airplanes were delivered to us here in Steinbach that were donated to MAF Canada.  Both of these aircraft require some mechanical work which will provide me with projects through the winter months while flying is much slower.

One other noteworthy occurrence this month was the birth of our son Kaeden, as I wrote a couple weeks ago.  Here’s a picture of the little guy to go with that.

With grateful hearts,
Nathan and Annie Driediger  grammar