Great Commission Air - March, 2008 - Flight Stats: A Busy Month

March has been a busy month! We flew about 50 hours and made over 68 landings. We served over 90 individuals with flights of various types. This chart breaks down the nature of passengers flight´s. As you can see, the mixture of emergency medical flights versus NGO workers and Missionary folks is quite good. Not shown are the many hundreds of pounds of NGO and missionary cargo we have carried as well.

In addition to the air transport service provided by GCA, we are also provide other services, including:

• Evangelical Outreach Sharing Proclaimer Audion Bibles in Mayan Languages
  
• Secondary School Scholarship Program
  
• Medical Assistance to Needy Families
  
• Municipal Water Supply Program (new)
  
• Clean Drinking Water Program (new)
  
• And much more...
  

We are happy that the service is being used by so many to do so much good in the name of God and for the glory of God!

Great Commission Air - Dinner Auction Gala !!! Saturday April 26th.

Join us on Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 5:00 pm for our Sixth Annual Charity Auction Located at Concordia College on Geddes Rd. in Ann Arbor, Riverside Student Union

Individual Auction Dinner Seats are only $50.00

Free babysitting on campus!

Event Schedule:
5:00PM Registration & Silent Auction
6:30PM Dinner
7:00PM Live Auction Entertainment by Roger Julie, RIA Auction Services

Map to Concordia: [click for a map to Condordia]

Click Here to Purchase Tickets or to Sponsor:

Please pre-register so that we will have plenty of food for everyone.

To RSVP and/or Volunteer or to donate an item call Tammy Burgess at (734) 239-2572

• All guests will have an opportunity to buy a $20 long stem rose with a mystery gift worth $20-$100
• Absentee bidding available - call or email for details
• Free Babysitting available 5-9PM (meal provided) 1/2 Hour entertainment provided by Red Nose Ministries
• Be an answer to prayer!

Dozens of villages and hundreds of Mayan families living in the remote northern jungles and mountains of Guatemala have been served by GCA. Many lives were saved and the love of God spread across the region - with YOUR help.

Because we (Robert and Jennifer Rice) will be in the US attending to aircraft maintenance tasks, it will be our pleasure to join you at this fun event. We look forward to seeing you there!

Saving Lives Through Flight - Why Your Participation Matters:
When you participate as a sponsor, attendee or donor , you are saving lives. To thousands of underprivileged children throughout Guatemala, medical evacuation services, medical check-ups, and dental care are unknown. Through the use of a small aircraft, Great Commission Air is working to provide life saving services by transporting medical volunteers, medical supplies, hosting clinics, and even providing medicine. GCA is also serving the region by providing transportation for Christian missions that are working diligently to implement social programs and spiritual teaching - missions that are providing hope.

Now more than ever your contributions and help are needed to make it possible for Great Commission Air to continue saving lives – spiritually and physically.

Great Commission Air - A Few Good Pilots

In this video, Robert Rice, President of Great Commission Air, washes cow manure off of the Missionary Aviation Aircraft, N538JP a Cessna 336. He can be seen describing his role in the organization and explaining the need for Missionary Pilot Trainees. Though cast in a humorous light, GCA really is interested in finding a few volunteer pilots that can spend a month here learning about how to function in this environment as they accompany Robert on life-saving emergency medical flight as well as other humanitarian support flights.

Great Commission Air - MedEvac March 10, 2008

San Marcos Rocnimac is a remote Mayan village that lies along the Rio Negro near the Siera Chama Mountains. They have no road and have called us on several occasions for emergency medical flights.

In this video, a woman is being carried by her family in a hammock to the GCA Skymaster, N538JP, for transport to the clinic in Playa Grande. Neither the husband nor the patient spoke Spanish, so another male family member went with me. As soon as we landed, they tried to make for the nearest witch doctor (Brujolo) but I cajoled them into going with the doctor in the ambulance that came to meet us at the airstrip.

Great Commission Air - MedEvac March 10

Flore del Norte is only a few miles north of our Base of Operations, Mayalan, in the Ixcan region of Quiché. We got a call to pick-up the man in this video who fell from the roof of a house (or a Coconut tree, depending on your Spanish). We suspected a spinal injury and were glad to help transport him to hospital. He was definitely in pain. A truck ride to Guatemala City would have been torturous.

The airstrip at Flore was recently renovated by the village, as a result of our encouragement, just for such emergencies. I flew over the village several times throwing leaflets out the window asking them to fix the airstrip - and it worked!

Please consider supporting Great Commission Air as our operations are funded mostly by donations from individuals (like you).

Great Commission Air - A New Airstrip in Barillas

One of the airstrips GCA served often in the past was in the town of Barillas, a mountain community in the northern part of Huehuetenango (pronounced Way Way Tenango), about twenty miles southwest of our base in Mayalan. That airstrip became unusable when residents started using it as a thoroughfare for horses, bicycles, cars and so on. The video at left shows me talking about a new airstrip, developed by that community. It is about 1000' higher than the old one and is situated at about 5,800' above sea level along a hillside above the city. The downside of using this airstrip is that its end is located directly next to a tall radio station tower with lots of guy-wires that are invisible to landing aircraft. It also has a perpetual tailwind on landing.

This video shows me (Robert Rice) and the GCA Cessna 336 Skymaster, N538JP, on this airstrip during a recent test landing and survey. I discuss the condition of the strip and my thoughts about using it.

This airstrip, like the one it replaced, will be used to make many emergency medical flights by GCA, saving many lives. It will also be used to transport humanitarian volunteers and Christian missionaries that work in the area. In fact, we recently made many flights for several humanitarian organizations doing medical and other humanitarian work in nearby villages.

Please consider supporting Great Commission Air as our operations are funded mostly by donations from individuals (like you).

MedEvac - January 27, 2008

Great Commission Air provides emergency medical air transport and air transport for Christian missions and humanitarian relief projects in north-central Guatemala (the Ixcan and surrounding regions). This MedEvac was from the town of Sayaxche in the Peten. Our friends, the Stoltzfus family, called on behalf of the clinic there. The patient was a young man, critically injured by stab wounds during an armed robbery. Though not the typical villager that we more commonly serve, this man's life was in the balance and saving it meant getting him to Guatemala City fast.

Thank you for helping to make flights like this possible. Please continue to support this ministry with your prayers and donations.

http://www.GreatCommissionAir.org/donate.php

Airstrip Fly-By with Music

OK, so the music may be a bit much, but it comes on automatically in my head when I drop below 300' AGL (above ground level) and it does spice up the video. Without it you would only hear the droning of two IO-360 engines. When I have any flight, it is common for me to make close fly-bys of other airstrips along the way in order to examine the condition of them. This video shows two airstrips GCA has served in the past. The first is a very difficult mountain strip called Saraguate. We won't be using it anymore. At one time, it was serviceable with a Cessna 206, but just barely. Now there is a fence across the middle of it, almost visible in this video. The second airstrip is at Las Flores Tzeja. You can see the shadow of our Cessna 336 Skymaster (N538JP) speeding across the ground, which is in pretty good shape but a little too short for a Skymaster. There is another, longer, better airstrip only one hour away (on foot).