Can you remember someone who was very influential in your life? A person you admired or tried to model yourself after? I sure can! One of those guys in my life was an MAF pilot named Bill Clapp.

Bill was my “jungle flight instructor” as I arrived in Ecuador back in 1978. He taught me a lot of the skills I would need as I flew in Ecuador for 22 years. I know that all of the safe flying I was able to accomplish was a result of the modeling Bill did for me as he passed on his jungle flying experience.

I really enjoyed serving missions and the national church with Bill. There were many days when we depended on each other for timely weather reports and for picking up a patient or a missionary that one or the other of us might not be able to get to that day. Bill is a master airplane mechanic and taught me a good deal about practical jungle maintenance. He also was my manager; I learned a lot about management from him. We were a good team…even to the point of brewing root beer together!

I’ll never forget one late afternoon flight with Bill. It was as close as I’ll probably ever get to playing Santa Claus! One of the mission outreaches we supported was Compassion International. At the time, Compassion worked with about 400 children in ten different jungle communities. Compassion had shipped in Christmas gifts for each child, but they had been hung up in customs. Our ability to deliver them in time for Christmas was quickly diminishing. Finally, on December 24th a truck showed up at the hangar with the gifts. Bill and I quickly loaded an airplane. He flew, and as we made a very low pass over each village, I literally pushed the gifts out of the rear cargo door. We were able to make 8 flights and dropped all of the gifts right in the middle of each community’s airstrip.

One day as I flew from Shell to Quito on a critical air ambulance flight, Bill sat in the back of the plane and comforted a young man who had fallen off a log bridge and had broken his back. Together we were able to transfer this patient to adequate medical care in a little over an hour. Overland this 12-to-14-hour trip, with a broken back, would have been impossible.

Bill is an example of someone who mentored me, someone who used his hard-earned experience to help me survive flying in the jungle and adapting to a cross-cultural environment. Now, I find myself in the same position: using my experience to help new families who are joining MAF to bridge the gap between flight training in the United States and that of an overseas MAF program.

Every few months a new candidate class rotates through the MAF headquarters. God is providing some quality young people who have responded to His call on their lives to use their technical skills --as Bill and I did-- in missionary aviation. As I participate in the training and equipping of these young people, I cannot help but think that all of you who comprise our support team are an integral part of this mentoring process. And just as you have invested your resources in our ministry, I hope you are also investing your lives as mentors to at least a few younger Christians.

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