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By Kelly Filgo, April 24, 2010

The stormy early hours of Saturday morning turned into a glorious day of perfect temperatures and sunny skies for twenty volunteers from Highland Baptist Church in Waco, Texas. The volunteers were part of a city wide day of local missions awareness sponsored by the church, called ‘Q2′, according to Lisa Fuentes, the group’s coordinator. Each quarter of the year at Highland, there is a special emphasis on some aspect of missions work and the second quarter of the year has been devoted to local mission support.

“Not everyone can participate in national and international missions, so this is a way the missions committee at Highland can expose the congregation to places close to home where they can be involved,” said Fuentes. Nearly one hundred and fifty volunteers gathered at the church this morning and were sent out all over the Waco area to learn about and serve local missions and ministries. Mission Waco, Care Net of Central Texas, Generations of Hope and many other groups were visited by groups from Highland. The volunteers were allowed to pick which organizations they wanted to serve, and many were interested in learning more about Wings for Christ.

The painters at work.

The team that came to Wings today worked mostly in three areas. One group made tremendous progress in our painting and rust prevention project in the maintenance hangar, painting all the exposed metal frame of of the structure from the top of the walls down a deep green color to match the exterior trim. A large part of the metal rafters were painted as well, but a lack of tall ladders prevented reaching the peak areas. The group even painted the air compressor to match and it looks like it is brand new.

Another group removed old sheet metal and wood from the old tee hangar. This is the first step of renovating the hangar in preparation for its use as the future home of Burt’s Blessing, our Cessna 172 project plane. This was difficult and dangerous work, and we appreciate the folks who climbed ladders and swung hammers to get the work done.

Removing sheet metal from the old hangar.

The final group worked on something you might not associate with the ins and outs of running a flight school, but is very vital to our mission. They worked with Cheryl Hull on a historic preservation scrap-booking project, taking multiple dozens of old pictures and newspaper clippings and organizing them into a visual history of Wings for Christ. Many of the images are from the early 1960′s and the very beginning of Wings for Christ. Cheryl filled in the details and the volunteers cut and clipped the pictures into a wonderful set of pages documenting our nearly 50 year history.

Making history with scrap-booking.

Overall, the volunteers from Highland Baptist Church put in over 60 hours of volunteer time in just a few short hours. They also had a chance to learn more about Wings for Christ International Flight Academy and how we are serving Jesus Christ through aviation.

All of the people at Wings for Christ would like to thank these great volunteers and Highland Baptist for their work and support. We welcome you back any time for more opportunities to serve or just to visit and do some hangar flying.

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By Kelly Filgo, April 15, 2010

WfC student Pastor Rick Cobb proudly displays his freshly cut shirt tails, a traditional right of passage for freshly soloed students.

Congratulations are in order for Wings for Christ student pilot Rick Cobb, pastor of Journey Christian Community church, in China Spring, Texas.

“Wow, what a relief!” said Rick, who confessed he thought the day would never come after his first flight. That was back on December 3, 2009 and on April 14, 2010, he did a great job completing his three takeoffs and landings by himself in Gracie, according to Chief Pilot Monte Michael.

The solo occurred after three days of intense training to prepare for the flight. A mechanical failure of the left brake lines almost derailed the pace, but Chief of Maintenance Joel New procured a new brake line in Mexia and quickly repaired the problem. Gracie was also down for three months during Rick’s training schedule for annual inspection and a carburetor rebuild, which took most of that time.

Considering the delays in his training, Pastor Rick did a great job getting to his solo as soon as he did. According to Rick, he plans to use his skills as a pilot to assist him in the active church planting he is involved with. Currently, he visits three churches on a regular basis and has plans to start several more in the future. Being able to fly between them will greatly increase his time on the ground living out his call to serve Jesus Christ.

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By Kelly Filgo, March 16, 2010

We have been searching for new ways to keep our Wings for Christ friends and family better informed. The new website design is a part of that effort and we are happy to announce that you can now follow us on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. Many thanks to our new webmaster, Ellen Filgo, for setting it all up.

We pledge to keep you better informed on what is going on at WfC and these new tools will help us do just that. The Twitter feed will allow us to send out quick messages to our followers. We can send reminders on work days, quick prayer requests and report live on events such as a student’s first solo. Our Facebook page will be a fantastic place to share pictures, post interesting articles about missions and aviation, network with other mission aviation enthusiasts and coordinate events.

So, be sure to join our fan page on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. We’ll see you there!