Early the next morning, Nate and Phil arrived at the airport complete with tools, blueprints, spars, the seven-foot propeller, and all the wooden wing parts Nate and Santiago had made. Nate had weighed every piece and had given Hank the weights. Hank didn’t seem worried about how much the cargo weighed; he assured them there would be room for everything. Nate and Phil pushed and twisted and adjusted all the pieces until everything was stowed inside the plane. Nate thought it all looked too heavy for the Norseman airplane, but Hank was the pilot, and it was the pilot’s job to know what was safe for his plane. Besides, Nate reassured himself, Hank must know what he’s doing or he wouldn’t have survived as a jungle pilot.
Nate held onto that thought as he climbed into the Norseman. He waved good-bye to Phil, who had been such a help and friend. By the time the Waco biplane was in the air again, Phil would be back home at his mission station with his family. Hank pushed the starter button, and the Norseman’s engine belched into motion in a cloud of oily smoke. Nate cocked his head to listen. The engine sounded fine to his mechanic’s ears.
Hank set the flaps for take-off and revved the engine, and the plane moved forward. He guided the plane to the end of the grass runway, turned it around, checked his instruments one last time, and pushed the throttle all the way forward. They rumbled down the runway. Nate noticed that with the load, the plane took a long time to gather speed. When one of its wheels hit a large mud puddle, the plane slowed. Nate waited for Hank to ease off the throttle and come around for another try at take-off, since there wasn’t enough runway left to get airborne. But Hank didn’t flinch. He looked straight ahead as the plane ploughed on down the runway, despite the fact it showed no signs of leaving the ground. Eventually, though, the wheels thumped heavily several times and then lifted off the ground. They were airborne, but the trees at the end of the runway were too close to clear. Nate could see Phil running toward the trees, and he wondered why. It wasn’t until several years later when he met Phil again that he found out. Phil could see the trouble the Norseman was having getting airborne, and he was running toward the spot where he was sure it would crash. But somehow it didn’t crash. An unexpected headwind helped the plane to barely clear the trees and gain altitude.
Nate’s heart was pounding. They hadn’t hit the trees. They were still airborne and heading east toward El Real. Nate looked across at Hank, who was still looking straight ahead. He began to wonder if he’d been wrong about Hank. Perhaps it wasn’t good piloting skills that had kept him alive this long. And they still had to land! Nate began praying hard as lush green tropical vegetation passed beneath them.
The jungle was so thick that Nate didn’t notice the El Real airstrip until they were right over it. Hank buzzed the strip with the Norseman as Nate peered down. He could make out the outline of the Waco biplane. Its nose and left side were covered with a blanket. Nate wondered what the damage looked like beneath the blanket.
Hank banked the plane around and came in for a steep landing. When the wheels hit the ground, Nate breathed a prayer of thanks and hoped he never had to be at Hank’s mercy again.
Hank was eager to get back to Tuxtla, so he helped Nate unload the plane. As soon as the plane was empty, he was on his way, leaving Nate alone in the jungle. Nate didn’t have time to think about the snakes or the jaguars that could be lurking in the trees around him; he had a job to do. He pulled the blanket off the fuselage. His heart sank when he saw the damage. The wing area was more torn up than he’d thought it would be.
Nate wondered if the engine would still run after sitting out for so long. He turned the key, which had been left in the plane, and hit the starter button; the engine sprang to life. That was one less thing Nate had to worry about fixing. That is, until it spluttered and died two minutes later. Nate frowned and wondered why it had stopped. He found the answer soon enough. Mud wasps had built little mud villages in the fuel tank and fuel lines. Nate would have to think of a way to get rid of them and then scrape out their homes. It took him a day to do it and get the engine running again.
More days were spent fitting the wings together and measuring the right wing root as a pattern for the left one, which he made on the spot. The wing pieces fit together as easily as his model airplanes had. Soon Nate was in the final stages of the repair work. He had brought cloth with him to patch the fuselage, but the hole was much bigger than he’d thought, and the cloth wouldn’t be enough. So one of the last things he did was to rip up his sheets and use them to patch the last hole in the fuselage.
Nate was putting the finishing touches on the patch when he heard a plane overhead. It was Hank and the Norseman. The plane circled a couple of times before coming in for a landing. It stopped at the end of the airstrip just long enough for a tall, dark-haired man to climb out. As soon as the man was clear of the plane, Hank hit the throttle and was off again. The man strode over to Nate, shook his hand, and introduced himself as George Wiggins, the man who had been copilot of the Waco biplane when it crashed. Wiggins ran his hand over the repaired wing and whistled with admiration at the remarkable repair job Nate had done.
Later that day, George Wiggins and Nate loaded up Nate’s tools and belongings, and then the Waco skipped down the runway with Wiggins at the controls. Nate had wanted to take the first flight alone, but the instructions from CAMF headquarters made it clear that George Wiggins was the official CAMF pilot, and he must be in the plane at all times. Nate decided he would have to say something about the situation to Jim Truxton and CAMF when he got back to the United States. It was an unacceptable risk sending up two men on a test flight.
Despite Nate’s feelings about the unnecessary risk involved in the flight, the Waco lumbered into the air. The men flew around the tiny airstrip several times, reasoning that if anything went wrong, they had a better chance of landing again than if they were flying over dense jungle. Satisfied that the repairs were safe and the left wing wasn’t going to fall off in flight, they pointed the nose of the Waco towards Tuxtla, leaving El Real behind. On the flight back, George Wiggins took his hands from the control wheel. The plane kept flying in a perfectly straight line, not veering to the right or the left. Nate heaved a sigh of relief; he had done a good job. There was no drag, and everything was in proper alignment.
The next morning, Nate was again relieved when he heard the biplane buzz over his hotel before it headed back to Mexico City and on to missionary service. The job was finished, and it was time for Nate to return to Los Angeles to report to CAMF.
When he got to Los Angeles, Nate found that CAMF had just changed its name to Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF). The report Nate gave to Jim Truxton and the MAF board helped fix in place many of the new mission’s policies. Because Nate had done such a great repair job under difficult conditions, MAF decided that in the future, it would look for pilots who were also mechanics, or at least had knowledge of how to fix a plane.
Nate also pointed out MAF’s need for lighter airplanes. If a lighter plane than the Waco had flown onto the El Real airstrip, it would have cleared the trees and not crashed. MAF had to stop taking the first or cheapest airplanes it was offered and instead choose planes that were useful and safe to fly in the jungle. Nate also explained that light planes are easier to fix when something goes wrong.
Finally, Nate talked about safety procedures. Everyone knew the risks of traveling by plane in the jungle, but why risk more lives than necessary? Nate described how he and George Wiggins had both flown in the Waco on its test flight. If something had gone wrong with the repairs and the plane had crashed, two lives would have been lost. The leaders of MAF agreed, and new safety rules were drawn up.
When Nate had finished his report, the MAF board asked him what his plans were for the future. He’d had a long time to think about this on the nights when the rats scurrying above his head had kept him awake. He knew what he wanted to do next, and he told the board, “I feel led to get additional schooling—so that I might be first a witness of His saving grace and then an airman.” With that remark, it was settled. Nate would go to Wheaton College and then join MAF as a missionary pilot.
When Nate left the MAF office late in the day, there was one other thing he needed to do before leaving California. He needed to visit Marjorie Farris, the nurse he’d met while stationed in Merced. They had been writing to each other, and he had been wondering if a girl like Marj had ever dreamed of a little house in the jungle complete with rats, scorpions, and snakes. It was a long shot, he had to admit, but it couldn’t hurt to ask!
Chapter 7
Follow the Oil
Nate laid down his hammer and wiped his sweating brow. He poured himself a cup of water from a bottle perched on a log and looked around him. He never imagined Ecuador would be this beautiful. No matter how long I live here, he thought, I will never get tired of the view. To the south, about forty miles away, stood the snow-covered peak of Mt. Sangay, an active volcano. Every morning the mountain seemed different. Some mornings its top glowed red with lava, other mornings, smoke and ash billowed from it, blanketing the land below in grayness. To the east was jungle that stretched farther than the eye could see, all the way across the Amazon Basin to the Atlantic Ocean two thousand miles away.
Nate smiled to himself. The house he was building had a living room that faced Mt. Sangay. He could just see Marj and himself enjoying a morning cup of coffee as they admired the mountain’s snow-capped peak.
Nate wondered how Marj was doing in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, high in the Andes Mountains more than a hundred miles to the north. He hoped she was getting plenty of rest; she deserved it. Ever since their wedding eight months earlier on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1948, they had been in a whirlwind of activity. First there had been the meetings with Missionary Aviation Fellowship to make sure they felt called by God to go out as MAF missionaries. Then there were all the meetings to raise money and explain the ministry of MAF. The whole idea of pilots being missionaries was new to many folk in the church. Nate liked to explain that the mission of MAF was not to do what commercial airlines could do more cheaply but to go where there were no other airlines and where missionaries needed them most. He would say, “Our responsibility is to harness aviation to the needs of the mission field.”
Many churches and individuals had understood how useful an air service would be to missionaries and agreed to support Nate and Marj as they established MAF in Ecuador.
As soon as Nate had agreed to join MAF, Jim Truxton had set about finding the right location to base the new ministry. He had studied a map of Ecuador. The whole country is about the same size as the state of Nevada. To the west, the country borders the Pacific Ocean. On the coastal lowlands between the ocean and the Andes, bananas were grown for export. Also on the lowlands and all the way up to Quito, located high in the Andes Mountains in the northcentral part of the country, the roads were numerous and in fairly good condition. It was obvious there wasn’t a particular need for MAF there. But across the Andes in the eastern part of the country, the roads were scarce and in terrible condition. This part of the country, called the Oriente, forms the western edge of the Amazon rain forest. Across the region, missionaries seeking to share the gospel message with the many Indian tribes that inhabited the area lived in stations dotted throughout the jungle. There was a great need for more missionaries in the Oriente. The trouble was, it was difficult traveling through the swampy jungles to set up more mission stations. As Jim Truxton looked at his map, he decided this was the area where MAF needed to be working. The ministry would establish a base of operations in the Ecuadorian Oriente.
