...lives are lost & lives show up:

Whether you agree with being at war...or not...is not the issue in this blog. All who read this will have their varied opinions. But every day prayers go up from this household for one young soldier we know personally, Josh Ingram, who is the son of one of the couples in our small group/home church.

Yesterday his mother sent us his most recent email. Last evening I asked his permission to share a moment of his adventure with you. Up extra early this morning (can't sleep for varying reasons) I find he has given his permission. But I also find that as a young leader, he is a team player in sharing the credit for a significant "win."

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Wes,

You can use/post the story, but the real credit goes to our flight medic, Kyle Storbakken. He was the one with his hands full, literally.

Josh

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...and here's the story that keeps me/us praying for this man and the rest of his Army crew, as he flies medi-vac helicopters "over there"...

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Yesterday was something of a first for all of us. Our medic delivered a baby in flight. Needless to say the pregnancy was complicated (hence we got involved) and things were looking pretty dicey for the newborn both before and after its birth so we flew *as fast as I have ever flown* in my life.

We threw the route out the window (figuratively), flew straight to where we wanted to go while using terrain to our advantage and skirting the Pakistani border. Literally, the only way we could have squeezed one more knot out of the aircraft would have been to throw things overboard.

We left our gunship escort in the dust and were flying completely unprotected (except our trusty M-9s). But, both the mother and child made it back, and are now doing well.

It was the medic’s first delivery ever, and is also (as far as we know) the first child born in flight in Afghanistan, ever. We wanted to give the kid a set of wings, but we didn’t have any. And of course, I was up front flying like a bat out of hell, so no pictures from me – but I think our crew chief got a few.

I saw the child in the hospital and it was absolutely precious. We all look the same when we’re born, except skin tone and hair, we’ll all the same. She doesn’t know who to hate, what religion is ‘correct,’ and that she was flown to safety by the ‘white infidels.’ Anyone who thinks that we are someone superior or different by race needs to look into the eyes of a newborn from another culture.

The press has been calling us non-stop today, so there may be something in the news/paper shortly. I don't know. We're also wondering if being born in a US helicopter makes the baby a US citizen.

Talk to you later,

Josh

Comments

[stephanie]

Thank you Josh for sharing, thank you Wes for posting it.
What a picture of treasuring life in the midst of war and death. I love his comments that this little one doesn't know how to hate yet, or know who is right and wrong. How soon, all too soon, we learn it and it doesn't matter what culture we live in - we learn it.