“Mission Pilot – the David Gates Story” by Eileen Lantry

Starting off with a bang – the main character gets blindfolded and taken to jail for something he didn’t do – the book rivets the attention for the first half. It seems to be written to help encourage young people to take up some kind of mission work, and so is written at about a 6th grade level. Unfortunately, the predictable grammar (interspersed with a couple of errors) gets boring quickly, and the story plot loses its intensity after David is released from prison.

The first half of the book is written in flash-back fashion, with David reviewing events in his life leading up to his current predicament in prison. He was born to missionary parents and lived in Bolivia for a while when young. Being young didn’t stop the valentino in him, and he grew fond of another missionary’s daughter. But they parted ways, and lost contact. He went to America and received most of his education in Kentucky and Tennessee, the same sticks where i come from, so the place names even are quite interesting to me. By mysterious providences he was able to hook up again with his childhood sweetheart, and won her heart all over again. Ahhhh, sniff sniff. 🙂

After his encounter with the prison in Mexico, he went further south into Guyana, and worked many years there with the Indians, setting up a school and clinics, and of course flying in supplies and patients out etc. Actually, considering the title of the book, there aren’t very many stories related to actually piloting a plane.

I have been on David Gates’ email list for over a year, and have been blessed. I believe his organization is called GAMAS and they are putting most all of their resources into the TV work in South America now with a network called Advenir.