Witness Faith 176 Seconds

by Guest Phil Poynter

Well, if you’re expecting a sermon, this is not. This is a witness of faith.

Now, before I get into that, I want to share with you that February 2025 was the 115th anniversary of the Scouts of America, 115 years. Lord Baden-Powell started the scouting movement. Now, I'm proud to tell you that my grandson, Miles, is very near being an Eagle Scout. He just has a little bit of paperwork to finish up, and he will be the fourth generation Eagle Scout in the Poynter family. So he's close.

Now, I'll also share with you that 113 years ago in March 2025, the Girl Scout organization was started by a lady with the last name of Loew. And her nickname was Daisy, as in the Daisy Scouts. And she started a troop with 18 girls, and those 18 girls had amazing enthusiasm, and they thought they could do anything. And I'm glad to tell you my granddaughter, J.C., is in Girl Scouts as a junior Scout. Now, in Girl Scouts, the highest award is the Golden Award, and J.C.'s not there yet. That's usually earned in their high school years, but I think she's well on her way.

So I just wanted to share that about the scouting background as part of my message. I'm going to share one more story about Scouts.

Several years ago, the Scouts were going to have a Court of Honor at Beal Park. That's the one by the swimming pool. And it was about six o'clock in the evening, and we were all ready to start the Court of Honor.

We'd reserved the shelter house, and another family came along, and they thought they had reserved the shelter house. Now, being good Scouts, we said, “That's fine. You go ahead and take the shelter house. We'll move to another park,” and we moved our group to Judah Park. But we had some folks that were going to come from out of town for that Court of Honor, and we didn't think they would know where we had gone, so I said, “I'll stay behind, catch the latecomers, and redirect them to Judah Park.”

So I'm standing out in the parking lot, in my uniform, trying to look conspicuous for anybody that would come late. And it was closing time for the pool, and a mama and a little girl, the little girl was about four or five, go puddling past me. And as they walk past me, I hear the little girl say, “Is that Jesus?” And before her mother or I, either one could say anything, we turned and looked at each other, and before either one of us could speak, the little girl went on to say, “Or is that Santa Claus?” Either way, I was in good company.

I just wanted to share that funny with you from the Scouting background.

I sometimes wear a fishing hook around my neck. A dental patient gave it to me years ago because I have been known to recruit from the dental chair. And she gave me this fish hook and said, “You are a fisher of men.” Disciples, the first 12 disciples, several of them were fishermen. Remember that, it's coming back.

So, imagine I gave you a rock with a word written on it. It may say hope, or faith, or prayer. Now, keep that your rock in mind because we’ll come back to that.

I'm in a boot. It's a walking boot. Prior to that, I was in a cast. A week before I got this boot, I had my ankle replaced. Now, the reason I share that story is because I fly an airplane my father and I built. You have to use your feet to control the rudder and the brake pedals.

And two different surgeons said my only option was fusing my ankle. And if my ankle is fused, that airplane that we built might have ended. And I happened to share that I was going to have my ankle fused with Ed. Ed is a fellow aviation buddy. And I shared that story with Ed, and he said, “You need to talk to my son.” I happened to be helping Ed in his hangar with his son's airplane that he's building for him.

So, I text his son and told him about fusing my ankle. And he said, “Who's going to be the surgeon?” I had already scheduled the appointment. Then he said, “I didn't think he did that many ankles.”

I'm thinking, “Oh, no.”

Ed's son is a striker, hip, knee, joint representative in St. Louis. And I said to Ed's son, “Well, what do you suggest?” And he said, “Let me do a little research.” He came up with the name of Dr. Horton at KU. Now, think about your rock. Imagine it has the word hope on it.

I'd only been told to fuse the ankle. When I got to Dr. Horton, I showed him a picture of my airplane. And I said, “I don't want to fuse my ankle. I'd like an ankle replacement. But because of some health issues, diabetes, polymyalgia, rheumatica, the other surgeon said, not a good idea.”

Dr. Horton, he's holding my ankle, listening to me and he said, “Well, I think we can do joint replacement.”

He gave me hope. So, this little story I'm going to share with you is not a sermon. It's a witness of faith. Pastor Gina challenged us several months ago to witness. And I thought, “I can do that. I've been a little bored at home, sitting around in the recliner, waiting for this to heal.” So, I got to thinking about witness and faith and 176 seconds.

My father and I started building my airplane when he was 91. There's something like 14,000 rivets. And it took us 10 and a half years in my basement.

Along the way, I had some challenges, some things that didn't behave or didn't go together right or whatever. But eventually, we got it pretty much together. And it was time to move it to the airport and put the wings on and hook all the wires up.

Along the path, Deena and I have taken some trips in this airplane. We've been flying for two years now. We've flown to St. Louis. We've flown to Fort Worth. We've flown to Sioux Falls. We flew around Niagara Falls and to Bar Harbor, Maine, just last October. Deena and I flew around Niagara Falls.

Now, along the way of working on this airplane, I met some very interesting people. One of my issues was wiring and things weren't behaving. I was speaking to the mechanic at Lee’s Summit. And he said, “I have a man I want you to meet. He knows about wiring and he also knew about my engine.”

That man that he introduced me to was Tom McNerney. Now, before I met Tom, I didn't know anything about him. This mechanic says, “We don't talk politics and we don't talk religion because he's an atheist.” I said, “Okay.” So, we went to lunch.

I'm describing some of my issues to this man. Again, I don't know anything about him, and everything I said about my issues, he seemed to understand. Everything. And I finally looked at him and I said, “How is it you know so much about airplanes?” And he said, “Well, I built five of them.”

He built five Reno Air Racers with the same panel that I have and his engines are fuel injected electronic ignition. So, he understands. I will call him my guardian angel. Now, you might say, an atheist is your guardian angel? Well, at one point, he was inspecting my plane. And he points to a bolt back in the tail.

In the tail, there's one bolt that controls the elevator. The elevator controls how high or how low you're going. Tom looked at me and he said, “That's your Jesus bolt.” I got the willies when he said that because I thought he was an atheist. And I said, “Now, wait a minute. I thought you said you were an atheist.”

And he said, “Well, that's the Jesus bolt. If it comes undone, you're going to say, oh, Jesus.” Tom did send me a Christmas card. So, I do think there's a belief there somewhere.

Tom entered his Reno Air Racer airplane for judging at Oshkosh this past year. Now, many of you may not know about Oshkosh, but Oshkosh is a great big airplane gathering, like thousands of them. All kinds of airplanes. And Tom entered his airplane in that judging. And he had 21 judges look at his airplane.

One of the judges' signatures was Burt Rutan. Now, that name might mean nothing to most of you, but Burt Rutan is like the pope of aeronautical engineering. He's world famous. And he inspected Tom's airplane. And Tom took top place, Gold Lindy Award at Oshkosh this past year. Pretty notable.

Tom flew to Maryville five times to help me with my airplane. I'm pretty lucky. Tom also flew with me in my airplane, and he fine-tuned the engine. So, it's running pretty darn good.

You might think I'm just here to talk about airplanes, but this is a Paul Harvey story. You'll get it at the end, okay?

So, in the airplane, it's all electronic panels. You’ll need to use your imagination a little to get the idea, but there’s one instrument on the left, on the far left, that’s called the attitude indicator. I want you to remember that one.

Now, over on the far right is my iPad, and that's in front of Deena, because she's my co-pilot. She can see where we're going, and she can see other airplanes. So, she helps me watch out. Pretty neat.

So, the attitude indicator on the far left, blue sky above, green down below, that's the ground, okay? And you can also see how fast we're going, and what altitude we're going, and a compass to tell us what direction we're going. Over on the right, there’s a pink line and it’s our GPS. It tells us where we're going. And it also shows us weather in the cockpit. Now, that's pretty neat.

Now, I'm going to digress from airplanes for a minute.

Think of a bird. It could be a sparrow. It could be a blue jay, but for the purposes of today, it's a hummingbird.

One day a we had the garage door open and a hummingbird flew into our. Once he got in there, he couldn't get out. He flew up near the ceiling, and I guess they're nearsighted, and all he could see was white.

There’s a line in a song, His Eye is on the Sparrow, that goes “I know he watches me.” That was one of my mother’s favorite songs and this hummingbird brought that to mind.

That hummingbird could not find his way out. I chased that hummingbird with a broom. I tried to catch him with a net. I couldn't get him. I finally gave up, and I just left the garage doors open, and I checked about sundown, and finally, about sundown, he found his way out.

“I know he's watching over me.”

Easter Sunday a year ago, Deena and I flew to Lee’s Summit to go to a baptism for our grandson, and when we're to return, there’s some clouds in the sky, but it’s otherwise clear.

Now, I am what they call a visual flight rules pilot. I don't belong in the clouds. I'm illegal in the clouds. My airplane is illegal in the clouds. I have instruments, but I'm not certified to be in the clouds.

Eight minutes from Maryville, we're in the clouds. For 18 years prior to this, I've been able to avoid the clouds.

Eight minutes from Maryville, we're in the clouds, we couldn't even see the ground, and it's the first time that I'd been in clouds, and I'm thinking, “We'll just pass through this, and it'll be clear sky on the other side.”

Well, I did check the weather, but I didn't check it right before we left, and the ceiling at Maryville was 400 feet. That's about where the windmills and radio towers are.

Now, if you're in the clouds and you're not trained to be in the clouds, the average VFR pilot makes it 176 seconds. That's less than three minutes, 75% of the time, and I know this fact, but I'm not sharing it with Deena at that point.

So, 176 seconds, and the statistics are you get disoriented, and it's not optimistic. Now, this is going through my mind. Sometimes, have you ever made a bad decision? Well, I made a bad decision in deciding to launch.

So, 176 seconds is the bad news time, and Deena and I are in the clouds for 30 solid minutes.

“His eye is on the sparrow.”

Now, my instructors, Joe and Kevin Rankin, above all else, they would say, keep flying the plane. Well, up until this point, the plane is on autopilot. I did something right as we started. The plane is flying itself. It's holding the altitude, and it knows where it wants to go, and it's going to Maryville, except Maryville is in the clouds. Joe and Kevin would say, keep flying the plane, but what they want you to do when you get into the clouds is pretty quickly do a 180.

Sounds good. First time in the clouds, I didn't respond right away, thinking this is going to get better. It didn't get better, and after about a minute, I decided better try turning.

Second mistake. I turned off the autopilot. Now, when you turn off the autopilot that keeps you steady and level, and you try and hand fly it, and spatial disorientation is setting in, I hear the engine revving. It's not a good thing. We're no longer flying level.

Now, Deena doesn't know that that's what that means. She is being an amazing co-pilot, because I'm saying to her, keep watching that screen for other airplanes. We can see other airplanes, even though we can't see them, but I hear the engine revving, so I tried turning left. Couldn't see anywhere. Tried turning right.

Couldn't see anywhere. Scared because I'm hearing that engine do funny things. I'm lost. Have any of you ever been lost?

I'm lost in the wilderness.

Now, in scouts, there's a merit badge called wilderness survival, and there are seven themes in wilderness survival. Shelter, fire, water, food, signaling, first aid. In the clouds, I don't need any of those. The most important one I want you to remember in wilderness survival.

Positive mental attitude.

Despair and faith. If you think you're going to die, you're probably going to die. If you think “I’m going to get out of this,” you got a good chance. So, my scouting training kicked in.

I didn't turn when I should have, and I immediately clicked back on the autopilot, and I look at my phone. Okay, where can we go? And where we can go that's got better skies is Clarinda. So, I set the autopilot for Clarinda, and as we fly over Clarinda, still can't see the ground.

I'm no longer looking down to the ground all the time. I'm looking at my instruments, but still can't see the ground. I look at my phone, and it says, maybe Red Oak. I said, “We're going to Red Oak.”

Finally, we can kind of see the ground. At 2200 feet, I'm beginning to see the runway, and I looked at Deena, and I said, “We're landing.” And after we landed, then I shared with her about 176 seconds, and she was real quiet, and then she said, “Let's don't ever do that again.”

Pretty good advice.

I'm going to bring you back to that attitude indicator. Imagine that instrument panel on the left side again. Blue sky above, green down below means you're right side up.

Positive mental attitude.

Now, when Pastor Gina challenged us to witness, and I'm sitting there thinking about how could I do this. I got to thinking about at times we all feel lost in our faith.

Positive mental attitude.

In our church sanctuary there are three stained glass windows. On the left, the dove is a sign of Christianity. To me, it's a sign of keep trying. Don't give up. Down below, we have the green ground. We have the blue sky. We have the GPS of God's direction with the Hand of God coming down from above, and we have our faith in the cross.

Now, when we were in the airplane flying over Maryville in the clouds, at that very moment, Chuck, the airport manager at the local airport, was there. At that very moment that we were flying over Maryville in the clouds, Chuck didn't know that it was Deena and I, but he heard that plane in the clouds, and he said, “Oh my, I'm saying a prayer for those souls in that airplane.” So, that imaginary rock you have might say prayer.

You never know what emphasis you're going to have on somebody else by saying a prayer for them. That rock that you have that says hope, you never know that it might give you a movable ankle rather than a fused ankle, and those of you that are holding the rock of faith, all the rocks count because you are the foundation of the church.

That's my message to you, and I leave you with the idea of may the sun shine upon your face and the wind be always at your back, except when you land and you want to land into the wind, okay? Thank you for reading my story. I hope you got something out of it.