Burns Take Flight, The

Please click HERE to visit our website.

Mission Statement:

To help meet physical and spiritual needs around the world through the use of aviation, entrepreneurship, discipleship, and dance fitness.

Problem Being Solved?

1. There are people living in remote areas where ground or water transportation alone present huge barriers to medical evacuations, receipt of needed supplies, and isolation from broader markets for their goods. Aviation solves this problem by providing an incredibly expedited option for transportation.

2. Missionary aviation is an industry that is in constant need of more financial resources to keep planes in the air and airstrips open and certified. People living in remote areas are living in abject poverty, as they are unable to get their goods and services to market in larger urban areas where the demand for their products is higher.

3. In discussion about the program with some of the faculty at Moody, it became apparent that there is a lot of value in having students attend the school that are a little bit older, with a little bit more life experience, that can help mentor and disciple some of the younger men and women in the program.

4. Two major pieces to healthy living are spiritual and physical well-being. These two needs can be met through dance and fitness services, such as Zumba, which allow the expression of worship beyond what words can describe as well as the expression of good stewardship of the body God has provided.

How Are You Solving It?

Over the next 5 years, we intend to attain missionary training in the area of piloting and aircraft mechanics with the goal of using that training in the area of missionary aviation in the more remote parts of the world. While going through the multi-year training program, we will seek to serve as mentors to younger men and women in the Spokane, WA area, will be serving unpaid in our church wherever needed, and Alyx will be providing dance/fitness services to the Spokane community with an eye not just toward physical well-being, but also spiritual well-being. Sam will also use his entrepreneurial training and mentality to connect the massive amount of wealth sitting in the coffers of western countries with these organizations and individuals in need of those resources.

Why Are You Qualified?

God has melded together many opportunities and gifts we've had to serve our home city of Tucson in various ways: mentoring and equipping others, running and supporting a business, organizing church and ministry events and plans, encouraging others through difficult times and/or who are enabled by his/her own damaging circumstances or beliefs, as well as fitness and dance focused community involvement. We have gone through unique cross-cultural training through Corazon Ministries in aiding us to better point those of differing cultures toward Christ and to build healthier life habits and relationships. We hope to continue serving and reaching out to others in Spokane as well as in the future on the mission field wherever we are sent to administer flights and transportation to needed areas and people.

What is the Urgency?

Aviation can save an immense amount of time when time is the only limiting factor to getting people needed resources and support. Airplanes can also be used to perform medical evacuations from remote villages to an urban hospitals, potentially the difference between life and death.

If you look at any mission aviation organizations website, the front page will be covered in calls for money. They will detail airplanes that are out of commission due to lack of resources to repair them. They will outline the stories of qualified pilots who are not flying due to lack of funding to support their unpaid work overseas.

There are young men and women entering the "real world" with little depth of faith and/or identity in Christ. They are good hearted and well-intentioned, but like the seed spread along the side of the road or in the thorny briars, lack the spiritual maturity to take on a world that is seeking to devour them.

For many, dance is a freeing expression of physical and mental health as well as worship beyond what only words can express. Physically, fitness education and dance classes are excellent ways to help stem the tide of the American pandemic (80% of adults do not meet the government's national physical activity recommendations for aerobic activity and muscle strengthening). This can help catapult people into being the best versions of themselves that God created them to be.