Member Spotlight: Aviation mechanic flies high

Dale Coates has turned his “tinkeritis” into service for God.

The 47-year-old Samaritan member and mechanic supervisor with MMS Aviation in Coshocton, Ohio, works on missionary aircraft and teaches others how to do so as well. The ministry’s priority for 36 years has been to train men and women how to keep those planes flying so pilots can get supplies and people to missionary outposts in hard-to-reach places. They’ve graduated 64 mechanics into the mission field.

The training takes place on aircraft actually used in missions work. Apprentices get 30 months of on-the-job training by working alongside experienced mechanics like Dale. Then they head out to the field to apply their new skills.

“We’re looking for people who have tinkeritis,” Dale says. “That’s the guy who took his dad’s alarm clock apart when he was 7 years old … the guy who was always taking things apart, always interested in how things work. They make great mechanics.”

Dale and his wife, Deborah, felt their calling to the field while still living in their native Zimbabwe. An electrician by trade, Dale had worked for that country’s national power company as well as for recording studios as a sound technician, maintaining a shop and equipment. He has always had a knack for making things work.

“That’s just the way God wired me,” he says.

Even with his electrician’s experience, he still faced “a steep learning curve” when he started working at MMS, Dale says. The standard of quality in aircraft maintenance is understandably high.

“I don’t want to use the word ‘perfection,’ but that sort of comes to mind,” he says. “Things have got to be right. There are no short cuts, especially in the Lord’s service. We want to do things absolutely right. We want to be honorable. We don’t want to cut corners.”

MMS’s approach to training is different from a traditional mechanics’ school. The missions organization gives its apprentices complete aircraft to learn on instead of having them learn in different classroom settings, each one addressing a different part of a plane. Getting an aircraft back to full service also gives the apprentices “a real sense of ownership,” Dale says.

Both Dale and Deborah have a sense of ownership in their ministry.

“She feels she’s called to this ministry just as much as I am,” he says. “She is such an encouragement to me.”

Deborah provides hospitality to families visiting MMS for evaluation, who are in the process of joining MMS but need housing, who are on their way to the mission field, or who are on furlough. She also helps with the mailing of the MMS newsletter, hosts a prayer and education meeting for MMS wives, and speaks to ladies’ groups and banquets about Africa and MMS.

Dale Coates is featured in the Member Spotlight of the July 2011 Christian Health Care Newsletter. If you’d like to receive a PDF of the article or entire newsletter, send an e-mail to mikemiller(at)smchcn.net.