Medicine for 1500 People – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

Focus on Partnership: Operation Blessing’s Indonesian branch, Obor Berkat (OBI), sent two teams of doctors to Palu just days after the earthquake and tsunami devastated the city leaving homeless and injured residents setting up makeshift tented camps across the town.

The doctor/nurse teams began holding clinics, moving from camp to camp, trying to provide basic care, but Mark McClendon, who was overseeing the operation, was struggling to get their cargo of medicine to Palu until MAF came to hlep.

“MAF sent medicines for 1500 people on their plane so that our medical teams can be resupplied today just in time. Tomorrow morning all of our teams will hit the ground with meds. We’re targeting a minimum of 10,000 patients the first month.”

A Miraculous Reunion Story – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

A team of MAF Staff from Papua have been in Sulawesi helping with the tsunami recovery efforts. One of the team members, Stanley, flew into a village to deliver supplies and miraculously and quite by chance met up with his in-law family that hadn’t been heard from since the disaster.

Cut Off – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

The community of Kulawi, tucked in the mountains south of Palu in Indonesia, did not make international news when a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck on 28 September. It was not in the path of the tsunami that followed. Houses weren’t sucked into mud like in Palu. But homes and buildings around Kulawi did crumble in random fashion – lightly in one village, entirely in another. And until some major excavation takes place, the area is left isolated between multiple landslides that have cut off access in or out except by foot or air.

In Just One Day – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

It was a busy Monday (October 8th) for the team of pilots and ground staff in Palu Indonesia for both Yayasan MAF Indonesian’s Kodiak and Helivida’s helicopter, delivering food, a full plane of medicine, two medical evacuations, and flying doctors in and out of two communities cut off by damaged roads.

MAF responds to earthquake and tsunami in Sulawesi, Indonesia

MAF’s Disaster Response Team along with our programs in Papua and Kalimantan, is responding to the disaster on Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, caused by a 7.4 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that occurred on Friday, 28 September.  MAF has been coordinating with partner organizations, including Ethnos360 Aviation, Helivida, and ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance (AHA) to plan a response.

CRMF Bible Box Testimonies, Prayer Requests and Statistics

The Bible Box is a project that both MAF and CRMF partner together on. It’s quite a simple idea, but it’s life-changing for people who have no access to Christian resources and Bibles. Here are some stories and testimonies from our MAF Australia pilots and MAF Papua New Guinea staff who help hand out these valuable resources.

Teaching to Fish and Overcome Poverty – Liberia

The story of a remarkable woman, Sister Wilhelmena, who in 2012 in response to the poverty around her, started the Peoples Initiative Against Poverty Program. Sister Wilhelmena often uses the services of MAF in Liberia to further her work, saying, “sometimes when the roads are bad, we are trapped. There’s no way to get out to carry on the work we do. It’s not only to the church but the entire country who’s been facing problems with roads. MAF’s presence in Liberia has brought great relief. We are very, very grateful. You can ask anybody in this region that has ever flown with MAF and they’ll tell you we are grateful.” Read about her amazing work here.

Diary of a Medevac

Of all the flying Australian Pilot Dave Rogers does in PNG, he finds medevac flights the most rewarding. MAF flights benefit the communities we serve in many ways, but nothing has a more immediate and tangible impact than a medevac. They are usually some of the most operationally difficult flights to manage given they come up at short notice, in the middle of your flying program, and often late in the day when weather or daylight is an issue. This makes it all the more rewarding when you get it to work.

Dave’s most recent case was no different.

Bringing Education to the Remote

For over 40 years, MAF has been partnering with Yirrkala Homelands School and Laynha to bring education to the remote communities of Arnhem Land. Yirrkala Homelands School was formerly part of Yirrkala School, and the services for Homeland communities began in 1974. Since the very beginning, they have been using MAF services to transport teachers out to the remote Homelands.

From Death to Life 

“She is not dead yet,” replied one of the villagers, “but will die soon.”

A 15-year-old girl was pregnant and trying to deliver, but the baby had turned. There was no healthcare at the time in the dense jungles of Kalimantan, Indonesia, on the island of Borneo. The people in her village had no hope that this girl, named Lihut, would live.

So they turned to the local witchdoctor.

He and a few other men decided to jump up and down on the girl’s belly, thinking this would help. Of course, it only caused further damage.

On a nearby grass airstrip, a small airplane—a Cessna 185—touched down and John Hook, a pilot with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), stepped out. Read what happened next here.

A Story of Grace

This is a story of Grace. Emma Grace. She is alive today only by the Grace of God because, when Emma Grace was just two days old, she was left to die. Read more here.

A Day to Remember – Harverson Memorial, PNG

The Harverson family came to PNG to find closure. What they found was connection and love.

Didinga Bible Dedication – South Sudan

When MAF’s Cessna 182 landed in the village of Chukudum, it was the first time ever that the Didinga people in the south-east of South Sudan had seen a Bible in their mother tongue. It had been almost 40 years in the making and the excitement was great.

Reconnecting Noru by Air

It has been twelve years since MAF has been able to land in the community of Noru in Papua New Guinea. Glenys Watson, First Officer on the MAF flight that recently reconnected Noru by air reports: “As we circled over the airstrip to inspect it, we could see plenty of people were out waiting to see what would happen. From the air, it looked good. The grass was cut short, and the wind was light. We made an approach to land. As we came into land, people lined the side of the airstrip, and all were clapping and cheering. We stopped and shutdown at the top of the airstrip where the majority of the community had gathered. We were met by men with bows and arrows dancing around the plane. As we climbed out, again the community clapped and cheered and hung flowers around our necks. The joy was obvious!“

Drilling for water in remote places

In Ulang, South Sudan, a Medair Emergency Response Team (ERT) is currently doing a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) intervention in Ulang County assisting the host community and Internally Displaced People (IDP). MAF recently flew a ton of equipment to the team – primarily tools for manual drilling of water points, well supplies, piping and a water pump – plus a lot of food for the 5-member Medair team who had been eating only rice for two and a half days.

Media Release: MAF Australia and Endeavour Christian College launch new educational flight partnership.

To launch the partnership, on August 3rd, MAF Australia General Manager Ian McDougall and Chief Flight Instructor Andy Little will be flying the brand new Cessna 182 Training Plane to Cooktown to formalise the partnership and speak with the school Community on MAF and Missionary as a career.

Well, This Isn’t Going to Work! – A Story from Papua New Guinea

Being a mission pilot these days in Papua New Guinea isn’t that much about flying missionaries. The number of missionaries in the country has declined a lot since MAF started its operation in 1951. Today, the MAF pilot is often the only expat missionary a remote community gets to see. However, the time spent on the ground with the community in many cases is limited to unloading the plane and to sorting out the passengers and loading for the take off.

Random opportunities do exist, however, when the timing is just right and the pilot can spend time with the people on the ground as recently happened to MAF Pilot Rick Velvin.

Enjoy his testimony of allowing God using him in an unexpected way.

A Day in the Life of a Training Pilot – A Story from Kenya

Pilot Danny Gill has been training in Kenya for the last six months. This is the story of a recent training flight that he took, where he went and the challenges he faced. It is a great insight into the life of a training pilot at MAF. Danny writes, “At the end of the day we usually brief with the instructors and gain tips, advice, and wisdom from what they’ve observed. I was encouraged by having performed better on this day and grateful for the encouraging feedback from my instructor on my progress. The training can be grueling, and I find it’s always playing on my mind, that I never truly stop thinking about the standards and requirements to be met.”

Is my life worth it? – A Story from Papua New Guinea

Saving a life is a big part of being a MAF pilot. Delivering food for the hungry or airlifting the sick and dying from a jungle airstrip; the MAF pilot who takes the opportunity can make a real difference. But, these opportunities include tough decisions. Medical Evacuation (Medevac) calls are vague at best. Details about the rescue often sketchy, and when the financial cost is high, the decision to cancel a day’s flying program to divert to a place far away with no certainty of a good outcome is a heavy burden. Read Paul Woodington’s story about one such decision he recently had to make.

Medevac Emergency in Mongolia

Our work week started with an urgent call to pick up a baby suffering from serious illness. Alarm clock was set for 3am on Monday morning. At 5 o’clock we took off from our base at Ulaanbaatar international airport and headed off to Arvaikheer, municipal capital town of Ovorhangai county, one hour twenty minutes flight to the West. We landed on the grass runway and taxied to front of the small terminal. A vehicle was already waiting behind the gate to bring the passengers. This time we did not need the stretcher. The main patient was an eight-month year old baby girl, who had turned yellow.

Medicine for 1500 People – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

Focus on Partnership: Operation Blessing’s Indonesian branch, Obor Berkat (OBI), sent two teams of doctors to Palu just days after the earthquake and tsunami devastated the city leaving homeless and injured residents setting up makeshift tented camps across the town.

The doctor/nurse teams began holding clinics, moving from camp to camp, trying to provide basic care, but Mark McClendon, who was overseeing the operation, was struggling to get their cargo of medicine to Palu until MAF came to hlep.

“MAF sent medicines for 1500 people on their plane so that our medical teams can be resupplied today just in time. Tomorrow morning all of our teams will hit the ground with meds. We’re targeting a minimum of 10,000 patients the first month.”

A Miraculous Reunion Story – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

A team of MAF Staff from Papua have been in Sulawesi helping with the tsunami recovery efforts. One of the team members, Stanley, flew into a village to deliver supplies and miraculously and quite by chance met up with his in-law family that hadn’t been heard from since the disaster.

Cut Off – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

The community of Kulawi, tucked in the mountains south of Palu in Indonesia, did not make international news when a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck on 28 September. It was not in the path of the tsunami that followed. Houses weren’t sucked into mud like in Palu. But homes and buildings around Kulawi did crumble in random fashion – lightly in one village, entirely in another. And until some major excavation takes place, the area is left isolated between multiple landslides that have cut off access in or out except by foot or air.

In Just One Day – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

It was a busy Monday (October 8th) for the team of pilots and ground staff in Palu Indonesia for both Yayasan MAF Indonesian’s Kodiak and Helivida’s helicopter, delivering food, a full plane of medicine, two medical evacuations, and flying doctors in and out of two communities cut off by damaged roads.

MAF responds to earthquake and tsunami in Sulawesi, Indonesia

MAF’s Disaster Response Team along with our programs in Papua and Kalimantan, is responding to the disaster on Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, caused by a 7.4 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that occurred on Friday, 28 September.  MAF has been coordinating with partner organizations, including Ethnos360 Aviation, Helivida, and ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance (AHA) to plan a response.

CRMF Bible Box Testimonies, Prayer Requests and Statistics

The Bible Box is a project that both MAF and CRMF partner together on. It’s quite a simple idea, but it’s life-changing for people who have no access to Christian resources and Bibles. Here are some stories and testimonies from our MAF Australia pilots and MAF Papua New Guinea staff who help hand out these valuable resources.

Teaching to Fish and Overcome Poverty – Liberia

The story of a remarkable woman, Sister Wilhelmena, who in 2012 in response to the poverty around her, started the Peoples Initiative Against Poverty Program. Sister Wilhelmena often uses the services of MAF in Liberia to further her work, saying, “sometimes when the roads are bad, we are trapped. There’s no way to get out to carry on the work we do. It’s not only to the church but the entire country who’s been facing problems with roads. MAF’s presence in Liberia has brought great relief. We are very, very grateful. You can ask anybody in this region that has ever flown with MAF and they’ll tell you we are grateful.” Read about her amazing work here.

Diary of a Medevac

Of all the flying Australian Pilot Dave Rogers does in PNG, he finds medevac flights the most rewarding. MAF flights benefit the communities we serve in many ways, but nothing has a more immediate and tangible impact than a medevac. They are usually some of the most operationally difficult flights to manage given they come up at short notice, in the middle of your flying program, and often late in the day when weather or daylight is an issue. This makes it all the more rewarding when you get it to work.

Dave’s most recent case was no different.

Bringing Education to the Remote

For over 40 years, MAF has been partnering with Yirrkala Homelands School and Laynha to bring education to the remote communities of Arnhem Land. Yirrkala Homelands School was formerly part of Yirrkala School, and the services for Homeland communities began in 1974. Since the very beginning, they have been using MAF services to transport teachers out to the remote Homelands.

From Death to Life 

“She is not dead yet,” replied one of the villagers, “but will die soon.”

A 15-year-old girl was pregnant and trying to deliver, but the baby had turned. There was no healthcare at the time in the dense jungles of Kalimantan, Indonesia, on the island of Borneo. The people in her village had no hope that this girl, named Lihut, would live.

So they turned to the local witchdoctor.

He and a few other men decided to jump up and down on the girl’s belly, thinking this would help. Of course, it only caused further damage.

On a nearby grass airstrip, a small airplane—a Cessna 185—touched down and John Hook, a pilot with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), stepped out. Read what happened next here.

A Story of Grace

This is a story of Grace. Emma Grace. She is alive today only by the Grace of God because, when Emma Grace was just two days old, she was left to die. Read more here.

A Day to Remember – Harverson Memorial, PNG

The Harverson family came to PNG to find closure. What they found was connection and love.

Didinga Bible Dedication – South Sudan

When MAF’s Cessna 182 landed in the village of Chukudum, it was the first time ever that the Didinga people in the south-east of South Sudan had seen a Bible in their mother tongue. It had been almost 40 years in the making and the excitement was great.

Reconnecting Noru by Air

It has been twelve years since MAF has been able to land in the community of Noru in Papua New Guinea. Glenys Watson, First Officer on the MAF flight that recently reconnected Noru by air reports: “As we circled over the airstrip to inspect it, we could see plenty of people were out waiting to see what would happen. From the air, it looked good. The grass was cut short, and the wind was light. We made an approach to land. As we came into land, people lined the side of the airstrip, and all were clapping and cheering. We stopped and shutdown at the top of the airstrip where the majority of the community had gathered. We were met by men with bows and arrows dancing around the plane. As we climbed out, again the community clapped and cheered and hung flowers around our necks. The joy was obvious!“

Drilling for water in remote places

In Ulang, South Sudan, a Medair Emergency Response Team (ERT) is currently doing a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) intervention in Ulang County assisting the host community and Internally Displaced People (IDP). MAF recently flew a ton of equipment to the team – primarily tools for manual drilling of water points, well supplies, piping and a water pump – plus a lot of food for the 5-member Medair team who had been eating only rice for two and a half days.

Media Release: MAF Australia and Endeavour Christian College launch new educational flight partnership.

To launch the partnership, on August 3rd, MAF Australia General Manager Ian McDougall and Chief Flight Instructor Andy Little will be flying the brand new Cessna 182 Training Plane to Cooktown to formalise the partnership and speak with the school Community on MAF and Missionary as a career.

Well, This Isn’t Going to Work! – A Story from Papua New Guinea

Being a mission pilot these days in Papua New Guinea isn’t that much about flying missionaries. The number of missionaries in the country has declined a lot since MAF started its operation in 1951. Today, the MAF pilot is often the only expat missionary a remote community gets to see. However, the time spent on the ground with the community in many cases is limited to unloading the plane and to sorting out the passengers and loading for the take off.

Random opportunities do exist, however, when the timing is just right and the pilot can spend time with the people on the ground as recently happened to MAF Pilot Rick Velvin.

Enjoy his testimony of allowing God using him in an unexpected way.

A Day in the Life of a Training Pilot – A Story from Kenya

Pilot Danny Gill has been training in Kenya for the last six months. This is the story of a recent training flight that he took, where he went and the challenges he faced. It is a great insight into the life of a training pilot at MAF. Danny writes, “At the end of the day we usually brief with the instructors and gain tips, advice, and wisdom from what they’ve observed. I was encouraged by having performed better on this day and grateful for the encouraging feedback from my instructor on my progress. The training can be grueling, and I find it’s always playing on my mind, that I never truly stop thinking about the standards and requirements to be met.”

Is my life worth it? – A Story from Papua New Guinea

Saving a life is a big part of being a MAF pilot. Delivering food for the hungry or airlifting the sick and dying from a jungle airstrip; the MAF pilot who takes the opportunity can make a real difference. But, these opportunities include tough decisions. Medical Evacuation (Medevac) calls are vague at best. Details about the rescue often sketchy, and when the financial cost is high, the decision to cancel a day’s flying program to divert to a place far away with no certainty of a good outcome is a heavy burden. Read Paul Woodington’s story about one such decision he recently had to make.

Medevac Emergency in Mongolia

Our work week started with an urgent call to pick up a baby suffering from serious illness. Alarm clock was set for 3am on Monday morning. At 5 o’clock we took off from our base at Ulaanbaatar international airport and headed off to Arvaikheer, municipal capital town of Ovorhangai county, one hour twenty minutes flight to the West. We landed on the grass runway and taxied to front of the small terminal. A vehicle was already waiting behind the gate to bring the passengers. This time we did not need the stretcher. The main patient was an eight-month year old baby girl, who had turned yellow.

Medicine for 1500 People – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

Focus on Partnership: Operation Blessing’s Indonesian branch, Obor Berkat (OBI), sent two teams of doctors to Palu just days after the earthquake and tsunami devastated the city leaving homeless and injured residents setting up makeshift tented camps across the town.

The doctor/nurse teams began holding clinics, moving from camp to camp, trying to provide basic care, but Mark McClendon, who was overseeing the operation, was struggling to get their cargo of medicine to Palu until MAF came to hlep.

“MAF sent medicines for 1500 people on their plane so that our medical teams can be resupplied today just in time. Tomorrow morning all of our teams will hit the ground with meds. We’re targeting a minimum of 10,000 patients the first month.”

A Miraculous Reunion Story – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

A team of MAF Staff from Papua have been in Sulawesi helping with the tsunami recovery efforts. One of the team members, Stanley, flew into a village to deliver supplies and miraculously and quite by chance met up with his in-law family that hadn’t been heard from since the disaster.

Cut Off – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

The community of Kulawi, tucked in the mountains south of Palu in Indonesia, did not make international news when a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck on 28 September. It was not in the path of the tsunami that followed. Houses weren’t sucked into mud like in Palu. But homes and buildings around Kulawi did crumble in random fashion – lightly in one village, entirely in another. And until some major excavation takes place, the area is left isolated between multiple landslides that have cut off access in or out except by foot or air.

In Just One Day – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

It was a busy Monday (October 8th) for the team of pilots and ground staff in Palu Indonesia for both Yayasan MAF Indonesian’s Kodiak and Helivida’s helicopter, delivering food, a full plane of medicine, two medical evacuations, and flying doctors in and out of two communities cut off by damaged roads.

MAF responds to earthquake and tsunami in Sulawesi, Indonesia

MAF’s Disaster Response Team along with our programs in Papua and Kalimantan, is responding to the disaster on Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, caused by a 7.4 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that occurred on Friday, 28 September.  MAF has been coordinating with partner organizations, including Ethnos360 Aviation, Helivida, and ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance (AHA) to plan a response.

CRMF Bible Box Testimonies, Prayer Requests and Statistics

The Bible Box is a project that both MAF and CRMF partner together on. It’s quite a simple idea, but it’s life-changing for people who have no access to Christian resources and Bibles. Here are some stories and testimonies from our MAF Australia pilots and MAF Papua New Guinea staff who help hand out these valuable resources.

Teaching to Fish and Overcome Poverty – Liberia

The story of a remarkable woman, Sister Wilhelmena, who in 2012 in response to the poverty around her, started the Peoples Initiative Against Poverty Program. Sister Wilhelmena often uses the services of MAF in Liberia to further her work, saying, “sometimes when the roads are bad, we are trapped. There’s no way to get out to carry on the work we do. It’s not only to the church but the entire country who’s been facing problems with roads. MAF’s presence in Liberia has brought great relief. We are very, very grateful. You can ask anybody in this region that has ever flown with MAF and they’ll tell you we are grateful.” Read about her amazing work here.

Diary of a Medevac

Of all the flying Australian Pilot Dave Rogers does in PNG, he finds medevac flights the most rewarding. MAF flights benefit the communities we serve in many ways, but nothing has a more immediate and tangible impact than a medevac. They are usually some of the most operationally difficult flights to manage given they come up at short notice, in the middle of your flying program, and often late in the day when weather or daylight is an issue. This makes it all the more rewarding when you get it to work.

Dave’s most recent case was no different.

Bringing Education to the Remote

For over 40 years, MAF has been partnering with Yirrkala Homelands School and Laynha to bring education to the remote communities of Arnhem Land. Yirrkala Homelands School was formerly part of Yirrkala School, and the services for Homeland communities began in 1974. Since the very beginning, they have been using MAF services to transport teachers out to the remote Homelands.

From Death to Life 

“She is not dead yet,” replied one of the villagers, “but will die soon.”

A 15-year-old girl was pregnant and trying to deliver, but the baby had turned. There was no healthcare at the time in the dense jungles of Kalimantan, Indonesia, on the island of Borneo. The people in her village had no hope that this girl, named Lihut, would live.

So they turned to the local witchdoctor.

He and a few other men decided to jump up and down on the girl’s belly, thinking this would help. Of course, it only caused further damage.

On a nearby grass airstrip, a small airplane—a Cessna 185—touched down and John Hook, a pilot with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), stepped out. Read what happened next here.

A Story of Grace

This is a story of Grace. Emma Grace. She is alive today only by the Grace of God because, when Emma Grace was just two days old, she was left to die. Read more here.

A Day to Remember – Harverson Memorial, PNG

The Harverson family came to PNG to find closure. What they found was connection and love.

Didinga Bible Dedication – South Sudan

When MAF’s Cessna 182 landed in the village of Chukudum, it was the first time ever that the Didinga people in the south-east of South Sudan had seen a Bible in their mother tongue. It had been almost 40 years in the making and the excitement was great.

Reconnecting Noru by Air

It has been twelve years since MAF has been able to land in the community of Noru in Papua New Guinea. Glenys Watson, First Officer on the MAF flight that recently reconnected Noru by air reports: “As we circled over the airstrip to inspect it, we could see plenty of people were out waiting to see what would happen. From the air, it looked good. The grass was cut short, and the wind was light. We made an approach to land. As we came into land, people lined the side of the airstrip, and all were clapping and cheering. We stopped and shutdown at the top of the airstrip where the majority of the community had gathered. We were met by men with bows and arrows dancing around the plane. As we climbed out, again the community clapped and cheered and hung flowers around our necks. The joy was obvious!“

Drilling for water in remote places

In Ulang, South Sudan, a Medair Emergency Response Team (ERT) is currently doing a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) intervention in Ulang County assisting the host community and Internally Displaced People (IDP). MAF recently flew a ton of equipment to the team – primarily tools for manual drilling of water points, well supplies, piping and a water pump – plus a lot of food for the 5-member Medair team who had been eating only rice for two and a half days.

Media Release: MAF Australia and Endeavour Christian College launch new educational flight partnership.

To launch the partnership, on August 3rd, MAF Australia General Manager Ian McDougall and Chief Flight Instructor Andy Little will be flying the brand new Cessna 182 Training Plane to Cooktown to formalise the partnership and speak with the school Community on MAF and Missionary as a career.

Well, This Isn’t Going to Work! – A Story from Papua New Guinea

Being a mission pilot these days in Papua New Guinea isn’t that much about flying missionaries. The number of missionaries in the country has declined a lot since MAF started its operation in 1951. Today, the MAF pilot is often the only expat missionary a remote community gets to see. However, the time spent on the ground with the community in many cases is limited to unloading the plane and to sorting out the passengers and loading for the take off.

Random opportunities do exist, however, when the timing is just right and the pilot can spend time with the people on the ground as recently happened to MAF Pilot Rick Velvin.

Enjoy his testimony of allowing God using him in an unexpected way.

A Day in the Life of a Training Pilot – A Story from Kenya

Pilot Danny Gill has been training in Kenya for the last six months. This is the story of a recent training flight that he took, where he went and the challenges he faced. It is a great insight into the life of a training pilot at MAF. Danny writes, “At the end of the day we usually brief with the instructors and gain tips, advice, and wisdom from what they’ve observed. I was encouraged by having performed better on this day and grateful for the encouraging feedback from my instructor on my progress. The training can be grueling, and I find it’s always playing on my mind, that I never truly stop thinking about the standards and requirements to be met.”

Is my life worth it? – A Story from Papua New Guinea

Saving a life is a big part of being a MAF pilot. Delivering food for the hungry or airlifting the sick and dying from a jungle airstrip; the MAF pilot who takes the opportunity can make a real difference. But, these opportunities include tough decisions. Medical Evacuation (Medevac) calls are vague at best. Details about the rescue often sketchy, and when the financial cost is high, the decision to cancel a day’s flying program to divert to a place far away with no certainty of a good outcome is a heavy burden. Read Paul Woodington’s story about one such decision he recently had to make.

Medevac Emergency in Mongolia

Our work week started with an urgent call to pick up a baby suffering from serious illness. Alarm clock was set for 3am on Monday morning. At 5 o’clock we took off from our base at Ulaanbaatar international airport and headed off to Arvaikheer, municipal capital town of Ovorhangai county, one hour twenty minutes flight to the West. We landed on the grass runway and taxied to front of the small terminal. A vehicle was already waiting behind the gate to bring the passengers. This time we did not need the stretcher. The main patient was an eight-month year old baby girl, who had turned yellow.

Medicine for 1500 People – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

Focus on Partnership: Operation Blessing’s Indonesian branch, Obor Berkat (OBI), sent two teams of doctors to Palu just days after the earthquake and tsunami devastated the city leaving homeless and injured residents setting up makeshift tented camps across the town.

The doctor/nurse teams began holding clinics, moving from camp to camp, trying to provide basic care, but Mark McClendon, who was overseeing the operation, was struggling to get their cargo of medicine to Palu until MAF came to hlep.

“MAF sent medicines for 1500 people on their plane so that our medical teams can be resupplied today just in time. Tomorrow morning all of our teams will hit the ground with meds. We’re targeting a minimum of 10,000 patients the first month.”

A Miraculous Reunion Story – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

A team of MAF Staff from Papua have been in Sulawesi helping with the tsunami recovery efforts. One of the team members, Stanley, flew into a village to deliver supplies and miraculously and quite by chance met up with his in-law family that hadn’t been heard from since the disaster.

Cut Off – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

The community of Kulawi, tucked in the mountains south of Palu in Indonesia, did not make international news when a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck on 28 September. It was not in the path of the tsunami that followed. Houses weren’t sucked into mud like in Palu. But homes and buildings around Kulawi did crumble in random fashion – lightly in one village, entirely in another. And until some major excavation takes place, the area is left isolated between multiple landslides that have cut off access in or out except by foot or air.

In Just One Day – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

It was a busy Monday (October 8th) for the team of pilots and ground staff in Palu Indonesia for both Yayasan MAF Indonesian’s Kodiak and Helivida’s helicopter, delivering food, a full plane of medicine, two medical evacuations, and flying doctors in and out of two communities cut off by damaged roads.

MAF responds to earthquake and tsunami in Sulawesi, Indonesia

MAF’s Disaster Response Team along with our programs in Papua and Kalimantan, is responding to the disaster on Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, caused by a 7.4 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that occurred on Friday, 28 September.  MAF has been coordinating with partner organizations, including Ethnos360 Aviation, Helivida, and ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance (AHA) to plan a response.

CRMF Bible Box Testimonies, Prayer Requests and Statistics

The Bible Box is a project that both MAF and CRMF partner together on. It’s quite a simple idea, but it’s life-changing for people who have no access to Christian resources and Bibles. Here are some stories and testimonies from our MAF Australia pilots and MAF Papua New Guinea staff who help hand out these valuable resources.

Teaching to Fish and Overcome Poverty – Liberia

The story of a remarkable woman, Sister Wilhelmena, who in 2012 in response to the poverty around her, started the Peoples Initiative Against Poverty Program. Sister Wilhelmena often uses the services of MAF in Liberia to further her work, saying, “sometimes when the roads are bad, we are trapped. There’s no way to get out to carry on the work we do. It’s not only to the church but the entire country who’s been facing problems with roads. MAF’s presence in Liberia has brought great relief. We are very, very grateful. You can ask anybody in this region that has ever flown with MAF and they’ll tell you we are grateful.” Read about her amazing work here.

Diary of a Medevac

Of all the flying Australian Pilot Dave Rogers does in PNG, he finds medevac flights the most rewarding. MAF flights benefit the communities we serve in many ways, but nothing has a more immediate and tangible impact than a medevac. They are usually some of the most operationally difficult flights to manage given they come up at short notice, in the middle of your flying program, and often late in the day when weather or daylight is an issue. This makes it all the more rewarding when you get it to work.

Dave’s most recent case was no different.

Bringing Education to the Remote

For over 40 years, MAF has been partnering with Yirrkala Homelands School and Laynha to bring education to the remote communities of Arnhem Land. Yirrkala Homelands School was formerly part of Yirrkala School, and the services for Homeland communities began in 1974. Since the very beginning, they have been using MAF services to transport teachers out to the remote Homelands.

From Death to Life 

“She is not dead yet,” replied one of the villagers, “but will die soon.”

A 15-year-old girl was pregnant and trying to deliver, but the baby had turned. There was no healthcare at the time in the dense jungles of Kalimantan, Indonesia, on the island of Borneo. The people in her village had no hope that this girl, named Lihut, would live.

So they turned to the local witchdoctor.

He and a few other men decided to jump up and down on the girl’s belly, thinking this would help. Of course, it only caused further damage.

On a nearby grass airstrip, a small airplane—a Cessna 185—touched down and John Hook, a pilot with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), stepped out. Read what happened next here.

A Story of Grace

This is a story of Grace. Emma Grace. She is alive today only by the Grace of God because, when Emma Grace was just two days old, she was left to die. Read more here.

A Day to Remember – Harverson Memorial, PNG

The Harverson family came to PNG to find closure. What they found was connection and love.

Didinga Bible Dedication – South Sudan

When MAF’s Cessna 182 landed in the village of Chukudum, it was the first time ever that the Didinga people in the south-east of South Sudan had seen a Bible in their mother tongue. It had been almost 40 years in the making and the excitement was great.

Reconnecting Noru by Air

It has been twelve years since MAF has been able to land in the community of Noru in Papua New Guinea. Glenys Watson, First Officer on the MAF flight that recently reconnected Noru by air reports: “As we circled over the airstrip to inspect it, we could see plenty of people were out waiting to see what would happen. From the air, it looked good. The grass was cut short, and the wind was light. We made an approach to land. As we came into land, people lined the side of the airstrip, and all were clapping and cheering. We stopped and shutdown at the top of the airstrip where the majority of the community had gathered. We were met by men with bows and arrows dancing around the plane. As we climbed out, again the community clapped and cheered and hung flowers around our necks. The joy was obvious!“

Drilling for water in remote places

In Ulang, South Sudan, a Medair Emergency Response Team (ERT) is currently doing a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) intervention in Ulang County assisting the host community and Internally Displaced People (IDP). MAF recently flew a ton of equipment to the team – primarily tools for manual drilling of water points, well supplies, piping and a water pump – plus a lot of food for the 5-member Medair team who had been eating only rice for two and a half days.

Media Release: MAF Australia and Endeavour Christian College launch new educational flight partnership.

To launch the partnership, on August 3rd, MAF Australia General Manager Ian McDougall and Chief Flight Instructor Andy Little will be flying the brand new Cessna 182 Training Plane to Cooktown to formalise the partnership and speak with the school Community on MAF and Missionary as a career.

Well, This Isn’t Going to Work! – A Story from Papua New Guinea

Being a mission pilot these days in Papua New Guinea isn’t that much about flying missionaries. The number of missionaries in the country has declined a lot since MAF started its operation in 1951. Today, the MAF pilot is often the only expat missionary a remote community gets to see. However, the time spent on the ground with the community in many cases is limited to unloading the plane and to sorting out the passengers and loading for the take off.

Random opportunities do exist, however, when the timing is just right and the pilot can spend time with the people on the ground as recently happened to MAF Pilot Rick Velvin.

Enjoy his testimony of allowing God using him in an unexpected way.

A Day in the Life of a Training Pilot – A Story from Kenya

Pilot Danny Gill has been training in Kenya for the last six months. This is the story of a recent training flight that he took, where he went and the challenges he faced. It is a great insight into the life of a training pilot at MAF. Danny writes, “At the end of the day we usually brief with the instructors and gain tips, advice, and wisdom from what they’ve observed. I was encouraged by having performed better on this day and grateful for the encouraging feedback from my instructor on my progress. The training can be grueling, and I find it’s always playing on my mind, that I never truly stop thinking about the standards and requirements to be met.”

Is my life worth it? – A Story from Papua New Guinea

Saving a life is a big part of being a MAF pilot. Delivering food for the hungry or airlifting the sick and dying from a jungle airstrip; the MAF pilot who takes the opportunity can make a real difference. But, these opportunities include tough decisions. Medical Evacuation (Medevac) calls are vague at best. Details about the rescue often sketchy, and when the financial cost is high, the decision to cancel a day’s flying program to divert to a place far away with no certainty of a good outcome is a heavy burden. Read Paul Woodington’s story about one such decision he recently had to make.

Medevac Emergency in Mongolia

Our work week started with an urgent call to pick up a baby suffering from serious illness. Alarm clock was set for 3am on Monday morning. At 5 o’clock we took off from our base at Ulaanbaatar international airport and headed off to Arvaikheer, municipal capital town of Ovorhangai county, one hour twenty minutes flight to the West. We landed on the grass runway and taxied to front of the small terminal. A vehicle was already waiting behind the gate to bring the passengers. This time we did not need the stretcher. The main patient was an eight-month year old baby girl, who had turned yellow.

Medicine for 1500 People – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

Focus on Partnership: Operation Blessing’s Indonesian branch, Obor Berkat (OBI), sent two teams of doctors to Palu just days after the earthquake and tsunami devastated the city leaving homeless and injured residents setting up makeshift tented camps across the town.

The doctor/nurse teams began holding clinics, moving from camp to camp, trying to provide basic care, but Mark McClendon, who was overseeing the operation, was struggling to get their cargo of medicine to Palu until MAF came to hlep.

“MAF sent medicines for 1500 people on their plane so that our medical teams can be resupplied today just in time. Tomorrow morning all of our teams will hit the ground with meds. We’re targeting a minimum of 10,000 patients the first month.”

A Miraculous Reunion Story – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

A team of MAF Staff from Papua have been in Sulawesi helping with the tsunami recovery efforts. One of the team members, Stanley, flew into a village to deliver supplies and miraculously and quite by chance met up with his in-law family that hadn’t been heard from since the disaster.

Cut Off – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

The community of Kulawi, tucked in the mountains south of Palu in Indonesia, did not make international news when a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck on 28 September. It was not in the path of the tsunami that followed. Houses weren’t sucked into mud like in Palu. But homes and buildings around Kulawi did crumble in random fashion – lightly in one village, entirely in another. And until some major excavation takes place, the area is left isolated between multiple landslides that have cut off access in or out except by foot or air.

In Just One Day – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

It was a busy Monday (October 8th) for the team of pilots and ground staff in Palu Indonesia for both Yayasan MAF Indonesian’s Kodiak and Helivida’s helicopter, delivering food, a full plane of medicine, two medical evacuations, and flying doctors in and out of two communities cut off by damaged roads.

MAF responds to earthquake and tsunami in Sulawesi, Indonesia

MAF’s Disaster Response Team along with our programs in Papua and Kalimantan, is responding to the disaster on Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, caused by a 7.4 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that occurred on Friday, 28 September.  MAF has been coordinating with partner organizations, including Ethnos360 Aviation, Helivida, and ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance (AHA) to plan a response.

CRMF Bible Box Testimonies, Prayer Requests and Statistics

The Bible Box is a project that both MAF and CRMF partner together on. It’s quite a simple idea, but it’s life-changing for people who have no access to Christian resources and Bibles. Here are some stories and testimonies from our MAF Australia pilots and MAF Papua New Guinea staff who help hand out these valuable resources.

Teaching to Fish and Overcome Poverty – Liberia

The story of a remarkable woman, Sister Wilhelmena, who in 2012 in response to the poverty around her, started the Peoples Initiative Against Poverty Program. Sister Wilhelmena often uses the services of MAF in Liberia to further her work, saying, “sometimes when the roads are bad, we are trapped. There’s no way to get out to carry on the work we do. It’s not only to the church but the entire country who’s been facing problems with roads. MAF’s presence in Liberia has brought great relief. We are very, very grateful. You can ask anybody in this region that has ever flown with MAF and they’ll tell you we are grateful.” Read about her amazing work here.

Diary of a Medevac

Of all the flying Australian Pilot Dave Rogers does in PNG, he finds medevac flights the most rewarding. MAF flights benefit the communities we serve in many ways, but nothing has a more immediate and tangible impact than a medevac. They are usually some of the most operationally difficult flights to manage given they come up at short notice, in the middle of your flying program, and often late in the day when weather or daylight is an issue. This makes it all the more rewarding when you get it to work.

Dave’s most recent case was no different.

Bringing Education to the Remote

For over 40 years, MAF has been partnering with Yirrkala Homelands School and Laynha to bring education to the remote communities of Arnhem Land. Yirrkala Homelands School was formerly part of Yirrkala School, and the services for Homeland communities began in 1974. Since the very beginning, they have been using MAF services to transport teachers out to the remote Homelands.

From Death to Life 

“She is not dead yet,” replied one of the villagers, “but will die soon.”

A 15-year-old girl was pregnant and trying to deliver, but the baby had turned. There was no healthcare at the time in the dense jungles of Kalimantan, Indonesia, on the island of Borneo. The people in her village had no hope that this girl, named Lihut, would live.

So they turned to the local witchdoctor.

He and a few other men decided to jump up and down on the girl’s belly, thinking this would help. Of course, it only caused further damage.

On a nearby grass airstrip, a small airplane—a Cessna 185—touched down and John Hook, a pilot with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), stepped out. Read what happened next here.

A Story of Grace

This is a story of Grace. Emma Grace. She is alive today only by the Grace of God because, when Emma Grace was just two days old, she was left to die. Read more here.

A Day to Remember – Harverson Memorial, PNG

The Harverson family came to PNG to find closure. What they found was connection and love.

Didinga Bible Dedication – South Sudan

When MAF’s Cessna 182 landed in the village of Chukudum, it was the first time ever that the Didinga people in the south-east of South Sudan had seen a Bible in their mother tongue. It had been almost 40 years in the making and the excitement was great.

Reconnecting Noru by Air

It has been twelve years since MAF has been able to land in the community of Noru in Papua New Guinea. Glenys Watson, First Officer on the MAF flight that recently reconnected Noru by air reports: “As we circled over the airstrip to inspect it, we could see plenty of people were out waiting to see what would happen. From the air, it looked good. The grass was cut short, and the wind was light. We made an approach to land. As we came into land, people lined the side of the airstrip, and all were clapping and cheering. We stopped and shutdown at the top of the airstrip where the majority of the community had gathered. We were met by men with bows and arrows dancing around the plane. As we climbed out, again the community clapped and cheered and hung flowers around our necks. The joy was obvious!“

Drilling for water in remote places

In Ulang, South Sudan, a Medair Emergency Response Team (ERT) is currently doing a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) intervention in Ulang County assisting the host community and Internally Displaced People (IDP). MAF recently flew a ton of equipment to the team – primarily tools for manual drilling of water points, well supplies, piping and a water pump – plus a lot of food for the 5-member Medair team who had been eating only rice for two and a half days.

Media Release: MAF Australia and Endeavour Christian College launch new educational flight partnership.

To launch the partnership, on August 3rd, MAF Australia General Manager Ian McDougall and Chief Flight Instructor Andy Little will be flying the brand new Cessna 182 Training Plane to Cooktown to formalise the partnership and speak with the school Community on MAF and Missionary as a career.

Well, This Isn’t Going to Work! – A Story from Papua New Guinea

Being a mission pilot these days in Papua New Guinea isn’t that much about flying missionaries. The number of missionaries in the country has declined a lot since MAF started its operation in 1951. Today, the MAF pilot is often the only expat missionary a remote community gets to see. However, the time spent on the ground with the community in many cases is limited to unloading the plane and to sorting out the passengers and loading for the take off.

Random opportunities do exist, however, when the timing is just right and the pilot can spend time with the people on the ground as recently happened to MAF Pilot Rick Velvin.

Enjoy his testimony of allowing God using him in an unexpected way.

A Day in the Life of a Training Pilot – A Story from Kenya

Pilot Danny Gill has been training in Kenya for the last six months. This is the story of a recent training flight that he took, where he went and the challenges he faced. It is a great insight into the life of a training pilot at MAF. Danny writes, “At the end of the day we usually brief with the instructors and gain tips, advice, and wisdom from what they’ve observed. I was encouraged by having performed better on this day and grateful for the encouraging feedback from my instructor on my progress. The training can be grueling, and I find it’s always playing on my mind, that I never truly stop thinking about the standards and requirements to be met.”

Is my life worth it? – A Story from Papua New Guinea

Saving a life is a big part of being a MAF pilot. Delivering food for the hungry or airlifting the sick and dying from a jungle airstrip; the MAF pilot who takes the opportunity can make a real difference. But, these opportunities include tough decisions. Medical Evacuation (Medevac) calls are vague at best. Details about the rescue often sketchy, and when the financial cost is high, the decision to cancel a day’s flying program to divert to a place far away with no certainty of a good outcome is a heavy burden. Read Paul Woodington’s story about one such decision he recently had to make.

Medevac Emergency in Mongolia

Our work week started with an urgent call to pick up a baby suffering from serious illness. Alarm clock was set for 3am on Monday morning. At 5 o’clock we took off from our base at Ulaanbaatar international airport and headed off to Arvaikheer, municipal capital town of Ovorhangai county, one hour twenty minutes flight to the West. We landed on the grass runway and taxied to front of the small terminal. A vehicle was already waiting behind the gate to bring the passengers. This time we did not need the stretcher. The main patient was an eight-month year old baby girl, who had turned yellow.

Medicine for 1500 People – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

Focus on Partnership: Operation Blessing’s Indonesian branch, Obor Berkat (OBI), sent two teams of doctors to Palu just days after the earthquake and tsunami devastated the city leaving homeless and injured residents setting up makeshift tented camps across the town.

The doctor/nurse teams began holding clinics, moving from camp to camp, trying to provide basic care, but Mark McClendon, who was overseeing the operation, was struggling to get their cargo of medicine to Palu until MAF came to hlep.

“MAF sent medicines for 1500 people on their plane so that our medical teams can be resupplied today just in time. Tomorrow morning all of our teams will hit the ground with meds. We’re targeting a minimum of 10,000 patients the first month.”

A Miraculous Reunion Story – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

A team of MAF Staff from Papua have been in Sulawesi helping with the tsunami recovery efforts. One of the team members, Stanley, flew into a village to deliver supplies and miraculously and quite by chance met up with his in-law family that hadn’t been heard from since the disaster.

Cut Off – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

The community of Kulawi, tucked in the mountains south of Palu in Indonesia, did not make international news when a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck on 28 September. It was not in the path of the tsunami that followed. Houses weren’t sucked into mud like in Palu. But homes and buildings around Kulawi did crumble in random fashion – lightly in one village, entirely in another. And until some major excavation takes place, the area is left isolated between multiple landslides that have cut off access in or out except by foot or air.

In Just One Day – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

It was a busy Monday (October 8th) for the team of pilots and ground staff in Palu Indonesia for both Yayasan MAF Indonesian’s Kodiak and Helivida’s helicopter, delivering food, a full plane of medicine, two medical evacuations, and flying doctors in and out of two communities cut off by damaged roads.

MAF responds to earthquake and tsunami in Sulawesi, Indonesia

MAF’s Disaster Response Team along with our programs in Papua and Kalimantan, is responding to the disaster on Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, caused by a 7.4 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that occurred on Friday, 28 September.  MAF has been coordinating with partner organizations, including Ethnos360 Aviation, Helivida, and ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance (AHA) to plan a response.

CRMF Bible Box Testimonies, Prayer Requests and Statistics

The Bible Box is a project that both MAF and CRMF partner together on. It’s quite a simple idea, but it’s life-changing for people who have no access to Christian resources and Bibles. Here are some stories and testimonies from our MAF Australia pilots and MAF Papua New Guinea staff who help hand out these valuable resources.

Teaching to Fish and Overcome Poverty – Liberia

The story of a remarkable woman, Sister Wilhelmena, who in 2012 in response to the poverty around her, started the Peoples Initiative Against Poverty Program. Sister Wilhelmena often uses the services of MAF in Liberia to further her work, saying, “sometimes when the roads are bad, we are trapped. There’s no way to get out to carry on the work we do. It’s not only to the church but the entire country who’s been facing problems with roads. MAF’s presence in Liberia has brought great relief. We are very, very grateful. You can ask anybody in this region that has ever flown with MAF and they’ll tell you we are grateful.” Read about her amazing work here.

Diary of a Medevac

Of all the flying Australian Pilot Dave Rogers does in PNG, he finds medevac flights the most rewarding. MAF flights benefit the communities we serve in many ways, but nothing has a more immediate and tangible impact than a medevac. They are usually some of the most operationally difficult flights to manage given they come up at short notice, in the middle of your flying program, and often late in the day when weather or daylight is an issue. This makes it all the more rewarding when you get it to work.

Dave’s most recent case was no different.

Bringing Education to the Remote

For over 40 years, MAF has been partnering with Yirrkala Homelands School and Laynha to bring education to the remote communities of Arnhem Land. Yirrkala Homelands School was formerly part of Yirrkala School, and the services for Homeland communities began in 1974. Since the very beginning, they have been using MAF services to transport teachers out to the remote Homelands.

From Death to Life 

“She is not dead yet,” replied one of the villagers, “but will die soon.”

A 15-year-old girl was pregnant and trying to deliver, but the baby had turned. There was no healthcare at the time in the dense jungles of Kalimantan, Indonesia, on the island of Borneo. The people in her village had no hope that this girl, named Lihut, would live.

So they turned to the local witchdoctor.

He and a few other men decided to jump up and down on the girl’s belly, thinking this would help. Of course, it only caused further damage.

On a nearby grass airstrip, a small airplane—a Cessna 185—touched down and John Hook, a pilot with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), stepped out. Read what happened next here.

A Story of Grace

This is a story of Grace. Emma Grace. She is alive today only by the Grace of God because, when Emma Grace was just two days old, she was left to die. Read more here.

A Day to Remember – Harverson Memorial, PNG

The Harverson family came to PNG to find closure. What they found was connection and love.

Didinga Bible Dedication – South Sudan

When MAF’s Cessna 182 landed in the village of Chukudum, it was the first time ever that the Didinga people in the south-east of South Sudan had seen a Bible in their mother tongue. It had been almost 40 years in the making and the excitement was great.

Reconnecting Noru by Air

It has been twelve years since MAF has been able to land in the community of Noru in Papua New Guinea. Glenys Watson, First Officer on the MAF flight that recently reconnected Noru by air reports: “As we circled over the airstrip to inspect it, we could see plenty of people were out waiting to see what would happen. From the air, it looked good. The grass was cut short, and the wind was light. We made an approach to land. As we came into land, people lined the side of the airstrip, and all were clapping and cheering. We stopped and shutdown at the top of the airstrip where the majority of the community had gathered. We were met by men with bows and arrows dancing around the plane. As we climbed out, again the community clapped and cheered and hung flowers around our necks. The joy was obvious!“

Drilling for water in remote places

In Ulang, South Sudan, a Medair Emergency Response Team (ERT) is currently doing a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) intervention in Ulang County assisting the host community and Internally Displaced People (IDP). MAF recently flew a ton of equipment to the team – primarily tools for manual drilling of water points, well supplies, piping and a water pump – plus a lot of food for the 5-member Medair team who had been eating only rice for two and a half days.

Media Release: MAF Australia and Endeavour Christian College launch new educational flight partnership.

To launch the partnership, on August 3rd, MAF Australia General Manager Ian McDougall and Chief Flight Instructor Andy Little will be flying the brand new Cessna 182 Training Plane to Cooktown to formalise the partnership and speak with the school Community on MAF and Missionary as a career.

Well, This Isn’t Going to Work! – A Story from Papua New Guinea

Being a mission pilot these days in Papua New Guinea isn’t that much about flying missionaries. The number of missionaries in the country has declined a lot since MAF started its operation in 1951. Today, the MAF pilot is often the only expat missionary a remote community gets to see. However, the time spent on the ground with the community in many cases is limited to unloading the plane and to sorting out the passengers and loading for the take off.

Random opportunities do exist, however, when the timing is just right and the pilot can spend time with the people on the ground as recently happened to MAF Pilot Rick Velvin.

Enjoy his testimony of allowing God using him in an unexpected way.

A Day in the Life of a Training Pilot – A Story from Kenya

Pilot Danny Gill has been training in Kenya for the last six months. This is the story of a recent training flight that he took, where he went and the challenges he faced. It is a great insight into the life of a training pilot at MAF. Danny writes, “At the end of the day we usually brief with the instructors and gain tips, advice, and wisdom from what they’ve observed. I was encouraged by having performed better on this day and grateful for the encouraging feedback from my instructor on my progress. The training can be grueling, and I find it’s always playing on my mind, that I never truly stop thinking about the standards and requirements to be met.”

Is my life worth it? – A Story from Papua New Guinea

Saving a life is a big part of being a MAF pilot. Delivering food for the hungry or airlifting the sick and dying from a jungle airstrip; the MAF pilot who takes the opportunity can make a real difference. But, these opportunities include tough decisions. Medical Evacuation (Medevac) calls are vague at best. Details about the rescue often sketchy, and when the financial cost is high, the decision to cancel a day’s flying program to divert to a place far away with no certainty of a good outcome is a heavy burden. Read Paul Woodington’s story about one such decision he recently had to make.

Medevac Emergency in Mongolia

Our work week started with an urgent call to pick up a baby suffering from serious illness. Alarm clock was set for 3am on Monday morning. At 5 o’clock we took off from our base at Ulaanbaatar international airport and headed off to Arvaikheer, municipal capital town of Ovorhangai county, one hour twenty minutes flight to the West. We landed on the grass runway and taxied to front of the small terminal. A vehicle was already waiting behind the gate to bring the passengers. This time we did not need the stretcher. The main patient was an eight-month year old baby girl, who had turned yellow.

Medicine for 1500 People – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

Focus on Partnership: Operation Blessing’s Indonesian branch, Obor Berkat (OBI), sent two teams of doctors to Palu just days after the earthquake and tsunami devastated the city leaving homeless and injured residents setting up makeshift tented camps across the town.

The doctor/nurse teams began holding clinics, moving from camp to camp, trying to provide basic care, but Mark McClendon, who was overseeing the operation, was struggling to get their cargo of medicine to Palu until MAF came to hlep.

“MAF sent medicines for 1500 people on their plane so that our medical teams can be resupplied today just in time. Tomorrow morning all of our teams will hit the ground with meds. We’re targeting a minimum of 10,000 patients the first month.”

A Miraculous Reunion Story – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

A team of MAF Staff from Papua have been in Sulawesi helping with the tsunami recovery efforts. One of the team members, Stanley, flew into a village to deliver supplies and miraculously and quite by chance met up with his in-law family that hadn’t been heard from since the disaster.

Cut Off – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

The community of Kulawi, tucked in the mountains south of Palu in Indonesia, did not make international news when a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck on 28 September. It was not in the path of the tsunami that followed. Houses weren’t sucked into mud like in Palu. But homes and buildings around Kulawi did crumble in random fashion – lightly in one village, entirely in another. And until some major excavation takes place, the area is left isolated between multiple landslides that have cut off access in or out except by foot or air.

In Just One Day – MAF in Sulawesi, Indonesia

It was a busy Monday (October 8th) for the team of pilots and ground staff in Palu Indonesia for both Yayasan MAF Indonesian’s Kodiak and Helivida’s helicopter, delivering food, a full plane of medicine, two medical evacuations, and flying doctors in and out of two communities cut off by damaged roads.

MAF responds to earthquake and tsunami in Sulawesi, Indonesia

MAF’s Disaster Response Team along with our programs in Papua and Kalimantan, is responding to the disaster on Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, caused by a 7.4 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that occurred on Friday, 28 September.  MAF has been coordinating with partner organizations, including Ethnos360 Aviation, Helivida, and ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance (AHA) to plan a response.

CRMF Bible Box Testimonies, Prayer Requests and Statistics

The Bible Box is a project that both MAF and CRMF partner together on. It’s quite a simple idea, but it’s life-changing for people who have no access to Christian resources and Bibles. Here are some stories and testimonies from our MAF Australia pilots and MAF Papua New Guinea staff who help hand out these valuable resources.

Teaching to Fish and Overcome Poverty – Liberia

The story of a remarkable woman, Sister Wilhelmena, who in 2012 in response to the poverty around her, started the Peoples Initiative Against Poverty Program. Sister Wilhelmena often uses the services of MAF in Liberia to further her work, saying, “sometimes when the roads are bad, we are trapped. There’s no way to get out to carry on the work we do. It’s not only to the church but the entire country who’s been facing problems with roads. MAF’s presence in Liberia has brought great relief. We are very, very grateful. You can ask anybody in this region that has ever flown with MAF and they’ll tell you we are grateful.” Read about her amazing work here.

Diary of a Medevac

Of all the flying Australian Pilot Dave Rogers does in PNG, he finds medevac flights the most rewarding. MAF flights benefit the communities we serve in many ways, but nothing has a more immediate and tangible impact than a medevac. They are usually some of the most operationally difficult flights to manage given they come up at short notice, in the middle of your flying program, and often late in the day when weather or daylight is an issue. This makes it all the more rewarding when you get it to work.

Dave’s most recent case was no different.

Bringing Education to the Remote

For over 40 years, MAF has been partnering with Yirrkala Homelands School and Laynha to bring education to the remote communities of Arnhem Land. Yirrkala Homelands School was formerly part of Yirrkala School, and the services for Homeland communities began in 1974. Since the very beginning, they have been using MAF services to transport teachers out to the remote Homelands.

From Death to Life 

“She is not dead yet,” replied one of the villagers, “but will die soon.”

A 15-year-old girl was pregnant and trying to deliver, but the baby had turned. There was no healthcare at the time in the dense jungles of Kalimantan, Indonesia, on the island of Borneo. The people in her village had no hope that this girl, named Lihut, would live.

So they turned to the local witchdoctor.

He and a few other men decided to jump up and down on the girl’s belly, thinking this would help. Of course, it only caused further damage.

On a nearby grass airstrip, a small airplane—a Cessna 185—touched down and John Hook, a pilot with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), stepped out. Read what happened next here.

A Story of Grace

This is a story of Grace. Emma Grace. She is alive today only by the Grace of God because, when Emma Grace was just two days old, she was left to die. Read more here.

A Day to Remember – Harverson Memorial, PNG

The Harverson family came to PNG to find closure. What they found was connection and love.

Didinga Bible Dedication – South Sudan

When MAF’s Cessna 182 landed in the village of Chukudum, it was the first time ever that the Didinga people in the south-east of South Sudan had seen a Bible in their mother tongue. It had been almost 40 years in the making and the excitement was great.

Reconnecting Noru by Air

It has been twelve years since MAF has been able to land in the community of Noru in Papua New Guinea. Glenys Watson, First Officer on the MAF flight that recently reconnected Noru by air reports: “As we circled over the airstrip to inspect it, we could see plenty of people were out waiting to see what would happen. From the air, it looked good. The grass was cut short, and the wind was light. We made an approach to land. As we came into land, people lined the side of the airstrip, and all were clapping and cheering. We stopped and shutdown at the top of the airstrip where the majority of the community had gathered. We were met by men with bows and arrows dancing around the plane. As we climbed out, again the community clapped and cheered and hung flowers around our necks. The joy was obvious!“

Drilling for water in remote places

In Ulang, South Sudan, a Medair Emergency Response Team (ERT) is currently doing a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) intervention in Ulang County assisting the host community and Internally Displaced People (IDP). MAF recently flew a ton of equipment to the team – primarily tools for manual drilling of water points, well supplies, piping and a water pump – plus a lot of food for the 5-member Medair team who had been eating only rice for two and a half days.

Media Release: MAF Australia and Endeavour Christian College launch new educational flight partnership.

To launch the partnership, on August 3rd, MAF Australia General Manager Ian McDougall and Chief Flight Instructor Andy Little will be flying the brand new Cessna 182 Training Plane to Cooktown to formalise the partnership and speak with the school Community on MAF and Missionary as a career.

Well, This Isn’t Going to Work! – A Story from Papua New Guinea

Being a mission pilot these days in Papua New Guinea isn’t that much about flying missionaries. The number of missionaries in the country has declined a lot since MAF started its operation in 1951. Today, the MAF pilot is often the only expat missionary a remote community gets to see. However, the time spent on the ground with the community in many cases is limited to unloading the plane and to sorting out the passengers and loading for the take off.

Random opportunities do exist, however, when the timing is just right and the pilot can spend time with the people on the ground as recently happened to MAF Pilot Rick Velvin.

Enjoy his testimony of allowing God using him in an unexpected way.

A Day in the Life of a Training Pilot – A Story from Kenya

Pilot Danny Gill has been training in Kenya for the last six months. This is the story of a recent training flight that he took, where he went and the challenges he faced. It is a great insight into the life of a training pilot at MAF. Danny writes, “At the end of the day we usually brief with the instructors and gain tips, advice, and wisdom from what they’ve observed. I was encouraged by having performed better on this day and grateful for the encouraging feedback from my instructor on my progress. The training can be grueling, and I find it’s always playing on my mind, that I never truly stop thinking about the standards and requirements to be met.”

Is my life worth it? – A Story from Papua New Guinea

Saving a life is a big part of being a MAF pilot. Delivering food for the hungry or airlifting the sick and dying from a jungle airstrip; the MAF pilot who takes the opportunity can make a real difference. But, these opportunities include tough decisions. Medical Evacuation (Medevac) calls are vague at best. Details about the rescue often sketchy, and when the financial cost is high, the decision to cancel a day’s flying program to divert to a place far away with no certainty of a good outcome is a heavy burden. Read Paul Woodington’s story about one such decision he recently had to make.

Medevac Emergency in Mongolia

Our work week started with an urgent call to pick up a baby suffering from serious illness. Alarm clock was set for 3am on Monday morning. At 5 o’clock we took off from our base at Ulaanbaatar international airport and headed off to Arvaikheer, municipal capital town of Ovorhangai county, one hour twenty minutes flight to the West. We landed on the grass runway and taxied to front of the small terminal. A vehicle was already waiting behind the gate to bring the passengers. This time we did not need the stretcher. The main patient was an eight-month year old baby girl, who had turned yellow.