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Clean Water, Fresh From the Mountain!

Flying over the highlands of PNG and looking down on the huge forests, more and more houses with a corrugated iron roof can be spotted. For hundreds of years the people used to live under a grass roof. Many still do. But apart from easier maintenance and higher sustainability, having a corrugated iron roof helps with collecting rain water. However, even for those with corrugated iron roofs and a small drum to collect water, after a couple of days of dry weather this runs out. Then a time-consumi...

Help Dreams Come True

In 2013 Josephine was living in an orphanage in Kajo Keji, South Sudan. She was a teenager, exhausted by a life that had left her powerless. Her broken wheelchair had condemned her to crawling on the ground, her legs and knees caked in mud. The only way Josephine could keep her dream of an education alive was to crawl to school and back every day.Verses like the one below show God’s amazing mercy and compassion for every person on the planet, even the most marginalized:He raises the poor from ...

Overcoming “Runny Ears” in Arnhem Land

From the very beginning, the vision of the Menzies School of Health Research has been a commitment to examine, understand and improve Indigenous health, including those living in Northern Australia and the tropics. Thirty four years later, the organisation has four headquarters across Australia, with an influence that spans across the developing countries of the world. Menzies is the global leader in tropical research into life-threatening illnesses. For the past two years, MAF has helped fly M...

MAF Makes It Possible

Friedemann Urschitz, from the Liebenzell Mission in Austria recently wrote: Thanks to MAF I was able to get to remote villages to conduct courses, get airstrip equipment repaired and visit churches over an eight week mission trip to the East Sepik Province of PNG. Without MAF’s flights into remote villages, I could not have done that many visits and courses. The first village MAF flew me to was Nungwaia. Shortly after we landed, the pilot sold almost a full box of Bibles and some reading glass...

Second Disaster in Five Weeks for Mozambique

Cyclone Kenneth struck Mozambique April 25-26, 2019, just five weeks after Cyclone Idai caused large scale devastation and loss of life. In response to this latest disaster Mission Aviation Fellowship again mobilized staff from its Nampula base (the largest city in northeastern Mozambique) to assist, along with staff from the MAF Disaster Response Team. On 27 April, MAF delivered a load of rice, sugar and candles to the island of Ibo, which was hard-hit by the cyclone. More than 160,000 people h...

Flying Over the Mud!

Only 43% of Chadians have basic access to clean water. International Aid Services (IAS), a relief and development organisation based in Denmark, drills wells to provide clean water to those who need it most. Luke Lunsford works with IAS in Chad—but sometimes the biggest obstacle to his work is dirty water. In rainy season it can be almost impossible to travel because of flooded rivers and thick mud. According to Luke, travel in and out of Hadjer Hadid (an area in eastern Chad) is “one o...

A Medevac for Meshack

A Friday night in October 2017, four gunmen killed a security guard and six students while injuring another 18 at Lokichoggio Mixed Secondary School, close to Kenya’s border with South Sudan. A former student, who had been expelled from the school due to indiscipline, led the three other armed men in the deadly revenge mission that lasted three hours. The attack happened between 1 and 4am—but the police didn’t arrive at the school until 5am. Therefore, the attackers had plenty of time ...

Too Busy to Care

Stewardship is one of our key values. For staff on the ground, this boils down to "efficiency" and since the start of this year, we have been on a drive to maximise our flying days. More flights mean that more people can be served and more impact on an individual and community basis. At the same time, we try to ballance efficiency with Care. One Monday recently, the Mt Hagen based Cessna Caravan P2-MAG was dedicated for our partner organisation, the Rural Airstrips Agency (RAA), which does a won...

A Camel Train in Chad

MAF pilot Stefan Hug recently flew some workers and journalists from Every Home for Christ (EHC) to Ati in the center of Chad. After arriving in Ati, he realized that he had no way to secure the airplane for the night as the airport was designed for larger aircraft that don’t need to be tied own. With some support from the base in N’Djamena and help from some local construction workers, Stefan was able to secure the aircraft to prevent wind damage using sacks filled with stone and sand and s...

Support MAF’s rescue and relief efforts In Mozambique

MAF US, based in Nampa, Idaho is on the front lines of the cyclone disaster relief efforts in Mozambique. The cyclone hit on March 14. Winds over 100 miles per hour flattened homes and left some underwater. The storm also destroyed water sanitation systems, raising concerns among aid workers that waterborne diseases could spread more easily. Aircraft are doing flight surveys and helping deliver supplies to areas cut off by massive flooding that has already killed 200 people. It is estimated that...

Help Bring Lasting Change!

Over the almost 50 years Mission Aviation Fellowship has been in Arnhem Land, there have been many wonderful testimonies of the Lord’s breakthrough in people’s lives and communities. MAF families become part of the community; they live, work and worship in the ancient Aboriginal homelands. Over the decades, appreciation, trust and respect have become deeply rooted. MAF flights support a network of Christians who are serving the Yolngu communities: couples and families with Pioneers living in...

In Just One Day

It was a busy Monday recently 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. Two organizations, Yayasan Alpha Omega and World Share from Korea, working with a local church, donated food to be delivered to the communities of Kulawi and Omu that have been trapped without road...

A Safe Haven In Life's Storms

Peter and Avrienne Austin have been at Tree Tops Lodge for three years now. Tree Tops, in Cairns, northern Australia, provides a safe and relaxing environment for those involved in missions work throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Literally thousands of missionary families have passed through Tree Tops on their way to or from the field. People come to Tree Tops for a number of different reasons. Many come because they are desperately in need of rest after a stressful experience on the mission f...

Help Keep MAF Flying

To fly Doctors Mark and Andrea Hotchkin back to the hospital in Chad where they provide basic healthcare to isolated communities would have taken MAF just six hours. Compare this to their arduous four days/three nights travel by land across the Sahara desert! This is how they described their journey: “We drove into the Sahara desert in driving rain, splashing through pools of water until we were stuck in a mixture of mud and sand. All our bags were unloaded and the digging started. After three...

Buy A Jerrycan Of Jet Fuel

Thank you for finding out about buying one or more of MAF’s $35 “Jerrycans of Jet Fuel” this Christmas! Each jerrycan card helps us make a flight that could change a life. With over 135 aircraft, MAF flies in some of the most challenging places in the world to bring emergency relief, long-term development and hope to people in places of deepest human need. But without fuel we cannot fly far! Each jerrycan holds about 20 litres of fuel—that’s enough for 20 minutes of flight. In many...

Bringing Change To One Community

MAF has been bringing printed Bibles, Audio Bibles and Bible CD’s into the community of Nungwaia, which in turn has brought change to those living there. Many have expressed their gratefulness—as well as requests for more resources. Many of the mothers in the Nungwaia community are excited about the Audio Bible. Many do not know how to read but they can listen to the Audio Bible while gardening, cooking, sleeping or just relaxing. It has greatly helped the mothers and they would like eve...

MAF/TRACK - Preparing Mission Ready Pilots

MAF New Zealand continues to be one of the highest per capita “sending” countries in the MAF world. With four women pilots and another to join them soon, we also have the highest ratio of women pilots per capita. But despite this success, we need to continue to identify, recruit, train and send more pilots into the mission field. Yet it takes someone special to be a MAF pilot. We set the bar high because, no matter what is going on around them, our pilots need to make sound decisions in diff...

Benji & Jess Hunt

As a missionary kid in the Philippines, Benji grew up watching missionary pilots and engineers and knew that he was called to the same work for the Lord. At 18 he returned to New Zealand to train in the Air Force as an aircraft engineer with the goal of working in the aviation field for missions. God opened many doors so that Benji could gain the exact experience he would need to partner with MAF NZ and put his skills to use for the Lord. Jess grew up in New Zealand and knew from the age of 7 th...

Change The Ending

“She is not dead yet,” said one of the villagers, “but she will die soon.” Lihut, a 15-year-old girl, was pregnant and trying to deliver, but the baby had turned. There was no healthcare at the time and the people in her village had no hope that 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. Lihut’s story was nearly over. ...

A Journey Across The World

Four young American students from Midwestern College in Kansas City, Missouri went to Chad to teach English and engage with the culture and the people. MAF was involved in flying them to their hard-to-reach destinations. Stephen, Arshia, Jackson and Jeremiah reflect on their time, in their own words. Jackson said, “There's a lot of uncertainty when travelling in that part of the world. You never know exactly what type of vehicle you're going to get, the people you're going to be with and you'r...

The Girl With No Feet

A little disabled girl was considered worthless—until she was noticed by someone outside her family. Imanya was only 6 months old when her mother left the home to do some errands in Abalwa village, east of Torit, South Sudan. Imanya woke up and started to cry and search for her mother. Inside the little tukol, built with clay walls and a thatched roof, there was a fireplace for cooking. Somehow the little girl crawled into the fire and was stunned with agony while her feet started burning....

Miracle Of The Conjoined Twins

Against all odds a pair of conjoined twins in the Congo were born naturally. Then they survived an epic 1,400 kms round trip to be separated! Anick and Destin, two baby girls who were born naturally at 37 weeks in the remote village of Muzombo, western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The family then travelled for 15 hours through the jungle on the back of a motorcycle, the twins wrapped in a blanket, to get to Vanga Evangelical Hospital, where they came under the care of Dr. Junior Mudji. Th...

An Eventful Day's Flying

Pilot Danny Gill recounts an eventful day of flight training with Christiaan Haak in Kenya. I've been training for 6 months in Kenya, going through the process of license conversion and renewing my IFR (Instrument rating) on a C208 Caravan. I am nearing the end of my orientation flight training. I'd had two flights earlier in the week and am planning my “check ride” (so I can progress to solo flying). This Friday I was flying the shuttle service to Marsabit. It was an interesting day with lo...

Bridget Ingham

God first placed the desire to be a pilot in my heart when I was 11 years old. I grew up in a Christian family and excelled academically. I completed a PhD in physics in 2005 and worked as a research scientist in the UK, USA and New Zealand. During my undergraduate study I gained my private pilot’s licence, but let it lapse when I went overseas. In early 2016 God reminded me of the dream to be a pilot. When I looked into what it would take to become a MAF pilot, God showed me how the different...

A Sawmill For PNG

In May, MAF flew a charter flight from Mt Hagen to Mougulu to transport a sawmill to the community there. Although the sawmill barely left enough room for passengers, the 45 minute flight was accompanied by another passenger from Care International, who was bringing care packages for the people. The earthquakes destroyed many of the food gardens local people depend on to grow their vegetables and a lot of people looked hungry. It seemed incongruous when a Bible School student thanked MAF for vol...