Limpho (pronounced Dim po) is a baby girl who was born with a severe cleft lip. It was so extreme that it reached vertically up her right cheek, up to her eye. Her operation would not be a simple one—neither was getting the South African doctors to agree on where to start—Limpho’s lip or eye. Their indecision delayed the process and caused Hlalefang, the mother, to worry about her child even more. She wanted what was best for her daughter, so she could have a chance at a normal life.

The little Cessna 206 was glad she was able to help with some of those doctor visits, by taking Hlalefang and Limpho from their isolated mountain village of Bobete in the Thaba Tseka district of Lesotho to the capital of Maseru. And from there, the pair traveled the rest of the way by ambulance.

Finally, on April 8, 7P-CMH rejoiced to see mother and daughter approaching on the tarmac at Maseru. Ten months old now, Limpho’s face was bandaged and swollen, so CMH knew she had received the long-awaited life-changing surgery. The little airplane rejoiced that she was able to return mother and daughter home, where Limpho could continue to heal.

Every week, 7P-CMH travels into Lesotho’s mountains to retrieve patients and bring them to the capital city for further treatment, oftentimes saving a life—or in Limpho’s case, changing a life.

You can adopt this airplane through a one-time or monthly recurring gift. By partnering with MAF and 7P-CMH you will help change lives, like Limpho’s, and bring hope to Lesotho’s mountain communities.

The post 7P-CMH appeared first on Mission Aviation Fellowship.

The post MAF wives photo essay appeared first on Mission Aviation Fellowship.

In March MAF’s Cessna Caravan 9Q-CMP had the wonderful privilege of flying for two New Testament dedications in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

9Q-CMP spent several days transporting church leaders and other guests to and from the villages of Todro and Isiro for the dedication ceremonies of the Bible being translated into the Logo and Mayogo languages.

The MAF East DRC program has supported the work of the Bible translators for many years—taking them into and out of these very remote places. Some of the MAF staff were able to attend the Logo celebration and said it was a true highlight, “for MAF… for God’s glory and Name!”

Now the Logo and Mayogo people will have God’s Word and the Gospel of Jesus Christ in their heart language. Think of the transformation that will happen in their lives because of this!

Did you know you can adopt 9Q-CMP through a one-time or monthly recurring gift? Your support of this airplane will help make flights like these possible and enable work that is making an eternal impact.

The post 9Q-CMP appeared first on Mission Aviation Fellowship.

“We are trying to reach the Koti people, and it is in their own language that they respond to the Gospel,” said the local translator working in Angoche, Mozambique.

Recently John Iseminger, of The Seed Company, was on MAF’s C9-AAL, a Cessna 206. The Seed Company is funding and managing the Bible translation program and John was traveling to Angoche to encourage the team, check on their progress, and make plans for the year ahead.

John has been working in Mozambique, overseeing the Koti translation work, for the last 20 years. While he doesn’t always get to fly with MAF, he appreciates it when he does. “It’s the best way to get around,” he explained. “It’s time efficient. It’s cost efficient.”

There was an unexpected benefit of MAF starting-up in the country shortly after John arrived there. He says trying to do a language survey and mapping out the area was difficult. “One of the questions that the mappers would ask us was, ‘Where’s the border? Where does this language group end and where does the other one start?’

“Well, all we had to do was get up in the air!” said John. “Flying has really helped to get perspective and see what people are living with and dealing with. You can’t see that stuff on the ground.”

John went on to say that the group should be done with the Koti-language New Testament in about two years.

While Bible translation is a long process, C9-AAL is happy to speed things along whenever she has the opportunity. By adopting this airplane you, too, can play a supporting role in flights like this and many others that bring hope to the people of Mozambique. All it takes is a one-time or monthly recurring gift to make C9-AAL part of your family.

The post C9-AAL appeared first on Mission Aviation Fellowship.

Lately, the MAF Cessna Caravan 9Q-CMO has sensed that her flights encompass the full cycle of life—from beginning to end. Two recent flights serve as examples of this.

MAF pilot Kevin Spann recently received his “checkout” in the Caravan, which means he can now fly the airplane solo and land at any number of airstrips throughout the vast country of Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). He says his checkout couldn’t have come at a better time.

Usually, flights are so long that a pilot will do one leg out and then one leg back per day. But on this particular day, Kevin fit in two complete flights—two polar opposites, as far as the reason for each flight.

The first one was to take the body of a recently deceased man, and his family, back to his home village. Several thousand people waited for the arrival of the airplane, ready to mourn for this man.

On the second flight, Kevin brought an MAF family out to the mission hospital in Vanga to get ready for the birth of their fourth child—the first MAF expat baby to be born in-country in 18 years. (It’s a girl, by the way!)

“It was an honor to pray with my passengers before takeoff on each trip, as they were going through a significant life event,” said Kevin.

Life is precious, and God has called MAF families and 9Q-CMO to serve people during many of life’s significant events—good or bad, happy or sad.

Would you like to help 9Q-CMO be there for Congolese people in their time of need? You can adopt this airplane with a one-time or monthly recurring gift and play a role in life events happening throughout the DRC.

The post 9C-CMO appeared first on Mission Aviation Fellowship.

MAF KODIAK PK-MEA is very busy serving the people of Papua, Indonesia. Looking back at one of the MAF pilots’ flight logs shows a variety of ways she has served.

One day she was called for a medevac flight, to pick up a child in Nipsan village who had a piece of wood stuck in his eye. She flew to the village and whisked him away to get medical care. He has healed well after receiving medical treatment in Wamena.

In December she brought a Pioneers missionary couple back to the Nalca area where they had served for so many years before. They spent Christmas with the local churches there and encouraged the people in their Kingdom work.

PK-MEA also helped train one of the new MAF pilots so he could get “checked out” at the remote villages of Sumtamon, Paro, and Kenyam, which means the pilot can now fly by himself and safely land or takeoff at these three villages. The new pilot flew PK-MEA along with the chief pilot and together they tackled each day’s schedule, handling medical evacuations, church flights, or general community flights.

On another day the KODIAK took a load of building materials and food supplies to Soba. From there, she traveled to Obukain where she picked up a missionary family. Then there was a stop to pick up six adults and two babies at Welarek before the airplane continued on to Sentani.

Whew! As you can see, PK-MEA gets a lot done on any given day. From training pilots to helping people stay healthy to transporting missionaries, villagers, and basic necessities.

Did you know you can adopt this KODIAK with a one-time or monthly recurring gift? By doing so you’ll play an important role in sharing Christ’s love with the Papuan people through this airplane.

The post PK-MEA appeared first on Mission Aviation Fellowship.

Your adopted airplane, the Cessna 185 floatplane, PK-MCB or “Charlie Brown,” has not been doing anything particularly glamorous lately, but what he has been doing is necessary in order to be an effective and safe ministry tool. And while he may not have enjoyed it too much, a major inspection was in order.

Charlie Brown’s wings were opened up and ailerons were removed (the flaps on the rear of the wings). Special attention was paid to the cabin area, the fuselage. Even his tail area with its pulleys and cables got a checkup.

The control cables were replaced. These connect the pilot’s steering yoke to the actual control surfaces on the airplane. And a patch of corrosion was fixed. This involved cutting out a section of the “skin” of the airplane and patching it up with a brand new skin. The team changed out the engine starter and even gave Charlie Brown a brand new pilot’s seat!

While time consuming and detailed work, it’s crucial to keeping him in the best shape possible. So when the emergency call comes or a pastor wants to reach a village that needs to hear about Jesus, Charlie Brown will be ready to go.

Along with the all of this maintenance work, the floating hangar had to get ready for a major government inspection. The Palangkaraya hangar is in the process of being registered as a private MAF water base, or airport, for float planes. This will enable MAF to meet government regulations and allow flights from this base well into the future.

So whether it’s maintaining the airplanes, or ensuring that the hangar meets all the necessary requirements, your support is a huge help.Thank you for adopting and caring for Charlie Brown, so he can carry hope to the people of Central Kalimantan.

The post PK-MCB appeared first on Mission Aviation Fellowship.

If there is one thing that can be said about our life here in Nyankunde, it is that there is always something to be fixed. These past few months we have had to replace multiple parts of a turbine engine in a plane, split the tractor in half and replace the transmission case, rebuild two chain saws, put up more solar panels, swap two engines in our land cruisers, clean eight carburetors, rebuild a motorcycle engine, weld countless broken parts on everything that moves, and much more that I cannot remember.

If you are wondering at this point how I was trained for these things, the answer is that I wasn’t. Each day is a challenge and a new adventure. With a little bit of courage and a lot of tools, everything that breaks can eventually be fixed. Google and Youtube are your best friends when knowledge fails.

The truth is that every small thing that is fixed is another piece of the big story that God is weaving together here in Congo, for His glory. Even the chain saw will be used to process lumber from the forest in the village of Itendey to build new hospital wards bringing the blessing of healthcare.

Thank you to every one who gives and prays so that Dave and other pilot/mechanics and maintenance specialists can serve in this vital way. 

The post Missionary Mechanic: More than just planes appeared first on Mission Aviation Fellowship.

Matt will lead MAF’s IT efforts in Africa, overseeing IT infrastructure, VSAT terminals, servers, cyber security, solar systems, laptops, and more.

“We had good careers, making good money,” said Matt. “I would have laughed if someone told me I would become a missionary.”

Right out of high school, Matt started working for a tech company and eventually worked his way into the U.S. Department of Defense as a private cloud administrator.

Beth joined the Navy after high school and served as a linguist, transitioning into the Department of Defense as an instructor. They met at Fort Meade in Maryland and married two years later.

With two daughters, the youngest only a year old, Beth accepted a position at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Austria. While stationed there, the family had the opportunity to travel and it was on a trip to Africa that Beth first felt God’s call to mission work.

But neither Matt nor Beth were ready yet. God still had work to do.

Several years later, after returning to the U.S., a friend happened to mention MAF, because he had flown on MAF airplanes as a missionary kid in New Guinea.

Beth encouraged Matt to look into MAF, which he eventually did. “I looked at their website and thought they were really cool, flying airplanes. But when I looked at their requirements for a pilot, I thought to myself that this is a whole different career.”

Matt said God kept putting it into his heart to look at the website again. Reluctantly, he did, and this time he saw a banner on the page: ‘Seeking IT Specialists.’

The next day, they called MAF, and in 2021 they officially joined the ministry.

During candidacy classes at MAF, the Wisches learned that IT staff had been praying for six years for the right person to manage the IT work in Africa.

Beth noted that it was six years earlier that God began to stir their hearts to serve people in Africa!

Today, the Wisches are thrilled to be on a new career path as MAF missionaries. They are now raising support to head to Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they will be based.

Matt and Beth are looking for financial and prayer partners to join their team. Learn more about them at maf.org/wisch.

This story appeared in the Vol. 2 2022 edition of FlightWatch. Read the entire issue here:

The post Ministry Spotlight: Matt and Beth Wisch appeared first on Mission Aviation Fellowship.

A pilot’s first solo flight is always an exciting and memorable event (mine was on March 14, 2014). The same applies to a pilot’s first solo flight on the mission field.

On September 28, 2021, I did my first Congo solo, flying from Bunia to Isiro to Dakwa to Banda and back to Bunia.

But what was truly inspiring were the people I was flying: three Congolese missionaries who were students at Centre Chrétien de Formation pour Evangélisation et Mission Intégrale (Christian Center for Evangelism Training and Integral Missions, or CCFEMI) in the city of Bunia.

The three men had done some training and then been sent to the province of Bas-Uélé for a one-month mission trip, followed by several weeks of serving the local church in Bas-Uélé. My task was to fly them back to Bunia for their next module of in-class training.

The three missionaries were eager to tell me their story.

During their one-month mission trip, their main assignment had been to perform an in-depth survey of three unreached tribes deep in the Ituri rainforest. The area is very difficult to access, so—unsurprisingly—there has not been much mission work there through the years.

Any evangelism and church planting that has been done has been mostly among one of the larger tribes, along the main road in the area. It’s just been too difficult to reach the more remote areas.

The men told me that one of the tribes they had surveyed was the uncharted Kango people, a fishing tribe living along the Uélé River, 270 miles deep into the rainforest. After the men had made initial contact with two of the Kango settlements—one on each side of the river—they’d been told by the people that it was the first time in known history that missionaries had come to visit them in their homes!

Throughout the month, the missionaries had continued to connect with the other tribes they had been tasked to survey. They’d also come alongside the few church plants in the area to share the good news of Jesus with people who did not know Him.

The men excitedly shared with me that 25 people had given their lives to Christ during that month! Praise the Lord!

One of the missionaries, a 64-year-old soldier-turned-pastor, had felt led to continue the work among the Kango, so he had revisited the two settlements. During his return visit, the people had asked him to plant a church! He had then traveled 48 miles (one-way!) by foot to continue surveying three more small tribal villages.

His research showed a desperate need for more evangelism and will help future missionaries work more effectively.

MAF is thrilled to partner with organizations like CCFEMI and their missionaries. The tribes that they are serving are located in areas that are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to access without an airplane.

CCFEMI reports that MAF has “enabled [them] to promote the security of [their] missionaries and bring the gospel into some of the least accessible parts of this country.”

Some of the missionaries on my plane that day plan to return and continue the evangelism effort that has been started.

I for one am very excited to fly them back!

Here’s how MAF celebrated my first solo flight in the DRC when I returned to Bunia. Click here to watch the video! 

The post A MEMORABLE MISSION appeared first on Mission Aviation Fellowship.