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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...

Supporting Schools In Madagascar

MAF is proud to support local schools in Madagascar! Yesterday, pilot Patrick Keller delivered 1,023 kgs of building materials for a school administration building in Marolambo. From the plane, the materials were carried through the village to the river where boats took the materials the rest of the way. It is very difficult to reach this place by road, but it’s only a 40-minute flight. A truck carrying building supplies for this project started out from the capitol but had to turn back due to...

Peter & Avrienne Austin

Peter & Avrienne Austin were married in 1977 and have two adult children and two grandchildren. They were baptized in 1984 at the Nelson Baptist church, after which they moved to PNG to work with Highway Motors, which was at that stage a branch of the Allegiance Training Association group in Lae. In total they spent 8 1/2 years in PNG, before moving to Hawaii to work as “Mission Builders” at the YWAM “University of the Nations” campus situated in Kona on the big Island of Hawaii. After H...

Building A Base In Loglogo, Kenya

LogLogo is a small village in northern Kenya, populated primarily by members of the Rendille and Samburu tribes. Life for most consists of herding sheep, goats, cattle, and most valuable of all—camels. LogLogo was once home to an Africa Inland Mission (AIM) mission base (which has now partly become the MAF base), and the AIC church is thriving there today. Melvin and Kari Peters have been serving in LogLogo since 2016. LogLogo is a single-family base positioned to facilitate flights to the...

Partnering In Arnhem Land

MAF and Pioneers have had a partnership in Arnhem Land since 2014, but it has only been in the last year that things have really started to gain momentum. The Pioneers team has grown from one to four families, and one of the families is now based out in a remote community. Over the past year the partnership has only grown stronger. MAF’s work in Arnhem Land provides Aboriginal homeland communities with access to healthcare, education and development opportunities as well as supporting the loca...

Kerry & Marie Hastie

Kerry was born in Hastings and Marie in Pahiatua. They met in Palmerston North, were married in 1992, and have been blessed with three children, Johanna, Ethan and Jesse. Kerry attended Every Boy’s Rally in his Childhood years but began his Christian walk at age 21. Marie put her trust in the Lord at the age of seven and hasn’t looked back. Upon leaving school, Kerry became an Automotive Engineer. In 2001 he switched careers to become an Aircraft Engineer. Marie worked for 15 years with LTSA...

Training Specialists In Liberia

Three MAF families in Rumginae, Papua New Guinea (PNG) are probably reading psalm 113:3 (From the rising of the sun to it’s setting, let the name of the Lord be praised) with more gratitude than ever before. Sunshine is not only providing them with warmth, light and Vitamin D—since December 2015 the sun is also providing them with energy! Power has always been sparse and unreliable at Rumginae. It is a remote, hot, humid, and tropical area which needs a constant supply of electricity. Be...

Visiting A Refugee Camp In Bunia

When we arrived at the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) refugee camp in Bunia we parked on the side of the road and got out into sewage. Apparently there was a ditch right next to the road and when it got full they just shoveled the sewage out and spread it on the road. I'm not too bothered by dirt, but it is hard to believe everyone isn't repelled by such smells. The entire time we were waiting there was a crowd watching us from the other side of the ditch. The people in the camp are from ver...

Bill & Angela Harding

In the early 1990s Bill and Angela changed their priorities and gave up law careers to go to Bible College. In 1994 they left New Zealand to work with MAF in Tanzania, East Africa. With MAF they moved to Kenya in 1996, England in 1999, to Australia in 2003, and back to New Zealand at the end of 2021.  Bill serves as MAF’s International Development Director and Head of Legal Services, while Angela works as MAF’s People Care Manager.They have four adult children.  Campbell (a pr...

Doug & Yvonne Miles

Doug and Yvonne joined MAF in 1990 with their three daughters Nicola, Gillian and Deborah. Their first field assignment was for 12 months in Yirrkala in Arnhem Land, Australia's Northern Territory, where Doug was a pilot. They then served another 14 months at Oenpelli before moving to the MAF regional headquarters at Gove Airport in 1992, living in the mining town of Nhulunbuy. During this time Doug had a number of roles including Charter and Regular Public Transport pilot, Operations Manager, E...

Andrew Macdonald

Growing up as a pastor’s kid, Andrew moved frequently in his early years before calling Hamilton home. He spent eight years in Hamilton completing his education and following his lifelong dream of learning to fly. Andrew was accepted into a full-time training course in the Waikato in 2010. Eighteen months later he finished with his Commercial Pilot’s Licence and a Diploma in Aviation Science. During this time Andrew wondered what God’s plan was and what He was preparing him for. He then c...