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 glasses to the village people which came to greet the plane. In Nungwaia I serviced the Deutscher Lawn Mower used to cut the airstrip grass and then handed out solar lights to church pastors and church leaders from eleven different local churches. I held a course with the church leaders over the weekend. Some of the pastors and church leaders had to walk three days to meet me in Nungwaia. On Sunday more than 1000 children from various local churches joined the pastors and church leader and we had a combined service together.
My second flight took me to Ambunti, the mission base of Pacific Island Ministries (PIM), situated right next to the mighty Sepik River. Here I spent most of my time in the mission’s workshop repairing equipment. I stayed there ten days until MAF could take me to my next destination.
Moropote is about a 30-minute flight from Ambunti. There I tried to fix the tractor but needed to order spare parts. (Maybe I can get it running again on my next mission trip?)
From Moropote I walked to three different villages to visit churches, hold church services with them and help teach and train pastors and church leaders.
Getting to those villages was not an easy walk, each taking about up to 2-3 hours one way through the jungle and swamps. If MAF didn’t fly to Moropote, the only other option would have been a one and a half day canoe trip up the Sepik, Sio and Nageg rivers followed by some hours through swampy jungle.
I wanted to visit some more villages, but because MAF did not have a plane scheduled for some days in the Sepik Province, these visits had to be postponed for another time.
Without MAF, this mission work would have been much harder. Without MAF teachers, nurses, missionaries and church leaders are not able to visit and provide services. No medevacs could be possible either, so many more people would suffer or die.