You and Aviation
Long hikes over slippery mountain trails. Days on a river in a dugout canoe. Impassable roads due to swollen streams. Small villages perched on the spiny ridge of a mountain or tucked away in the narrow river valley between those ridges. A tiny cluster of houses on an equally tiny island in the sparkling blue ocean.
The obstacles to travel or the questions of how to get there are taken care of with the help of Ethnos360 Aviation. You’ve already read how they are trained and what their goals are, but what about you? Could you fit into this picture? I can give you two ways.
The first one is by becoming involved with the Missionary Flight Sponsorship project. Let me introduce you to the project with a story:
“Sometimes, it looked like I had three heads,” said Anga, a Tala-Andig missionary. He was hiking day after day to a distant village, two of his children on his back, excited to take the Good News to his lost relatives. But just as the foreign missionaries who had first reached his village, Anga faced daunting transportation obstacles. Unlike them, however, Anga had only meager resources to live on, much less to spend on flights.
A few years ago, Ethnos360 Aviation resolved to pull out all the stops to provide affordable flights. They moved funds into a dedicated account. Then God’s people caught the vision too. Those whom God had blessed with funds gave so that those whom God had blessed with training and skills could go and reach people with the gospel.
Now, if a native missionary needs a flight to carry out his church planting strategy, he gets a flight because Ethnos360 Aviation only charges what he can afford.
The Missionary Flight Sponsorship project needs a consistent base of people to replenish the fund as it is used to establish thriving churches. Do you have a heart for those who have never heard the gospel? Do you have financial resources? Then this project might be just the ministry you are looking for! Please pray that God will continue to provide the funds needed to keep flights going.
“But,” you ask, “what about the impossibility of airstrips on tiny islands, on mountain ridges and deep in narrow valleys?” That is a great question.
Reasonable access to 15 of Ethnos360’s church planting locations in Papua New Guinea is by helicopter only — as well as three more people groups per year the field would like to add. Add to that the people groups sending delegations asking for missionaries to come, plus all the other locations that need the helicopter when emergencies arise. That’s a lot of work for one helicopter. On top of that, when the helicopter is off serving in the West New Britain or New Ireland islands, the mainland has no helicopter service.
God has already provided two new R66 helicopters to replace the old LongRanger and meet the growing needs in Papua New Guinea. Do you have a heart for unreached people groups? Pray for funds to order the third and final R66 for Papua New Guinea.
