Serving People’s Core Needs

Most of us don’t have to think twice about addressing our basic needs. We turn on the tap. We flip on the light switch. We fill the gas tank. We run to the grocery store. We visit the doctor.

But for those living in the jungles of Indonesia, the desert places of Haiti, or the African bush, daily life is a lot more complicated.

Each opportunity MAF has to help ease their load is an opportunity to show them that God sees them, and He cares.

In Bunia, DRC, 150 internally displaced people (IDPs) in three camps are excited about being able to read the Bible and help support their families through skills learned in a new literacy course supported by MAF staff, funded by MAF donors, and taught by fellow IDPs.

In Kalimantan, one day’s flights transported a passenger with serious head trauma, a man whose heel was nearly severed from his foot, and a boy with a broken arm. MAF pilot Jeremy Toews said, “I cringe to think what would have happened if they weren’t given access to better medical care.”

In Haiti, MAF provided flights for Lemuel Ministries, a Christian organization that combats poverty in the arid northwestern region near Anse Rouge. Lemuel Ministries digs water retention ponds, plants trees for reforestation, supports micro development, and operates a school from preschool through ninth grade.

In Guinea, western Africa, MAF-US and MAF International partnered together to begin operations in the country after a year and a half of planning and many years of anticipation by organizations eager for our services. The first operational flight on April 23, 2022, transported a couple working for an agricultural development organization.

“We’ve been praying for transportation since we got here over a decade ago. There are no domestic aircraft in Guinea, so we have to drive [over narrow and dangerous roads]. We drive and cry!”

—American couple served by MAF on its first operational flight in Guinea

Record time

A lot can happen in two months.

In June 2022, MAF staff member Wally Wiley and a wealthy Indonesian businessman visited the Asmat village of Saman on the swampy south coast of Papua, Indonesia. Saman had no medical facility. It had no school for its children.

A missionary couple in the village was learning the Asmat language to present the gospel in the people’s native tongue. But the constant flow of villagers seeking medical help on their doorstep was hampering the process.

Over the years, MAF had partnered with the businessman to strategically place Siloam medical clinics and Sekolah Lentera Harapan (SLH) schools in nine remote villages throughout Papua.

By the end of the visit, it was decided that Saman would become the tenth.

Two months later, a doctor and two nurses opened the doors to the community’s first clinic. Three teachers welcomed 80 children to the first day of class in a newly constructed school.

MAF float plane pilot Jack Gandy, who flew multiple trips transporting supplies and personnel for the project, later shared, “Basically no one in the U.S. knows that Saman exists. But the Lord knows about them, and He cares for them.”

He sure does. And so do we.