Em Nau Wantok bilong mi stret hia.  (Hey, my true friend!)

Yupela stap iorait o nogat?  (How are you all doing?)

It was a real lift to my day to receive your email Jack.  I have often wondered how you guys are and looked back with joy at the times we have shared.  Some how I lost touch with you and have often wondered how I might catch up with you again and here I am with an email address at last.  So how are you guys?  Fancy Ray being away at Bible college already! How time flies.  My youngest is doing last year of high school this year and I just turned 50!  Where have the years gone?   I have my one and only granddaughter staying here at the moment and she is just adorable.  Only 9 weeks old.  I think I am going to be a grandfather that spoils his grandkids rotten.

So I guess you are still teaching Jack?  Is Ray still interested in flight school?

Things have really changed in PNG. Some positive developments and some really challenging ones.  The mission aircraft have not been able to go out to the Sepik and the more distant missions for some years now due to the cost.  They have tried to fund the district flying out of what our pilots earn around Goroka carrying freight and passengers.  But with cutbacks in pilot numbers and an aging and very maintenance intensive fleet of aircraft, this did not provide sufficient money to do all the district flying needed in spite of the huge effort of all the staff.

They began having major problems with the aircraft too. So the brethren met and decided that they would cut the program back to just 1 airplane but buy a new one that would be more reliable and concentrate on doing the local mission district flying again with less emphasis on the commercial flying around Goroka.  The South Pacific Division is putting in some funds to pay for some of the operating cost of running the airplane which is a big plus. The local missions are just so poor.   They have been sacking scores of pastors each year for some time now to cope with the rising costs.  They just cannot afford 1000 kina (Approximately $350 US) per hour to fly around in a mission aircraft.  So there are to be 2 pilots, 1 aircraft supported by the SPD. They will do mainly local mission flying with a bit of commercial on the side when they can just to defray a small amount of the cost.

What is great about this is that there will be a new aircraft which will be hopefully more reliable and less costly and time consuming to maintain. That is pretty important if there are to be only 2 personnel running the program.  Also the SPD helping with the operating cost is a real benefit.  It at last starts to match church resources to the expectations they have of the staff and the equipment.  That will make the job so much more pleasant.

Yet this scenario leaves us with a tremendous challenge.

I think the best thing I got out of the commercial program that we had running Jack, was the insight into a brilliant and exciting field of missionary service. It opened new vistas of mission endeavor to my mind. So many missionary opportunities came to light as we went down that road. Making regular daily contact with people in remote areas opened our eyes to the spiritual and physical needs of the people. We picked up for instance that in many of the villages 60% of the kids were dying before reaching maturity. We went back to Goroka and I mentioned this to a few people and before long I had nurses coming to me and asking if they could help as volunteers. A meeting was held and the Laity Mobile Health Service was born. They raised their own funds - which I thought was a miracle. They have done an outstanding job in providing basic health care to remote villages.

Most of the government health services in remote areas are non functional these days. This provides a fabulous opportunity to Adventists to prosecute their missionary outreach. It has been so effective. Today is the day of opportunity for mission in PNG.  LMHS has been one of those ministries that God has blessed in spades right from the start. Today we have several permanent clinics in remote villages. LMHS volunteers man these outposts and Adventist Aviation Service was carrying the supplies given by government and NGOs to immunize and treat the people. They run flying clinics to areas where they do not have a permanent presence and immunization patrols with vaccines from the WHO. 

Jack, the results from their work are staggering. The death rate amongst the kids has dropped from 60% down to 5% in a lot of villages. The nurses are running clean up campaigns in villages, helping the people to fence out the pigs and teaching mothers the principles of hygiene. They are teaching the proper construction of pit toilets and many other public health issues to try and combat disease and bring the abundant life promised by the gospel. Their work is very openly and frankly missionary. They carry their picture rolls with them and always take a bit of time out to share the gospel story with the villagers. It means so much more when they hear about the healing Jesus to see people bringing healing to them. I had one old village elder tell me "mipela harim harim harim gut nius tasol nau mipela lukim" (We have heard the good news over and over but NOW we SEE it!) He shook his index finger with a lot of conviction as he said it.

There are 2 new villages who once were hostile to Adventists. They are Kapi and Wabo. When I first went up there I was told never to go into Kapi because they hate Adventists. The Kapi people asked me to take in a coffin one day. When I got there I asked about the mortality rate amongst their kids. They were a 60% village. They were enthusiastic about a team of nurses coming. I will never forget the experience we had the first day a team went in there. They had tried to kill one of our missionaries just a few months before. Now there is a permanent clinic there and recently I sent Pr Jessley the money to send a church approved Layman in there to answer the people's request for a minister to help them to become Adventists. Is Medical missionary work still the right arm of the message? It sure is.

There were many other things that we did to assist missionary work on our commercial ops. We often were able to help a District Director to go somewhere "very economically" when he needed to. Pr Kassi at Karimui is a terrific pastor. He has a very bad knee Jack. He gets terrible pain if he has to walk any distance and you know what the terrain is like up there. I used to pick him up and take him places when ever I could so that the people in his scattered area could get the nurture they needed and importantly When they needed it. We have ferried laymen around and ferried messages in and out to the local mission, and to and from the DDs around their areas and equipment for them too. Just having a plane regularly circulating has opened up opportunities for a new school with Adventist teachers at Dobu funded by the Chimbu Government. We have carried countless tons of roofing iron in at discounted rates to help our church members with building schools and churches.

We have done so many medical evacuations I have lost count. I have seen God's hand so many times diverting us unexpectedly into places where we have been needed. If the people could not pay, then God gave us special blessings time after time to compensate. Jack I know the church has made the decision to turn away from this model of operation to a large extent and re prioritize reviving the local mission flying for local missions. I think they have a valid point. The local missions have really suffered the last few years. It has not been aviations fault either. But in the eyes of presidents I know that the pilots have worn the blame often. Aviation was expected to foot the cost of the flying and we just could not keep the aircraft in the air enough of the time to earn that kind of money, so many of the local missions have not seen the mission plane for years now. There is so much good new work going on. They have work on most of the Island groups off the coast of New Ireland now to name one example. It is hard and expensive for the local mission to get there to visit. They need AAS to help them do that.

I am very pleased that the church have decided to re accept responsibility for paying for district flying. Not that Aviation could not do that if they had have been left to get on their feet. There is no doubt in my mind that they would have. At least now though, the church is matching resources with its expectations and the mission pilots are not misunderstood as not wanting to help local missions. I think the pilot's desire to help is one of the reasons everyone was overloading aircraft and cutting the margins of safety on maintenance and weather as fine as they dared to make that few extra kina to be able to help a local mission do a little more district flying. All the while guys were wearing themselves and the machines out with no relief, only mounting expectations and financial pressure. I am just so thankful to God that this night mare is over now. The church is supporting aviation much more thoughtfully and practically now. This will enable aviation to provide the church with safe reliable aviation services in return.

I feel that shrinking the program to 2 pilots and 1 aircraft NEW (Yeeeeesssss) Is a good move for the church. It matches the funds and managerial resources available to control it properly. That's an important lesson we have all learned from the past. But for me one obvious outcome of the current downsizing of the program is that all the commercial dependent missionary work we are doing is dead for now. It cannot realistically be brought back to life with 2 guys and one plane which will be away around the Union most of the time. The work we were doing is dependent on regular circulating around the area. That's the way you build up the current of business upon which it rides. That's how you can maintain your commitment to medevac flights which crop up any old time, not in gaps in the district flying program. I am aware too that two mission pilots will need some time to spend with their families after being away for a week or so and will need time for committees, admin work and maintenance. What I am getting at is, The commercial dependent mission flying we developed around Goroka cannot be continued at the old levels and will be a mere shadow of its former self. Especially for the nurses. They will not be able to get regular supplies and will not benefit from having other commercial customers subsidizing their flights if the commercial side of the program is not revived to a regular service with good loadings. Loadings really suffer when the plane has been away for a while or off line for some reason. You can have dead runs just trying to revive it all again.

Anyhow Jack, I am convicted that there is a very wide missionary field available away from Goroka too for this kind of missionary work. When Jessley was president down in Morobe mission we talked about all the unentered villages up in the Finnestere Ranges behind Lae. We have a few isolated churches up in there, but there are a lot of strips we never go to. I have a burning desire to get nurses into that area and start breaking down prejudice and opening the doors for our missionaries to go in there. There are areas down North East too where I know from the little medical work we tried to do there, that this type of program would be dynamite for building up the church. So I see Goroka area as a spring board for establishing a Lay Model aviation service which would be managed outside of the financial pressures the church faces with all the other needs it has to care for and would be able to grow with God's blessing and be able to establish bases in other areas and pursue this outstanding missionary opportunity into as many areas as possible, for the love of people and for the effective presentation of the Gospel by the church.

By the way, all the missionaries that my group supports up there are approved by the church and are told that they are servants of the church and work under the direction of the church government structure in place in PNG. They are subject to their DD (District Director) and the local mission, not to us. We get reports from the local mission so we can gauge the effectiveness of those missionaries. We support them but they do not work under our direction. What I want to do is provide a logistical frame work for the church to do its own missionary work, not provide a new mission. I am a supportive member of the church and believe in church government and try my best to co operate with it. I do believe in the personal calling to mission of individuals within that context and am interested in finding ways to help others achieve their calling to mission as well.

There are a number of things we want to do. I want to establish a "library" of equipment for pastors and laymen like generators, Av equipment, lighting etc so that those who cannot afford these things do not need to hold back if an evangelistic opportunity arises. They can borrow from the library. We would transport the equipment out and back, train people to use it and maintain it. This way more people will be able to utilize this kind of equipment and more people will hear the message. It would be available for AAS to use for church work as needed as well.

I have projects in mind to help the people out of poverty. This text in Psalms sums up what I am on about here and how it relates to the gospel. Ps 113: 6,7 New Living Translation "...He stoops to look, and He lifts the poor from the dirt and the needy from the garbage dump." I don't share the Hillsong church's view that the gospel is all about God blessing us with more earthly riches than anyone else Jack, but I do believe that Christian believers have a legitimate field of ministry in trying to help people out of abject poverty, where they do not have the chance to educate their kids or clothe them for church or buy them life saving medicines when they are sick. I can see why the church itself has a different focus. That is appropriate too. One of the benefits of lay people being involved is that we can go ahead and do a wider variety of things to help people.

The coffee price is about the same now as when I went up there about 10 years ago. The cost of flying has gone up to about triple of what it was then. The margin for growers has shrunk to the point that distant places are just not even bothering to pick the stuff any more. Some are heaping and burning it in frustration. Peanuts are worth far more than coffee and are a more spiritually correct crop for Adventists too. I know we tried to develop Markham peanuts at one stage and that failed because of their poor quality. Karimui peanuts are pretty good. The air operator at Chimbu makes a killing on peanuts. Goroka has no wholesale outlet. I hope to be able to boost tithe, income and hope out in the bush by developing new industries that can help the people earn a decent living to educate their kids and give them clothes to go to Sabbath school in.

I want to revive the fish for veggies trade with Kerema and Kikori too. I beleive that was very beneficial health wise and money wise for the people. There is an Egyptian Guy in South Australia who has developed a process to convert the internal flesh of banana trees into fine and very strong paper. This has the potential to relieve the pressure on the worlds forests and put much needed cash in the hands of subsistence farmers in the tropical areas of the third world. I would love to be involved in bringing this to poor farmers in PNG.

Also the last price I heard for vanilla was K750.00 per Kg. Compare that to K2.00 for coffee! Vanilla is being adopted particularly in the warmer areas as a prime cash crop. Sepik has been doing it for a while and it has really improved the standard of living in some areas. I think North East Papua are right into it now and it has really lifted the tithe there. I would like to help bring education of these new crops to remote villagers so that they too can receive modest benefit and be able to break out of the poverty which grips their communities. It would be hard for AAS to do this sort of thing, but it would fit well within the gamut of church members doing Christian help work to benefit people and bringing "bik nem" to God and to His church.

The other thing we did a bit of with AAS and which I would like to do more of with a Lay model program, is to get out to remote areas and bring people in to church programs like camp meetings. We had a scheme going where the plane would go out and the people would fly in at a discounted rate so more could have the opportunity of attending. They then go back with renewed spiritual insights and vigor to strengthen their own remote communities.

I have a real burden for remote areas. There are so many of the remote areas where the church is really struggling because of the lack of contact and nurture that the church can provide those communities now. AAS will be helping this by taking local mission guys out to visit in the bush again and that is fabulous. I just want to share one quick example of a community that has really suffered under the current climate of cut backs in ministry. I flew into Wia Wia one day and was told by the elder that their church had dropped to 30 members from 115. When I asked the reason he told me that the mission had sacked their pastor because they could not afford to pay him any more.

Local missions have been sacking scores of pastors over the last couple of years to contain costs. This has a devastating effect in remote areas where people are unable to read and find nourishment for their spiritual life if there is no shepherd to lead them. In Wia Wias case, we found a sponsor down south and the president selected a suitable Layman and we flew him in there and supported him in his work with regular flights. We established a clinic there too. Within a few months we were getting the request for roofing iron and nails to build a new and bigger church because the one they had was not big enough any more. You have worked in PNG as a missionary and you would understand the joy and excitement that we as pilots felt at seeing this transformation in a hurting remote church community. Bonnie, Bill's wife contacted someone back home in the states and a kindergarten Sabbath school there raised the money for the roofing iron for Wia wia church. Some one fixed a radio up and had it sent there. We flew a layman in from Goroka to help with the building of the church. It was a combined effort of lots of normally pew bound church members. They all got a blessing for being involved and participating in the churches missionary effort. The benefit of mission participation to the soul is tremendous. Last I hear there are a group of people there waiting for baptism now. With God's healing power, and the faithful ministry of Aileen our national nurse there, the village population which has steadily declined to just over 200 over the last few years is now rebounding and growing for the first time in living memory. Lots of Mums were dying of hemorrhage after child birth. Aileen is a good bush mid wife and I think they have only had one death over the last 12 months she has been there. I just praise God for His blessing of the efforts of ordinary church members who have seen needs and put them selves in God's hands to go out and do what the corporate church can not afford to do by its own means.

STOP PRESS. I just heard that we now no longer have a nurse at Wia Wia. The reason is that there are no longer any flights out there. All AAS aircraft have been grounded since about May (2004) I think with maintenance issues. We desperately need to obtain an aircraft and restore hope to these people. There are many other communities suffering terribly now that our medical work has hit a brick wall. Another operator occasionally agrees to do a little flying for our nurses but charges an obscene amount of money for doing so. I am praying that God will open the way for me to get a plane and to get some people who want to be involved in this project any way God is calling them to do that and get this thing started before what was built collapses altogether.

It astounds me how God has blessed the Nurses work there in Eastern Highlands. They had measles completely eradicated in Eastern Highlands there at one stage. Now as the flights have stopped they will not be able to contain the disease problems. I am inspired by God's leadership and blessing of this humble group of Christian workers who get no or very little pay for their efforts (About $55 US per month) and do what they do for the love of Jesus. People have really responded to this. What they have developed is the most effective tool of Gospel ministry I have seen in my time up there in PNG. For the moment the Devil has stopped it in its tracks by the grounding of our aircraft. They still have some clinics they are able to work by road. They took on some of the Sopas nurses when the hospital closed.

Jack I have a burden which I feel to the point of desperation some times that this work must not only get going again around Eastern Highlands but that the model of ministry that they have developed, must be transplanted into other areas of the country as well. e.g. Sepik. This is not possible with the limits the church is now working with in Aviation i.e. 2 guys and 1 aircraft with perhaps a back up plane, cannot exploit the potential for mission that God has put in our hands. I want to get into the dark areas in the Finnesterres. I want to get into the areas around Poppondetta too and there is a vast area of need out west of Hagen. There are all the remote areas in the Sepik. The church's clinic at Tumolbil on the border has influenced the starting of new churches over in Irian and lots of new groups our side as well.

I see huge potential for church member involvement in mission. There is a group of professional laymen at Goroka town church who are always looking for opportunities to go out and share their love for the Lord and their ministry skills with remote communities. They have several hand churches they are supporting around town. The DDs (District Directors) in the bush have expressed the desire to have their help in the bush if we can get them out there. The excitement for me is finding ways of connecting the resources God has put in our pews with those who are crying out for their help. I would like to continue AAS practice of developing commercial routes where our missionaries are in need of special assistance. Eg. Haia where there is a lot of opposition to our mission work.

What I have in mind Jack is a privately run air service managed at a Lay level which would work in co operation with AAS and focus on the commercial dependent missionary work that AAS pioneered so well, but can no longer put much energy into.

The Adventist Aviation Association and NNSW conference here where I live had a very harmonious relationship. They even had their own separate aircraft at one stage. I remember when I was president of AAA, we were invited to the conference office when they were planning the following years visitation so that they could liaise with us to make best use of the aircraft. I have seen church work enhanced by lay support and involvement in the past and believe that it can work in PNG.

Another thing that is very dear to my heart, is to be able to hold out hope to young people like Raymond. I want to see a mission opportunity that a kid can hook into for life that will provide the opportunity for professional and spiritual growth over time. To achieve what needs to be done will take a lot of guys. I want Adventist young people who are faithful to God and want to keep the Sabbath Holy, to have a rewarding career path in missionary aviation to set their sites on as the contemplate the expense of pilot training.

Anyhow Jack I should stop rambling here. Thanks for making contact. If you have any suggestions about the project I have in mind or would like to be involved, I would sure value your input. I know you guys have been in the self supporting side of mission and I admire that. I see room for lots of paid people and lots of volunteer in and out sort of people as well as the thing develops. This is a critical time for this program.

God bless
Regards
Trevor

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