News for Prayer 30 October 2014
Issue 512
Flying the former Archbishop
Please continue to pray for the situation in South Sudan where we flew the former Archbishop of Canterbury, the Right Reverend Dr Rowan Williams. He recently visited the fragile young nation as Chair of Christian Aid. Dr Williams visited a variety of projects in Juba and spent time talking to church leaders, addressing the issue of peace and reconciliation, and visiting two camps for Internally Displaced People (IDPs). From Juba, he followed in the footsteps of the current Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby – travelling to Bor with MAF to support the peace building and reconciliation process facilitated by Christian Aid and The Lutheran World Federation. When inter-tribal warfare erupted last December, Bor was one of the areas that was caught up in the violence, and suffered badly (NfP 500). Give thanks for MAF’s assistance in enabling Dr Williams to meet with local leaders, and with IDPs living in the UN camp at Tomping. The former archbishop also visited a number of water projects and prayed at the graveside of hundreds of civilians killed during fighting in April.
Dr Rowan Williams (right) boarding a plane back to Juba
Axe attacks
In Papua New Guinea (PNG), domestic violence is sadly prevalent. So when Christina’s husband grew violent and attacked her with an axe in remote Eleme, she ended up badly injured. Fortunately, MAF Pilot Martin Koehler was able to fly her to Kompiam Hospital. Dr David Mills, who works at Kompiam, says she is recovering slowly. ‘The fractured shoulder will take the longest, but the experience must have been extremely traumatic.’ A week later, our plane was again needed in Eleme. ‘We had a health worker there,’ says Dr Mills, ‘who rang us, saying a guy was bleeding from a massive cut across his loins. In the end, the health worker hooked up an IV drip to a coconut and gave the coconut fluid intravenously to keep him alive. He survived until the MAF plane came.’ Although Dr Mills says the patient ‘was a whisker away from being a paraplegic’, he is slowly recovering in hospital. Give thanks for our ability to save lives, and pray both patients make a full recovery.
Life in the desert
In the Turkana region of northern Kenya, life is a daily battle. Yet among the dust and desert thorns, God’s Word is spreading and the Church is growing. Our team praise God for a recent flight allowing the GO YE Africa (GYA) team to visit the remote town
of Lokichar, around 370 miles north of Nairobi. Passengers included personnel from GYA, Bible League Canada, Christ Is The Answer Ministries and Around the Globe Deliverance Ministries. Having landed at Lokichar, a brief car journey took them to a small church building, where a number of church planters and believers greeted the visitors and updated them on their work. After a time of joyful praise and fervent prayer, Eric Musee, GYA’s founder and the driving force behind its church planting initiative, encouraged them by saying that ‘God has remembered the Turkana people.’ He explained how GYA had started with only 10 church planters, and has since trained a further 60 missionaries who are now serving with over 100 children’s workers. He concluded by telling the believers that ‘the best people to reach the Turkana with the Gospel are you.’ After the meeting, the visitors drove along dusty roads and dry river beds till they reached a small, thorny, hut-like structure from which singing and clapping could be heard. After they had brought greetings, shared Scripture and prayed for the believers there, they drove off to visit two other churches. Give thanks for partners like GYA that are working to see isolated people physically and spiritually transformed, and pray that many more churches will be planted across Kenya.
Medevacs in Papua Praise God that our team in Wamena, Papua, has responded to a string of urgent medevac requests. One Tuesday morning, MAF Pilot Kees Janse airlifted a lady from Ipdehek whose foot had become badly infected after being bitten by a pig. On Thursday afternoon, MAF Pilot Kevin Lynne landed in Karubaga to pick up a father, mother and child who were injured when the father lost control of his motorcycle and they crashed into a ravine. Both the mother and her boy suffered head injuries. On Friday morning, Kees picked up a woman from Anggruk who had successfully delivered her baby four days earlier, but was now very weak and needed to reach hospital. Later, Kees also transported a boy from Panggema, who had broken his arm. ‘It was neat,’ shares Kees, ‘to see the dad’s love and care for his boy. He wouldn’t let him walk, but carried him around.’ On the Saturday, Kees flew to Ndundu to pick up Selamat, a three-year-old boy whose face and upper body had been severely burned. Finally, on Monday, MAF Pilot Doug Allrich picked up a man from Ngergen who had fallen off a roof and injured his head badly. Give thanks for the many medevacs MAF carries out each year, and pray that Selamat and the other patients will fully recover.
Prayer points • ANGOLA Pray that our team will make progress on an airstrip building project that will help the Flying Doctor service reach rural communities. • ARNHEM LAND The weather is getting hot and humid, so working in these conditions is very challenging. Pray for health, energy and perseverance. • Praise God for the success of a Christian rally at Gangan. We supported the event by flying the organiser and promoting the outreach. Pray the seeds planted will continue to grow. • BANGLADESH Give thanks for our new shuttle flight to isolated coastal islands. Our first passengers, from the German Red Cross, assisted villagers on Hatiya Island, which is vulnerable to natural disasters. • MONGOLIA Pray the right people will quickly be found for the positions of Programme Manager, Pilot and Chief Engineer. • We have had a very busy summer, seeing many lives changed through our
partners’ work in Mongolia. Pray for high-impact flights assisting local churches and physiotherapy charity Reaching the Light. • MYANMAR We have submitted registration paperwork to the Myanmar Government so we can operate there. Pray that God will open doors and give us wisdom as we seek to bring hope and healing to remote communities in this new country. • SOUTH SUDAN We hope to secure a plot of land to develop a new MAF compound, so please pray the process goes well. Pray too as we cope without a permanent Operations Manager. • TIMOR-LESTE Pray for three-week-old Jiona de Rego who was flown from Atauro Island to Dili Hospital with breathing difficulties. It’s the ninth emergency airlift we’ve made since the Atauro runway opened in July. • UGANDA Pray for our team as they work to reinstate our Air Operators Certificate and get permission to carry out cross-border flights.
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