Recently I visited a very different segment of our aviation industry. Missionaries Mike and Karen Broyles came to our church to speak about the situation in Haiti. They live and serve in Haiti and were on site when the recent earthquake struck.
Mike is a missionary pilot and mechanic for MAF (Missionary Aviation Fellowship). I was aware of MAF, which is a member organization of IAMA (International Association of Missionary Aviation), a group that I spoke for back in 1995. That was a long time ago, and I welcomed the chance to talk with Mike and ask about changes in his industry.
One thing hasn’t changed at all. Mike and Karen serve with the same dedication, fervor, faith and enthusiasm as the missionary pilots I met back in ’95. These are people who obviously take great pride and delight in what they are doing.
You may have read or heard of MAF yourself. During the Haiti crisis, MAF, including Mike, had a large part in managing the tremendous workload at the airport where many of the relief airplanes landed. The powers-that-be quickly learned that MAF knew what they were doing and relied upon them heavily.
Mike is usually more involved with flying small aircraft into out-of-the-way places in the interior of Haiti, using Cessna 206s and 207s for this rough work. Mike talks casually of short strips that he measures “between the trees.†Remember the charts you saw in private pilot training that show the 50-foot tree at the end of the runway? Most of us never see such trees in normal flying, but Mike lives with them daily. He freely admits that the flying is extremely stressful, but also calls it “a joy.â€
MAF just took delivery of a new Kodiak, which adds a capability only dreamed of by the pilots I met in 1995. They hope someday to also operate the larger Cessna Caravans.
Mike talked of trips taking food and medicine to the hungry and ferrying critically sick children to hospitals in difficult weather. On top of that, he and Karen teach kids and perform other services.Â
When possible, they plan to go right back to Haiti to continue the good work. I am proud to have them in the aviation industry.
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