PCM News: Floods and maintenance

07 February 2007

Floods and maintenance

Christmas and New Year has come and gone (hopefully you all got our Christmas Newsletter), and we are now back into the usual cut and thrust of daily life.

The rush seems to have started early this year with Paul being on three back to back flights from this w/e.

The first is with a US doctor team who are doing a four day medical outreach through the Nazarene Church in SE Moz. The good news (for Paul at least) is that Cathy is also going on this trip.

The day after we get back Paul is off on another five day trip to take some pastors from a Baptist church in Cape Town to visit their missionaries in central Moz.

This morning we got a call from a Development/Aid/Relief agency in Moz who are trying to co-ordinate efforts to deal with what appears to be yet another potential disaster. They want us to do a survey flight along the Zambezi from the Indian Ocean to the Zambian border. Water levels on the Zambezi are already way above the alert levels and quote - "this year's crisis could be worse than in 2000 and 2001, when heavy flooding swept through the country's central and southern regions."

Until the Mozambique Government officially announce that help is needed, little work can be done. In the mean time contingency plans need to be made, which for now at least, is where we come in.

Paul will likely leave the medical outreach to do this flight this coming Sunday.

Recently Paul was flying in the area and took this picture.

Each of these trips are likely to be relatively rough. On the first we will need to camp and the missionaries for the second one purposely live on the rough side of town where there is no electric or running water. February is also pretty much the hottest time of year. We're expecting there to be what the weather bureau describes as 'high discomfort indicies' which usually amounts to 35-40 deg with heaps of humidity.

The rush has not come at the best time for us really. We have been using the traditional Christmas lull to carry out maintenance on a number of our aircraft. The Beech 18 requires two engines to be changed and will not be back in the air til mid March and the 310 needs a whole heap of work doing and will be out of action for at least another four months.

This is hurting us quite bad as there is a great need which we are finding it hard to meet at the mo. The solution for us is newer turbine powered aircraft, obtaining one is very much in God's court right now though as they also come with a meaty price tag.
Not quite a jack of all trades, Paul has however been helping with the maintenance recently in order to get our 210 back in the air in time.

Cathy continues to teach at ASM and last week delivered yet another baby belonging to a missionary couple serving in northern Moz.

Matthew has now retired to the safety of his fourth and last year at Uni in Grahamstown. It was good to have him back over Christmas.

We'll write again when we get back.

P n' C

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A short history of us

Not long after we were married we felt that God had some full time work for us overseas. This initially began with a move to Sheffield in 1992 to work for a Christian management training company. Three years later we felt the Lord's prompting that another change was imminent and this led to a move to Africa where we helped set up a youth program with the Lesotho-Durham link in the capital Maseru. An initial three year commitment turned into four after which the youth work was handed over to the nationals.

Then, after feeling God was moving us into mission flying Paul enrolled at a flying school and completed his South African commercial license with an instrument rating in December 1999.

We moved from Lesotho to White River in South Africa in June of 2003 where we now work with Mercy Air. Mercy Air was borne out of Youth with a Mission (YWAM) and is a sister, although smaller organisation to the more well known Mercy Ships. We are situated near Nelspruit and provide a service to missions and the development/aid community in the southern African region but mainly serve Mozambique.

We operate four aircraft at present - a Quest Kodiak, a Cessna 310 and two Airbus 350 helicopters which are often used for the relief flights.

When not flying Paul is responsible for flight operations and is Mercy Air's Safety Officer.

Cathy, who is a registered Nurse and Midwife works part time at Africa School of Missions which is a bible college preparing missionaries for overseas service. She teaches in their School of Health and is part of a team which visits a number of rural clinics during the week. She is also helps with the hospitality ministry that Mercy Air runs.

Matthew spent four years at Rhodes University in Grahamstown where he studied photo journalism. He has now flown the nest and is living with his wife in Durban. They have a young daughter named Isabella.