PCM News: Busy all of a sudden

04 February 2009

Busy all of a sudden

Two weeks ago there was a 75 km mountain bike race in Barberton – the first big race of the year, which was quite muddy and took almost six hours. This last weekend Cathy and I ran the clinic at Londolozi game lodge again. Monday was spent getting the auto pilot in the 310 fixed in Johannesburg. Tuesday we hosted a new cell group that will meet in our house. Now it looks as if the next few weeks are set to be about as manic as it gets as it seems that everyone wants to go everywhere – right away!

The Zimbabwe water purifying flight is now being arranged for next Wednesday. We will already be up in Moz with a missions team on an eight day trip and so can continue up to Malawi, where pick the chemicals up, from there.

A few days after we get back we have been asked to transport 11000 crocodiles from a small town on the Zambezi River in Moz to South Africa – should be novel.

In between the two flights there is also a 100 km mountain bike race that Paul will be doing. In the mix with all this are some of the worst storms we have had for a long time (last night it thundered all night and left us with 60mm of rain and a small lake in the kitchen and bathroom).

We have a Mercy Air planning meeting tomorrow (Thursday) and Cathy and I will spend Friday afternoon at a memorial service for two cycling friends of ours who died tragically last week.

So, huge amounts of paperwork and planning and only limited time in which to do it.

We’ll let you know how it all goes.

In the mean time Cathy's delivered two more babies since we last wrote and Matthew has probably taken 2000 more photos.

Paul and Cathy

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Well! This is a new experience for me too - I've heard about blogs, but that was it! Now I've actually seen one, and, hopefully, responded. The pictures are lovely - but I'm a bit worried about that hen in amongst so many wild animals! I hadn.t realized you had been in S.A. for fourteen years, the time seems to have passed so quickly. You must have a great feeling of satisfaction when you cast your mind back over all you have achieved. Keep up the GOOD work, and take care.; 16 February, 2009

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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.