PCM News: Helping hand

17 July 2012

Helping hand

Recently Paul helped another operator in Nelspruit with some local flying as one of their pilots was on three weeks leave.

It made a pleasant change to what we normally do as most of the flights were less that 30 min and involved transfering people from the nearby international airport to various game lodges. Some of the days involved being in the Kruger Park for 06:20 so that the passengers could make the early schduled flight to Cape Town.


20 mins before sunrise on the way to Sir Richard Branson's private game lodge for a pickup.

One lodge I landed at had a 1000m airstrip

which was just as well as the other end was occupied by a Giraffe.

I flew about 20 hours in the three weeks but racked up almost 50 landings including one at a large military airfield which required over 6km of taxiing.

Paul and Cathy

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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.