Can you fly to Livingstone... now?

Some have written recently wondering if we're still alive.

The good news is that we are, although finding time to write about what we've been up to seems night on impossible. Here's an attempt.

Paul has done a number of flights (as you would hope and expect). A more recent one saw him fly to Livingstone in Zambia - with 20 minutes notice. It was actually for another organisation who's pilot couldn't do the flight at the very last minute, and was a good exercise in planning as you go! It turned out to be a big day (and half a big night) and covered 1500 miles which is about the same as going from London to the north of Africa and half way back.


This Wednesday he has a flight to the north of Mozambique, returning the following day. The equivalent distance here would get him from the UK to Newfoundland.

Cathy continues to be busy at Africa School of Missions with the student nurses as well as being involved with a new birthing centre that has been set up in White River. In early August she is hoping to deliver the baby of one of the Mercy Air families.
From the beginning of July Cathy will be responsible for Mercy Air's hospitality ministry as the current co-ordinator is going on maternity leave. This is the best part of a full time job but is an important ministry to missionaries from Mozambique. Go to http://www.mercyair.org/ and click on 'Hospitality' to see more.

Matthew visited us again a few weeks back and got to do a couple of photo shoots while he was here. He will next be up in August to shoot a few weddings.
When not hiding behind his lens he is spending some restoring an MG Midget.

Last weekend we hosted a missionary friend whom we knew in Lesotho and who is now working in Zimbabwe. When we went there for a holiday years ago we bought back a few bank notes as souvenirs. We still have them, a 5, 10 and 20 Zim Dollar note. Our friend was kind enough to donate a few of her current Zim notes to our collection and we now have a 10, 50 and a 250 million Zim Dollar note. So, we're millionaires, although the reality is that you need three of the 50 million ones to buy a can of Coke!

A number of Mercy Air staff are on furlough at the moment which again puts a lot pressure on the ones still here. Paul has therefore been extremely busy in the office. We are looking to sell our Beech 18 and he recently flew with it to Johannesburg to show it off to some prospective buyers. He then worked on various proposals for it's replacement which we are hoping will be a pressurised turboprop aircraft. We have also had a big Civil Aviation inspection last week which he had to prepare for.

Mercy Air's helicopter is currently busy in the Zambezi Delta with mission and food distribution work. Matthias Reuter the pilot writes:

"After an intensive maintenance service, the Mercy Air helicopter was once again on its way to the poorest of the poor. We started working immediately after our flight from South Africa to the small town of Tambara on the Zambezi river. The goal of our mission was to provide further help to the victims of the flood at the beginning of the year. Using our helicopter, we transported many tons of goods in cargo nets to the people who lost everything in the border region between Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

Further downstream we brought more than 25 tons of food to a remote region at the shores of the Zambezi river. Everything from rice to beans, to flour and cooking oil was safely carried in the cargo netsbeneath the helicopter to the people in need.We were also able to provide medical support. In collaboration with the government of Mozambique, we carried out several vaccination campaigns for children and were able to airlift medical personnel to several remote villages. For most of the local people this is the only possibility to get medical help and medicine. Thank you very much for your help and support - it makes it possible for the "wings of love for people in need" to fly again - tomorrow."

We are looking forward to a number of UK visitors this winter/summer. It will be good to take some time off and show them the sights of Mpumalanga as well as go lion hunting in Kruger Park.

As a final note we were musing recently about our life here, and wondering what state we have got to when our greatest relaxation seems to come from hurtling round the local forests on a mountain bike. We can philosophise, but for us four races in five weekends will leave the body tired but the mind well refreshed.

Thank you

Paul and Cathy

A tail of two lions

Hello,

Thanks to all those who wrote to us with regard to Matthew's graduation.
We were moderately surprised just how many people were also up for a bit of gratuitous violence and requested 'the lion pics'. So much so, it will be easier for us to send them out 'en masse'. Sorry if you've seen these already. If you requested not to see them, perhaps best not to scroll down to the last two pics (of four).

The Story:
These guys whom I used to fly with now breed lions. They are kept sort of separate but a younger one stuck his tail through a fence and a larger one took a chomp and damaged it some. Vet is called in, darts it and has a look. Prognosis was not good and a separation was required, which we got to witness.

Now for the Good ol' Christian Gore Slide Show...

The Victim:
The Culprit:
The Damage:
The Consequences:

The End... of the tale!

All big and growed up

For someone who usually gets to fly from place to place I was reminded of just how big even our little corner of Africa was, when we spent two full days driving to Grahamstown for Matthew's graduation - and then two full days back again. Fortunately half way was where we used to live in Lesotho so we had somewhere to stay and friends to catch up with there.

The two days in Grahamstown were a hive of activity with the highlight being the graduation itself. A typically posh and lengthy affair but no harm in a bit of pomp and ceremony in recognition for all that has been achieved over the last four years. The following day was the garden party for mass congratulations and photo opportunities.

As an aside, a funny thing happened on the way to the graduation - as they say.
We stopped by at an airfield that Paul used to fly from to see what was going on there. They are now breeding lions and when we arrived a vet was just about to dart one cos it had had its tail bitten by another lion. Turns out it was too badly damaged to save and had to be amputated. Even in Africa, not the kind of thing you see every day.

Thanks for praying for travel safety (2600km is like driving the length of Britain and back), and your prayers for Matthew over the last four years.

P n' C

Moz for an hour

As we haven't been in touch for a while, here is a short summary of the last few months activities in our hot and thundery neck of the woods.

Paul has done a number of short trips (a new pilot at Mercy Air has been flying some of the longer ones as part of his familiarisation). He has flown to Moz a few times and on one occasion he stayed less than an hour!

This was all part of the plan though as the previous day we had received news of a man who needed urgent medical evacuation to Jo'burg.
Flight permits were obtained, plans made and Paul left early Sunday morning with the paramedic.

He patient turned out to be the Captain of a ship that was delivering supplies to Beira. We picked him up after a three hour flight to Moz and then flew him another four hours to Jo'burg where an ambulance met him at the plane.


Another flight two weeks ago involved taking an elderly couple to Pretoria for urgent medical tests.

Paul spent last Thursday in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He managed to talk to a number of people whilst waiting for his passengers and it seems that things are as bad there as we are led to believe. One lady wanted to know when he was coming again and said he should bring food and bibles. With the elections less that a week away, many seem to think that the campaigning might be in vain, as the votes have likely already been counted.

Paul passed his Medical a few weeks back. Not such a major event in itself, but one that could certainly change the immediate outlook if it didn't go well.

Reminiscent of the dark days (nights) of 1971 and the coal miners strike in the UK, South Africa has been experiencing major Power Cuts recently. Many a time we have shared a romantic candlelit dinner - of sandwiches. The reason is load shedding which basically means Eskom, the power company, hasn't got enough capacity to supply everyone at the same time. Unfortunately the future's looking pretty bleak as they don't reckon they'll have the problems sorted this side of 5-8 years. The joke, 'Eskom are sorry to announce that the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off to conserve electricity' would be funny if it wasn't so true.
The upshot of this is that electricity prices are set to go up by over 50% soon, to help fund the construction of new power stations. This is on the back of a 50% rise in the price of petrol in the last year. The pound is quite strong at the mo but we don't know how long that will last.

We wrote to you about Matthew's visa, which is a real weight off everyone's mind. Thank you so much to all who prayed, and then wrote to us about it - it was possibly the biggest response we have had from any of our news updates. One of his first photo shoots while he has been back with us, was to photograph the water birth of a baby for which Cathy was doing the delivery. Cathy has done three deliveries in the last two weeks - two of which have bee water births.


Mercy Air's helicopter is back in SA now for some routine maintenance on the tail rotor gearbox. Routine maintenance in this case involves shipping the gearbox off to New Zealand for overhaul. When it returns the heli has one more trip to make back up to Moz to finish off with the Zambezi flooding and then it will go to Lesotho to help Mission Aviation Fellowship transport materials to build a remote clinic in the mountains.

Lastly, and talking about Lesotho, we shall be there this coming Wednesday as we are driving down to Grahamstown to attend Matthew's graduation, and will stop off for a night on the way. His graduation will surely be a 'my, where has the time gone' moment for us, as we are now coming upon 14 years in Africa. On a practical note, we would appreciate your prayers for the 17 hour long journey. SA has just been congratulating itself on the fact that this Easter there has been 27 fewer deaths than last year, but the total still stands at 120 - over a four day period. As far as I can work out, the UK would have 35 deaths over this time but SA has half the number of people and about ten times more roads. We return next Monday.

Thank you again for your prayers and support which make things like the above possible.

Paul, Cathy and Matthew

Happy New Year

Hello from a reconnected South Africa.

Actually it's a reconnected USA as our mercyair.org web server in the US has been down since before Christmas till last night. This meant that we couldn't send any mail out and any mail sent to us was probably returned, so please send again if you got any of yours back.

This then will have to serve as a brief pcm New Year Update.

Well, what a year! As busy as ever - here are a few of the highlights:

Paul flew the equivalent of 1.3 times round the world.
Cathy delivered 10 babies.
Matthew finished university and got his degree - a BA in Journalism and Philosophy.

We also went to the UK for two months and snook a visit in to Switzerland whilst we were there.
It was really good catching up with so many of you and being able to share what we're doing out here. We are also really grateful to those of you who pray for, and support us (either/or of course).

Matthew's spent the last three weeks back home with us but as I type he's sitting in Jo'burg International Airport with his girlfriend waiting to catch a flight to the UK. He'll be there for only two and a half weeks so a sighting of him might be rarer than Santa. He's hoping to return to SA and work as a freelance photographer in Durban.

We're looking forward to 2008 but it does help being able to start it wearing shorts and t shirt!


Regards

Paul, Cathy, Matthew

Fire!

As seems traditional, the break in communication is due to having little time to think, let alone write.

Paul was out just about every day last week. He was mainly flying for another mission organisation doing relatively local flights.
For the digit heads (like Paul) that all equated to about 3500 miles and 400 gallons of fuel.
It was a hard week not only for the long hours, but also that most of them were spent battling huge amounts of smoke. Our area and the north of Swaziland have had the worst forest fires in 60 odd years and huge amounts of land were simultaneously ablaze.


Hundreds of thousands of hectares have been mentioned which is probably half the size of Wales, but the consequence for us has been visibility down to a few hundred feet in places. Some routes that we would usually fly at 3500ft could only be run at 12000ft. The smoke covered the eastern side of South Africa from top to bottom and drifted over Mozambique to the coast.


Out of the smoke it was great, but the airstrips are in the valleys and finding them was a bit of a mission at times, especially when the sun was low.
The week ended with a long overnight haul up to Moz with a group that are developing a work in a remote area between Beira and Zimbabwe.

Cathy has had three deliveries since we last wrote, one of which turned out to be an emergency C section. She has continued her work with Africa School of Missions mainly with teaching and assessing the students in the local Government hospital, which is operating 'normally' since the strike finished.

We had a good time with Matthew at the Arts Festival although his girlfriend's Dad has been very ill recently. He's finishing up his fourth year at Uni and will be spending a few days in Cape Town with the photo journ department while we are in the UK.

Talking of which... Just to remind everyone that we are coming back to the UK for two months from 23rd August - so just over two weeks. We are hectically behind schedule in getting all our ducks lined up with regard to when we'll get round to visiting everyone. Some have written expressing a preference and we'll be getting round to arranging something as soon as... we can!
Someone has kindly lent us a car and a projector for Power Points etc. We still need to borrow a laptop though. It's actually about time we bought one of our own, so if anyone knows where we can get a good deal, then perhaps we could get it in the first few weeks of being home.

See you soon!

P n' C

Prison baptisms

Another quick update as we have been busy again.

Paul spent a week in Moz two weeks ago with a pastoral group from the US. They were there to help a mission team run three days of training and teaching sessions for local pastors, some of whom had travelled for over a day on a rickety bicycle to attend.

The missionaries there have also been working for a long time with the inmates of the town prison where 130 men share a 5m x 5m room. They are often in there 24 hours a day and only get one cup of corn meal and a cup of water per day. The inmates are imprisoned for anything from murder to stealing bread, and some can be detained for up to two years before their trial is even heard. Daily, the missionaries have given them medical and spiritual input but the highlight of this trip was when 20 men were baptised.


Last Saturday Paul flew a joint trip with Mission Aviation Fellowship and took another US team to the costal town on Inhambane. It was a long day (8 hrs flying and over 1000 miles) as we just dropped them off and Paul ended up flying back to SA at night. A year ago Cathy and Paul had taken a small exploratory team to various places in Moz as they were searching for somewhere to start an outreach (see 19th Mar 2006, 'Where to plant a church'). It was good therefore to be the first to fly a large team in to the location they had chosen.

Today (Tuesday) Paul was out again assisting Zumat with a couple of flights. He took some people down to Natal and then picked up some pastors and flew them to a mission station just north of Durban. Not in itself too spectacular, but the one hour flight would of taken them the best part of a day to complete by road. This was yet another day that ended well past sunset.


Cathy continues to teach every day at Africa School of Missions and also delivered a baby of a local lady recently. She has two more deliveries planned within the next three weeks.
She is applying for a work permit as her voluntary visa will expire at the end of June. This is a complicated process so please pray for success otherwise Paul will have to learn to cook real quick!

Matthew starts his mid year exams this week. Please pray that he'll do well in those.

Don't forget that we'll be in the UK from the end of Aug till the end-ish of Oct. Book us whilst there's still time!!!

Cheers

Paul and Cathy

Bits and bobs

Just a quick update to let you know how things are down under-ish.

We have been very busy at Mercy Air lately.

Paul has been doing some flying for Zululand Mission Air Transport (ZUMAT) again in their 207. Most of these flights have been one day affairs so for him it’s actually nice to get out of the office and go flying, but still spend the night at home.


This Thursday he’s off to Moz for a week with a group of pastors who will be running teaching sessions for local pastors. Then he’ll have two days at home before collecting another group in Johannesburg and taking them to the Mozambican coastal town of Inhambane for their outreach.

We’ve changed the big radial engines on the Beech so that's thundering round the sky again.


The Cessna 310 is in a million bits (engines, wings, undercarriage off and ready for inspection), and the 210 is as busy as an agitated mosquito. The heli has done a couple of outreaches in Moz and will be off there again on the 23rd of this month.

He’s practically finished the next Mercy Air newsletter which is a weight off his mind but there are still loads of officy things to do.

Cathy delivered another baby a week ago and is fitting the post natal care in with a busy teaching schedule at Africa School of Missions.

Matthew is gearing up for his final half year at Uni. After that teaching English as a foreign language in Thailand for a year looks favourite. We will go and see him at the Grahamstown festival again this year as his bedroom floor amounts to free accommodation for us!

Other than that, we are busy with a few mountain bike races and trying to find enough time to get our heads round coming home.

We will return to the UK on 23rd Aug for two months. If you’d like to see us – or have us come and see you, then please let us know.

Thanks

P n' C