PCM News: Flying for Life

06 September 2018

Flying for Life - Limpopo

Cathy and I did a flight recently with Flying for Life, based out of Johannesburg, but working into the rural Limpopo area of South Africa.

Mercy Air have been working with them for a number of years (see previous posts) but went this time to meet with the authorities who govern the various projects to find out how they think we are doing, and to see what else we could get involved in next year.

Again, the 1h10 flight up over the escarpment to Tshikondeni saved an eight hour drive.

Even with the saving by flight time, there were still plenty of rural dusty roads to negotiate.

After meeting with members of the local Tribal Council our first visit was to a primary school where class sizes are often 60+.

The kids were happy to see us


The school kitchen and the cook. It used to be a classroom.

Not very exciting from a photo point of view but most of the visits involved sitting down in meetings to review the last year and plan for the coming one.

Primary school meeting

Next stop was to the Takuseni special needs school where volunteers look after children to enable their parents to go to work. We had visited here a number of times in the past, on one occasion taking a dental team.

Cathy in their kitchen

After a number of other visits including a clinic and a secondary school we flew to Thohoyandou (toy and oh) to spend the night before visits the following day. On the way we passed over the area we had just visited.

Whilst waiting for our lift there were a few curious guys desparate to see and sit inside an aircraft for the first time.

Everybody wanted their picture taken

The next day we went to a hospital where we fly the eye cataract team every two months. Again more meetings and a quick tour of the facilities.

as good as they were, we are still quite fascinated by signs such as these!

After lunch it was time for the flight back to drop Flying for Life in Jhb...

The only shade on a 37 deg day!

...before the return to Nelspruit.

Landing at Mercy Air

Thank you

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.