The loving four-month restoration of the house that MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) missionary Nate Saint built on the edge of the jungle in 1948 is nearly complete. Hundreds from Ecuador and abroad are expected to attend the ceremony to dedicate the historic building at 3 p.m. Oct. 30.

Arizona volunteers formed a short-term work team that helped restore the Shell, Ecuador, home of MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) pilot Nate Saint, who was martyred with four other missionaries in 1956. Historic restoration of the house, built in 1948 by Saint and a missionary team, is nearly complete. The house will be dedicated Oct. 30.

“Nate Saint and a team of missionaries helped build this house for Nate’s family, facilitating the pioneering outreach that eight years later led to his martyrdom,” said John Boyd, MAF president. “Its restoration means that his home will continue to be a center of ministry and witness of Christ’s hope for generations to come.”

The dedication will include sharing the Nate Saint story, a presentation of the gospel and a prayer of dedication. It will be conducted in English, Spanish and Waorani, the language of the people group that the five missionaries were visiting when tribal warriors killed them on Jan. 8, 1956.

Chris Nevins, president of Fuel the Mission, the nonprofit construction ministry that restored the home, said that a core crew of eight Ecuadorian workers with two short-term work crews from the United States have labored 90 construction days. Since June 15 when work began, 350 college and high school students and families from Europe and the United States have visited the house.

“We are grateful to God for Fuel the Mission and the many ministry partners who have given their time and other resources to the restoration project,” said Boyd.

Visitors during the restoration included Mincaye Enquedi, 75, one of the last three survivors of the Waorani warriors who martyred the missionaries. Mincaye, who speared Saint, became a Christian. Today he serves as a church elder while his grandson is associate pastor of an Ecuadorian church that some MAF families attend.

Nate Saint’s son Steve visited in August, and retired missionary Frank Drown, 89, who helped build the house, stopped by with his wife, Marie. Drown broke the news of the men’s martyrdoms to their wives in the kitchen, a scene documented in a famous Life magazine spread. Drown helped recover the bodies and bury his friends in a driving rainstorm. Drown family members Richard, Roger and Joelle helped with the renovation this summer.

Flying termites had nearly eaten the whole house. Without intervention, Nevins estimates that the structure would have collapsed within a year. The foundation, all but one foundation pier, the radio room, all doors, first-floor beams and 20 percent of the lumber are original in the renovated house. The kitchen will look mostly as it did in 1956. Some rebar remaining from construction of a trailer roof for Rachel Saint, Nate’s sister, was also used in the reconstruction.

Nevins, of Scottsdale, Ariz., founded Fuel the Mission to help mission groups worldwide with their construction needs. His team is raising the $75,000 needed to complete the restoration.

When I travel to Papua New Guinea areas where malaria is known to be present, I always take up a supply of the right pills so I dont fall victim to malaria.  I just read this blog post from the guys flying around the world in an Australian GA8 Airvan, the same plane used in some of the MAF programs:

“One lady told how she had lost three boys and two daughters to malaria, another man spoke of the three children that he had lost to malaria . . . the stories went on and on.  One chap said that until the missionaries came to Malamaunda, they had no access to any medicine due to their remote location, and the death toll each year was in the thousands.  Even now, the villages “close” to Malamaunda are a number of days walk away, and Bob Kennel told how a man had tried to bring his child sick with malaria to the village where Bob was - a three day walk.  After a day’s hike, the child died in the man’s arms and all he could do was return home to bury his little child.  This is happening right now.  As I write this, people here in PNG are dying from malaria . . . only a very short flight away from Australia.  This should not be happening . . . this must not continue to happen.”

Lets not ask “What would I do?

Ask “What can I do, now?”

Imagining myself as that father carrying his sick child rammed home the impact that malaria has.

Two men from Bendigo (Vic) are preparing for a world-first circumnavigation of the globe in an aircraft totally designed and manufactured in Australia.

And MAF will be one of only two organisations to benefit from funds raised by the epic journey.

Ken Evers 33 and Tim Pryse 51, will depart from Bendigo Aerodrome on a day to be determined in May bound for Norfolk Island.

They will continue their journey across the Pacific to California via Hawaii then on to Arizona and New Orleans. From there they will touch down to refuel in Jamaica and Barbados before heading south to Brazil, then due east across the Atlantic to Africa, on to India, Vietnam, the Philippines, PNG and back to Australia.

The history-making flight commemorates Australia’s Centenary of Flight when the famous contortionist Harry Houdini conducted Australia’s first controlled, powered flight in March 1910, changing the landscape of flying in this country forever.

Ken and Tim will fly a GA8-TC Airvan over 26,740 nautical miles in 230 flight hours. The eight-seat Airvan is manufactured by Gippsland Aeronautics in Morwell (Vic).

The flight aims to draw attention to malaria, the world’s most common infectious, mosquito-borne disease, claiming over a million lives annually. Most victims are those least able to afford preventative drugs or treatments.

The pilots hope to raise one million dollars

to combat the global impact of malaria by inviting donations via the millionsagainstmalaria.com website to two nominated charities - Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) and the Australian Foundation for the Peoples of Asia and Pacific (AFAP).

People in many of the tropical and sub-tropical areas the pair will fly across suffer from malaria including Papua New Guinea where Ken Evers grew up as a teenager and was deeply impacted by the Work of MAF.

“MAF pilots are my heroes”

“For me, MAF was the epitome of aviation. MAF pilots are my heroes,” he said.

“Living in PNG and watching the work of MAF taught me the lesson that you can use the gifts you have been given to do the right thing. And of course in the case of MAF it is using the gift of flight to help people.

“I watched what MAF did in PNG. I saw my friend’s life saved (by a MAF flight) and now I want to offer my support. I think MAF is such an unsung group. People fail to see that MAF is saving countless lives every year. ”

For further details about Ken and Tim’s epic journey and an opportunity to donate online to MAF, go to  www.millionsagainstmalaria.com

While in Nampa we were fortunate….. enough to be there for the Donkey Basketball MAF Fundraiser for Haiti.

I haven’t seen anything like it before. Only 1 donkey managed a professional foul on the gym floor. It gave the commentator my favourite line “We have poop. Poop on the floor”. Don’t hear that at basketball much.

sent from Apple iPhone

A former Kiwi missionary to Papua New Guinea is riding a motorcycle across the length of New Zealand to raise funds to buy an aeroplane to serve the rural people of PNG. Interestingly, the motorcycle that Frank Carter, 76, is riding to raise funds is the same one – a 1955 DOT Scrambler– he used while serving in the Western Highlands province in the late 1950s.

Carter Family and the DOT motorcycle - 2009

Mr Carter rode into Dunedin on the South Island on Wednesday and was expected to ride into Gore yesterday, before reaching the town of Bluff today – clocking up 2,220km in 14 days. He plans to end the ride at an annual motorbike rally called the Burt Munro Challenge at Oreti Beach near Invercargill this weekend.

So far, he has been able to raise more than NZ$20,000 (K40,000) on his road trip – far short of the NZ$1 million (K2 million) needed to by a new Australian-built GA8 Airvan and donate it to the Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) for its work in PNG. Mr Carter was reported by the Otago Daily Times as saying that he was praying hard for more funds.

The DOT tackles a rough stretch of road in PNG

Mr Carter bought the motorbike in 1959 and shipped it to Mt Hagen where he and his family were doing missionary work. He said the DOT (devoid of trouble) was ideal for the remote and rugged conditions he encountered in the Western Highlands province, and it was his only mode of transport for the seven-and a-half years he lived and served God there. When it was time to return to New Zealand, the motorcycle was “a wreck”, so he sold it to the mission and left it in PNG.

Thirty-eight years later, Mr Carter had retired and was keen to relive a small part of his youth by buying another 1955 DOT Scrambler. After a long search, he found one and, to his astonishment, it turned out to be his very own old 1955 model – refurbished. “I was convinced that God was part of this reunion and I made the decision to ride the DOT from Cape Reinga to Bluff, as a fundraising venture towards the purchase of a new Mission Aviation Fellowship plane for Papua New Guinea,” Mr Carter said.

PNG men admire the DOT

Source: PNG National newspaper