Just Happened To

David, doing his job, using three computers and two smart phones!

Kristina was sick. Very sick. In intense pain and unable to walk, sleep, eat. She needed to see a doctor.

David Stobbe, a pilot serving as acting flight scheduler, took the emotional call that morning from Kristina’s husband, Jos.

Jos and Kristina are indigenous believers from the remote Aziana people group. They were introduced to Christ many years ago by Ethnos360 missionaries and were discipled through the church that was planted in their village. Now they are missionaries, sent out to work with another remote group — the Menya people. The church in Menya needed more discipleship to stand on its own. So, Jos and Kristina, along with another Aziana family, volunteered to move to Menya — to a people, language, and place not their own — to help lead and disciple the struggling church there.

On this particular morning just before Christmas, though, Kristina needed help and quickly. 

Pilot Stuart Sims (r.) helps unload Kristina after her emergency medevac.

God had everything set up. In an aviation program where people are often booking flights months in advance, on that last flight day before Christmas there “happened” to be a helicopter free and ready to go. In a country where our pilots often have to watch their duty-hour limits very carefully, helicopter pilot Stuart Sims “happened” to be in the office, with hours to spare, ready to go.

So, David got to say "YES!" And within just a couple of hours from the initial call, Jos and Kristina were loaded into a helicopter, coming out to Goroka to the hospital. [The last update had Kristina recuperating at her daughter’s house in the town of Goroka.]

David is excitedly waiting for the day he can be flying here. But one of the awesome gifts of where God has him at this moment is that he is the point of contact for missionaries calling for help — routine or emergency — and he gets to have his finger on the pulse of the difference aviation is making here in PNG! For pilots carrying out their flight schedule for the day, the purpose and benefit of each flight is sometimes obvious but other times harder to see. But for David as flight coordinator, handling all the communications, the difference an aircraft can make in this rugged environment is very obvious.

Benefit of Flight

We want to thank those of you who give to Missionary Flight Sponsorship and let you know what an awesome difference you are making. Though a fund exists to cover medical evacuations, your assistance kicks in to help indigenous people like Jos and Kristina get set up in their outreach ministry in the first place.

Stuart Sims fueling an R66 in a remote location.

In January 2025, the two Aziana families (Jos and Kristina being one of them) were commissioned to come alongside the Menya church for discipleship. Helicopter pilot Stuart Sims explains how aviation played a part: “We had the privilege of facilitating the beginning of this ministry by flying the leaders and the men involved [in the outreach] several times, which reduced a two-day hike down to a 15-minute flight.”

Flight sponsorship makes it possible for church planters like Jos and Kristina – who do not have the means to ever afford a flight – to carry out the ministry strategy that the Lord has given them.

Jos & Kristina (r.) with the Menya team. 

Thank you for partnering with us to make aviation an option to all of our church planters, regardless of their ability to pay. Thank you for working with Jos and Kristina to do the work that God has called them to do.

Edited from a letter by pilot’s wife Laurel Stobbe, Papua New Guinea