Mud on Faces - Joy in Hearts

Pilots Brent Haberchak and Brad Richert received the traditional “mud-on-the-face” YembiYembi greeting!

Mud is part of life in Papua New Guinea, especially in the lowlands around the Sepik River. Mud means wet – and wet means lots of rain, lots of rivers, and very difficult travel.

“The rough terrain and river system make it nearly impossible for all of the church leaders to come together for a conference,” wrote Tim Shontere, YembiYembi church planter turned church development leader. “It is so difficult and expensive that we have never brought all the Sepik church leaders together in one place since we started planting churches 50 years ago.”

God is in the business of building His church – and He is at work in the hearts of believers to build each other up and strengthen groups of believers who live quite isolated from each other in places such as the Sepik Provinces. “The YembiYembi church had a dream,” continues Tim, “of bringing all of the leaders together for a workshop/conference to be able to network with each other and sit under teaching together. That dream came true [April 11-19, 2023].”

How could it be accomplished, given the obstacles of location, transportation and finances?

To overcome the obstacle of where to hold the conference, the YembiYembi church volunteered to host it and provide meals for everyone — which in the end included 100 extra people who showed up unexpectedly in canoes!

What about the transportation obstacle? Use aviation! But a muddy airstrip is a huge setback to landing an airplane. So Tim wrote email messages, resulting in a concerted petition to God for a dry (or at least not too muddy) YembiYembi airstrip to land on!

Pilot Andrew Smith arrives with leaders from the Hewa church - and a little mud on the Kodiak!

“God used Ethnos360 Aviation to bring leaders from the different corners of the Sepik Region so that all the church leaders could come together in one place for the first time.” Pilots Brent Haberchak, Brad Richert and Andrew Smith flew leaders from 15 people groups to the YembiYembi location using the Kodiak – and received the traditional “mud-on-the-face” YembiYembi greeting!

“National church leaders from strong churches in the West New Britain Island came and spoke at the conference,” wrote Tim. So did two missionaries, who taught on marriage, family and leadership.

One attendee commented, in a cultural idiom, “God punched all of our stomachs with his truth.” As they heard God’s truth, they compared their lives to it. This man went on to say, “We have failed in some areas as church leaders, but now we have been given God’s talk to straighten us out again. … True, it gave strength to our stomachs.”

As they soaked up fellowship and good teaching, the conference goers realized the benefit of the airplane in facilitating this historic gathering. As one man prayed, “Thank you, God, for the [Ethnos360 Aviation] plane. If they didn’t fly those far away leaders into here, how would they come? No way. They would not be here for the leadership conference.” Another commented on the joy of face-to-face fellowship: “We got to see everyone’s face for the first time. …. We hear them on the radio, but we never saw them. … We are one team for God. … We are doing the same work but doing it on different places on this ground.”

Grace, from the Maleu people group, teaching the ladies.

When you partner with Missionary Flight Sponsorship, you help overcome the last obstacle: You make the flights affordable to these brothers and sisters of little means. Without your generosity, the flights cannot happen. What a tremendous impact you can have on groups of believers like this whom you will most likely never meet until Heaven! Through Missionary Flight Sponsorship, they enjoyed the kind of fellowship that we take for granted. They heard teaching like what we hear every Sunday — and is at our disposal every minute of every day on the internet. Thank you for blessing these brothers and sisters.

Tim summed it up: “It was great to see them network together and be encouraged! … It was a historic event!” Thank you for being a blessing to these believers.