Flying Mission pilot Timo Kehr tells us how he is finding mission flying in this report of a flight to Malawi he recently undertook. He dubs it 'a short insight into the life of a missionary pilot': 

6 am: the alarm clock goes off. Take off is set for 8 am, so I have a small breakfast and off I go…Thank God, the internet is working - what a great start to the day!

First of all: weather check; clouds are low but otherwise no threat. " Good to go".

Next step: checking the plane: fuel, oil; all is functioning and everything is where it’s meant to be…

Chief Pilot for Flying Mission Zambia, Rick Rempel, recently had one of those frustrating jobs that turn up every so often. It began on a Friday afternoon….

I was asked by the Flight Scheduler to take a missionary from Zambia to South Africa for health care the next day. International flights take some planning, with special clearances required for all foreign airspaces. Times for exiting and entering all have to be submitted. I was going into an airport new to me and close by busy Johannesburg, so there was plenty of work to be done.

In October Dr Craig of Mercy Fliers, partner to Flying Mission Zambia, took Dr Breen up to Chitokoloki Mission hospital for the annual fistula repair camp there.  

This year is the fourth year that Doctors Uta and Craig (from Mercy Fliers, partner of Flying Mission Zambia) have visited Mongu hospital on the Zambezi river, about 150km south of Chitokoloki. They took with them a new microscope donated to Uta by some German friends of hers.  This microscope is amazing. Instead of the old thing which weighed 30kg and filled the aircraft, this new one weighs 8kg and occupies a briefcase!  

It was a sunny morning shortly after Zambia celebrated fifty years of independence.  Dr Bruce Bvulani waited on the airfield with Doctors Craig and Rae Oranmore-Brown of Mercy Fliers (partner organisation with Flying Mission Zambia) whilst baggage was stowed and pre-flight checks done. 

Craig continues:  after a pleasant and uneventful flight, we arrived at Mukinge and got to work. The late morning was spent seeing patients and making a rather ambitious surgery list for the visit.  We started operating that afternoon.

"Swimming Galas are not my favourite places", says Bryan Wilson, Flying Mission Zambia Managing Director. "I go because, well, I have to: I am the Dad!

The boys love them and are doing really well; my wife Diane loves them and shouts louder than any other parent in support of her boys, and I sit in my chair most of the day and do what I am told!" (Really? ed)

If you read this page regularly you will know that the Village Live-in is a major part of adjusting to Zambian culture for new Flying Mission Zambia missionaries. 'Life in rural areas is laid back, but at the same time exhausting! Every day looks almost the same as the day before', write Nina and Timo. 'Our hosts were James & Eloisia from the Tonga tribe. James is a farmer and a Pastor/Reverend. 

They call their 7 children their own, but 2 are adopted. They opened their home to us in such a lovely way and made us feel so welcome. 

Whenever new personnel join the Flying Mission Zambia Team, they are guided through a series of experiences that will help them adjust to life in a foreign country. Come with Nina and Timo now and see through their eyes how local people 'do' travel....

The goal: take the minibus and try to get to the National Museum in Lusaka. Then find your way home, with the minibus, of course. A minibus corresponds roughly to the public transportation you may know…that is, it takes you from point A to point B! It's the “how” that turns out to be slightly different!

'Mrs B' was involved in a nasty road traffic accident way out in Mongu in the Zambezi valley, not far from Angola. She sustained a neck injury which caused her right hand to be paralysed though there was no other paralysis.  The family and medical staff were concerned that if she took the 9 hour drive back to Lusaka, Zambia, she could well sustain further injury to her spine and become quadriplegic.

Flying Mission Zambia partners, Mercy Flyers, were requested to fly her back to Lusaka to get her urgently to the orthopaedic surgeon at the Zambian Italian Hospital.

Christian discipleship is a core part of the vision of Flying Mission Care Ministries. To this end we are involved in Bible distribution activities throughout the year at prisons, HIV and AIDS treatment clinics, and amongst children's ministry projects and Sunday Schools.