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.

There are some sayings that are heard all over Africa, such as TIA (This is Africa) and 'the man with the key has gone' and Flying Mission pilot Jonathan Weaver got to experience both of those recently.

'I was doing an international flight for some of the Baptist Missionaries. I was excited about this flight because I had never been to Mozambique, but I was also a bit apprehensive because, with international flying in Africa, you never know what to expect.

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. ISAIAH 55:10-11

Pastor Chris Maphosa is a man of God who is passionate about serving the world’s forgotten children of Southern Africa