MAF, Ecuador

About MAF

Mission Statement

Our passion is to see individuals, communities, and nations transformed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We promote this transformation by positioning Christ-centered staff in strategic locations worldwide utilizing aviation, communications, learning technologies, other appropriate technologies and related services. In accomplishing our mission, we collaborate with churches, subsidiaries, partners, and networks.

Aviation Detail

In its global efforts to overcome barriers, MAF operates the world's largest fleet of private aircraft used for the public good.

In fiscal year 2006, the MAF fleet of 54 aircraft executed 37,490 flights, logged 3,014,031 miles, transported 116,459 passengers, and delivered 10.2 million pounds of cargo all on 1,700 rough, unimproved dirt and grass airstrips as well as waterways.

More importantly, in the past 12 months, MAF planes saved Christian and humanitarian workers 66,928 days of travel time or 276.5 work years redeemed for productive Kingdom work!

These flights support Christian workers, evangelists, teachers, medical personnel, as well as relief and development workers. MAF planes haul food, seed, and livestock; transport the sick and injured; deliver doctors, medicine, and relief supplies; and carry the materials for a better life to people who need it most-people others cannot reach.

MAF airplanes are often the only safe and reliable means of transportation for those involved in ministry. In regions without trafficable roads, MAF typically can reduce a missionary's all-day trek by foot to a mere 20-minute flight.

Every 7 minutes, in some of the most remote places on earth, an MAF aircraft either takes off or lands.

One MAF airplane can haul a half-ton of cargo into a region that would otherwise require a train of pack animals, several guides, and weeks of grueling effort to reach by land.

In 1970, only a quarter of MAF passengers were nationals. Today, they represent the majority. Indigenous evangelists and missionary groups, who are the fruit of earlier missionary efforts, are increasingly seeking and reaching the lost and hurting in their own countries.

Community Development Detail

In isolated regions, using a full range of aviation, communications, and distance education services, MAF helps meet some of the most basic human needs, thereby gradually improving the quality of life for the local population. MAF helps improve living conditions and enables thousands of families to develop safe, healthy, and productive communities. 

MAF missionary-pilots assist in community development by transporting Christian staff and needed supplies for health and community improvement projects, as well as devoting many hours of personal time.

"Even though you reach out to the farthest corners of the globe, it is the person to person relationships that I see as your greatest strength. You have a huge impact in the areas you serve as there are no resources within the national culture to accomplish what you do." 
—Brenda Mantel,worker at an orphanage in Lesotho.

 

For example, in Mali, MAF has enabled dozens of water projects that provide clean and safe drinking water for thousands of people. Digging water wells by hand has opened opportunities to share the Gospel with grateful villagers. 

In one village alone where MAF staff dug a well, more than 35 new believers now attend a church initiated and built by the village people. 

Likewise, MAF solar panels enhance village resources. By providing electrical power, children who need to work in the fields by day are able to study at night. They remain in school, gain an education, and thus begin to break the cycle of illiteracy and poverty.

In other remote regions of the globe, MAF brings in teams of experts who teach mothers, daughters, aunts, and even grandmothers how to sew or plant gardens in order to provide families with a steady income. Then by transporting their produce, handicrafts, and hand-made clothing to distant marketplaces, MAF helps families earn a living. 

Recently in Haiti, 1,500 tilapia (a quickly reproducing species of fish) were loaded aboard an MAF flight destined for a Haitian orphanage. The goal was to provide its sixty-some children with a continual supply of food and much needed protein. A local ministry supplies tilapia from breeding ponds for transport to many locations. Once people are trained to care and feed this fast-growing fish, they benefit from a renewable food supply.

Medical Assistance

Everyday, MAF provides a profound Christian presence through flights of mercy, meeting healthcare and medical needs in the most isolated corners of the globe.

MAF responds quickly and effectively to save lives and ease suffering caused by accidents, disease, disasters, and deadly epidemics. 

In many remote villages of the world, the only ambulance service that can reach emergency cases is a small MAF plane flying from a short, unimproved runway. During medical flights, MAF staff members witness to patients about the love of Christ, often saving souls, as well as lives. 

Thousands are saved each year because MAF “wings of mercy” transport doctors, nurses, and medicines to patients in minutes instead of weeks. And many epidemics are prevented by massive immunization campaigns whose workers are flown in by MAF.

Every day, MAF transports tons of vital emergency and medical cargo. In hundreds of remote areas, clinics and hospitals can receive medicine, medical equipment, and supplies only if they are flown to them as cargo aboard an MAF airplane. 

MAF communications networks advance healthcare as well. Remote field clinics can maintain contact with large hospitals via HF radios connected to computers powered by solar panels, which relay email messages via satellite. 

MAF communications services have opened doors that are locked to traditional ministry strategies. For example, MAF installs solar panels in areas of South Central Asia without access to electricity. As a result, MAF embodies the light of the Gospel while powering small village clinics. 

Providing critical support to the international medical community, MAF aviation and communications services make the difference between life and death for hundreds of thousands of people living in remote areas of the globe.

National Training Detail

Discipleship - Skills Training - Leadership Development

Jesus’ reconciling work in this world drives the MAF imperative of being a transformational ministry. Jesus is the practical model for all MAF staff members to demonstrate God’s love through their message of hope, compassionate actions, and consistent lifestyle. The divine incarnation undergirds the importance of people going, living, and embodying Jesus among those to whom they minister. 

Indigenous brothers and sisters in Christ share the vision of bringing hope and help to their own countrymen. As an incarnational presence, MAF enables them to carry out that vision by transferring skills and knowledge. Utilizing formal settings, distance education and mentoring, MAF builds national capacity through discipleship, skills training, and leadership development.

Discipleship —As part of its missiological mandate, MAF trains and disciples fellow believers. National brothers and sisters in Christ, working hand in hand with MAF, make an invaluable contribution to help overcome barriers to the Gospel and the advancement of God’s Kingdom.

Skills Training —In partnership with MAF-approved schools such as LeTourneau University and the aviation program of Moody Bible Institute, MAF supports an ongoing program that provides nationals with flight training and college-level courses leading to a bachelor’s degree in mission aviation. The curriculum includes Biblical studies, aircraft maintenance, information technology (IT), finance, and management.

Leadership Development —The goal of MAF is to help equip church leaders for their task of building churches and equipping their congregations for ministry.

MAF-Learning Technologies (MAF-LT)

Enables Bible and ministry skills training for church leaders in the developing world by providing technology, expertise, consulting services,and synergism in digital publishing and distance education.

In partnership with organizations such as Moody Bible Institute and Greater Europe Mission, in fiscal year 2006 alone, MAF-Learning Technologies supported 19 ministries in 18 countries. More than 100 church leaders, previously without access to ministry training, were trained through distance education courses while thousands more accessed digital reference and study materials.

Ecuador

Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) provides vital aviation and radio communications services to national churches, Christian missions, and non-government organizations (NGOs) ministering in Ecuador, as well as to jungle villages.

THE NEED

In the Amazon basin region of Ecuador, the dense jungle and ever-changing serpentine rivers create living barriers, conspiring to keep people in isolation and spiritual darkness. The country lacks a national communications infrastructure, and all-weather roads are nearly nonexistent.

Childbirth, a snakebite, or a fall from a tree is a grave event in these jungles. Left untreated, minor ailments worsen until they become life-threatening medical emergencies. For the rural poor, health care is deteriorating rather than improving.

Since the 1960s, the Church has grown significantly in response to the faithful preaching of the Gospel. However, losses to cults and syncretistic beliefs are a great danger when opportunities are inadequate for believers to be discipled and grounded in God's Word. Many people groups in the Amazon integrate the beliefs and practices of animistic cults with Catholicism. Those in remote communities believe that shamans (witchdoctors) can kill and cure through magical means, which allows them to play an important part in their religious and social life.

THE SOLUTION


Since 1948, MAF has provided access to the Gospel and life-sustaining resources to the people of Ecuador.

In many of the country’s remote regions, MAF provides flights, communications, and logistical support for missionaries, local churches, and villages. MAF operates a fleet of five aircraft from two bases: Quito, the capital city of Ecuador, and Shell, on the edge of the Amazon basin.

Medical and air ambulance support are significant components of the MAF ministry in Ecuador. Forty-three percent of all MAF flights are medically related, including flights for the Ministry of Health, which sends health care teams into the jungle to provide preventative immunizations and rural health education programs. The recently established chaplain ministry, established in 2005, is impacting hundreds of patients and their family members each year.

Throughout the jungle, MAF communications networks enable villages to communicate with one another and with the outside world. Missions and local churches coordinate evangelism and discipleship programs, request medical emergency flights, and bring isolated communities together.

Ecuador, like many mission fields, has seen a rise in national missionaries and a corresponding decrease in foreign mission workers. The fruit of earlier mission efforts, national pastors and missionaries have a call to share the Gospel with their countrymen, but may not have the economic ability to use aviation services. When possible, MAF subsidizes their flights.

IMPACT 2007 HIGHLIGHTS

In the past 12 months, the MAF program in Ecuador ...

Saved Christian and humanitarian workers 4,873 days of travel time—or 20 work years redeemed for productive Kingdom work!

·      Executed 4,633 flights, transported 9,966 passengers, and delivered 544,421 pounds of cargo in order to provide access to the Gospel and to basic services such as health clinics, medical emergency evacuations, and education—services otherwise unavailable in jungle locations.

·      Supported 95 national and expatriate mission workers, including doctors, teachers, and translators, who provide critical services to isolated villages and remote regions.

·      Continued a chaplain ministry that ...

• Witnessed to each passenger at the hangar by playing DVDs in the waiting room about Jesus Christ or His ministry.  
• Distributed approximately 2,000 New Testaments and more than 9,000 Christian tracts.
• Made 200 visits to the government hospital in Puyo, sharing the Gospel and encouraging patients. Shared the Gospel with some 800 people brought from the jungle on MAF air ambulance flights. Eighteen patients ultimately professed faith or expressed an interest in following Christ.  
• Linked patients with jungle churches for follow-up and discipleship.
• Provided many patients with clothes and personal hygiene items.

·      Provided monthly flights supporting the ongoing translation of the Old Testament into Shuar by Avant Ministries—a project that could not otherwise be accomplished.

·      Transported staff of Compassion International and Ecuador para Cristo to support their ministries to jungle communities.

·      Upgraded the MAF radio network, including replacing repeaters. Some 35 villages now have new radios, batteries and solar panels.

·      Installed 32 VHF radios, part of the 74 units in the MAF jungle radio system. The only communications link to the outside world, these radios allow isolated jungle villagers to contact doctors; doctors to schedule emergency flights; pilots to obtain accurate weather reports; church leaders to participate in regional training events; and remote communities to connect with one another.

·      Hosted six work teams from the U.S. and one from Ireland. These teams donated 90 days of service to MAF. The volunteers constructed protective containers to house radio systems, painted the hangar, and installed new roofs on the fuel depot and one missionary home. 

·      Enhanced the precision and safety of MAF flight operations by upgrading the safety equipment on two aircraft. A third aircraft is currently being upgraded.

·      Continued frequent flights for brigadas, medical teams each consisting of a doctor, nurse, and dental hygienist. These teams treat patients, teach improved hygiene, and instruct villagers in basic first aid to treat minor medical problems before they become serious and life threatening. Successfully lobbied the Ministry of Health to send more preventative medicine teams into the jungle, resulting in an increased number of teams in 2007. 

KEY GOALS 2008

·      Evaluate trends in usage and flight hours to determine fleet optimization needs, including the suitability of the Kokiak aircraft for Ecuador operations.

·      Continue the MAF chaplain ministry, including quarterly visits to village churches. Explore ways for the MAF chaplain program to coordinate ministry efforts with Alas de Socorro del Ecuador (ADSE).

·      Install the remaining 40 HF/VHF radios in the villages that are part of the MAF Jungle Community Radio Project.

·      Install a remote voltage monitoring system at two radio repeater stations as well as a new roof on the south repeater.

·      Work with MAF-Learning Technologies to assess the need for distance education services in Ecuador.

·      Continue ongoing efforts to nationalize the MAF program in Ecuador, working in close association with the MAF affiliate, Alas de Socorro del Ecuador.  Continue to develop an MAF/ADSE partnership, including possible integration of staff. Create a plan to promote the ministry of ADSE in Ecuadorian churches. Develop a program for mentoring and discipling ADSE missionaries.

·      Work with ADSE to develop a funding model for Ecuadorian missionaries that fits the Ecuadorian church situation.

·      Plan for and host visiting work teams throughout the year. Six to eight teams are anticipated over the next 12 months. 

• Replace the roof on the old hangar apartment in Shell.