Globally, especially within the mission community, connections are amazing. Just today, as Todd and I were on the ramp to welcome Ricky Poki back to Hagen, one of the pilots from the Air Niugini Boeing 737 walked across the tarmac towards us. He walked right up and said he wanted to say hi, and showed us his phone and he was having a video chat with Abdiel David, a friend working in the MAF I office in Cairns, Australia!!

It turns out that Ole was a pilot with New Tribes for many years and is now living in Cairns, Australia. He is neighbors with Abdiel and also with Stephen Charlesworth, who we work closely with out of the MAF I support office in Cairns. Not only did we have that connection, but we discovered another connection as well. We introduced Erwin Jungen, Todd’s outgoing Admin Assistant and Ricky Poki, Todd’s former Admin Assistant. Ricky is headed to train at SMAT in Michigan, with the goal or one day flying for MAF in PNG. Ole’s son is training at SMAT right now!!

Saturday, 11-June, a fundraising event was held in the Capital City – Port Moresby, at Vision City in support of Ricky Poki’s flight training.  This event was sponsored by friends of the family and involved a dinner and presentations about MAF by Todd, and also the call that the Lord has placed upon Ricky’s heart.  There were more than 150 people in attendance, including representatives from key governmental agencies, and corporations.  The Lord was truly present during the event. 

As follow up to the contacts made on Saturday, and facilitated by Ricky’s father, Dr. Poki, we had meetings on Monday the 13th with the Managing Director of one of the major corporations in PNG and a team from PNG’s newly formed National Identity and Unification project.  Great discussions were had about how MAF, with its 70+ years of involvement in the building of PNG, could be further involved in bringing unity to the remotes areas of PNG.  More to come on this. 

Speaking of connections – if you would like to hear from us more often you can follow our new ministry instagram page @tcaeb.png which has more pictures – less words. With a glimpse of life here in PNG the fun stuff and the not so fun stuff.

Prayer Requests:

We are in the midst of the National General Elections here in PNG – one of the hot spots for turmoil is Mount Hagen where we live and operate the main headquarters. There have already been a few issues, but so far the defense force has been able to keep things somewhat peaceful and we haven’t had too many non flying days due to associated unrest.

We have so many open positions that need to be filled – critical ones include HR Manager and IT Manager, and an XO for Todd.

Transition for our daughter and son-in-law coming out to PNG to teach and help with Comms – prayer for our other daughter and our only grandchild as this will affect them greatly.