Rain clouds open up for life changing medical flight

Proverbs 16:9 tells us that man plans his path but God directs his steps. Proven factual time and again in our ministry, it became very evident to me a few months ago.

Five-thirty Monday morning found me leaving the house for another day or two during my field checkout training on mountain airstrips. I gave my wife, Misty, a kiss and expected to see her and my son Benjamin the next evening.

As fellow pilots Dave Wolf, Wolfgang Grotendiek and I ascended from the Chihuahua airport, the day began with a few puffy clouds lingering in an otherwise clear blue sky. The forecasted thunderstorms due to Hurricane Paul had changed overnight to a mere 20% chance of scattered showers. Conditions were good for flying.

We landed around two o’clock in a local village called Samachique, home to a Tarahumara Indian mission hospital. Dave left us there and took off immediately for another village where two Tarahumara women waited to be flown to the hospital the next day for scheduled surgeries. As soon as Dave left, it began to rain and pounded down continually the rest of the day. Tuesday brought even more rain, so we helped dig and replace pipe for a well. Wednesday dawned with…you guessed it, more rain!! But our God controls the weather.

On Wednesday afternoon Dave took off in clear weather with his two passengers to Samachique, but the weather turned nastier and nastier the closer he got. Finally, just as he was about to turn back, the Lord opened up a just-right sized window in the clouds. The rains abruptly ceased for a moment. He was able to descend through a layer of thinning clouds and land the airplane. As he taxied up to the local hangar, the rains started up and visibility once again decreased to almost nothing.

Thursday morning, missionary doctor Mike Berkley, an Orthopedic Surgeon serving with Mexico Medical Mission, began preparing the women for surgery.  As he and I had already chatted about my medical background as a respiratory therapist, Dr. Berkley asked me to assist in the operations. Both women had suffered for years with dislocated thumbs: one for three years due to a fall, the other for seven due to an abusive husband. The surgeries took several hours while each thumb was fused back together with a metal rod.

Normally, the Tarahumara Indians do not express emotion; however, that day, one of the patients had tears in her eyes over the joy of regaining the ability to use her hand properly. The missionary from their village who accompanied them and spoke their tribal lan-guage shared with us that neither of the ladies were believers in Christ. These successful surgeries, she felt, had opened a door to building deeper relationships with them.  (Several months later, one woman did accept Christ and demonstrated a desire to learn more about God.)

Just after the surgeries were finished, the weather finally broke.  We packed up, resumed some training flights, and returned to Chihuahua. I certainly did not know what I was in for that Monday morning when I left, but I am thankful for those steps God put on my path. How good is our God who uses the skills and abilities He has given us to minister in different ways to others when we least expect it!

UIM Aviation – The beginning of the Guarijio Church

Their families live removed from a world familiar to you and me. Children walk one hour to school on a rugged footpath.  Raising chickens for eggs and growing corn and beans provide the main food supply. They believe sickness and death is the result of a curse. Death itself brings years of punishment before being sent to the father god, the sun. They are the Guarijio Indians. From an airplane, each isolated village is just a blink in a road-less expanse of territory. How, one  marvels, is God going to reach these people?

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About twenty years ago, a group of New Tribes missionaries came to the Guarijio village of Tojiachi. They began to learn local culture and language in order to, one day, present to the people a Bible in their native tongue. Building relationships with the Indians and gaining trust was a long, slow process. Such special events as medical and dental clinics helped prove that the missionaries came with a desire and a message to improve life. Over the years, UIM Aviation has been privileged to aid this effort by providing service for medical emergencies and transportation for clinic teams, their equipment, and various consultants.

In 2001, one such dental clinic  brought Santos Tigre and his family from the village of Chiltepín, six hours walk from Tojiachi. This was the first time the missionaries had heard about this Guarijio community. Santos told them that years before a traveling evangelist, whom UIM still flies monthly throughout the area, had shared the Gospel with them in Spanish.

During this same time, more and more Mexicans were moving to Tojiachi and dominating over the Guarijios.  Wishing to maintain their focus to reach native people groups, the missionaries surveyed the surrounding area for a new home base. Among other villages, their search took them to Santos and his family in Chiltepín. After a few years of monthly visitations as the Lord led, the missionaries pursued and received permission to build homes in this community of fifteen families.

Relationships developed and some of the Guarijios were asked to be language helpers. In April 2006, they helped the missionaries begin trans- lating over 1700 Scripture verses used in a chronological Bible study. A rough draft was completed seven months later. This draft must be checked for comprehension on separate occasions by at least two separate individuals who are completely unfamiliar with the information they will read. Santos’ father, Martimiano, was willing to help. He had heard the Gospel a number of times in Spanish and was eager to learn about God.  He did not, however, convey a true understanding of the significance of Christ. Martimiano’s review of these Scripture verses was the first time he had ever received God’s Word in his native language.

As they came to verses referring to Christ, the missionaries witnessed Martimiano link important concepts between the Old and New Testaments. He realized that Christ was God’s sacrificial Lamb to take away sin once, for all.
Through over 20 years, a change of location, and different teams of missionaries, God faithfully pursued the Guarijio people. That day, His Word penetrated a new heart. Martimiano’s knowledge became understanding.
“This Book,” Martimiano remarked, pointing to the Bible, “really opens our eyes and makes us start to think. It cuts off our burro ears.” (In Mexico, referring to someone as a burro means they are ignorant; Martimiano meant reading the Bible removes ignorance.)

“It is better that you tell us in Guarijio so we don’t forget,” he continued, “but there is no one to tell people in (the villages of) La Barranca and La Finca.  Who will tell them?”

Indeed, who will tell them?

UIM Aviation supports the ministry of Mexican missionaries

BEAUTIFUL ARE THE FEET

Rounding the last cliff in the heart of a narrow Mexican valley on July 17, only two or three hundred feet off the ground, Wolfgang Grotendiek set the flaps and prepared to land. The airstrip, looking alarmingly narrow and short, came up at a rush, and the wheels crunched the ground with a jerk. Trees and shrubbery flew by, and just when it looked like the runway was running out, he crested a hill and rolled easily down the rest of the airstrip.

Stepping out of the aircraft at Palmarito is like going back in time. The mountains feel vast—and very, very quiet. Even a donkey’s bray, rooster’s crow or dog’s bark hardly penetrates the silence.

People quickly appeared on the airstrip to greet the missionaries. They greeted their host with the customary abrazo and followed him down the narrow path to the simple white-washed house where they had arranged for the evening’s meeting.

As they did so, Wolfgang took off to pick up a second group of Mexican missionaries and take them to Saucillo, where they would spend the week visiting and teaching in several surrounding communities. The same day a third group, led by Pastor Alfredo Marin from a Baptist Church near the Gulf of California, drove up to Mesa Colorado to minister to a group of 15. He baptized four new believers that week.

Who are these men and women who go from village to village preaching the Gospel every month? Years ago, Alfredo Marin was a Bible School student in Guaymas on the Gulf, and Ron Hamilton, an American from Arizona, was their teacher. Hamilton wanted his students to get practical missionary experience, so he began to fund flights to get them into the mountain villages where they could share God’s Word with love and power to people who had no clue of it.

Since that time, about a dozen men and women from various coastal churches have joined the monthly trek. At an age when most men are thinking of slowing down, Job Sierra, for instance, is still trucking six hours from his home up to the mountains every month.  He then flies out to Guarijio villages in the UIM airplanes, visits the villagers, preaches and teaches all week, then reverses the journey for the trip home.

In 25 years these Mexican missionaries have seen about 40 people a year come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, a considerable cadre of believers by now. But the cadre of believers is not intact. A great many have left their villages—including the best Church leadership potential—because they could not make a living and did not want to be involved in the illegal activities by which others prosper. Hamilton says the path to starting churches in these villages has been “difficult, difficult, difficult.” So, little bands of poor believers are left without leaders and that’s what keeps these committed Mexican missionaries going out. They will not leave the people God has given them as orphans.