UIM Aviation in Tepic, Mexico

UIM Aviation can meet a need to provide air support for UIM Mexico, the Mexican church, and displaced Huichol Indians in and around the city of Tepic in Nayarit, Mexico.

UIM Mexico is increasingly involved in a ministry with a Mexican pastor to Huichol Indians in the Tepic area. Together they are implementing several community development projects in various villages, one of which is a refugee settlement where Huichol Christians have fled from persecution for their faith in their home villages. Due to the poverty in which so many of the people live, the community development projects thus far have included gardening, composting, and basic hygiene seminars.

Unhindered by the poverty in which they live, many of the Huichol Indians have demonstrated a desire to know more about Christ. They have been faithfully attending and completing a theological training course administered by missionaries. They are eager to learn about God’s word and are dedicated to maturing as God’s children. They have a great desire to return to their home villages and share their new-found lives with

family and friends. Currently, most have to travel about 20 hours by ground. Many of these trips can be reduced to 20 minutes by air. If UIM Aviation partners with UIM Mexico, the local church, and the Huichol Indians, flights would allow the people to make more frequent visits to villages, spend a larger part of the day in the village, and ultimately aid in reaching more of the Huichol people for Christ.

On a recent survey trip, UIM Aviation staff met with UIM Mexico, the Mexican pastor, and several Huichol leaders. We presented our ideas to them and were received openly and favorably. Most of the surrounding airstrips we would use are registered airstrips, meaning they are officially recognized by the government. The suspicious activity in Mexico is assumed to take place on unregistered strips, which was the primary reason our flight operations in Durango had to be closed. Furthermore, Tepic is centrally located between the states of Durango and Jalisco, both of which have ongoing and developing ministries that could benefit from air support.

In order to immediately begin serving the Huichol people, we would schedule a monthly flight from our base in Chihuahua, Mexico. The trip would last about one week and cost roughly $1200. As we move toward a base in Tepic, we will plan to station two UIM families and one airplane there. All of this needs considerable prayer and we place our trust in the Lord to guide us through the decision-making process as well as provide funding.

- Pray with us as we seek to expand in Tepic, Mexico.
- Pray for UIM Mexico and the pastors who are working in this area already.
- Pray for the growth, protection, and safety of the Huichol believers.

Misionera Aventura Infantil ~ Children’s Missionary Adventure

Children everywhere! Hundreds of them, in all shapes and sizes, and they kept coming. This was sure to be an adventure, a missionary adventure.

For one day, the sights, sounds, and smells of world missions came alive for Mexican children aged 6 to 13. Participants were divided into traveling groups of about 35, plus guides, and spent the day rotating throughout the grounds learning about world missions in different countries as well as different types of ministries.

The UIM Aviation team welcomed each traveling group into a mock airplane. Kids took their seats, buckled in, and received pre-flight briefing. Via video on a large screen, our passengers experienced a missionary flight into some of the most remote parts of Mexico. They learned how God uses the airplane as a tool to reach the lost. We challenged them to develop their God-given gifts and abilities for His service.

This annual event is vital in exposing Mexico’s future missionaries to world missions. We give all praise and glory to God for the chance to be a part of His kingdom work. Pray for these children who have now returned to their homes. Pray that God is working in their hearts and minds to open their lives to missionary service.

UIM Aviation – God provides new hangar in Chihuahua!

“Your rent is going up,” said the owner of the eight-plane hangar at Chihuahua International Airport.

For 12 years UIM had rented a space here for $500/month. However, a short while later, this hangar was seized by the airport for unpaid fees. Thanks to a friend, we were informed the night before and removed the airplane, parking it in the more vulnerable out-of-doors. We needed a solution fast. The Lord had obviously prepared us for change.

Nosing about, Dennis Joyner and Wolfgang Grotendiek inquired about space at a private owner’s airstrip, just minutes from the International Airport. The owner, Fernando Amaya, was willing to work with us.
Dennis, UIM’s Chihuahua Area Manager, punched some numbers and realized that over a period of 10 years, UIM could build a hangar at a lower cost than 10 years’ worth of rent. He, Dave Wolf and a Mexican friend went to visit Fernando and see what they could work out. Fernando agreed to the idea of constructing a hangar in lieu of monthly rent.

The project was approved but there was no way to get funding from the budget. Our Chihuahua staff researched possibilities. Dennis shared the dream with his brother in Arkansas. The Lord impressed their church, Freedom Fellowship, to raise enough money for a 60’x60’ slab, which UIM staff plus a few volunteers promptly poured. Later the Lord touched Mountain View Baptist Church in Tucson as well as an interested individual to fund the poles, trusses and roof tin, so the team put up the poles and the roof. What a blessing that the Lord so skilled our staff that they could do this work.

The next phase in the project was to enclose the walls and hang the main doors. Would the Lord still provide?  He did indeed. An Indiana couple and a visitor to the July Oshkosh Air Show donated enough funds for these materials. An unexpected gift from another Indiana man will be used to complete a bathroom. Dennis expects to have enough money left from all the donations to paint the hangar floor and hook up electricity.

The Lord’s people have freely given an astonishing $20,500 for this hangar. We hope to finish the building for around $25,000. How exciting to watch God work! Step by step, He has provided for each phase of the project from totally unexpected sources and construction has proceeded with continuity.

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 helps meet need of water wells in Mexico!

Only our Creator God can, in a single act, solve similar problems separated by hundreds of miles.

The situation:

(1) Three vain attempts to hand-dig a well for UIM’s children’s camp in Oaxaca,

(2)Mexico; an airstrip land purchase deal in Durango that includes drilling a well for the current owners and

(3) A new village boarding school that lacks continual water supply.

After some research, UIM Aviation pilot, Wolf-gang Grotendiek,  discovered that with an investment equal to the cost of hiring someone to drill one well, UIM could purchase a portable well-drilling unit themselves. (See photo)

UIM Aviation Mexico Field Director, Don Nellis, began raising funds. In one month and with multiple sets of helping hands, the unit was purchased and brought to Durango, where its full potential awaits discovery.

Praise God for this technology to help these people and allowing us to be His hands!

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.