MAF provides vital aviation and radio communications services to indigenous churches and community development projects in Kalimantan, Indonesia.
Indonesia’s province of Kalimantan occupies the largest portion of the island of Borneo and shares its landmass with Malaysia. One of the world’s most isolated and remote areas, it remains largely undeveloped. The geographical and logistical barriers are forbidding. Dense rain forests, impenetrable mountains, arduous terrain, and the absence of roads leave villages isolated, limiting access to the Gospel and life-sustaining services such as health clinics and education beyond elementary school.
The Solution:
In 1969, MAF began to serve mission groups and the emerging indigenous churches of East Kalimantan. During its early days, the program served some western missionaries ministering through small Bible schools in Kalimantan’s interior. Those missionaries have since departed. MAF is the only western mission organization remaining in the area to serve village churches led by Kalimantan pastors, the fruit of earlier mission efforts.
MAF opened its Palangkaraya floatplane base, in Central Kalimantan, in the mid-1990s to serve SIL International missionaries as well as a medical clinic in the interior. This base also provides flight service to isolated villages along four major river systems.
Today, MAF serves from two bases: Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan and Tarakan in East Kalimantan. MAF aviation and communications services enable and maximise:
• Theological education by extension (TEE), church conferences, and outreach teams
• Pastor training in remote locations, student transport to Bible schools, and the placement of ministerial students in remote villages for internships
• Support for medical clinics in remote villages, as well as emergency medical evacuations
• Community development projects, surveys, and conservancy initiatives
• Delivery of materials for needed improvements to church buildings, hydroelectric systems, schools, local businesses, and homes
• Transport of goods, medicines, and school supplies.
MAF enables ministry groups to bring the Gospel and basic, life-sustaining services to this primitive and otherwise inaccessible region of Indonesia. The MAF team provides much-needed and appreciated flight services, and maximizes opportunities to minister in ways not available to other mission agencies. Aviation allows MAF to establish and develop relationships with a broad cross section of society. On any given day, MAF pilots might minister to the poorest of the poor with medical flights, then later transport officials at the highest level of local government.
Indonesia has been especially affected by the aviation gasoline (avgas) shortage and escalating prices. To address this, in early 2010 the MAF Kalimantan programme took delivery of a Kodiak aircraft that uses jet fuel. With its greater cargo capacity, the Kodiak will be able to deliver passengers and supplies with fewer flights.