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The Prophets The Stranger The Lamb |
Is it a long walk from the parking lot into the shopping mall? How long does your walk take? Imagine that between the mall and your car was dense jungle with a river, slippery and muddy trails, and steep cliffs alongside the path. Wouldn't it take a bit longer? Now imagine walking to the shopping mall from your house. Have you ever done that? Try walking there without using the roads and you will begin to see why we use aircraft to transport our missionaries! Just the other day I decided to walk home from the airport. It's only about sixteen kilometers by the roads I followed. Driving home in the van takes only about fifteen minutes. Walking at a moderate pace along the paved "highway" took me only two and a half hours. In the airplane it only takes me about three minutes to cover the same distance point to point. It's only five miles in an airplane or about 9 kilometers. Most of our missionaries live about seventy to one hundred and forty miles from where their food and mail comes from. Very few of those locations have "roads" along which they might walk to get to and from their homes with food and supplies. So, enter the airstrip: Carve a place out of a mountain side and/or dig out trees and fill in the holes. Then you can have your food and mail brought to you regularly with ease. And you can fly away from the fray for a weekend with only 35 minutes to an hour in an airplane rather than a week or two on foot! Aircraft are tremendous tools in speeding the spread of the gospel among the
tribes! Minutes in aircraft save hours and days on the ground!
Maprik - Abelam Tribe -- From Wewak to Maprik by road is only 70 miles. Half of it has asphalt and the other 35 miles is a gravel road. Though the asphalt is less than five years old there are no less than three places where half of the road has fallen down the mountain side. If you are alert you will see the marker posts in plenty of time to stop and let the oncoming traffic go through first. There are only two or three places where you have to ford rivers on that half. The other half has seven river fords. Most are not too bad. If it hasn't rained recently the water shouldn't be deeper than one or two feet. Of course if it has rained shortly before you arrived, you might have to wait an hour or a day before you can cross the river. If you are on a motorbike it would be best to go back where you came from. A 4x4 pickup truck should get through three feet of water without much difficulty. If the water is four feet deep, don't try it unless you have an experienced driver, a heavily loaded flatbed truck, and a stable load. Better yet, forget driving three to six hours, go back, get in the airplane and fly for twenty minutes. There! That's the easiest one! Iteri tribe - One long bone-jarring day by truck to Pagwi, at least one sun-scorched long day by boat to Nakwi, then a two hour hike. Cessna 206 airplane - 65 minutes delivered to the doorstep! Malaumanda tribe - One long bone-jarring day by truck to Pagwi, six or eight hours by boat to Bisorio, then three to five days hiking through rugged mountainous terrain covered with jungle and swimming through swamps. Nearly an impossible hike for missionary women and children. Cessna 206 Airplane: 45 minutes.
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Multiple languagues
