62. David Holsten, MAF: What You Can Do With An Airplane

Join us for an illuminating conversation with David Holston, CEO of Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), as he shares his inspiring journey from a Colorado farm with dreams of piloting to leading a global mission organization. David’s story takes us through his experiences in Savannah, Georgia, and his dedication to serving others which ultimately led him to Moody Bible Institute and then to Indonesia. With over 17 years of experience in the field, David offers a unique perspective on MAF's mission to deliver aid and hope to the world's most isolated regions, showcasing how aviation serves as a lifeline in challenging times.

Discover the critical role MAF played during the COVID-19 pandemic, as David recounts the logistical hurdles of transporting vital supplies like test kits and vaccines to remote communities. The discussion extends to MAF's alignment with the teachings of Jesus, focusing on both spiritual and physical support. We also explore the transformative power of empowering local leaders within MAF, highlighting inspiring stories of individuals who have become key figures in their communities, embodying the shift towards a more diverse and inclusive mission aviation landscape.

In this episode, we also shine a light on the evolving dynamics of global missions, emphasizing the rising influence of countries like Brazil and Nigeria. Through programs like International Pathways, MAF is fostering a more inclusive missionary model, breaking down traditional barriers. From providing exceptional medical care in unexpected locations to overcoming technological challenges in isolated areas, David invites listeners to reflect on their potential contributions to a mission-driven life, making a global impact one flight at a time. With stories of resilience and innovation, this episode promises to inspire those passionate about aviation, medicine, and cross-cultural service.

Chapters

• 0:07 Mission Aviation Fellowship
• 14:31 Global Impact of MAF Operations
• 26:39 Empowering Local Leaders in Aviation
• 32:35 Expanding Diversity in Mission Aviation
• 44:27 Medical Care in Remote Locations
• 50:03 Technology Challenges in Remote Settings
• 54:50 Embracing Impactful Cross-Cultural Service

Transcript

Grantley: 0:07

welcome back to above the noise, and today my guest is david holston. He is the ceo of mission aviation fellowship, an organization which I've become associated with I've known for a number of years but serving with in a board capacity and they do phenomenal work around the world and I am so excited to have David here to share his story and share the work that he and Mission Aviation Fellowship is doing around the world. So welcome, david, to Above the Noise.

David Holsten: 0:41

Hey, thanks, Grant Lee. I've been looking forward to joining you for the conversation. Thanks for having me.

Grantley: 0:47

Well, thank you for joining us. Let's begin by just telling us about yourself. Introduce yourself to the audience, who you are, what you do, a little bit about your upbringing, your family. Are you married, do you have children? That kind of stuff. Let them get to know you.

David Holsten: 1:02

Yeah, great. Well, as you mentioned, I have the privilege of serving as the CEO of a.

David Holsten: 1:09

Christian mission organization or faith-based ministry that's based out of just outside of Boise, idaho, where our headquarters is located. That's where I am right now, and Mission Aviation Fellowship has been around for almost 80 years and we are a very unique ministry in that we use aircraft to reach some of the hardest to reach places around the world and our vision is to see isolated people changed by the love of Christ, and we do that through our mission of serving together to bring help, hope and healing through aviation. My journey to be a part of MAFs really goes all the way back to my childhood. I grew up on a farm in northeastern Colorado and from my earliest memories I wanted to be a pilot. I can't even remember when that dream began, but I would ride my bicycle around and later would drive a tractor for my dad, and I was always imagining that I was actually flying an airplane. That was sort of just my dream growing up.

David Holsten: 2:11

Then, when I was in eighth grade, my family moved to Savannah, georgia, which was a completely different part of the US. Both geographically, culturally, the racial makeup of people, it was all quite different. And so I went there at the start of my high school and found myself in an urban setting and was starting to get more involved in my church and my youth group, and so by the time I was getting ready to graduate from high school, I had this growing desire to still wanted to be involved in aviation, but I also had this desire to go into some sort of work where I could serve the Lord. And it turns out that you can do that in Mission Aviation Fellowship. You can bring together these two elements of ministry and aviation.

David Holsten: 3:01

So I went off to Moody Bible Institute, went to a five-year program that trained me to become a missionary pilot and mechanic, and along the way I was married to my wife, natalie, and we joined after graduating. I served for a couple of years as a flight instructor in that program and then we joined a mission aviation fellowship almost 25 years ago it was actually 2000. So in our 24th year with the organization, we were assigned to go to the country of Indonesia and honestly, at that time we were okay, where's Indonesia? We hardly knew where it was. This is the internet is just kind of starting to come around, as before Wikipedia, you couldn't just Google something and find out where it was.

Grantley: 3:46

Yeah, encyclopedia Britannica, look at that.

David Holsten: 3:49

That's right. Art of World Atlas. Exactly so that started a journey of learning about this place that we were going to serve. We went to Indonesia in 2001. At the time, we had our two youngest children. We had a three-year-old and about an 18-month-old who went with us, and we arrived in Indonesia, which is the world's largest Muslim country, about three days before 9-11 took place.

Grantley: 4:17

Wow.

David Holsten: 4:19

And so, if any of your listeners were around during that time, I can remember just all of the unsettledness and questions that surrounded everybody at that point. Were we getting ready to go into World War III? It actually reminds me a little bit of kind of some of the feelings I think a lot of people are experiencing right now with some of the disruption that's going on in the Middle East, and so we were just. It was a unique time to kind of start learning about a new culture and this place of ministry. We got through that, by God's grace, and then ended up serving for 17 years in Indonesia.

David Holsten: 4:53

We had two more kids along the way, so we have four children now. They're all young adults and, as of last week, we're empty nesters. Our youngest one just went off to college and then about six years ago, we came back to the US and just through a number of different events, I now find myself serving in this role here at. Maf Serves in about a dozen countries around the world, using airplanes, like I said, to reach these really remote places. We have about 600 employees who are serving globally and it's a really fascinating type of work to be a part of and I'm just, I'm very grateful to be a part of it.

Grantley: 5:31

Yes, it's a very interesting organization and the work that you do in those places that most people like you said, many people haven't heard about and the countries that they haven't heard about, and then the places you go, most people will never see. But you have a unique industry, a unique mission field and a unique tool and a unique industry right. The mission aviation industry is its own industry, a subset of the larger aviation industry. So it's all like three or four things all melded together to reach a specifically target audience.

David Holsten: 6:11

Yeah, that's right.

Grantley: 6:12

You're not flying into London or Belfast.

David Holsten: 6:16

No, the places we fly to you know first of all, we have airplanes that are sort of specially designed or chosen, I should say, to fly into the sort of places that we go to.

David Holsten: 6:28

So we need airplanes that can fly in and out of what we would call unimproved airstrips, places that are not asphalt or cement runways but they're dirt and grass and they get muddy. If there's been a lot of rain they're carved into the sides of mountains or down in a little valley beside a river. So very unique sort of places to fly into because there's no other way to get into these locations. Our pilots have to be trained to do that type of flying. If you were to take the average airline pilot and put them into one of our airplanes to go into one of these small airstrips, it would really be challenging until they'd had this unique training and experience that you need to do that. So, yeah, it's a very, a very specialized form of aviation and I like to tell people I mean I'm biased, but I think that it's the, I think it's one of the most special things that you can do with an airplane.

Grantley: 7:22

Cutting edge. So what are some of the things that Mission Aviation Fellowship does in these places? Obviously, you're flattened into unique places. Some of them may be the first time people have seen an airplane, and definitely the first time many of them have got close to an airplane, even if they've seen it in the sky. So what are some of the things that Mission Aviation Fellowship does that are also unique?

David Holsten: 7:46

So I think, really, one of the things that is particularly unique about us is we were purpose built from the beginning to really serve the transportation needs of multiple other organizations, and so our kind of the role that we play is a role of supporting others, of helping them to be successful in the work that they are doing. So that means that we're working with ministries, whether they are it could be an organization that is maybe relatively well-known around the world, like someone like a World Vision, or working alongside the Red Cross or the World Health Organization, doctors Without Borders, groups like that that are maybe internationally known NGOs to mission organizations like Wycliffe, bible Translators or Ethnos 360 or Compassion working with groups like that all the way down to local ministries that exist only in that particular country, for instance. So maybe we're working with the local church that exists in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or in Indonesia or in Mozambique, or we're working with the Department of Health in the country of Lesotho, or a government institution in a place like Haiti, and so one of the things that I most love about what we get to do is we get to be involved with people who are working across this whole spectrum of different services that are being provided. So it could be somebody who works in education and we're helping them get to these places that they're serving to maybe fly teachers in or the salary for those teachers or the food that those teachers need or the building supplies for a school. So we're not necessarily the education professionals, but we're helping those who are to get to the places where they need to go. On the medical side, almost every day that MAF is flying, we are conducting medical evacuation flights, so we're bringing somebody from a place in the interior parts of a country out to a city where there's maybe a more sophisticated medical facility where they can receive needed care or treatment. So we're doing that almost daily, and so we're not the doctors or the nurses or the medical professionals, but we work with those who are to help them get those people to where they need to go.

David Holsten: 10:14

Community development we're involved in a lot of that, just helping communities to get to a higher level of advancement, if you will, and that could just be flying food supplies that they need. It could be something really basic. I mean I would fly loads of noodles or flip-flops or school supplies. I remember once flying into a village where my cargo was a bank safe, and so this was like a 2,000 pound safe that I was flying into this village and there was a new bank and there had never been a bank in that, really in that whole region.

David Holsten: 10:55

This was in the interior part of Indonesia, and in many cultures around the world it's hard to build wealth, and when I say wealth I mean think of just minimal savings.

David Holsten: 11:07

I'm not talking about being particularly affluent, but just trying to set aside some money for the unexpected is oftentimes hard to do that, because in many cultures if you start to have a little bit of extra, it's very much expected that anybody else who's in need whether it's a neighbor or maybe a family member they can come knocking on the door and they have some access to that, and there's some good things about that. But then there's also some problematic things about that. So this bank just having the ability for people to start to place money on deposit to maybe build a little bit of wealth or reserves for the unexpected we needed to be the ones to fly that bank safe in and I love that. I just thought that was a really unique way to help a community. Or ballot boxes for an election, or a giant coil of cable for a suspension bridge that was going to go across a river. I mean, we fly those sorts of things in our aircraft.

Grantley: 12:00

Or chickens and pigs right.

David Holsten: 12:19

Chickens and pigs right flying in different parts of the world, and so that is a unique thing about MAF is we really kind of get to be involved in this whole realm of different ways that people are trying to help those who are living in isolation, and our hangers in different parts of the world are sort of this intersection of really fascinating work that's going on. I may fly a missionary from one of our hangers out to the place where they're serving, and then I'm bringing back a medical patient and there's an ambulance waiting to pick them up, and so it's just an incredibly diverse type of work to be involved in.

Grantley: 12:58

Tell us a little bit about how Mission Aviation Fellowship got involved in COVID relief how Mission Aviation Fellowship got involved in COVID relief.

David Holsten: 13:12

Yeah, so COVID was a very I mean like for many people incredibly challenging for us to kind of figure out what is this going to look like. And because we're in the transportation industry and because we're involved in aviation, that's a highly regulated industry and every place that we served we found there was a different sort of expectation or iteration of what the protocols needed to look like. So in some countries where we served, honestly, the COVID-19 was just another thing added to a long list of things that could kill people. So that sounds sort of crass, but that's the reality.

David Holsten: 13:47

In some parts of the world where we were flying there was active war or unrest or they've already dealt with things like Ebola or malaria or dengue fever or all the different things. It was just added to the list and so some places we served almost shrugged it off like, okay, it's another thing here. And so in some of those places there maybe wasn't as much that they were requiring us to do, whereas other locations they were requiring daily testing. Our pilots would have to get a test and show that to an official before they could fly. The airplane Passengers had to have special approvals and testing to be able to do that. Just a lot of protocols in some parts of the world.

Grantley: 14:31

Let's talk a little bit about the delivery of the actual, the core supply, exactly yeah.

David Holsten: 14:36

Yeah, so in some parts of the world, as rapid test kits were being developed, we were asked to deliver those to clinics that would maybe be interior.

David Holsten: 14:46

So we did quite a bit of that. We started to pick up COVID patients who were experiencing significant respiratory issues, and when that would happen, everybody they're in these full body suits to pick them up early on. When that was that way and we're flying them out on our aircraft, we would fly in oxygen to remote clinics that had no way of getting oxygen or to generate oxygen on site. So we'd fly in oxygen and other respiratory equipment that some places needed, equipment that some places needed. And then once vaccines were being developed, there were some locations that were able to kind of get those distributed. Now you have to realize I mean a lot of the places we served. They were sort of the last ones to receive some of these resources, but because we could fly the airplane and there's a cold chain that's needed in order to preserve vaccines, we fly vaccines all sorts of different types actually throughout our history. That was another way that we were involved in responding to that.

Grantley: 15:55

Okay, yeah, I mean at a critical time. Right, that probably wasn't on your strategic plan back in 2020, right, you wrote it in 2019. Exactly, yeah, and in fact, an you were older 2019.

David Holsten: 16:05

Yeah, and in fact, an interesting thing that a lot of people didn't even think of just washing, just sanitation, right? So washing your hands Remember how early on I mean there was all these instructions of this is how you wash your hands and you need to use a lot of soap and all that. Well, we fly into places that struggle to even have soap. Well, we fly into places that struggle to even have soap, and so we had staff members who were going around to all the stores in town and trying to buy up as much soap as we could so that we could get that interior to some of the communities. So, yeah, I mean, we fly in places that have very rudimentary facilities, minimal supplies and, in some places, a minimal understanding of what to do, because they haven't had the access to just the basic sort of instruction of what that looks like, and so in some cases, our involvement during COVID was very basic of just getting soap to somewhere and delivering information about how people could start to hopefully combat that.

Grantley: 17:10

So that's interesting. So, as you think about all this, maf is doing a whole bunch of stuff, and there's the telecom stuff as well, with setting up communications, but the original mission of MAF is to reach people in isolated places with the gospel. So how do you see God and the gospel and all of these things that we just talked about?

David Holsten: 17:37

Yeah, absolutely. There's a passage I think it's maybe Luke in Luke 9, where it describes Jesus and his ministry. It talks about him going through the country and he's teaching and he's preaching and he's healing people's diseases. We also know we can read in other parts of the Gospels where he's feeding people. He is touching people you think about the woman who is suffering from bleeding for years and he touches her, reaching out to the marginalized person in society. But he's also speaking very boldly against the religious leaders who had created all of this legalism. And he's coming to that and he's describing that I've come, it's for freedom that I've come, to set you free. No longer let yourselves be burdened by this yoke of slavery, the sense of burden that was being placed on people. So I love this picture of Jesus's ministry where he is bringing both freedom and freedom to the world, a physical and a spiritual impact. Right, he's touching people's bodies. He is providing something they need which is as basic as the food that they're eating, sometimes something as simple as a conversation with an outcast of society, which is a beautiful picture of what he comes to do. And he's bringing the truth of the gospel, which is spiritually helping to set people free. And so we love to talk in MAF about being a part of both a spiritual and a physical impact in the people's lives that we serve.

David Holsten: 19:19

And so, way back at the beginning, the roots of our organization, as you mentioned, maf was really started by this group of pilots and mechanics that came out of World War II. They'd seen airplanes that were used as tools of destruction and they thought what could we do for aircraft to be tools of life, really to bring life-saving health? And in the 40s and 50s there was this effort of missionaries to reach some of the hardest-to-reach parts of the world and they couldn't get in there without airplanes. And so MAF was formed initially to really come alongside of those individuals and to help them get to the places where they were going. And those missionaries were bringing this message that was impacting people spiritually and physically. If you've been to remote parts of the world and you see how a missionary serves, they're learning the culture, they're learning the language, they're teaching biblical truth, but inevitably there's a long line of people outside their door getting Band-Aids and medicine and the missionary may be helping them to think, hey, this is probably the more sanitary way we can deal with this or this is how you could grow your garden in this way, maybe, or this is how you could grow your garden in this way, maybe. And so they're very much involved in this more holistic approach that involves a physical and a spiritual impact, and so we really embrace that in MAF.

David Holsten: 20:35

We want to be working with people who are bringing that physical and spiritual impact to people's lives, because that's what they need.

David Holsten: 20:44

If you just focus on one of them to the exclusion of the other, you have problems. Right, if you come in and, as a Bible teacher or an evangelist, if all that you're doing is teaching the truth of the gospel and we love the truth of the gospel, that is life. But if they're ignoring somebody who's maybe starving or somebody who is sick, it's hard for that message, that spiritual message, to get traction in people's hearts, because they're not seeing that you're attending to the needs, the physical needs that are there. And on the other side of that, if you come in and all you're doing is touching people's physical needs but you're not giving them a message that gives them eternal hope beyond this life, that's problematic as well. So we don't pit those things against each other. We instead say look, they're very integral. We want to do both of those, because Jesus did both of them he was involved in his earthly ministry was involved in both of those areas.

David Holsten: 21:44

So we want our staff serving in different parts of the world to be able to articulate the truth of the gospel to others right alongside of helping their neighbor with the physical needs that they have. And I can remember driving our neighbor literally to the hospital so she could have a baby. There was nobody who could do that for her, or we had different employees who would help us because that was very much expected in our culture and we were helping to feed their families because that was something that they needed. But we're also wanting to speak the truth that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and nobody goes to heaven except through him, and so that's the truth of the gospel. So we're about that in MAF. We want to bring both physical healing and addressing those physical needs that people have, and then the spiritual truth of the gospel to people wherever we're serving.

Grantley: 22:39

That's a great, great explanation. I appreciate that. Another thing that MAF is doing is this podcast is about faith, race and reconciliation, and in many of the places you go, there's two parts to this question, but we're going to deal with this first part first and then come to the second part, about just how you get to change the lives of local people right, not just necessarily the people you fly in or the doctors and stuff, but you get to employ people.

Grantley: 23:11

You have a lot of local staff and in many ways, sometimes I'm assuming the jobs that you give them are, in those communities or cultures, considered pretty good jobs is considered pretty good jobs. So how do you see that impact on the communities where you serve, changing the lives of the people who may come to work for you, doing something as simple as mopping the hiring floor.

David Holsten: 23:38

Yeah, no, that's a great question. So we are blessed to have just incredible people who work with us. As I mentioned at the beginning, we have about 600 different employees and unfortunately, because we serve all around the world in different places, we've never been able to put all 600 in the same room at one time. If we did, it would be awesome because it would be such a diverse group of people from Southeast Asia to Central Asia, to Africa, latin America, north Americans. I mean it would just be really diverse, multiple cultures and languages, backgrounds, and so that's a unique thing about MAF is, if you were to come to our headquarters here in Idaho, just because of where we're located, it can kind of look pretty homogenous. Just where we're located here, most of the crowd looks like me, but then if we go to Africa, it could look very different. And Indonesia or wherever.

David Holsten: 24:29

The work of MAF is only possible through this collective effort of everybody serving together. We have that phrase in our mission statement of serving together, and we have a number of employees who are from the countries where we serve, number of employees who are from the countries where we serve, and so you and I had a chance a few months ago to be a part of our board meeting in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kinshasa is a challenging place to live probably 18, 20 million people living in very crowded conditions and we have Congolese nationals who are working for us, some of whom have worked with us for decades, and we could not do the work that we do without their help, and so some of them come in at entry-level jobs. They maybe have been hired Occasionally. They come with very minimal education and we're able to give them a job and they can work their way up through increasing levels of responsibility and capability, which, for us, it may be helping to prepare an airplane for an inspection, where they're kind of removing seats or the floor, opening up different inspection panels. Maybe it is helping to clean a hangar or fuel an airplane or help get passengers loaded onto an airplane Really important jobs that you need somebody to be able to do for everything to work and then, over time, because of their diligence in doing that sort of job, we've be able to do for everything to work and then, over time, because of their diligence in doing that sort of job, we've been able to equip them. Some of them have gone on to get licenses as aircraft mechanics and are actually leading the inspection. Some of them go on to become experienced enough that they start to manage the functions of our office. They're going to the immigration officials, they're working with high-ranking government officials and are helping to procure permissions for us to fly in the places that we fly. They're doing flight scheduling for us Again, very critical roles. That you take away any of those roles and our work just grinds to a halt and they become very respected members of their communities. They're working for an organization that's respected and appreciated.

David Holsten: 26:53

Many of them are kind of influencers in their own right in their own communities or churches and a lot of them will refer back to sort of their career at MAF as being pretty impactful and they're sort of growing their perspective of the greater world and how it functions, how God has called us to serve others, and they are co-laborers with us. Occasionally we're able to bring some of those employees to our headquarters here and take even a deeper level of training with them, and that's awesome. I think of this couple for instance.

David Holsten: 27:24

We have a husband and wife who are both Mozambican, who are part of our Mozambique team. He's our director of safety and quality. She's our lead finance person there, and they met through their about our work in other parts of the world, like Indonesia or in Haiti, and so their view of MAF's ministry and just the world has really grown to encompass all these other places. And just talking to them, what do you think about it? We love this. We think it's such an amazing thing to be a part of. So it's a great privilege of ours to be able to work with these men and women who are from very different backgrounds than what I grew up in, who look different than I do, who really. I mean we oftentimes use the language as brothers and sisters and we're able to serve together. Yes, it is.

Grantley: 28:33

And I'm sure in those communities that's a dynamic change, probably generational change, right, because their children get benefit from that and maybe even get to go to school college from that and maybe even get to go to school, college.

David Holsten: 28:53

We have a number of different employees who you know because of their connection with an organization that is based out of North America, whose their children have actually come to the States, gone to college here, you know, in some cases then gone back to their own countries and and yes, or they've gone to school there in whatever country they're a part of.

David Holsten: 29:09

So we try to compensate them in a way that allows them to be in a they're like comfortably middle-class in their culture. That's kind of how we do that, because you have to be careful that you don't sort of skew the economy in a weird way as you come in, and so it's yeah, it's just a very special thing that we get to be a part of, and I'm very thankful for all of our MAF employees who are from other parts of the world.

Grantley: 29:42

Yeah, I mean, and our experience in Congo was just amazing. Yeah, I mean, and our experience in Congo was just amazing. So many people doing all of those things you talked about, from helping clean the hangar, preparing the plans, doing accounting, doing finance, doing booking flights, just a whole bunch going to customs, working with the immigration people, just a whole bunch of different things and even starting a school to help educate kids. So lots of opportunities. So the other part of this conversation, then, was you talk about the headquarters there.

Grantley: 30:19

It may seem like it's a little bit homogeneous because of where you are, but one of the things that MAF is working on. So traditional missionary movement around the world has been North American and European based. Right, it was that sending culture we're going to send the people to the world, and because of that, most of the missionaries were white or North American, european, canadian going out there, and then most of the local people were the people of their colors that work in those places. But missions is changing and MAF has realized that there is a lot of human capacity and capability in some of these places. A lot of human capacity and capability in some of these places.

David Holsten: 31:07

Absolutely.

Grantley: 31:07

Some local people are just as capable to become pilots and pilot mechanics and mission leaders, national leaders, and you started this program to try to consolidate some of that capability. But yet there's some challenges in trying to try to roll it out, because it's still North American base and where you're headquartered and if you're going to put people to flight planes, they still got to meet the same requirements. They got to be good pilots, they got to be good mechanics, because they just don't go to one of those remote runways and call in a pilot and he comes showing up in his pickup like he's here with everything loaded in the back of the pickup. Let me fix you. So you're trying to bring all of this together and give people opportunities, which is very commendable, but it's presented some challenges.

David Holsten: 32:02

It does and I'm grateful you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast you're one of our board members. No-transcript folks were coming out of the US and now that is shifting further to North America is still heavily involved. But there's other countries that are emerging as sending countries. We refer to them as the global South. They're in the Southern hemisphere, places like South Korea, brazil, nigeria. They are also sending people to other parts of the world and so, yes, we're in this place where a lot of times, as we would go to work in a country, it could be a place like Mexico or Mozambique or Indonesia. Most of the employees who we were working with, who are from those countries countries had no intent of going anywhere else outside the country. They needed a job there and they stayed in their own home and that was really the picture of what it could look like.

David Holsten: 33:38

But in recent decades, the churches in those parts of the world are feeling a burden to go. Well, we believe we need to respond to Jesus's call to make disciples all around the world, and so you now have a Mexican who is saying I'm willing to go to another part of the world and be a missionary there, or a Nigerian who's saying I'll go to Indonesia to be a missionary, which is a fascinating thing. What we're trying to do we've created this program, we call it International Pathways, and what we're trying to do is help create a pathway for somebody to have access to the financial resources as well as the training that would equip them to go into this very technical, demanding industry, where most of the subject matter experts are still sort of North American based, and that's just a reality. And so you have to think about visas, you have to think about training, you have to prepare them to be cross-cultural, just like somebody from North America needs to go through that training. Aviation is an expensive industry to be able to obtain the need of training, so we're trying to marshal the financial resources to help them do that. But just a simple phrase that we've sort of used is from anywhere to anywhere, right, we want people who could be potentially from any country have the ability to serve in any other country, and we're starting to see that.

David Holsten: 35:05

So right now, this past, about a month ago, we just received a couple who have joined MAF. They are Brazilian and he's a pilot, his wife's a doctor. They received most of that training in Brazil and then they had their green cards. They lived in the US and were actually working in the US, and they have now joined MAF and they are assigned to serve in Mozambique. Mozambique speaks Portuguese, the same as Brazil. They have bilateral agreements so that his wife is able to practice medicine when they go to Mozambique he's eager to fly an airplane there and they are raising support to do that in the US and they also have Brazilian support base.

David Holsten: 35:51

This is the future of missions there will still be North Americans and we are praise God, we really want to have this picture of we're part of the body of Christ right, so we will value people wherever they're coming from and value the unique role that they bring.

David Holsten: 36:10

But that Brazilian couple, I mean it's complex because we have to think, okay, how are they able to raise support if they're not US citizens? In a place like the US, there's special visas. You need to have an understanding of North American culture because of our headquarters being here. You're looking at training that is in many ways, sort of comes out of a North American mindset, but now you're going to be flying as somebody from Brazil on the continent of Africa and so there's learning that culture and what's normal there and it's complex, but we believe we have to lean into that and we have to embrace that and we have to work hard to think through some of those dynamics, because the North American talent base is not enough and, besides, if it's just North Americans going, it's also is not the picture of the whole body of Christ.

Grantley: 37:03

So we want people.

David Holsten: 37:04

We're just. It's a richer experience. It's when you have more diversity in that way and it's just a more complete picture of what the body of Christ looks like, and that's where we think we need to be heading.

Grantley: 37:17

Yeah and it's not either. Or it's not North Americans and Europeans or people from other countries, it's both.

David Holsten: 37:26

Absolutely, because we just each of us, bring unique strengths from the background that we come from the childhood, the culture, all of the different things that shape us as we go into adulthood. We bring unique things to the table because of that, and so we want to try to leverage that in a more complete way, because it raises the tide for everybody.

Grantley: 37:48

I really like that program. I really like how that's being developed and obviously if it was easy everybody would be doing it. That's right.

David Holsten: 37:57

If it was easier, it would have been done already.

Grantley: 38:00

But then on the other side, there's the challenge when these people go to places. Now they've been to places where people have culturally expected missionaries to look a certain way or to come from a certain way, and now other people are coming in. So it's not just the transition that's happening here and allowing other people to participate in the missionary movement, there's also changes that's going to be going on the other side, the receiving end, to say this person is a missionary too. This person is capable of doing this too. This person deserves all the other things that we're allowed with a missionary. So this is a bicultural thing. The thing that we're doing is creating a new model, but it's going to be pushing change from the back end saying, yeah, this Brazilian pilot is a missionary. We're not accustomed to seeing a Brazilian pilot as a missionary, but here's what it is.

Grantley: 39:03

And there may even be some governments in some places who may say are you guys for real, is this really true or are you trying to do something else behind the scenes? Because in some places, governments are suspicious of the work that MAF is trying to do at first, until they realize that it's truly genuine, it's truly there to help. For whatever reason they have that suspicion. Historically, maf has been really good at helping overcome those suspicions and build trust in places that are again not on the beaten path.

David Holsten: 39:41

Yeah, you're exactly right. There may be a certain mindset that is becoming more commonplace in North America in terms of accepting people when certain roles or professions who bring there's a diversity there. That is, when you travel around the US, it's a pretty diverse country in terms of what it looks like, all the people who have immigrated here, and it's just you become more accustomed to seeing that. There were many times when I've been in other parts of the world where we serve, where I am the only white person that I can see anywhere, and so, yes, there are certain assumptions that are attached to like okay, well, maybe it's just yeah, the missionaries are just the white people here.

David Holsten: 40:31

Now, thankfully, even outside of MAF, there has been in recent decades, you see, that same more diverse look starting to take place, even in missions, even outside of the aviation realm. I mean, we've flown Bible translators who are Indonesian or African. We've flown doctors, certainly, who are Indonesian or African or Haitian or from Central Asia. So I think that, as we're seeing it slowly progress, but it tends to be behind, kind of where you know we are here and I think it's. I mean, I'm excited, I think it's a beautiful thing for somebody to be able to see, to be in an African, a village in Africa, and we have a pilot in pilot in Kinshasa who flies out of Kinshasa, who's Nigerian and his wife is Congolese. And for them to see this fellow African get out of the airplane and to serve them and love on them and do everything that we want our pilots to be able to do, is an amazing thing for them to be able to witness and to go oh man, I can do this. And we say, yes, you absolutely can.

Grantley: 41:44

It's what I was thinking right, all of those kids and people who see that, oh, I can do that too. I never thought about it, but now I can do that. So you're sort of beginning to create what I think eventually become a pipeline of people who are saying I want to give a hand at flying one of those airplanes. I think God's calling me to this Aviation is not necessarily going commercial. I can serve God and you can serve God being a commercial pilot too we're not saying that or military pilot, but I can serve in a mission's capacity and still fulfill my dream to fly, or still fulfill my dream to be a mechanic, because all aviation mechanics don't want to fly, they just want to fix stuff. They like to fix stuff. There's a lot of back stuff that goes on in. Like you said, to fly an aircraft that doesn't include flying.

David Holsten: 42:36

Absolutely Lots of behind-the-scenes work.

Grantley: 42:39

Or maybe somebody wants to become a fuel expert because we know there's a whole industry now looking at new aviation fuels and more energy efficient and that may be a whole new field. If somebody says, oh yeah, I want to become an engineer and help develop the next fuel to help you guys save fuel. Or here in Washington there's two companies that are trying to develop electric aircraft, so you can see this whole thing beginning to spread its fingers in a whole bunch of different places. Now that people look at themselves and say I'd like to have a try at that, because I saw somebody who looks like me who is actually doing it.

David Holsten: 43:19

Yeah, absolutely that's our prayer, and I think that, by God's grace, we start to sow the seeds of imagination right, that somebody is starting to imagine themselves doing something, because a lot of places we serve, our airplane is one of the only links to sort of the rest of the world for them, is one of the only links to sort of the rest of the world for them, and so without it, there may be multiple generations of a family that just they never really come to understand the world that lies outside of that village or outside of that area, and some of them are very content to be there and great, but there's others who are imagining what else could be, and so sometimes the airplane is the means that they can get to that other place, and it's the conversations with our staff who are there that can help them think maybe beyond the confines of what they've always imagined. And so I think, yeah, it's exciting to think about the future and what our organization could look like 20, 30 years from now.

Grantley: 44:22

Yeah, I want to tell this story because I thought this was really fascinating. We were in Kinshasa and we went to the remote hospital in Guam right, I think it was 200 miles out of the city of Kinshasa. But there was this young man there who got into this really bad motorcycle accident in Kinshasa. I don't know if you remember him in the hospital.

David Holsten: 44:49

Oh, I'll never forget him. Jeremy's his name.

Grantley: 44:51

Yeah, and the thing that I thought was fascinating was his accident happened in Kinshasa and I think that I even thought he was dead at some point, but he wasn't. Yes, His legs were messed up, he had some serious injuries, but the fascinating thing to me was that the solution they taught the best place for him to get treatment and to recover was not in this major international city that we assume have all the capabilities and everything to deal with a person that critically injured. They came to the conclusion that flying him to the mission hospital in Vanga was his best means of recovery. And we got to see him there and we got to talk to him and he was so grateful for his recovery and the help he got. He was so grateful to MAF for flying him and for the mission hospital there.

Grantley: 45:48

And to me that was like a turnaround, because in the United States, in North America, we would say you take him to the Seattle General or Boise or Salt Lake or Atlanta General or New York Sinai, right. But here the solution was 200 miles away in a remote village I'm talking about remote village in a remote hospital, because that's where the best care was. And I think the other thing was we didn't get to see this, but I saw it in the magazine when he actually got to leave the hospital and the MAF plan also took him back to the city.

David Holsten: 46:27

It completely upends some of your assumptions of how these things work. And one of the reasons that they determined he would be better treated in that small hospital interior was because he had more family members out there who could also help care for his needs. And in the US, part of the services you get when you go to a hospital I mean they bring you your dinner and you can even choose from a menu. What do you want to have? Well, that's not how it works. In a lot of places in the developing world, it's your family cooks the food and they bring it to have. Well, that's not how it works. In a lot of places in the developing world, it's your family cooks the food and they bring it to you. And so you could potentially go to a large hospital, a place like Kinshasa, but not have anybody there who can feed you.

David Holsten: 47:10

And these are things that people just they don't think about oftentimes when you imagine what's the rest of the world like? But that's the world that we serve in at MAF. And so, yes, you have this strange reality. We're going to fly this young man from a city of 15 plus million people to this small village because he'll actually get better treatment there and remember he prayed for us. It was an amazing moment. He wanted to pray this prayer of blessing over us out of gratitude, and he has all these scars and wounds on him still, but he had a huge smile and that just left an impact on me. I don't think I'll ever forget that moment.

Grantley: 47:49

Yeah, I mean it was powerful. And just to see how it all came together and most North Americans would walk into this hospital and say there's no way that this would be the best choice for him.

David Holsten: 48:00

It's pretty rough. It's a pretty rough place.

Grantley: 48:03

Where it is you wouldn't expect it to be, because flying over, I mean, this is remote, remote, remote, but it was powerful to see how God works. Reminds me of one of my friends who was a missionary, who had this message called God's upside down theology the things that we sometimes think are the best way is not necessarily the way that God works.

Grantley: 48:28

That's right, sometimes he works where we think that would be down, that is not the way to go. But he says, yeah, that's the way it's supposed to go. Right, right, not in the big city with 30 million people. Go out to the village and that's where you'll find the answer that you need. But it helps us to not get complacent and to think that we always have all the answers and to think we know what's always best, because sometimes what's best is what is best in that community, for those people in that culture, because they know how it works.

David Holsten: 49:03

That's right, yeah, To have a contextualized understanding of the right solutions. You absolutely cannot show up and say the template has to be based out of a European context or a North American context or a Southeast Asian context. Again, there's good things that can come from that, but in other ways it's going to fall completely flat. It's dead on the realities that they have to be a learner in that environment and to really be co-laborers with them and to think okay, am I even asking you for your perspective? Am I seeking your input in the wisdom that you have to bring to this and vice versa, and are we able to have a conversation and interaction that helps us arrive at a solution that's going to play well in that environment?

Grantley: 50:03

the. I want to talk a little bit about technology, just just for two minutes. One of the things that I found fascinating about maf also was that you have this. Some places you go you have to create your own technology, like set up up internet so people can communicate with each other. You use a lot of technology in the offices but I remember where we went and we saw you had to set up the antennas to create internet service, to get internet service to people to do the work. Let's talk a little bit about that part of it.

David Holsten: 50:52

Let's talk about that part of it. Sort of things require various software systems. Some of them are cloud-based, so then you need internet, so then you need power to run it. I mean, all of these things are required. So we have a great team of IT professionals who work with us and they help us to. I mean, in some places you're setting up, you're trying to get internet connections. It may be through a local service provider, but sometimes you're having to use a VSAT system or something like Starlink, and then you need to get that signal to the places where it needs to go, and so that could be typically that's through wireless connections. You have a tower that's setting up, that's relaying that signal somewhere, but then you're living in places that have really intermittent electricity, and so we're putting in solar systems and batteries and the backups to allow that, so that if the power drops off which in some places is a daily occurrence and is off for hours your internet is not interrupted.

David Holsten: 51:56

Your ability to work in these cloud-based software systems can continue on, and so we have a whole team that is involved in just getting that installed and maintaining it, and it's amazingly complex. You don't just install it and then expect that it's going to just function perfectly for the next 10 years. I mean, our team is they're having to roll out. They're rolling out software updates, they're doing firmware updates. Something goes offline and they've got to figure out okay, how can we set this up? They're doing backups, info security, that surrounds all of that, and we have a team that basically has 24-hour coverage.

David Holsten: 52:38

So we even have developed an IT help desk where if one of our staff members in Africa, for instance, has an issue, they can send in a ticket to our IT help desk.

David Holsten: 52:51

And maybe our team here in Idaho has already gone home for the day, but we have a specialist who's in Europe or in Indonesia who receives the ticket and they can address it while North America's asleep. And then North America wakes up and they take over the issue while Indonesia goes to sleep, and so our team has kind of worked out a whole way of helping that to function. And that team is staffed by. I mean, we've got Indonesian staff members, we have Congolese staff members, we have Dutch staff members. It's a very diverse group of folks who are all working together as IT professionals to make it work. So it's pretty cool, and if it doesn't work, you can have some. We'll have people in the office who can't do their job at all if we don't have internet and they're trying to move forward and all of a sudden having to write things down on paper, and so it's interesting trying to use 21st century technology solutions in parts of the world that are still struggling to just have decent electricity.

Grantley: 53:54

So, as we turn the corner to wrap up our conversation, what advice or recommendations would you have for people who listen to this and now they're probably being Googled and MAF and looking at some of the pictures and videos and they say that's something I'm interested in, maybe becoming a pilot or aircraft mechanic or, like we said, a teacher or telecom person or whatever. What advice would you have for them as they begin to think about this and think about could I fit within this specific context of ministry, this specific context of service?

David Holsten: 54:31

Yeah Well, just a few things as I reflect on that. I think it's sort of a philosophical level. Before you even get into, do I have maybe the aptitude or the experience, all the different things that are maybe needed at a technical level. I think it's important for us to kind of imagine ourselves at the end of our lives and, looking back, you try to imagine yourself reflecting on the life that you've lived and what do you want to be able to say about it? What are the things that you want to be able to look back on and go? I don't want to have regret in those particular areas, because I think when my wife and I were considering this, that was something that we would kind of have some conversations about. We just thought this is going to radically impact our lives as we leave our families and we go to a different part of the world. But we both shared this desire to do it and we just said if we don't do this, I think we're going to look back on it and regret it.

David Holsten: 55:35

We're going to wish that we did it and now I can say, 25 years later, I mean, there's mistakes that we've made, there's things that we wish we could do differently, but, big picture, we would do this again. We don't have regret for doing this, and so I think that's a good thing. To kind of start with is to go okay, what sort of life do I want to live? What sort of impact do I want to have? And because you're going to have to say no to some things in order to be able to say yes to this type of life, and you need to wrestle with that. It's not necessarily surrounded by prestige and affluence, and you're going to go to some hard places, and then there's going to be people who, just you, will very much be the minority in some locations, and that comes with different challenges and everything. And so, wrestling with that and working with that, and I think then going, what am I passionate about? What is something that I love doing? And if it's aviation and if it's serving Jesus, well, I think MAF could be a great place to consider what that looks like, and they can go to our website and learn about it and get in touch with one of our recruiters who could talk to them and that's all possible to kind of click on various links on our website to figure out how to do that.

David Holsten: 56:49

But in and outside of aviation if it's medicine or education or community development or literacy I mean all of these different things the missions world has all sorts of opportunities. Engineers I've met missionaries who are engineers, very professionally trained, who've said I want to help design and develop infrastructure in different parts of the world to help the people there, and so there's so many different things you can do and different organizations that are serving in that way you need to wrestle with. Am I willing to do it? Am I willing to go now to a different part of the world and become a student of that different culture and people and to enter into it with a learning posture, on to the good things that God has grown within me and that I can offer there, but also seeking to learn from them and grow from their world? So I think those are just kind of big picture, some things that I think are good to wrestle with.

David Holsten: 57:49

But if there's an interest in serving the Lord in a cross-cultural context in the realm of aviation I mean again, I'm biased I think MAF is a great place to look at. Maforg is our website. You can go to it. We have pictures and stories and videos and you can look at and click on links about careers with us and you can get in touch with somebody who can sort of help you navigate. What does that look like from a training standpoint to joining us and what does that entail and like?

David Holsten: 58:21

I said, as an aviation professional, I'm just grateful to have done it. It's a very unique type of work, but it's a really special way to get to use an airplane.

Grantley: 58:32

Yeah, and I think that's true. The organization is MAForg Mission Aviation Fellowship. There's a whole bunch of information there that you can get information on and you can reach out to people and they'll reach back out to you. Well, thanks for your time, david. I really appreciate it. Thanks for coming on Above the Noise and sharing Mission Aviation Fellowship and the exciting work that you're doing around the world and cutting edge things in many places where cutting-edge is not even the norm, but the cutting-edge allows you to do things and reach people that you ordinarily would not have reached in a lot more efficient ways. And thank you for your service and thank you to all the people at Mission Aviation Fellowship who put their lives on hold here to go around the world and help other people hear the gospel, get medical help, learn all the things that you do in these places. Thank you very much.

David Holsten: 59:34

Well, thanks again for the invite and providing the opportunity for us to talk about it and hopefully build some awareness out there of a unique type of work and ministry. And next time let's have you come out here to when you're out here in Idaho. We'll have you on our podcast that we do, so that'd be kind of fun.

Grantley: 59:52

Yeah, I appreciate that. I look forward to it.