December 21, 2021 The Giving Season, Part III - AIM Air

The Liberty Gazette

December 21, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: There are signs in yards around town proclaiming that Jesus is the reason. Indeed, Christmas isn’t about trees, Santa Claus, and reindeer. If we are going to celebrate the birth of Christ, supporting people and organizations who are committed to doing his work deserve our attention. We can make a difference. 

As we journey further along in the Giving Season, we aim to create awareness and present opportunities for your heart to change lives around the world. This week, we highlight the Christian mission organization, AIM Air. AIM stands for Africa Inland Missions.

AIM Air has two bases in Africa. The main base is at Wilson Airport in Nairobi, Kenya. The other is a remote base in Arua, a large town in northwest Uganda bordering South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This base serves the missionaries who work “beyond the end of the road.” 

Donations to AIM Air become a lifeline for missionaries serving people in remote places. They provide critical support by air, and that keeps missionaries safer and serving longer in Africa in the most isolated and vulnerable places. Sometimes missionaries or the people they serve need immediate care. There have been scares with poisonous snakes, and there have been civil wars. Through these, and all kinds of emergencies in between, it has just taken one phone call to AIM Air to begin evacuation. 

Because of the kinds of aircraft they fly, often generically referred to as “bush planes,” AIM Air pilots can land just about anywhere, load up, and take off, getting people to safety. 

They also bring supplies to those on the front lines. Items such as mail, food, audio bibles and literacy materials, car parts and building supplies have made their way to the most remote places on AIM Air’s planes. 

I flew with AIM Air a couple of times years ago. A Cessna 206 and a Caravan. We flew out of Nairobi and landed in South Sudan and Congo, ever mindful of guerrillas hiding in the trees. The kind that carry guns.

Mike: In 1982, the flight instructor who worked with me for my commercial pilot certificate was an AIM Air pilot. In 1985, this pilot who trained me to do canyon turns flew four hostages out of hostile territory after being released by Sudanese rebels that had held them captive for over a year. They sometimes are called upon to do these things. 

AIM Air invites us all to join their “Half Ton Team”. By sending $50 a month, they can fly an extra 1,100 pounds of goods or people. There’s a special joy this brings to givers. For me, it’s one of anticipation for the future, because while I may not see the impact of what one flight with one little box on board may mean this side of eternity, on the other side… I can just imagine. If you’ve ever dreamed of launching a flight without being a pilot, supporting AIM Air will allow you to do that. 

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

December 14, 2021 The Giving Season, Part II - Samaritan's Purse

The Liberty Gazette

December 14, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Here we are, in the Giving Season. This month, we aim to create awareness and present opportunities for you to change lives around the world. This week, we highlight the Christian humanitarian organization, Samaritan’s Purse.

Do you remember the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:30-37? After sharing this story, Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.” The story gives a clear picture of God’s desire for us to help those in desperate need, wherever we find them. That is the mission of Samaritan's Purse.

For over 50 years, Samaritan’s Purse has done their utmost to follow Christ’s command by going to the aid of the world’s poor, sick, and suffering. The organization has reached hurting people in countries around the world with food, medicine, and other assistance, and much of the work is accomplished by airplane.

The Samaritan’s Purse DC-8 allows them to respond to global disasters at a moment’s notice. Since it first deployed in April of 2016, the DC-8 has carried more than 5.6 million pounds of cargo on 147 missions around the world.

You may already be familiar with Samaritan’s Purse because of their incredibly generous Shoebox program through Operation Christmas Child, or because you know of Franklin Graham, son of the late Rev. Billy Graham. But Samaritan’s Purse was actually started by someone else.

 After visiting suffering children on the Korean island of Koje-do, Bob Pierce wrote in his Bible, “Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God.” This impassioned prayer is what guided him as he founded Samaritan’s Purse in 1970.

Then Pierce came across some courageous women who were living among lepers and orphans in China, sacrificing everything to share Christ’s love. That’s when he received a vision for ministry and dedicated himself to finding and supporting Christians who were caring for the poor and suffering in the distant corners of the world.

In the summer of 1973, Pierce met Franklin Graham, who was then an adventurous young student with a growing heart for world missions. They spent a lot of time together, and in 1975, Graham accompanied Pierce to some of the world's neediest mission fields. He saw the poverty of pagan religions and the utter despair of the people they enslave.

After Bob Pierce died of leukemia in 1978, Franklin Graham took the reins of Samaritan's Purse. Through over 40 years of earthquakes, hurricanes, wars, and famine, Samaritan’s Purse has continued the Biblical example, flying medicine, supplies, food, and personnel all across the globe.

Their DC-8 is also used to send Shoebox gifts to children in some of the hardest-to-reach places—whether deep jungles, city slums, steep mountainsides, or one of 1,000 remote Pacific islands. When you build a Shoebox online, it provides a creative way to share the Good News in remote areas in a culturally sensitive manner. 

“Go and do likewise.” No matter where they go or what they do, they offer more than help. They offer hope to suffering people in a broken world.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

December 7, 2021 The Giving Season, Part I - JAARS

The Liberty Gazette

December 7, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

With another Thanksgiving celebrated, giving thanks for all we’ve been given, we enter again into the Giving Season. This time of year, people who celebrate Christmas and people who don’t find common ground in giving. During this time, we aim to create awareness and present opportunities for your heart to change lives around the world. We’ll start with the Christian mission organization, JAARS, sharing information from their website.

Seventy years ago, Cameron Townsend acted on his belief that all people should have God’s Word in their own language. His action was to create JAARS – Jungle Aviation and Radio Service, SIL International (a literacy organization), and Wycliff Bible Translators as Christian change agencies with a goal to permeate cultures without destroying them.

Through JAARS, Townsend set out to accomplish the Great Commission goal of providing Scripture to every people group on earth in a language and form they clearly understand. In his words, “Airplanes and radios don’t just make translation easier; they make it possible.”

He devoted his life to that vision, trusting that God would make the impossible possible. Reaching and working in minority language communities—sometimes in the most remote, dangerous corners of the world—had to be overcome with logistical support. 

Today, JAARS is a multidisciplinary team of problem-solvers committed to the belief that people’s lives and communities are transformed as they experience God’s Word in their own language. Their commitment is to support their translation partners with locally appropriate and sustainable solutions until the Gospel has reached the whole world. These solutions come in transportation, technology, media, and training. And being there requires a strong ministry so that the translation projects underway or yet to begin in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas are not hindered by lack of support in the areas where God has blessed JAARS to serve.

Major transportation tools, like aircraft and boats, are critical for JAARS to overcome logistical barriers around the world. But these tools are becoming increasingly expensive and take longer to fund, even as translation plans begin to focus on the last, most remote language communities.

With the expansion of transportation systems and infrastructure globally, along with the pace of technology and communications innovation, it’s tempting to wonder whether any place, any longer, is truly “off the grid.” The reality is yes. Missionaries intently focused on translation efforts are increasingly challenged by the responsibility to manage mission-critical transportation operations. JAARS continues to help fill these gaps, but not without support from private donors. 

At the JAARS Center in Waxhaw, North Carolina, missionaries and other volunteers depend on the research and development, training, manufacturing, repairs, medical services, housing, food service, childcare, and spiritual encouragement to help make Scripture translation possible. They depend on this support to have a sustainable impact when they are working in the field. Ultimately, the work is for the millions of people still eagerly waiting to hear and grasp the Gospel in the language they understand best.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

November 30, 2021 What Hits the Airwaves Doesn't Always Fly

The Liberty Gazette

November 30, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Here’s hoping you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and called to mind many things for which you’re thankful, whether they fly or not. 

Remember the 1970’s sitcom about a radio station, WKRP in Cincinnati? The cast and crew had a lot to be thankful for with the episode, “Turkeys Away.” The show had been on the air only four months and was about to be canned, but this one saved it as audiences gobbled it up, and TV Guide marked it as the fortieth greatest episode of any series in television history.

Feeling job insecurity with the hiring of a new program director, station manager, Arthur Carlson (played by Gordon Jump), comes up with a holiday promotion idea to be the whipped cream on the pumpkin pie: twenty turkeys would drop out of the sky – gifts that would bless some lucky people out shopping in the mall.

“Dr. Johnny Fever,” the popular DJ (played by Howard Hessman), closes out the last notes of a song and cuts to Les Nessman (played by Richard Sanders), the station’s news reporter, who positioned himself in the mall parking lot for the big surprise. The beat of rotor blades (which sound like a Bell-47 bubble-type helicopter) accompany Les as he begins his play-by-play, first reporting an object falling from the aircraft, and openly wondering if it’s a parachutist. Realizing it’s a turkey, and more are following, the scene unfolds into chaos, with turkeys hitting the parking lot “like bags of wet cement,” and people running for cover. 

Back at the station, the staff who huddled around Johnny Fever anticipating a live, feel-good report, quickly realize the plan has run afoul. Fever cuts back in with, “For those of you who have just tuned in, the Pinedale Shopping Mall has just been bombed with live turkeys.” 

Not to worry, fellow animal lovers, no turkeys were injured in the making of the show. It all fell to the nerdy Nessman to ignite listeners’ imaginations, as one must do in radio. The actors all said it was difficult to keep from laughing while filming that segment. 

WKRP went on to complete a four-year run and was later revived for another three years. It was nominated for eighteen awards, including Emmy, Golden Globe, Humanitas, and TV Land, scoring wins twice.

This much-loved script was written by Bill Dial, who wrote and produced many television shows, including some Star Trek episodes. He even appeared occasionally in WKRP as the radio station’s engineer, Bucky Dornster, and acted small parts in other shows, too. 

But Episode 7 of Season 1 went down in history as his best, the fan favorite, which ends as Les Nessman returns to the office in a daze and explains the rest of the story. “The turkeys mounted a sort of counter-attack. It’s as if they were somehow organized.” 

While Nessman served up the meat of the show, the real gravy came in the closing line by Mr. Carlson. “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.” 

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com