Our Visit to Guyana
In the middle of May of this year, we visited a project in Guyana, South America to assess the need and how we would fit into the project. We found that God is preparing to do a mighty work there.
Currently there is one pilot and one airplane working overtime to meet the needs of a small area of Guyana. Captain James Ash is mainly working in region 7 providing medical evacuation and carrying supplies to mission projects there. There are many more regions that really need these services.
Meanwhile, there are two airplanes almost ready to be flown down to Guyana and put into service. But there is still only one pilot. This is a very unique situation. Usually you have too many pilots and not enough airplanes.
However, the devil is working hard to keep God's work from moving forward in Guyana.
Some of you may have heard of Todd Anderson. He was a friend of ours. He was a pilot and mechanic who served in Guyana. For the past year he and his family were living in Tennessee working on one of the airplanes that is schedule to go to Guyana. He and his family were scheduled to fly the plane down this spring. However the devil had other plans and this past December he was diagnosed with Tetroma a cancer that is usually curable. This spring when he was just finishing his Chemo he had a reaction to one of the drugs and his lungs were destroyed. On April 22, he went to sleep in Jesus. Please pray for this family Cas and her two kids Millie and Sam as they grieve and move forward without him.
There is one other family Edwin and Laura Davidson, who have plans to service in Guyana but are continually coming up against obstacles which are delaying their departure. Please pray for the Lord to remove the obstacles so they can move forward.
As you can see the devil knows that the Gospel is needed in Guyana, but he is stopping the progress. Please be praying for the project that more pilots and funding will be provided for the project to reach the people there.
What is Guyana like?
Guyana is a former British colony that gained it's independence 50 years ago. there are about 900.000 people living there with about 1/3rd of them in the one major city Georgetown, with most of the rest of them along the Caribbean coastline. The interior is sparsely populated with native Amerindians. Guyana's terrain and climate varies from tropical rain forest to desert and is warm all year long with a short wet season and a long dry season. To get into the interior of Guyana, most people have to ride the river system which can take days. There are almost no roads as you move away from the coast and many emergency medical needs end badly.
Who is GAMAS and what are they doing?
Guyana Adventist Ministries and services (GAMAS) aviation's mission is to support the message and mission of the Seventh-day Adventist Church by providing logistical air support to all GAMAS Projects, extend medical services to those in the remote regions of Guyana and advance the cause of mission aviation within Adventism. Other GAMAS projects are three secondary schools, one medical missionary training school, and one bible worker training school.
GAMAS Aviation plans to strategically place the 3 land based airplanes to cover most of the interior regions. We would also like to get an amphibious plane that will allow us to use rivers where there are not landing strips, increasing access to even more villages. This will allow us to insert bible workers into these villages and provide support for them and two of the Adventist secondary schools via air transport.
Another part of the vision is to create a training environment for pilots who are interested in serving as missionaries. Currently, there is a giant leap from flight training here in the US to the demands that mission aviation puts on a pilot. GAMAS is building a program to bridge that gap and prepare pilots and their families to serve anywhere in the world.
In order to keep the whole program running, GAMAS needs a full maintenance shop in the country.
Where do we fit in?
We will be based in a village called Bethany which is about a 20 min flight from Georgetown. Being this close to Georgetown will allow us to get large items needed to work on planes out to the base easier. On the property there is already a house that is about 75% built and a runway along with a partially constructed hanger. The Bethany flight base is just a 3 min walk from another GAMAS project: Bethany Medical Missionary Training College (BMMC). Our primary goal when we first get back there will be to finish this house so we can live there and set up the maintenance base. Then we will focus on obtaining a sea plane and begin serving the villages along the river systems.
We look forward to serving God in this project. If you are at all moved to participate in this project in any capacity please contact us and we would love to share more with you.
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