Church planter, pilots share passion for missions in Papua New Guinea
Liberty University alumni in different fields are fulfilling the Great Commission around the globe. From time to time, their outreach efforts intersect overseas, like the Cizdziel and Hamer families, whose lives have providentially overlapped as they share the love of Christ.
Jason Cizdziel (’10), who received his B.S. in Global Studies, and his wife, Laken, answered the Lord’s call to serve the people of Papua New Guinea in 2015, devoting their time to the teaching of God’s Word and the spiritual harvest of souls in the Wabuku community. As tribal church planters, missionaries, and Bible translators with Ethnos360, the Cizdziels and their four children live among the small remote tribe along the Sepik River in western PNG. July marked the family’s 10th year of ministry on the island nation.
About 130 miles east, in the same province as the Cizdziels, Liberty alumni couple Luke (’13) and Tracy Hamer (’13) are in their ninth year of work with Samaritan Aviation. The Hamers graduated together with their B.S. in Aeronautics and A.A. in Aviation Maintenance Technician degrees through the School of Aeronautics. As a seaplane pilot, Luke provides emergency medical rescue flight services to the entire province of East Sepik, often flying from remote villages to the government-run Boram Hospital in Wewak, where he is based. Without air travel, residents deep in the jungles would have to go to the hospital by canoe, which can take up to four days along the 700-mile serpentine river.
Jason Cizdziel and the Hamers never met during their time in Lynchburg, but their paths have crossed in PNG. When the runway used by Ethnos360 pilots is flooded, Luke Hamer has come to the rescue. This first happened in July 2022, when the alumni met and quickly formed a friendship.
The Hamer family
The Cizdziel family on a retreat to Australia
Changing Lives
Although the couples are supported by different sending organizations, there is mutual respect between them because of their common mission.
“Living in the jungle is isolating,” Jason Cizdziel said. “Sometimes it feels like living on the moon. We’re deep in the swamps of New Guinea. Without an aviation team, planting a church in this tribe would never have happened. We rely on the supplies they send us, and we rely emotionally on seeing the faces of these pilots because they are faithful believers who both speak our language and carry words of encouragement. The aviation teams that support us are our lifelines.”
Flying patients to the hospital for critical medical attention is “simply a means to an end,” Luke Hamer said, but his main purpose for his work is to see lives changed for eternity. Every patient receives spiritual counsel from Samaritan Aviation staff.
“If it wasn’t for the hospital ministry, it would be strictly humanitarian, and I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with it,” he said. “Our patients may spend one day or six months in the hospital. The longer they stay, the more times they will hear the Gospel from our team that is there to minister to them.”
In her job there, Tracy Hamer works closely with the hospital ministry, sharing the love of Christ with patients.
Luke Hamer explained that in tribal areas where animism is the chief belief system, one of the greatest hurdles is teaching them to read Scripture and believe that the Lord can heal them, not sorcerers.
“When someone gets sick in PNG, they’re looking for a spiritual reason for why they got sick, so in order to find a cure, you have to go back to that source, and they continue to go back to the shamanic witch doctors,” he said.
Luke and Tracy Hamer (’13) have flown a seaplane for Samaritan Aviation’s hospital ministry in Papua New Guinea since 2017.
The heart of the matter
PNG is one of the most linguistically diverse nations in the world; more than 800 languages are spoken among its 7 million people who live in rural, indigenous communities. Jason Cizdziel has spent much of the past 10 years studying the Uriay language used by the tribe, which had never before heard the Word of God spoken in its native tongue.
“Learning the tribal language was easily the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,” he said.
But establishing trust between his family and the tribe was a barrier he said needed to be broken down before communicating God’s love and truths to them.
Jason Cizdziel (’10) teaches a lesson before Easter last year in the church he and his family have planted to serve the Wabuku tribe of Papua New Guinea.
“The relationships we built over these years are starting to produce fruit in that Wabuku were able to hear ‘Yawe’s talk’ (Jesus’ Word) from someone they knew and trusted, someone who spoke their heart language, and someone who had probably already helped them medically in some significant way. That’s what the tilling of the soil looked like — years of following them on hunts, treating machete wounds, treating their kids for malaria, and swapping stories around the fire late into the night.”
The Cizdziels planted a church and continue the work of discipleship through Bible studies and devotions, prayer, and fellowship so that the Wabuku members will grow and flourish in their faith and lead others to the Lord.
Jason often illustrates his sermons with elaborate chalk drawings of Bible stories.
Jason Cizdziel with his literacy class for new readers who met daily with him to learn how to read the Bible in their language
“I wasn’t surprised at Wabuku’s enthusiastic reception of the Gospel, but I was relieved,” Jason Cizdziel said. “We’ve suffered a lot during our years in Wabuku, and a poor reception or rejection of the Gospel after all of that would have been devastating. Wabuku is continuing to watch the biblical story unfold. With dramas and videos and storytelling, we’re doing our best to make these stories clear.”
Leading up to last Easter, the church welcomed 53 new believers. In October, 34 more were baptized.
“Our new church is growing,” he said. “Thank Yawe for His work of redemption, but our work doesn’t end here. The Great Commission asks us to make disciples, not just converts, so now the real work of teaching, training, and discipling the new Wabuku church begins. As tribal church planters, it’s not our goal to just plant one healthy church in Wabuku. It’s our goal to plant a healthy church that is going to reproduce itself and plant churches in all the surrounding villages.”
Fellow servants
In January, the Cizdziels and Hamers met in Wewak, Papua New Guinea, where Samaritan Aviation’s flight operations are based.
As the two families have gotten to know each other, Luke Hamer has offered the Cizdziels opportunities to relax and recharge.
“Those guys, they’re kind of getting off the battlefield and coming back to town to rest, so anytime they have a request, and any way that we can help them recoup, we try to help,” he said, “because what they’re doing is not only super special, but it’s also extremely difficult.”
To help the Cizdziels celebrate their anniversary and two of their children’s birthdays in May, Luke Hamer took a detour after a medical supply drop to taxi their whole family to a city for a vacation, serving in-flight refreshments.
“Luke landed on the water just downriver from us and we jumped in,” Cizdziel said. “When we buckled up, he passed back a cooler with Cokes and Sprites and my kids’ faces lit up like Christmas. These aviation guys are good humans.”
Whenever their paths cross, the alumni give updates on their ministries, swap testimonies and prayer requests, and share memories from Liberty.
“It’s really awesome to see how God used two different people from two different disciplines and vastly different backgrounds, laid different (missionary work) on both of our hearts, and now we’re serving in the same province in the small island nation overseas,” Luke Hamer said. “It’s humbling to see how God has used that to further His Kingdom, and now we both get to reflect on how Liberty shaped our lives in doing that.”
School of Aeronautics Dean Steven Brinly has kept up with the Hamers and has been encouraged to hear these stories from the mission field.
“I am extremely excited about how God is using these Champions for Christ from two different schools to establish His church among the Wabuku tribe in Papua New Guinea,” he said. “Their courage, obedience, and unity in the Gospel are a powerful testimony of what it means to live out the Great Commission. We are honored to celebrate the work God is doing through both of their families.”
Follow these alumni and learn how to support them in their ministries at ReachWabuku.com and SamaritanAviation.org/Missionaries/Hamer-Family.
Wabuku tribe members flock to meet the pilot of a Samaritan Aviation seaplane after landing on the East Sepik River in PNG.
