Aviation students experience missionary life on trip to Kenya

For two weeks, six student-pilots from Liberty University’s School of Aeronautics witnessed firsthand what missionary aviation is all about during a trip to Kenya, Africa, in late May.

“It was really an exposure for these students,” said Joel King, a senior flight instructor at Liberty who led the 15-day adventure to multiple missionary outposts, many of which he serviced over an eight-year period while flying for AIM AIR in Kenya, Uganda, and South Sudan. “Every student got a chance to do a takeoff and landing at one of these places (and) there was a lot of time spent talking to the missionaries, to the national pastors, and to the people who have been impacted by mission aviation in these very remote, very difficult areas.”

The trip was organized by LU Send in conjunction with African Inland Missions (AIM) AIR and Samaritan’s Purse.

The student-pilots — Jonathan Harms (’23, B.S. in Aeronautics: Global Studies), Aviation Technology: Flight and Maintenance seniors Luke Pierce and Colby Larsen, and Commercial/Corporate aviation senior Grace Johnson, junior Jacob Outcalt, and sophomore Michael Verbosky — were accompanied by King, co-leader Sarah Rotter (’21, Commercial/Corporate), who is pursuing a master’s degree in Aviation Safety, and former Liberty certified flight instructor Lindsey Gray (’11, Aviation Maintenance Technician Program), currently AIM AIR’s chief pilot.

“(Lindsey) was our tour guide and helped put this trip together,” King said. “She has been in that role for several years and has done this trip several times for Liberty, the last time in 2019.”

King said the experience was life-changing for the team members, many of whom were inspired to pursue careers in missionary aviation.

“Any chance students get to go and do some sort of a vision trip, there’s something (special) about it,” King said. “You get over there and see what’s being done and how you potentially can be a part of that. It really highlights your purpose in life (and leads you to ask), ‘Why are we here? What are we doing? What are we going to do with the gifts, abilities, and talents God gave us?’ Yes, we can go and get a really good job and make a lot of money and serve ourselves, or we can go and serve others.”

Johnson said the trip was eye-opening and inspired her to play her part in fulfilling the Great Commission.

“It was really cool to see what it actually looks like to be a missionary pilot overseas because I didn’t have a clear picture before,” she said. “I would be honored and would love to go do a mission trip someday, to live overseas and work with people and spread the Gospel. I would love to see all the people have a Bible in their own language and to know the Lord and know of His love for them. You’re meeting a really practical need of missionaries and organizations where you can’t or wouldn’t want to drive to, building relationships with people who aren’t reachable any other way.”

King said there are still close to 1,000 unreached people groups in Africa who have never heard the Gospel.

“They are unreached for a reason — because you can’t get to them,” he said. “The best way to get to these people is with airplanes, including the six-seat Cessna 206 and the 14-seat Cessna Caravan, which is extremely reliable and extremely safe. There are people who want to go, organizations that want to focus on church planting and discipleship of unreached people groups, and they utilize these airplanes to go and do that.”

On the trip, the team flew the large turboprop Caravan from town to town in northern Kenya. They hopped from one rural village to the next, from Nairobi to Lokichogio to Eldoret to the border of Uganda and the South Sudan and across Lake Turkana to the border of Ethiopia and Somalia.

“Because most of the airstrips we were going in and out of were short and made of dirt, gravel, or grass, we were weight-limited … and could only have eight of us and a pilot to be able to safely get off the ground,” King said.

The various stops along the way were planned strategically around fueling stations as well as areas where mission work was taking place.

“They got to see what a mission station looked like where missionaries have developed it and moved on, and then what a base looked like where missionaries were actively engaged in that community,” King said. “At each place they were hearing stories of how critical that aviation connection is for security, for medical, for day-to-day supplies, food, or transportation for their kids going back and forth to boarding school, or whatever service they need.”

The team visited House of Hope, a mission outreach to widowed women in Kenya where they can learn skills to make a livelihood and find self-worth. Those same missionaries have also developed a clinic ministry, a midwife ministry, and a radio station just miles from the Ethiopian border that will broadcast the Gospel to thousands of people in the surrounding area around the clock.

For recreation, the team traveled on the northern end of the Serengeti, where they went on a safari and experienced a traditional goat roast.

King said while the students mostly observed how the missionary pilots operate, they had the opportunity to serve alongside them.

“On the return to Nairobi, two of the guys were able to help with an inspection on one of the airplanes, working with (AIM Air’s) maintenance crew,” King said. “They helped clean the airplane, wash it, and do a pre-flight inspection to get it ready for an immediate dispatch to Uganda.”

The team had the opportunity to meet Jim Molloy, a former dean of Liberty’s School of Aeronautics who now serves as the chief pilot for Samaritan’s Purse in Kenya and Uganda and oversees the organization’s mission work in South Sudan.

They learned about the huge demand for not only pilots but also mechanics and administrators in missionary aviation.

“One of the mission organizations’ biggest needs right now is administrative: general managers, directors of operations, quality control managers, quality assurance mangers, safety managers — positions other than active line pilots and mechanics,” he said. “Liberty trains students in business management, aviation management, to be dispatchers, and if any of those are interested in mission aviation, they don’t have to be a pilot to have a very impactful position and role in reaching those unreached.”

The next LUSOA exposure trip, to MAF’s base in Lesotho, South Africa, will be led by Professor Pete Spahr over Christmas Break, from Dec. 27-Jan. 16, with an application deadline of Sept. 1.