Notes From The Field: Flying For Life

We love sharing news from our NGO partners. Gabriella Szabo, Marketing and Events Coordinator for Flying for Life, tells us why partnerships are crucial to what they do.

Flying for Life journeys with many different people. We never travel alone. There is an African proverb that says: “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”  

In 2018, Flying for Life partnered with Mercy Air, a like-minded Christian Aviation organisation that has the same vision – to see isolated people spiritually and physically transformed. Their staff are missionaries with a heart for God and for people.  

On one of our flights there could be nurses, doctors, photographers, logistics staff, evangelists and, of course, pilots. As a team of many different people from many different backgrounds and organisations, we collectively bring a unique set of skills and personalities. Every individual is paramount to the journey.

When we land, the collective journeying continues as we work with and coordinate many different partners on the ground. On a recent flight to the Vhembe District, we partnered with the local government to reach rural areas that do not have easy access to dental care. The government brought their dental truck, and our volunteer dentists from Johannesburg worked together with government dentists.

Mashula, a thirty-nine-year-old woman who received treatment, had experienced a year of dental pain and travelled over an hour to reach the dental truck. If city-dwellers go a month with dental pain, many would say they have left it too long. Each of the twenty-one patients that were treated have a long story of pain, but now they each carry a testimony of relief. Without unity, Mashula would have never been helped.

Journeying together is a result of and a necessity for our vision of help, hope and healing in rural isolated communities of South Africa.

We love the fact that in an aircraft there are many different travellers in one vehicle, all going in one direction – a great reminder of our Christian mission. In 2019 we look forward to working in unity with many different partners, seeing more lives transformed, not just for the moment, but for years to come.

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