You enable people to experience God’s transforming power!

Mountains concealed with green carpets and waterfalls shedding jeweled water drops: a beautiful tableau of Papua, Indonesia.

But even more beautiful than God’s physical wonders are the people spread across the mountains.

Jonathan Schultz and Molly, his wife, serve remote language groups in Papua. Jonathan, a JAARS-trained pilot-mechanic, flies with YAJASI, our Indonesian aviation partner. While on furlough in the States, he did some recurrent training at JAARS. This two-week training gave Jonathan a chance to review things he might have grown fuzzy about, since it had been seven months since he last flew the Pilatus Porter—the aircraft he flies in Indonesia.

Besides classwork, the students practiced performing steep turns and takeoffs and landings.

One day he practiced touching down in the same zone consistently. “Some of the runways where YAJASI operates,” Jonathan says, “are as short as 350 meters (just over 1,000 ft.), so it’s necessary to be consistent with where you land so you touch down there every time.”

Jonathan performs some maneuvers in his Upset Recovery Training

When Jonathan is serving in Indonesia, he enjoys flying with YAJASI’s more experienced pilots into some of the mountain-top airstrips. Besides the spectacular views, he enjoys the people. In the Ketengban area, where the people now have God’s Word in their language, “There are so many people who have hearts of gold,” Jonathan declares. “You can tell where the gospel has made an impact in their lives, because there’s been so much change in them.”

The snaking Mamberamo river basin in Papua’s Northern Lowlands

Molly practices English with some ladies in their town of Sentani. One woman from the Ketengban village told Molly, “Before the gospel came to us, we lived in darkness.” The people lived in fear of spirits. But when the people had access to Scripture, they began to see the power Jesus holds over the spirits. The people began to trust in his power over and above that of the spirits.

Jonathan’s recurrent training enables him to better serve these people by bringing them Scripture, teachers, building materials, and food.

Jonathan and Molly hope to return to Papua after the birth of their baby so they can continue serving these people with hearts of gold and watch God continue to transform them through his life-transforming Word.

Your gifts to Aviation Solutions help pilots serve effectively in remote places like Papua, Indonesia.