The Blessing of MAF

Last Tuesday afternoon, as we were packing and preparing for the long car trip from Abeche to N’Djamena that were were anticipating making on Friday or Saturday, I happened to glance at my email and noticed an email from Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), who operate a couple of small planes in Chad to assist missionaries and other non-profit workers with transportation. The email said they had a flight coming to Abeche on Wednesday, and then returning to N’Djamena on Thursday, and that they had seats available. Very interesting. The last time we made this car trip across the country it involved 14 hours of driving, several of those in the dark. And driving in the dark in Chad is not fun at all. Donkeys have died. Anyway, we were dreading the trip but there aren’t a lot of options. Normally to get a MAF flight, if there’s not one already scheduled, you have to charter it. That means paying for the entire plane, which usually means a couple thousand dollars. It didn’t even cross our minds to fly because we don’t have the money. But when someone else charters the plane, and shares the costs, it starts getting tempting. So we found ourselves on Tuesday afternoon scrambling to tie up loose ends so that we could fly to the capital on Thursday, and from there we’ll fly to Europe for a few weeks of meetings/vacation before returning to Abeche mid-June. And a very generous supporter paid for our flight, which was inexpensive for adults, half-price for the kids, and Norah was free.