USA (MNN) — For the past 60 years Mission Aviation Fellowship’s USA headquarters has been located in Southern California. But, that will be changing by next year as MAF broke ground recently on their new 8.5 million dollar headquarters in Nampa, Idaho.
MAF’s Dennis Fulton says moving to Idaho was strategic. “Costs for our families coming home from overseas – southern California was just prohibitive to find housing. High workers compensation, high medical and so those costs were much more reasonable here in Idaho.”
Fulton says the location is very friendly to missionary aviation. “There is an excellent general aviation community and a lot of Christians, in that general aviation community, that are very supportive of what MAF does. The other thing that is good; lots of wide open spaces for training and a lot of great air strips that we can fly into that are very close for our training program. In southern California those were going away.”
The good news is the move will be positive for ministry. “We felt that we were spending too much on the home office and we’re looking at this move probably saving us right around $1-million a year. And, that just means that we can do two new programs every year, that we can’t do right now.
The facility is being built in phases. Phase one is building the hanger, followed by the office building, staff housing, and RV park for volunteers. The goal is to be in the office building by July of 2006.
Half of the $8.5 million has already been raised.
