For example, Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) serves remote villages in Lesotho, a small country completely surrounded by South Africa. Grant Strugnell, a pilot with MAF, has helped fly COVID-19 vaccines to clinics in Lesotho’s mountains and other hard-to-reach areas.

(Photo courtesy of MAF)

“The majority of our flying in Lesotho is actually in partnership with the Lesotho government, and specifically the Lesotho Flying Doctor Service. So most of the flights that we do are, in some way, connected to the Department of Health and to the medical work that they’re doing in the country.

“We’ve been really nicely positioned to very naturally…assist with the delivery of vaccines to some of the most remote places in Lesotho.”

Lesotho is known as the Mountain Kingdom, and rightly so. Sharp ridges and valleys cross the landscape, and many citizens live in scattered villages throughout the region.

“A lot of the airstrips that we serve are co-located with a clinic,” Strugnell explains. “But you can’t always build the airstrip right next to it. In some cases, that is true. But…we’ve got a few places where the closest area they could build the airstrip was sometimes a 45-minute walk from the village. So it definitely varies village to village.”

(Photo courtesy of MAF)

Upon landing at an airstrip where the clinic is still far away, the vaccines are sometimes loaded onto wheelbarrows or any other transportation available. Then they must endure a long hike to the clinic.

But the hike between the airstrip and the clinic is often nothing in comparison to how far villagers must walk to receive the vaccine.

“One of the villages that we did this at was… basically on the side of a mountain. There [are] just mountains and valleys all around and people walked, in many cases, probably four to five hours from their village to the clinic.”

By reaching Lesotho’s remote communities with vaccine access, MAF is being the hands and feet of Jesus in the pandemic.

Strugnell says, “We see one of our main missions here as directly meeting some of these physical needs. And we believe that is reflecting the Gospel in its own way — using the tools we’ve got [and] partnering with local Lesotho people here who are already doing the work.

“Helping them in very tangible ways definitely does open doors for the Gospel.”

You can support MAF Lesotho in their work here!

Grant Strugnell, a pilot with MAF. (Photo courtesy of MAF)

And, most importantly, both MAF and the nation of Lesotho could use the encouragement of your prayers. Strugnell says the government’s budget for the Lesotho Flying Doctor Service has been tight as COVID-19 continues to present new challenges.

“The needs and the prayers that we have would be that the government would be able to…get the budget back towards the Lesotho Flying Doctors so that they can reach more of these places and continue to do the good work that they have been doing over the last couple of decades here in Lesotho.”

And please pray for the villagers and clinic workers. Pray that as MAF ministers to and with them, they would sense God’s love.

Header photo of MAF pilot Grant Strugnell, courtesy of MAF.

“We haven’t done as much testing as would be preferred,” says Matthew Monson, manager of Mission Aviation Fellowship Lesotho. “South Africa is sort of our temperature gauge of what is going on in Lesotho, and South Africa was having definitely some explosive cases where things were expanding and growing so they went into lockdown. Shortly after that, Lesotho followed.”

Lesotho Prime Minister Thomas Thabane has the country on lockdown until May 5 and deployed the military to “restore order” in the capital, Maseru. The government also plans to release mass coronavirus screening and testing in high-risk areas.

(Photo courtesy of Matthew Monson with Mission Aviation Fellowship Lesotho)

MAF serves Lesotho by flying into remote areas with medical, physical, and spiritual aid. A big part of MAF’s work in the country includes the Lesotho Flying Doctor Service which supports clinics and hospitals in hard-to-reach areas, mostly by shuttling doctors and nurses to and from these locations.

Due to the current lockdown, MAF has suspended normal day-to-day flight operations.

MAF pilot Grant Strugnell explains, “We’d love to be flying out every day to take nurses from the city into the mountains. But we’ve also just got to stop ourselves and think what harm that could do if we’re taking infected people out to these villages where it could be a village of 100 people or something that would never be infected if it wasn’t for people coming from the outside.”

However, Monson says they are still flying code ones, “which is a medical emergency — someone that a lot of times could be a pregnant woman who’s in labor and that’s not going as planned. So we’re able to take them from a facility that doesn’t have the necessary equipment or ability and transport them quickly to a facility that can care for them.”

(Photo courtesy of Mission Aviation Fellowship Lesotho)

MAF’s international staff had the chance to leave, knowing that if they stayed, they may not get another chance to get out of the country for several months.

But everyone with MAF stayed to continue serving as the hands and feet of Christ in these uncertain times. And others have noticed. 

For example, Monson says, “I went to the hangar to grab some things and I got into a discussion with some military guys and they’re just amazed. ‘Why are you still here? Isn’t your country better?’ I get to explain essentially what God has called us to, explain the Gospel of what He’s done in our lives and why we choose to stay — not because we’re thinking about ourselves, but because of the love that we want to show people that God has given us to show.”

If COVID-19 comes to Lesotho, MAF could start coordinating with the government to fly infected patients or medical personnel working with coronavirus cases. If so, they will need more personal protective equipment to carry out these flights.

Please pray for the health and safety of MAF pilots, mechanics, and staff in Lesotho, especially as they explore assisting with potential future COVID-19 medical needs.

A village in the mountains of Lesotho. (Photo courtesy of Pixabay)

“Something that just the country of Lesotho could really use prayer for is that the decisions to lock down and the steps that the country has made so far to protect itself against COVID would be successful,” Monson says. “If COVID came into the country with full force and began to spread, there would be some challenges in the medical sector and also just challenges with the general population’s health status as being high-risk.”

Also, pray encouragement for the nurses and doctors working in Lesotho’s remote regions with little support. Strugnell says, “I’m just still amazed that we fly into these places and there’s a clinic there and there are nurses there who, I don’t know what they’re being paid, but it can’t be enough to justify the kind of work that they’re doing…. It’s not something that should be overlooked. They do a good job.”

Finally, you can be a tangible encouragement to the people of Lesotho by coming alongside MAF! You can financially support MAF here.

Monson reflects, “It’s just a blessing to be able to see where the Lord is leading us…because God is working and we get to see Him work in us and through us every day. So it’s just an exciting thing to get to highlight where God is being glorified through our work.”

Header photo courtesy of Angelo Moleele via Unsplash.