“I love this airstrip. It’s called Apahapsali,” he says. 

Intrigued by the name, Fagerlie asked the local Yali people what it meant in their heart language.

“They said, ‘Apah’ means ‘human’ and ‘hapsali’ means ‘where we remove their skin,’” he recounts. 

Matching the candor of their answer, he posed another question: what was the backstory of this airstrip? They pointed across the valley and gestured. 

“You know, we used to do a lot of night raids to that village. We’d capture people alive, we’d bring them back here, we’d skin them, and we’d eat them.” 

It’s a hair raising account, yet Fagerlie relays it without a hint of alarm in his voice. That’s because something happened between the head hunting history and Fagerlie’s entrance to the village. That something was the Gospel. 

When missionaries first introduced this tribe to Jesus Christ and His Word in the 1950s, they were met with opposition that ended with two of them dead. But as the Yali began to receive the Word, a magnificent transformation rippled throughout the community. Cannibalism was turned on its head, as the Yali began to hunt fellow souls for redemption. 

By the time Fagerlie met this tribe in 2018, they were able to give an update on some of the structural outcomes that accompanied spiritual change. 

“They said, ‘This place that we used to skin and eat them, now it’s the air strip. And our celebration hut is now the church. And that place across the valley that we used to go and raid, our sons and daughters now marry their sons and daughters.’” 

The transformation of the Yali people is a reminder that when God’s Word goes out, it does not return void. 

“It changes them personally, it changes them culturally, it changes the way they view themselves, their neighbors, and the world,” Fagerlie says. 

MAF pilots are integral in carrying the Gospel across challenging terrain. Throughout mountainous jungles in Papua, for example, villages are isolated from each other because of the physical features of the island. It can take days to walk from one community to another, Fagerlie says. 

“An MAF airplane can get them there in 15 or 20 minutes. And not only can we get them there quicker, we can bring in their family, food, building supplies,” he says. 

So please pray for MAF pilots, their passengers, and the villages they serve. Pray for safe flights, open ministry doors, and receptivity of Papuan people to the Gospel. This tribe is an example of impact. 

“In a generation, it has changed them from cannibals to Christians,” Fagerlie points out.

Please pray that Yali believers would continue to grow in their faith and in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

And please pray for the others still waiting to hear the Good News: that even now, the Holy Spirit would be moving in their hearts to ready them for His life-giving Word.

Village in Papua, courtesy of Becky Fagerlie, MAF.

Header image courtesy of MAF. 

What makes this particular flight so remarkable is a story of God’s faithfulness that actually began 52 years ago. Another Yali tribe in the same valley laid in wait for another pair of missionaries. However, in this early encounter, it was not a welcome committee but an ambush.

Phil Masters, one of the two missionaries martyred in 1968. (Photo courtesy of Mission Aviation Fellowship)

The two missionaries – Stan Dale and Phil Masters – were there to scout an airstrip that would allow easier access to reach the Yali people with the Gospel. The Yali attacked the two men and shot them with over 200 arrows until they succumbed to their wounds.

The story could have ended there. But just three months later, an MAF plane tragically crashed nearby. Everyone on the plane perished except for 10-year-old Paul Newman. He escaped the wreckage and a Yali man found him. This particular Yali man had opposed killing the two missionaries, and he kept young Paul safe until a search party came.

The Yali people took this second encounter with the outside world as a sign and asked for a missionary to come live with them.

MAF’s Linda Ringenberg says, “Five years later, a church was born in that very hostile area…. Then it was a 30-year process from that time since the entire [Yali] Bible was completed and able to be distributed.”

Linda Ringenberg is career staff with MAF in Papua, and her husband, Dave Ringenberg, is MAF’s director of field operations in Papua and an instructor pilot.

Dave and another pilot, Peter Santana, flew in this recent Bibles reprint for the southern Yali people – 52 years after the first missionaries to the Yali were martyred.

(Photo courtesy of Mission Aviation Fellowship)

“Dave said you could just feel the excitement in the air,” Linda shares. “They were so thrilled to be getting these Bibles…. They had run out of Bibles for the community, so their church organization — known as GIDI here in Indonesia — had arranged to purchase more Bibles and to ship them here to Papua and to distribute them through MAF.”

GIDI (Gereja Injili di Indonesia) Church continues to grow among the Yali people and they have 5,000 more Bibles they hope to ship in.

You can support MAF’s Gospel ministry in Papua, Indonesia here!

Linda also asks for your prayers. “There are still Yalis who don’t know the Lord, so… pray for those who don’t know the Lord and also that those who have received the Bibles will continue to grow in their faith.”

Header photo courtesy of Mission Aviation Fellowship.

FCBH works with technology ranging from the Proclaimer (seen here) to the Samsung Smart TV App
(Photo by Faith Comes by Hearing)

Indonesia (MAF/ MNN) — Seeing people receive God’s Word in their heart language for the first time is one of those “Bucket List” kinds of moments.

According to UrbanDictionary.com, the term “bucket list” refers to a literal list of things you want to do or accomplish before you die. It comes from the phrase “kicking the bucket,” which is sometimes used to refer to dying.

Dave Ringenberg, a Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) pilot serving in Indonesia, describes his Bucket List-worthy experience in an e-mail shared with MNN.

Humbling Cargo

(Photo cred: MAF)

My scheduled flight was to Anngruk that day, an airstrip about one hour southwest of Sentani, inhabited by the Yali people group. I found out the previous day that I was to carry a couple of Indonesian gentlemen from a ministry called Faith Comes By Hearing. The purpose of their visit was to distribute devices containing the audio version of the New Testament. The written Bible has already existed in their local Yali language for some time, so I’m not sure I grasped the significance of what this audio version would mean to the local people until I heard chanting and celebrating from the village women as I shut down the Cessna Caravan.

A huge group of villagers gathered around Pak Chandra and Pak Nathan, the men from FCBH. As the plane was unloaded, the boxes of audio Bibles were placed in the middle of this huge gathering. Chandra began to explain in Indonesian what these audio Bibles were and how to use them. Nathan translated Pak Chandra’s words into Yali. There were two types of audio Bibles: a smaller one and a larger one. Both are solar powered, and the larger one also has a hand crank.

And then Chandra played it for the people. They stood in rapt attention as a dramatic voice spoke from the device itself, reading the first few sentences from the fourth chapter of the book of Matthew in their native tongue. One lady off to the side kept raising her hands to the heavens and then bringing them to her heart. Right then and there I knew that this was pretty special, as they were going to have the Word of God in audio form in their heart language.

Before I knew it, the ceremony was just about complete, but prior to our departure, the local pastor offered up a prayer of thanksgiving to God for these wonderful gifts from caring Christians around the world. As he began his prayer, I felt a humility before the Lord and I had to get on my knees. In my heart I could hear God’s Word resonate: “Whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24). I was moved by these events as I humbly remembered that God’s Word will not return void. Praise God.

Hear more about this story in the full interview.

Dave Ringenberg and wife Linda serve the Lord in Indonesia with their two sons.
(Photo credit MAF)

MAF missionary families and Indonesian staff members serve central and eastern Kalimantan. MAF enables ministry groups to bring the Gospel and basic, life-sustaining services to this primitive and otherwise inaccessible region of Indonesia. The MAF team provides much-needed flight services and maximizes opportunities to minister in ways not available to other mission agencies. Aviation allows MAF to establish and develop relationships with a broad cross-section of society.

Learn more about their work in Indonesia here. Then, respond by taking action.

“The first thing [to do] would be to pray: pray for God to bring workers in,” says Ringenberg.

“The other thing is to see what things are going on around the world and see if you’re interested in participating, somehow, someway.”