In pursuit of another airplane (Cessna-182)
This will be my biggest goal in my whole missionary life, but I am very confident that God will provide the means to see this become a reality. Join us in prayer and partner with us with whatever means you can, even if all you can do is to share link with others. Together we can continue helping to save lives and deliver hope.
Since I became a full time missionary in 2011, I have found three very simple steps towards doing something great for God: heartfelt desire, praying about that desire in my heart and waiting for Divine providence.
Heartfelt desire
With those steps in mind let me share with you the most recent desire that has been pounding in my heart each day. A second airplane. When the pandemic escalated in the Philippines I was assigned at one of the PAMAS airbase where I was flying a 230 horse powered airplane, which can hold 4 souls onboard including me. I saw myself flying 12-15 patients weekly, flying an average 15-20hrs per week. These estimates are based on filtered request, we would have helped more but we had to prioritize the more critical patients so as to not exhaust our fuel, hours on the airplane and my human limitations. Flying missions was an everyday affair.
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With such demands on our little air ambulance we could not afford to be down for maintenance for too long, so we opted to ensure that we had as much spare parts as possible and do all that we can to service the airplane in a much needed timely manner. However, things would often happen beyond our control, namely weather and the finances to get the airplane back in the air. I can recall a number of times when we were down for maintenance and also a few days of really bad weather, that my phone kept ringing and lots of request where coming in. Unfortunately, a number of patients even died due to such delays. As this continued for couple months, every time I could not fly due to weather or maintenance I would brace myself for those patients who will be reported before we can fly and help them.
But one of the most obvious reasons why I think it was on my heart to solicit help for a second airplane was the fact that in September of 2020, we had a returning missionary pilot and his wife, coming back to be a part of this airbase. Hence my thoughts were, it would be a great idea to have two airplane to help more people and also, with two airplanes we would always have a way to fly and help the sick and suffering, except for bad weather days when we cannot fly at all.
Praying for a plane
Due to the nature of this desire where I do know airplanes are not cheap, I had to take this one to the Lord in prayer because I did not know if this was His leadings or just my selfish heart wanting to have a second airplane. Hence I embarked on a prayer journey.
I did not ask God for the airplane, I asked Him to show me the true motive of my heart. While praying about it each morning and throughout the day, I reached a point where I did not tell anyone what I was praying about and I also asked Him for a sign to confirm to me if this was something worth praying for or to just let it go.
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As we can all agree that since the pandemic so many have lost their jobs and we all know by now that money is tight for everyone, even the rich! With that in mind I asked God for a ridiculous sign. My exact prayer was, if the Lord wanted me to pursue a second airplane He should impress someone to donate $1,000 USD without me asking or telling anyone about the sign. Weeks went by, months also and no answer from the Lord. Then the unthinkable occurred. A random donation came in which was even more than $1,000USD. $1,100USD to be exact. The donor was from Europe, he just happened to google “medical missionary from the Caribbean and he came across my website. Amazing isn’t it?
Lord thank you for answering my prayers about the second airplane, now I have the assurance that it is His will to have a second airplane to fly and help others.
Waiting for God’s Providence
The last step in doing something great for God is Divine providence. I often would wait for the Lord to lead me in the right direction and also the right time to go about soliciting help towards getting resources to help make our ministry efforts a success.
After I shared the story behind the donation that came in from someone in Europe, with the donor himself, he was really amazed that God had led him to give such a big amount, he shared it with others and one of the persons that he shared it with opted to pledge to give towards the new airplane as well, which I was told is a confirmation to their prayers too.
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In closing, while I was very optimistic to get going with another fundraiser for the second airplane, I couldn’t because the airplane that I had been flying since March 2020 was almost due for an engine overhauled. Estimated cost, $15,000USD. I prayerfully embarked on soliciting help for that first and within a month and a half we saw God providing the $15,000USD.
We bought the replacement engine for the airplane but now we need to ship it to the Philippines and that is estimated to take 2 to 3 months, which means that we will have a long time before we can resume flights. Even though we have notified our contacts that we are not able to help the sick and suffering at this time, we still get calls and text messages asking for help. All we can do is pray for them to be helped some other way. Since April 16th, 2020 to December 31, 2020 I had flown over 330hrs and transported over 180 patients. I know very well the need that is out there waiting for our airplane to be back in service.
With your prayers and your support we can do more to help others who go through life with very little hope of getting the healthcare that they need. I can recall one mother who was transported when the baby swallowed his feces inside the womb. She was flown to the hospital in another area because where she lives there was no facility or medical doctor to handle such case. Upon arrival at the hospital she was told that if there was at least 1 more hour of delay, both she and the baby would have died. That flight to help her took less than 2hrs to pick her up and drop her off. I was not the one who flew the airplane to transport her the first time, but I was the one who flew her home with the baby. That’s when I was told the story behind the smile on her face as I was transporting her home. Our ministry was really busy both ways, transporting patients out to get badly needed medical care and transporting those returning home after their surgery, checkup and sadly even those who died when the doctors couldn’t do anything more for them.
The estimated cost for a used airplane, specifically a Cessna 182 like the one we already have will be around $85,000USD to 100,000USD, which should be enough to help with shipping and handling. There is a few of them for sale here in the Philippines but the cheapest is $100,000USD.
$20,603.09 reached
Goal of $100,000 USD
Answered Prayers
Previous Fundraisers
We have reached our goal! Thank you so much for your support!!!
A new engine for the plane
Reached $15,145.28
Goal of $15,000
Hello everyone and greetings from the Philippines. My name is Davin Bennett and I am a Missionary/Medevac pilot here in the Philippines with Philippines Adventist Medical Aviation Services (PAMAS). It was a 7-year journey for me to be where I am today, from zero hours to being a full-time missionary pilot. I was actually assigned at an airbase in March of this year and oh boy, I did not expect that the flying was going to be this busy. Right after the president shut down the entire country, I was flying 12-15 patients weekly, logging about 20 hours. Many times I was the only one flying. All other aircraft was grounded. There were a couple times when due to maintenance and weather our airplane was grounded for a couple days. Consequently, we had patients pilling up, some of which died in the hospital and at home awaiting our services.
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Some of the cases we transport are accidents from drinking alcohol and riding without helmets, complicated pregnancies, stroke, cancer, even infants who were raped and needed to get medical confirmation to file cases in court. Since the COVID-19 pandemic kicked in full swing, I was able to transport 181 patients, 80 returning patients, 185 patient assistants, 264 family members who got stranded away from home due to COVID lockdown, 5 deceased patients who died in the hospital, 5,200 lbs of cargo (medical supplies, government documents, food for the needy, mask, and alcohol) just to name a few.
Before the pandemic we would not have much priority for the patients and their relatives after we airlift them to get better health care but when the pandemic restricted travels, we now have to help them to get back home, hence, more flight time on the airplane.
Here at PAMAS, we don’t receive a salary as missionary pilots and our ministry itself does not get funding from the church or government. We literally survive from random donations. Nevertheless, since PAMAS started in 2007, we have seen so many miracles of how God continues to provide for our every need.
So you might be wondering, what are the other options that these people have in terms of travels? Well there are a few small airplanes that is commercially offering their services but its only for the rich. They do help with medevacs but at a very expensive cost, and the folks we help can in no way afford such services.
This is not an easy job, but being raised in a single parent household where I have gone to bed hungry many times, I really can relate to the struggles that these people have to endure, especially when they are sick. I had the humble opportunity to visit some of these areas and I found out that many of them doesn’t have a hospital, some only has one doctor serving the entire area and even with the ones who have a hospital they have very limit resources, hence the need for our small little air ambulance.
I would like to personally solicit your prayers and your support towards a new engine for our airplane so that we can continue to help others who go through life with no other way out but to accept their fate, that death is their finally destiny. Yes we have heard from so many citizens, health workers and even government officials that before this airplane was available to help the people, many lives were lost.
According to the manufacturer the recommended flight hours on the engine should be 1700 hours. To this date we have logged 1542 hours, which means we have 158 hours left before the airplane will be grounded for maintenance. However we found another problem where the camshaft is wearing away and needs to be replaced urgently. So as of now we are not able to fly the airplane. Estimated fix for that is $2,000USD. We don’t want to shut down the airplane completely so we have decided to use the first 2,000USD donation to fix that problem which will allow us to keep flying a little longer until we can get the new engine.
A newly built engine would cost $38,000USD but we found a used on in very good condition that we can overhauled ourselves for $15, 000USD.
So far to this day we have gotten $5,500 USD donations and a few pledges to help, and we hope that those promises can be fulfilled in a timely manner. Since it’s the season to be giving love and gifts, why not give something towards this airplane that can help many other families to live a little bit longer? I know that God will provide the means for us, just like how He has provided all the other times when we were in need. God bless and thank you for your prayers and support in the past, it was much appreciated!
