When Nate Gordon left the comforts of home to become a missionary pilot, little did he know that the skies over Papua, Indonesia would become his second home. With 22 years of service tucked under his wings, Nate joins us on More Than Medicine to recount the thrilling and often unpredictable life of flying to the aid of the most isolated communities on Earth. His stories are not just about piloting small aircraft but about the people whose lives are eternally altered by the power of the Gospel and the helping hands of those willing to reach them.
Listen in as we navigate through tales of daring medical evacuations on treacherous mountain airstrips, the construction of new pathways to connect unreached tribes, and the spiritual transformations that illuminate once-darkened lives. Nate's passion for his calling soars as he discusses his book, "Airborne: At the End of the Earth," an homage to the unsung heroes of remote lands and a clarion call to others inspired by these acts of faith. Whether you're intrigued by the adventures of missionary aviation or moved by the profound impact of this work, prepare for an episode that takes you beyond the familiar and into the heart of where faith meets flight.
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://amzn.to/3csvSsB&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AOvVaw0sgtJfaVk6EEHyp8kvRA3C
https://www.jacksonfamilyministry.com
https://bobslone.com/home/podcast-production/
When Nate Gordon left the comforts of home to become a missionary pilot, little did he know that the skies over Papua, Indonesia would become his second home. With 22 years of service tucked under his wings, Nate joins us on More Than Medicine to recount the thrilling and often unpredictable life of flying to the aid of the most isolated communities on Earth. His stories are not just about piloting small aircraft but about the people whose lives are eternally altered by the power of the Gospel and the helping hands of those willing to reach them.
Listen in as we navigate through tales of daring medical evacuations on treacherous mountain airstrips, the construction of new pathways to connect unreached tribes, and the spiritual transformations that illuminate once-darkened lives. Nate's passion for his calling soars as he discusses his book, "Airborne: At the End of the Earth," an homage to the unsung heroes of remote lands and a clarion call to others inspired by these acts of faith. Whether you're intrigued by the adventures of missionary aviation or moved by the profound impact of this work, prepare for an episode that takes you beyond the familiar and into the heart of where faith meets flight.
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://amzn.to/3csvSsB&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AOvVaw0sgtJfaVk6EEHyp8kvRA3C
https://www.jacksonfamilyministry.com
https://bobslone.com/home/podcast-production/
Welcome to More Than Medicine, where Jesus is more than enough for the ills that plague our culture and our country. Hosted by author and physician, dr Robert Jackson, and his wife Carlotta and daughter Hannah Miller. So listen up, because the doctor is in.
Speaker 2:Welcome to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, dr Robert Jackson, bringing to you biblical insights and stories from the country doctors, rusty, dusty, scrap Buck. Well, I'm delighted to have a very special guest on the phone line with me today. His name is Nate Gordon Nate. Welcome to More Than Medicine.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me, Robert. It's a pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 2:Well, nate, tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and where you come from and where you are right now.
Speaker 3:Sure, Well, I'm one of those odd creatures we call them missionary kid.
Speaker 3:I was actually born in India, grew up in Nepal, went to high school in the Philippines.
Speaker 3:My parents were Bible translators, and then I returned to the mission field.
Speaker 3:As an adult I wasn't smart enough to be a Bible translator, so the gifts they got did give me were in technical areas, so I returned to the mission field as a missionary pilot with an organization called JARS here in the United States, and our partner organization in Indonesia, where I was sent, was called the Yajasi, and so my wife and I had the immense privilege of serving there for 22 years on a team of aviators that was there primarily to support the Bible translation movement in a place called Papua, indonesia, and reaching out to some of the 270 different language groups that are on Papua, and we used light aircraft to access these very difficult to reach, very remote and isolated people groups with the gospel and then with the long term vision of seeing God's word translated into each of their languages.
Speaker 3:And so, after 22 years of doing that, we are now back in the US at the JARS center, which is located just south of Charlotte, where we prepare, amongst many other things we prepare young missionary aviators for service overseas, and I currently have kind of switched gears and I'm doing some writing and also I lead a software development team that develops software that is used by missionary pilots in the cockpits of the airplanes around the world. So that's a thumbnail for you.
Speaker 2:Well now, what's more dangerous driving in Charlotte or landing on the airstrips in Papua?
Speaker 3:It depends on the day. It depends on the day, all right.
Speaker 2:Now tell my listeners exactly what JARS stands for.
Speaker 3:JARS stands for Jungle Aviation and Relay Service, and so we are the last mile. We help you get the last mile to reach the most isolated people on the planet. If you look at the Bible translation worldwide, obviously the low hanging fruit has all been done the major people groups living in very accessible places in the cities and so forth. Most of those people groups have, generally speaking, at least the New Testament, if not the whole Bible, in their language. So those that don't have any scriptures or any translation even started in their languages tend to be very small people groups living in isolation, obviously minority people groups and marginalized within their home countries, host countries and host cultures, and so they're very often very difficult to reach. And so, now more than ever, things like missionary aviation that JARS is all about are critical to getting that last mile, to reaching these people with the gospel and then, of course, leaving them with the translated word of God, which is absolutely essential, obviously, for thriving and ongoing church.
Speaker 2:I understand that. Now tell my people, my listeners, exactly where Papua New Guinea is. I understand that. I know where it is because I've looked at the map and studied, but I guaranteed the majority have no clue where that is.
Speaker 3:Sure Well, the easy way to do this, robert, is to grab a globe. If you're living here in the United States, put your finger on where you're living in the United States and then try to find the farthest place away on the opposite side of the globe and, in all likelihood, you're going to be right in the neighborhood of the island of New Guinea. So literally anywhere I go in the States I can tell people it's about as far away from here as you can.
Speaker 2:So that's true, and how big is the island?
Speaker 3:So yeah, so just a little bit of geography here. The island is called New Guinea. It's the second largest island in the world after Greenland, and yet it's divided into. This goes back to the colonial era. It's divided into split right in half. The North-South line. The right half is what most people are familiar with and I even heard you say it. You said Papua New Guinea. Most people are familiar with that. That is an independent nation. We have an aviation organization there supporting Bible translation there.
Speaker 3:That's not where my wife and I served. We served on the left half or the western half of that island, which is a province. It's the largest province of the country, of Indonesia. So it's very, very different than the rest of Indonesia, which is Asian. This is Melanesian in its flora, fauna, people, everything. So our half of the island is 153,000 square miles, that's like two and a half times the size of the state of North Carolina.
Speaker 3:But with one fundamental difference no roads, essentially no roads. Yes, there's some roads along the coast. The government is valiantly trying to push a road through the center of the island, but the jungle just eats that almost as soon as they lay it down. And so you imagine an incredibly vast place that's got mountains towering to over 16,000 feet. We have a permanent glacier there.
Speaker 3:The only other place in the tropics that's 20 degrees north and south of the equator, the only other place that you have a permanent snow field in the tropics is on the top of Mount Kilimanjad. So we've got these towering mountains, but we also have these vast areas of lowland swamp, and when I say swamp, people think Everglades. It's not like that at all, it's. You have towering rainforest with its roots in the swamp, so it's just impenetrable jungle. But yet when you're on the ground it's really hard to get around as well, and so it's into this environment that God has placed, you know, like I said, 270 different people, groups, and this is what makes aviation so critical to reaching those groups is this kind of geography and, just this year, vastness of the land. So it's about a thousand miles, almost a thousand miles in breadth. That's just our side of the island, not counting the Papua Megidion sign, but the Papua Indonesia side, just south of the equator.
Speaker 2:Now, of those 270 people groups, how many actually have some sort of missionary presence?
Speaker 3:You know that's a great question. The gospel has had, you know, started to penetrate the interior regions of Papua just barely, just barely, before World War II. And so now we've had, you know, obviously, big interruptions for World War II and then missions got started in earnest in the early 50s, you know, after the close of the war, and so much of the island has had some gospel presence at one point or another, but oftentimes that'll be like in a central valley, and so you've got all these little tributaries and rivers and small valleys where there are people living still in isolation, and so they might go to the main central point where there might be a church or there might be a presence, a gospel presence. But there's still quite a few people who have, you know, very little gospel witness, and then another it's just various. In other regions there's been just a tremendous work and a large scale turning to Christ in some tribal groups.
Speaker 2:I got you Now who's mainly there in terms of missionary organizations.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, historically I'm getting in trouble with some of my friends but because I'm going to leave somebody out. But historically the Christian and missionary alliance were huge in opening up the interior, the Unavangalized Fields, mission, rvmu, regions, beyond some of these. Today, wycliffe, who jars, is one of our sister organizations who we serve. Wycliffe Bible Translators has a fairly good presence there. Ethnos 360, who was formerly known as New Tribes missions as a large and growing ministry. There there's been outreaches by Baptist, particularly Australian Baptist, in the past, not so much anymore. Again, I'm going to leave people out. One of the great things is to see the Indonesian church growing in maturity and taking ownership of rightful place and setting out missionaries of their own, and so it's rapidly changing into where there's still many expatriate missionaries like myself and we're still needed, but we're just working in partnership with a maturing church that is catching the vision more and more.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. I like hearing that. Well, tell me what it was like on a daily basis when you were there as a missionary pilot.
Speaker 3:Well, that's an easy answer, because no one day was quite like another. So you know, I'd wake up often a little before 5, 4.30, 4.45 in the morning to head to the airport, get the airplane ready, do the preflight inspection, and then every day's mission seemed like it was different. But our primary reason for being here again was to support Bible translators and other missionaries, so often taking some of them out to their location in the interior, or maybe perhaps taking them supplies, or perhaps going to pick them up and bring them out out to town for a break. Our base is on the coast, coastal area, so generally good weather in the morning, and then the mountains is also generally good weather in the morning. So we fly out to the mountains. Typically was our first flight, because the swampy areas are fogged in in the morning and, just being a picture, we're in the mountains, we're literally landing on the sides of mountains. These are airstrips that the local communities have, in some cases, I hope one of the last airstrips I opened. They had worked 14 years, 14 years by hand to reshape the contours of their mountain side so that we could land a 6,000 pound projectile on it. And it's just amazing because the aircraft is their only link to the outside world. So yeah, we're landing on an upslope, typically up to like 15% upslope. That equates to about 7 degrees of angle, which doesn't sound like much, but actually it's 15% as the percentage. And in the United States the steepest you're allowed to build a road is 7%. So think about the steepest road you've ever driven on Steepest Hill. You've ever taken a car up and double that incline and that's where out there landing airplanes on it. So after landing, usually the aircraft is completely surrounded by the people in the village coming up to you and talking, and sometimes they have needs.
Speaker 3:We do metavaxes, such a huge part of our ministry, so really common for me to show up at a place or get a radio call and have to divert. And of course the most common one would be women in difficult labor, and so often my days plan would change because we had a woman having a difficult labor. We had to go pick her up and take her to the hospital. So I'll tell you one story. Since you're a doctor, you might appreciate this. I was going to fly this particular day for a church conference and so I was again. We talked about the maturing church there, and so these were the local pastors getting together in a central location for a conference. And so my job was to go around all these villages, pick up the pastors and fly them to the central location for the conference. And on my way out to my first stop I got a radio call that they told me this mother had delivered the night before and she was fine. But she said, you know, the baby was fine, but she hadn't delivered the placenta, and so could I come? And I said, sure, I'll cancel everything, I'll come and pick her up right now. Well, they knew about this church conference. The people at this village said no, no, no, go deliver all the pastors where they are, then come pick her. You know, come pick her. I said are you sure she was? They said yeah, she's fine. So I did that.
Speaker 3:So here's maybe four or five hours later, after doing all my running around in the mountains and delivering these pastors to this conference, I show up at this lowland airstrip to pick up the patient, and she is probably 16 years old and all they've got over her is a. This was a very remote location and the women would literally just wear a grass skirt, and so she's laying on a makeshift stretcher that's made by two poles and some rice sacks along between those two poles, and then she's got a rice sack just kind of over her, her waist and upper legs, and so I get her up into the airplane and I get some oxygen on her. She starts crying when I put this mask on her. She's never seen anything like this. She's probably never seen anything manufactured before in her life, and so I pray for her. She doesn't understand my language, I can't communicate with her, and so I'm getting her secured, laying down in the back of my aircraft and I said, okay, so bring the baby over.
Speaker 3:And they kind of gave me a confused look and she reached down underneath that rice skirt, rice sack that was kind of acting as a just protecting her modesty there and rearrange something. And I see this little hand stick out and I took a closer look and here is this infant between you know, just still alive and still connected to the umbilical cord, and has been that way since the night before. And I yell the people. I said why did you tell me this? And they said they're fine, you know. I said how long has this been? They said since, whatever it was, I had a really guess of the eight o'clock the night before and I had just had my first spore and I remember them telling us that it's so critical that the newborn get nutrition almost immediately as soon as it's born. So I said, well, let's, we got to get the baby up, up to mom so he can nurse. And I said, can't, the cord is too short.
Speaker 3:And so I contemplated for a minute Robert, you'll be a guest of pulling out my Swiss Army knife and cutting that cord and getting that little one up up to its mom so it can nurse. But I realized that I was just 45 minutes from home, and so I just said I'll call ahead and love nurses there and they can take care of it right away. So, yeah, that's just one of you know. Again, I woke up that morning thinking I'm going to help get pastors to a conference and this ended up being on my plate. But it's also these kinds of things that that you know just are what are burned into my memory of how incredible it was to have a front row seat to what God was doing and to be his hands and feet to the very least of these. Yes, yes, this was a woman who, in her culture, was a nothing, and yet here we were, using a very expensive airplane and doing everything in our power to save her and her precious little son's life.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 3:And so I'll never forget, because the next day after I got her out, flew her out successfully, I flew low, got her on oxygen, got her out to a clinic where they took care of her, and the next morning I went by on my way to work just to see how she was doing. So here I am, in her possible room. I can't say anything to her. She can't say anything to me, can't communicate, but as I leave she just looks at me right in the eyes and there was this immense amount of communication where you could tell that we as an organization, with these aircraft and pilots, had shown her her worth in the sight of God. That's right. There was something in that look that just just went right to my core. I'll never forget as long as I live, and it's one of those richer awards of being in a place where God could use us in those ways.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, now there's another story in your book. Now we go get to the book. In a minute I'm gonna tell all the folks about your book. But in your book you told a story about a man who was previously a warrior, almost cannibalistic, who became an evangelist. And am I correct in saying that?
Speaker 3:Well, there's a number of folks like that, so I'm not exactly sure which story precisely yours Just pick one because I find those stories fascinating.
Speaker 2:The transformation of God's grace in these people's lives is just overwhelming to me. Yeah so just pick one and share one of those.
Speaker 3:Sure, I'll try to be as quick as I can about the one that does just pop into my mind. And you know, you go over there as a missionary, as a technically professional Christian right, and you believe the gospel, yeah, if you've seen it transform your own life, but then to see it transform lives that are just so deep in the darkness, it just it takes your faith to this different level. So I was helping a couple of young missionary families with ethnos 360. They were going into a, at this point, essentially a completely unreached people group called the Moi and they needed to find a place where they could allocate in this tribal group and it needed to be a place where they could build an airstrip so they could get air service. So I went in on the first helicopter to help them find this airstrip site.
Speaker 3:So at one point in this I'm condensing all of this I'm on this ridge with two of these missionary men and I was trying to get a satellite fix on my hand-held GPS and so I'd sent those guys ahead cutting a kind of a path through the forest, because we were measuring every 15-20 meters the slope of the land, the width, how you know. Could we cut down these trees and turn this into a runway. That's our basic quest. So those guys are disappeared, they're out of sight in the jungle, and I had found this little opening in the rainforest canopy where I thought I could might be able to get a GPS fix just to help locate this on a map. Later on, and you know, I had one of those sensations that I was not alone and.
Speaker 3:I turned around and I'm looking into the eyes of a Moi warrior and of course he's armed to the teeth, but I judged his intentions to be just fine. But of course I knew one word in his language, which was the greeting, that's Ababa. And I knew how to shake hands. They shake hands in a very unique way, and so I stuck out my hand and said Ababa, and we shook in their way, which snaps our knuckles together, and he looked back at me and said Ababa. So now I'm staring at him, I'm like I don't know what to do, but I'm.
Speaker 3:My parents are from the northeast and we're some of those weird people who absolutely love black licorice, and my mom had sent me this package in the previous months with some good and plenty candy which is licorice candy, and I had some in my in my fanny pack that I had around my waist in a Ziploc bag. So I stuck my hand in there, not knowing what else to do, pulled out a handful of licorice and held it out and, like, motioned him to hold out his hand, which he did, put some in there. He just stood there staring at it. He had no idea what to do with it. So I demonstrate I threw some of this in my mouth. I started chewing, very obviously, so he did the same. And here I'm thinking you know, the world is divided Squarily in half between those who absolutely love licorice and those who absolutely hate licorice, and I'm realizing this could go really really good so.
Speaker 3:Next thing. I know he's just sticking out his hand, thrusting it, saying give me more. And so was that a moment that I knew that I had found a brother. His name was Piatto and I Didn't know at that time that I was looking into the eyes of a killer.
Speaker 3:Oh really, I didn't know that he would kill again after that meeting, but I also didn't know, robert, that I was looking into the eyes of the one who would become the very first believer amongst the boy. Wow, I was looking into the eyes of my future brother in Christ. And so cut to the chase, we're gonna jump bunch of years forward. The airstrip spin built. The missionaries have been living amongst the people, learning the language, desperately trying to get to the point where they can share the gospel in this language that that takes a fairly high level of master in language to share spiritual truths. They're finally getting really close.
Speaker 3:Piatto, like most boy men, had multiple wives, and one of his wives had given birth To a child that was very sick. And so Steve, one of the missionaries amongst the Moy, and his wife Carolyn were ministering to this little baby, trying to keep it alive. But one morning Steve woke up early, have his devotions any, and he heard wailing coming from down the mountain ways. And it was Piatto's little hamlet where he had his huts. And Steve knew instinctively what had happened that that little baby had passed away in the night.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:So he threw on his shoes. He runs down there to that hamlet to just Come upon this absolutely unreal scene of Piatto finishing off one of his wives with an axe. And the reason he was doing that was because he was convinced living in an animistic worldview that One of his wives had put a curse on the baby of one of his other wives Out of jealousy and that's why that baby had died. And so he was in his fury and his sadness and his rage. He was murdering one of his wives. In that moment Steve somehow found the presence of mine. It was full of the Holy Spirit and was able to sit down with Piatto and slowly unpack the gospel of Jesus Christ to a person who just committed murder. And, and literally in the minutes after committing murder, piatto comes to understand his guilt before holy God and how desperate he wanted to be free from this. And he gave his life to Christ and became the very first believer amongst the mowing.
Speaker 3:The great part of the story to Robert is just this past January. This the events Were telling you started in 1999. I met Piatto in 1999, probably came to know the Lord about three to four years later, it's my guess. I don't have that timeline quite right, but Steve and Carolyn and her co-workers labored on until just this past January 2024, they were able to give the Moai people the New Testament and the Moai language, and now there's a thriving church there and they have God's word, just like you and I do, for that church to grow, and so this is-.
Speaker 2:Glory, hallelujah glory, amen.
Speaker 3:And you know, piazza is just one of the example. They were all living like this. And so to see that kind of transformation, it just it tells you. You know, if the gospel can reach somebody like Piatto, it can reach anybody. And it is that powerful. It does change cannibals, killers, into men and women of peace, men and women of prayer.
Speaker 2:No, I hear you, brother, I hear you. Now should I start carrying black licorice in my pocket more, there you go.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 3:I cannot eat a piece of licorice without thinking of Piatto and meeting him on that lonely ridgeline years ago.
Speaker 2:My wife says you can reach the whole world with banana nut bread and the gospel. I'm gonna have to tell her no, daughter, it's black licorice. There you go. All right, well, I wanna tell my listeners about your book. The book is entitled Airborn to the Ends of the Earth. It's by Nate Gordon and I just read it. It was fascinating, nate. I promise you I couldn't put it down. I read it every night for an hour until I was done. And now is it fascinating, but it was heartwarming, it was heart-rending, it was convicting. But I was so impressed with the power of the gospel to transform lives and so tell my folks how they can get ahold of a copy of your book.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, thank you so much. I'm so glad you enjoyed it, robert. Yeah, it's called Airborn at the End of the Earth, and the easiest place is to get it on Amazon. Airborn at the End of the Earth on Amazon is how it's mostly distributed, so that'd be the way to get it.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, I encourage my listeners to get a copy of it. The chapters are only two or three pages long. Most of them it's full of excellent photography of the people there and how they live the landing on the airstrips. I mean, I'm just holding onto the edge of my bed watching those airplanes come in on those small airstrips and I'm thinking, oh, my goodness, is he going to make it? And so it's fascinating reading and the pictures are amazing. And now, how about jars? Now jungle aviation and relay services. Did I say that right?
Speaker 3:You did.
Speaker 2:Now folks want to find out more about jars. How would they do that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, let me just preface this. I wrote the book for three reasons. The first was that God would be glorified.
Speaker 3:People would put down the book and just go we have an amazing God and an amazing gospel, just like you said, that's capable of transforming lives in the most amazing ways.
Speaker 3:The second part of the reason I wrote the book was to shine a spotlight on people like Piata, whose faith just surpassed my own in so many ways, these anonymous kings and queens in the kingdom of God who are just living in such remote places. I wanted to kind of shine a spotlight on those. And then the third reason was we really need to have more people join us in the effort to reach the ends of the earth, and, in particular, our part of the ministry is in the technical part and in specific aviation. We need young missionary aviators, pilots, mechanics, avionics technicians, software developers. We need these kinds of people to join us, and so that's why we love for any of your listeners who are at all interested first to read the book, but then also to connect with us at JARS, and the best way to do that is just throw our website and it's JARS. It's got two A's J-A-A-R-S dot org.
Speaker 2:And your headquarters is located where?
Speaker 3:It's in Wax on North Carolina. It's just south of Charlotte.
Speaker 2:I got you and I've never been to visit, but I'm determined I'm going to come visit you guys and just check out the whole headquarters. I've always been fascinated by what you do and I think I'm going to have to come pay a visit.
Speaker 3:We're looking forward to it. I'll hold you to it.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, you're listening to More Than Medicine. My guest today is Nate Gordon, the author of Airborne. Is it to the ends of the earth? It's at the end of the earth. At the end of the earth, excellent, excellent, all right, you're listening to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, dr Robert Jackson.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this edition of More Than Medicine. For more information about the Jackson Family Ministry, dr Jackson's book, or to schedule a speaking engagement, go to their Facebook page, instagram or their web page at JacksonFamilyMinistrycom. This podcast is produced by Bob Sloan Audio Production at bobsloancom.