The Real America Project
The Real America Project brings you powerful, personal conversations with creatives, entrepreneurs, community builders, and go-getters from diverse backgrounds. Hosted by Eldon Palmer, each episode dives into honest stories of resilience, reinvention, purpose, and passion—stories that resonate far beyond geography.
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The Real America Project
When Hope Sounds Like An Airplane
A river can be a runway if you bring the right wings. We sit with Case Visser from Samaritan Aviation to share how a Cessna 206 on floats turns the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea into a lifeline for mothers in distress, snakebite victims, and kids with traumatic injuries. What would take days by canoe becomes 45 minutes by air, and that time delta is the thin line between loss and life.
Case traces his path from West Michigan HVAC tech to mission pilot and mechanic, showing why systems knowledge matters when your landing strip is full of hidden logs, fishing nets, and fast water. We break down how single-pilot operations work with Level One triage, when an OB nurse rides along, and why helicopters—while capable—are too costly to make free care sustainable. Along the way we dig into the quiet backbone of the mission: medicine delivery to 40 outposts, vaccine campaigns that halted polio outbreaks, and national staff who visit patients daily to meet physical and spiritual needs in a hospital without call buttons.
You’ll hear unforgettable stories: a boy with a compound fracture spared an eight-hour ordeal, a spear injury that turns into a lesson about forgiveness, and a boar attack that forces hard decisions in the field. We talk recruitment—commercial instrument pilots, A&P mechanics, and a medical director—as Samaritan opens a second base to serve villages that haven’t seen a nurse in years. We also get personal about thriving on mission: language learning, scratch-cooked meals from market staples, decompression on the ocean, and building a legacy of service that your kids can see.
If you care about humanitarian aviation, global health, and faith in action, this conversation brings the texture, the procedures, and the heart. Fuel a flight, share the story, or consider joining the team. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: what moment from this conversation will you remember tomorrow?
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You get to fly over the jungles and back to my hero complex.
Case Visser:You get to save people.
Eldon Palmer:Hey guys, welcome back. Today we have Case Visser with Samaritan Aviation. He's here to talk a little bit about what they're doing and share some of his story. So, Case, welcome.
Case Visser:Glad to be here. Thanks, Elton.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah, good to have you. Before we get started, I actually have a little something for you, a little gift. So we're starting to give some gifts here. So here's a little, I don't even know if you'll use it, but you can have a take a quick peek.
Case Visser:Let's see here. We've got ooh, Herman's Boy right here, local in Rockford. My wife's gonna love that.
Eldon Palmer:I thought maybe, um, and I don't know too many people that don't drink coffee.
Case Visser:Oh, Papua New Guinea Perosa, yeah, Papua New Guinea. We had uh this stuff while we were over in Papua New Guinea.
Eldon Palmer:I kind of figured so they happen to have it at Hermann's Boy. I was a little surprised. I asked if they had anything, but they have a lot of cool stuff there.
Case Visser:So there we go. Yeah, they grow a lot of coffee, especially up in the highlands uh where we used to serve.
Eldon Palmer:Really? I didn't know there were highlands there.
Case Visser:Yeah, we serve down on the river. Yeah, uh, not a lot of coffee that I saw down in the river, yeah, but there are a 14,000-foot mountain range to the middle of the country. Okay, and my understanding is that's where a lot of the coffee in Papua New Guinea is grown.
Eldon Palmer:Very cool.
Case Visser:Interesting little tidbit on that one is where we were from in Papua New Guinea, uh, the coffee you would drink was uh instant. They'd boil water. So for yeah, you come over here and everybody gets you, you know, Papua New Guinea really good coffee. And I'm like, man, I was there. We drink instant coffee.
Eldon Palmer:Well, that's kind of life of uh you know missionary work. All right, so let's go back to um I guess little case. Um you're a pretty tall guy. So what where where'd you grow up? Where are you from? What's your backstory?
Case Visser:Yeah, I'm West Michigan guy. So Marne, Michigan, Marn, Coopersville. Uh went to Coopersville High School, and my parents and two sisters, yeah, we've been local for a long time. I worked with my dad in a heating and cooling business that he started, Visser Heating and Cooling.
Eldon Palmer:Okay.
Case Visser:For 16 years, I was with him. So we did that for 16 years until God called uh my wife and I, our family with our four kids into missions aviation.
Eldon Palmer:Okay. Now, 16, 16, you don't need old enough to have done some, had a career for 16 years. So um, yeah, I guess tell us about why what drew you into mission aviation?
Case Visser:Yeah, after doing heating and cooling for 16 years, I started hearing these stories about a need for people to fly airplanes in very remote parts of the world where there was a lot of need, a lot of help that could be done by somebody that was capable but more so willing to get the training uh to get good at it and go over there and serve. So I signed up for the school that I went to as a student. I was a student at SMAT. They got a one-year maintenance program and a one-year pilot program. And in the process of taking the classes, getting educated to learn how to work on airplanes, fly airplanes, I was introduced to Samaritan Aviation, the organization that we eventually joined and I flew air ambulances with in Papua, New Guinea. So yeah, it was one step at a time. We never had the full picture laid out in front of us, but we just said we're willing, and we started taking one step at a time. And the next thing you know, I'm flying ambulances on the rivers in Papua New Guinea.
Eldon Palmer:That's pretty crazy. Um, so I have a little insight to that because I I went to a movie that I was invited to, which is kind of where we met, and it talked about what what they do, and I was just shocked at some of the stuff that I saw there. Um, I guess I'm gonna tease that though, before we get into that. Like what why did you even go into um the aviation in general? Like you left the the heating and cooling not exciting enough, or um just looking for a different adventure, or just kind of looking to to do something different.
Case Visser:What yeah? I mean, I always grew up on motorcycles and snowmobiles and boats. If it burned gas, we liked to do it uh the way the way my dad was. And you know, our heating and cooling company was mostly service driven. Okay. So working on stuff with my hands, fixing stuff. My favorite service calls we'd go on were the ones on nights and weekends. I got a little bit of a hero complex. Yeah. So I always I always liked uh going in and saving the day, even in the heating and cooling world. Okay. So to get to aviation, uh, I was interested in becoming a pilot, and I'm a bit Dutch and cheap. So I'd do the math a bunch of times and just couldn't for myself justify the costs of going into aviation to, as we say, burn holes in the sky. Yeah, and there was no reason to get a plane for our small business. Yeah. So it was an interest I had for a while, but always just kind of set it aside saying, nah, that doesn't make sense. Um, as we got further down the road, heard about how you can use aviation skills for helping people, for saving lives, for uh introducing them to the gospel, introducing them to Jesus. And there was not one time where I said, Oh, the light went on, that's what God wants us to do. It was more just becoming aware of the need and saying, okay, we're willing to do that, and taking the next step to prepare yourself to fill that need.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah. So the mechanic work was sort of the entry level into working on planes. And then now, is part of the mechanic training for a plane, is that you know you have to learn to fly too, or is that sort of like just a precursor to get around the planes and then you start taking the pile of lessons?
Case Visser:Yeah, so what's interesting is in the heating and cooling world, now you do have to fix things right, but there's a lot of room to figure out how you want to fix it. In aviation, you fix it how the airplane manufacturer tells you to fix it. So in aviation maintenance, there's a lot more that has to do with yes, maybe diagnosing a problem, but you will find the book, find in the book how to do what you're supposed to do and follow it precisely. I'm not the greatest at that because of my heating and cooling background. But for missionary pilots, they will be a lot better pilot when they understand the systems that are inside the plane. So we will train them as mechanics so that they understand the system so that when they're flying, when they're having a problem with one of the systems, they can almost picture that part in their head and make adjustments, change course, do what they have to do to still be safe. We train mechanics and pilots at the school. Uh, we have about 30 mechanics at any given point in our school, and we usually have about six pilots. So we actually train way more mechanics than pilots. Uh, you could say they're in higher demand.
Eldon Palmer:Sure.
Case Visser:Being a pilot, there's that bit of a romantic. You get to fly over the jungles and back to my hero complex. You get to save people being a pilot. Being a mechanic, you're making that a possibility for the organization. You're the one making the airplane safe. So it's actually a higher demand field to be a mechanic. You just don't get the romantic part of flying.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah, it makes uh makes a lot of sense. So it does make a lot of sense, especially when after what I saw in uh the videos from Papua, uh, is you're so far out. Like if it's just a mechanic, you're not you're not like flying local 30 minutes to your next spot. It looks like that stuff's hundreds of miles um away sometimes to the ambulance, or you're out in the middle of nowhere. Um, I mean, it that sure certainly makes sense on why you would want to know the systems. When I did go to your website, they had um I see you're looking for people um looking for more pilots, more mechanics, more of that at Samaritan.
Case Visser:Yeah, we really need pilots and mechanics. Pilot mechanics are what we historically hired. That was like me. I was both a pilot and a mechanic. We have four pilots in country that fly regularly for us right now. And we really could stand to hire two to four more as we're adding a base of operations. So the level of help, the level of assistance we're given to the people of Papua New Guinea is going to go way up. We need the pilots to be able to fly those missions. In order to keep their airplanes safe, we actually need mechanics as well, so that the pilots aren't always doing all the mechanicking work when they're supposed to be out flying the airplane. So, yeah, we need to hire mechanics, we need to hire pilots. We also have other positions available. We need a medical director at the second base. So somebody with medical expertise, they'll answer the cell phone and triage what's going on with the patient, and then they'll call us pilots. The pilots don't really know that much about medical. I mean, we learn a lot while you're driving an ambulance, but uh the medical director triages, tells us what to do. We go pick up the patient, bring them back to the hospital. So, yeah, there's a lot of positions that if people want to work with Samaritan Aviation, it's a great way to use your life uh to help others to glorify God. And there's a lot of different avenues of service with Samaritan Aviation.
Eldon Palmer:It looked pretty mean. If you're looking for adventure too, I don't think there's any lack of that based on what I saw. Um, I'm sure there's plenty of boring times, but it looks like there's plenty of adventure.
Case Visser:Yeah, if anything, the problem is probably too much adventure. Uh, we actually, you know, you're flying an ambulance, so you see a lot of stuff I say people shouldn't have to see. Smaritan Aviation does a really good job of caring for our people, not just the pilots, the mechanics, the medical directors, but the families that go with as well. So we do stuff like every six months, they take a two-week uh vacation, a two-week break just to get away. We actually have a boat in our main base. We can go out in the ocean uh fishing. So a lot of Saturday mornings from say 5:30 a.m. to 9 a.m., a group of people will go out and catch some mackerel and some wahoo and just get in out on the ocean away from people where it's calm uh and decompress and relax. So uh a lot of it is trying to calm down and take a break from what we do over there. Um, what we say with Smartton Aviation is we want people that can thrive serving with us. We don't want them to just survive, we want them to thrive. So there's a lot of stuff we do to make sure our staff thrives in what they do.
Eldon Palmer:So let's rewind again a little bit more. We got kind of in in some details, but can you just explain the overall the overall mission in a little bit more detail? Like, what's it look like? Um what's the mission? Like if somebody were to start, say, as a pilot or whatever, what would that what would what's that story look like?
Case Visser:Yeah, Samaritan Aviation operates in Papua New Guinea, that's just north of Australia, second largest island in the world. The people we serve live anywhere from one day to about five days from the only hospital in the region. If they're closer than that one day out, they can just take the road. So they don't need us. So we start at about one day out. Um, and one day to five days, they would take a boat down a river. There's a 700-mile river, and they would have to take that boat down the river, sleep at night, and now travel another day. If you have a life-threatening situation, whether it's bit by a venomous snake, about 30% of the flights we do for the medical side are picking up pregnancy related. So mothers that are hemorrhaging, they're continuing to bleed, or maybe they've been in labor for two days. So we will fly out, pick them up. It's usually about an hour or a 45-minute flight to get them back to the hospital where we can save their life. And then back at the hospital, we have a staff of nationals that go in every weekday. We say daily, uh, just to make sure both their physical needs are being met. There's no nurse button at this hospital normally. Uh, so making sure their physical needs are being met as well, but also their spiritual needs. These people are, as we said, days from home, the people they know, um, and there's not people there to check on them, care for them. So our national staff goes in daily just to talk with them, pray with them, just to be a friend as they're going through something that's uh very difficult situation. So, yeah, our pilots do the flying, the mechanics keep the planes going. Um, and that's the mission of what we do. Uh, the name is Samaritan Aviation. So that story Jesus tells in the New Testament of the Good Samaritan. If you're familiar with that one, we live out that story of the Good Samaritan. We just don't have a donkey, we have a 206 float plane.
Eldon Palmer:Yes. So uh who is who's on the plane? Is it just you? Do you have like a medical tech? Um, what's that look like? Just take us through, you know, somebody has a medical emergency. Um, how do they get a hold of you? And then walk us through that process.
Case Visser:Yeah, generally we're what we call single pilot operations. So usually it's just the pilot, and then depending on the level of emergency, um, we have one, two, and three. Okay, if it's uh level one, we have to be up in the air within 35 minutes, is what we set for ourselves to be picking up that patient. Level ones, we will bring a nurse. Uh, if it's pregnancy related level one, we bring an OB specialist from the hospital with us. So if it's a critical patient, we will have a nurse type person on the plane with us. They're responsible for the medical aspect. The pilot's responsible for getting the plane there. And obviously, we'll help them load, we'll deal with the medical side at their instruction. Um, and then we're responsible for getting them back to our base at WeWAC. So a nurse will be with us, and then us, we pick up the patient. So let's say a typical one is a pregnancy related. So we fly out, we'll pick up the pregnant mother, um, and then usually there'll be a family member or a caregiver that comes to the hospital. Again, your days away. So that caregiver will often sleep in the hospital with the patient, um, help get them their food, their needs. So it'll be the pilot, the medical staff person, the patient, and then the patient's caregiver family member. So typically it's four people in the airplane uh when we're coming back into town.
Eldon Palmer:So what you you know, you're talking about a float plane. Why are you in a float plane versus you know, like a some other sort of plane?
Case Visser:Yeah, the area we work has what they call the Seepik River, or the name of it's the Seepik River. It's a river that's 700 miles of zigzags uh through a river valley in Papua New Guinea. It's about 150 miles from where it starts at the ocean until where it gets too shallow for us to fly any further up it with rocks and stuff. So, in that 150 miles, you got 700 miles of zigzaggy river, and we can land on most of that. So there's about 80 different landing sites that we will land at that serve about 120 different villages included in that, or there's some different lakes and pockets. So the float plane is perfect. We don't have to maintain runways. Um, helicopters are very expensive, um, usually three to four times as expensive to operate as an airplane, and the cost would be pretty prohibitive for what we do. So, to be able to have a 700-mile runway and essentially land wherever we want, it just works really well for our operations.
Eldon Palmer:So, landing in rivers, um, what what are some of the odd things you come across? Like it's gotta be unpredictable. These are, I think one thing that I really noticed from the movie is that I mean, this is this is remote. This is um, I mean, you got like tribes, you got, I mean, yeah, national geographic type stuff. Like the people here, it's not like they have um you know high-tech kind of how do they call you even?
Case Visser:Yeah, most of the people we serve don't have electricity. Uh, it's very rural living. Uh, they might have a solar panel hooked up to an old car battery so that they could say uh have a light at night or charge a phone. But even the medical aid outposts we serve often don't have electricity. Some of them will have to have a refrigerator for their medicines, and a lot of times they're solar powered refrigerators. So even the medical clinics we work at often don't have electricity. But with that said, uh, all up and down the river, uh, they have cell towers. It'd be interesting to visit. I'm like, are they they got a generator running at the base of every cell tower? Um, I don't exactly know how that works, but about 80% of the villages, or you could say the population of about 300,000 people that we serve in the CPIC, okay, have some sort of cell coverage. Okay. Um, so they will call us on the cell phone, uh, we'll answer it and we'll go out. There is pockets where they don't have cell coverage. Some of the villages have HF radios if you're into radio type stuff. Sometimes they'll have to go a half hour down the river. You know, we'll hear stories of somebody's gotta uh run a couple miles and climb a coconut tree because they know where they can get cell coverage, and then they'll call us from that spot. But yeah, they'll give us a shout on the cell phone and we go pick them up. Yeah, the the rivers are very um rural, you could say rugged. Um, the depth of the water doesn't tend to be a problem, but it's very milky, it's very dark colored, so you can't see much below, let's say, four inches into the water. So one of the things we're always looking for is logs or stumps or what's floating down the river. At almost any given point, there's usually a band of debris, uh, vegetation, stuff like that. So we have to make sure we land in a clear spot of the river. About 25% of the time, it's so dense with the forest, with the trees, we can't pull our airplane up to pick people up. So about 25% of the time, they'll actually bring a boat out to us and we'll load the patient from their boat right onto the float of the airplane into the airplane because it's so remote, so rugged that you can't even pull the airplane up to the side. They have to bring the patient out to you in the middle of the river.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah. Now, are these um they kind of have modern boats? Are they like metal boats? Are they wood boats? What are they yeah?
Case Visser:I'd say a little bit of both. The standard is a dugout canoe picture 30, 40 foot long. So uh great big, let's say four foot diameter tree. They spend a lot of time digging it out, um, but then they put an outboard motor on the back. No way, yeah. So um they would get in one of these dugout canoes with an outboard motor that uh they maybe do 15 mile an hour. They don't exactly plane out like a boat, right? Um, and they might be a hundred miles down the river in that thing for a day, and then you sleep at night, and it's too dangerous. You you wouldn't want to travel down the river at night, it's pitch black. Um, so then they're gonna do that another day. So that's that's the standard that canoe they come out to us with is great big long, you know, 30-foot long dugout canoe with an outboard. They also do have um fiberglass boats, so occasionally it'll be a fiberglass boat with an outboard motor on it. I think part of that is there's various uh mission organizations, um, non-government organizations, these medical aid outposts we pick people up from. There's about 40 medical aid outposts on the river. Um, they're not hospitals, but they have some um medicines um and stuff like that that can help and minor issues. A lot of those will have a boat. And picture if they got to bring somebody into town, if it's not a rush, if four days later they can get to town, they'll take their boat and bring it down into town. But if you've got a mom that's losing a baby and there isn't four days, um, those are the type of calls we get.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah, that's I mean, if you got to drive a boat like that four days anyways, you would think it would be pretty important.
Case Visser:Exactly.
Eldon Palmer:Um, so I I could definitely see the value there. Float plane makes sense. So, what about critters? Are there like critters there you gotta worry about? Like, I think I don't I don't know, is this like Florida? It's wild, right?
Case Visser:Yeah, look over your shoulder. So, what's interesting is our planes are very loud as a pilot. I never saw any animals. Um, you know, we we land the plane and it's so loud everything scatters. Yeah, there was one day we were delivering medicine way out to a place called the May River and we landed, it was hot, it was towards the end of the day for me. Um, there was, I don't know, 40, 50 people around, 20 kids. And a lot of times when we're delivering medicine, that's another thing we'll do. Uh, we'll stop and we'll chat with the people for a half hour, an hour. Um, it's nice to build that relationship with them. That's part of why we're there is to just introduce them to Jesus, tell them God loves you. Uh, so it's nice to do that. Well, this particular day, I was not in a chatting kind of mood. So I looked around, there's a bunch of kids, and I started asking questions. Hey, do you guys swim in the river? Yeah, yeah, we do. Um, and it was hot. I said, Want what do you want to race? So I set up a race to swim across the river. Actually, what they ended up doing is we all swam across and they said on your market set, go. And we swam back.
Eldon Palmer:Okay.
Case Visser:Uh a little bit later, after we got back, I asked, I was like, Hey, are there like crocodiles or alligators in this river? And they said, Oh yeah. Oh man, why did you tell me that ahead of time? But no, the airplane chased them away. There are villages I've been in that if the airplane's shut down and it's been a while, um, you'll see their um dogs or um different birds that they might have or pigs. Um, but yeah, as far as wild animals, we don't see that as often because our airplane's so loud.
Eldon Palmer:Makes sense. Yeah, man, it's so interesting to me. It's uh, you know, back when I was a kid, I was I'd my grandma had this huge collection of National Geographic stuff. And so it was always fun to look at. And frankly, I didn't even I haven't thought about that in a while until I saw the movie and realized that there are still people that that live like that. Like we drive our cars and wander around and you know, go to the urgent care, the hospital, or and just go to Meyer local store and pick up medicine and things, and uh, we really take that for granted. And when I saw that, I just it just kind of reminded me that wait a second, there's a whole whole nother world out there. Um, that and they those people need help. Yeah. Um so it was super interesting to me.
Case Visser:Yeah, what I was struck with when we moved there is we lived in a town that had let's say 20,000 people, a couple hardware stores, a couple grocery stores. Um, that town is connected to the river by a road that takes six hours to get down. Um, and you can pay somebody to take you down that road in a taxi, too dangerous to go at night. Um, once you get to the river, yeah, you're a couple days. So trade happens. There's a trade language that pretty much all the people, at least that we serve in Papua Nigue, know called talkpis or pigeon.
Eldon Palmer:Okay.
Case Visser:So these villages that are down the river, they have ability to be connected to the developed or the industrialized world, if you want to phrase it that way. But it's it's far distances and it's difficult. Um, I tell people a lot of times, the people that are living there, um, if you're from Michigan like me, sometimes we'll go camping. And uh, I'm not talking fifth wheel with air conditioning, you know, because that happens too. But if you go rustic camping, um, you're out in the woods, you brought your food with you. Um, we'll do it for fun. Hey, look at we're surviving, right? Um, these people, that's kind of their life. They're three degrees off the equator. Um, so food grows year round. Okay. Interesting point if you didn't know, but hurricanes don't go by the equator, they don't cross it. Oh there's not like a hurricane bad weather situation. So you can grow food year round. They live on the river, so there's fishing. Uh, one of the other reasons we don't see a lot of wild animals is I mean, you could hunt for your food too, and the animals don't want to be dinner. Um, so they'll stay away a little bit. Yeah, but um, so if you picture it kind of like a rustic camping, some of the villages I were was in, they're very beautiful on the river. It's a beautiful country. There's a disconnect, though, between that call it rustic lifestyle and how would you enter the industrialized type world. Some of these villages we serve don't have schools in them yet. Um, some of the villages they do have schools, um, and they're learning not just pigeon, the trade language, but English is actually the national language there. Oh, really? So some of the kids in these areas, they're learning English because if you want to move into some of the cities in Papua New Guinea, often you'll need to know English for that. So if you picture people that are living a lifestyle that's kind of like a camping rustic situation, until you have a big problem, you know, it's life for them. They're different. They they might have been to town, they've seen industrialization, but uh, if they were to move into town being less educated, um, they're not gonna be able to get a good job, they're gonna live in a really rough neighborhood. It's actually gonna be a lot tougher life. So some of the people we work with, the families are moving into towns, um, but there's a generation or two or three often that will happen where it's actually a rougher life until your family gets established in a developed world. So it's this balance. So when they live out in that rustic area and you have a medical problem, yeah, well, what do you do? And uh there was nothing before Samaritan Aviation, uh, there was nothing you could do. You'd you'd just have to die or you'd have to suffer. So that's why the organization was founded in 2000. We started flights in 2015 um to bridge that gap between um we don't have medical services, uh, especially for big emergencies, um, so that these people that are um living out there uh don't have to die when medical emergencies come up.
Eldon Palmer:So 10 years, um, do you have any idea what the stats are on how many people you've helped, or maybe even just an average daily or weekly or monthly?
Case Visser:Yeah, and it's changed. We've been flying since 2010. So it's been 15 years we've been flying. I believe the back of my card said 3,600 flights. I have been with Samaritan basically since 2022. Okay, so the last three years. Those last three years were averaging anywhere from 150 of these life flights, so medical emergency type flights, to I think I heard last year it was over 370. So that's you know, averaging it out more than one a day. Yeah. Um, and the numbers keep going up. Partially the population's going up, partially we have more planes, we have more people there to be able to do these flights. So um in a geographic area that we serve about 300,000 people. If I do really rough math, I mean, this is really rough math. Um, we have served about 3,000 people, 2,500. Um, you do some funny math there and you're going, you know, that's almost 1% of the population that we've helped with these medical flights. It's a little it's probably closer to a half a percent, but when you're talking uh pregnancy, that's that's two people. Your percentages go up. So, you know, in your community, if you were to look around and say, has one out of every hundred people been in the ambulance? Well, where we serve, it's that high of number. So the people are very, very appreciative uh that we're there, that we're helping them of the work we do.
Eldon Palmer:That's great. So do you you said you when you're flying there, sometimes you have some time. Um, are there non-emergency flights or like uh like just like hey, getting the awareness out to the communities that, hey, look, we're here.
Case Visser:Yeah. Um, I'm gonna come right back to that. Our new base that we're starting on the south coast of the island. Um, those flights were we got a house, we got a dock, we're trying to get that established. A lot of the flights down there are less emergency. It's gonna be medicine delivery, it's actually gonna be um medical exploration. Uh, some of these villages have not seen a nurse for 10 years. Wow. You can imagine that the people in the village. So those ones will be a lot less medical emergency until we get the communications line established. I don't think they have cell phones down there. So we're gonna have to figure out do we get uh you know satellite internet set up for them, something like that. Um, up in the north where we're at, about a third, I think, is where we're at now, somewhere around there of our flights are medicine delivery flights. So the government has a big medical medicine store. Okay, um, it's hard to get that medicine four days down the river. Is it gonna get there? Rains often, you know, raining on medicine. Um, so we bring that medicine out. So those are what I'd call a non-emergency flight where we bring the medicine out. When we do that, usually we'll shut the plane off, unload, you know, it might be 300 pounds, 400 pounds of medicine that we're bringing to these eight outposts. Um, and then we'll have a chance to talk with the people. Hey, how are you doing? Uh, what are the needs in the community? Um, and just build relationships that way. Now, some of those flights turn into emergencies. One of the flights I was on, we delivered the medicine to a village and cell phone rang, and 30 miles down the river, there was a guy that um had a I'll say assault type trauma. Um, he um he had a fishing spear sticking out of his face. Oh my! So we left what was just a routine medical delivery flight and pulled up into another community um where a guy had uh a fishing spear that was kind of impaled in his face. And uh they had to surgically remove it because picture about 12 kind of individual barbs that you'd stab a fish with in the river. Um, but all those barbs were stuck into his you know, bones and face and skull. So uh we brought him back to the hospital. Um, so that was a tough one. Um uh that guy's name was Donovan. And uh, you know, part of what we do there is to introduce people to Jesus, but also uh, you know, just be a gospel light to him. Donovan had got drunk and threw the spirit his dad. Um when you're drunk, you're not the best at stuff, right? I don't fly the plane drunk. Well, I don't get drunk to begin with, right? But um uh he missed. His dad threw it back and he didn't miss. Uh so they went to the hospital when I was at the hospital. Um, I visited Donovan over the next couple days, um, and he pretty much was healed up. I'm not sure one of his eyes totally works anymore. Yeah, um, because how that went down. But I was able to talk to Donovan, uh, A about getting drunk, but uh B, hey Donovan, are you gonna be able to forgive your dad for spearing you in the face? Um, and we talked about what forgiveness looks like and how we can forgive people because Christ forgave us. Um and Donovan said, Yeah, I I already forgave my dad. I know I was in the wrong. Um, and uh I forgave my dad for what he did to me. So that's that's part of the ministry of what we do. That's what our national staff does on a daily basis is um just talk through situations with the patients um to be their friend, but also help them learn, help them learn from some of the situations they got themselves in.
Eldon Palmer:Now you say national staff, are those nationals like uh local people?
Case Visser:Yeah, yeah. Uh a lot of times people would say natives, right? And I'm like, I I I don't necessarily like that word. Um, you know, there's 300,000 people we serve in our area. Um, so we hire, I think there's 15 or 20, don't quote me on that for the number, sure. Um, people that live in our area that work for our organization. Yeah, um, the government there is very careful um to care for their people. I'll phrase it that way. So they don't want, even as missionaries, they don't want us coming in and taking the jobs. So one of the things they have is if we bring in one missionary, they want us to hire two national people and give them a job. Okay. So some of that is our hospital care. We hire the locals to go in and do that ministry of hospital care. Um, some of that is some of our base uh maintenance and construction type projects. We have people that help with that. We usually have a couple people at our hangar helping us fuel the planes, load the planes with medicine. Um, so yeah, when I say nationals, yeah, they're they're Papua New Guineans that um work for Samaritan Aviation on our team to help us accomplish our mission.
Eldon Palmer:Okay, awesome. I mean, that's great too. Uh I mean I imagine that just helps with all of the relationships. So it's not, you know, everything's integrated.
Case Visser:It is. One of the things that we do there, one of the reasons we're there, is we are there to encourage the people, encourage the church. We want to see people following Jesus. And the local church is the primary driver, the primary motive of uh what Jesus gave us for following him. So even hiring national staff, but the people we pick up in the villages, um, us being there, not just saving lives, but um, you could say giving our stamp of approval of living a Christian lifestyle, um, hopefully showing that with how we live, but also um encouraging other people that are doing that is a big part of what we do. So the staff at the hospital that's local that will fly out on the plane to help us, you know, the OB people, the nurses, um, a lot of them are Christians already. So coming alongside them to say your country is worth investing in, your people are worth investing in, and your local churches in these communities, they're worth investing in because Samaritan Aviation, um, we don't make money. We we lose money. We're serving the people there. We can't operate without donors giving to Samaritan Aviation. Airplanes are very expensive to operate. Um, so we need people to uh support the ministry we do. Um, the staff that work with us over there, they're there serving. We're providing a service, yes, but we do not charge for that service. We don't charge for any of our flights. Um, so everything we do is to help and be an encouragement to the people there.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah, that's awesome. So if somebody were to want to give, like how would they do that?
Case Visser:Yeah, the easiest way is to just go to our website, Samaritanaviation.org. Okay. And I mean, there's newsletters, there's info, but uh right up at the top, there'll be a there'll be a button that says donate. Um, and you can choose to donate to specific stuff. It takes about $250 worth of fuel uh for each flight we do. Um so if you donated $250, that covers the fuel for one flight. Um, there are other projects going on, like the new base we're building, you can donate towards um just general operations budgets. Airplanes are mechanical, but they break down and we got to buy parts for them. Um but yeah, Samaritanaviation.org.
Eldon Palmer:Do you bring in, like you talked about flying outside some some of these? Do you and maybe this is a new thing that might be added or just temporary, but um, some other missions I've seen over the years, they'll bring in a specific doctor, go to a village, help people, just general medical care, or maybe they'll bring in a dentist or an eye doctor or somebody that kind of has a specific thing. Is that something you guys?
Case Visser:Yeah, right around the edges. Part of it uh we talked briefly about we really need two to four more pilots right now and two mechanics. So part of our issue right now is our staff is stretched and we don't have the capacity to do as much of that as we would like to do. For instance, we've had some eyeglasses with a I'm not an eye doctor, but something you look through and it'll tell you what prescription you need. Yeah, um, that we could go out to these villages and get the people set up with basically free eyeglasses. Um, I I can't imagine living a hunter gardener lifestyle with bad eyesight. Um so we'd like to do more of that, um, but we don't have the capacity. Part of it's uh staffing uh and part of it's funding. Uh one of the big things we do is working with the government, and when I say government, the local villages, so we do vaccine outreaches. So think uh like the TDAP, tuberculosis, diphtheria, polio. Um there are areas we serve that had polio outbreaks in the last 15 years. It's still a thing there. Kids are dying of polio. Um, so I can't remember if it's five or 10 years ago. Uh, we helped get out um big vaccine outreach for polio and save thousands of lives um for doing a polio um vaccine outreach. My wife and daughter were able to go on another of these uh vaccine outreaches uh to a village that uh is actually on the ocean. Um and then there's kind of a lake and backwater that we land on. And that village had not seen uh, let's say a nurse, they hadn't had medical care for three years since COVID had happened. So picture any kid three years old or younger didn't have any vaccines for stuff like tuberculosis, which um we we pick up people with tuberculosis. Um so that's probably the main uh let's call it mission medical care we'd go out and fly on. Uh down on the south base, we're gonna be doing a lot more of those where we just bring in a nurse and say, hey, what are you guys dealing with? Um is there a way we can help with that?
Eldon Palmer:Yeah. Now you you mentioned your wife and your daughter. Um now when you were stationed there, like what one, what did your my wife like she gets nervous if I'm flying on a plane, she hates to fly. Um I've I really enjoy flying. So, what did your wife think of this? And how's that how's your serving in this manner and maybe they're serving? Uh how's that looked?
Case Visser:Yeah, we have four kids. They were all teenagers when we went.
Eldon Palmer:Okay.
Case Visser:So if you can imagine, uh, you know, we had a good life here in West Michigan. So uh bringing four teenagers with you, uh, they understood the mission, but they weren't as excited to do it as uh my wife and I were, we'll put it that way. Yeah, my wife is great, Jennifer. Uh, she was excited to go, um, did a great job serving there, even just down to the hospital, to that hospital care. Uh, when my wife was learning pigeon, she would go with one of our staff members from the hospital national staff. Um, and one of the ways she would learn pigeon is she would go to the hospital with uh um Betty or uh one of the others, and they would talk to the patients. And that was one of the ways my wife was learning, um just investing in the people, um, hands-on uh care for the people. So, yeah, my wife loved serving there. Um, she had a medical issue while we were there, um, and it's not safe for us to be in Papua New Guinea anymore with my wife's um health condition. Okay, um, and that's what eventually brought us back to the States is we need to be in a place where uh my wife can have access to the care she needs. So we came back to the States. Uh, so I'm no longer a you'd say missionary pilot overseas with Samaritan Aviation, uh, but I do recruiting, pilot training, uh, plane movements, fundraising uh while I'm doing my 40-hour a week uh teaching job at the school that trains future pilots and mechanics to go. So yeah, uh my wife is great. She was heavily involved in that. She uh was able to go on a couple flights for like the vaccine outreaches, but generally she was uh the same job she did when we were in the States. She was a household engineer. Uh she made sure our family ran well and uh did a great job with that. Still does.
Eldon Palmer:Holding down the floor, the floor. Yeah, it's it's a lot of work, especially I imagine, in a foreign country.
Case Visser:Um yeah, the food, food prep was more difficult. Uh the village we live in or the town we whack gets three jet planes a day, okay, um two-eights, and uh it gets ships, but it's not connected to the rest of the country by road, believe it or not. So any of the food goods that came in were either locally grown or they were more of picture dry goods that were long-term storage. So any of the fresh food we buy at uh markets, essentially like farmers' markets in town. So a lot of the food prep was you'd say from scratch type food prep. So it took a long time to prep food. Some of our missionary families would uh, I'm not gonna say complain, but they would they would comment, they would comment about um how much work it is and uh you know how how difficult it was to have good food. They've been there for years once we got there. So what was interesting is we would probably once a week do a potluck. Uh, we live on base with the rest of our staff, six families. Um, so we'd do a uh usually weekly staff potluck meal um all together. And it's some of the best food I ever had. And part of it was they have learned to cook from scratch and to cook very, very well. Uh, but it takes a tremendous amount of time. Uh, you couldn't buy tortillas uh or and even bread was hard to come by. Yeah, um, we'd get a bread guy that would drive his van down our road and you'd run out there and you'd buy your loaves of bread for the week. Um, that's the stores often didn't have bread when we were there. Um, but yeah, tortillas were out of the question. So my wife and daughters, usually every other week, they'd make tortillas for like fish tacos or uh something like that. But they would start at about noon making their tortillas uh so that we could have fish tacos at 6 p.m.
Eldon Palmer:Wow.
Case Visser:So yeah, a little bit more work.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah. So now along that line, that's probably um it's probably challenging to recruit people because of that. So you're gonna you really want a a good match. And I'm sure there's people that um are excited about that. I mean, I mean, some of us are wired um to do some weird things, do some uh extraordinary or or or not ordinary things, I'd say. And so, and and we might even get um extra joy from that.
Case Visser:Yeah, hero complex like me. Yeah, yeah.
Eldon Palmer:I was kind of leaning there, but you know, I'd like you to say it again. Yeah. Um so what do you lose what do you look for? Sorry, my voice is cracking. Um, what do you look for when um recruiting families and pilots and uh mechanics?
Case Visser:Yeah, we're looking for people that want to serve. Um, we used to have on our application, and if you go to the website, you can click on the like work with us, and it'll give you more of a full list of what it is. But right at the top was adaptability. Um, so people that can go serve and adapt to the community they're living in, the food that's available this month, um, the um just the living arrangements of what we have. We take good care of our people, we have air conditioning in our houses, which is really nice. But um, but yeah, it's different. So to be able to be adaptable to that. Um, but adaptability um and then primarily a heart to serve and a heart to serve um in Christ's name. We are there as missionary mechanics or missionary pilots. Um, we want to um have people see Jesus in us that care for others that we have learned from uh studying who Jesus is and what he gave us in the Bible. Um, so we're looking for solid Christians that can basically live a life of service that helps others and glorifies God at the same time. And like I said, we got a lot of roles uh in the pilot side, uh, it's commercial instrument rated, eventually seaplane, uh, mechanic side, there's different qualifications. But if if we had somebody that um was on fire for the Lord that wanted to serve others, um they can take it from where they're at and go to a place like Samaritan Aviation or go to Samaritan Aviation. The school I teach at, SMAT, um, we have students everywhere from fresh out of high school. I just want to do something in aviation and they don't know what to. I have another student this year that's 36, I think, years old. He had a CMT company as a similar story to what mine was, and they sold that. And he went through the mechanics school at SMAT getting ready to graduate. Probably by the time this edits, he'll be AMP rated mechanic, and he's signed up next year to take his pilot training. And when he came, he had no idea what organization he was gonna serve with. Is it gonna be Papua New Guinea or Africa? Um, part of it is when he comes to the school, he gets introduced to a lot of amazing organizations. Now I'm kind of partial to Samaritan Aviation.
Eldon Palmer:Sure.
Case Visser:I really love the work we do, but there's a lot of organizations that do um similar work. Uh, most of them are doing a lot more of transporting missionaries or Bible translators. Samaritan Aviation is very unique in that we come and we help people's physical needs first, we save their life. Uh, what we found is if we save somebody's physical needs, that gives us the relational capital to talk to them about spiritual things. They're very open to talk to us about God, the Bible, um, the purpose of life when you were this close to losing your life.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah, that's awesome. I I do think the hands and feet um and serving is definitely the maybe the best way to to introduce that. Yeah. Um I don't know if anything else is anything we missed here so far. I guess tell us about the movie because that's kind of how I was introduced. Um I I heard you're having another another viewing.
Case Visser:Yeah, it looks like October 23 here in Grand Rapids. Uh we're gonna show it. We did one about a month ago, uh, rented the biggest screen I could find, 55 foot wide. And basically it's a 40-minute infotainment documentary. That's a mouthful, right? Yeah, but um it's uh it's a documentary that's very entertaining, a lot of aviation, and it shows what we do firsthand. Uh, the title of it is Salmon Balus. So Salmon is uh basically like the float or the outrigger on a canoe, okay, um, is what they call them there in Pigeon. And balus is the word for bird or airplane. So uh the name of the movie, Salmon Balus, is literally float plane. Okay. Um on my shirt, uh, that's what we're known as in Papua New Guinea and Pigeon. They won't say Samaritan Aviation if they're speaking Pigeon, they'll say, Oh, Salmon Balus. Uh, so that's what we name the movie after. Um, it's gonna be at Celebration Cinema, and uh usually we show it free of charge um and then tell people, hey, our operations don't happen without donors. Um, and after they see the movie and see what we do, a lot of people um are motivated to say, hey, I want to be a part of that, I want to do more. Um, so yeah, hopefully October 23. Um, and uh we'll provide a link um to this, hopefully, so you can go sign up for that.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah, we'll put it in the description or show notes. And um, I saw the movie, um, it was great, it was not only entertaining, but great storytelling, and uh really kind of shine a light on what they do, which was after you see that, it's super valuable. And um, I was one of those people that um felt led to give. So it was good, um, very helpful. I'd encourage you to go see it.
Case Visser:Yeah, one of the stories it tells in that movie is uh the Condon family, Matt and Janine. Uh he was a police detective, I believe it was the San Diego Police Department. So another story of one of our people had a life, had a career, have a heart to serve the Lord. Um, so he got his aviation training over a couple of years and uh joined Samaritan Aviation. So he's one of our uh pilots over there now. Awesome.
Eldon Palmer:Do you find that like um first responders, police, military? What's is there a particular background or it's a pretty broad group of people that end up serving there?
Case Visser:Yeah, pretty broad background. So uh out of the staff over there, our chief pilot uh was actually flying float planes in Alaska uh with his wife for a couple thousand hours, a couple of years. So they are very float plane experts. Um the next pilot in line was a corporate pilot. So he was flying around uh King Airs, and I believe the place he was flying for has a jet now, different Sirius aircraft. So he had kind of like what I would call a pilot's dream job. Um, the person, the organization he flew for uh owned multiple planes. They owned medical buildings throughout a couple states. Gotcha. Um, had this aviation dream job, but heard about Samaritan aviation and what we do and said, man, that's an amazing way to use my life. Um I was a heating and cooling guy. Yeah, there's not a cookie cutter uh who fits well with Samaritan aviation.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah. So um in your time there, were there any like flights that particularly or rescue missions that that stood out to you?
Case Visser:Yeah, one one in particular, I picked up a boy, I think he was about 10, 12 years old, and he had fallen out of a tree. They told me 20 or 30 foot, which sounds quite high, um, but he broke both bones below his knee. Um, and I believe him because there was a hole in his leg where one of them had come sticking out of it. Um I gotta be careful. I can tell you don't like some of these stories.
Eldon Palmer:I just shiver, like just thinking about it.
Case Visser:So um we went to pick him up. There was one of those sites where I can't make it to shore in the boat. So he was laying on a um cot type thing in the bottom of a boat. They pulled the boat up next to ours, and we had a kind of triage. Um, we had to move him from the mat he was on to the stretcher in the plane. And uh the amount of pain he was in, just to move him a foot to get him on our stretcher, um, it it hurt. I did pretty well with my flights picking up everything from people that fell into fires to um attacked by wild pigs. Um, but that that kid was a tough one because just the amount of pain he was in uh to move him over onto our stretcher. Uh, once we got him on the stretcher, we put him in the plane and flew him back into town and uh where he could get the care. Uh when we get back into town, we got to take him out of the plane, put them in our ambulance, which is a Toyota land cruiser with no seats in the back. Oh my. So uh when you use the word ambulance, yeah, um, it's about three miles uh or so, maybe two miles from our hangar to the hospital. Okay. Um slowest I've ever drove through town. Every bump you hit, and the roads have some potholes. Um, you could hear him just uh I'm gonna use the word grimacing, you know, in the back. Just oh um, well, that boy would have been eight hours. He would have been about four hours on the river. Imagine hitting waves. Oh, yeah. Um, and then another six hours, four hours in a car. Um, and I drove, I took five minutes to go two miles. Um, just the pain he was in. Uh, when I was 12 years old, I broke my femur, most pain I've ever been in in my life. Um, so I I really could feel for this boy that uh basically we turned what would have been an eight-hour excruciating journey, and we would have been, you know, shock and stuff entering the picture um just from the pain to a 45-minute flight, five-minute car ride. Um, so that's one of the flights I remember both as being hard, but also um the suffering that we alleviated by being able to be there.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah, it's amazing. Well, the thing with a compound fracture, too, you know, run along the river, like you just don't. I mean, so the risk of infection is so much higher.
Case Visser:Yeah.
Eldon Palmer:Um, like I just can't even imagine.
Case Visser:Yeah, yep. So that's that's what we do day after day. About 30% of our flights are that type of you know, trauma related. Uh, snake bites, there's poisonous snakes that you die within eight hours. Um, so we pick up snake bite victims that wouldn't make it to the hospital. Um, and then you get the pregnancy, but then you get diseases too. So malaria, tuberculosis. Um, yeah, there's quite a variety of ways that we help people.
Eldon Palmer:You know, I think something that came up when I was thinking about prep for this is legacy. And like we, as we get later in life, um, I guess you are closer to my age. I thought you were younger. I'm over the hill. I'm over the hill. But we start thinking about that. And I think like the pilot um that you know went from flying corporate jets to serving in this uh in this arena. Um, what what does that mean to you? Like what's next for you?
Case Visser:Yeah, I'm teaching at the missionary school, um, trying to build people that are willing to do work like this. Um, they go to a lot of orgs, not just ours. Um, but part of my job is also re recruiting for Samaritan Aviation. We I talk to a lot of people that are interested in mechanicking for us, flying for us. And some of those people want a job that's an adventure. You know, flying planes in Papua New Guinea sounds like an adventure. Um, some of them uh do truly want to help, but maybe they don't have the right training yet, or they're not willing to put in the you know, minimum three years because you got to learn a language, you've got to learn our ministry. Um, we're looking for long-term commitments. We say minimum three years, but we're looking for people that are you know five years, ten years that want to serve with us. So, in my recruiting position at Samaritan Aviation, there are people I come across that have like really nice lives, families, and you would say, Why in the world would you want to uproot your family and move over there? And it it's just a legacy of service. My my kids saw what we did, what my wife uh was willing to do, um, and they see a life that is served with others in mind, instead of served with our own self in mind. Um, it's very much focused on others. So, some of the people that I talk with recruiting, there are there are even days where I'm like, no, I don't know if you want to do this. Um, not that it's a bad life, but because there's hard parts about it. What is very encouraging is when I look at our staff that's there and how they're using their lives. And back to at Samaritan Aviation, we try very hard to make sure that they're thriving there, they're doing well. But when you look at how they use their lives, I say, these are the most amazing people in the world. I get choked up just kind of thinking about it. Luke and Nick and Matt and Anton and Josh and all their families. Um, what an amazing way to use your life. Um, they could live here in the States a lot cushier life. Um, they could be building wealth and uh, you know, you could even be building legacy here, building into their kids here. But the way they're doing it in Papua New Guinea is um just astounding. Um, so for people that are interesting in working with us, we say, yeah, there's there's hard parts about it, but what you're building for your life, for your kids' life, for the people of Papua New Guinea, um uh it matters not just here, but for eternity. You know, as Christians, we believe that uh life here on earth is important, it's important how we live. Uh, but we also believe that our life here is just a tiny piece of what eternity we're gonna spend forever. Um, so for people that want to work with Samaritan Aviation, um, they're investing in eternity, not just their lives, not just their kids' lives, but the eternity of the lives of the people they're serving, Papua New Guinea.
Eldon Palmer:Hey, just want to say thanks for talking with us. Um, I know you said you wear hot, a lot of hats, you're a busy guy. Um, I forgot where we're going there.
Case Visser:Well, I'll tell you where we're going. I were we're gonna go flying. Uh, I was just at the air show last week uh in Oshkosh, the largest air show in the world, and I actually got to fly our airplane in the air show for awareness. So that was kind of fun. And uh I'm in the pre-air show meeting uh with the F-35 guys and the F-22 guys, actually gals on that one. And uh, they got these shirts that say F-22 demonstration team. So I'm in the process of lobbying my boss uh to give me a new title because I can be recruiter and fundraiser and trainer. Um, but my new title, I'm I'm trying this out, is uh Samaritan Aviation Demonstration Team Pilot. So part of that is not just demonstrating how our airplane works, but also demonstrating what Samaritan does. So in that line of thought, I think we should go demonstrate our actual airplane to you and the viewers and uh show them what Samaritan does and some of the tools we use.
Eldon Palmer:I say let's do it. Let's do it. Let's go, let's go. Don't go anywhere from the studio to the skies. We are heading to Sparta Airport with Case. He'll give us a tour of his float plane, uh, take off, and land on the water at Hest Lake. We'll have lunch at Smugglers on the North Shore. Hey Case, how are you doing? Good, Alden. Welcome to Sparta Airport. You ready for a demonstration of what our equipment can do? I'm ready. And uh, who's this lovely uh helper here? Jennifer? Yes, I'm his wife. Lovely bride, life navigator. Yes. Love it.
Case Visser:Yeah, we're heading out to the lake today to give you a little water demonstration, show you what we do. And one of the hardest things our pilots deal with is actually docking the plane and secured it so it's safe. So Jen's got some experience with that, so we're bringing her with to uh help us manage the aircraft while we're out.
Eldon Palmer:And manage you a little bit, maybe keep you in line.
Case Visser:Well, yeah, that too. That too.
Eldon Palmer:So is this the official attire for um like a Samaritan aviation pilot?
Case Visser:Yeah, it is. We fly in Papua Game where it's very hot and we're jumping on and off the plane into the muddy river, sandy riverbank. So the sandals are so when you get rocks under, you know, your feet, you can wash them off nice. If I wore shoes like you, uh it'd be a mess all day. And it's hot there, so the nice fishing shirt keeps us cool. So, yeah, most uh pilots, you know, they got the nice white shirt with the bars. But this is it. This is official attire of Samaritan Aviation Pilots.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah, more my style. Love it. Yeah, let's check it out.
Case Visser:Sounds good. But I got it set up like we have in Pop When you guinea typically. So we got the four seats, one of them's the stretcher. So it's a ways up there. Yes. If we're thinking that when we load a patient, um, if we're actually loading a patient on the stretcher, we will move the front seats all the way forward, and then these back two come out. The stretch will be on the ground with the patient, and it takes about four people to lift them up. We can just squeeze them in and get them in place.
Eldon Palmer:It's not that big of a place, especially if somebody's injured. Correct. Um, you know, and they're hurting. It's kind of a little tight, and then you're floating on the water.
Case Visser:Exactly. Coming out is almost harder than in because we're so high. Once the water depth is about here, um, it's a little bit easier, but then again, when you're dealing with a canoe, yeah.
Eldon Palmer:Right.
Case Visser:Not always the best. But we managed, yeah.
Eldon Palmer:Well, let's kind of hop up, can I hop again?
Case Visser:Sure, go for it, yeah. Well, say you just have malaria today.
Eldon Palmer:Just malaria, yeah.
Case Visser:You know, maybe it was a four-day journey to the hospital and you weren't gonna make it, so there we go.
Eldon Palmer:Is this good? Like uh.
Case Visser:One of the things we have is uh checklist so that I don't have to be doing one down on my lap. It's all right up where I can see. So that's somewhat unique to missions aviation, but specifically to us, this is our kind of custom checklist we use.
Eldon Palmer:Nice to be able to have it convenient where you can uh, especially when you're in a hurry on the room.
Case Visser:Exactly. Welling on the water, where there's so many things we gotta be paying attention to. That have ended up where we can visually see it. Alright, so it'll basically be like a wheelie. I'm basically gonna wheelie all the way down the runway until it flies, and then once it flies, I'll just manage what I got to manage. There's our wheelie. So on Papua New Guinea, we have a similar setup where we have a GPS. We'll carry a GPS. That's just an iPad. Basically Velcro to it. So that it doesn't matter whose iPad or cell phone, they bring it with them. So they'll do their flight plan on the ground back home. And then we usually all also have another cell phone with GPS. So even though the missionary school went by November, we teach people uh how to fly looking outside and on paper charts. Uh we got GPS.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah. I like having redundancy. Yeah. Do you have any unique obstacles at uh top left beginning?
Case Visser:So right along the coast, there's a I don't know if you call it a mountain range, but a hill line that goes up from sea level up to 2,000 foot right around there. There's a little pass through it that's about 300 foot lower, kind of repeat. So we will get days where the clouds are sitting right at the top of those mountains. And uh we'll have to fly through that little pass. Uh so the clouds might only be a couple hundred foot above us. Okay. Uh if that's not high enough, or if there's legal days for that, uh sometimes we'll fly all the way down the ocean about 40 miles and then come back up the river. So the beauty of a float plane is if you're above the river, if you ever had an engine failure, you just land on the river. So it's actually that piece of it is quite safe compared to a lot of other missionary aviation where they're over jungle. Um that's that the first 20 minutes of almost every flight for us, we go up over that range. Uh it's pretty much jungle to trees, kind of like what you're seeing out your window, uh, except no road. So if our engine died at the first, let's say 15 minutes, it it wouldn't be good.
Eldon Palmer:Well, you're at a pretty low elevation anyway. Um how long would it take to coast out from 2000?
Case Visser:Yeah, so for every house, you are up uh this plane will glide about a mile. So uh we'll actually stop at about 1,300 foot above the ground here. So we'd only have about a mile. Yeah, um fairly hard thing. That's one reason a lot of pilots will glide higher like uh we tend to have a cloud kind of base at about 2,500 feet above the ground over there, somewhere in that range, maybe 3,000 at the end of the day. So what happens is on a one-hour flight, it takes so long to climb above the cloud that it's not worth it. Um, because then you gotta find a hole to get back down. So a lot of times over at Papua New Guinea, uh we'll fly at about 1,500 feet above the ground. Um so it's lower just because by the time you get up, now you're coming right back down anyway. So a little more efficient that way.
Eldon Palmer:Like if you're coming into a new area, if you do a fly running a couple passes, or how do you decide on where to land?
Case Visser:Yeah, so there's about 80 different landing sites we land at. Um so part of it is every new pilot is going to fly with another pilot and get familiar with the area before they let you into new ones. Make sure to manage it here. Um other than that, uh, we have most of them keyed into our GPS overseas. So we can uh fly to a point we pick out on the GPS. Now, as far as looking down below us, yeah, we'll look out the window. Every landing we do, we uh fly around once, make sure there's nothing in the water. The old joke on most of our videos is make sure there's no crocodiles.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah.
Case Visser:I guess Martin saw one. Like I said, uh all my flying the airplane is so loud that uh I never saw a crocodile. But there are logs, floating debris, canoes, people fishing, fishermen's nets, all that kind of stuff.
Eldon Palmer:Exactly.
Case Visser:Yep, exactly. And it's we have a standard operating procedure. It's uh a book or a booklet, I guess you'd say, we use. Um, and in that booklet, it has our procedures that all the pilots follow. So there is a lot of you've gotta figure it out as you go, but there's also a lot of um procedures as far as you're gonna do a pattern, you're gonna fly these speeds. So it's a good mix of standard operating procedures, and okay, how are we gonna get it down on this body of water? So for instance, this is Hess Lake we're coming up to already. So uh I know the wind is from roughly the north airplane down below us down there. Uh roughly uh the northeast. So we're gonna wanna be going kind of east, but we're gonna go fly over it and see if anybody's down there. Get a good look at it before we uh commit to landing.
Eldon Palmer:What are some of the basics you gotta look at when you're gonna make that land?
Case Visser:Well, around here, um, towers. We're double checking where the towers are at. We got a tower just past the lake. Uh that's more like uh power lines. But um, some of the stuff we do have towers here and in Michigan, I've got them on my screens. So um, sometimes it's just making sure the towers are where they're supposed to be. Is that a fair way to put it? Um and then also uh yeah, checking for boats around here. We got a couple boats out in the lake. So we're gonna be looking for boats, waves, shallow spot, extra on boy 38, 40 GL card. A big part of it is making sure um where are we gonna actually dock. So in our instance, I know we're straight ahead on this side of the lake. Sometimes on the river, uh, we might have to land here and then what we call step taxi for a mile across the water to get to where we actually have our patient pick up at. So it's it's all that kind of figuring where am I gonna land, how's the wind, where do I tie this up? Are people there? All of your locations are predetermined. Hey, you've been there before. Somebody from Samaritan has, and yeah, usually even for our pilots, they've been there once before. So we're gonna act like we're gonna land. We're gonna kinda go down, just check out the water, make sure everything looks good. It kinda gives everybody on the ground an idea of what we're doing. Then we'll climb back up. So um, after we climb back up, we will uh come back around and basically make it look pretty much the same as what we just did. I put off the water, we'll just pull the nose up just a little bit. Sometimes a little bit of power to slow it down. There we go. Sorry about that rough landing. Barely felt it. Alright. So I would say everybody's getting hungry. Yeah, absolutely. Why don't we go get some food? There was two guys in the boat that were all cut up pretty bad. One guy was his leg, and the other guy had a puncture wound in his chest, the back of his arm. And uh, anyway, I guess the guy the there was a father in his garden that was gardening, and he got attacked by the wild boar. Um, from what we were asking him for they figured probably 300 pounds for days.
Eldon Palmer:Holy cow.
Case Visser:Yeah. So the sons went in to try to rescue, save their dad, and those were the guys that they brought to us. So the dad passed away, the sons basically had lost blood, and they were over a day away from the hospital. So they actually left me left me behind in that village because we were trying to figure out who do we bring in. We don't have room for everybody. Um we were gonna leave the guy behind that a puncture wound in his chest and his arm, but we unwrapped his arm and it was bad. So uh we I told the guy that was with me, I said, Well, why don't you leave me behind in the village? And if I gotta spend the night or figure out how to get back, we'll deal with it. I'm not leading to that. Yeah. So that was a wild one. That's yeah, you don't mess with wild, you don't mess with wild pigs. So they'll grow their own pigs, and I would say that's probably the party, party meat of choice. If you're gonna throw a big party for the community, they're gonna do like a wild pig. Yeah, but um chicken. And I'm trying to remember in the villages do they have chickens in the ones we were in? I think they'll have chickens out there. We could buy chicken at the store in town. Um so that was probably the meat of choice. Um lot, a lot of fish. So we're on the ocean. Yeah, um, so a lot of different kinds of fish. Um on the river, there's a lot of I'd call them pan fish. So you know, bluegill sides around here are totally different varieties. Yeah. Because one of them has teeth, they look like our molars. Oh in front, it's the weirdest looking.
Eldon Palmer:Sheep's head, they're like that.
Case Visser:Similar, yeah.
Eldon Palmer:They have like a peat like uh almost like a perch siding looking siding. Yeah, they're usually human teeth, they're creeping.
Case Visser:Yeah, they're a little weird, but those fish will actually eat the roots that are connecting kind of this big lily pad-ish layer of vegetation in the river. Um, and they'll eat all the roots, and then those big pieces of vegetation will go floating down the river, and that's one of the things we have to dodge. Interesting. So there's a lot of different fish um in the sea pick where we were, we call it the sea pick happy meal. It's kind of the kind of the food of choice. Like if we go to the hospital to a patient we brought in, we say, Hey, do you want us to pick up food from the market? Because the hospital supplies food from a commissary, but it might be just rice and maybe there's a protein. And if you bring them a bowl to the commissary, they'll put food in the bowl certain times a day. Okay. So like our patients that are stuck in bed, their caregiver goes and you know, but you know, it's food. So we'll ask, hey, is there anything you want to get from the market? Because they got fresh fruits and vegetables. And they'll always they'll always want a sepic happy meal, which is uh they call it sock sock. So there's the I believe the sago palm. So sago palm and they uh process it. So there's kind of a white meaty thing inside the tree.
Eldon Palmer:Okay.
Case Visser:Um but they scrape or grind it out, and the closest I could explain is I think like grinding out the inside of a coconut.
Eldon Palmer:Okay.
Case Visser:So similar idea. Um, it goes through a certain process and then they put it in a pan, and it's almost like boiling it down, um, in the same way you'd boil down maple syrup. Okay. But so it comes out as like a pancake. So it's like pancakey. Well, the can yeah, if you had one tapioca the size of a pancake, um, and then it dries out a little bit. So you got this pancakey material, and then they'll have smoked fish, um, and then a spriga onion. Okay. And that's the C Pick Happy Meal. Sock sock, a spriga onion, and some smoked fish. And their smoked fish is typically these pan fish size things. They got a different size, but uh most houses you know don't have electricity, but off the back side they'll have an elevated, I'm gonna use the word grill, but a place you put wood on that cooks under a grate.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah.
Case Visser:And they'll they'll put pans on that, they'll cook. Um so that smoke will go up three to five foot, and then it'll kind of go out out their roof out into the jungle or whatnot. So about three foot up, they'll have it lined with all the fish they caught, just smoking. So they smoke all day long while the fire's going, and then at night they'll pull them in so animals don't get them or whatever. And then the next day, so it'll be like days or weeks that these things are on the smoke. Yeah, so it's interesting. Pretty smoked.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah. And they makes you happy.
Case Visser:I ate it. I went down to the market when we'd go to the market, and uh, I would get the sepic happy meal just for the fun of it. I actually didn't eat the onion. Um, I don't like onion that much. Yeah, go figure, right? It was like the clean, all that the clean green onion. But um, so I'd get the sack sack and smoked fish, and I'd I'd be eating it while I'm at market or walking back to our house. And yeah, they got the biggest kick out of it because over there um they'll call me white skinned because there's not as many Caucasian people.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah.
Case Visser:Um, so we're white skins over there. So um, if they saw a white skin eating a sepic happy meal, and then they'd call out, Oh, manbolo sepik, which is a man that belongs to the sepic.
Eldon Palmer:Okay.
Case Visser:They're like, You're eating our food. Yeah. Um, so they got a they got a big kick out of you know, meat eating kind of their staple.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah.
Case Visser:And it was good. It wasn't my kids didn't like it. It wasn't anything where they're like, when other friends would be like, What did you eat over there? Nobody would ever say, Oh, a seapick happy meal, smoked fish and sock sock. But it was a thing.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah.
Case Visser:What were the good foods, babe? We had uh, I think some of the best foods were the pineapple, the fresh local pineapple was unlike anything you can get here. Um, I think they're smaller, uh they ranged in sizes. The big ones were actually more money than you pay here. Yeah, uh, the American dollar doesn't transfer well into Papua New Guinea. It's this weird kind of so even though an average laborer, if I can say, I don't know if they have a minimum wage, but you know, that kind of idea, job that might be minimum wage around here, I think was uh don't quote me, but let's say a dollar, dollar fifty, two dollars an hour or something like that. Um well a a pineapple was three dollars, so you're you're talking significant money.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah.
Case Visser:Um, part of it was people would bring them out from their village and you got they're carrying it down to the market, they're sitting all day to sell ten pineapples or something.
Eldon Palmer:And it's a treat you can't really probably get.
Case Visser:Well, they got them around, but they do take a couple years, so but so they're expensive. So, like locally, most of the locals wouldn't, I want to call it, buy pineapples. Yeah, they would grow their own if they want one. Um, but those were a treat. But those take a long time to grow. They take a long time to grow. But part of it is like when we buy bananas here in America, my understanding is they picked them when they were green. Yeah, they ship them, and they might even do something chemically, but you know, they ripen and you eat it once it's ripe here. Well, buying bananas and pineapple there, they picked it ripe. So it's just the flavors you can't even compare it. But because they're so expensive, even for us missionaries that were there that you'd say had a good income, if I can phrase it that way. Yeah, um, you wouldn't cut them like you cut pineapples here because there's so much waste. So you would spend what 45 minutes?
Eldon Palmer:It took a little bit of time.
Case Visser:Cutting the pineapple. And if you look at a pineapple, it's actually individual seeds that spiral them. Yeah. Kind of spiral up. So you they actually go through and in the spirals cut out the little squares or whatever. Well, the squares would stay in, but the pokey part at the end of the seed. Oh, so you'd be left with if you ever go to a super fancy restaurant or a cruise or something like that, um, they'll do them the same way. It's this fancy spiral cut pineapple.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah, little cruise cut out. Okay.
Case Visser:And yeah, that's probably the most delicious food we had when we were there. And they have many varieties of mangoes.
Jennifer Visser:Mango was, yeah, that was special. The kids don't love papaya. There's a variety of papaya, but that was highlighted.
Case Visser:Yeah, the papaya was good. It was a little bit almost like eating a watermelon. Okay.
Jennifer Visser:Um they had watermelon in season too, but that was fun.
Case Visser:Those were really expensive.
Jennifer Visser:They were really expensive, yeah.
Case Visser:Well, comparatively. Yeah. 10 bucks for a watermelon. Well, you imagine somebody somebody's carrying them in a bag miles to the market to sell. So, I mean, most of them aren't getting dropped in. Right.
Jennifer Visser:So it was a very special day to have lettuce. Like green remaining avocados. That would be a great thing.
Case Visser:They had a lot of greens, but a lot of the locals, a lot of the greens they would eat would be like pumpkin leaves and um I'd call it not what we would expect high-quality greens. Yeah. Um the texture, there were some issues.
Jennifer Visser:So they were when we boiled them in coconut milk and garlic. That was really good. That was a typical way to make them. Okay. That was good.
Case Visser:Now, admittedly, we lived in town and there was a really nice restaurant. Um I would say four star. Not quite five, but and you could get a burger and fries, and the burger was big enough for two people for I think $15 US. So for basically $7.50 is a burger and fry. Um, so it's not something you do every day. Sure. Even even on our missionary budget, like we can't really buy $15 burgers every day.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah.
Case Visser:But uh, we would go get those on like a Sunday afternoon, and that restaurant had a little pool. Um, so you could get a burger, swim in their pool for a treat. So um all the way from local food to there was some really good fresh stuff, pineapples, to living in town, um, that restaurant would have you know menu specials. I think they had a was it a chef from Indonesia, is what it was. So they had what they called chili prawns, which are kind of like a shrimp. Um, and best, like some of the best food I've had was there. Now, part of it might be your expectations are different, right? It's like, yeah, you're the difference in the yeah, I'm seep I'm seepick happy meal on Tuesday and I take my wife out on a date once a month to the restaurant, and you're like, This is so good. So, um, so yeah, you know, you when people are like, What did you eat there? You say, Well, what did we eat when we're eating out in the village or like the locals? Yeah, or what did we eat as missionaries when I take my wife on a date?
Jennifer Visser:But one of our kids' favorite meals was um pork tacos, so you could find the brown pork and so we would uh you know do seasonings with the meat, and then um green peppers, um pineapple was in with it, and uh trying to think what else we used to put in it, maybe a little bit of onion, but I and then we made our tortillas because you can't get tortillas there. So that was like one of my kids' uh favorite meals to be able to have that. Or can I have a lot of time?
Case Visser:Tortillas made with love. It was a labor of love. Yeah, it took you guys about like four hours to make those things, I think.
Jennifer Visser:It was a special labor.
Eldon Palmer:So you did you have a machine to grind it or uh did you hand grind the stuff?
Case Visser:We'd buy flour.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah, you could be flour. Yeah, yeah, flour was fine to get there.
Case Visser:The dairy products were the hard because refrigeration of milk.
Jennifer Visser:So you wouldn't like to, you know, just go drink straight milk, but yeah, yeah, it was the highly so we constantly dried milk and not dried, it was the box milk.
Case Visser:I think in America the brand you'll see is Gossiner. Super pasteurized or something, yep, super high temp pasteurized. Yeah, so it's shelf stable. Um, so we would, and it wasn't always available when we were there. Yeah, so there would be times where you couldn't find milk in town. And you'd almost feel bad, but then kind of not really. But when it came in town, we'd buy like four gallons.
Eldon Palmer:They'll buy more the next time. Yeah, like they'll order more next time, right?
Case Visser:So, and cheese was hard to come by the first couple months we were there. So we were there just after COVID, and during COVID, um, a lot of the shipments of food, food products was tough. So our missionary friends they didn't have very much cheese. And so we always hear the stories of cheese is so hard to buy, cheese is so hard to buy. Oh, yeah. So every time we saw it in the store, we bought it. Put it in the freezer. I think when we left, we probably had 10 pounds of cheese in the freezer because that we were all we were all worried that you couldn't buy cheese. Oh, that's funny, but it it became available again. Yeah, we had cheese on the tacos, that's what it was. Cheese on the tacos, yeah.
Eldon Palmer:We did a cruise down to and we were in Rotan, Honduras, and an island, and our our tour guide for the day, we booked a cruise for some like a missionary company, like a guy had a church and he would book cruises or day trips, yeah. And um, so it was a lot cheaper than on the cruise, and they had people in it supported the uh the mission there, the their church. And we didn't know, we had the guy for the whole day. Like we had booked these things, but he was pretty much our driver. Anything we want to do, he did. And he's local, grew up there, and it was awesome. But he said um during COVID, like they had all the cruise ships stopped, everything stopped, so they didn't get hardly anything, nobody could make money. So, and they had they live in multi-generational family, or you'll have like your brothers, they have to share houses in order to stay there. Like I think the government, so they they can't sell it to other people. Yeah, like as long as you have more than two families or at least two families there, you can keep your house kind of something like that. And it very little infrastructure on most island. Some of it hadn't was developed a little bit. Um but he's like, I fished every day for food. Like our family ate a lot of fish, yeah. So he's just surf fishing, um, eating eating every day from that. Which is an interesting thing to think about, you know. Yeah.
Case Visser:There's a tuna packing plant in town by us.
Eldon Palmer:Okay.
Case Visser:Um, so commercial fishing boats would come in with their catch of tuna and they'd get processed at the plant, is my understanding. Um but every once in a while somebody'd be standing on the side of the road holding the tuna up. And it was hard to tell. Like, did they guys catch that? Or was we heard stories of they would go out to the big boat and the ones that were too small, they could buy them off them and then they'd come sell them secondhand to us.
Eldon Palmer:Gotcha.
Case Visser:Um, so we did twice where we bought tuna off the side of the road.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah.
Case Visser:And uh made some blackened ahi is it ahi tuna, blackened aye tuna, where you just sear it for like eight seconds on a side.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah.
Case Visser:And Jen became a really good cook that way, made up all the seasoning. That was some really good tuna we had, but there was always that sesame seeds. The question about there's always that question about is it is it good? I had a research once because the one I bought was nice and ice cold. And the kid didn't have a cooler, and I'm trying to figure out. Now I know when you fish for tuna, they're out of the deep, but I think by the time you pull it up through all the water, yeah.
Eldon Palmer:You're pretty sure.
Case Visser:Yeah, they had it in ice somewhere, but when you were asking the kid about it, oh my dad, my dad just caught this. He was like, Really? Why is it cold?
Eldon Palmer:They probably yeah, a couple guys pitching a few off the boat on the way in or the canoes come grab them and hard to tell.
Case Visser:Hard hard to tell. We don't tell the people we'll pay for them to get back, but we don't fly them back to their village typically unless there's a medical reason that it's gotta happen. Um we'll let them take the slow boat back home. Part of that was um earlier on they had some people, not everybody, but they had some people that would be taking advantage of the system. You know, they they weren't that sick when we picked them up, but it's a free ride into town and a free ride back. So once it's not a free ride back, no, a little that cuts down on the not so sick calls. Um that's one good way they manage, you know, anytime you're starting a new organization that's doing stuff to help people for free, there's I I would say it's not the rule for sure of people that were taking advantage of it, but there's always there's always somebody, right? Um so yeah, so if they come to our base um and ask for help for their fare back, because usually you gotta pay somebody taking a car to the river, and then you're gonna pay one or two or three boat people to bring you the next leg up the river. A lot of times Samaritan will pay for that. But you know, we'll sit down and have a meeting with them and say what's the need and why did you ask family if they'd help? Um because if you I mean you can imagine if you're picking up on average a person a day or more, um, just the expense of sending people back down the river on top of the aviation and everything else. So yeah, that's one of the things is getting them back out. Um that the time I was left behind in the village, I thought it was kind of unique or fun to be out in the village, and there's about like 20, 30 guys that were kind of hanging out and just sitting talking with me. Um but as you're getting to the bottom of it in the story, they're trying to be good hosts, but at the same time one of their village people just died from the pig bite, and the two boys, I don't know if they're gonna make it. That was that was a little surreal. Trying to figure out maybe your normal happy-go-lucky case. Or you know, it's a borderline kind of time of mourning for the community. So some interesting lines you gotta figure out how to walk. That was actually one of the more interesting, even mission settings one. Um they had a family that was, I think, Muslim, like Indonesian Muslim, move in outskirts of their village. They didn't really interact with them much. Um so I got to uh kind of explain to them what Muslims believe, um, because I know a bit more about that. We've studied at church and stuff, um, and I got to explain to them that Muslims don't believe that Jesus is God. Um they they'll say he's a good teacher, but he wasn't God. And uh they don't even think that Jesus died on the cross. There's this thing. But um but surely he didn't die to pay for your sins and my sins. Um he didn't do anything that uh uh makes us right with God. Um so I was able to share with this community a little bit what Muslims typically believe, but also compare that with the gospel, that Jesus is God, that he came and lived a perfect life, and then he died not because he deserved it, but he took our place on the cross. So that was an interesting setting while I was waiting for the plane to come pick me back up to kind of do more what you'd uh picture a missionary doing, is just sharing the gospel in a really clear way. In pigeon. Yeah. Was that pigeon that time too, I think. Yeah. Which is tricky when it's a new language for you, trying to make sure you share something clearly.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah. I could imagine some misunderstandings. You know, so everybody gets upset all of a sudden. You're like, what?
Case Visser:Yeah, I use the phrase talkin' me again a lot, which is say that to me again. Talkin' me again. Uh me no sabi. I don't understand that.
Eldon Palmer:That does so it sounds like it's got a little bit of Spanish to it, or um so it's you'd say Latin based.
Case Visser:It's uh kind of English, Latin Germanic base, a lot of Dutch in there as well. Um so most of the words have that Latin English root to them. So um, like your head is a het. So het blow me, it's het belong to me. So sometimes they'll say blow, or sometimes they'll just say blong. And it you know it sounds like belongs. So a lot of the words have that root to where the once you know the language, it actually kind of makes sense what words you're saying.
Jennifer Visser:Me is like I, like me, yeah, me because you're talking by yourself.
Case Visser:Yeah, interesting. And you is you, why you, you, you alright?
Jennifer Visser:I'm alright.
Case Visser:Yeah or me alright. So are you alright? I'm alright. So uh yeah, so it's it's a simpler language to learn. That's kind of the point. It's a trade language. There's 800 languages in Papua New Guinea.
Eldon Palmer:Oh wow.
Case Visser:Um, especially once you get up in the mountains where they're very isolated from each other. So pigeon or talkbison is the trade language that we say everybody knows. If you're up in the mountains where they're very isolated, it sounds like maybe the kids and people don't know the pigeon as much because like there's you're not trading with anybody. You're you're stuck in your village, there's nowhere to go. But on the river system where we worked, um, you know, there's the river, there's trade that goes back and forth. People can travel, so they all learn pigeon. Um there's not a lot of words. Let me rephrase it. There's less words in pigeon than English. Um so to explain something well, a lot of times it'll take more words, it takes longer. Um, because you're actually going to describe what's going on instead of just use a word or two to say what's going on.
Eldon Palmer:Yeah.
Case Visser:So what's fun is when you read the Bible in pigeon, at least for me, is it's almost like reading a commentary because it's saying the same thing, but it takes more small words to do it. And sometimes that pulls the meaning out of it a little bit more. So if I'm reading the Bible, uh ESV is kind of my standard go to right now. If I'm reading an ESV and I want to be like, I wonder what another language says, or another, like instead of going to NIV or KJV, a lot of times I'll flip over to Pigeon and read it in Pigeon and go, Oh yeah.
Eldon Palmer:It's clear that flying for Samaritan Aviation isn't just about the plane. It's about people. It's about saving lives and saving souls.
Case Visser:Ah, as I like to say, and my wife doesn't. Cheated death one more time.
Eldon Palmer:If you'd like to support their mission or know another pilot with a story worth telling, drop a comment below. And don't forget to like and subscribe. Because these are the stories that lift us all.
Narrator:Papua New Guinea is really the final frontier. It is very remote. We're going into a place where people are used to dying. And we're going to change that. Whenever they hear the sound of the plane, they hear hope. Because they believe it's important for them to hear about Jesus.
