Snader Flyby

The quick version

We’re the Snader family and we’re serving with a Christian non-profit named Samaritan Aviation operating in Papua New Guinea which provides 100% free medivacs to remote river communities along the 750 mile Sepik river. There’s a lot to do, but if I’m lucky I’ll find myself in the hangar working on airplanes, which is my official role. My wife, Janice, helps with payroll, makes sure the guest house has fresh sheets on the bed, and homeschools our three kids!

The long version

Well, since I’m to blame for this blog, I’ll go first. My name is Josh. I process things out loud and so this little blog helps me manage my stress. It’s my cheapest hobby and so my wife Janice encourages it, as long as the trash gets taken out and the appliances get fixed.

I grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. My first real job was working as a menswear clerk in a local department store stocking underwear shelves and helping old ladies try on shoes. I didn’t like it much. Later I worked in photography, graphic design, marketing, and did estimates for a horizontal drilling company as well. For a few years I sold chickens online by mail order. For a brief time I made dry pretzel mix for a nationally franchised soft pretzel company and I was one of three people in the world who knew the secret recipe (although I’ve completely forgotten it since then).

I worked on enough cheap motorcycles and old vans to know that I had a knack for fixing things. And as a bored child I enjoyed reading books about missionaries in exotic places. Somehow getting speared in the jungle seemed preferable to dying slowly from boredom, a fate I only narrowly escaped on several different occasions during my forced marches into the educational arena. But I thought that to be a missionary you had to be an evangelist. Pretending to be a bubbly, enthusiastic, charismatic people person was too exhausting to consider so when I found there were different ways of serving God, such as fixing airplanes, I was delighted! I no longer had to hammer a square peg into a round hole.

Since we’ve moved here I’ve softened my stance against boredom and occasionally even daydream about it.

Janice was born in Paraguay but her family moved to a dairy farm in near Kalamazoo, Michigan when she was still young because of her dad’s medical condition. Her family brought the culture home with them and one of the first tests I faced when dating Janice was to drink scalding hot tea from a cow horn. I found Janice, too, had always enjoyed reading stories about missionaries and foreign lands and was considering a degree so she could teach English in Thailand.

Janice’s first job, besides being born into the dairy farming business, was walking between corn rows tasseling corn for the local seed company. Then she built Jayco motorhomes. And in between she drove bus for a local county government, drove rattletrap equipment for her brother who owned an excavating company, and drove tractors and stuff like it on her parent’s dairy farm. She also drove her red Pontiac through a barbed wire fence, although that wasn’t a job, just something she did in her free time.

We met initially on a short term missions trip but it was only several years later, after noticing some of her posts on Facebook, that I really began thinking about Janice. “This girl’s different,” I remember thinking. And after I drove nine hours out to Michigan for a casual first date, I was hooked. She complimented my deficiencies: She was smart, good looking, milked cows with her bare hands, and knew how to diagram a sentence – at least better than I did. I figured if we never went to the mission field at least we had a good chance of surviving the Apocalypse. It was a match made in heaven! It took me a year to propose but that was only because I didn’t have enough money to get married. Thankfully Janice did.

I believe Janice has the gift of hospitality and she demonstrates that everyday by putting up with me. She also loves to host people in our home and enjoys experimenting with new recipes, taking care of her potted plants, and tends to her sourdough bread starter like it’s another child. I’m not complaining because that’s good eating.

I was planning on being a bachelor missionary until I attended a wedding where the preacher mentioned that sometimes God has a plan too big for us to accomplish alone so he brings us a partner to help. My thinking on marriage suddenly switched from it being a liability to it being an asset. I often think about that because I never would’ve got here on my own. Not a chance! I’m very proud of Janice. Like I tell my kids, “Yes, mommy is better than daddy, but don’t forget I’m the one who picked her for you.”

We have three kids: Adilene (a girl, the oldest), Elliot (a boy) and Oliver (a boy, the youngest).

Ok, but where is Papua New Guinea?

Papua New Guinea and Indonesia share the second largest island in the world called New Guinea (that is if you consider Australia a continent and not an island). This island is directly north of Australia, but just south of the equator. If you hop on a big airplane, it takes about an hour and half to fly from Cairns, Australia to the capital of Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby. Though it’s a short flight, you might as well have boarded a rocket and flown to Mars because it’s a different world.

I’m exaggerating a little, but not much. Papua New Guinea was a territory of Australia for many years but there still isn’t a road system that connects the island. The typical journey to somewhere significant goes something like this: You use your feet to get to the river where you hop on a canoe with a sputtering two-stroke outboard and go upriver until you meet a road (or something resembling it) and then you find a PMV (a Public Motor Vehicle) that’s going to the same place you are. And, if there’s no shortage of fuel at the moment and the driver isn’t too drunk, you’ll reach your destination in a day or two, assuming the PMV doesn’t break down or get held up by bandits on the way.

But that’s the thing, Papua New Guinea is a land of contrast. For every bad thing I could say about it, there’s also a good thing.

Papua New Guinea is a tropical island and so along the coasts you have beautiful, unspoiled reefs bursting with exotic marine life, white sand beaches, warm ocean water, swaying palm trees, and some of the best fisheries in the world. As you go inland, you’ll find the terrain rises. Mt. Hagen is a large, inland city that’s sprawled out on a valley floor at 5,500 feet. Not too far away is the highest mountain in PNG, Mt. Wilhem, at 14,793 feet. In between all the mountains and dormant volcanoes you have steep canyons, rivers, and unsociable tribes.

During World War II, the Japanese had some strongholds in the Papua New Guinea and so the Allies bombed it pretty hard. To this day there is still unexploded bombs hiding in the jungle. If people find one, they’ll light a fire under it and stay clear until it explodes. So when a boom wakes you up in the middle night, you simply roll over and go back to sleep.

This means the island is a logistical nightmare. It’s hard to travel far in any direction. The ruggedness of the country has prevented people groups from mingling and so each tribe has retained their own language for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This has resulted in over 800 distinct languages being spoken on the island.

English is actually one of the official languages, but if you wander into the jungle and stumble into a little village and try to communicate, English won’t get you very far. Since we’re living in Wewak on the northern coast ministering to people from the bush, we’re (trying) to learn Tok Pisin, a very common trade language used on the northwest side of the island.

Why are we here?

Our Christian beliefs tell us that all people have value given to them by their Creator and that this Creator God cares for all people very deeply, no matter how “useless” they may be to the world. Now, God could impact the world by whatever method he choices but it seems He prefers to use his followers to do it. And as followers of His, we found ourselves feeling that we had a responsibility to help those who need it. Now, we could’ve done that anywhere in the world since you only have to open your eyes to see hurting people. But when we had an opportunity to help make a difference here we felt a responsibility to do so. Especially since there weren’t a lot of other people who were willing or able to do it.

So in April, 2023 my wife Janice and I packed up our three children and moved to Wewak, Papua New Guinea.

Remember I talked about the lack of infrastructure? One practical implication of this is that many people die of very preventable diseases simply because it takes them several days of hard traveling to get to the hospital. It’s hard for people to get out of the bush and it’s hard for medicine and doctors to get in. Many of these remote villages have a child mortality rate of 40%. Not only is it dangerous to be born but it’s dangerous to be alive. The tropics are warm, humid, and home to a lot of poisonous things and communicable diseases.

Samaritan Aviation started operating here around 2010 to help address these needs. We fly amphibious Cessna model 206s that can land on water or paved runways, thanks to the floats mounted on the bottom of our planes that have retractable wheels tucked inside of them. Because we can land on water, we have a lot of access to remote villages that are typically built on rivers or lakes here in the swampy lowlands.

The process

There are aid posts scattered throughout the Sepik lowlands. These aid posts can’t give a high level of care but they usually have someone with basic first aid training, some IV fluid, and some medicine stocked in coolers with ice packs. First, we’ll refer “customers” who call our emergency number to aid posts where they can get a better diagnosis, along with bandages and an IV if needed. At this point the aid post worker will give us a report on whether they think an emergency flight is warranted. Our on-staff Medical Director will also weigh in on the situation and help make a decision. This prevents us from flying people who exaggerate symptoms just so they get a free ride to town.

We’ll fly out and load the patients into the plane. Typically we bring the patient and one person to care for them (usually an aunt, brother, or parent) while they are in the hospital. We’ll bring them back to Wewak where we’ll land on a paved runway, unload them into our ambulance, and then drive them to the hospital. We help them get registered and then leave a “Patient Pack” with them that has some basic necessities. Typically the hospital doesn’t provide anything more than a bed and two meals a day. It’s up the patient’s family to provide anything else and since they’re so far from their families, we try to step up and fill that gap for them.

But our ministry doesn’t stop there. We all take turns visiting them each week checking up on our patients, reading the Bible with them, chatting, and seeing if there’s anything they need.

In the Bible, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan and if you think about it, our ministry is similar. Instead of using a donkey, we’re using an airplane. And instead of dropping them off at an inn, we take them to the hospital. We also make sure their needs are met during their stay. The grand vision is that through all of this we will be able to introduce them to the Great Physician, Jesus, who is able to address their eternal needs.

So there you have it. I’d be a bad missionary if I didn’t mention we are faith supported, which means we’re 100% supported by donations. If you’d like to help make this happen, find the official donate link here.

Thank you for being here!

Josh

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