American Thought Leaders - How These Pilots Became a Lifeline for Remote Pacific Islands | Mark Abbott and Brock Welge

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

In the remote Pacific, emergency medical transport is not a simple call away. Across hundreds of miles of open ocean separating island communities, sudden illness or severe injury can quickly become fatal without rapid intervention.Pacific Mission Aviation pilots Mark Abbott and Brock Welge operate on the front lines of remote search-and-rescue and critical medevac flights, serving remote island peoples.The Christian nonprofit’s mission is to provide free emergency evacuations, rescue and disaster relief, medical and food supplies, and even educational resources across Micronesia and the Philippines.In this episode, Abbott and Welge walk me through the unique reality of aviation in the remote Pacific. How do these self-funded aviators execute lifesaving operations? What are the dangers of landing on short, and sometimes neglected, airstrips? And what drew them from working in corporate America to serving remote island communities?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

On the island itself, they don't have the basic things that you would think are common in the states like dialysis, advanced imaging, cardiac treatments. We're the only lifeline that they have. Mark Abbott and Brock Welch have been flying for decades before joining Pacific Mission Aviation. Working there, they provide critical medical evacuations, transportation, food, and educational resources to some of the remotest islands in the Pacific. We've been able to respond within an hour. get airborne to go out to pick up that patient and then have them back in about a little over an hour compared to a ship would take over 27 28 hours. In this episode, Mark and Brock unpacked their unique humanitarian and ministerial work.

God has sustained PMA for 50 years. We've seen miracles happen in order for us to be ready for a flight or for us to be able to meet a need. The only explanation is God's at work and he's using us here with these airports. planes to help meet people's needs. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jania Kellogg. Brock Welch, Mark Abbott, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for everyone. So you guys just celebrated your 50th anniversary of Pacific Mission Aviation.

We're here in this beautiful hangar. Tell me about the kind of the work that you do. and kind of the need that you're filling here. As a starting point, let's just talk about what a typical day of operation looks like from the moment that phone call comes in. So the kind of work we do here, it's primarily we're out here to support medevacs and air ambulance services with our plane.

That's why we started over 50 years ago. Typical day, we would have outer island flights you know, scheduled to transport people back and forth in cargo. And we never know what the day is going to bring because it could be a call from the hospital saying we have a sick boy or a pregnant lady that needs an air transport. And so we're adapting and adjusting the schedule

to accommodate those emergent requests. But our island transportation keeps the planes in good shape, keeps them ready, keeps our crews well trained. and ready to respond to those emergent missions. So you have, you know, you have this commercial aviation system going. It sounds like that's more like a backdrop because you need to keep the planes going for your real mission, which is to do the medevac.

But let's say that phone comes in and someone needs help, what happens? Well, normally we get that call and we'll immediately contact the hospitals or the hospital there, for example, in YAP we're on base debt. And normally, they'll, We'll send out a doctor and a nurse to go along on the flight.

And they usually show up in about 10, 15 minutes. Call the pilots and usually we're there. If it's during the day, we're reading in a moment's notice. Basically, our guys get the aircraft towed out. We'll have to install a stretcher into the aircraft and maybe two, if there's two patients. And then load the doctors and the nurse and head out. I mean, we were able to, for example, on the island of Ulythi, we've been able to respond, you know, within an hour,

get airborne to go out to pick up that patient and then have them back in about a little over an hour. So in a lot of situations, in two or three hours of the first call, we have them back and Yap in the hospital. Further islands may take a little bit of time, and that's just limited by the flight time in the aircraft. But compared to a ship, for example, just to go Ulythi to Yap State hospital and take over 27, 28 hours on a ship that has no sitting, no room for sitting at and would not be good for a patient that, for example, is bleeding to death or something like that. Give me a picture of the geography.

You talked a little bit about Yap. Let's talk a little bit about Palau, right? Like what is the need because of all these little islands and how you're reaching them? So in Palau we have Outer Island of Angar in Pelaloo. And, you know, when the winds are out of the southwest, the Angar port just becomes unserviceable from a boat. Boats can't make it in or out. And so that's why PMA was invited to come to Palau and help serve the state of Angar for Menevac. And also when the boats can't come to help bring support.

and provide relief for the island. So the geographic nature of these Pacific Islands, they're remote, isolated, you know, there's very deep oceans separating a lot of these islands. Sometimes it's, you know, only 30 or 40 miles, and sometimes it's, you know, almost 400 miles. And so that's PMA's range and ability to help service these outer islands.

and bring people and supplies, you know, back and forth and also these critical medical services. And in addition, we also do search and rescue. So if, let's say a boat has a distress call at sea or worse, they don't come back when they're supposed to and they're overdue, we'll take the planes and go out and essentially be the first responders from the air. And we can get there much faster than somebody in the ocean. And we can also relay back GPS coordinates to help the ocean vessels, the patrol boats. But we say you can get there. You can get there to see where they are, but you're not actually like engaging them, right?

Because they're in the water. No, but we're trying to locate them. It's a missing person situation. So they could be anywhere. And the plane, because we fly at an altitude, we got a vantage point. And with this aircraft behind us, we can also do air drops. So they have a system to drop supplies either on the island, medical supplies on the island, or drop something near the person that's stranded in the water.

Yeah. And we've done that many times, drop relief, provide water, you know, essential food, even locator beacons, and, you know, until the rescue ship can arrive. And the key is that PLB, the personal locator beacon. They're very expensive. They're $400, $400 each. and we end up giving those out to fishermen on each island, or as many islands as we can get them to.

And so they hit a button, and that tells them that there's an emergency and they need to be located. One of the things we do is the bags of rice are expensive out on the Outer Islands. It's a popular part of their food menu every day, rice, also with taro, other items, but rice sometimes would cost 25. $30 a bag while at the Yap at the in Colonial the main island the bag costs about

twelve thirteen dollars so we do is when we have extra space on the plane we load it full of rice and sell people the rice out there at the cost of yap instead of having them have to pay twenty five dollars most of the people out there are very very poor just living paycheck to paycheck in a very simple home and so we charge them about fifteen dollars and so we make two or three dollars on each bag and then with that money we buy the personal locating beacons as that we give out to the fishermen. Oh, fascinating.

What would you, Brock, what would you say is the most dramatic scenario that you remember in your, the rescue missions that you've been involved in? Well, there was a boat with fishermen that was out and they're in Palau here on the western edge of the reef and they had gone outside the reef

to chase a school of fish. And it was late afternoon and their boat actually capsized, and this is a pretty good size, 30-foot boat. So it was made to go in the open ocean, but it had capsized and washed up on the reef. And it didn't come back when it was supposed to. So we got contacted to come and see if we can locate it before sundown. I was on the way to a chamber of commerce function where I was supposed to MC, and I had a quick make emergency.

call-ins and have another board member take care of that so I could come get the plane ready. And we flew out with another person that was close to the situation. They flew with us, and we were searching up and down the coast, and we actually located them just before sundown. And the boat had overturned on the reef. There were three guys standing on top of the bottom of the hole upside down. And the sun's setting, and so we're circling. we've got the coordinates back to the boats that were coming out for rescue and they had to go up through a channel and come around the outside because they couldn't get it the reef was too shallow they couldn't get to them from the inside and so I had to go through the main channel and come out make the rescue but we're thankful to be able to locate them before the tide went up and the boat was drifting off or fully sunk and and they get the guys recovered before before dark so it's kind of do or die if it gets if it got dark

all you know it's not clear what's going to happen right because the tides you know shift the boat could drift out to sea and the currents are so strong out here in a matter 24 hours you can be almost 20 miles away and from 20 miles offshore you're not there's no land in sight and and so the sooner the better that you find somebody the the better likelihood of things turning out really well This is one of the things that really strikes me being here that there's so much ocean between this place and any other place. Right. It's kind of astonishing. In fact, I'm just remembering the kids book about how you actually got some of these planes here. You can't just like, you know, fly from the United States or wherever, right, to here with one of these planes. It's a whole project to get it out there in the first place.

But before I jump into that, what about your most? kind of memorable or dramatic rescue. Other ones so far, I haven't been here as long as Brock, but we had a call from Woolliye, which is about an hour and 45 minute flight from Yap. And the ship that I told you about that slowly goes around the islands that generally needs to be replaced. It's in very bad condition for the people here.

But anyway, a lady had a miscarriage and was bleeding. and they couldn't stop the bleeding. So obviously it's a very critical patient. We got a call. We launched in less than an hour, took the doctor and a nurse down there, and we were able to get her stabilized and on the aircraft and back,

I think within five hours of the call, she was back in the upstate hospital. And within a couple weeks, she was discharged and was back to good health. And so that's probably one of the most critical ones because if she didn't get that help. They Brock recently was in a medevac too that there was a Marine U.S. Marine that was sick down on Pelilu, an island just near here, not very far away. And they medevacked him up to Guam to go to the Navy Guam hospital, which is an excellent facility there for a servicemen.

And he was in the latter stages of appendicitis. And so he was screaming. There was two hours on that flight. was in a lot of pain. And so obviously that was down to the last straw. I mean, they got him there in time and he was treated successfully. But that's kind of astonishing, right?

Because you think, you know, this is the U.S. military. They've got a few planes, right? Not here. You can look at the ramp out there. Right now there's a Coast Guard plane out there for this conference. But normally sometimes you get, there'll be a couple C-17s here and step,

but nothing full-time and certainly nothing. stand by. Yeah, that's truly remarkable. Tell me a little bit about your background, Brock. How is it that you came to be, you know, based in Palau doing this? Well, I had went to school for aeronautical engineering technology and ended up in Boeing flight test. I was, my official job title was called Flight Analyst, and we would fly on the triple seven, the seven-eight-seven, and I flew a little bit on the 477-47-8 in production flight test and also experimental flight test. And we would work with a pilot and co-pilot and systems operator to ensure the planes

like either ready for delivery or with the engineering, make sure that we're meeting the objectives on those models. Just hold the presses for a second. Sure. This is an incredibly unique role you had. Just maybe speak to that a tiny bit before you continue. Okay. Yeah. So that role as a flight analyst, I would sit in the cockpit with the other crew members,

and we would test all the systems. We would bring the airplane through its complete operational and flight profile and make sure every emergency backup, you know, engine shutdown, relay, turn off all the electrical and make sure the backup systems worked well, stall the plane. I mean, everything you can imagine you need to ensure an aircraft is safe for passenger service, we would do. And these are Boeing's biggest airplanes, you know, wide bodies, 400 plus passenger configurations. And so it was a, it was a, it was basically my dream job coming out of the

education, the background that I had. And really enjoyed, you know, every minute of my time at Boeing, made some great relationships. But it was late in, you know, 2018. And I had felt kind of a call on my heart to get back into flying the planes. Because I was more in an engineering or crew chief type of role of the aircraft and interfacing directly with the captain. But now, you know, get back in the left seat, do some more stick and rudder, flying, that sort of stuff.

So I joined Mission Aviation Training Academy while I was still at Boeing Flight Test, you know, training in the nights and weekends and learn how to do mission flying. And some people call it bush flying, you know, But you could, we would fly in the Cascade Mountains in Washington, do all kinds of different training, small airports, unimproved strips, you know. And so that had kind of like started to stir things in my heart. And then I met Amos Collins, who's our chief pilot.

He's based over in Yap with Mark. And Amos was in at an air show. And I was there too. And we just got talking. And I asked him, I said, you know, I'm thinking about. you know coming out and visiting and I might have an opportunity with Boeing to take a six-month leave of absence would would that be something he says that sounds great how soon can you start and three months later I was out here in Palau and as soon as I got here the base

manager was was talking about or had resigned and so we had a three-week overlap to basically do a handoff, which couldn't have been planned any better. It was a great amount of time to learn the ropes and the way out here. And this hangar was just newly constructed, but we had to do all kinds of things like get the electric hooked up, get the water hooked up, make the toilets flush, get this big door wired properly so it can open and close every day. And so I get to be a part of not only just the mission flying, but also constructing this facility, which is an oasis for aircraft out here in the middle of the Pacific. Incredible, Mark, tell me about your background.

And I understand there's a plane here that you actually flew 20 years ago, I think in Africa somewhere, just help me part of that. You just include that in the story. Okay. Yeah. Well, I grew up in Eugene, Oregon, and I ended up getting appointed to the Air Force Academy. Graduated from there in 1983. And actually, the first airplane I was assigned was one just like the one I fly here at Beach

Super King Air they called C-12's in the Air Force and I flew that in South Korea and in the Philippines and from that I flew a big transport jet C-141 and flew that during the first Gulf War based out of my corded Air Force base after I finished my active duty commitment in the Air Force I decided I want to go do something totally different and so I moved to a Khartoum Sudan when Osama bin Laden lived there and puts other characters and and went with a group called Air Serb International. I was interested in humanitarian flying. My brother had told me about this group.

He had been involved with the World Vision over in West Africa a lot. And so I served with them all together, about 24 years. Initially as a pilot there, and then also flew out of Nairobi, Ethiopia. But when I was in Nairobi, there's another mission group, a humanitarian group called Mission Aviation Fellowship.

And the director of their King Air Program, there had been our chief. pilot at AirSher International and he went and purchased this aircraft as similar to this one it's up in the app right now and he was a retired United Captain and they used that aircraft in Kenya I flew in it during Kenya during the Rwanda genocide aftermath and the refugee situation that created we used I used a Cessna Caravan and they used the King Air and we started a kind of a little scheduled service to get all the

relief workers around to the different camps. And so that was the history of that plane. My brother ended up becoming president of Pactech, which was what they called M.A.F. in Afghanistan. And that plane served for over 10 years in Afghanistan, delivering a relief supplies there during the war efforts during that time. I came back from Africa after about five years, and I got employed by FedEx. And I was a pilot for FedEx. for 27 years, mainly on the MD-11. I retired in 2022, and I really wasn't planning on flying. I loved Japan a lot, so my wife and I ended up becoming short-term missionaries

with a group called Send International, about two hours west of Japan in a town called Ome. And while we were there, Amos, who I knew through another friend that was at the same academy that Rock had trained at. told me they needed a pilot for a King Air out on Yap. And two years ago, I had no idea where Yap was. I'd heard of Palau, Panpei, Chuck, Chuk. And so where is Yat? And Amos said, well, you're in Japan.

It's only about a three-hour flight to Guam. And then there's one hour hop down to YAP. So he came out there and visited. And it was not on my radar, but you know, that's kind of how God works. And my wife was pretty apprehensive, and I kind of copied Gabriel and I put out some fleeces. I go, I have no idea what this group is. Do they run a good operation? Are the aircraft safe to fly?

I've seen everything in my career. I'm 65. I'm flying 50 of it. And, you know, is there mission worthy? Are the people there happy? And am I going to get along with the people that are there? You just never know. have different personalities and we went there for a week and it was pretty strange

because all those conditions were met you know I go very well mean Brock does a really good job maintaining these aircraft as does Amos even better than I've seen in other organizations they do a great job the mission is outstanding and like like mentioned it's self-sustaining you know organization a non-profit and I really appreciated that my brother has a lot of history of that that type of operation and so I was really familiar with that and how that operates and just great people up there that work together as a team very unselfishly but you have a medevac for example everybody drops what

they're doing it doesn't matter what project you're on or if you're home or your kids at a graduation boom everybody comes in the hangar we're going out and we're going to get get this person to the hospital so that's kind of what brought me here and where I am now I mean, you're clearly, your training and your, you know, your background is extremely helpful in making sure all these, you know, everything is working well. You have that eye for the detail, right? That I think probably a lot of people might know that some of the conditions that you've experienced, you know, previously in life. But tell me a little bit about how this all works, right?

So as you said, mentioned, it's a nonprofit. It's a self-sustaining a nonprofit. That's very important. That's what we are at Epak Times as well. much more than self-sustaining where, you know, we try to put a lot into growth, and I would expect you might as well. But so where do the planes come from?

You know, how do the staff here, you know, participate, how do they get paid? I mean, just give me a picture of how it all works. So kind of a 10,000 foot overview. We are a Christian nonprofit organization. We started 50 years ago as an FAA-135, charter, approved charter operation with air ambulance authority. And so that allows us to fly commercially, but it also allows us to do these medical flights. And so the first airplanes were

bought with donations, donated money from churches, from Christians around the world in Europe, in Germany, Switzerland, in the States. And flown out here. ferried out here through the, you know, because it's such a remote area, you have to put in special fuel tanks, get special flight permits, have special routing. But then the everyday kind of operations, when we do our commercial flights, we have kind of a local self-subsidized rate that helps make it affordable for the people out here. And then we have a standard rate, which people who are tourists or on vacation, would pay and that pricing differential allows us to fund self-fund a lot of the free things that we offer like the like the medical flights from the Outer Islands and

things and so but the the fact that we are authorized for commercial lets us have an operating budget that we can reinvest back into the organization and hire local staff and train up local people in this aviation industry and help provide, you know, a professional career path for locals who are interested in our mission, what we do. So that's basically the operation kind of in a nutshell. We have a fantastic relationship with the Samaritan's purse and their aviation department that see the last two letters on our registration is, Sierra Popper, SP for Samaritan's purse, and they sold us to two King Errors for a dollar each. And Franklin Graham has come out to visit us on Yapp Island in our operation and really

likes what we do here, and we have an ongoing relationship with them where they provide things that we can't afford, especially some high value items, and so we really appreciate their support. So, yeah, how does your faith fit into this? maybe so like I said earlier you know God stirred my heart he kind of put a calling that says you know Boeing's great but I have something different for you if you want to if you want to take a step in faith and and it definitely was a step in faith when I came out for the six-month internship it was just a leave of absence

from Boeing I had a safety net behind and I came out and I saw the need and I saw the work and the value in the work like Mark did. And so my wife and I, we had prayed about it, and we knew that God had given us an opportunity, and it was our decision to make. And so we came out full time. And it was a few days after I quit Boeing that we got notification by Franklin, from Amos, that Franklin was donating to King Ers. That's the confirmations, the signs that God gives when you're going where you need to go. Mm-hmm. Yeah, for me, I wish I could say that I sought them out

and I was dreaming of doing this, but that's not the case. It was kind of throwing at me in a moment's notice, and when you feel the Lord's calling, and you go, I had no desire to fly anymore. I've been flying my whole career, and I've been flying FedEx long international trips, and I was looking for a break. break and um but you know when god put something in your face and you go we yeah my wife and they're there's no doubt that the Lord's asked us to do this they need someone here um how you can't

I can't say no I mean uh in my personal life I and we've kind of kind of positioned my lifestyle after retirement to be able to do anything at a moment's notice uh for that reason but uh I never dreamed of this and but um I'm glad we were very happy I'm very satisfied with working with PMA. We have really good leadership, our CEO, Knopkalau. Very great leader, a pastor of a large church in Pompei as well. Good leadership and I can't imagine doing anything else. But it's, you know, life, our CEO says,

his life is short, eternities forever live like it. And so I kind of, I kind of, embody that and try to keep that the top of my mind as I talk with God every moment of the day and and he's very reassuring and going here right where I want you at and and yeah just like Brock mentioned things happen here that shouldn't happen and they all fall in line you know very well and so we appreciate the Lord support through this as well as other people are like-minded that support this mission and we're always looking for more people to help support us and we also need we need some like-minded pilots to come out here we

we could use another couple pilots on the King ears and so looking for experience pilots to come out here as well as we have an internship for for young pilots here at the Palau program explain to me how it would work for a pilot that might want to come for example yeah so our pilots are self-funded or we say they get an opportunity to raise their support support. And what that means is their salary is covered by donations. And before they come out, they get to go meet with friends, with family, with churches, and explain the mission of PMA, explain what God's doing out here and bring people along the journey. Maybe people who couldn't

come out or serve overseas, but they can help be a part of what God's doing by supporting them. And so Once they get their support raised, then they can come out here and start the training program. And once training is complete, they can start flying on the missions. But that allows PMA to be more flexible, to remain debt-free for the 50 years that we've been here, and to be flexible, like Marcus positioned himself, on a moment's notice, to take advantage of opportunities. and to serve and not have to worry about the finances or where things are coming from, or be pressured by loans and leverages and banks. You use the word service, and you actually were talking about the mission.

And so, you know, just very briefly, right, obviously part of the mission is to save physical lives, but then you also have a faith mission. And so just very briefly, how do these things intersect with each other? How does that mission get accomplished? So PMA stands for Pacific Mission Aviation. And we have a ministry branch called Pacific Mission Fellowship. And we use that to set up Bible studies on remote islands. After we've been out and building the relationships with the community

and become a trusted partner to the island, we usually get an invitation or get offered to. to provide those opportunities for spiritual care. And then we can do Bible studies. We've planted churches on the big islands and that allows for the whole person care, right? Not just the physical, but also spiritual and emotional. And that's really interesting,

but you're saying you're not coming in with the Bible study. That only comes when someone says, hey, I'm actually interested in that. I've gotten to know you, I trust you, that kind of. Yeah, yeah, those relationships are important to establish before you share, you know, your faith, your background, you know, it's the hope that we found in Jesus Christ that motivates us to come here and do this. Like Mark said, he's not, you know, wasn't looking for another flying job, but, you know, his relationship with the Lord, you know, prompted him to respond to the call that he, that was to come out here. It's a great flying job though. I mean, this aircraft is a aircraft that

Samarters Purrish gave us are great planes. They're one of the safest planes I think I've ever flown. And so it's a great opportunity though for people that are looking to serve God or want to come out and serve the people here. It's a fantastic job. You're out and flying around islands. Like you mentioned, everything's surrounded by water here.

But you're flying around one of the safest aircraft to do that. And yeah, it's been a blessing for me to come out here, even though it upended my life. But then again, you know, would you rather do this or would you rather just sit at home and play golf and go watch baseball games, you know? And I've done plenty of that before. And to this, obviously, this is much more fulfilling and I'm having a great time doing it. And that's just a huge blessing from the Lord. So I had a conversation recently with someone who got radiation treatment. for cancer in Taiwan, for example. I guess, so to what extent do islanders actually travel

to other countries for this kind of a treatment or what kind of medical services are found here? Do you need to often take people, like you said, you took the Marine to Guam and not here, presumably because there were better services? Can you just kind of flesh that out for me a little bit? Yeah, I can speak to that. We have, once we got the King Airs donated,

our range increased. And it'll open up the opportunity for us to be able to fly non-stop to Manila or even, and of course to Guam. But we were able to get a Lifeport medical interior system for the planes. It's an approved stretcher system that has advanced life support capabilities too. And then that really allowed us to take those longer trips and move stretcher patients over to to Manila or anyhow. On the island itself, they're limited.

They, you know, don't have the basic things that you would think are common in the states like dialysis and advanced imaging, cardiac treatments. And so there was a person on a cruise ship that was just transiting the area. and they had the indications of a heart attack. And so they got them off the ship, put them in the hospital here, but the hospital couldn't actually treat them. And so we loaded up our stretcher system

and medevac them to Manila so you can get that advanced treatment there. And so that was just one case of somebody being in a remote location and needing the critical care. But most of the local people here that have serious medical conditions have to be referred to another islands. And the ones that are time sensitive,

we often get involved with to do stretcher transports to another more capable international hospital. I mean, this is astonishing in a sense, right? To someone that's, you know, in the States or Canada where I'm from, you're kind of used to just having all this stuff available. But it just, in many places it isn't. Like, you know, people might be wondering, wait, you have to go to these great lengths to volunteer,

to set up this whole operation and amazingly running for 50 years. And you're providing a service, which is basically just kind of standard on the mainland, right? Yeah. And it's not just the medevacs too. We make regular runs from Yap out to small islands. Ulythi, Fais, and Woolliye are the main islands we go to. And there's a small runway out there's a small runway out there.

but no one else around here has aircraft that can land at it because the strips are short. And so we're the only lifeline that they have. So even if you just need to go to a doctor appointment, maybe it's not critical, they use our aircraft to get back and forth. We also provide free transportation to the different missionaries and pastors that are involved with the church out to those different islands. Some of those islands don't allow any other denominations. There's been so much infighting in the past.

They said, okay, just the Catholic Church and maybe one other here, and that's it. But since PMA has such a positive influence on these people out there, they always allow the pastors from PMF our subsidiary, the fellowship, to come out there and do Bible studies because they know they're not there to make a bunch of controversy or they're just there to serve the people and provide a Bible study. or a church service for them. But yeah, you supply everything to these people.

I mean, that's their lifeline. And so it's not just an emergency service with medevacs and taking people to doctor's appointments, but also getting them food, different things that they need. The relatives will mail to Yap and then we take it out to the islands. We have a contract with a post office to take. There's a post office out on Ulythi.

There's a post office in Rulia. we take the mail out there. So it's a very community-based operation beyond just the Medevac service that we provide. What would you say is the biggest challenge here? I can speak that as the director of maintenance, maintenance is the biggest challenge. There's no parts store just down the street

or in the next day over that you can overnight apart. So when something breaks, we have to have like many parts on the shelf. way more than the average shop would have. Because of the length of time it takes to ship things out here. You know, it's five or six thousand miles from North America. It's 3,000 miles from Australia. And so it takes weeks to get parts out here.

And so that's one of the biggest challenges that we've seen. And that's why we have multiple aircraft the same model so we can always keep one running really well. And so that's one of the biggest challenges. But you had mentioned, you know, the amazing thing of us going for 50 years. And I wanted to just kind of touch on that a little bit. God has sustained PMA for 50 years.

And I want to be really clear about that because there has been time after time after time where we've seen miracles happen in order for us to be ready for a flight or for us to be able to meet. a need and the only explanation is God's at work and he's using us here with these airplanes to help meet people's needs and help provide things, you know, whether it's a transport from the Outer Island to a doctor or bringing supplies or helping, you know, a sick pacing on a stretcher get to an advanced care. And just, you know, a quick comment in order to decide to, you have to make a decision to fly, not everything is 100% all the time.

Sometimes something's 99 or 98, and you have to make that call, right, and you have to decide, is it, you know, because there's always risk, right? And so that, I think it's a reality that a lot of people might not understand, given the kind of limited available resources. Like sometimes you might not go out because you feel like there's too much of a risk

for the plane doesn't make it. Yeah, weather is always an issue out here. I mean, this area is the birthplace of most typhoons that go and strike the Philippines or China or Taiwan or Okinawa. And so you get very good at reading a weather map because weather forecasting out here, they do have weather forecasting, but it's not always super accurate. And things change so quickly. So we have a special radar weather map that you, an app on my phone and constantly

watching the weather we all do. And then you have to make an assessment, should I go out, should I do that? But most of the time we're able to do it. The weather isn't that bad out here. Probably, you know, once in a while, you'll get a storm through. But a lot of that is providential too.

I think a lot of times when we do Medevac, we're able to, I don't know, very many, we had to turn back because of weather. We always get in there and get the patient out. So thank God for that. Just before we finish up, Just very quickly, you've been in Palau a while now. You're living here with your family.

That's a whole, you know, kind of relocating. That's a whole project in itself, I imagine. But what would you say is the most, the thing that people don't understand about this place, the biggest misconception you face when you talk to folks back home? I would say probably the biggest misconception people have is how long it takes to build relationships out here. So these communities, I mean, they've, they've been out in these islands for thousands of years, and there's traditional leadership,

clan-based traditional leadership. And so you have to learn the culture of the people out here you're serving in order to serve them well, in order to integrate with that. We're not here just to bring a bunch of Western mindset. We're here to provide a need that isn't currently, you know, or isn't being met. And so I've been out here since 2019, and I'm just now starting to feel like accepted and integrated into the community, which is amazing. It's a huge blessing. But it takes a long time to build those relationships, sometimes lifetimes, you know.

And so coming from North America, and the Seattle area, things move at a fast pace, you know, and tech companies start up. And man, we need it on the desk by tomorrow morning kind of thing. And that's just a whole different mindset out here. And so that's probably the biggest. It's just the cultural differences. And being sensitive to that, learning that, slowing down to take the time, you know. And then that is what builds the relationships.

It's amazing, though. So as we actually finish up, I have this wonderful little kids book that I know this is part of bringing in a little bit of revenue selling it on Amazon, and sharing the story, incredible story of how a little plane made it all the way to Microdisi. But if people do want to help and support

are inspired by this. How do people do that? Well, we have a website at specific, www.pacific.org. And you can check it out on the internet. That has ways to connect, ways to serve, or ways to donate, and help support the work that we do out here. I also want to just put a shout out for families here too. We come out here in it's a difficult situation.

And Brock and Amos Collins, his wife Heidi. They all have kids in high school and junior high, elementary age, and have to adapt to all these different cultures and go through a lot of pressures. And it's also a good opportunity for them too. And just to put a shout out for my wife, Sherry Abbott. She's probably one of the biggest Epic Times fans from the very beginning.

And so she's excited that you guys are out here covering up PMA. I love hearing that. And a final thought from you, Brock? Final thought is just really appreciate you, taking the time to come out to the Pacific Island Forum, to be a part of the Leaders Conference out here, and taking the time to let us share a little bit about PMA.

I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you very much. Well, Brock Welch, Mark Abbott, such a pleasure to have you on. Thank you very much. Thank you all for joining Brock Welch, Mark Abbott, and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jania Kellick.