Welcome to Paul and Cathy's blog

Let us introduce ourselves.

Our names are Paul and Cathy Middleton.

That's us clinging to the top of an engine on one of the planes we fly.

You can find out about how we got to be where we are in the 'A short history of us' on the right (quite an interesting story if we say so ourselves).

This blog is basically a collection of the e-mail updates we have sent out since we joined Mercy Air in 2003, as well as some of the personal family activities we have got up to. Click on a year and read from bottom to top and it should give you a good idea of what we do.

Mission Holiday

Most mission groups we fly find a couple of days after they return to South Africa to go and visit the Kruger National Park. It's only 40 minutes drive from where we live and it would be crime not to take advantage of the opportunity.

Yesterday we flew a group who are doing things the other way round, They are spending a short time at a lodge before we fly them to the north of Mozambique next week (the longer route to the north and west below) - a bit like having pudding before your main course.


This involved flying into Jo'burg Int. to meet them from their flight from Spain and then take them to a remote dirt strip in the very north of the Kruger Park (the smaller triangle to the left in the pic above but still 5 hours flying).

With the Confederations Cup still on, the red tape involved in flying anywhere near Johannesburg was a bit of a headache but but towing the line is always better than arguing with a jet fighter!

We go to Jhb Int only a few times a year but you always feel slightly more important when you're around bigger planes.



This 777 was right behind us in the taxi out to the holding point for take off.

I always take it as a compliment when your passengers sleep - even if thay have just come off a 10 hr flight from Europe!

Finally to our dirt strip in the N of Kruger.

The passengers shot off for drinks while we unloaded the luggage.

We will pick them up again this Monday for their Mozambique leg.

Thanks

Paul

A brief foray to the UK.

Just to say also that Cathy and Matthew will be returning to the UK to see her family for two weeks from 8th - 21st July.

Sugar Water

Cathy and I have just got back from a ten day missions trip to Zimbabwe and Mozambique with a group from Sugar Creek Baptist Church in Houston, Texas.

We picked them up in Jo’burg and flew them to Bulawayo where they worked with an orphan programe run by African Outreach Ministries. In particular they worked with the ladies who look after the orphans by giving health talks and helping with the food distribution programe.

Then we flew on to Inhambane in Mozambique where they met five more people from another church in Houston. Now, being from Houston, a number of the group knew a thing or two about drilling wells. Enough in fact that some of them were also members of a ministry called Living Water International (www.water.cc) who demonstrate the love of God by providing desperately needed clean water and medical attention in third word countries, and who have sunk over seven thousand wells around the world. They had raised money to get drilling equipment driven in from Maputo and we helped with the drilling of a well in the village of Masavane just south of Inhambane. Whilst the lads did this the ladies gave health promotion talks and in the evenings we showed the Jesus Film to over 400 people on a big screen under the stars at the well site.

We flew back on Sunday just in time for Paul to watch the British Grand Prix, the 20/20 cricket final and then Brazil v Italy in the Confederations Cup!

Cathy doing a talk to a group of care givers in Bulawayo.

While that was going on the lads played games with the orphans.

Then the food arrived. Each bag weighed 50 Kg.

The group with the food - we're in the middle.

Cathy helping to share it out.

Then we flew 3 hours to Vilanculos, Moz. Lots of space in Africa.

And then 1 hour low level down the coast to Inhambane.

We flew in formation for a while.

Even the drive to the village was a bit of an adventure.

The next day we started helping with the drilling.

And found water at about 36 metres.

Paul went in search of coconuts.

And we had a dedication service on the last day.

And a night baptism in the sea to finish off.

Thanks

Paul and Cathy

A long way home

Never in the history of me, have I spent so long in a plane – on my own.

Monday morning I was up before dawn to eat breakfast and pre-flight the plane for the days journey. A short five minute flight later I was at the local international airport just before it opened to fuel up and clear customs and immigration. My first destination was two and a half hours away in the coastal town of Beira where I met a Canadian film crew who had been in Mozambique for two weeks and now wanted to go to Malawi to complete their work.

The crew were part of a church in Toronto that has a media ministry (www.livingtruth.ca). They film the work of local churches working in needy areas around the globe and then broadcast it on commercial channels worldwide, helping to raise awareness and money.

On this occasion they were on a follow up trip to assess and document the impact that their visit a year earlier had had. Then they had helped raise money for Hands@Work, an organisation that Mercy Air knows well as we have flown them many times in the past.

Their schedule was very tight and the cost in time and money of using a scheduled airline to get from Beira to Lilongwe would mean that they would have to change planes numerous times and lose a whole day and a night in transit. All this was made harder by the fact that they had a huge amount of film equipment. Using Mercy Air enabled them to get where they wanted in 2 ½ hours, save that day and a whole load of hassle - all for about the same price.

Not much of a hands on action mission shot, but the best I can come up with is this photo of us all at 11,000ft somewhere over northern Mozambique on our way to Lilongwe.

The two guys in the back are the cameramen and Charles Price is the pastor/presenter on the right.

Unfortunately I only stayed one night with them in Malawi otherwise it would of been good to have gone with them to see the work first hand. I departed the next morning on my own for South Africa. We have recently upgraded the aircraft I was flying and one of the benefits is more payload and greater endurance – the latter enabling me to fly for over five hours, 1500km, and still land with 1 ½ hours fuel left in the tanks.

The bottom right hand figure is the flight timer in the plane when I landed, 5h 06m.

Thank you.

Paul

From bush to clinic

Five years ago Ron and I took a team from Times Square Church, New York, to a site south of Inhambane, Moz, where we spent a week clearing an area of land and digging foundations. Two of the only pictures I now have of that are of Ron attacking trees with his chainsaw and one me taking a coconut break.

Yesterday we flew a team of eight people representing the various medical donor companies out to the same site where they inspected the clinic and maternity unit that has recently been completed.

From the above photo to the one below - a complete contrast. Doctors for Life and Medical Mission International were the main partners.

Despite its remote location, the clinic has modern facilities - two consulting rooms, a pharmacy and a maternity unit.

One of the doctors attends to a local child.

We saw the sun set over the remoteness of Mozambique on the way back...

And landed in the dark at Maputo to drop the passengers off and refuel before flying back to South Africa.

It was good to go back and see the transformation from what we had experienced five years previously. It bought a sense of completeness having seen the contrast of the finished product, a product that will now give so much more to the community.

Thanks again to those of you who help make things like this possible.

Paul

Would passenger number 3160 please return to his box.

International Passenger Tax when flying out of Mozambique is US $30. Had we of been charged this amount for today’s flight we would have had to fork out $33,000.00. Fortunately today’s passengers were classed as cargo, and so the 11,000 Nile Crocodiles we had on board our two aircraft traveled tax free.

It was a hectic couple of days. We started in dripping 35 degree humidity and flew two and a half hours north to Beira and then on to Caia on the banks of the Zambezi, where we were met by an enthusiastic crowd of locals.

We loaded 550 boxes of crocs.


Each box contained 20 of the cute little creatures!


Half way through loading, we had some weather which made some of the boxes quite wet. This was not good.


There's not much to do in Caia, so we went to bed at 7:30 and were up at 4:30 the next morning to fly back. The weather still wasn’t brilliant and delayed us, but we got back to Beira to find that things weren’t as they should be…

We had to do some search, locate and recovery.


After a lot of official paperwork and a top up of fuel we were back up into the weather and on our way to South Africa. In heavy rain the view forwards was bland for most of the way.


The view to the passengers in the back wasn’t so great either!


Eventually we got back on the ground this time to the welcome of more officials than you can shake a stick at.


And more absentees to be located and returned to their allocated boxes.


So, the end of an interesting and very novel experience. Not the kind of thing one gets to do each day.

The long cycle to freedom.

Cathy and I went for a bike ride today. Nothing unusual in that except we didn't cycle together this time, although we were both at the same place.

We had joined 3000 other people and had entered two different mountain bike races of the Sabie Classic. Cathy did the 40 km and one of my 'mates' had talked me into doing the 100 km which involved 2300 m (7550 ft) of ascent.


It was a long way and we weren't even close to competitive but... we did finish, beating the 8hr 15 min cut off by 7 minutes.

We were pleased we did it but don't intend making a habit of this type of thing - until maybe next year!

Zimbabwe Medevac

A week ago Friday we got a call that a man was ill and needed air lifting out to receive urgent medical attention.

Nothing hugely unusual in that, but the situation was complicated by the fact that he was in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and the medical help he required was in Cape Town, 1100 miles away.

Permits were hurriedly obtained, a stretcher was loaded and the plane readied to leave the following day. He was, however, Zimbabwean and an emergency visa was not granted for travel the following day so we delayed our departure until we had word of the visa. This was finally granted on Tuesday, so Cathy and I flew up to Francistown, Botswana, for fuel and then on to Bulawayo that day.

Our plan then of course was to fly out early the next day but just before we drove out to the airport we got another call to say that although the visa was in the passport, the passport was still in Harare, and Harare was five hours drive away – but no one had any petrol, or transport. So, a day of planning and waiting ensued with regular phone calls for updates, with the passport finally arriving via a delayed internal flight at nine o clock that evening.

'Inflation'

We were back at the airport, one day late, at seven o clock the following morning to get the plane ready. The patient arrived two hours later on a mattress in the back of a small truck, we were almost ready to go except… immigration hadn’t yet arrived at the airport (they said they would be there at 06:00). Their phones were down but we eventually managed to get a message though and after a small bout of negotiation we were told that if we put the paperwork under their door at the airport, we were free to leave.

The six hours of flying to Cape Town, with a stop in Johannesburg for fuel and customs, was now relatively straight forward with only about two hours ‘weather’ to deal with. It was still a long way but we were at our destination by five in the afternoon where a minibus was waiting to take the patient to the hospital. We were very tiered and ready for some food and very grateful to the couple who opened up their house and put us up for the night.


But now Cape Town and Nelspruit, where we live, are at opposite ends of a big country, so the next day still meant seven hours of sitting looking out of the same Perspex window at the ground slowly slipping past underneath us. More weather caused us to divert, adding to the journey, but we finally made it home after four days, over 2500 miles (4100 km) and 16 hrs of flying.


Again, thank you for your prayers and support that help make a difference to people like this.

Paul and Cathy

Busy all of a sudden

Two weeks ago there was a 75 km mountain bike race in Barberton – the first big race of the year, which was quite muddy and took almost six hours. This last weekend Cathy and I ran the clinic at Londolozi game lodge again. Monday was spent getting the auto pilot in the 310 fixed in Johannesburg. Tuesday we hosted a new cell group that will meet in our house. Now it looks as if the next few weeks are set to be about as manic as it gets as it seems that everyone wants to go everywhere – right away!

The Zimbabwe water purifying flight is now being arranged for next Wednesday. We will already be up in Moz with a missions team on an eight day trip and so can continue up to Malawi, where pick the chemicals up, from there.

A few days after we get back we have been asked to transport 11000 crocodiles from a small town on the Zambezi River in Moz to South Africa – should be novel.

In between the two flights there is also a 100 km mountain bike race that Paul will be doing. In the mix with all this are some of the worst storms we have had for a long time (last night it thundered all night and left us with 60mm of rain and a small lake in the kitchen and bathroom).

We have a Mercy Air planning meeting tomorrow (Thursday) and Cathy and I will spend Friday afternoon at a memorial service for two cycling friends of ours who died tragically last week.

So, huge amounts of paperwork and planning and only limited time in which to do it.

We’ll let you know how it all goes.

In the mean time Cathy's delivered two more babies since we last wrote and Matthew has probably taken 2000 more photos.

Paul and Cathy