Highs and Lows

Recently Ryan had a really rough start to his week. On his first flying day, whilst he was looking at the morning weather and planning his program for the day, he had a quick look at his emails and spotted an alert from PayPal which had come through overnight. It said that 2 payments had been made from our account totalling over £2,500 (CAD$4,600). He knew instantly that something was wrong and logged straight into our PayPal account to disconnect our Credit Card. He tried to call our Credit Card company to tell them of the problem, but, due to the time zone, it was after business hours and we couldn’t get through. Ryan was angry and upset, fearing the worst that we had lost a chunk of our savings.

Whilst Ryan continued to get ready to go flying, I logged a ticket with PayPal explaining that we had been victims of fraud and that we knew nothing about the source of the 2 transactions. Within an hour, one of the payments had been reversed, we’d received a refund of the latest transaction, almost half the amount! We were grateful for God answering prayers and for PayPal having a good fraud prevention team, but we were still over £1,300 (CAD$2,400) in unexpected debt.

Ryan went flying, there was nothing more that could be done. PayPal had said it could take a week for them to do their investigation, so we just had to wait and pray. And Ryan had to fly, although he was not in the mood.

That afternoon Ryan stopped at a bush airstrip. A routine stop, at a remote and isolated community which he has visited many times before. Some people got off his plane, some people got on, same as every day. But something was different…

The community at this airstrip had made a particular request to Ryan on a previous routine stop.

“Please, could you bring more Bibles next time?”

So he did. Ryan brought a whole box of Bibles and sold 40! That’s 40 families who now have access to God’s Word, when they didn’t before. That’s a community transformed by the MAF plane bringing them hope in a small, green book written in Tok Pisin, the PNG trade language. Bibles are sold in PNG (not given away) to ensure they have value, but they are heavily subsidised, to make sure that anyone who wants one can afford one!

The day started with us feeling like we’d been robbed in our sleep, and ended with us knowing that we’d been a blessing to a whole community! Despite the challenges and struggles we face personally (and there have been lots this year!), God reminded us that we are where we’re supposed to be!

Oh and don’t worry, PayPal gave us a refund for the second amount by the end of the week. Despite the stress and worry, and the sadness of feeling violated, everything worked out, we didn’t loose a penny. This was all another lesson in trusting God in ALL circumstances. Easier said than done, but worth doing!