A longtime MAF teacher’s vision for Outdoor Education transforms students and communities
By Natalie Holsten
The airstrip at a small village in the swampy lowlands of Papua, Indonesia, buzzes with activity as high school students dig trenches, push loads of gravel, and prepare piping, slowly turning the spongy landing area into a safer place for MAF planes to land.
Their work is part of Outdoor Education (known as “OE”), a program of Hillcrest School (HIS) in Sentani, Papua, where every year students take a two-week service trip into remote locations.
The airstrip is critical to the mission work in this village. Photo by Angie Hamstra.
For OE 2024, MAF flew students to Faowi, where they loaded into boats for a trip upriver to the village where Ryan and April Beck serve as missionaries, translating and teaching God’s Word to the local people.
At lunchtime the hardworking students gather around a house where another group of students prepare a meal. As the students pause to ask a blessing, a slim, older woman stands smiling among them.
Joan Wiley, or “Aunt Joan” as she’s affectionately known by her students, is MAF’s longest serving teacher. She’s taught hundreds of missionary kids (MKs)—including many MAF children—for 37 years.
In addition to teaching, Joan spearheaded OE, a program that has ripple effects throughout the province and in the lives of the students.
A Heart for Missionary Kids
As a teenager, Joan made friends with a girl whose missionary family would furlough in Joan’s hometown in New Jersey. When it came time for her friend’s family to return to the Philippines, she told Joan she dreaded going back, because she felt like her dorm parents at her boarding school didn’t love her.
“Right then I decided I wanted to work with MKs, so they would know they were loved,” she shared.
After teaching missionary children in Mexico, Joan married her husband Wally, and together they set off for Indonesia, where Wally started working as an MAF carpenter. After a term in West Kalimantan, the family moved to Papua.
Joan was a busy mom with two young kids when Hillcrest School was started in 1987 and Joan began her long career as the high school English teacher.
The First OE
The high school was small at the time—only 20 students total—and for the first few years, the school held an annual spiritual emphasis retreat with a speaker from the U.S.
In 1993, the retreat expanded into a two-week Outdoor Education, with students traveling by ship to the coastal city of Manokwari, then by MAF plane to a village where students worked alongside local missionaries helping with work projects.
Over the years, Joan and other leaders developed OE into its current format, including daily worship and Bible teaching from a speaker, work projects that benefit the village, kids’ Bible clubs, and an anthropology project requiring the students to observe and interact with the people in the village. Later, back at school, they each write an anthropology paper to earn school credit.
“It’s for them to observe and respect somebody else’s culture,” Joan said. “But also to see what a difference Christ makes in somebody’s culture.”
Partnership with MAF
MAF plays a critical role in the success of the OE program. This year, MAF conducted 11 flights to position supplies, teachers, and students for OE. “It couldn’t happen without MAF,” Joan said.
Planning for OE usually begins with Joan and other HIS leaders meeting with MAF leaders to strategize about good locations, ones that might include work projects for the students.
This year’s work project was particularly important for the missionaries in the village. With 370 inches of rain a year falling on the airstrip, it quickly becomes spongy and is often too slippery for planes to safely land. Ryan sometimes spends up to 10 hours fixing any divots made by the plane’s wheels after it lands.
MAF is the Becks’ lifeline, so a safe airstrip is critical, but the project was too much for Ryan to do alone. By having the students work on the airstrip during OE, they accomplished in 10 days what would have taken him months.
Ryan figures the collective work hours of the students freed up enough time for him to translate 1,000 Bible verses.
Spiritual Transformation
Taking 50 to 60 high school students into a remote village for two weeks is not for the faint of heart. Many of Joan’s colleagues refer to her as “unflappable,” with an uncanny ability to pivot and turn difficulties around for the good of the students.
“She’s very passionate about having hard things happen because it helps us see what the original missionaries had to work through. It develops grit in these kids,” former HIS principal Kim Mills said.
Spiritual transformation is at the heart of OE for Joan. She’s seen it happen time and again: When students are stretched and challenged, they have to depend on the Lord. “I think OE is an endless adventure, but an adventure that’s focused on God. Our goal is to have our kids see what God is doing and how they can be a part of it.”
Jackson Hamstra is one MAF MK who found himself at a crossroads after an experience at OE last year. His group of students went on a grueling nine-hour hike to a village to do ministry. When they arrived, one student collapsed. Her teammates didn’t know it, but she had typhoid fever and was in desperate need of medical attention.
Using a satellite phone, the OE leaders contacted MAF and other mission leaders in Sentani, who just happened to be having dinner together. The leaders quickly made an evacuation plan.
The students used machetes to clear a spot for a helicopter to land. Jackson carried the sick girl to the helicopter, which flew to an airstrip, where an MAF plane flew her to Sentani and she received lifesaving care.
“I had been pretty committed to going to the Air Force Academy my whole life,” Jackson said. “But while I was on OE and saw how the MAF plane literally saved that girl’s life, I was like, no, I need to do this. This is what I’m called to do.”
Jackson is now a freshman at Liberty University majoring in aviation technology, flight and maintenance.
“Because of OE,” Joan said, “we’re seeing a lot of our MK’s returning as missionaries, both in Papua and around the world.”
Story appeared in Vol. 4 2024 edition of FlightWatch. Read the entire issue below: