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Episode 25 with Dave Hoisington and David Holsten
March 26, 2026 · 1 hr 22 min
On this episode of From the Hangar, host Lem Malabuyo invites Dave Hoisington and David Holsten as guests. Both men served as pilots with MAF in Indonesia, but they both served in very different time periods. On top of that, Dave Hoisington's experience with MAF began long before he became a pilot with the organization.
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Bringing help, hope and healing through aviation so that isolated people can experience Jesus's love.
March 26, 2026 · 1 hr 22 min · From the Hangar
On this episode of From the Hangar, host Lem Malabuyo invites Dave Hoisington and David Holsten as guests. Both men served as pilots with MAF in Indonesia, but they both served in very different time periods. On top of that, Dave Hoisington's experience with MAF began long before he became a pilot with the organization. ...more Show the full description Show less On this episode of From the Hangar, host Lem Malabuyo invites Dave Hoisington and David Holsten as guests. Both men served as pilots with MAF in Indonesia, but they both served in very different time periods. On top of that, Dave Hoisington's experience with MAF began long before he became a pilot with the organization.
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In this video 0:00 From Farm Boy to MAF Pioneer19:02 Trials in West Irian Jaya32:32 Pioneering MAF in Kalimantan56:46 Gratitude, Transformation, and Legacy
From Farm Boy to MAF Pioneer 0:15 Hey, everyone. Welcome to From the Hanger podcast. I'm your host, Lem Malibuya. And thanks again for your patience. We we kinda took a 2 month break. We were kinda swamped with projects, with video work and0:27 everything like that. So we we kinda decided to put a pause on producing more episodes with from the podcast from the Hanger podcast, and we showed some old episodes from the original podcast that we did,0:39 from Flight Follow. And that was actually really fun to to kinda get get going again and and revisit those episodes. But now we're back and we have 2 guests on this0:51 episode. I'm gonna call them the Davids because they're both Davids, and they're both their last names start with an h. So this is gonna be a really fun way to try to differentiate between you guys.1:02 We would have sat beside each other in a classroom 1 day, I guess.1:05 Yeah. We would have just called1:06 at the same time. But yeah.1:07 Well, I'm the old 1, though. That's an easy young 1.1:11 Yeah. Well, here on the far right, we have David Hoistington, and then we have David Holston here. And, Hoistington has a really great history with MAF,1:22 and and I asked David to kinda help kinda, like, cohost or kinda drive this conversation because I think you guys have this really great connection and think it's gonna be really fun to talk about. So, so that's what we
1:33 have for today. And, I'm just gonna queue up, you, Hoisington, that, why don't you talk about, where you served at MAF and and kinda where that
1:45 was and how long you served?
1:46 Well, my wife and I went out to West Syrian in May of 19 63. Wow. And we served out there for 2
1:58 terms and then a partial term in Kalimantan. Cool.
2:03 Awesome. Yeah. And we'll get into the details of Kalimantan and everything, later. But you also have a really great connection with even, like, the beginnings of of m a of MAF. And so I
2:15 wanted you to tell that story, you know, going back to your uncle and everything.
2:19 Well, I was just a farm boy in Westminster, California, and I was interested in amateur radio. I got my license when I was 12. And so when we moved to
2:31 the farm, my first day of high school, I had a ham radio set up all that time. And 1 day, I came in from
2:43 irrigating, and I turned on the radio on 15 meters, and I heard a station from Ecuador calling. Oh, wow. It was
2:54 Shalimara, Ecuador, and that rang a bell because I had read Jungle Pilot.
3:00 Mhmm.
3:01 I was just a kid, but I'd read Jungle Pilot and Through Gates of Splendor. And, soon as I heard Shell Mera, I just answered right
3:13 back. I wanted to talk to Shell to say I had because that was in my mind, that was a notable place. And the guy came back and he says, I have an MAF pilot
3:24 here that has just crash landed, Cessna
3:31 Oh, wow.
3:31 1 80. And he said his name is Danny Durr, and he'd like to talk to MAF headquarters with a phone patch. And so I said, well, he said, are
3:43 you anywhere close to them? And I said, I'm 9 miles away. So I said, just a minute. And I went and called MEF, and, I had had a little
3:55 contact through my uncle through them by them. But I mentioned on the phone that I was talking to Kjell Mera and Danny Durr needed to talk to headquarters.
4:08 And right away, Joyce Joe Silvey, Hobie Lowrance, and Johnny Keenan. Now Joe and Johnny were in that book, Jungle Pilot.
4:18 Oh, man.
4:19 They came over to my house, my room, talked on my radio to Shalimar, Ecuador, and I'm telling you, I was really high.
4:30 Oh, good.
4:30 And, that was a thrill. And they talked to Danny what to do about the airplane. It broke the spar, the rear spar, and it went open. The plane flipped
4:42 over.
4:42 Oh, man.
4:43 And, so that was the beginning. That
4:49 That that started the
4:50 That started the thing rolling. And a couple weeks later, I was just a high school kid. I got a call from MAF, and they said, look. We're converting some World War
5:02 2 transmitter and receivers over for missionaries in South America. Would you come up and help us convert those? I was used to working on those
5:14 old r fives. They were out of b 17 bombers, actually. And, so I went up there and worked a couple weeks, and I just told them that I had
5:25 tried to get into Moody. And they just turned me down without even looking at the application because of my high school grades. And so
5:37 I asked them, what what do you think I should do? What could I do? I wanna go with them. Yeah. They said, well, go to LA Trade Tech and get your mechanic's license,
5:49 A
5:49 and P, and then try again at Moody. So I did. I went to Los Angeles for 2 years, drove every day from Garden Grove to
6:00 LAX and went to got my A and P. And then I went and got, after I got the A and P, I applied to Moody and was accepted into
6:12 their flight course, but I had my A and P so I could cut it short 1 year. So I went 2 year mission and bible, met the most wonderful girl in the world my third
6:24 year. We got married, and, we're living in Elk Grove Village. I had a mechanic's job at 2
6:36 dollars an hour in Elgin, Illinois. I we were high on the totem pole. And 6 weeks later, MAF called us.
6:45 Mhmm. Oh. Wow.
6:46 That's
6:46 fantastic. And Charlie Mellis said, Dave, we need you to come out for candidacy and orientation right now. So we loaded up the 54 Ford and
6:58 everything we had and drove out from Elk Grove Village, Illinois out to Florida and started in candidacy, and then they said, well, we're sorry. We don't
7:10 have a house for you to live in. So we stayed with my folks, and then I we rented an old house for 25 bucks a month
7:22 and attended candidacy and orientation all at the same time. And about 6 weeks into it, why Hobie, Grady, Betty Green,
7:35 and Charlie Mellis, they called us in, and we thought, boy, we're in trouble. And they called us in. We're sitting in front of that big desk, and they said,
7:46 well, I was 23. Ruth was 21. They said, well, we've decided before the Lord to assign you to West Syrian. Well, that was a
7:58 new name for Dutch New Guinea. We had no idea anything about it. Said, we'll send you there and we've got the tickets. So
8:11 our orientation, our candidacy was cut pretty short. They said, you need to go get your support, and the support in those days was 900 dollars a month.
8:23 A little different. Yeah.
8:24 It's a
8:25 little different.
8:26 Well, so is there a reason why they cut cut your orientation and your candidacy short? Were they short on
8:32 pilots out there? Dutch the Dutch were handing over West Syrian, which was Dutch New Guinea to the Indonesian, then it became named
8:44 Airyngaya or West Syria. And the cutoff was gonna be in 8 weeks, and they didn't think they could get any more visas, so they wanted to rush us
8:55 out. And they did. Wow. We got our support very quickly in 2 or 3 weeks. And That's awesome. We did some did orientation flying up in the
9:07 orange Santa Ana mountains with that little Piper Pacer, they call it, the mighty Pacer, and out we went.
9:16 That's so cool. Man, even, like, listening you talk about those names, when you walked into that room, like, those are at least for me, that those are those
9:28 are legacies. Right? Like, people that I read about in history Yeah. Like and you're talking as a you know, you saw them face to face. Like Yeah. You know? Is that how is that for you, David Polston? Is that, like,
9:39 oh, that's really cool. I mean, part of what I I, thanks also, Dave, just for being here. And, part of what I love about this conversation in this year, you know, this is our
9:51 20 25. We are celebrating our eightieth anniversary at MAF. And, you know, anniversaries are important things to celebrate and to recognize and to pause and
10:03 kind of contemplate where are we now, where we come from, where are we looking to go. And, that's something I've always enjoyed about my interaction with Dave is he
10:15 has this, you know, he helps us to look back on this era that was years before I was even born, right? And
10:24 Hate to say it.
10:25 It's alright. I'm calling you old. That's just my dad. You know,
10:27 you got to interact with Betty Green. I mean, you knew Betty Green and talk to her. And there's another story about our very first airplane in MAF that I want Dave to tell. But I think that it's,
10:40 I, you know, to hear him talk about the heart of the founders of MAF, the folks who he got to interact with, even in those days, of course, they were seriously seeking God's
10:52 leading and looking at the kind of what was going on at that moment and saying, you know, the Lord seems to be moving in this way and we want to kind of accelerate this thing because we have a unique
11:04 window of opportunity. I mean, it's interesting. We 80 years later, that wasn't 80 years ago. But but, you know, 80 years from the beginning of the organization, we have similar situations where you
11:16 see this moment of opportunity that maybe none of us anticipated and we're going before the Lord. We're saying, Lord, would you guide us? Would you direct us? And all of a sudden, we're stepping on the gas. Hey, can we
11:26 get somebody over here quickly or whatever? We're doing that with, for instance, like Nigeria right now. So I love being able to get to you know, I've so enjoyed getting to know Dave to hear about some of those
11:38 foundational elements of the organization. Why are we doing it this way now? Oh, it's because of that situation that maybe Dave was a part of. Or to hear the heart of the founders and
11:50 to be encouraged that we are still staying true to what they envisioned the organization doing, which is something that's very important to me in the role that I'm in, that we
12:02 do not drift from any of those essential elements of who we want to be as an organization, what we've committed to do before the Lord and to hold true to that. So,
12:14 I've I've loved the the time getting getting to know to know him and and the perspective that it gives us.
12:20 Yeah. Yeah. That's what piggybacking off what you said, I think that was 1 of the things that I heard too, Dave, was that those founders or the people who
12:32 were in that room with you during your candidacy and orientation talked about, yeah, we prayerfully considered what to do here, and this is what we wanna do, and send you out
12:45 to ASAP kind of thing. And it's like, oh, man. Like, it's 1 of those things where it's like, of course, they were doing that, but it's also really encouraging to hear Yeah. That they were always seeking the guidance of
12:56 the Lord and everything.
12:58 So Absolutely.
12:59 But I wanted to also that the story about the Waco plane, I think, will be a really great story to tell as well, which even goes even back before the ham radio story that
13:10 you just told. Yeah.
13:11 Yeah. And then why does Well, my first contact or interaction with MEF, I had an uncle, Art McIntosh, who later became an MEF pilot. He
13:23 flew in South America for 2 terms, and then he they gave him a Cessna 1 72, and he did a lot of, campaigning for MAF around the country.
13:35 But when he was at Moody back in 19 54, they had a fourth year cross country, and they came out to MAF. They'd bring 2 guys with an instructor, fly
13:47 out to MAF. So I drove up to Fort and Airport, which was dirt and pavement interspersed.
13:59 It was a rough runway at that time, but MEF was there. That was their base. And my uncle, they flew in there. So I got them they had a trouble with a
14:11 tailwheel. So I kinda just was a kid looking at it. You know? And, man, here's the MAF guys. You know? And that was before
14:23 Nate Saints' Day, before that big incident. But then Art had an older brother that in World War 2
14:35 met with Charlie Melas overseas in England. They were all in the eighth air force. My uncle flew p b 17. Charlie flew b
14:46 24, and they knew each other over there. That to me is amazing. Mhmm. And they discussed at that time, they were believers, and they got together.
14:58 And how could we use aviation instead of killing people with bombs in World War II? How can we use
15:10 aviation for the Lord's work? And from that came the seeds of MAF. Well, my uncle,
15:22 he completed 35 missions, and, I verified this story with his copilot who survived and the navigator who
15:33 was on a different airplane the day that the CEO came to my uncle. Well, start back up a little. He had finished 35 missions, and he
15:45 was on his way home. He went into the barracks on Framlingham Air Base and gathered up all his stuff. He sent a telegram to my
15:57 grandfather and he said, kill the fatted calf. Your son's coming home. And the next morning, the CEO came in. We need 1 pilot. So my
16:09 uncle Fred said, I'll do it. So he went, and he never came back. They took an 88 millimeter and the number 4 engine. It just went back on the
16:21 wing. The airplane rolled over, and that was the end. It blew up in midair. The copilot survived Lyle and,
16:33 the belly gunner, name was Deward Baer. He survived. Mhmm. And I became good friends with them. And they're the ones that told me and they were not believers, but they're the ones that
16:45 told me the story that of the fatted calf. But they had a memorial for my uncle at Calvary Church in Santa Ana, California in August
16:57 of 19 46. I remember that. They had a big photograph of Fred on the stage and flowers, and I was only 6 years old
17:09 then. But they took up an offering, and they donated 1000 dollars to MAF for the first airplane, a walker.
17:21 And that's the 1 that the Betty Green flew
17:23 Yes.
17:23 In that first flight. Yeah. Wow.
17:26 Isn't that an incredible story? So his this yeah. Your this memorial to your uncle being a part of, the first to acquire the first airplane.
17:38 And I love, I love what those, you know, these soldiers and airmen, what they were talking about at the end of World War II saying, How can we use this tool?
17:51 This thing that has been, you know, for many, this instrument of war and death, how can it be used for something that brings life? And I've told people, I think, MAF, we get to be
18:03 the stewards of that sort of idea. I think it's 1 of the most important things because I believe that, I fully believe that the airplane is a gift from the Lord to mankind. It's
18:15 just been an amazing tool that we've been able to
18:17 use and that we
18:17 get to steward that as as we move forward in this ministry. That's a remarkable story.
18:23 It is. It's really fun to hear it being told from you because we we write about that story about how these pilots, these World War 2 pilots wanted to use these airplanes for life
18:34 giving flights better than life taking flights.
18:38 Yeah.
18:38 Yes.
18:38 And, and we write about it and promote MAF through that way, but to have someone talk about, oh, yeah. I have an uncle that was a part of that conversation, and and they confirmed it with him and his
18:50 friends that they had that conversation. And it's like, oh, man. That is so cool. Yeah.
18:56 It's pretty pretty remarkable. Really neat. So
18:58 Yeah. Thanks for thanks for telling that. And, I I wanted to also now kinda jump back to when you guys were assignedShow more
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