Norton Family

Jared and Kaitlyn were accepted to join Missionary Flights as a staff family in May 2023. After flying with the Georgia Forestry Commission Air Operations Unit as an aerial wild land firefighter, Jared will serve MFI as a pilot and in the cargo receiving department.

Bio

The Lord has given Kaitlyn and I the desire to serve with Missionary Flights International or MFI, as an Aviation Missionary Family. In December of 2020 our first pastor, being married, shared his and his family’s love with us on how the Lord uses aviation to spread the Good News, that is the Gospel. We started a search and found MFI and looked into how the Lord is using MFI to spread the Gospel. Come April of 2021, MFI invited us down for a four-day weekend so that MFI and we could get to know one another better and prayerfully discern if it was the Lord’s will for us to become a part of MFI. At that time, sadly, the Lord’s answer was not right now. We’ve stayed in touch with MFI and have now joined in May of 2023 to give our gifts, skills, and abilities to aid in, “Transporting life-saving supplies and the Hope of the Gospel.”

From the duration of April of 2021 to us joining MFI in May of 2023 the Lord has given me a part-time job flying as an aerial wildland firefighter with the Georgia Forestry Commission Air Operations Unit. As I have built flight time and experience Kaitlyn and I have also been operating a Cottage Kitchen out of our home. Therefore, Kaitlyn has continued to grow in her skills and knowledge as well. Now, we will be using these skills at MFI. I will be a first officer flying the turbine-powered Douglas DC-3’s. When I’m not flying, I am helping receive thousands of pounds of mail to weigh, inventory, and document for the loadmasters to get ready to put on the DC-3’s and give the proper paperwork to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. Kaitlyn will be helping serve the missionaries and church-missions’ groups that are using MFI to go to either Haiti, Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos, or the Bahamas by helping prepare desserts for them in MFI’s Hospitality Park commercial kitchen. When she isn’t helping there, she will also be able to help as the reservationist to coordinate flight tickets and cargo for the DC-3’s with the loadmasters.

Neither one of us would have these desires to use our gifts, skills, and abilities for the Lord if He had not first saved us from our own transgressions against Him. At eight years old, before a Wednesday evening Bible study, I started asking my dad questions about Christianity. What was really going on that evening was that I started paying attention to my conscience. From then on, I have trusted Christ as my Lord and Savior and given Christ control of my life. Kaitlyn has a similar testimony of being raised in church all her life. At thirteen she was saved from the Lord’s just wrath against her for her transgressions and sins in March of 2011 at a GO TELL outreach in our childhood mall. Growing up, neither one of us were discipled, it was just going to church on a routine basis. Thankfully, near our first anniversary in December of 2019, we started a devotional for Christmas. We read one chapter a day in Luke’s eyewitness testimony, or Gospel, of Christ. This leads up to Christmas day since Luke’s account has twenty-four chapters in it. Ever since then, we have not put the Bible down. Most nights we continue to read His word, He continues discipling us, and we continue growing in spiritual maturity.

If you have prayerfully considered to donate toward our ministry, thank you! MFI’s staff have chosen to give their time and skills in the air to serve the Lord. Therefore, Kaitlyn and I rely on the financial and prayer support of others to continue serving at Missionary Flights International.