Mark McLaughlin
Edinburgh Evening News
CROUCHED behind an aircraft hangar in the middle of the African jungle, missionary John Boyd watched the rebels, barely more than children but armed with AK47 rifles, emerging from the trees.
"I could see the dust thrown up from bullets hitting the ground just yards from where I was hiding," he remembers. "I heard a noise - bang bang - and I was convinced my pregnant wife and 18-month-old child were dead."
The Dunbar-born former businessman had been only yards from the jungle base which served as home and offices for a handful of missionary families when the attack happened. Flinging himself behind the hangar, he could only pray that his family had also managed to find a hiding place.
But there was not a flicker of doubt for having brought his family to such a dangerous place in the first place - in 1996, Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was in the throes of a bloody civil war. Nor was there any regret about giving up the life of a millionaire fashionista to become a Christian missionary.
"People always ask me what kind of man would bring his 18-month-old child and eight-month pregnant wife to a missionary camp in the jungle, but my wife and I always knew that God would protect us," he says.
Back in Scotland for a visit as he approaches his 60th birthday, he recalls: "Even at that moment, when I thought that all was lost, I felt a tremendous sense of calm. Was I scared? You bet I was scared!"
It was 1996 and John had recently qualified as a pilot with Mission Aviation Fellowship, the Christian air-relief agency he now heads as president and CEO, and was stationed in the jungle providing aid to local villages in a country torn apart as Tutsi rebel Laurent Kabila and his army of kadogos (child soldiers) attempted to oust aging dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
Minutes after the terrifying volley of gunfire, John saw the group of rebels leap into the base's jeep and roar off. "I emerged from my hiding place to find the rest of the base had been rounded up in the office. They'd taken everything they could lay their hands on and been very intimidating, firing off AK47 rounds next to their ears, but thankfully no-one was hurt.
"I went back to my house on the base to find my wife and child were unhurt. I said to them: 'Start praying, because I think we need to get out of here!'"
John was able to evacuate all of the missionary families on the base to Uganda, despite a second wave of soldiers arriving 45 minutes later demanding more supplies.
"I just told them very firmly to go away because there was nothing left. When we arrived in Uganda we unloaded the women and the children, and then the men turned to each other and said: 'D'you know what? I think we need to go back'."
As Mission Aviation Fellowship was the only lifeline to the dozens of bases and hospitals in the jungle and, John and his team returned and ended up evacuating more than 200 missionaries.
It was a far cry from the gilded lifestyle John, the son of a Dunbar British Rail worker, had enjoyed less than a decade earlier when, as managing director of a South African fashion firm, he had millions in the bank.
Then, sitting in his penthouse office one day in 1987, it dawned on the 38-year-old bachelor that he wasn't actually happy.
"I suddenly had the personal realisation that there had to be more than the life I was living at the time. The money didn't satisfy me, the ego of leading a millionaire lifestyle didn't satisfy me, and I started to yearn for more than just self-gratification.
"How spiritual was I before that day?" asks John, rhetorically, before curling his thumb and forefinger into a circle. "Zero!"
"It was at that point in my life that I first picked up the Bible. As I started to read it I began to understand the kind of man I was and as I kept on reading I realised that these words were what I believed to be the truth."
Four months after John's conversion the company that he managed was bought out in a hostile takeover, and his new corporate overlords closed the business.
The world's stock markets collapsed and most of John's shares were suddenly worthless, but by that point he was past caring.
"I found God when I was at the top of my game and it was my faith in Him that made me realise that all of these things that we falling apart around me weren't real."
However, the Bible wasn't the only book that inspired him to seek out new horizons. "Following the hostile takeover I took a job as marketing director with an aviation company called Court Helicopters.
"I picked up a book called Jungle Pilot about a Mission Aviation Fellowship flyer called Nate Saint, who was martyred while spreading the Gospels to the Waorani, a primitive tribe of American Indians from Ecuador."
The story inspired him to volunteer for the MAF himself. By this time, he had also met Tanya, the woman who would become his wife, who at that time owned her own computer business.
"We soon decided that we'd like to do something more for the MAF so I decided to train to be a pilot."
His first mission was to Zaire - but his second, to Haiti, this time with newborn daughter Ashleigh in tow, was hardly less fraught.
"Haiti was just a desperate country," says John. "If we thought Africa was bad it was nothing compared to Haiti. We were living in a house with no running water, no electricity, no telephone and living a very rudimentary life, but we were there for famine relief.
"We spent 18 months in Haiti and then, after a six-month break, we were assigned to Lesotho in south Africa. It's absolutely ravaged by Aids but for me it starkly illustrated the changes that had occurred in my life.
"When I held a dying Aids baby in my hand and managed to get him and his mum from a remote mountain village to get medical help in Maseru in an MAF plane . . . wow! No money in the world could beat that feeling."
John left Dunbar as a child, when his father moved to what was then Rhodesia to work on the railways there - although he worked briefly for his uncle Ronnie at his store, Purves Groceries in Dunbar High Street in the 1970s. But he's often been back, to visit his aunt, Audrey Purves and, perhaps most significantly, back in 2001, when he was here to raise money for a new plane for the MAF, which was named The Caledonian Connection.
Today, as John gears up for his 60th birthday, he showing no signs of slowing down. As president and CEO of Mission Aviation Fellowship he spends most of his time at their US HQ in Idaho, but still takes regular trips to MAF's 54 bases around the world.
"As I look back on how my life has changed over the last 20 years," he reflects. "I honestly believe, with God's help and good health, that I'm ready to rock'n'roll for the next ten years."
ON A MISSION
MISSION Aviation Fellowship is a Christian organisation whose mission is to operate light aircraft in remote places that might otherwise remain cut-off because of impassable or non-existent roads.
The planes fly across deserts, jungles, swamps and mountains, carrying teams bringing medical care, supplies and Christian hope to communities struggling to survive amidst poverty, conflict or natural disaster. MAF was founded towards the end of the Second World War by a group of international airmen. Today MAF is a worldwide partnership operating in 54 countries.
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