ABOUT ME — ZACH MERKLING
I fly, fix planes, teach, and am a missionary wherever I go
“So you’re a teacher?”
“Well, yes, kind of….I’m finishing that in December.”
“Oh. But you’re a pilot too right?”
“Yes, but I’m not going to be flying for a couple of years…”
“Oh. But you’re a mechanic as well. So will you be working on airplanes during that time?”
“Well, maybe, but not likely.”
“Oh. But you are also missionaries, right? What country are you going to ?”
“Um, we thought we knew, but we don’t really know. It changes...”
With my choice of career, this is how conversations usually go. My chosen career field is missionary aviation. However, the journey to that field has been long and confusing. We are going on year 9 right now for training and preparation.
Ever since high school, I wanted to become a missionary pilot, soaring over jungles in aircraft helping those in isolation.
If you’ve never heard of a missionary pilot, let me sum up: I am a trained aircraft mechanic and commercial pilot who specializes in flying to remote areas to bring the Gospel of Christ and aid to those who live in isolated regions all over the World…also I’m a flight instructor.
Confused yet? Let’s provide some more context:
- I am a Pastor’s kid and have been attending the same church for 22 years.
- I knew I wanted to be a missionary pilot from the age of 12 after traveling to Mexico to visit our church’s missionaries.
- I worked in grocery stores throughout high school and into college.
- I started college in 2013 and graduated in 2018 (it was a 5 year B.S. program).
- My wife (Kayla) and I met in the spring of 2018 and married in the summer of 2019.
- I have been instructing at the college since the summer of 2018.
- We had our first child (Theo) in March of 2021.
With context out of the way, let's clear up some of the confusion about what my family and I are doing exactly…
Over the last three years, I have taught students from all over the world (Switzerland, Indonesia, Morocco, the States, and Brazil). I began instructing in the maintenance school, training aircraft mechanics. After that, I taught flight. The students I have worked with are now going out into the world to serve as missionary pilots themselves.
As of December 2021, my time at the college will be completed. During my instructor tenure, my wife and I have been researching different missionary agencies join. These agencies have bases all over the world.
Originally, we expected to join a large aviation organization and go to the Congo. Well, that didn’t pan out.
Next, we found a smaller mission that would send us to Kenya. We actually started the application, but God changed our path yet again.
Now, we have been pursuing serving at an even smaller mission in Peru. Applications have been started, we purchased airline tickets to visit for a month, and I even have a technical interview set up for the mission to assess my piloting and mechanic skills.
Just last week, however, we received word that COVID restrictions are tightening in Peru, and there is a possibility our trip may not occur this year.
Basically, for the last 2.5 years of our marriage, life has been up in the air. (common pilot pun…).
So, if we can’t go to Peru, does that mean that we won’t continue to pursue missionary aviation?
Nope.
We are going to pursue the snot out of every opportunity we can to serve God with the skills He has provided us with. There are numerous other opportunities to explore if the restrictions do indeed prevent us from going to Peru. However, these restrictions seem to change daily, and we never really know what is going to happen. So, we wait.
Where does that leave us right NOW? Good question…
As an “official” missionary couple, our income comes from ministry support. We have cast a vision to many people around us, and they have joined with us on that same vision. We will be the hands and feet of God, going to a people to serve. These others will be the senders and support us financially and prayerfully so that we are able to go.
While some see this as just a monthly “humanitarian donation”, it really is a partnership. We aren’t superhumans for trying to go to a different culture, we are regular people who possess skills that can be best utilized in a cross-cultural context. As people support us, they are enabling the work to happen, and without that support, we couldn’t do that work.
As we continue to explore all these possibilities, we don’t know which one is going to work out. So right now, we are“in-betweeners”. We are between two seasons of life and are just waiting for God to reveal the next step.
Until then, I am a teacher who’s not teaching, a pilot who is not flying, a mechanic who is not fixing airplanes. But we are missionaries who never stop serving God, wherever we are.
