He texted a message from his phone saying “he was asked to find a missing 7-meter open boat with five passengers, and he asked his fellow SDA members to pray and ask God to direct him to where the boat is…”.
Known mostly as Dr Mark or the flying doctor, he is based in the Torba province, providing medical care to the islands in the province.
According to the Police Media Unit, the boat was traveling from North East of Santo on Saturday heading for North West Santo, which is believed to be around the Big Bay area.
It is believed the five were members of the family of a state minister. They were rescued 40 miles outside Hokua, northwest Santo area.
Preliminary information indicated that the boat ran out of fuel and had no GPS and no compass.
The ordeal of the five, who were a drifting for two days, was over yesterday afternoon when the flying doctor, who is based in Torba province, spotted the boat floating in the calm sea.
Yesterday afternoon (Monday) this message was texted out from the flying doctor’s aircraft and posted immediately on the popular Yumi Toktok Stret social media.
“Screening a huge area of lonely ocean with only one other aircraft, we eventually found them, after nearly 6 hours of flying, in the middle of absolutely...NOWHERE! Felt like half way to Australia!!! All 5 of them looked OK but they seemed pretty happy to see us and especially when we flew low & slow to drop 10 coconuts...which is food and drink from the Pacific's "tree of life". Wrote on the coconuts: "From Wings of Hope. A Ship is coming." You can see two coconuts falling in the middle of this video. Thank You Lord for answering our prayers for your guidance! And thanks so much for praying for these people, guys!!!”
A video posted on social media saw two coconuts dropping out from the aircraft to the boat.
They were then rescued by the French marine rescue team.
Photo: The missing boat taken from the aircraft