Margaret Baldock was widowed at 24, but now, at the age of 97, she can look back and marvel at the ways God has brought triumph out tragedy, both for herself and for MAF.
Monday 6th August in 1951 was a day that 24-year-old Margaret Hartwig had been looking forward toward to. She had been in Papua New Guinea three months and was finally unpacking crates and boxes and setting up house while her husband Harry, Mission Aviation Fellowship’s first pilot in Papua New Guinea, was out flying.
“All our things were still packed up from Melbourne and being crated up there,” said Margaret. “And so I spent the day unpacking everything, making up beds, and getting everything ready. And of course, Harry didn’t come home.”
Within a week of the accident and three months from establishing the first MAF base in the southern hemisphere, Margaret was repacking her household belongings to return to Australia with her one-year-old daughter Beth.
“I won't forget that day,” she says. “I couldn't believe what God had done. It's still hard, but it happened.”
Harry Hartwig was one of the founding members of MAF in Australia from 1947. On the day he went missing in the notorious Asaroka Gap in the Eastern Highlands, Harry was carrying freight back to Madang in his Auster Autocar after flying a missionary and two local men to Asaroka.
She recovered from the tragedy and eventually remarried and had more children. Today, as 97-year-old Maragret Baldock, she looks back on those events from the vantage point of age.
“I couldn’t see how, with all that had gone before, it could ever start up again,” she said. “Now I've gotten a bit older and I’ve realised it was God's work anyway.
…we started off without anything. Nothing. And God just provided everything.
“He looked after it and cared for it, and I think it was partly because of the accident that He raised up many young people who became interested, and the prayer certainly increased over that period of time.”
Ever since the accident, Margaret has been a staunch MAF supporter and fundraiser, and she was a founding member of the Aircraft Replacement Fund in the 2000s.
She is still keenly interested in aeroplanes, and she recently visited the Mareeba hangars and flight training centre on her first trip to Far North Queensland in 73 years.
“It's a miracle, when you think of how much a little plane costs,” Margaret said. “When I saw them out at Mareeba at the airport, under repair, it was just amazing to think how we started off without anything. Nothing. And God just provided everything.”
Margaret is part of MAF history and the legacy of faith, and she is grateful for God’s faithfulness through the hard times and the good times.
“I give unending praise to God for what he has done. I've seen the work at Ballarat, the work at Coldstream, and the work in New Guinea, and seen MAF expand and expand and go to other countries and help so many people. That's a big benefit, isn't it? How many have been saved because of MAF?”
