Nampa, Idaho-based Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), a nonprofit global Christian organization, has broken ground on a new 8,000-square-foot facility at their U.S. headquarters located at the Nampa Airport.
The facility will serve as a gathering place for MAF employees who are in Nampa for training, families serving overseas that are on break, and local staff. The building will include meeting rooms, an activity room, library and study, computer stations, a large kitchen and dining area for 45 people, and a teen and children’s center. It will also include an outdoor patio with grills.
“When we moved to this site 13 years ago we envisioned a campus that not only included our administrative building and aircraft hangar used for maintenance and training, but would also function as a full service location for missionary families who are here for training or on a break from overseas service,” said David Holsten, president and CEO of MAF.
“Each year we host several hundred people for training and meetings. Most of them are families and they can often be here for extended periods of time as they prepare for overseas service. This family center, as we call it, will allow a separate location for study, a place for kids to have activities other than in an apartment, and for people to gather in their down time,” said Holsten. “We are very grateful that through the generous donations of many people, organizations, and churches, this building will become a reality in 2020.”
The two-story, 8,000-square-foot facility is expected to be completed in late spring of 2020 at a cost of $1.7 million. The project contractor is Mussell Construction and the architect is Network Architects.
Besides the administrative and hangar building, the 19-acre compound now contains six one-to-three-bedroom duplexes and triplexes with an adjoining playground, a maintenance building, and a shower/laundry building that serves the RV park used by volunteers.
The fundraising campaign that will fund the construction of the family center facility was also used for the purchase of five aircraft for overseas work, the construction of three duplexes already built and two more that will be built in the near future. It also funded the construction of the maintenance building and expansion of the RV park.
Image Above - Left to right: David Holsten, MAF president and CEO, Mark Fledderjohann, Mussell Construction, project manager, Mike Mussell, Mussell Construction, project contractor, Jeff Schoedler, Network Architects, Joy Blomberg, MAF project design team lead, Ruth Harrison, MAF CHRO, Aaron Bear, MAF CAO, Joe Barraclough, MAF CFO, Dan Whitehead, MAF COO. Ted Van Zwol, MAF CIO, and Eric Kellerer, Ph.D. MAF board member.
Mission Aviation Fellowship (www.maf.org) was founded in 1945 by WWII pilots who had a vision for using aviation to spread the gospel. Since that time, MAF has grown to a global family of organizations serving in 37 countries across Africa, Asia, Eurasia, Indonesia, and Latin America, supporting the work of missionaries, Bible translators, and relief and humanitarian agencies around the world. MAF’s U.S. headquarters is in Nampa, Idaho.