Natalie and her husband David joined MAF in 2000 and spent 17 years in Indonesia in the provinces of Kalimantan and Papua. In 2018 they relocated to MAF’s headquarters in Nampa, Idaho, where David now serves as President/CEO and Natalie writes for MAF and the local newspaper. They have four children and a miniature dachshund.
The birth of the church in Dem Land
By Natalie Holsten
In the early months of this year, while the world was consumed with the chaos of global events, something amazing was happening in Bina, a small hamlet in the mountains of Papua, Indonesia.
A church was born.
A Dem woman with her children. Photo by Angie […]
Over Christmas, my parents visited us here in Papua. Together we traveled by MAF to the interior mountain town of Wamena for a few days.
After we landed in Wamena and my parents gushed over the beautiful scenery of the Baliem Valley, they turned to our pilot, Luke Bryant, and thanked him for the flight.
“It’s a […]
It’s almost Christmas, and while in North America winter is coming, here at the equator it’s a different story. It’s the start of West Wind Season, which means we see an uptick in windy, stormy weather.
Last night it stormed. One of those delicious thunderstorms that comes on the heels of an oppressively hot day. The […]
Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their labor. – Ecclesiastes 4:9
This summer my aunt and uncle came to visit us. It was their first trip to Papua, and we wanted to make sure we packed in as much adventure as we could, so we planned a trip into the mountain town of […]
For missionaries, goodbyes are brutal. Each time I say goodbye to loved ones, on either side of the world, I wonder if it will be the last goodbye.
Last summer, I stood in the hot Georgia sun and said goodbye to my sweet mother-in-law, Faye. A few weeks before, she received word from her doctor that […]
Oh, the power of a package!
Just when I feel that all have forgotten us in this isolated corner of the world, and that I may as well be doing a stint on the International Space Station for how far away I feel, a box arrives.
Someone (usually my parents) remembered us! Someone went shopping for us! […]