From Tragedy to Purpose

15 Apr 2009

Richard and Cherie West began their work with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) in 1996 in Northern Australia where they provided Aboriginal communities with mission aid.

After their work in Australia, MAF asked Richard and Cherie to move to Papua New Guinea to aid rural communities with transportation of people and goods.

There the dream that has become LatitudeSix was born.

Out from the Dust

'Richard was doing a lot of flying of coffee beans from the farmers down into Goroka for processing,' Cherie says. 'One season the farmers were not picking because they had worked out that it actually cost them to have [the harvest] processed.'

The Wests began looking into how they could help these farmers make a profit and found that the Papua New Guinea government needed the farmers to continue producing to meet their trade quota for the American coffee market. The government agreed to subsidise the flights to the processing plants, resulting in higher payouts for the farmers.

'That got us thinking, because at this time we needed to raise some support for ourselves as well,' Cherie says. 'We thought that we could sell this coffee back to our friends and family and colleagues, tell the story of MAF on the back of the pack and raise money for MAF, but also get some money back to the farmers.'

MAF began the project on a small scale, selling the coffee with 10 per cent of the profit going back to the farmers.

Coping after Tragedy

In 2005, a tragic accident changed their life plans.

A plane carrying Richard, another New Zealand pilot, Chris Hanson, and 11 passengers crashed in the Star Mountains on a routine run into Telefomin. Richard and Chris did not survive.

'That's something that I will never get my head around,' says Cherie. 'My husband died in an accident and it shouldn’t have happened. It’s not a good thing to be widowed when you're 34 years old and left with two young children.'

Initially wanting to continue mission work through partnering with Tear Fund or Opportunity International, training indigenous people to set up and run small businesses, Cherie enrolled at Massey University and completed a Graduate Diploma in Business Studies. A few months later she received a memo that served to change her direction.

'A memo came out from the MAF office here asking if there was anybody interested in running the coffee project because it had gotten too big for the office to handle,' she says. 'I thought, "Well, it was our idea to start off with and I am doing the study toward running small businesses, so I probably ought to get some experience as well." So at that point I said I'd do it.'

From there Cherie worked to rebrand the MAF project as a semi-independent small business, LatitudeSix.

The Means to Get By

Cherie claims that without her faith and trust in God’s control she would not have had the strength to carry on without Richard by her side.

She is striving to let the memories of her husband’s kindness and his tender-hearted love toward those who needed his help live on through the redeeming work of LatitudeSix.

By Cara Wood (from War Cry magazine)

To learn more or to purchase your own LatitudeSix coffee, go to www.latitudesix.org.nz