The beginning of another year causes many of us to analyse our lives and make minor changes. Whilst contemplating my own New Year’s resolutions, I was stopped in my tracks by someone who made some very dramatic changes to help others.

Keith Lake, now a part-time pastor at Cranleigh Community Church in Bournemouth, gave up a successful career as a pilot with British Airways to help those living in fear, suffering and poverty in the Congo. A dramatic difference to what Keith was used to as he went from flying commercial aircrafts to mission flying. “I was flying much smaller planes, transporting church personnel, injured people and medical supplies; a very different challenge,” Keith told me this week.

Years of conflict resulting from a brutal civil war and ongoing unrest has left many of the population in the Democratic Republic of Congo facing increasingly desperate times, with millions of people being displaced by the violence and turbulence. “These people are the forgotten ones, those who are left without a voice and facing an uncertain, unpredictable future,” Keith explains.

For over 15 years Keith and his wife Senga lived and worked in the Congo and since returning to Bournemouth in 1994, their passion for the people has not waivered, going back at least once a year. In July they will return with a team of 15 people to set up projects such as a vocational training school for deaf children, the building of new schools and improvements to the women’s health clinic.

“It’s a tragic situation with five million people killed in the last six years in the Congo,” Keith says. “There are massacres on a grand scale and it still goes on. “Only last month we heard that 300 people were murdered or raped in a town there and that has a dramatic impact with evacuees who run away from the situation and those who become orphans. “It brings total discord and suffering and we seek to show them the hands and feet of God in a practical way. “We talk openly about our Christian faith and hope to help them spiritually as well as physically.”

Keith’s dramatic and life-changing decision, motivated by his faith, did not go unnoticed by his three children. All three have gone on, not only to become Christians, but also to help others less well off than themselves. His daughter, Kirsten, 31, is a missionary in Rwanda, Jonathan, 28, is training to be a mission pilot mechanic and Stewart, 24, has just come home from Australia after three years at a Bible Training College at Hillsong Church.

Surely few people will make such changes in 2012! For more information or to discover how you might be able to assist Keith’s work in the Congo e-mail keith@cranleighcommunitychurch.co.uk