About Us

We are Grady, Holly, Diego & Lucas Nace and we work for Mission Aviation Fellowship assigned to Mozambique (opposite Madagascar on the African mainland) as missionary pilots.

We are very excited to be working with MAF and feel so blessed to be a part of an organization with a wonderful legacy of serving the Lord.  We pray for God's strength and wisdom to help us serve the people of Mozambique in a way that really shows who God is.

Here's a little of our story:

Grady is the third of four kids and grew up in Ferndale, Washington. His older sisters led him to Christ when he was four. He grew up hiking the Cascades and kayaking in the Puget Sound. His grandparents were missionaries on the Navajo reservation for three decades, so mission stories were an ever present part of growing up.  Always eager to learn and ready for an adventure, he started flying lessons during high school at the local Bellingham airport.

Holly was born and raised in the Lone Star State where she spent lots of time reading books in trees or flipping around during gymnastics practice. Holly grew up enthralled with Laura Ingalls Wilder and told her parents she was born 100 years too late as she wanted to be a pioneer. She also accepted Jesus as her Savior at a young age. In high school Holly's brother wanted to take flying lessons, and to his shagrin she also jumped on board and took lessons with him at an airport in Roanoke, Texas.

We met during college at the University of North Dakota. Grady claims he didn't realize how cold it got there until his first winter hit -40 wind chills... Both Grady and Holly were involved in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship with many amazing Christians who helped them both grow in their relationships with God. There was even a missions trip to Mexico that really spoke to our hearts about missions.  While flight instructing at UND we began dating.

We were married in February 2008 in Newton, KS while working for a Northwest regional airline based out of Memphis, TN. It was fun to have lunch together in random airports across the US while on trips flying CRJ-200s (50 seat regional jets). During this time we were saving up money to go back to school for bible classes and aviation maintenance certification because we felt God was sending us into missionary aviation.

Soon we were off to Costa Rica for bible school, where our son Diego was born in March 2010.  Grady even DROVE to Costa Rica our second semester there! After a school year there, it was back to Memphis.  God worked, and Grady had a mechanic internship in Bellingham, WA so off to the Pacific Northwest we went.

Grady earned his Airframe & Powerplant Ratings in October 2013, just in time for us to have the last October technical evaluation slot at MAF headquarters.  We were so excited to pass and then to be accepted as staff in January 2014!  

We spent time raising a support team, saying goodbyes and doing final training for the field.  Our son Lucas Charles was born in Bellingham, WA in November 2014.  He has us all wrapped around his little finger, even Diego is enchanted.  Final flight training and orientation was done spring of 2015 and then we were off to language school in Coimbra, Portugal. We had a fully year working full time on language acquisition.  

With our courses completed in summer 2016 we headed for Mozambique.  Grady is a pilot-mechanic and Holly a part-time pilot, full time mom and we are both being trained in for work at the hangar.