In their first year living in Gabon, Africa, Steve Straw and his family have been mugged on the beach, bitten by dogs and had their electricity and Internet cut during a controversial election.

But former Penn State student Straw finds that even through the low points of his new life in Africa, he still strives to realize his goal --to build an aviation medical

program.

"Gabon seems to be very well off, but if you scratch a little off the surface, the money doesn't go too far beyond the upper class," he said. "It's sort of the have and the have-nots. There's a need to service the people that are poor."

Straw, sponsored by the faith-based organization Air Calvary, is a full-time organizer. He works to refurbish airplanes and set up landing strips throughout the small central African country, creating a network of evacuation sites for the deathly ill to be transported to Bongolo Hospital in southern Gabon.

The State College native said the air service will transport people suffering from diseases like AIDS and malaria to hospitals for life-saving care, a priority in a country where many die from lack of access to care. Time is of the essence in such cases, and Straw says he can be anywhere in the country in less than two hours by plane.

The 39-year-old's passion for helping people was instilled at a young age by his parents and his faith.

"I've grown up being influenced by my parents, of course," Straw said. "Going to church, we'd hear about missionaries and the work they did around the world. I was very interested in the spiritual condition of people."

After he graduated from State College Area High School in 1988, he attended Penn State for a year and a half, eventually leaving to pursue his true passion of flying.

After graduating in 1993 from LeTourneau University in Texas, Straw became a commercial pilot, hired by oil companies like Exxon Mobile to patrol miles of pipeline across the country. He loved flying, but he felt like he could be doing something more.

So when he received an e-mail four years ago about the aviation project, Straw was ready to completely change his life.

The e-mail came from a hospital in the small African nation of Gabon with a request for pilots to create a program to expand the reach of the hospital and help the extremely sick get care before it was too late.

Steve and his wife of 16 years, Alace, went to check out the country in 2005. After some skepticism and soul-searching, the couple decided to move to the capital of the country, Libreville, along with their three children.

"In some ways, I feel like Gabon picked us," Straw said. "They were really looking for it. The pieces to the puzzle were there."

Now, a typical day for the Straw family includes hours of planning locations for landing strips, giving medical examinations to village people around the country, visiting orphanages and building a bond with the local people in Libreville, which has a population of about 600,000.

Alace Straw now runs a guesthouse where visitors are constantly coming and going. Even the couple's three teenage kids, who were originally opposed to a new life in Africa, are starting to get involved, putting on skits for local children and learning to help out with medical examinations.

"It's not been the typical life, but I think they've started to see the value in what we're doing," Straw said. "We feel like we've been guided and directed here."

The people of Gabon do need the help. Straw said six or seven out of every 10 patients who enter the hospitals for any illness have HIV or AIDS. Bongolo Hospital, where he'll be shuttling patients, was just granted permission from the government to hand out AIDS medication.

Straw hopes to have the first plane completely refurbished and running by October. Eventually, he'd like to add two or three more. But he said the project relies heavily on donations, and he sometimes wonders how long he can keep scraping by.

Despite the trials of living abroad with three kids, a demanding job and always wondering about the fate of the charity, Straw said Gabon is where he's supposed to be.

"Our life in the U.S. was great, but here we're having fun, too," Straw said. "It's not better, it's not worse, it's just different. We want to be a blessing to people. Despite the ups and downs, I think we would make the same choice."