"I've been on at least 300 flights in my life and today was the first one where the pilot prayed before startup." That's how the conversation started with passengers around plastic tables in a remote village as we ate dinner together after a long flight day. 

I had with me a delegation of representatives from the Belgian embassy, Congo civil aviation, Congo ministry of transportation and Congo RVA (kind of like a mix of FAA and TSA in the U.S. ).  Their mission was to inspect and study the condition of government owned airports focusing mostly on the runways. We had been to 3 airports that day and had 3 more days of visiting airports before returning to Kinshasa. 

Although I didn't know the passengers personally before the flight I do know many people at each agency because we interact with them so much for MAF aircraft licensing, flight permissions, airport taxes, etc.  We discovered we had mutual friends and acquaintances and quickly became friends ourselves as we worked together. 

The passenger who made the statement about prayer was one of the directors of RVA. After we chatted a bit about MAF being a Christian Mission and what we're about, they better understood the tradition of praying in the airplane. They all appreciated it and especially the director. He had been in church the day before and went to see the pastor to ask for specific prayer because of the journey he would soon make over the Congo jungle in a small airplane. He had never been in a small airplane yet and was a little uneasy.