A Seventh-day Adventist missionary family survived a plane crash April 15, emerging from the wreckage just moments before it exploded. the 79 passengers aboard the plane survived, but Airline officials put the confirmed death toll so far at 21, and said he believed all were killed on the ground in the Birere market district struck by the airliner when it failed to lift off.

Barry and Marybeth Mosier of Dodge Center, Minnesota (USA), and two of their young children were aboard a DC-9 passenger jet headed for Kisangani, where their eldest son, Keith, 24, leads the Congo Frontline Missions.

"The seats in front of them were smashed down, trapping some people underneath, and there was a fire behind them," Keith said in a widely distributed email, describing conditions soon after the jet crashed during takeoff from Goma Airport, located along the country's eastern border.

The couple's youngest daughter, crawled through a small hole in a fuselage panel. "She didn't know if Mom, Dad and Andrew had made it out safe until they all met at the hospital," Keith said. Barry and Marybeth escaped after unpinning their adopted son, Andrew, from the debris. The three-year-old suffered a broken femur during the ordeal.

"I remember dad complaining about the airport at Goma," Laura Abbot, Barry and Marybeth's grown daughter, later said in an email. "About a third of the runway is covered with lava from a volcanic eruption, making it a really difficult takeoff."

Barry and Marybeth have served as missionaries in Tanzania for 8 years with the Kibidula Institute of Outpost Centers International, an Apison, Tennessee-based supporting ministry of the Adventist Church. The family was visiting the Congo to help them decide whether to join Keith's outreach and humanitarian efforts there.

"We're praying about whether the Lord wants us to move to Congo," Barry Mosier later told the Adventist Review. "It was a rough introduction to Congo a couple of days ago, but wherever He leads, we'll go."

In an email update, Keith asked for prayers as his family recovers from the "traumatic" and "sobering" experience. "I'm so happy they're alive." [Editors: Elizabeth Lechleitner and Christian B.: Schäffler for ANN/APD, also with news input from the Mosier family].