From one of our pilots – October, 2020
These stacks of boxes contain freshly printed New Testaments in the language of the Jarawara people group of the Amazon rain forest. For the five years that we lived and served up north, I had the extreme privilege of regularly providing flights for this translation team. It is such a joy to see the culmination of decades of work!
I once sat in the translator’s home in the village after flying him there. As we shared a simple lunch together, his eyes welled with tears as he recalled the difficulties he and his young family used to face as they tried to get to the village by boat. It was a multi-day trek through swollen rivers in rainy season, or through dried up creeks in dry season. There were fallen logs, bugs, alligators… just about everything working against safe and easy trips to the village. This prompted them to begin the laborious task of carving out a 2000-foot-long swath of trees just wide enough for our aircraft to touch down and turn their trip into a 1-hour flight.
We praise the Lord for years of safe aviation operations, His protection over this family, and the literacy programs throughout the years that have enabled this people group to read God’s Word — which they now have available in their language!
COVID Continued….
Travel restrictions continue to keep our aircraft nearly 100% grounded. Average hours flown per month have fallen from 100 to 7. So, what does a mission pilot do when he cannot be out piloting? Aircraft maintenance! We are working on one aircraft that needs repairs, and a second that is being transformed from a floatplane to a landplane. With these projects, we are taking the opportunity to modernize some of the equipment onboard to make our aircraft safer and have a higher dispatch rate than ever before.
