JAARS History—Overview

In 1917, the young W. Cameron Townsend had traveled from California to Guatemala to sell Spanish Bibles. He was deeply moved by the difficulties Guatemalan Indians had in reading, and the alienation they felt with the strange Spanish language. This experience changed the course of his life. He stopped selling Spanish Bibles and spent the next 12 years translating the New Testament into the Cakchiquel language. It was during these years at the translation desk that the heart and soul of the new Bible translation movement was formed.

After finishing the Cakchiquel New Testament, Townsend resigned from his mission and in 1934 began what became known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) to train prospective Bible translators in linguistics. He established Wycliffe Bible Translators in 1942 to communicate with the home church constituency and coordinate financial support. SIL International continues to coordinate language programs worldwide. But the time for his third organization, JAARS, had not yet come. Several near tragedies and years of difficult travel and hardship for their personnel were needed to pave the way. One such incident took place in late 1946.

A young missionary couple anxiously waited deep in the Amazonian jungle for a flight that never came. Four months pregnant, Florence Nickel describes part of the ensuing journey she and her husband Titus had to take to reach medical care. “It was rainy season and the river was high and hard to travel. The second day out, the boatman got drunk. In the afternoon we ran out of gas, and then the propeller fell off and sank to the bottom of the river. Titus and I camped in a little dirty hut while the boatman floated downriver and retrieved a new propeller. After two weeks on the river, we got to the place where the foot trail started, and I thought the worst of our journey was over. But I didn’t know the trail ahead of us. At the end of each day of hiking through the jungle, we were so stiff and tired it didn’t seem possible to crawl over trees, up and down hills and wade through streams anymore. Four days later, at the end of the walking trail, we were able to get mules to ride for a day and a half—a luxury to us. We finally reached a road and got a ride to the coast, arriving on Christmas Day. We had been traveling twenty-one days.”

Townsend anguished over extreme hardships like these and the heartbreaking tragic deaths in other missions where flight service was nonexistent or inadequate. In 1947 in Mexico, Townsend was in a near fatal air accident himself. Along with his wife Elaine and their first child Grace, they had squeezed into a chartered Piper Super Cruiser. Barely past the end of the dirt airstrip, the inexperienced pilot banked the tiny plane. With insufficient altitude, the tail of their plane hit a tree throwing them into a small ravine. Miraculously no one was killed in the mangled aircraft, but all suffered serious injuries except for baby Grace.

This crash put Townsend in bed for many weeks, but it only served to energize him, making him more determined to work toward establishing an SIL aviation program. The SIL board had been against Townsend’s visionary and frighteningly expensive notion of establishing its own aviation service. They wanted SIL to keep using an already established mission flight service. However, it was becoming ominously clear that the likelihood of a tragic air fatality would only increase with the use of under-qualified pilots and poorly maintained chartered aircraft. In addition, the extremely difficult travel and overwhelming time involved were taking their toll on SIL personnel and programs. Finally, in light of these inescapable realities, the SIL board approved the formation of its own air service in 1948. Jungle Aviation And Radio Service, now known as JAARS, was formed with one amphibious plane serving in Peru.

From that simple beginning, JAARS has continued to grow in size and scope. As Bible translation efforts spread throughout Latin America, so did JAARS. In time, translation work expanded into the Philippines, Asia, Africa and the Pacific area. JAARS came alongside to support the new initiatives, broadening its scope of technical service to include aviation, wireless communications, information technology, construction, vernacular media, buying, shipping and transportation services. JAARS was officially incorporated in 1963, locating its international center in Waxhaw, North Carolina, just south of the city of Charlotte.

Wycliffe translators are involved in Bible translations in over 1,300 languages across more than 70 countries throughout the world. Uncle Cam passed on in 1982, but JAARS continues to follow his example of pioneering and serving. Though JAARS support has expanded far beyond just airplanes and radios, the principle is still the same. As Uncle Cam said, “Airplanes and radios don’t make Bible translation easier, they make it possible.”