North Carolina Based JAARS Joins Century of Flight Celebration in Wilmington April 12-13 |
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JAARS and Wycliffe Bible Translators Founder Townsend Envisioned Powered Flight Reaching Remote People as Early as 1926 |
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| March 25, 2003 — Missionary aviation holds a
unique place in the chronicles of powered flight. In 1948, JAARS Inc.,
based in Waxhaw, N.C., just south of Charlotte, began assisting
Wycliffe Bible Translators with an aviation program to provide access
to remote language groups in Peru. Later, aviation services were
extended to other Latin American countries, and then to Asia, Africa
and the Pacific.
At the Coastal Carolina Airshow in Wilmington, N.C., April 12–13, experienced missionary pilot Mike Mower, who has flown hundreds of missions in the Philippines, will demonstrate the capabilities of the Helio Courier aircraft, the workhorse of JAARS’ 37 aircraft fleet. The “Helio” can fly safely at speeds as slow as 30 mph, and has a top speed of 140 mph. This makes it an ideal craft for short airstrips sometimes cut out of the side of a mountain. Even before William Cameron Townsend founded JAARS in 1934, Townsend had a vision for powered flight reaching remote peoples with the Gospel. In 1926, a year before Charles Lindbergh’s historic trans-oceanic flight, Townsend was serving with another mission in Central America, and was already dreaming of using aviation to reach isolated people in the jungles of South America. As the Bible translation efforts grew in the 1940s, Townsend was concerned about the dangers faced by young Bible translators with families in getting to Amazonian villages over land and on rivers. While visiting Bible translation recruits in Mexico in 1947, he and his wife, Elaine, were seriously injured in a small airplane accident. Following this, Townsend became even more determined to develop an aviation program supporting the Bible translation efforts. In 1948, JAARS (formerly called “Jungle Aviation and Radio Service”) was launched in Peru with their first airplane, an amphibian Grumman Duck. Initially JAARS supplied only aviation and radio communication to Wycliffe and other organizations engaged in Bible translation. Today it also provides information technology, vernacular media services to reach people in their heart languages, construction and maintenance, shipping, and land and water transportation services. JAARS also plans to participate in Festival of Flight activities in:
For more information on the Wilmington or other Festival of Flight events, call Tom Hopkins at 704-843-6095 or visit www.firstflightnc.org (the official web site of North Carolina’s First Flight Centennial Commission). |
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JAARS, Inc. PO Box 248 Waxhaw, NC 28173 |
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