Dear Readers,

About four years ago when I became the Aviation Training Manager, the need for a greater number of qualified aviation people was evident. What could we do?

After several attempts to recruit via aviation job fairs and other professional gatherings, we decided that strengthening our outreach to Christian aviation schools was better. We have added Wes Reimer as full-time recruitment coordinator, and we plan to add another person to visit Christian colleges and universities that offer aviation training. This is intended to develop ongoing relationships with students and staff.

Aviation is vital in supporting Bible translation. Our goal in this issue of Flightlines is to reach qualified pilots and mechanics with this message and trust God to send forth laborers into His fields. Joy Carrera’s story “Combining Passion and Obedience” is one example of how God did just this in one person’s life.

Serving the unchangeable One,

David Shields
JAARS Aviation Training Manager

by Joy Carrera, JAARS Pilot-Mechanic

Pilot Joy Carrera

I was the youngest of four children traveling with my family around the East Coast. No, we weren’t gypsies — we were a missionary family on furlough. Each Sunday my father would speak at a different church. With a “new audience” each time, he preached the same message week after week, with the same appeal: “If God is truly King of your life, are you willing to go to the mission field if He sends you?” That year, God spoke to my heart every Sunday, but I didn’t want to embarrass my family and myself by responding to my own father’s message. So I promised God I would dedicate my life to be a missionary “as soon as I got back to Brazil.” Our first weekend after we returned to Brazil, we attended our local church. They were having their annual missions conference. God reminded me of my promise, and amidst tears. I told Him that I would go anywhere He wanted me to go.

Only a few months later, my dad introduced me to a man he was discipling who was a pilot. He invited us to take a ride with him in his small airplane. We took off and my heart soared along with the plane. I was even more excited when I was allowed to maneuver the controls and make turns to the right and to the left. I was enthralled! I knew that I wanted to be a pilot when I grew up.

But as an earnest pre-teen, I wrestled with this difficult dilemma: I wanted to be a pilot, but I knew God wanted me to be a missionary. Finally, I took my struggle to my parents. They told me about people called “missionary pilots.” I finally knew what I wanted to do, but it would be at least 15 years before I arrived back in Brazil on my first assignment.

With advice from my parents and from the occasional pilot that I met, I formulated a plan to reach my goal. I studied hard in school, taking as much math and science as I could. I volunteered to run the lights and sound for school productions. I even helped a friend’s dad do some car maintenance since my father didn’t work on his own car. I applied to the only college that I was aware of that had a program specifically for missionary aviation and graduated in 1995 from Moody Aviation.

Despite many obstacles and strange looks from people as I told them what I wanted to do, I never gave up on my goal. At each bend in my path, I prayed and resolved that I would obey God no matter what He told me to do. God led me to JAARS where I instantly felt part of the team. The goal here wasn’t just to fly airplanes but to reach all people groups of the world by bringing them God’s Word in their language. My first priority is to be a missionary and I am just lucky enough to also get to fly. “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

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by Nate Gordon, Aviation Manager in an Asian Country

I put the phone down shaking my head. I had just had to give bad news to two different organizations that we partner with in this Asian country. We simply couldn’t meet their pop-up needs for flight services this week. From a human perspective, their ministries are now on hold waiting until we have the equipment available to serve them.

From the office, I looked out at our hangar floor. Three of our four Helio Couriers are in for maintenance, two of them in a state of major disassembly with their wings off and engines apart. With only one Helio on line, we’re severely limited in the needs that we can meet. What we could do with another airplane!

I’m convinced that we are blessed with the hardest-working maintenance men on the planet. (OK, so maybe I’m biased.) There is, however, a limit to what these guys can accomplish. We have only two to three aviation maintenance technicians at any one time. That’s less than a skeleton crew when you consider we’re flying 2,500 hours a year in 30-year-old aircraft in and out of some of the roughest airstrips on earth. We need more of God’s men and women, committed to reaching the uttermost parts of the earth with His love, willing to give their lives, their training, their skills in pursuit of this wonderful eternal endeavor. 

Please contact Wes Reimer at 888-773-1175 or aviation_recruiting_jaars@sil.org.