Project Overviews

The JAARS Center in Waxhaw is a place where laborers are trained and sent to support Bible translation efforts; where field workers can come to retool and refresh; and where conferences bring people together for workshops and discussions in support of field work. Six hundred members and volunteers serve the field teams bringing God’s Word to Bibleless peoples. Your gift will ensure that field workers have the resources to see lives changed through the translation of God’s Word.

“The share of the man who stayed with the supplies is to be the same as that of him who went down to the battle. All will share alike.” I Samuel 30:24 NIV

JAARS needs to replace its current fleet of aging, piston-engine aircraft that use avgas with aircraft that burn readily available Jet-A fuel. Assimilating turbine-powered aircraft into the fleet worldwide before avgas supplies run out is critical to the ability of JAARS to provide the aviation services needed to speed Bible translation.

Your gift to this project will help ensure that JAARS pilots have the right aircraft and the right number of aircraft needed to meet the increasing number of flight service requests for moving people and resources quickly and safely in the task of Bible translation.

Vernacular media services is key to bringing God’s Word in the heart languages of people in oral societies in a certain part of Asia. These tools will also help people better appreciate their own language, and help transform them an illiterate to a literate society. With the Scriptures translated and recorded on cassette tape, people can hear the Good News even though they are not able to read or do not have access to the printed word. Your gift will help cover the costs of adding digital video equipment in the vernacular media department in this part of Asia.

Help Others Hear God’s Word in Their Own Language

The use and impact of Megavoice recording units is being tested in the Pacific area among language groups of people who live in traditionally oral cultures. These devices are handheld, solar powered units with built-in speakers. They can be loaded with Scriptures portions, Bible stories, even gospel songs, and added to as more Scriptures are translated.

Your gift will help provide up to 350 new Megavoice units for this project, giving new access to the Scriptures for people who need to hear of God’s love for them.

More than 15 new locations in Cameroon now have flight services available since the helicopter program opened in February 2007. The helicopter serves in the mountainous northwest part of the country, much of which is not accessible by road or fixed-wing aircraft.

Gifts to this project will help enable translators to reach and deliver God’s Word to those without it. Bible translators and health workers will move more efficiently and safely into remote and extremely difficult-to-access regions of the mountains of NW Cameroon.

Travel to villages high in the mountains of South Asia is slow and treacherous on wet and sometimes snow-covered unpaved roads. Public transportation is virtually non-existent, and where available, unreliable. Dependable, safe transportation is essential for transporting the language team and their supplies to the village and for medical evacuations. A four-wheel drive vehicle is critical to this project. Your gift will help purchase a vehicle to get the team where they need to be to translate and bring the Good News of God’s love to people who have yet to hear it.

“Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth.” (Psalm 96:1, NIV)

Local churches in the island country of Vanuatu primarily use translated hymns and choruses with Western tunes rather than songs written in culturally appropriate musical styles

Your gift to this project will help make it possible for individuals to attend a song writing workshop, led by an ethnomusicologist to learn how their preferred music styles could be used in their local churches.

There is a need to replace the aging and hard-to-maintain high frequency (HF) radios in five of the airplanes now serving in PNG. The Codan HF2000 radios currently in use are more than 20 years old and no longer made or supported by the manufacturer

Would you prayerfully consider a gift to help purchase these radios which will enable pilots to fly translators to the remote villages without delays. Having these new radios will help the remaining 280 languages in PNG have the Scriptures in their heart language.

“From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. ” (Ephesians 4:16, NIV)

Email, the internet and computers have become vital tools in helping Bible translation projects move forward and stay on target.

Your gift to this project will help to provide adequate, reliable, and affordable access to the Internet, as well as easy-to-maintain networking and email systems connecting Bible translators, literacy specialists and support workers throughout the African continent.

While aviation is an integral part of Bible translation work in remote areas, it is also crucial for providing search capabilities for downed aircraft, boats lost at sea, or individuals lost in rugged terrain. The ability to search successfully depends on having updated, appropriate search and rescue (SAR) equipment for aircraft and each entity’s aviation office.

Some equipment currently in airplanes and helicopters flown by JAARS around the world will be totally obsolete as of February 2009.

Would you consider a gift to help upgrade the JAARS worldwide aviation fleet’s ability to handle search and rescue missions?

Ethiopia is a vast country with people in many language groups who do not yet have a Bible they can understand. Recruiting Ethiopian Christians and equipping the church for the task of Bible translation is key to providing the Scriptures.

Your gift to this project will help provide a vehicle for Ethiopia’s SIL Center management to use in travels to visit language projects and encourage the teams. Meetings with church staffs and government officials will also create the awareness and build the partnerships needed to help bring the Scriptures to the language groups in Ethiopia who have not heard of God’s love in their own language.

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17, NIV)

YAJASI, the JAARS Indonesian counterpart and partner organization, concluded in September 2007 that their 35-40 year old fleet of Avgas burning Helio-Courier aircraft needed to be replaced with three Pilatus Porter PC-6 aircraft.

Within weeks of formalizing those conclusions and having them confirmed at a meeting with representatives from JAARS, the Indonesia Branch, Asia Area and Wycliffe-US, a friend of several YAJASI staff members donated his personal PC-6 aircraft. God is at work in providing another PC-6 aircraft. However, the aircraft requires some modifications and an extensive avionics refit to make it usable in YAJASI’s flight program.

Would you consider a gift to help prepare the PC-6 for service in YAJASI’s fleet? It will provide Bible translation teams and other support workers with safe, reliable air transportation needed to reach people in remote areas of Indonesia who do not have the Scriptures in their heart languages.

When you think of Kenya, you think safari! Think four-wheel-drive too! A mountain range runs north and south through Kenya as does the Great Rift Valley, which separates the Lake Victoria basin to the west from the hills in the east. Dry grassy lowlands and coastal beaches complete the topography that Kenya’s Bible Translation and Literacy staff traverse to help implement, supervise and monitor translation and literacy teams’ progress in the field. They need to purchase a good, secondhand four-wheel-drive vehicle for a reliable means of transport.