While traveling for hours through dangerous waterways in remote rainforest regions, what matters isn’t whether you might capsize; it’s how your group responds when you do.
Still, Bible translators must routinely risk their lives on the water while working alongside indigenous groups on remote island clusters or in communities along a river in a dense rainforest.
Despite the danger, these seas and rivers are often the best—or only—viable way to reach their destinations. Unfortunately, few missionaries, indigenous or otherwise, have been taught to travel safely and care for their limited equipment.
JAARS Sea Ops personnel know this reality personally, which is why they train instructors at JAARS Base in Waxhaw, NC, to provide missionaries in these regions with specialized vessels, logistical/financial support, and safety equipment and training in its use.
In the Amazon rainforest, missionaries must depend on overcrowded wooden canoes to travel from one indigenous community to another. They often pass spots where past passengers have drowned.
There’s no one to signal for rescue in these places, and passengers, including missionaries, rarely know how to respond to common crises. Few indigenous passengers wear safety gear, finding it unfamiliar, untrustworthy, or even humiliating.
“Communities that still need Bible translation are very remote,” says James, a JAARS water safety instructor. “JAARS knows all about that.”
Before working with JAARS, James and his wife were familiar with overcrowded canoes and routine risk-taking on the water. During a short visit at JAARS Base, they received water safety training that prepared them to keep themselves safe.
James was also equipped to train others. He joined JAARS in sharing resources and expertise with Bible translators and indigenous groups in South America.
“The idea is to have a group of collaborators, prepared and trained by JAARS here in Waxhaw, with the highest standard of quality … in order to replicate the training in the field,” says Holmes Rodriguez, the director of our Global Operations in the Americas."
Rodriguez understands this training could mean the difference between life and death, as was the case with one translator serving in the Amazon region.
During the JAARS water safety training course, experienced JAARS water safety instructors taught this translator how to respond to common crises, such as passengers trapped under flipped canoes, surviving capsizing as a group and as an individual, and the need to signal others after being lost in an accident. Her instructors took time to understand her needs and circumstances and taught accordingly.
Later, her boat capsized. Her friends and co-laborers searched for hours, but couldn’t find her.
"Finally, she appears on the other side of the river,” says Rodriguez. “She said, ‘Thank you to my trainers at JAARS, because the knowledge that they gave me helped me save my life.’”
With groups like the Kisi who live along Lake Malawi’s steep, rocky shoreline in Tanzania, JAARS did even more than providing safety training and equipment. To reach the Kisi villages in need of Scripture, translators must travel by boat.
The boats these translators can hire only reach 5 knots (6mph), and there’s a limit for the number of boats allowed on the lake at one time. So translators were severely limited in how they could reach the 20,000 Kisi people living on the lake.
Seeing this, JAARS funded a boat-building project so that these translators could have a specialized vessel for their unique needs. This way, they faced fewer obstacles between the gospel and the unreached Kisi.
In cases like this and in cases where translators have the appropriate equipment, JAARS also works to provide specialized maintenance training.
"We invest a lot of time, from raising funds for the resources to buying them, to transport the equipment there,” says Rodriguez. “So we need to [know how to] maintain that equipment and make it last.”
All operations at JAARS, including Sea Ops, center around meeting the needs of mission workers ready for the field but unable to reach the remote areas where the unreached live.
“I feel like that’s the uniqueness of JAARS,” says James. “While being known for the aviation aspect of the organization, they also have the land and maritime divisions of transportation, which many aviation ministries don’t have.”
Interested in partnering with us as we bridge the turbulent waters between unreached people and the gospel? Consider supporting our efforts and give to the cause today.