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The Last Mile of Missions · Centrally Speaking

0:01
SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, it's the central strength of the church's podcast.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: It speaks about issues that would be of interest to our society.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: In particular, it addresses how a Christian worldview intersects with Western secular culture.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: In the spirit of the church's founder, we take the perspective of the middle way, which is in agreement with the historic Christian church.
0:24
SPEAKER_02: I'm Dr.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: Drake Williams, Minister of Mission and Theology at the Church.
0:28
SPEAKER_02: Our website is www.csdfamily.org.
0:33
SPEAKER_02: One of the tasks of the Christian Church is to share the good news of Jesus Christ far and wide.
0:39
SPEAKER_02: And today we're going to be talking about the last mile of missions, meaning the furthest extent to which the gospel message has gone.
0:47
SPEAKER_02: And we'll be speaking with Steve Biggerstaff, who is the Vice President of Advancement of JARS, Jungle Aviation and Relay Services.
0:56
SPEAKER_02: This is a mission agency that's been in existence for 78 years.
1:00
SPEAKER_02: They're involved with transport and logistics and just helping missionaries as well as those who are at the last end of mission be able to get around.
1:10
SPEAKER_02: They fly in translators that will also help be the hands and feet of Jesus to those who are in distress in these areas.
1:19
SPEAKER_02: Steve, with his uh work, is well in touch with the last uh mile of missions.
1:24
SPEAKER_02: Before working with JARS, he worked 30 years uh in the private sector with strategic planning, uh, marketing, and customer service.
1:31
SPEAKER_02: Now he lives in uh Waxtaw, North Carolina.
1:34
SPEAKER_02: He's married to Jane for 36 years and he has four children, all of whom are grown.
1:39
SPEAKER_02: Steve, welcome to the show.
1:41
SPEAKER_02: We're very glad to have you here on Centrally Speaking.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Drake.
1:44
SPEAKER_01: My pleasure to be here.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: Well, as we talk about uh the last mile of missions, uh let's start with where Christian mission stands as of the year 2026.
1:53
SPEAKER_02: How many people have heard uh the message of Jesus uh that he saves from sin and gives power for living?
1:59
SPEAKER_01: Well, um you can you can look at that question a lot of different ways.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: Um our original why was to support the mission of Bible translation.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: And so we look at the number of people who do and don't have scripture in their own language.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: And the way that's reported oftentimes is not only scripture in general, but how much scripture.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: The best estimates right now say that about one and a half billion people do not have so much as a full Bible in the language they value most, which oftentimes is their heart language, their original language, but there's more and more multilinguals, and over 600 million people that don't even have a full New Testament uh in their own language.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, depending on how you want to do the math, that's 10 to 15 percent of the world's population, maybe 20% as it relates to Bibles.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: And they're oftentimes in very, very, very small groups and very, very, very isolated places.
2:50
SPEAKER_02: Of course, the mission of uh Jesus uh first started in Jerusalem many years ago, uh right um uh before his uh ascension, and now has gone out to, of course, to West Europe, East Europe, places in the States, uh uh Asia and Africa, and really in all major continents.
3:07
SPEAKER_02: But there's still 10 to 15 percent is what you're estimating, uh, without a Bible at this point.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: Without a full Bible uh in their own language.
3:15
SPEAKER_01: They might have parts of it, but the data is is is really, really dense and it would take a long time.
3:20
SPEAKER_01: It might be a verse, it might be a chapter, it might be a book, might be the full New Testament, or maybe a little more, but about a billion and a half, less than a full Bible.
3:29
SPEAKER_02: Uh there's a group called the Joshua Project that uh estimates uh 3.43 billion people don't know about Jesus' death and and its significance.
3:38
SPEAKER_02: Are your figures in line with their Yeah?
3:41
SPEAKER_01: I think that's fair.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: You you've probably heard the expression unreached people groups or unreached people.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: And there's multiple aspects of being unreached.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: There's there's people who, for political reasons, the church can't reach, right?
3:54
SPEAKER_01: The Bible may well be in their language, but uh missionaries, church planters cannot get there.
4:00
SPEAKER_01: That's that's a political barrier.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: Jars has has no ability to affect uh that problem.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: There's religious barriers, same issues, but it's it's the prevailing religion that does not want Christianity there.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: Again, that's not a problem that that we're focused on or that we're solving.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: Other people are working on things like that.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: We are working on the physical barriers, which typically are rainforests, jungles, mountains, islands across hours or days of open water.
4:29
SPEAKER_01: We're working on solving the physical barriers that get to unreached people.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: And again, there's a lot of people who haven't heard the gospel.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that the gospel doesn't exist in their language, it just means that for one reason or another, they've been kept from it.
4:41
SPEAKER_02: Where in parts of the world are most of these uh people who are unreached at this point in time?
4:47
SPEAKER_02: Maybe could uh give some countries for our listeners.
4:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
4:51
SPEAKER_01: From a from a physical barrier perspective, most of the unreached people uh and the countries that they live in are along what we call the green band, which is really if you kind of put your finger on the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and spin the globe, you know, you you come across Africa and the sub-Saharan countries of Africa, and then keep spinning and you get to what we call Melanesia, which is really Northern Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: You know, in Africa, it's Democratic Republic of Congo, it's Uganda, it's Tanzania, Gabon.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: It's those equatorial countries that are characterized by lack of roads or roads that uh are oftentimes inaccessible due to weather or uh civil unrest.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: People living at the top of mountains or in isolated remote mountain valleys or on islands across, again, hours or or or days of uh open ocean travel.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: So very, very difficult to get to.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: It's not impossible, but it's very dangerous to try and get there in general.
5:51
SPEAKER_02: You mentioned some places in Africa, like around the Democratic Republic of Congo and um the Central African Republic.
5:58
SPEAKER_02: Some of these people also would be in uh northern Africa too, wouldn't they, for political reasons?
6:03
SPEAKER_01: Like for political and religious there's political and religious barriers in northern Africa, but in terms of transportation infrastructure, most likely you can reach them.
6:11
SPEAKER_01: So we're not, you know, jars is not needed everywhere, but certainly there are barriers in other places.
6:16
SPEAKER_02: Right.
6:16
SPEAKER_02: A little earlier you said that uh half billion people uh don't have uh a Bible in their most comfortable language, their mother tongue.
6:23
SPEAKER_02: I was wondering if you might uh comment what's the difference about reading the Bible in one's mother tongue as opposed to uh one of the more common languages, and how does that contribute to being uh outside of at the last mile of missions?
6:36
SPEAKER_01: First of all, it's a billion and a half.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: One of the great examples that we have, and I know it's it's hard to imagine this kind of in this format, but there's a people group along the coast of South Carolina, maybe parts of North Carolina, northern Florida, called the Gullah people group, whose language is sort of a Creole combination of English, French, and the native African languages that enslaved people brought with them.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: Maybe 20, 30 years ago, the New Testament was completed in Gullah.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: As a Creole language, your listeners may have heard North American Creole languages in in New Orleans or Savannah or Charleston or whatnot.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: There are times when it's very close to English, but not quite.
7:16
SPEAKER_01: There are very concrete things that maybe you can get out of it.
7:20
SPEAKER_01: But when you start to talk about abstract, when you start to talk about theological, when you start to talk about beliefs and uh supernatural realities of the Bible, those are things are very, very difficult to communicate if people don't fully grasp the language, right?
7:36
SPEAKER_01: They can get that you're talking about a certain place or a certain time of the year or a certain kind of fruit or building or whatever.
7:43
SPEAKER_01: But when you're starting to talk about the core aspects of deity and sovereignty and creation and sin and redemption and things like that, it just it just you can't follow.
7:55
SPEAKER_01: You can't follow.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: So the gulla is a great example of that because as an English speaker, you can start to read it and you can pick out things here and there, but you you know that you just couldn't get the a full grasp of it.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: So historically, we talked about art languages, right?
8:08
SPEAKER_01: The language that you learn at you know in your mother's lap, right, growing up.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: More and more language communities are multilingual.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, someone will will kind of go out into the larger world and come back, or they've learned a trade language, which is kind of a pidgin that allows them to conduct trade with the larger society or with the language community in the valley over the ridgeline.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: It's a very rudimentary, simple language that simply allows them to conduct transactions.
8:34
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't really, you know, go to the depth of things that the scripture requires.
8:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think of it as uh if something is important, you want to say it in the language that's most understandable.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: There was a great quote that we heard a few years back from Vanuatu, which is an island nation kind of northeast of Australia, and there was a young woman who was crying because she had just heard scripture on an audio player, and her response was in tears, that was God speaking, and I listened.
9:04
SPEAKER_01: She listened to the voice of God, was her take on that.
9:08
SPEAKER_01: And it put her in tears.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how many Bibles you have in your house.
9:12
SPEAKER_01: I probably got 10 in my house, and I don't think I've cried in reading them in a long time.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: But for her, that presence of God through that audible scripture was just overpowering.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: It makes a difference to have it in your language when you've never had it.
9:28
SPEAKER_02: And this lady probably already spoke uh three or four other languages too, didn't she?
9:32
SPEAKER_02: Like whether it be French or English or or German, uh, but to be able to hear it in your own language, uh, takes the next step.
9:40
SPEAKER_01: Which goes to both comprehension, but also it goes to validation.
9:44
SPEAKER_01: God speaks our language, God knows who we are.
9:48
SPEAKER_01: So one of the things, can't remember if we talked about it when I was up visiting you, but so many folks, so many of these isolated people groups are what's known as animists.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: And their view of the world, you know, um, anthropologists oftentimes say, leave them alone.
10:01
SPEAKER_01: They're idyllic, they're peaceful, they're everything is good.
10:03
SPEAKER_01: Don't go in there and ruin them with Western problems and ideas.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: But the reality is, is they believe their worldview is that humans are no different than any other part of nature, no better than, no worse than a cloud or a rock or an animal or a plant.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: And as far as they can tell, every other part of nature is trying to kill them.
10:24
SPEAKER_01: Heat, cold, earthquakes, floods, animals with poison or fangs or claws, the people who live in the valley next door, every other part of nature is trying to kill them.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: And they're just simply trying to appease nature to survive.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: They don't have a view of themselves as being created in the image of a sovereign God.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: They're no different, no better than anything else.
10:47
SPEAKER_01: And when they hear and absorb the fact that there is a sovereign deity who created everything, who controls everything, and who created man, not rocks, not trees, not animals, created man in his image, it changes everything for them in terms of their view of themselves and the world, the value that they place upon themselves and how they treat each other.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: It's really, it's really quite compelling.
11:11
SPEAKER_02: And then to hear that that God who created also speaks their language is very it's a very significant thing.
11:18
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
11:18
SPEAKER_01: There was a quote many, many years ago that our founder, Cameron Townsend, who was great friends with Billy Graham back in the day, recounts from his early days in Guatemala, where he was talking with a village elder who said to him, If your God is so great, why can't he speak my language?
11:35
SPEAKER_01: Which just pierced his heart.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: Pierced, you know, our founder's heart.
11:38
SPEAKER_01: He says he can speak your language, and I'm gonna learn it too.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna, but um, it's that sense of uh we are a people separate from the creator, as far as we know, right?
11:49
SPEAKER_01: Either because we've separated from him or he's separated from us.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: And to bring the two together it uh just just brings incredible changes uh to people, to families, to communities for generations.
12:00
SPEAKER_02: Well, we've talked about the importance of Bible translation.
12:03
SPEAKER_02: Um, let's uh get to uh what it takes to actually do Bible translation.
12:08
SPEAKER_02: I mean, what does it take for a missionary to get the Bible translated in a language where most people do not know who God is?
12:14
SPEAKER_01: That is maybe the most complex question you could ask.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: The truth is that most translation work is now done by multilingual nationals who are recruited.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: Uh, they're given access to translation training, software tools, 24-7 access to seminary train, uh, linguistic consultants, but they still oftentimes have a physical barrier to deal with, all right, which is where Jars comes in.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: But all that said, there's geopolitical access, right?
12:40
SPEAKER_01: You've got to have access to the country and to the people.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: There's places where you can and places where you can't.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: There's years of training and study, less and less so if you've got a national, a local person to do it.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: Access to linguistic and seminary trained resources, those typically don't exist on the ground in these very remote places.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: You've got supply chain infrastructure, right?
13:00
SPEAKER_01: If you're gonna get people in and out of these villages and two consultants where they can work on computers and they can use software and they can ask questions as they as they run into problems with how to translate X or Y, it requires high-intensity transportation solutions.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: And then it requires significant financial partnership by the people of God.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, all of this is done typically by people who step away from the commercial world, step away from the for-profit environment.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: And many of us who are not able to go are blessed with the kingdom resources to make it possible for others who do and can go.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: And so all of those things are critical.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: It's it's really a supply chain, and there's the tip of the spear and the people out there right at the point on the ground, but there's you know, all sorts of resources lined up behind them to get them there and keep them there, keep them safe, healthy, their children, their families, and to sustain that for many years, because translation is not a it's not a quick thing.
13:54
SPEAKER_01: No, it's not.
13:55
SPEAKER_02: And I know some uh Bible translation uh organizations are working with intermediaries so that not only is there translation in the the language that has not uh been accomplished, but it's going through an intermediary step, whether it be of uh English, French, uh, or or German too.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: So and one of the things that the that the software that the the prevailing software does is identify so so so language you know stems back, you know, to go back to the Garden of Eden, right?
14:22
SPEAKER_01: So language language branches out, and there's different sort of branches of language.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: And and and the the branch that yields you know, Chinese and Korean and Japanese and whatnot is very, very dissimilar from the branch that yields the European romance languages.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
14:37
SPEAKER_01: And so software has been developed to go as as far back as possible with what you know and what you can hear and try and establish kind of the root and the the branch structures of the language, because then that accelerates the ability of AI and other kind of tools embedded to move forward with translation.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: Once it kind of realizes what the rules are of this language, if there are any rules that relate to any other languages, because sometimes there's not.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you run into completely unique language structures and systems.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: But to the extent that there are commonalities, the software can help with that and really accelerate the process.
15:12
SPEAKER_02: So now that we've gotten a Bible translator out there backed up by many, many people uh to support the person at the, as you say, the tip of the spear who's on the on the ground.
15:23
SPEAKER_02: Now this uh work has been accomplished.
15:26
SPEAKER_02: How do people receive these Bibles now that they're in their own language?
15:30
SPEAKER_02: You've you've said uh you've already given us one story about somebody who heard it, but maybe you have a story about how uh someone has actually received a Bible in their own language.
15:39
SPEAKER_01: Well, uh a couple a couple thoughts through that.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh first, these are primarily oral societies.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: For for millennia, they have existed without writing, without transmitting or sharing or storing information on paper.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: It is all in the language, it's all in the memory, the institutional memory of the community.
15:57
SPEAKER_01: So in the past, years and decades were spent learning the language, developing a writing system, translating scripture.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: And then once it was done in writing, it was recorded orally and provided to an oral society.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: But that took many years.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: More and more the process begins with oral Bible translation.
16:16
SPEAKER_01: Some really uh smart people have developed some very unique tools that allow you to move directly to oral Bible translation without having written down the language or an alphabet uh or a dictionary or any of those kinds of things.
16:31
SPEAKER_01: So that allows for faster transmission.
16:33
SPEAKER_01: It gets the it gets the Bible into an audible format earlier, or at least portions of the Bible that expand.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: It creates earlier converts and church growth because they're they're accustomed as a society to passing information along orally.
16:47
SPEAKER_01: It creates a greater demand for the written version when it ultimately exists because they want to dig in and study what they have learned orally and audibly.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: And then that provides a rationale for literacy, which not only creates the ability for growth and study, but also goes to things like education and jobs preparation and economic development and all kinds of other benefits of a literate society.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: So first thing to remember it's oral communities.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, how do people without a Bible receive a Bible?
17:16
SPEAKER_01: Contact and trust building are critical.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: All right.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: So we've all heard the proverbial stories about first contact, first time uh a native people has seen somebody from the outside, right?
17:27
SPEAKER_01: And that happens, that still happens.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: One of the great stories that I've heard from a guy by the name of Nate Gordon, who's a colleague of mine here, a great friend.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: He was a pilot in Papua Indonesia for 20 years and wrote a book called Airborne at the end of the earth.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: He tells a story about going in, having seen a people group that they didn't know existed before in a particular valley that they were flying over.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: They saw them on the ground.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: They they couldn't land.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: There was no place to land a fixed-wing aircraft there, but they went back in with a helicopter.
17:55
SPEAKER_01: They put it down in the only place that the helicopter could land, which was where the locals had cleared the land for a garden.
18:01
SPEAKER_01: As they were coming in, they saw guys on the ground with their bows and arrows, spears, and machetes.
18:07
SPEAKER_01: And as the helicopter got closer, they all receded back into the woods.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: Helicopter lands, a few people get out, the helicopter takes off and kind of moves away a little bit to appear less threatening.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: And so you've got, I think, three or four Americans and Europeans there just standing in the garden waiting to see who's going to come out of the woods.
18:26
SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, a few guys did come out of the woods with without their weapons.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: But clearly, not everybody came out of the woods, and the guys in the woods still had their weapons, right?
18:36
SPEAKER_01: Just through the graciousness of the Holy Spirit, they were able to communicate from both sides a desire, curiosity, lack of threat, a desire to communicate, and ultimately were welcomed there.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: At which point the other folks were called out of the woods and they came, you know, with all the weapons.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: And as time went by, the story emerged that there were a few people in the woods, arrows drawn, prepared to shoot the newcomers in the garden.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: And these guys don't miss when they shoot, by the way.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: They're very well trained and experienced.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: Their animistic worldview, you know, says anybody coming in can disrupt the tenuous balance we have with the spirits in the spirit world, and we can't allow that.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: And so their tendency is to just kill you first and ask questions later.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: But they didn't because one guy reached out and stopped the other guy from shooting and reminded him of a story that had been passed down in their language community, their people group for generations.
19:37
SPEAKER_01: An elder several generations back had had a dream that there would come a point when men came into the valley who looked like a certain tree.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: I forget the name of it.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: It's in Nate's book.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: And when those men came, don't kill them.
19:53
SPEAKER_01: Good things will happen.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: They're there to help reconnect you to the creator.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: That particular type of tree was the only tree in the whole forest there with white bark.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: And generations earlier, God had planted a dream in an elder that said, Pass this down.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: At some point, these people will come for your good.
20:15
SPEAKER_01: Don't kill them.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: And so the guy, the guy in the woods with his arrow drawn, is stopped at the last minute.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: No, these are the guys.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: Don't shoot.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: It's an amazing story.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: Just amazing.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: Just amazing.
20:25
SPEAKER_01: So that contact, that first contact, which is fraught with all kinds of potential for misunderstanding, building trust, you know, God going out ahead, right?
20:33
SPEAKER_01: God going out ahead to touch hearts and minds and give people, you know, we hear about this in the in the Muslim world all the time, uh, of God using dreams, right?
20:42
SPEAKER_01: We kind of poo-poo it in the United States as something that you know doesn't happen, but we hear about it from Muslims.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: And he's doing that all over the world.
20:52
SPEAKER_01: And so uh that's really, really important.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: That that contact, that trust building.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: The third thing is really continuity and honoring the second great commandment.
21:00
SPEAKER_01: You know, when the when the Pharisees tried to test Jesus about what was most important, he said, love God and love your neighbor, right?
21:07
SPEAKER_01: Love God with everything you have and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself in the same ways that you love yourself.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: And so when we make contact, and when I say we, it's pilot enabled, but generally speaking, the people on the ground are not pilots.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: They don't, they come and they go, but it's the hands and feet.
21:24
SPEAKER_01: As you said, it's the hands and feet of Jesus, right?
21:26
SPEAKER_01: We want to spend time with them.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: We want to start to let them know what we're doing.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: We want to communicate, you know, our faith and the desire to share with them.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: But also we want to get their pigs and their beans to market and bring back whatever tools you know they need from the proceeds of selling their stuff.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: We want to get women in crisis pregnancies out to health care.
21:44
SPEAKER_01: We want to get people with illnesses, or we've, I mean, we're always flying people with arrows sticking in them to get those taken care of.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: We want to provide access in and out for people who are planting churches, who are gonna build schools, for government folks kind of coming in doing surveys and trying.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Figure out what resources are needed, economic development, healthcare.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: You know, once we have a connection, then all sorts of things can flow through that connection, right?
22:08
SPEAKER_01: That demonstrate, again, the love that we have for other people.
22:11
SPEAKER_01: Another quick story.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: I was told years ago by an old gentleman who was working here that when he was young, he had been part of a translation team in Suriname, South America, and had gone back years later after the scripture had been translated and had been welcomed up to the home of the village elder or chieftain who knew him from you know many years before.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: So they were having coffee or tea or whatever drink they share there.
22:34
SPEAKER_01: And the village elder pointed out the window at a ridgeline and said, You do you remember the people that lived on the other side of that ridgeline?
22:42
SPEAKER_01: We used to go before we had the scripture, before we knew about God and his great love for us, we used to go over that ridgeline into that valley and kill those people and eat them.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: Now we go over there and we tell them that God loves them and we love them too.
23:00
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: That's quite historic.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: It just is transformative.
23:04
SPEAKER_01: And we can be deceived by the anthropologists of the world that assume that man is inherently good and this these the lives of these people is idyllic.
23:13
SPEAKER_01: What they don't understand is the fear and the danger that they that they live in and how they respond to the truth of the gospel when they can understand it and comprehend it in their own language.
23:25
SPEAKER_02: Well, obviously, with uh these type of good stories as well as uh the integration of those who are uh so far outside of civilization, there's certainly value in in this type of mission work.
23:37
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you could give us some idea of what it's like to get a missionary uh or a Bible translator out to the last mile of missions.
23:45
SPEAKER_02: And maybe an example might help if we chose uh one of the areas that you're working in, the um Congolese ra rainforest.
23:51
SPEAKER_02: I mean, what's what's it like to get a Bible translator out into the jungles uh in these areas?
23:59
SPEAKER_01: In terms of first contact, it's some pretty hard slogging, and helicopters are really kind of like the primary front-end tool, other than just hiking.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: And there are still places where you just got to hike there and it's you know 12-hour hikes and you're going up and down mountainsides and fording rivers and all kinds of things.
24:17
SPEAKER_01: But the point of it all is that there's very few roads in these places.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: And what roads there are are oftentimes impassable because of weather.
24:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I just saw a photo the other day with a four-wheel drive truck that was up to its axles in mud, you know, there were people all around it tying ropes to it and trying to drag it out, but they're standing in knee-deep mud as well.
24:37
SPEAKER_01: It's like it is just almost impossible to use the roads in many of these places, or there's civil unrest going on, especially in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, Boko Haram and other groups, you know, sort of claiming in the DRC, it's just, you know, just rebels in general.
24:51
SPEAKER_01: Just a lot of political unrest there, tribal unrest.
24:54
SPEAKER_01: Where there are rivers, they range from, you know, massive rivers with massive currents, hippopotamuses, alligators, crocodiles, piranha, you know, all the things we've learned to be uh scared of in the Tarzan movies, those exist.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: And the boats that oftentimes are put on those waterways locally are incredibly dangerous for a number of reasons.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: One, they're typically overloaded by a factor of two to three, right?
25:20
SPEAKER_01: If if it's made for a hundred people, they'll put 200 on it because you know, every every other person is more money, right?
25:26
SPEAKER_01: The boats are not well maintained, the engines may not be well maintained, they may not have sufficient fuel.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: If there's any kind of snag or sandbar or or weather condition that causes the boat to tilt or list, you're likely to dip it underwater and then it starts to sink.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: Captain might be poorly trained or drunk, you know, just all sorts of problems with traveling by water.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: And yet it's the only choice oftentimes, and people take it at great risk.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: So, in addition to trying to provide boats in a very few locations, we also provide water safety training to missionaries who are going to have to take some of these local commercial options.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: And so they're gonna have vests, right?
26:06
SPEAKER_01: And they're gonna have ropes and they're gonna have lights and they're gonna have beacons and they're gonna have, you know, all sorts of training uh of how to not only protect themselves, but also to protect others, you know, in a serious accident situation.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: Those same situations are true uh in the Congolese rainforest.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: They're true in the Amazon and the Melanesian rainforest, right?
26:26
SPEAKER_01: In addition, in Melanesia, you've got mountains that are 15,000 feet high.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean, almost three miles high, and then lots of, you know, in the in the foothills of those mountains, which is sort of a misnomer, you know, you've got massively high ridges and valleys in between.
26:42
SPEAKER_01: And so getting over or through those ridges is very, very difficult.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: Again, there's no roads, you know, again, helicopters on the front end, and then maybe years down the road, after the people have built landing strips by hand, you're able to fly fixed wing in.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: Also in Melanesia, you've got islands, right?
26:58
SPEAKER_01: Vanuatu, Solomon's, these are you know, very, very small islands across hours and days of uh open ocean water.
27:06
SPEAKER_01: So treacherous crossings for small for small boats as well.
27:10
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's um again, if your language isn't written down, you live in a pretty remote and difficult place to get to.
27:17
SPEAKER_02: And some of the equipment that you're using then to get uh missionaries and Bible translators into these places, uh you already mentioned helicopters.
27:24
SPEAKER_02: Uh what type?
27:25
SPEAKER_01: Well, we're currently using uh Bell uh L3s, L4s, I think 407.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: Excuse me, I'm not an aviator, but I but I think we've got one of those.
27:33
SPEAKER_01: Um then we've also got Cameroon, we're using a Robinson R66, which is a turbine helicopter.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: We use in general the fixed wings in general, we are falling the category that some would call STOL or short takeoff and landing.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: They're special purpose aircraft designed to take off and land in very, very short strips.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: Again, the strips that we're landing on are hand-built, and so they're not very long.
27:56
SPEAKER_01: They're only as long as they need to be.
27:58
SPEAKER_01: They're typically on the side of a mountain.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh they're sloped, extreme slopes.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: And oftentimes there are uh mountain ridges or forests all around them.
28:08
SPEAKER_01: And so you cannot take the typical long, flat landings or takeoffs that we're used to here in the United States.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: You have to be coming down very vertically, which means you have to oftentimes be flying very slowly and in circles to get to the point where then you can put it down in a very short space.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: So very, very uh specialized aircraft where we have moved over the last decade from primarily piston engine aircraft, you know, Cessna's and and helios that that use what's called Avgas, aviation gas.
28:40
SPEAKER_01: We've moved to turbine-powered single prop aircraft just because it just became untenable to supply Avgas in countries where there's no real private aviation.
28:50
SPEAKER_01: The only aviation going on in most of these countries is commercial and they all use jet fuel.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: And so uh Avgas just doesn't exist.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: And so we were we were shipping it in in containers and and uh trying to store it, and um, it just it was proved untenable.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: So we moved the fleets to turbine STOL aircraft, which is available but significantly more expensive.
29:11
SPEAKER_01: And obviously, with the events going on in the Middle East right now, prices are up about 80% for futures.
29:18
SPEAKER_01: But that's the aircraft that we use.
29:19
SPEAKER_01: We also operate on water.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: We have two boats right now.
29:23
SPEAKER_01: One is deployed in the Milne Bay, sort of the eastern northeastern coast of Papua New Guinea, and it will essentially go out to the outlying islands because there's translation work on out there.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: It is slow, it's about seven knots an hour.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: It is slow, but it's going to get there and not sink, and it's going to have a reliable schedule.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, we hear stories of people, you know, taking the commercial transports out there.
29:47
SPEAKER_01: Again, very, very dangerous, but then also very unreliable.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: And so you get out there to an island, you finish your work, the boat was supposed to come this Friday, and you get news that it's not going to be back for a month, and you're you're stranded, right?
30:01
SPEAKER_01: And so uh we have a we have a small, slow boat, but it's it's reliable, and it runs on time.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: And then we were also just recently gifted sort of an ocean-going yacht.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: When I say yacht, it's I don't know, 30, 40 feet, something like that.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: And the owners used it in the Caribbean to do mission work from island to island in the Caribbean, raised their children on board, you know, homeschooled their children on board the yacht as they're doing life and mission.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: Their kids are all grown, and they just decided, you know what, we're not going to do that anymore.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: And where where can this boat be put to kingdom use?
30:34
SPEAKER_01: And so they've given it to us, and we're in the process of upfitting it, and then ultimately recruiting and training a crew, and it will go over to Melanesia as well, probably about the time we start looking at our next hub in Danawatu and the Solomon Islands.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: But then also, as I said, we provide water safety training for people who have to use commercial.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: And then we actually purchase for you know third-party missions, sometimes local boats with Yamaha, you know, outboards, diesel outboards, things that can be easily fixed or replaced that allow them to kind of manage their own transportation as opposed to depend upon very dangerous and unreliable local commercial transport.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: And then on land, it's typically four-wheel drives, could be a truck, could be a you know, an SUV type, you know, enclosed vehicle, or it could be motorbikes.
31:18
SPEAKER_01: Motorbikes are very, very useful because they can oftentimes get around road problems that a four-wheel drive can't.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: Everything's got its limitations and its its pros and its cons.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: There are places where four-wheel drives and motorbikes you know make all the difference.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: Those are primarily the tools that we use.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: Clearly, when you're talking about the boats and the aircraft, you need pilots, you need mechanics, you need staff for scheduling and parts and administration.
31:42
SPEAKER_01: And then you need a whole kind of again, the whole kind of behind the curtains training.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: What we do here in North Carolina.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: We take people, we're currently taking people who normally would spend about 10 years on the journey to become prepared for deployment as a missionary pilot.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: And we've consolidated that down to about two years just because the need is so urgent.
32:02
SPEAKER_01: The uh the current generation of pilots and mechanics overseas is aging out.
32:06
SPEAKER_01: We don't have time to wait 10 years for the next generation to deploy.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: And so we've created an apprentice program where they get high-level and intensive training, housing, healthcare, a living stipend for a couple years, spiritual mentoring, but within two years, they're ready to deploy.
32:20
SPEAKER_01: It's not something we've typically done.
32:22
SPEAKER_01: It's pretty expensive, but it's critical to keeping the pipeline moving overseas.
32:26
SPEAKER_01: We do what we call pre-field orientation, which is about four months of once a pilot outside of our apprentice program has completed all of their training, we do about four months of very intensive training, including taking them up into the mountains in North Carolina and teaching them things that nobody else can teach them.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: We do technical evaluations, which is basically taking somebody from outside the system and saying, all right, how far along are you?
32:49
SPEAKER_01: What else do you need to know and learn?
32:50
SPEAKER_01: We'll evaluate folks and then kind of plug them in at the right place.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: And then everybody who's deployed around the world is required to do recurrent training on a certain schedule, depending on what they're flying and how long they've been flying, how old they are, those sorts of things.
33:03
SPEAKER_01: So we do recurrent training as well.
33:05
SPEAKER_01: So people are always flowing back towards JARS from different places around the world to get their recurrent training, make sure that they're they're still, you know, good to go.
33:12
SPEAKER_02: Well, this sounds like uh exciting work that you're involved with, Steve, and the work that Jungle Aviation and Relay Services is doing.
33:19
SPEAKER_02: Uh, we certainly wish you the best uh as you take the uh message of hope to the ends of the earth, and especially as you're working on the last mile of missions.
33:28
SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Drake.
33:29
SPEAKER_02: Appreciate that very much.
33:31
SPEAKER_02: May God bless you and uh and your family.
33:33
SPEAKER_02: You too.