ViOG
Jun g le Flying f o r Christ
by Betty Rebanks Dell
S ix - year - old Benjamin Rich came into my kitchen and peered at the fish sticks I was about to pop into the oven. “What’s that, Aunt Betty?” he asked, frowning. His mother playfully challenged him to guess. After more scrutiny with eyes and nose, he said, “ Alligator.” I roared with laughter which the green parrot echoed raucously. Where had this odd child been all his life? In the jungles of Peru, with his two brothers, two sisters, and Mother and Dad. He had been born in the United States, on their last leave, but had gone back with them before he was a year old. Jungle life, with its exotic food and strange pets (they had left their spider monkey behind) were familiar to him, but all of the children found many things very queer and some delightful, in their native land. Why was this American family more oriented to jungle living, than to town or city? The explanation begins many years ago, before they were a family. Margaret Halvorsen was one of six children reared in church, lullabied with hymns, and exposed to the Gospel’s great commission, the command of Jesus, “ Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel.” She met and married Ernest Rich, also a believer in the sharing of God’s Word with all the world. However, several things delayed them. They both went to school—Biola— to train for Christian work. But a World War came along, and upset their career and family plans. They didn’t start their family till after that, when they were thirty. They bought a little home in Downey, California, re modelled it on Ernie’s adequate salary as a mechanic, had two sons a year apart, and began to think the pat tern of their life was established. Mission Boards general ly wish younger candidates, so they thought their part was to help finance others to go and share the Gospel. Then they were introduced to Wycliffe Bible Trans lators and J.A.A.R.S. (Jungle Aviation and Radio Service) with its unique and specialized methods for carrying out the first century command. W.B.T., an international cor poration dedicated to the translation of the Bible into every tongue on earth, even tongues of small tribes, be lieves that every individual’s native language speaks best to his mind and heart. Margaret and Ernie were wel comed by Wycliffe with open arms. Ernie, being an expert car and truck mechanic, took a course in airplane mechanics, and was sent, with his family, to Wycliffe’s Peruvian “ Jungle Base,” the hub of all their tribal work there. His job was to maintain their twelve airplanes, modem missionary life-savers and distance-shrinkers. Most of their planes are bought in poor condition and rebuilt by Ernie Rich, and the hanger staff of eight other mechanics and fifteen Peruvian employees, carefully trained by them. These Peruvians are hired on trial, first for three months, then, if they prove satisfactory, for a year. The mechanics become patrones to them,
or actually a kind of “ papa,” sharing their joys and sorrows, even loaning them money if necessary, within limits. They set to work building their own tropical split- level home, and fitting into the industrious life of base personnel. That was eleven years ago. During that span, they have become proficient in Spanish, at home in the air, and adept at many things. Margaret has had various assignments, as all wives work outside their home, usual ly hiring some local help to do their housework. They run nurseries, freeing mothers to work; teach the one hundred children of the missionaries; order and stock the commissary; work in the group dining room, al though most base personnel eat in their own homes, which have increased to sixty-five as the jungle has been pushed back. Their amphibious planes carry many commercial loads, as well as missionaries and their equipment, and have proved invaluable to Peruvians. The base doctors do most of their medical work. The two girls were born there at the base clinic. However, the Rich family flies to Lima for dental work and for shopping. Roger, the fifteen-year-old boy, rides his bike to Pucallpa, the closest town, mud-paved and sidewalk- stalled. A daily swim, in the lake at the base is a habit. (Until they installed their special gravity shower system, it was also their only source for a bath.) But life isn’t altogether an idyll in a tropical paradise for the Rich’s and their companions. If vegetation and animal life are more .profuse and extravagant, so are other kinds of life, such as the heavy mildew they must constantly battle — mold that destroys clothes, type writers, etc. Many tropical parasites also grow bigger and better and take up residence in their bodies. There have been many days of sickness and many more weeks and months of “just dragging around.” Tropical allergies can be bigger and better than home-grown varieties, as Margaret can testify hoarsely, eyes streaming. What then has kept this American family of seven in this alien clime? A deep sense of purpose, and satis faction in fulfilling that purpose. Although it be mainly done with nuts, bolts, wrenches and similar tools, they feel they are fulfilling the great commission as much as others who are actually translating the Bible into tribal languages. For a translator, who formerly had a one week trip of very rugged travel through dense jungle foliage and on a turbulent, treacherous river, to come out for even medical care, can now make contact by daily radio report, and be flown out in one half hour. One who took six weeks, takes six hours. This can often mean the preservation of a highly trained and useful life which would have been snuffed out at its most fruitful time, be fore J.A.A.R.S. came into being, and possibly, before the Ernest Rich’s left stateside comfort for jungle service.
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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