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Jim and Roni Bowers creatively spread the gospel to 50 remote Peruvian villages accessible only via the Amazon. In 1995 they began ministering as houseboat missionaries with the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE), living in a 55-foot vessel shipped in chunks via ocean liner from the United States and reassembled on that mighty river.

For six years they traveled in their floating home to towns along a 150-mile stretch of water evangelizing, preaching, teaching and discipling. They held leadership training classes and seminars to equip local believers. Their family included two adopted children, Cory, five, and Charity, seven months.

On April 20, 2001, ABWE pilot Kevin Donaldson was flying the family in the mission’s seaplane on an official trip to secure Charity’s visa. They were headed home when a Peruvian Air Force fighter jet flew close to the missionary craft. Minutes later, the jet opened fire on the missionaries.

Machine-gun bullets tore through the plane. Flames erupted in the cabin. Roni Bowers slumped in the back seat. Charity lay in blood on the floor. Donaldson, his bullet-riddled legs useless, crash-landed the plane in the Amazon. Miraculously, Cory and Jim Bowers escaped injury.

Almost two and a half years have passed since that horrible day when the Peruvians, acting under a CIA-sponsored program, mistook the missionaries for drug runners. Bowers is rebuilding his life. He told World Pulse that he wanted to get an update out “to all of those caring people who prayed so much those first days, and some who’ve continued to pray even without specifics to pray about.”

Bowers authorized a book, If God Should Choose by Kristin Stagg [Moody Press, 2002], about his and Roni’s lives and the incident. In December 2003 he married Stacie Smedley, an old friend and fellow MK he lived near as a child and with whom he attended boarding school in Brazil. Stacie was herself a missionary for 11 years with a sports ministry in Portugal. The new Bowers family lives in Raleigh, N.C., where they’re planting a Hispanic church. He posts ministry updates and photos of Roni and Charity, as well as of himself, Cory and his new wife on www.jimbowers.org.

On the Amazon, fellow ABWE missionaries Patrick and Gina Cassidy will refurbish and add a second floor to the houseboat, which has lay idle and empty since the shoot-down, and resume the Bowerses’ ministry. The Cassidys were preparing for the mission field when Roni and Charity were killed. “The Lord directed them to go there and take our place,” Jim Bowers said.

That’s just one example of many Christians who saw his wife and daughter’s tragic deaths as a personal call to service, Bowers says. He travels to Bible schools where he shares his testimony and encourages his audiences to serve as missionaries.

Bowers has returned to Peru since the incident but rules out living there again because “Things just aren’t the same now for me when I’m in Peru,” he said. Bowers and his new wife’s hearts, however, remain overseas, though he says that God hasn’t yet given them a departure time or destination. “Stacie and I can’t see ourselves here in the US when we are more interested in doing our part in making up for a lack of ministers in other countries,” he said. “We are willing, able and ready to go somewhere where people have less of a chance of hearing God’s truths explained and demonstrated.”

Ironically, the wrongful downing of the ABWE plane didn’t occur in a country noted for religious persecution. “I’m not trying to minimize what happened, but right away people were talking about martyrdom—that Roni was killed for her faith, that it’s such a dangerous place and the governments don’t care about their people. Stuff that wasn’t true,” Bowers said.

He holds no bitterness about the incident and says that he has forgiven those who took his wife’s and daughter’s lives. “I might have struggled with this if God hadn’t helped me believe with all my heart that we are expected to ‘forgive as the Lord has forgiven you,’” he said. “Jesus, John, Paul and others made that principle of God’s will as clear as it could possibly be. Should I now choose to ignore that and hold something against the people who wronged me? Should I be fighting for Roni’s and Charity’s rights while they are in heaven, telling God that they shouldn’t be there with him, it was all a big mistake?

“I don’t fully understand much of what God does, what he allows and doesn’t allow, so why should I demand that he give me a clear explanation in this case?”

Asked whether his story has a happy ending, or if such could be only bittersweet because two innocent lives were lost, Bowers said, “It hasn’t finished. I have many stories to tell of people who were inspired, challenged or convicted as a direct result of what God allowed in my life. Stacie, Cory and I have lots of open doors in ministry ahead of us, praise the Lord.” Bowers believes the unfathomable loss he suffered has given him a greater platform from which to call evangelicals to serve as missionaries: “That has been one of the many blessings God has allowed in my life.” Bowers Builds for the Future Roni and Charity’s memory and legacy inspired a recreation center project in Iquitos, the city of 500,000 nearest the area where the couple ministered for five years. “Roni and I had been looking into the possibility of raising funds to build a facility that would make sports evangelism possible,” Bowers said. “We knew it would be a huge help in reaching out to the 100,000-plus young people of the city of Iquitos—a city that has no similar place for kids to play.

The fruit of a memorial fund, the facility will double as a much-needed conference center. Though more funds are needed to complete the Roni Bowers Memorial Sports Center, construction will begin in the next few months, Bowers said. He’s helping plan the facility from his home base in North Carolina.