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Bob Griffin, author of
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Bob Griffin and his identical twin brother began flight training in 1941 while still in high school. They often parked the Piper J-3 Cub trainer behind the barn on the family farm near Pullman, Washington. Bob has a long record as an outstanding member of the Wycliffe Bible Translators support team, JAARS. He ferried the first JAARS Helio Courier to Ecuador in 1956 where he initiated the aviation program supporting Bible translators. He has logged nearly 7,000 hours as a missionary aviator. Bob and his wife have served in Guatemala, Ecuador and the Philippines. But perhaps his most outstanding accomplishment over several decades of service has been the telling, both as speaker and writer, of God's grace and power revealed through mission aviation. As editor of the award-winning publication Beyond, Bob wrote many compelling "Cleared for Takeoff" columns, some of which were published in book form in 1998. Now enjoy anew this revised, updated 50th Anniversary edition of Bob Griffin's true adventures of life on the mission field. |
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cleared for takeoff - 50th Anniversary
It was late 1956, and we were on final approach to land at a tiny airstrip in the jungle of eastern Ecuador. A few minutes earlier the clearing had been swarming with happily waving Jivaro people. Now everyone had disappeared. Something had frightened them. That was the bad news.
My passenger, veteran missionary Frank Drown, had asked me several weeks earlier to consider making this special flight. "But," he warned, "pray about it. It might be dangerous." Now I knew why.
We were especially wary because only a few weeks earlier five of our missionary friends had been speared to death just a few miles to the north, by people then known as Auca. The Jivaros to whom we were hoping to pay a visit were just as fierce, with a centuries-old reputation as headshrinking killers...
