Pubdate: Fri, 05 Jul 2002
Source: South Florida Sun Sentinel (FL)
Copyright: 2002 South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Contact:  http://www.sun-sentinel.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1326
Author: Gary D. Robertson, Associated Press Writer

PERU MISSIONARY RELIVES PLANE TRAGEDY

GARNER, N.C. -- When he got off the plane that brought him to North 
Carolina, Jim Bowers wondered aloud to his mother if he could ever get the 
images out of his mind.

The smoke from the guns of a Peruvian Air Force A-37 that shot through the 
small aircraft carrying his missionary family. The screams in Spanish of 
the Cessna's pilot: "They're killing us! They're killing us!" The blood on 
his infant daughter. His wife slumped over in her seat.

More than a year has passed since a single bullet took the lives of Bowers' 
wife, Roni, and his daughter, Charity, in the sky over the Amazon River. A 
Baptist, Bowers credits his faith with sustaining him and his 7-year-old 
son, Cory.

He says he's forgiven the U.S. and Peruvian officials who mistook his 
family's plane for a drug smuggler's. The two governments have acknowledged 
errors were made, and President Bush has called him to express regret.

But Bowers still longs for an apology from the CIA, who officials said 
hired the surveillance crew that first told the Peruvians about the flight 
- -- then never explicitly stopped them from shooting.

"From the very beginning I wasn't expecting anything except for someone to 
admit they did something wrong and to be punished for it," Bowers said 
recently from his mother's home in this Raleigh suburb. "Then I realized as 
the months went by that there wasn't going to be anybody punished.

"It doesn't matter how much you forgive a person. When they do something 
wrong, they should still suffer the consequences."

After the Peruvian plane shot at the missionaries, a U.S. program to force 
down or shoot down airplanes suspected of carrying drugs in Latin America 
was halted.

On Thursday, a senior Bush administration official said the program is 
expected to resume. The timing of President Bush's decision to restart the 
program remains uncertain, said the official, who spoke on condition of 
anonymity.

Bowers, 39, has made dozens of speeches about his experience at Bible 
colleges and churches in the Americas and Europe.

A book, "If God Should Choose," and a dramatic video about the family are 
now serving to meet the Bowers' calling: evangelism and encouraging others 
to become missionaries.

"God has chosen Cory and me to represent him in a bigger way, a lot bigger 
than I would have imagined," he said at a memorial service for Roni and 
Charity last year.

Jim and Roni Bowers worked in relative anonymity for five years along the 
Amazon in northeastern Peru, spreading the Christian gospel among the 
riverside villages and training ministers through the Association of 
Baptists for World Evangelism. The Bowers lived with their children aboard 
a houseboat that sailed up and down the river.

On April 20, 2001, the family, flown by fellow-missionary Kevin Donaldson, 
was returning from the Colombian border where they had picked up a 
permanent resident visa for Charity. CIA personnel aboard a surveillance 
plane spotted the aircraft and alerted Peruvian officials. A Peruvian 
interceptor arrived and shot the aircraft as the CIA crew debated whether 
the plane fit a drug smuggler's profile.

Roni Bowers and Charity, who had been adopted in Michigan only a few months 
earlier, were dead. Cory and Jim Bowers weren't injured. Donaldson was shot 
in the legs, but still managed to land the pontoon plane on the river. They 
reached land and got help.

In the months after the shooting, government reports blamed errors by the 
Peruvian military, procedural mistakes and the poor language skills of 
personnel from both countries for misidentifying the plane.

"They had no reason to suspect us," Bowers said.

Jim Bowers brought the bodies back to America and settled in Garner, a town 
of 20,000 south of Raleigh, where tobacco fields are giving way to suburban 
subdivisions. There, he and Cory moved in with his mother, Wilma.

Bowers took a job at Bethel Baptist Church in nearby Cary, leading Spanish 
Bible studies and church services for the area's growing Hispanic population.

He said he's not bitter, though he does have strong words for the people 
involved. "It was an accident," he said. "It was terrible negligence and 
stupidity but it wasn't malicious."

Roni Bowers' parents have a more pointed assessment.

"It was the United States and Peruvian governments that murdered our 
daughter," Roni's father, John Luttig, said in an interview from Pace, Fla.

An $8 million settlement from the U.S. government was reached this spring 
with the crash survivors, Roni Bowers' parents and the Bowers' missionary 
agency. The government didn't admit liability or assign blame to the CIA as 
part of the settlement.

When asked whether the CIA would apologize to the family, an agency 
spokesman referred to the White House statement released in March that 
said: "The United States government and the government of Peru deeply 
regret this tragic event and the resulting deaths."

All of the beneficiaries say they will give the money to support Christian 
ministries. Peru also has agreed to replace the missionary agency's plane.

With few answers about why this all happened, he leans on the positives 
that have come out of the tragedy, including the growth of his own faith.

"I got Roni stripped away from me. Basically, my main thing in life was my 
relationship with her," he said. Now, "God has seemed to be much more real 
and close to me."

On the Net:

Association of Baptists for World Evangelism: http://www.abwe.org

Jim and Cory Bowers: http://www.jimbowers.org
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MAP posted-by: Beth