The Powell's First Post!

October 14th, 2024

We are so excited to share with you our latest updates as we prepare to retire from the Air Force. Brad retires at the end of December, and the Lord is calling us into the next exciting chapter in our family’s life!

For the past few months, we have been working through the application process with a missionary aviation organization called Jungle Aviation And Relay Service [JAARS]. JAARS is closely affiliated with Wycliffe and supports local language translation work through aviation, shipping, ground transportation, and logistics. There's a link below to the trailer for a documentary produced by JAARS.

This past January we all visited the JAARS headquarters in Waxhaw, NC, just south of Charlotte. Brad was even able to do a flight with an instructor in their Robinson helicopter!

The JAARS headquarters also has an incredible museum of language and writing called the Museum of the Alphabet. We fully enjoyed our tour and learning how writing and language has developed from pre-historic times to today.

The next step in the process of joining JAARS is for Brad to complete a week-long flight evaluation with the aviation team in North Carolina. While Brad is doing the flight eval, they will have the whole family out for the week for some initial orientation activities. We are tentatively scheduled to do the evaluation this January.

One of the decisions we have to make is when to move away from Florida, and up to North Carolina. We are praying for wisdom as we weigh our timing options. Our goal is to be accepted into JAARS on time to get into their 4-month long orientation course which starts this March.

We plan to serve with JAARS in Papua New Guinea after we’re complete with all our initial training. Papua New Guinea is half of an incredibly rugged island with hundreds of people groups, each with their own language. Many of these peoples are only accessible by airplane or helicopter. So Brad’s job would be flying people and supplies to and from the villages all-round the country in support of JAARS work. There’s also a clinic where we would live in which Cambria could work, caring for the local people and the other missions workers.

This past July, Brad and Cambria traveled to Papua New Guinea to visit the people and location where we hope to live and work. Look out for our next post for details and pictures!

Please pray with us.

Brad and Cambria

Click below on the icon for the JAARS documentary trailer (Youtube)