As part of the 50th anniversary, we invite you to read the testimony of Bruce Edwards who was a bush pilot in the Amazon in Peru for Wings of Hope from 1978 to 1981 and who is still involved with the organization today.
One evening in May 1978 I boarded a Canadian Pacific Airlines DC8 in Toronto. The next morning I was in Lima, Peru. Thus began probably my most rewarding and exciting years as a pilot. On the flight I was accompanied by Jean Francois Taschereau, who was to train me to become a jungle pilot. A few days after arriving in Lima we crossed the Andes by car. In those days it sometimes took over twenty four hours to complete the journey on rough mountain roads. At that time Edward Schertz was the chief pilot and he also helped me to learn many essential pilot skills.
Most of our operations supported dozens of native communites as well as mission posts all over the Peruvian Amazon. We also flew medevac missions, often several times a week. Through the medevac work I met my wife, Elisa. She was a medical student completing a rural intership program at the hospital in Satipo. She would travel extensively in the region doing mobile clinics and vaccination campaigns in the native communities.