NC MAN RETURNS TO PERU, WHERE WIFE, DAUGHTER WERE KILLED

WINSTON-SALEM -- Jim Bowers described his recent return to Peru,
where he and his wife built a ministry and where his wife and young
daughter were killed in April.

He talked about returning to the boat that housed their Amazon River
ministry, and how strange it was not to have his wife, Roni, meet him
at the back door.

"Here we were, everything was like before and Roni wasn't there," Bowers said.

He talked about other thoughts that ran through his head, including
"realizing that Chapter One had come to a close for me, and the Lord
has lots in store for me, but not for Roni."

Bowers spoke Monday night at Salem Baptist Church at a missionary
conference sponsored by the church and Piedmont Baptist College, the
college where Jim and Roni Bowers met in the early 1990s.

Roni Bowers and 7-month-old Charity Bowers were killed when a
Peruvian military jet mistook their Cessna floatplane for a
drug-trafficking aircraft and shot it down.

Jim Bowers and their 6-year-old son, Cory, were also on the plane and
survived, as did pilot Kevin Donaldson, who was shot in the legs.
Bowers and his son are now living with Bowers' mother in Garner. He
and his son are both doing well, he said, and are free of nightmares
and excessive grief about the crash.

He returned Sunday from a two-week trip to Peru, where he was
accompanied by a missionary couple who will take over the Bowers'
houseboat ministry to villages along the river. Bowers plans frequent
visits and hopes to lead the construction of a gym in Peru for a
sports ministry for youth. He hopes to pay for that complex through a
memorial fund set up in the names of his wife and daughter.

He expressed frustration with an inquiry into the crash done by the
United States and Peru. The missionary plane was shot down after a
CIA-operated surveillance flight identified it as a possible drug
flight. The inquiry produced a report that lists a number of factors
as contributing to the crash, including language problems and the
fact that Donaldson did not file a flight plan.

But the group sponsoring the missionaries said that Donaldson was
following customary procedure by calling in his flight plan as he
approached his landing point.

"They want Kevin to share the blame," Bowers said. "That's the only
thing that really bothers us.... We were completely innocent.

"In private ... they've (Peruvian and U.S. officials) said they're
sorry. But never a public apology."