GROUP CALLS CRASH A 'TRAGIC ERROR'

Filed at 7:27 p.m. ET

NEW CUMBERLAND, Pa. (AP) -- As second-generation missionaries who grew up
near the Amazon River, Kevin Donaldson and James Bowers never thought of
Peru as a foreign country.

Their organization's list of five or six countries considered dangerous has
never included Peru, where Bowers' wife and the couple's infant daughter
were killed Friday in a small plane gunned down over the Amazon River.

``You usually think of your missionaries as being in danger of malaria, not
in danger of being shot down by a military plane,'' group President Michael
Loftis said Saturday from the headquarters of the Association of Baptists
for World Evangelism in central Pennsylvania.

The plane was fired on by a Peruvian air force jet whose pilot mistook the
missionaries for drug smugglers. Veronica ``Roni'' Bowers, 35, was holding
7-month-old Charity when a jet fired on the plane; both were hit.

Donaldson, 42, originally from Morgantown, Pa., was the plane's pilot. He
was shot in both legs but guided the flaming, single-engine plane into the
river, missionary officials said.

Donaldson, James Bowers, and the Bowers' 6-year-old son, Cory, floated on
the craft's pontoons for a half-hour before villagers rescued them.

About 200 people gathered Saturday at Calvary Church in Fruitport, Mich.,
to pray for the Bowers family, who were from nearby Muskegon. The Rev. Bill
Rudd, a pastor at Calvary Church, said 38-year-old James Bowers and his son
might return to western Michigan as early as Sunday.

``They will need time and space as well as love, so we'll do the
appropriate things to take care of that,'' Rudd said.

Church member Kate Fagan, 36, of Muskegon will begin a four-year mission in
Uganda in late May or early June. She said God had a purpose for what happened.

``We can't and won't grieve for Roni, because she's in heaven,'' Fagan
said. ``We know that's where she is. Who we do grieve for are Jim and Cory,
and the difficulty and the pain that they just started to go through.''

Loftis said the organization considers the shooting ``a tragic error,'' and
harbors no anger toward the Peruvian government.

``It's an amazing story of God's mercy and goodness,'' he said. ``We could
have lost five missionaries out there yesterday.''

The family often floated up and down the Amazon and its tributaries for
days at a time, Loftis said.

``They were involved in various kinds of work -- literacy programs and
schools up and down the river, clinics up and down the river, any number of
things. But the work was always tied in with the gospel,'' Loftis said.

Established in 1927, the missionary organization has about 1,300
missionaries in more than 65 countries who are supported by more than 8,000
Baptist churches. The missionaries work full-time in setting up churches
and schools, ministering to the sick and the needy.

The organization began its ministry in Peru in 1939.

Missionary officials could recall incidents in which two missionaries were
murdered during robberies -- one in Columbia about 10 years ago, and
another in Togo last year -- but none in which a missionary plane was downed.

The organization has been flying planes in Peru for 41 years and has always
had good relations with the Peruvian government, said the Rev. E.C.
Haskell, a spokesman.

``As far as I know, this is the first time in all of missionary aviation
that something like this has happened. We've never had a fatal accident,
and we feel very fortunate,'' Haskell said.

Retired missionary Ivor Greenslade of Brantford, Ontario, spent 21 of his
47 years with the organization in Peru. He said that despite the dangers
they faced, the missionaries had strong faith in God.

``You go into it trusting him,'' Greenslade said. ``If he decides to take
you, you accept that.''