John Chambers: Alaska Missionary Bush Pilot

The small aircraft buzzed along between two vast expanses of whiteness. The long Arctic night was coming fast. Above the airplane was a low and threatening deck of clouds. Below him was a seemingly limitless expanse of snow and ice covering the tundra. Somewhere out there in that whiteness was a lost boy and his dog team.

John Chambers, missionary pilot at Barrow, Alaska, had been asked to assist in the search. The local men from the village had gone out by land in their dogsleds looking for the boy. They had searched for two days, all to no avail. The temperature climbed to about ten degrees during the few short hours of daylight and then plummeted to well below zero during the long Arctic nights. The boy had already been missing for two days. Any longer, and there would be no hope of his survival.

The search was long and wearying. It is easy to get lost in the Arctic, even in an airplane! Will Rogers, the cowboy from Oklahoma, had perished in an airplane crash not far from the spot where Chambers and the ground teams were searching. Punishing winds, freezing temperatures, unpredictable weather, icing on the leading edge of the wing, and the ever present danger of a whiteout were always things to take into consideration.

On this day, John Chambers only had a narrow window of 500 feet for visible flying. Any higher, and he would be lost in “the soup.” Any lower, and he would smash into the unforgiving tundra. Because the whiteness below and the whiteness above looked exactly the same, it was very hard to tell how high he was above the ground. He had to keep a constant eye on his altimeter to judge his altitude.

His aircraft, a Cessna 170, was dubbed “Arctic Messenger.” The plane was owned by the Presbyterian mission agency that had sent John Chambers and his wife and baby girl to the farthest point north on the continent of North America. Here, at the fringes of civilization, few people would take an infant girl. But believing that God had sent them, John and Barbara, had set out in faith for the land of the far north with their daughter, Sara. How John wished he could be back with them in the warmth of their dwelling and the safety of the ground.

As John continued to check the vast snowfields for any sign of the missing boy, he noticed the sky lowering. The narrow gray circle of the horizon became only a tiny band. The “Arctic Messenger” was flying in and out of the base of the low clouds with little room to spare. He looked to his left and saw that the leading edge of the left wing was darker than the usual bright yellow. Ice! Any pilot in the Arctic knows that ice on the edge of the wing can change the aerodynamics of the plane, denying the needed lift, and threatening disaster. With nothing else to do, John dropped the nose of the plane toward the ground, seeking to be out of the moisture.

Skimming the hostile ground, he turned toward Admiralty Bay. A small black speck in the wind-packed snow became visible. John skimmed closer for another look. It was a dog team! And a man! Now the great question, was the man alive? Spotting a lake a half mile away from the man, John Chambers gently put his plane down on the frozen surface of the lake. The skis attached to the landing gear (in place of wheels or floats) skimmed the snow and settled down onto the frozen lake. John Chambers clambered out of the cockpit along with his Eskimo companion and the two men tightened the fur lining of their parkas to their faces as a protection from the biting Arctic air.

After trotting across the frozen landscape for half a mile, they came across the Eskimo boy and his dog team, the very ones they were looking for! The boy was too cold to move, and he was exhausted from three days with nothing to eat and only snow to drink. He had stayed alive by hunkering down with his dogs. Were it not for the “Arctic Messenger,” and the brave missionary pilot, the boy would probably not have been found until his frozen body was recovered in the spring. By the grace of God, the boy had lived and would take his place among the congregation at Barrow, Alaska.

Ministry in the Arctic was full of many strange and difficult adventures for John Chambers. He was born in 1930, just as the world was awakening to the wonderful potential of aircraft. John was raised in the rolling hills of central Pennsylvania. As a young boy, John always dreamed of being a pilot. He spent many hours building model airplanes. John’s oldest brother was a pilot, and John never forgot the thrill of his first 15-minute ride in a bi-plane. John’s parents were faithful Christians, and they taught their children every day from an open Bible in the living room on their small farm. At the age of 12, John Chambers acknowledged the Lord Jesus as his own Savior.

John attended Houghton College in western New York. While there, he sensed God’s call upon his life to become a missionary. Dreams of being a pilot were laid aside in the more important calling of taking the light of God’s Word to a foreign field locked in darkness. He was startled one day to hear a presentation from a representative of the Missionary Aviation Fellowship. Could it be that he could use his interest in aviation to advance the spread of the Gospel? He began to focus his attention on the needy field of South America, and the potential of aviation to reach the isolated tribes in the interior of Brazil.

After finishing his ministry studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, John Chambers applied for service in Brazil. He took flight training in the summer of 1956. A year later, he married a young lady named Barbara Cross, a girl who shared his interest in serving the Lord as a missionary.

John and Barbara never forgot the snowy day in March of 1958 when a letter arrived asking them to consider service in Barrow, Alaska. After seeking the Lord’s direction, the young couple decided to go north instead of south. The Chambers ministered for many years on the rocky shore of the Arctic Ocean. They came to dearly love the Eskimo villagers among whom they ministered. John’s skill as a pilot was a tremendous help to the scattered villages in the Brooks Mountain Range who depended upon him as their shepherd, their adviser, and their friend. John performed their marriages, instructed them in God’s Word, brought medicine for their sick, and buried their dead.

He also helped them find whales at sea by spotting them from the air during the summer whale hunts. He also flew Eskimo hunters out over the tundra to find the caribou herds. The pastor loved his people, and the people loved their flying pastor. Alaska is known as the land of the midnight sun, but it is also a land of constant darkness during the long winter months when the sun never rises above the horizon from December to February. John did his best to take advantage of these months of confinement. He led hymn singings, Bible studies, prayer meetings, and times of sweet fellowship where the children played games, read books, and happily passed the long hours of darkness.

Wherever the light of the Gospel comes, the darkness of superstition is dispelled. Little by little, line by line, precept by precept, centuries of control by evil spirits over precious souls in the far north was broken by the light of the Gospel. Truly, the people that walked in darkness saw a great light!

Drawn from Arctic Bush Mission: The Experiences of a Missionary Bush Pilot in the Far North  by John Chambers