A pilot for Wycliffe Bible Translators for 30 years, Ralph Jacobson retrieves and restores the plane he flew in Mindanao, Philippines.

Ralph Jacobson of Hayward, Wis., has an airplane for sale, but not just any airplane and for not just any purpose. Jacobson, 72, has spent the past four years rebuilding the same Piper Super Cub that he flew in the Philippines for 2 ½ four-year terms as a Wycliffe Bible Translators missions pilot more than 30 years ago.

The plane was originally purchased and overhauled by his home church, First Evangelical Covenant Church, in Rockford, Ill., as a project begun by Jacobson’s brother Vern in the 1970s. It was shipped to the Philippines for $10,000 and put to use.

“The aircraft was based in the southern island of Mindanao, where it served to diversify our fleet, carrying smaller loads at a lower cost,” Jacobson said. “We were support personnel for people doing Bible translation.”

Missionaries doing translation work spend part of their time in the village and part in the “center” where the base is located.

“We were the connection between those two places,” Jacobson said. 

“Back then, it was an eight-hour trip from the center to the coastal city — a trip of about 80 miles.”

Pilots also served as a sort of “mountain ambulance,” usually making “at least one run a week.”

Jacobson returned to the United States in 1977, but the Super Cub continued to serve missionaries until 1992 when it was “taken down” to meet changing program needs.

“The engine was sent to the United States, the wings were in a hangar and the fuselage was put in a shed,” Jacobson said.

In 2000 he and his wife returned to the Philippines for six months.

“When I saw the Super Cub in pieces, remembering our family’s involvement with the original project, I volunteered to rebuild the Super Cub,” Jacobson said.

In 2004 permission was given to ship the plane back to the U.S.  

“In December 2004, my wife and I drove to North Carolina with a trailer and brought back two crates of airplane parts,” he said.

Jacobson spent the next four years rebuilding the Super Cub at his home in Hayward, a labor of love and dedication.

“On Sept. 11, 2009, the Super Cub flew again,” he said. “It has been given an airworthiness certificate and is flying again.”

Now his goal is to sell the Super Cub, which has been updated with “some goodies,” and return the money to the Philippines for a scholarship fund. The fund will be used to train Filipinos to do the work of Bible translation into the more than 90 dialects of their country.

“People have responded to the Gospel in tribal areas and now there are churches,” Jacobson said. “Missionaries travel and teach in churches from material that’s been done (by translators).”

He also said that people have dedicated their lives to an individual language. He has friends more than 80 years old “still hiking into the mountains to keep in contact with the people.”

Founded in 1942 with a vision for making the Bible accessible to every people group in the language they understand best, God has used volunteers like Jacobson to continually move Wycliffe’s ministry forward. In 2000, Wycliffe began the project of moving its headquarters from Huntington Beach, Calif., to Orlando, Fla.

Bob Johnson of Lake Nebagamon, Wis., worked as assistant project manager for nine months at the new location.   

“We moved over a million yards of sand, all with volunteers. That’s unheard of in construction,” Johnson said.

It was his job to assign tasks to more than 100 volunteers who donated their energy to the project.

“I was working, literally, with rocket scientists,” Johnson said.

“We had a retired rocket launch director from NASA, airline captains, truck drivers, stock brokers, [people from] every walk of life.”

Johnson said Wycliffe needed $40 million to complete the new campus, which would house missionaries home on furlough, provide training, supply equipment and be a home base for their foreign missions projects.   

“By the time they moved in, the entire $40 million was paid for,” he said. “(The Orlando project) was really the most fascinating project I’ve ever worked on.”

According to its Web site, Wycliffe has played a part in the translation of Bibles or New Testaments in 740 languages throughout the world, impacting 82 million people, but there are still 200 million people who do not have the Bible in their own language. 

Wycliffe continues to depend on God sending missionaries and volunteers to take on this task.

Jacobson recalled moments when he wondered if the Super Cub project would be successful. Now the plane is flying and he shares the same gratification as Johnson. There is fulfillment in his laugh as he talks about it.

“It’s a great relief and accomplishment,” he said.

If you would like to contact Ralph Jacobson or learn more about the Piper Super Cub he has for sale, he can be reached by e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it