"Primetime Thursday" To Air An Exclusive Interview With the Husband of the Missionary Shot and Killed Along with Her Baby Daughter When a Peruvian Air Force Jet Shot Down Their Plane

AIRS THURSDAY, MAY 24 AT 10-11PM ON ABC

Every day, 6-year-old Cory Bowers learned something from his mother. Sometimes it was a bit of song praising God, or a Bible passage. Other times, it might be a lesson in good manners. No matter what the lesson, "Ronnie" Bowers made sure she taught it well. "She was great at teaching Cory in every way, as far as his schooling, but also in teaching things he needed to know," Cory's father, Jim Bowers, tells Diane Sawyer in an emotional interview for "PrimeTime Thursday." It marks the first interview Bowers has given since his wife and their 7-month-old daughter were killed April 20 when a Peruvian Air Force jet shot down their small plane in Peru's Amazon jungle region.  It will air on "PrimeTime Thursday" THURSDAY, MAY 24, 10:00-11:00 p.m. ET, on the ABC Television Network.

"I'm not in agony thinking that everything has been destroyed," Bowers says. "Because Ronnie's purpose was eternal and that's where she is now." Also on "PrimeTime Thursday," the pilot describes in detail what happened when bullets tore into the small plane carrying missionaries with the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism. "In the back of my mind danger is always there," pilot Kevin Donaldson says. "There was often political unrest, but nothing I worried about, nothing that bothered me, that haunted me, that kept me from doing what I had to do." 

Missionary Veronica "Roni" Bowers, 35, was holding her adopted daughter, Charity, on her lap when a bullet struck her in the back, killing both her and the child. Donaldson, a veteran missionary pilot, was wounded in the leg. Bowers and Cory, also on the plane, were unhurt. Once Donaldson got the plane on the water, the survivors sat on pontoons before being rescued by some Peruvians in a dugout canoe. The U.S. Embassy has said the Peruvian pilot mistook the Bowers plane for an airplane transporting contraband drugs.

In the interviews, Bowers and Donaldson provide key details about the morning the plane was hit. Bowers said when he first saw the fighter jet, he told his wife to wake Cory, so he could see the plane. Then, he heard was he describes as a sound like popcorn. "Loud. And things flying because there was a hole in front of my face. A large hole in the windshield. And those bullets came from behind."

Donaldson is an experienced pilot and has worked for the missionary association since 1985. His parents were missionaries, and he grew up in Peru. "The Lord directed me, and assured me that my experience, the language that I knew, the culture that I knew, was certainly for a reason," Donaldson tells "PrimeTime Thursday" about his decision to carry on the Lord's work.

Bowers tells Diane Sawyer that his faith in God has helped sustain him and his family while they struggle to understand the tragedy. "I'm saying to God that he's chosen me. I don't have a choice now. I'm telling God, 'Well, you know what you're doing and there's obviously something great that's going to come out of this, and already has. Ronnie's goal in life was to reach people, for you.' I told God that."

  And: Every year, nearly 130 missionaries are killed because of their commitment to spreading the gospel. Religion Correspondent Peggy Wehmeyer examines today's missionary life - the spartan conditions, hostile environments and disease that constantly test the resolve of Christian missionaries living abroad.  She interviews a family that, like the Bowers did, increasingly find themselves caught in the crossfire of drug traffickers and political conflicts in Latin America. "You can't lose focus of the primary reason you're here and it's to see the soul saved.  It's to see people make heaven when they die, when they leave this world," missionary Connie Adams tells Wehmeyer. "Our goal is to see us make it and take as many people with us as we can."

"PrimeTime Thursday" is co-anchored by Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson.  David Doss is the executive producer.