Through Gates Of Splendor
Monologues
Let Me Tell You ...
People Of Faith Speak To Their Times And Ours
The Aucas have been on my heart since the first time I heard about them at a missionary conference while I was still in college. They have always been a fierce people. They killed Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century and speared a Jesuit priest, the first missionary trying to contact them, in 1667. They were left alone for 200 years. In the nineteenth century, rubber hunters raided their villages, carted off able-bodied young men to be slaves, and killed others to prevent reprisal. There could have been cooperation, but the conduct of white people ended that. It is no wonder that they have stayed aloof and have avoided contact with white people. Oil explorers here in Ecuador had to contend with them in the 1940s, and occasionally lost a worker to their attacks. It is assumed that there are 500 to 1,000 of them living in small settlements in the jungle around us. And to think that we have been privileged to contact them, and that we will meet a group of them for the first time this very day! All of us are excited. I can hardly wait! Let me tell you how it came to pass that we are here at this moment.
My name is Jim Elliot. I was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1927. I was raised in a Christian home, and I have been an enthusiastic Christian all my life. I attended Wheaton College, an evangelical college in Illinois. In my sophomore year, I felt the call to be a missionary to Latin America. I majored in Greek in preparation for translating the New Testament into other languages, and I studied Spanish informally. I felt convinced that God was calling me to work among the unreached Indians of South America. I met another Wheaton student, Elizabeth Howard, while I was a sophomore, and, though we came to love one another, I felt that it was essential that I go to the mission field, at least initially, as a single person.
A friend of mine, Pete Fleming, had just gotten his M.A. in Literature from the University of Washington. People thought he would be a teacher, but he, too, felt called to go to Ecuador, so the two of us teamed up, were commissioned by a Mission Board, and set sail from San Pedro, California, in February, 1952.
Before leaving the ship at Guayaquil, we sang that hymn: "Faith of our fathers, holy faith, we will be true to thee till death." That was an accurate statement of our own conviction. We flew to Quito, Ecuador, where we spent six months in an intensive study of Spanish.
Following our language training, we boarded a rickety bus that took us and our gear to the interior station of Shell Mera, an abandoned oil company town that served as the headquarters of the Missionary Aviation Fellowship. There we met Dr. Tidmarsh, who was to escort us to Shandia, a mission outpost among the Quichua Indians where Dr. Tidmarsh had served, but which he had had to abandon because of his wife's health. There was no airstrip at Shandia, so when we walked into their village, we were immediately surrounded by these gentle people who lived between the headhunting Jivaros to the south, fierce Aucas to the northeast, and the rising white people's world to the west. We had come to share God's word, but we would first have to live among them to gain their trust. Pete and I slowly became familiar with their language. Their language was not written, so we were constantly writing what we heard in little notebooks. The Indians asked Dr. Tidmarsh if we did anything else. As we learned more of the language, the Indians included us in more of their activities. Dr. Tidmarsh eventually returned to his home and left us in charge of the station. With medical books, penicillin, and prayer, we were often called on to help the sick in conjunction with the rituals of the witch doctor. We reopened the school room and tried to educate the youngsters so that one day they could bring the message of Christ to their people. We could see that we would always be outsiders.
In September, 1953, Ed McCully, one of my classmates at Wheaton, arrived with his wife and child to work with us at Shandia. Ed had taken a course in missionary medicine following graduation from college, and his knowledge would be a tremendous help. Pete and I built a house for the McCullys, and then, in a flood, it and all the other buildings were washed away. Five hundred hand-planed boards, each representing a day's work, were also swept away, along with 300 feet of the airstrip we had been clearing. We did what we had to do -- rebuild. At the same time, the McCullys were learning the language, treating the sick, and keeping the station going.
Our life-line with the outside world was Nate Saint, a pilot with the Missionary Aviation Fellowship, who with his wife Marj was stationed at Shell Mera, where they had built a mission facility and hangar. Marj monitored the radio for contacts with MAF planes and with outlying mission stations. Before the arrival of the Saints, missionaries might have to trek through the jungle for eight days to get simple supplies. Now, with an airstrip and short-wave radio, things could be brought in by plane in forty minutes. It made our work more efficient, healthier, and safer. Nate had developed a way to lower a bucket on a line so that people on the ground in areas where there was no airstrip could put things in or take things out, including the use of a field telephone, while the plane circled.
Not too far away from us by plane was another couple working among the Jivaros. Roger Youderian, his wife Barbara, and their two children were working at Macuma, another jungle outpost. They, too, had studied missionary medicine and came to Ecuador in 1953. They have studied the Jivaro language and developed a method of teaching the Jivaros to read and write in their own language. It is a difficult place to work, because the Jivaros live by revenge. Children are taught early the names of people they must hate and are encouraged to take reprisal against any relative of those they hate. The love taught by Jesus is foreign to their way of thinking.
Roger has wanted to go deeper into the jungle and work where no missionary has been. He feels a great urgency to save souls. In 1954 Roger moved his work to a remote abandoned airstrip at Wambuni, where he could be nearer an unreached tribe, the Atshuaras, who are cousins, but deadly enemies, of the Jivaros. Because of some medical successes he was invited to their village and was, in fact, able to save many Indians from death when a roving band of soldiers inadvertently brought influenza into their village.
I went back to the States in 1953 to marry Elizabeth and to bring her with me to Ecuador. In November of that year we opened a station at Puyupungu to teach Indian children. In 1954 Pete returned to the States to marry his fiancee, Olive, and in the fall of 1955 they came to relieve us at Puyupungu so we could return to Shandia. We were now deployed so that we could make contact with the elusive Aucas.
In October of 1955, Ed McCully, another MAF pilot, and I were looking at a map, planning how we might contact the Aucas. We knew that we needed to keep our plans secret from the Indians among whom we were working and from anyone who might be listening to our radio messages, because at first contact competitive commercial groups would quickly follow up on any contact we might make. We referred to the Aucas simply as the "neighbors." Ed and Nate had discovered what looked like an Auca settlement just fifteen minutes by plane from where the McCullys were stationed. We decided to make gift drops using the spiraling cable Nate had developed. At the same time I went to interview an Auca woman who had come out of the jungle and to learn phrases of their language.
The first gift drop on October 6, 1955, consisted of a tea kettle, rock salt, buttons, and streamers. It was dropped on a sandbar near a large communal house by means of a release mechanism in a bucket. No one was in sight, but a week later, when a machete was dropped, four men came out and ran for the machete. Subsequently Nate hooked up a loudspeaker on the plane so that as we dropped gifts, I would call out in their language, "I like you. I am your friend," or "We have come to pay a visit." The Indians would now wave at us. They showed no sign of hostility or fear. We continued to make drops and speak on the loudspeakers. The Indians learned to take things out of the bucket as we circled, and eventually, they began to put gifts in the bucket for us: feathered head-bands, live birds, food. I was anxious to go in. I prayed, "God, send me soon." I felt the Aucas were saying, "Come down." The three of us felt we needed more help, so we invited Roger Youderian and Pete Fleming to join us, which they did.
Now we had to look for a place to land. We named the village that had received the gifts "Terminal City." As we continued to drop gifts, we noticed that one of the huts had a model airplane on its roof, a sign to us of goodwill.
We decided to make January 3, 1956, the date of our ground contact. We decided we would wear the headdresses they had provided so they would recognize us, that we would carry small airplanes, that we would carry small gifts wrapped as previous ones had been, that we would shout, "I like you," in their language. We also decided that we would have handguns available to frighten off Indians if they should happen to attack us. We also knew that the first shot fired would be the end of our mission. We tested several sandbars as possible landing sites, and chose one we named "Palm Beach." We planned to make several trips with supplies and building materials all in the same day. We would plan for a five-day stay, but have supplies for twelve days in case of siege or flood. We included air mattresses for floating downstream, should that become necessary. We continued to make gift drops, including pictures of ourselves, and the Indians continued to put gifts in the bucket: a parrot, a woven basket, a distaff for spinning cotton yarn, fruit, a squirrel, some pottery.
All of us, including our wives, felt that God's leading was unmistakable, but we were also realistic about the dangers. Our wives considered among themselves what they would do if we were killed. Each of us felt we had made a personal transaction with God, and that we were at God's disposal. We had heard Christ's call to go into all the world with the Good News of God's love, and the issue of personal safety was irrelevant. Nate Saint expressed the feeling of all of us when he wrote "... we feel that it is pleasing to God that we should interest ourselves in making an opening into the Auca prison for Christ."
Last Monday we all gathered with our families and our supplies at the McCullys' in Arajuno. On Tuesday morning we had breakfast together, prayed, sang a hymn, loaded the plane, and Nate took off with Ed. They had a safe landing on the beach, unloaded the plane, and Ed stayed at Palm Beach with the supplies. Next Nate flew in with Roger and me and more supplies. We set up a platform in a tree as a place to stay. On his way back to Arajuno, Nate flew over the village and broadcast in their language, "Come tomorrow to the Curaray River." The three of us who were staying at Palm Beach would stand on the beach and call out toward the trees, using phrases in the Auca language. On Thursday the jungle was still quiet, but we felt we were being watched. The village itself we determined to be about a day's walk through the jungle from where we were. Nate was flying in each day with supplies, staying for the day, and flying out in the evening with letters, messages, and films.
On Friday an Auca man and two women appeared from the jungle as we were bombarding the jungle with words. They jabbered among themselves and to us, with no comprehension that we couldn't understand them. We took pictures, gave gifts, showed them magazines. They seemed unafraid. We called the man George. He showed interest in the plane and a willingness to fly, so Pete flew him over the village. He waved and yelled to those below. When the plane returned, George jumped out clapping his hands in glee. We offered thanks to God.
We served them lemonade and hamburgers with mustard, which they evidently enjoyed. We tried to get George to invite us to his village, but he seemed reluctant. Early Saturday morning they disappeared into the jungle. All yesterday we waited for others to arrive with an invitation to their village. Nate flew over the village broadcasting, "Come, come, come." He could see George back in the village.
This morning Pete flew over the village, and he noticed that some of the men were on the trail to the beach. He flew back and announced, "This is it, guys. They're on the way." We radioed Marj, told her of the expected arrival, and asked that she and the others pray for us. We expect the Aucas to arrive about 4:00 this afternoon. All five of us are here now, and we're pretty excited. Whatever comes of this, we believe that God will use us to open the door to these people, to make it possible for them to hear about the love of God, to experience through us the salvation that is possible through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Though what we are doing is dangerous, we are grateful to be a part of it. Anyway, we all feel that that person is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to attain what he cannot lose. May God be glorified and people saved by what we will be doing today.
Epilogue: There was no further message from the five young missionaries. At the first meeting with the larger group of Aucas, the Indians became frightened, attacked the missionaries, killed them, destroyed the plane, and returned to their village. Soldiers found and buried the bodies. A year later Elizabeth Elliot, her five-year-old daughter, and Nate Saint's sister went to live among the Aucas and were accepted by them. The Indians said that it had been a mistake to kill the missionaries. Nevertheless, their deaths opened the door for the Aucas to receive the message of God's love.
My name is Jim Elliot. I was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1927. I was raised in a Christian home, and I have been an enthusiastic Christian all my life. I attended Wheaton College, an evangelical college in Illinois. In my sophomore year, I felt the call to be a missionary to Latin America. I majored in Greek in preparation for translating the New Testament into other languages, and I studied Spanish informally. I felt convinced that God was calling me to work among the unreached Indians of South America. I met another Wheaton student, Elizabeth Howard, while I was a sophomore, and, though we came to love one another, I felt that it was essential that I go to the mission field, at least initially, as a single person.
A friend of mine, Pete Fleming, had just gotten his M.A. in Literature from the University of Washington. People thought he would be a teacher, but he, too, felt called to go to Ecuador, so the two of us teamed up, were commissioned by a Mission Board, and set sail from San Pedro, California, in February, 1952.
Before leaving the ship at Guayaquil, we sang that hymn: "Faith of our fathers, holy faith, we will be true to thee till death." That was an accurate statement of our own conviction. We flew to Quito, Ecuador, where we spent six months in an intensive study of Spanish.
Following our language training, we boarded a rickety bus that took us and our gear to the interior station of Shell Mera, an abandoned oil company town that served as the headquarters of the Missionary Aviation Fellowship. There we met Dr. Tidmarsh, who was to escort us to Shandia, a mission outpost among the Quichua Indians where Dr. Tidmarsh had served, but which he had had to abandon because of his wife's health. There was no airstrip at Shandia, so when we walked into their village, we were immediately surrounded by these gentle people who lived between the headhunting Jivaros to the south, fierce Aucas to the northeast, and the rising white people's world to the west. We had come to share God's word, but we would first have to live among them to gain their trust. Pete and I slowly became familiar with their language. Their language was not written, so we were constantly writing what we heard in little notebooks. The Indians asked Dr. Tidmarsh if we did anything else. As we learned more of the language, the Indians included us in more of their activities. Dr. Tidmarsh eventually returned to his home and left us in charge of the station. With medical books, penicillin, and prayer, we were often called on to help the sick in conjunction with the rituals of the witch doctor. We reopened the school room and tried to educate the youngsters so that one day they could bring the message of Christ to their people. We could see that we would always be outsiders.
In September, 1953, Ed McCully, one of my classmates at Wheaton, arrived with his wife and child to work with us at Shandia. Ed had taken a course in missionary medicine following graduation from college, and his knowledge would be a tremendous help. Pete and I built a house for the McCullys, and then, in a flood, it and all the other buildings were washed away. Five hundred hand-planed boards, each representing a day's work, were also swept away, along with 300 feet of the airstrip we had been clearing. We did what we had to do -- rebuild. At the same time, the McCullys were learning the language, treating the sick, and keeping the station going.
Our life-line with the outside world was Nate Saint, a pilot with the Missionary Aviation Fellowship, who with his wife Marj was stationed at Shell Mera, where they had built a mission facility and hangar. Marj monitored the radio for contacts with MAF planes and with outlying mission stations. Before the arrival of the Saints, missionaries might have to trek through the jungle for eight days to get simple supplies. Now, with an airstrip and short-wave radio, things could be brought in by plane in forty minutes. It made our work more efficient, healthier, and safer. Nate had developed a way to lower a bucket on a line so that people on the ground in areas where there was no airstrip could put things in or take things out, including the use of a field telephone, while the plane circled.
Not too far away from us by plane was another couple working among the Jivaros. Roger Youderian, his wife Barbara, and their two children were working at Macuma, another jungle outpost. They, too, had studied missionary medicine and came to Ecuador in 1953. They have studied the Jivaro language and developed a method of teaching the Jivaros to read and write in their own language. It is a difficult place to work, because the Jivaros live by revenge. Children are taught early the names of people they must hate and are encouraged to take reprisal against any relative of those they hate. The love taught by Jesus is foreign to their way of thinking.
Roger has wanted to go deeper into the jungle and work where no missionary has been. He feels a great urgency to save souls. In 1954 Roger moved his work to a remote abandoned airstrip at Wambuni, where he could be nearer an unreached tribe, the Atshuaras, who are cousins, but deadly enemies, of the Jivaros. Because of some medical successes he was invited to their village and was, in fact, able to save many Indians from death when a roving band of soldiers inadvertently brought influenza into their village.
I went back to the States in 1953 to marry Elizabeth and to bring her with me to Ecuador. In November of that year we opened a station at Puyupungu to teach Indian children. In 1954 Pete returned to the States to marry his fiancee, Olive, and in the fall of 1955 they came to relieve us at Puyupungu so we could return to Shandia. We were now deployed so that we could make contact with the elusive Aucas.
In October of 1955, Ed McCully, another MAF pilot, and I were looking at a map, planning how we might contact the Aucas. We knew that we needed to keep our plans secret from the Indians among whom we were working and from anyone who might be listening to our radio messages, because at first contact competitive commercial groups would quickly follow up on any contact we might make. We referred to the Aucas simply as the "neighbors." Ed and Nate had discovered what looked like an Auca settlement just fifteen minutes by plane from where the McCullys were stationed. We decided to make gift drops using the spiraling cable Nate had developed. At the same time I went to interview an Auca woman who had come out of the jungle and to learn phrases of their language.
The first gift drop on October 6, 1955, consisted of a tea kettle, rock salt, buttons, and streamers. It was dropped on a sandbar near a large communal house by means of a release mechanism in a bucket. No one was in sight, but a week later, when a machete was dropped, four men came out and ran for the machete. Subsequently Nate hooked up a loudspeaker on the plane so that as we dropped gifts, I would call out in their language, "I like you. I am your friend," or "We have come to pay a visit." The Indians would now wave at us. They showed no sign of hostility or fear. We continued to make drops and speak on the loudspeakers. The Indians learned to take things out of the bucket as we circled, and eventually, they began to put gifts in the bucket for us: feathered head-bands, live birds, food. I was anxious to go in. I prayed, "God, send me soon." I felt the Aucas were saying, "Come down." The three of us felt we needed more help, so we invited Roger Youderian and Pete Fleming to join us, which they did.
Now we had to look for a place to land. We named the village that had received the gifts "Terminal City." As we continued to drop gifts, we noticed that one of the huts had a model airplane on its roof, a sign to us of goodwill.
We decided to make January 3, 1956, the date of our ground contact. We decided we would wear the headdresses they had provided so they would recognize us, that we would carry small airplanes, that we would carry small gifts wrapped as previous ones had been, that we would shout, "I like you," in their language. We also decided that we would have handguns available to frighten off Indians if they should happen to attack us. We also knew that the first shot fired would be the end of our mission. We tested several sandbars as possible landing sites, and chose one we named "Palm Beach." We planned to make several trips with supplies and building materials all in the same day. We would plan for a five-day stay, but have supplies for twelve days in case of siege or flood. We included air mattresses for floating downstream, should that become necessary. We continued to make gift drops, including pictures of ourselves, and the Indians continued to put gifts in the bucket: a parrot, a woven basket, a distaff for spinning cotton yarn, fruit, a squirrel, some pottery.
All of us, including our wives, felt that God's leading was unmistakable, but we were also realistic about the dangers. Our wives considered among themselves what they would do if we were killed. Each of us felt we had made a personal transaction with God, and that we were at God's disposal. We had heard Christ's call to go into all the world with the Good News of God's love, and the issue of personal safety was irrelevant. Nate Saint expressed the feeling of all of us when he wrote "... we feel that it is pleasing to God that we should interest ourselves in making an opening into the Auca prison for Christ."
Last Monday we all gathered with our families and our supplies at the McCullys' in Arajuno. On Tuesday morning we had breakfast together, prayed, sang a hymn, loaded the plane, and Nate took off with Ed. They had a safe landing on the beach, unloaded the plane, and Ed stayed at Palm Beach with the supplies. Next Nate flew in with Roger and me and more supplies. We set up a platform in a tree as a place to stay. On his way back to Arajuno, Nate flew over the village and broadcast in their language, "Come tomorrow to the Curaray River." The three of us who were staying at Palm Beach would stand on the beach and call out toward the trees, using phrases in the Auca language. On Thursday the jungle was still quiet, but we felt we were being watched. The village itself we determined to be about a day's walk through the jungle from where we were. Nate was flying in each day with supplies, staying for the day, and flying out in the evening with letters, messages, and films.
On Friday an Auca man and two women appeared from the jungle as we were bombarding the jungle with words. They jabbered among themselves and to us, with no comprehension that we couldn't understand them. We took pictures, gave gifts, showed them magazines. They seemed unafraid. We called the man George. He showed interest in the plane and a willingness to fly, so Pete flew him over the village. He waved and yelled to those below. When the plane returned, George jumped out clapping his hands in glee. We offered thanks to God.
We served them lemonade and hamburgers with mustard, which they evidently enjoyed. We tried to get George to invite us to his village, but he seemed reluctant. Early Saturday morning they disappeared into the jungle. All yesterday we waited for others to arrive with an invitation to their village. Nate flew over the village broadcasting, "Come, come, come." He could see George back in the village.
This morning Pete flew over the village, and he noticed that some of the men were on the trail to the beach. He flew back and announced, "This is it, guys. They're on the way." We radioed Marj, told her of the expected arrival, and asked that she and the others pray for us. We expect the Aucas to arrive about 4:00 this afternoon. All five of us are here now, and we're pretty excited. Whatever comes of this, we believe that God will use us to open the door to these people, to make it possible for them to hear about the love of God, to experience through us the salvation that is possible through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Though what we are doing is dangerous, we are grateful to be a part of it. Anyway, we all feel that that person is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to attain what he cannot lose. May God be glorified and people saved by what we will be doing today.
Epilogue: There was no further message from the five young missionaries. At the first meeting with the larger group of Aucas, the Indians became frightened, attacked the missionaries, killed them, destroyed the plane, and returned to their village. Soldiers found and buried the bodies. A year later Elizabeth Elliot, her five-year-old daughter, and Nate Saint's sister went to live among the Aucas and were accepted by them. The Indians said that it had been a mistake to kill the missionaries. Nevertheless, their deaths opened the door for the Aucas to receive the message of God's love.
