HOW VETERAN MISSIONARY FRANK DROWN FOUND THE BODY OF HIS FRIEND, NATE SAINT, AT THE ‘END OF THE SPEAR’
By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries
Frank and Marie Drown during the interview
MURRIETA, CA (ANS)—For veteran American missionary Frank Drown, that January day in 1956, when he found the body of his pilot friend Nate Saint, was something he will never forget.
“He had a spear in his head, and a big cut on his face,” said Drown during an extraordinary interview on Wednesday, January 4 with Brian Brodersen and myself on the “Pastor’s Perspective” radio show aired on many stations across America.
Murdered pilot, Nate Saint
Frank and Marie Drown had agreed to talk about the terrible yet life-changing events that took place 50 years ago when Jim Eliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Nate Saint and Roger Youderian ventured into the eastern rainforests of Ecuador, where they made contact with the Waodani people, also known as the Aucas. With a homicide rate of 60 percent, the tribe’s behavior placed them on the verge of self-annihilation.
The missionaries’ story was made famous in the pages of Life Magazine, but now the Drowns were able to give more insight into what occurred all those years ago.
WENT TO ECUADOR TEN YEARS BEFORE THE FIVE MISSIONARIES
“We were in Ecuador ten years before they were and then Nate came in and he became our pilot,” said Frank Drown. “He flew us all over the jungle, and we did lots of things together. Before he came, I walked on the land, and it was such a blessing. One minute in a plane is worth an hour on the ground.”
Marie then entered the conversation. “All of the missionaries that were killed were our good friends,” she said. “Marj Saint was a good friend of ours. Before we ever met her, she sent in with Nate, a tray of ice cubes, and we hadn’t had ice cubes for years. We made lemonade, and it tasted like something we’d never known before. It was so different with ice cubes in it.
“I remember another time when Nate came he and Marj were expecting their first child, and we had a son Ross Drown, who was born in 1948, and a year later in early 1949 their first baby was born. When Nate was with us, he saw Ross and Frank playing with a ball, and Ross would repeat, ‘Figh!’ and daddy would say, ‘Throw the ball way up high!’ and he’d say ‘Figh!’ and they’d throw the ball back and forth. Nate said, “I can’t wait until ours is born.”
“Now Ross and Kathy, their firstborn, are husband and wife.”
Frank said that he had given Nate a radio to go into the jungle, but as the missionaries wanted to keep their mission a secret, they spoke in code.
“They didn’t want other people to know so that if it did happen that we got to be good friends with those Indians that there wouldn’t be a whole rush of all the people wanting to go in there,” he said. “So I knew that and they told me what he was going to do and I loaned them my radio so they could take it along, and I knew where they were, I knew what frequency they were going to talk back to me because it was my radio. And so I listened to them, and one day only, on Friday when they had a good contact with the Indians and they called back and said it was great. ‘The neighbors came,’ one of them said.
Drown said that as he was on the network of radios so they could all talk to each other, and on the Monday morning he received an urgent message from Marj, Nate Saint’s wife.
He went on, “Marj went right straight to me and said, ‘We haven’t heard from the men since yesterday. They were supposed to talk at 4:00 and they didn’t answer. We’ve lost contact with them.’ And she wanted to know if I would be willing to go and form a rescue party and go down into that jungle down there and see if I could help them.
“It was terrible especially as I heard that another MAF pilot had flown over there and he could see the little airplane down on the beach where they’d landed, but he couldn’t see anybody around, and I knew this was bad.
“Still, we went, not knowing whether they were dead or alive. The trip took two-and-a-half days, part walking, part by dug-out canoe, and we got down there and found the airplane all torn to pieces, and nobody there. It was a sad day.”
He explained that the US Air Force had dispatched a helicopter to the area and they could see straight down into the water of the river where the plane was and they said they saw some bodies.
“So we picked them up,” said Drown. “There were two of them. Jim Elliot was the first one that was found, and then Peter Fleming, and then I was told that there was somebody down stream and so I went to help pick him up out of the water.”
It was then that he found the body of Nate Saint. “Then some other missionary with natives that were friendly with us, went downstream further and brought the body of Roger Youderian, who was my buddy, the one that worked with me. We had walked the trails together, and worked together for the Lord, and they brought him back, and so we had four of the five.”
Frank said that Roger Youderian had built an airstrip in the jungle at the request of an Indian leader who wanted to hear more about Jesus.
“I went back again and one day he said to me, ‘I want to be the bow to knee one.’ That meant he wanted to get down on his knees and ask Jesus into his life,” he said.
He said that only one body—that of Ed McCully—was not found at that time.
“We didn’t find Ed, but the Indians found him weeks later, and they said they buried him, but I don’t know whether they did or not,” he said. “The other four were buried on the beach.
“After I had gone and buried the men and came back home, we had three days of rain and I was there at Ed McCully’s house because he lived the closest to these Waodani, and I had time to think this whole thing through.
“God could have stopped this anytime along the way. It’s understandable that if we just had a big shower there wouldn’t have been a sand beach for them to land on. And if one of them had stayed up in the tree house and could have shot and scared them off, and that might have changed things. And when they first landed, the tire was ripped and the tube was showing. But anyway, those things didn’t happen, and God allowed those men to go and to die and you say well that is wrong.
“Folks, a private never tells the general where you’re gonna fight. And so we are God’s people, and where God puts us, that’s where we work. And God will take care of us until He’s ready to move us out of this world, and so that’s the way it is. And God did that. He wanted those men to die so that He could talk to our people here in America that you need to give your life to God and sacrifice. We don’t want sacrifice. We don’t want pain. We don’t want anything like that.
“But listen, folks, if we’re going to win the world to Jesus Christ there’s gonna be more, and we need to serve God with all that we’ve got, whether it’s life or death. For Marie and for me and many years of staying there and living with those people and seeing them come to Christ, so it’s not up to us to say where we’re going to serve or how, but it’s up to God.”
Frank and Marie Drown with Kay and Chuck Smith at the mission’s conference in Murietta
Frank and Marie Drown, who have told their story in a book called “MISSION TO THE HEADHUNTERS” were speakers at the Calvary Chapel Mission’s Conference at their conference center in Murrieta, California.
They also spoke on Saturday morning at a packed missions meeting at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa. Also speaking were Steve Saint, the son of Nate Saint, and Mincaye who, as a young warrior was one of the tribesmen who killed Saint’s father, Nate, and the four other young missionaries, and is now a believer and has been reconciled with Steve and the Saint family.
Now a movie is about to be released called “END OF THE SPEAR,” in which the filmmakers explore the story from the tribe’s perspective—and the remarkable way God changed the tribe’s violent ways.
Note: A podcast of this broadcast is available from www.kwve.org.
Dan Wooding is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS). Wooding is the co-host of the weekly radio show, “Window on the World” and was, for ten years a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC. He also co-hosts three days a week a live phone-in show called “Pastor’s Perspective” with Brian Brodersen which is carried on KWVE, Santa Ana, California, and other radio stations across the USA. Wooding is the author of some 42 books, the latest of which is his autobiography, “From Tabloid to Truth”, which is published by Theatron Books. To order a copy, go to www.fromtabloidtotruth.com. danjuma1@aol.com.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Friday, January 20, 2006
Interview with Steve Saint - Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
A Conversation With Steve Saint
For the Love of a Tribe … On Jan. 8, 1956, five missionaries to Ecuador, Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Nate Saint and Roger Youderian, were speared and killed by Waodani (pronounced wow-donni) Indians on a jungle river sandbar. Only 5 years old at the time, Nate Saint’s son Steve continued to have contact with the Waodani through his Aunt Rachel (Saint) and Jim Elliot’s wife, Elisabeth, who established friendly relations with the tribe and learned their language. This January, 50 years after the martyrdom, the film End of the Spear will open in theaters across the country, relating the historic missionary account from the perspective of Steve Saint and the Indians he now calls family. In a recent conversation with Decision, Saint talked about the savage tribe that God transformed through tragedy and about the film that tells the story of their redemption.
by Amanda Knoke
Q: When the news reports broke in 1956, the Indians were referred to as the Auca. Why are they now known as the Waodani?
A: “Auca” is a Quechua term. Quechuas are a large tribe that lives on the borders of Waodani territory. Auca has its roots in the term for “naked savage.” I don’t use the term because it’s derogatory. They were known as Auca until people found out their real name.
Q: According to anthropologists, the tribe was in danger of extinction.
A: The Waodani basically lived by the rule that if somebody does something you don’t like, you ignore it. If you can’t ignore it, you kill the person—with the understanding that the family of the one you killed had the right and the responsibility to kill somebody in your family or to kill your whole family.
Fifty years ago, when the Waodani were probably fewer than 500 people, it was getting hard for young warriors to find girls that were properly related to them. So more and more they were reverting to what they called wild marriages, where they would kill a family and take a girl. That was considered immoral to them, but they were getting desperate. The violence was escalating and more people were being killed. So yes, they really were in danger of extinction.
Q: The first contact with the Waodani was prior to the time of the slaying, correct?
A: The first contact with the Waodani was in 1954. My Aunt Rachel had found a young girl, Dayumae, who had fled from the tribe. My aunt lived with her and learned the language of the people, hoping that God was opening the door for contact with the tribe.
My dad, Roger, Pete, Ed and Jim had one friendly contact Jan. 6, 1956, a day that we call Friendly Friday. Before that, Dad would fly his plane in tight circles over the tribe and let a long line out of the plane with a bucket at the end that would stabilize in the air and then be lowered to the ground. They used that to drop gifts to the Waodani, who then started exchanging gifts with them. That went on for 13 weeks.
This interaction established some friendship. When Dad and his friends landed on a beach, they hoped that these people would find them. They went in on Tuesday, but there was no sign of the Waodani until Friday morning, when they heard a voice call from across the river, and then two women and a young man stepped out of the jungle. They walked across the river and spent the day with my dad and his friends. We have that documented because the five men took pictures and my dad had a movie camera. The Waodani man got in the plane and Dad gave him a ride.
My dad and Pete flew out every night because they didn’t want to take a chance that the river would flood and wash the plane away. The other guys spent the night up in the tree house that they had built so that during the night they would have a position of defense, should the Waodani decide to attack.
Nobody came back on Saturday. On Sunday, as my dad was flying, he saw a group of Waodani. He radioed my mom and told her: “It looks like our neighbors will be here for the afternoon service. Pray for us. I’ll call you back at 4:30.”
Dad flew back to the beach and told the other guys that the Indians were on their way, expecting that this was the beginning of permanent contact. But unknown to the men, as a result of animosities within the tribe, the warriors had decided that they were going to kill the foreigners.
Steve Saint visits the Waodani in Ecuador several times each year.
Q: How long did you live with the tribe?
A: I had a relationship with the tribe from the time I was 8 or 9. I went in to live with Aunt Rachel, whom the Waodani called “Star,” during summer and Christmas vacations. When Aunt Rachel died, I went and helped them bury her. They said, “We’ve decided now you should come back and live with us.”
I didn’t want to go, but they had insisted. I realized that I would jeopardize my relationship with them—they weren’t asking me, they were telling me to come. So my family and I went to live with them for about a year and a half.
Since we returned to the States I’ve continued going down there four times a year, working for them, helping them with medical things and teaching them to fly their own airplane. They wanted me to help teach other people like them to do these things, so we started an organization called ITEC (Indigenous Peoples Technology and Education Center).
Q: When you were living with the Waodani, did you ever feel threatened by them?
A: I felt very comfortable with most of the warriors. I didn’t feel like somebody was going to spear me, but I knew that I needed to be guarded.
Mincaye was the one who actually took me into his family. Recently I read a letter that Aunt Rachel had written to Mom. She said that Mincaye had come to her and said, “My having speared his father, I myself will teach him how to live.” Over all these years Mincaye has maintained this special relationship with me that he had initiated when I was a boy.
Q: Have you ever been criticized by people for trying to modernize the tribe or change their culture?
A: “You’re not doing enough to bring them into the 21st century” is one criticism. “You should just leave them the way they are” is another. I only do what the Waodani have asked me to do. I would just as soon they live in their old culture—without the killing. But that really isn’t for me to decide. The people in the culture who have to live with the ramifications of the change are the ones who should decide.
With the movie, I’ll be criticized for trying to capitalize on the Waodani, though I have no financial interest whatsoever. And some people will say, “It’s the same old missionary thing—ruining the culture.” I can’t answer all the criticisms.
Q: But after Rachel and Elisabeth Elliot went to live with the tribe, the homicide was reduced, wasn’t it?
A: Ninety percent of the killing ceased almost immediately. There are still some tensions between them and the Arunaidi—that’s what the Waodani call the Quechuas—but there’s very little killing between them.
Q: Would you say that the Waodani are effectively discipling one another and teaching their own people about the Bible?
A: There are very fervent believers, but the church as an institution doesn’t really function. People from the outside, who characterize the attitude toward a lot of indigenous people, don’t think that the Waodani can manage their own affairs. So they have been doing things for the Waodani that they should have been doing for themselves. Consequently, they have become so dependent that their church has ceased to function. I’ve spent 10 years encouraging them to choose elders for leadership. I also look for opportunities to try to gently encourage North Americans not to be so heavy-handed. The Apostle Paul said to the Corinthians, “I told you I’d come back, but the reason I haven’t come back is for your own good, because I don’t want to lord it over your faith, but I want your faith to become strong instead” (Cf. 2 Corinthians 1:23-24).
Mincaye, left, and Tementa, right, accompanied Steve Saint to the BGEA-sponsored Amsterdam 2000.
Q: The movie has a scene in which Mincaye invites you to take his life in payment for your father’s. Did that happen in real life?
A: No, that scene was necessary to bring the reconciliation to a head. There are aspects of it that are real. But this is why I finally asked to have Mincaye’s name changed to Mincayani in the movie. I didn’t want them to use “Mincaye” lest he be hurt. I suggested “Mincayani” since we’re taking a composite of a couple of characters that’s mostly Mincaye.
When we watched the movie together he leaned over to me and said, “Look, that’s like me,” as he saw Louie Leonardo playing his character. The Waodani don’t do make-believe, so when we’ve watched other programs I’ve told him, “That’s onoki,” make-believe. If someone was getting blown up, I’d say, “Mincaye, that guy’s not really getting blown up. They were just making it look like that.” He tried to understand, but he couldn’t really understand it.
So when Mincaye said, “Look, that’s like me.” I said, “Yes, that’s like you, and do you see that little boy? That’s like me.” Then later he said, “Who is that like?” I said, “That’s like Kimo.” For the first time this 75-year-old was looking at a movie and saying, “Oh, I get it. So they are pretending to be us.”
When it came to the killing scene, I was so nervous. I prayed, “Lord, please don’t let Mincaye be hurt by this.” And as soon as the movie was done, I said, “Mincaye, did you see it well [approve of it]?” He looked at me, grabbed my arm and said, “I saw this very, very well.” And I didn’t ask him any more questions.
Q: So you’ve had a history of reconciliation over a period of years, but there wasn’t a specific moment of reconciliation?
A: It was a developing thing, but I think that the point of reconciliation really was with Mincaye and my Aunt Rachel. In her journal she once wrote, “Tonight when I was sleeping in the hammock I heard a noise. Somebody was walking around in the dark.” Mincaye called out to her and squatted by her fire, wanting to talk. He said, “You said that Waengongi, the Creator, is very strong.” Aunt Rachel said, “Mincaye, He is very strong. He made everything here, even the dirt.”
Mincaye said, “You said that He could clean somebody’s heart. My heart being very, very dark, can He clean even my heart?” Aunt Rachel said, “Being very strong, He can clean even your heart.” She wrote that Mincaye got up and walked away, but that the next morning he came back excited. He said, “Star, what you said is true. Speaking to God, He has cleaned my heart. Now it’s waatamo , it’s clear like the sky when it has no clouds in it.” That was the real beginning of reconciliation.
Q: Were there significant conversations or incidents during the filming of the movie?
A: After the filming of one scene, the one in which my dad is speared, an actor came to me and said, “Steve, what is sin?” I told him that the Waodani say that sin is those things that God sees well that we don’t do and those things that God does not see well that we do do. He was one of the actors who wanted to meet the Waodani in their own territory. He said to me, “I want you to tell the Waodani that I, too, have lived badly, badly. But now I want to live well. Would you ask the Waodani to pray that I will live well now?”
The Waodani were so excited. They said, “Oh yes, that’s what we say, too. We say, ‘God, You helping us, we’ll walk Your very good trail.’” So, the Waodani got around and prayed for the actor, that he would walk God’s trail and that God would clean his heart so that he could see the trail and that once starting, he would not veer off one way or the other.
Q: What is your hope and prayer for the movie?
A: My hope is that people will see a compelling picture of God Followers but not be distracted by the God Followers so much that they can’t see that all of us have tragic, shattered relationships in our lives and that God is the One who can put them back together in incredible ways. If Mincaye and I can be very close friends, be family, love each other, and my kids and my grandchildren can love Mincaye and his family—if that can happen out of the tragic relationship that we started with—then maybe it’ll give people hope that their strained relationships can also be reconciled and that, better yet, God can be part of the answer.
Amanda Knoke
Amanda Knoke is an assistant editor at Decision magazine.
©2005 Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
from the January 2006 issue of “Decision” magazine
For the Love of a Tribe … On Jan. 8, 1956, five missionaries to Ecuador, Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Nate Saint and Roger Youderian, were speared and killed by Waodani (pronounced wow-donni) Indians on a jungle river sandbar. Only 5 years old at the time, Nate Saint’s son Steve continued to have contact with the Waodani through his Aunt Rachel (Saint) and Jim Elliot’s wife, Elisabeth, who established friendly relations with the tribe and learned their language. This January, 50 years after the martyrdom, the film End of the Spear will open in theaters across the country, relating the historic missionary account from the perspective of Steve Saint and the Indians he now calls family. In a recent conversation with Decision, Saint talked about the savage tribe that God transformed through tragedy and about the film that tells the story of their redemption.
by Amanda Knoke
Q: When the news reports broke in 1956, the Indians were referred to as the Auca. Why are they now known as the Waodani?
A: “Auca” is a Quechua term. Quechuas are a large tribe that lives on the borders of Waodani territory. Auca has its roots in the term for “naked savage.” I don’t use the term because it’s derogatory. They were known as Auca until people found out their real name.
Q: According to anthropologists, the tribe was in danger of extinction.
A: The Waodani basically lived by the rule that if somebody does something you don’t like, you ignore it. If you can’t ignore it, you kill the person—with the understanding that the family of the one you killed had the right and the responsibility to kill somebody in your family or to kill your whole family.
Fifty years ago, when the Waodani were probably fewer than 500 people, it was getting hard for young warriors to find girls that were properly related to them. So more and more they were reverting to what they called wild marriages, where they would kill a family and take a girl. That was considered immoral to them, but they were getting desperate. The violence was escalating and more people were being killed. So yes, they really were in danger of extinction.
Q: The first contact with the Waodani was prior to the time of the slaying, correct?
A: The first contact with the Waodani was in 1954. My Aunt Rachel had found a young girl, Dayumae, who had fled from the tribe. My aunt lived with her and learned the language of the people, hoping that God was opening the door for contact with the tribe.
My dad, Roger, Pete, Ed and Jim had one friendly contact Jan. 6, 1956, a day that we call Friendly Friday. Before that, Dad would fly his plane in tight circles over the tribe and let a long line out of the plane with a bucket at the end that would stabilize in the air and then be lowered to the ground. They used that to drop gifts to the Waodani, who then started exchanging gifts with them. That went on for 13 weeks.
This interaction established some friendship. When Dad and his friends landed on a beach, they hoped that these people would find them. They went in on Tuesday, but there was no sign of the Waodani until Friday morning, when they heard a voice call from across the river, and then two women and a young man stepped out of the jungle. They walked across the river and spent the day with my dad and his friends. We have that documented because the five men took pictures and my dad had a movie camera. The Waodani man got in the plane and Dad gave him a ride.
My dad and Pete flew out every night because they didn’t want to take a chance that the river would flood and wash the plane away. The other guys spent the night up in the tree house that they had built so that during the night they would have a position of defense, should the Waodani decide to attack.
Nobody came back on Saturday. On Sunday, as my dad was flying, he saw a group of Waodani. He radioed my mom and told her: “It looks like our neighbors will be here for the afternoon service. Pray for us. I’ll call you back at 4:30.”
Dad flew back to the beach and told the other guys that the Indians were on their way, expecting that this was the beginning of permanent contact. But unknown to the men, as a result of animosities within the tribe, the warriors had decided that they were going to kill the foreigners.
Steve Saint visits the Waodani in Ecuador several times each year.
Q: How long did you live with the tribe?
A: I had a relationship with the tribe from the time I was 8 or 9. I went in to live with Aunt Rachel, whom the Waodani called “Star,” during summer and Christmas vacations. When Aunt Rachel died, I went and helped them bury her. They said, “We’ve decided now you should come back and live with us.”
I didn’t want to go, but they had insisted. I realized that I would jeopardize my relationship with them—they weren’t asking me, they were telling me to come. So my family and I went to live with them for about a year and a half.
Since we returned to the States I’ve continued going down there four times a year, working for them, helping them with medical things and teaching them to fly their own airplane. They wanted me to help teach other people like them to do these things, so we started an organization called ITEC (Indigenous Peoples Technology and Education Center).
Q: When you were living with the Waodani, did you ever feel threatened by them?
A: I felt very comfortable with most of the warriors. I didn’t feel like somebody was going to spear me, but I knew that I needed to be guarded.
Mincaye was the one who actually took me into his family. Recently I read a letter that Aunt Rachel had written to Mom. She said that Mincaye had come to her and said, “My having speared his father, I myself will teach him how to live.” Over all these years Mincaye has maintained this special relationship with me that he had initiated when I was a boy.
Q: Have you ever been criticized by people for trying to modernize the tribe or change their culture?
A: “You’re not doing enough to bring them into the 21st century” is one criticism. “You should just leave them the way they are” is another. I only do what the Waodani have asked me to do. I would just as soon they live in their old culture—without the killing. But that really isn’t for me to decide. The people in the culture who have to live with the ramifications of the change are the ones who should decide.
With the movie, I’ll be criticized for trying to capitalize on the Waodani, though I have no financial interest whatsoever. And some people will say, “It’s the same old missionary thing—ruining the culture.” I can’t answer all the criticisms.
Q: But after Rachel and Elisabeth Elliot went to live with the tribe, the homicide was reduced, wasn’t it?
A: Ninety percent of the killing ceased almost immediately. There are still some tensions between them and the Arunaidi—that’s what the Waodani call the Quechuas—but there’s very little killing between them.
Q: Would you say that the Waodani are effectively discipling one another and teaching their own people about the Bible?
A: There are very fervent believers, but the church as an institution doesn’t really function. People from the outside, who characterize the attitude toward a lot of indigenous people, don’t think that the Waodani can manage their own affairs. So they have been doing things for the Waodani that they should have been doing for themselves. Consequently, they have become so dependent that their church has ceased to function. I’ve spent 10 years encouraging them to choose elders for leadership. I also look for opportunities to try to gently encourage North Americans not to be so heavy-handed. The Apostle Paul said to the Corinthians, “I told you I’d come back, but the reason I haven’t come back is for your own good, because I don’t want to lord it over your faith, but I want your faith to become strong instead” (Cf. 2 Corinthians 1:23-24).
Mincaye, left, and Tementa, right, accompanied Steve Saint to the BGEA-sponsored Amsterdam 2000.
Q: The movie has a scene in which Mincaye invites you to take his life in payment for your father’s. Did that happen in real life?
A: No, that scene was necessary to bring the reconciliation to a head. There are aspects of it that are real. But this is why I finally asked to have Mincaye’s name changed to Mincayani in the movie. I didn’t want them to use “Mincaye” lest he be hurt. I suggested “Mincayani” since we’re taking a composite of a couple of characters that’s mostly Mincaye.
When we watched the movie together he leaned over to me and said, “Look, that’s like me,” as he saw Louie Leonardo playing his character. The Waodani don’t do make-believe, so when we’ve watched other programs I’ve told him, “That’s onoki,” make-believe. If someone was getting blown up, I’d say, “Mincaye, that guy’s not really getting blown up. They were just making it look like that.” He tried to understand, but he couldn’t really understand it.
So when Mincaye said, “Look, that’s like me.” I said, “Yes, that’s like you, and do you see that little boy? That’s like me.” Then later he said, “Who is that like?” I said, “That’s like Kimo.” For the first time this 75-year-old was looking at a movie and saying, “Oh, I get it. So they are pretending to be us.”
When it came to the killing scene, I was so nervous. I prayed, “Lord, please don’t let Mincaye be hurt by this.” And as soon as the movie was done, I said, “Mincaye, did you see it well [approve of it]?” He looked at me, grabbed my arm and said, “I saw this very, very well.” And I didn’t ask him any more questions.
Q: So you’ve had a history of reconciliation over a period of years, but there wasn’t a specific moment of reconciliation?
A: It was a developing thing, but I think that the point of reconciliation really was with Mincaye and my Aunt Rachel. In her journal she once wrote, “Tonight when I was sleeping in the hammock I heard a noise. Somebody was walking around in the dark.” Mincaye called out to her and squatted by her fire, wanting to talk. He said, “You said that Waengongi, the Creator, is very strong.” Aunt Rachel said, “Mincaye, He is very strong. He made everything here, even the dirt.”
Mincaye said, “You said that He could clean somebody’s heart. My heart being very, very dark, can He clean even my heart?” Aunt Rachel said, “Being very strong, He can clean even your heart.” She wrote that Mincaye got up and walked away, but that the next morning he came back excited. He said, “Star, what you said is true. Speaking to God, He has cleaned my heart. Now it’s waatamo , it’s clear like the sky when it has no clouds in it.” That was the real beginning of reconciliation.
Q: Were there significant conversations or incidents during the filming of the movie?
A: After the filming of one scene, the one in which my dad is speared, an actor came to me and said, “Steve, what is sin?” I told him that the Waodani say that sin is those things that God sees well that we don’t do and those things that God does not see well that we do do. He was one of the actors who wanted to meet the Waodani in their own territory. He said to me, “I want you to tell the Waodani that I, too, have lived badly, badly. But now I want to live well. Would you ask the Waodani to pray that I will live well now?”
The Waodani were so excited. They said, “Oh yes, that’s what we say, too. We say, ‘God, You helping us, we’ll walk Your very good trail.’” So, the Waodani got around and prayed for the actor, that he would walk God’s trail and that God would clean his heart so that he could see the trail and that once starting, he would not veer off one way or the other.
Q: What is your hope and prayer for the movie?
A: My hope is that people will see a compelling picture of God Followers but not be distracted by the God Followers so much that they can’t see that all of us have tragic, shattered relationships in our lives and that God is the One who can put them back together in incredible ways. If Mincaye and I can be very close friends, be family, love each other, and my kids and my grandchildren can love Mincaye and his family—if that can happen out of the tragic relationship that we started with—then maybe it’ll give people hope that their strained relationships can also be reconciled and that, better yet, God can be part of the answer.
Amanda Knoke
Amanda Knoke is an assistant editor at Decision magazine.
©2005 Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
from the January 2006 issue of “Decision” magazine
Sunday, January 08, 2006
The Missionaries' Story - Mincaye and Steve Saint
Sunday, January 8, 2006
The missionaries’ story
A man and his father’s killer promote a documentary about an indigenous tribe inEcuador and thosewho cameto help.
By ANN PEPPER
The Orange County Register
“GRANDFATHER”: Mincaye, a Waodani tribesman, listens to Steve Saint, the son of a missionary Mincaye killed 50 years ago, before speaking Saturday at Saddleback Church.
KEVIN SULLIVAN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
LAKE FOREST – An elderly man from a Stone Age Ecuadorean tribe and the son of the man he speared to death 50 years ago today are speaking at Saddleback Church this weekend about forgiveness and learning to be “a coming-after one.”
“Mincaye is the man who killed my father,” said Steve Saint, 55, putting his arm around the man he addresses as “Grandfather.”
“But he isn’t really that man,” Smith said, because he has become a “coming-after one,” meaning he has found God’s trail and he follows it.
The story of how the two men came to know, forgive and love one another, began in 1956 in the dense rainforests of the Andes Mountains.
Back then, Steve Saint’s father, Nate Saint, was 32 and one of five Christian missionaries who died that Sunday, trying to bring their faith to the Waodani, then considered one of the most violent communities on the planet.
The men were also trying to bring the Waodani skills that they would need to survive their own government and the coming of the oil companies, Saint said.
A film, “The End of the Spear,” which attempts to tell the missionaries’ story from the Waodani point of view, will open at more than a dozen theaters throughout Orange County on Jan. 20. Saint and Mincaye are speaking at different U.S. locations, including Saddleback Church, to promote the film.
The story first became known through a dramatic Life magazine story and photographs and in the book “Through Gates of Splendor,” by Elizabeth Elliot, the widow of another one of the missionaries.
Shortly after the five men were speared to death for being outsiders, Elliot and Nate Saint’s sister, Rachel Saint – with the help of a Waodani woman – went to live also as missionaries with the tribe.
In a short time, anthropologists documented that the homicide rate among the Waodani – so high that the tribe was in danger of self-extinction – had dropped by 90 percent.
Mincaye, then a young tribal leader, was among those who accepted the missionaries’ teachings from the “carvings” in the book they brought. He quickly adopted a new way of life.
“We acted badly, badly until they brought us God’s carvings,” Mincaye said gesturing and speaking expressively to the standing-room-only crowd as Saint translated. “Now we walk his trail. No one had ever come to show us the markings. How could we have followed the trail?”
By the time Steve Saint was 10, he was visiting the Waodani from his home in Quito, Ecuador, where his mother had taken her three children to live.
He grew up knowing Mincaye and the men who killed the other missionaries as family. He was baptized by them. And his children were baptized by them.
A decade ago, Saint established I-TEC, or Indigenous People’s Technology and Education Center, which focuses on enabling the Waodani and other indigenous groups to overcome the technological and educational hurdles that stand in the way of their independence. He and his wife, Ginny, who live in Ocala, Fla., visit the tribe several times a year.
Much of their work there focuses on trying to persuade younger Waodani not to abandon their ancestral culture and language, Saint said.
About 25 percent of the tribe – which has grown from about 500 in 1956 to more than 2,100 people – have become Christians.
Saint and Mincaye will speak today at four services – 9 a.m., 11:15 a.m., 4:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Saddleback Church is at 1 Saddleback Parkway.
Key dates in the relationship between the Waodani tribe of Ecuador and five American missionaries and their families.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, five couples met, married, began families and then headed to Ecuador as missionaries. What happened next:
1948: Shell Oil abandons plans to drill for oil on lands held by the extremely violent Waodani tribe.
1955: Five missionaries – Nate Saint, Jim Elliott, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully and Roger Youderian – begin an airlift of gifts to the Waodanis.
1956: The missionaries make first face-to-face contact. On the second attempt, all five are attacked and slain.
1958: Rachel Saint, sister of Nate Saint, and Elisabeth Elliot, Jim Elliot’s wife, return to the Waodanis with the help of a member of the tribe. Marj Saint, Nate Saint’s wife, joins them later.
1959: Marilou McCully, Ed McCully’s wife, joins them with the tribe. Rachel Saint, reaches Mincaye, her brother’s killer, with her Gospel message.
1960: At age 10, Nate Saint’s son, Steve, visits the tribe.
1961: Elisabeth Elliott returns to the United States and writes the book, “Through Gates of Splendor.”
1987: A study by anthropologist Clayton Robarcheck documents a 90 percent drop in the tribe’s homicide rate within a few years of the missionaries’ arrival.
1995: Steve Saint moves his family to the jungle to work with the Waodani, particularly on economic independence.
2006: “The End of the Spear,” a film about the experience of the Waodanis with the missionaries, is released on the 50th anniversary of the deaths.
Copyright 2005 The Orange County Register
The missionaries’ story
A man and his father’s killer promote a documentary about an indigenous tribe inEcuador and thosewho cameto help.
By ANN PEPPER
The Orange County Register
“GRANDFATHER”: Mincaye, a Waodani tribesman, listens to Steve Saint, the son of a missionary Mincaye killed 50 years ago, before speaking Saturday at Saddleback Church.
KEVIN SULLIVAN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
LAKE FOREST – An elderly man from a Stone Age Ecuadorean tribe and the son of the man he speared to death 50 years ago today are speaking at Saddleback Church this weekend about forgiveness and learning to be “a coming-after one.”
“Mincaye is the man who killed my father,” said Steve Saint, 55, putting his arm around the man he addresses as “Grandfather.”
“But he isn’t really that man,” Smith said, because he has become a “coming-after one,” meaning he has found God’s trail and he follows it.
The story of how the two men came to know, forgive and love one another, began in 1956 in the dense rainforests of the Andes Mountains.
Back then, Steve Saint’s father, Nate Saint, was 32 and one of five Christian missionaries who died that Sunday, trying to bring their faith to the Waodani, then considered one of the most violent communities on the planet.
The men were also trying to bring the Waodani skills that they would need to survive their own government and the coming of the oil companies, Saint said.
A film, “The End of the Spear,” which attempts to tell the missionaries’ story from the Waodani point of view, will open at more than a dozen theaters throughout Orange County on Jan. 20. Saint and Mincaye are speaking at different U.S. locations, including Saddleback Church, to promote the film.
The story first became known through a dramatic Life magazine story and photographs and in the book “Through Gates of Splendor,” by Elizabeth Elliot, the widow of another one of the missionaries.
Shortly after the five men were speared to death for being outsiders, Elliot and Nate Saint’s sister, Rachel Saint – with the help of a Waodani woman – went to live also as missionaries with the tribe.
In a short time, anthropologists documented that the homicide rate among the Waodani – so high that the tribe was in danger of self-extinction – had dropped by 90 percent.
Mincaye, then a young tribal leader, was among those who accepted the missionaries’ teachings from the “carvings” in the book they brought. He quickly adopted a new way of life.
“We acted badly, badly until they brought us God’s carvings,” Mincaye said gesturing and speaking expressively to the standing-room-only crowd as Saint translated. “Now we walk his trail. No one had ever come to show us the markings. How could we have followed the trail?”
By the time Steve Saint was 10, he was visiting the Waodani from his home in Quito, Ecuador, where his mother had taken her three children to live.
He grew up knowing Mincaye and the men who killed the other missionaries as family. He was baptized by them. And his children were baptized by them.
A decade ago, Saint established I-TEC, or Indigenous People’s Technology and Education Center, which focuses on enabling the Waodani and other indigenous groups to overcome the technological and educational hurdles that stand in the way of their independence. He and his wife, Ginny, who live in Ocala, Fla., visit the tribe several times a year.
Much of their work there focuses on trying to persuade younger Waodani not to abandon their ancestral culture and language, Saint said.
About 25 percent of the tribe – which has grown from about 500 in 1956 to more than 2,100 people – have become Christians.
Saint and Mincaye will speak today at four services – 9 a.m., 11:15 a.m., 4:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Saddleback Church is at 1 Saddleback Parkway.
Key dates in the relationship between the Waodani tribe of Ecuador and five American missionaries and their families.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, five couples met, married, began families and then headed to Ecuador as missionaries. What happened next:
1948: Shell Oil abandons plans to drill for oil on lands held by the extremely violent Waodani tribe.
1955: Five missionaries – Nate Saint, Jim Elliott, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully and Roger Youderian – begin an airlift of gifts to the Waodanis.
1956: The missionaries make first face-to-face contact. On the second attempt, all five are attacked and slain.
1958: Rachel Saint, sister of Nate Saint, and Elisabeth Elliot, Jim Elliot’s wife, return to the Waodanis with the help of a member of the tribe. Marj Saint, Nate Saint’s wife, joins them later.
1959: Marilou McCully, Ed McCully’s wife, joins them with the tribe. Rachel Saint, reaches Mincaye, her brother’s killer, with her Gospel message.
1960: At age 10, Nate Saint’s son, Steve, visits the tribe.
1961: Elisabeth Elliott returns to the United States and writes the book, “Through Gates of Splendor.”
1987: A study by anthropologist Clayton Robarcheck documents a 90 percent drop in the tribe’s homicide rate within a few years of the missionaries’ arrival.
1995: Steve Saint moves his family to the jungle to work with the Waodani, particularly on economic independence.
2006: “The End of the Spear,” a film about the experience of the Waodanis with the missionaries, is released on the 50th anniversary of the deaths.
Copyright 2005 The Orange County Register
Monday, January 02, 2006
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)