Nate Saint

HOW VETERAN MISSIONARY FRANK DROWN FOUND THE BODY OF HIS FRIEND, NATE SAINT, AT THE ‘END OF THE SPEAR’

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.

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

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

Abe Van Der Puy Letter requesting info about Nate Saint

Excerpts of an interview by Melinda Ledman with Steve Saint Feb 2005

Steve Saint is the son of Nate Saint, a missionary who was killed by the Waodani. He has been working extensively with the Waodani throughout his life to help them develop and modernize their culture.

Mart Green is the CEO, Founder, and Executive Producer for Every Tribe Entertainment, a full feature film production company which produced Beyond the Gates of Splendor.

I wish to extend my sincere thanks to these men for their time and stories!

Interviewer: I’ve got to tell you, everybody I talk to, when I tell them about the film, the first thing they say is, “Are you sure? They weren’t mad at them? They didn’t have any resentment? The storyline they accept, and then that’s the first trip up. I’m sure that’s the reaction you get, though”

Steve Saint: The question people usually ask me is “How did you forgive these people? And really, the honest truth is I didn’t. I mean, it never occurred to me, really, that there was anything to forgive. Now, that wasn’t because of some great altruism. It was just that before my dad was killed, I remembered how excited Dad was, hoping to be able to contact these people so that they wouldn’t be killed by the oil companies or the government. And then after my dad was killed, you know, kids follow their parent’s clues. I mean, you sit around and your dad’s cheering because some guy just knocked the stuffings out of someone else trying to catch a football in the air, and what do you say? …I mean, that’s brutal, but you grow up thinking, “That’s great, man, what a great hit!” …My aunt loved these people. She was willing to risk her life to go and live with them. My mom was praying for them, my dad…I just couldn’t wait to meet them. I think it’s just a heritage that people don’t understand… So, um, I can tell you this, I watched very carefully, I watched my mom and these other four women and I never, ever, ever noticed or sensed any resentment. Now sad, oh, yeah, I mean their lives, can you imagine how devastated? I was devastated. My hero, I watched him fly off into the jungles one morning and he never came back… I never saw any resentment or anger towards the Waodani and I never saw any resentment or anger towards God, which is even maybe the bigger deal.

Interviewer: How many years did you live with the Waodani when you were young?

Steve Saint: You know we like to make stories grander than they are. I first went in to live with my aunt with the Waodani when I was nine and it would have been in the summer. And then I went to school up in Quito in the capital city. So, I only got to go out there summers, Christmas vacation and sometimes in between. But, I never spent years and years with the Waodani…The man who had started that airlines was a friend of my dad’s. He had helped him keep his planes running. So, I could just go out, jump on the plane, didn’t have to have a ticket or anything, and just fly down to the jungles and visit my Aunt Rachel. And I loved doing it. I mean, hunting and fishing every day. No rules. Nobody except Aunt Rachel to tell me what to do, and she couldn’t walk that well, so…(laughter). She spent her life with the Waodani…

Interviewer: Talk a little bit about the fact that now it’s your son that gets to go back….now there’s a third generation that’s had contact.

Steve Saint: Fourth! My parents, mine, and my sisters and brothers, and some of the other kids. Although I have had much, much more contact than any of the others…I was in the second generation. Then, Jenny’s and my children loved the Waodani, and the Waodani just absolutely loved them. Especially, well, they all have been given tribal names. Then, our grandchildren…in fact, I’m going down Thursday because we have a new grandchild. Actually, we have two new grandchildren, and the Waodani DEMAND to see them. (laughter)

Interviewer: How many of the Waodani have come to the U.S. now?

Steve Saint: …Oh actually about 10…my aunt came up with Kimo and Dawa and Dayuma. And then Gikita has been here, and I’ve come with Tementa and Mincaye. There’s been three or four more that have come with environmental people. And there may be some others that I don’t know about. But, you know, just a few. Mincaye has been the only one who’s come up here and really traveled. He’s been up here with me six times, been in Canada four times and been in Europe once. Which, if you want to know what our country’s really like, then you need to travel with Mincaye. (laughter) He’d be afraid to get on the elevator. Escalators are terrifying…Those stories go on and on. I was telling Randy about going to a football game. I’d better not start that! (laughter)

Interviewer: What would you say inspired this film? Did you want to do a film on it? How did the film actually start taking shape?

Steve Saint: When my son Jessie was graduating from high school, he and Stephanie wanted me to bring grandfather Mincaye up for the graduation…which is totally impossible. He had no passport and no visa, and those people, I mean, I’m an Ecuadorian citizen...and I have been trying to renew my Ecuadorian passport. I’ve had an attorney working on it for a year and a half. And so, to get that passport, you have to have served in the Ecuadorian military…you have to go through a lot of rigamarole and red tape to do it…and so, it was impossible and we had one day to do it [get Mincaye’s passport]. I was just gonna make a token effort and get turned down.

And when we went down to the U.S. Embassy and I was filling out the form, they wanted to know your full name. And Mincaye’s full name is Mincaye…they want to know where your bank account is. The only bank Mincaye knows is where he pulls his canoe up…they want to know what your profession is, and there was nothing, address, telephone number. The only thing I could find to fill out on the whole thing was occupation, so I put “hunter/ gatherer.” And we were number ga-zillion. The consulate was just packed with people… I heard somebody [worker behind the bulletproof glass] say, “Hey, get a load of this. Occupation hunter/gatherer.” …So we went up and said, “Did you call for the hunter gatherers?” He said, “What’s your number? Oh, no, you won’t even get an interview today.”…but the Consulate was walking by…and he said, “I’ll take this interview.” So the Consulate himself sat down and started asking me questions. He said, “You know, I was in the Peace Corps here years ago. I read about some people who killed some missionaries…Everybody is always worried about what happened to the people on this side, but I always wondered what happened to those people that killed the missionaries.” And I said, “Well, one of them is looking at you through the bullet proof glass.”…He asked, “Why do you want to take the man who killed your father to the states?” You know, looking for some exploitation or something…And he said, “I’ll tell you what, I’m going to have to stick my neck out a long way to do this…but if you’ll come back this afternoon when the consulate closes, I’ll give you a one-time visa on the condition that you travel with him.” …That was ten o’clock in the morning and we had until three o’clock in the afternoon when the consulate closed. And [we] got all those papers, really, years worth of paperwork in five hours and got back there and got a visa and came to the states.

After the graduation, I had a speaking engagement up in Pennsylvania. I was going to speak about this story. I thought, boy, I’m going to go up there and speak about this. Mincaye is right here! So, I said, “Hey, let’s make a road trip.”…That first time that we spoke together, a businessman in the auditorium heard us speak. He started thinking about Columbine and some of the things, I mean… read the newspaper! He said, “People here are living just like Mincaye…” Mart [Green] thought, “Our culture needs to hear this too.”

Mart Green: The first time that I met Steve and Mincaye would have been June 14, 1997. It was at a Wycliffe associates meeting….I was there in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and heard them speak, and just was amazed. I had heard the Through Gates of Splendor. I knew the story pretty much from the N. American point of view, and knew about Jim Elliot and loved the story, but never really thought about what happened to the six guys that killed the five. Where are they at? Kinda what I’d call… the other side of the story. And so I hear Steve speak and all of a sudden he brings up on stage one of the six guys who killed the five, one of the men who killed his dad…I knew that the oldest person in 1956 was 33 in the tribe. So, this was, you know, almost forty something years later. You have to assume they were all dead, because they didn’t live to be 33 years old. And then he brings up Tementa, which he was also in the story at the end there… So it was quite impacting to see the man standing on stage with the man who was responsible for his dad’s death [Mincaye], and the other one who was the son of the man who lied who caused his death [Tementa]. And he’s got his arms around him, and generally seemed to really love these guys. And when you hear his story of how he moved his family to go live with them, I mean, this is not some, “I’ll forgive you, but I hope I never see you again” kind of story. It’s, “I’ll forgive you and I’m gonna move my family, four kids, with no electricity and running water to Ecuador and live in a hut with you.” So I guess the word “reconciliation,” down to one word, it was the most amazing reconciliation story I’d probably heard.

My passion is four words: I’m on planet earth for four words: This Book is Alive -- meaning God’s Word. I believe this Book is alive. I believe the best way to portray that is through the life you live, and Mincaye was one of the greatest examples I’d ever heard of going from the most violent societies to living in peace. It was God’s Word that transformed his life.

So, little did I know that I’d get involved in the project. At that point, I assumed the guy in Tulsa would just get the tape, listen to it, and God would move on his heart to make the movie. But that’s not the way it went.

Interviewer: So, how did you end up with the project on your hands?

Mart Green: It was October of the next year, of 1998, when a guy [in Tulsa, OK] told me he really hoped to make a movie of that story someday, talking about what I’d call the North American story…So I sent him that tape to listen to of that event [Steve and Mincaye’s speech at Wycliffe]. I thought, well, I’d better listen to that tape again, so I was re-listening to that tape, and was driving down the road and Mincaye said, “We acted badly, badly.” - which they did. They were the most violent society ever recorded. There’s nobody more violent than the Waodani – 60% homicide rate for five generations…So, “We acted badly, badly until they brought us God’s carvings…” which is what Elisabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint represented when they went back in. “…and now we walk his trail.” So, I literally just wept in the parking lot and called my friend. I said, “This is going to be a movie someday, but it’s not going to be a movie about what I call the ten American heroes, that being the five men and the five women. It won’t be about the ten American heroes’ story. It’ll be- what happened to the six guys that killed the five.”

…[Six months later in 1999] I was actually working on a commercial campaign. I call it a “Milk Campaign on God’s Word.” That’s the best way I can explain it… All I knew was, wow, would this movie about God’s Word transforming the most violent society help our cause! I’m not gonna do it, but if this guy will do it, he’ll help my cause...Well, on May 9, 1999, the guy I called from the Wal-mart parking lot, the president of the four Bible Agencies, had asked for a copy of the tape too…He listens to the tape and he says, “Man, I’ve been listening to the tape and I’ve been weeping. You gotta do the movie.”…I said, “Yeah, yeah, I remember that. I told you the guy in Tulsa - that was his dream…call him, don’t call me.” So, he challenged me to get Steve Saint’s address….

I said, “I’m not gonna call Steve Saint out of the blue. I mean, this is the most well-known missionary over the last hundred years. I just saw him from the audience. I don’t know Steve. I think he lives in Ecuador, and besides that, I was raised not to go to movies. I’ve never been in a movie theater. So, I’m not calling him.” So, I no more hung up and the next phone call is my guy from Wycliffe. If I’m going to call and get Steve Saint’s address, the guy that I would call is on the phone right now. And I knew my conscience - I can’t go to sleep tonight if I don’t at least ask this guy for Steve Saint’s address…of course, I’m hoping he can’t get it... And of course, three hours later, I’ve got Steve Saint’s address…So, ironically, two years to the night, to June 14, 1997, on June 14, 1999, two years, to the day, to the night, I’m in Steve Saint’s home asking for the right to do the film.

On the Waodani’s unwillingness to do the film…

Steve Saint: [Talking to Mart Green that night in 1999] I said, “Everybody starts here. Nobody thinks about asking the Waodani their part of the story. I’ll tell you what, if you want to ask them, I’ll take you down there, introduce you and I’ll translate.”…They all came with me and we asked the Waodani and the Waodani said, “No.”

They said, “The foreigners always, always come. They want to take pictures of us, they want to take video…but they don’t talk to us. Then, they go and tell what they want to say about us. So, we say no.”…I said, “Let me tell you why they want to do this.” And I told them what had happened in Columbine that these two boys had gone in “ononke”, for no reason, and just started killing other people. And Mincaye said, “That’s JUST how we used to live. For no reason, we just speared and speared, hating and afraid. We were killing everybody. I say, are the foreigners living like that?” Of course, he had been up here already…he just kept asking to see documentaries of the foreigners killing each other. And he’d watch and he’d just shake his head. He said, “We would kill people that we hated, but we would never kill people that we never knew. Why would you kill somebody that you didn’t hate?” And yet, he’d see bombers flying over and he’d say, “How can you see those people that you’re killing?” And then he saw the concentration camps and he was so repulsed by that, that he couldn’t even deal with it. That someone would keep somebody alive and not feed them, that was beyond his comprehension…so he said, “If the foreigners are living that way, then you tell them, you show them how we used to live. And then you show them that now, look, we live happily and at peace.”

…I thought, “I need to warn them. If you say yes, they’re going to show you like you used to live, naked with just a string with your earplugs in.”- which was embarrassing to them. Because they knew, they weren’t embarrassed of being naked, but they were embarrassed of what people thought of them. The people called them Auca’s which means “naked savages.” The connotation is almost animal-like. I said, “They will show you like you were.”…Mincaye’s wife, Ompodae, has been listening to this. She whips off her blouse, pulls off her skirt, she’s sitting there in her little panties and all the film crew’s kinda looking around. She said, “If they have to show us like we were, I say do it. But look at us now. You tell them to tell them how we live in peace.”

Mincaye killed Ompodae’s family and took her forcibly to be his wife. Kimo had led the spearing party to kill Dawa’s family, Dabo had killed...Everybody sitting there, they all had reasons to hate each other. So, it really was an incredible transformation. They should have killed me when I was a kid. They knew that I would grow up to want to avenge my father’s death, so they should have killed me too.

About the story’s perspective…

Mart Green: I said, there’s one thing I will not compromise on, and that’s the way the story’s told. I’m gonna tell them, “We acted badly, badly until they brought us God’s carvings. And now we walk his trail.” And if you think back to documentary, that’s what act one was, “We acted badly, badly…” We told you how they lived. And then act two is when Rachel and them come in and bring God’s Word. “And now we walk His trail,”- you saw them actually flying the plane and trying to create their own culture. That became act one, act two, act three and the flagpole that I said “I will not let go of.” And I don’t want to tell your dad’s story, I don’t want to tell Wycliffe’s story…

The first three movie scripts, I rejected all three of them because they became the North American story. I kept saying, “Now, look, I know it’s impossible to tell the South American point of view, but I can’t do it any other way. I have no choice. We’re going to have to figure out a way to do it.”

The nature and origin of the documentary…

Mart Green: Now, the documentary obviously is very broad. It’s a lot of people’s point of view. When you get down to the movie [End of the Spear, the feature film on which the documentary is based], it gets down to Mincaye and Steve. And that’s really my passion – the movie. Now, along the way, Bill Ewing challenged me to do a documentary. I thought, “We’ve busted on three scripts. I’m tired of not succeeding, so let’s DO something. Let’s do a documentary.” Then Jim Hanon shot an hour and a half piece that wound up turning out a whole lot better than I could have ever imagined.

Interviewer: Why did you release the documentary before the feature? Or has the feature been released, just not here?

Mart Green: The movie’s going to be released next January. Now, the fiftieth anniversary of this event is January 2006. It happened in 1956. So, we’re going to leverage that to a broad audience.

Interviewer: You were obviously in retail before, so have you redirected into film or are you doing both?

Mart Green: I started Mardel Christian Bookstores when I was 19 yeas old. I quit college and started, so I did that for 23 years and this past June, I named a new president and took the title of CEO…I am taking a much more active role in Every Tribe because it’s brand new. So, more of my time is spent there.

Interviewer: Are you looking to do documentaries or feature films in the future?

Mart Green: Feature films, but documentaries become part of the marketing strategy. Just like you make a trailer or you make a commercial…The next film, we want to do on the persecuted church in China, but we’ll do a video on the persecuted church of the world. See what I’m saying? What is happening in our world today while we’re sitting here in North America and people are being persecuted for their faith. It’s happening all over the world….and then we’d have a feature film. But again, that would be very focused. We would tell a story of a little boy in China. We would take one of many, many stories and make a film out of that. African AIDS is what we hope to be our next one...we want to make feature films, and if the documentary serves that purpose, so be it.

We’re making it [End of the Spear] into the Chariot’s of Fire model, that’s what I say. It’s a great story. Yeah, it’s faith-based, but it’s a great story FIRST. Then it’s faith-based second. So, that’s our passion in film.

Interviewer: The feature film End of the Spear will use actors for the main roles, right?

Mart Green: Yeah, we shot it in Panama, but we did use an indigenous tribe so most of the Waodani, who were Ecuadorian of course, were played by people that were in huts that we canoed down. Now, the lead guy that played Mincaye is a North American actor. Three of the major parts that are playing the Waodani are by North American professional actors. All the rest of them were non-actors that did an incredible job. It was so fun because we used an indigenous tribe to play an indigenous tribe…The documentary, now, those will be the real stories. Here are the real people telling the real story, and here’s what they told us and here’s exactly what it is. It will be a great follow-up piece when people say, “I don’t even believe that.” You know, parts of the story are even better than what we could even tell in a film…At the end of the feature film, when the credits are rolling, you’ll see parts of the documentary…at the end you get to see the real Steve, the real Mincaye, and it just brings it home once again.”

What other projects do you have on your plate?

Mart Green: We feel like we’ve got the first five. One, you’ve already seen the documentary. The second one is the persecuted church in China. The third is Africa AIDS, which will be based on an orphan city we’re going to visit through the year this year. Basically, I can get them down to one word. The first story is on Reconciliation. The second story will be based on Freedom. In other words, the guys in prison have more freedom than the guys that are holding them captive. That doesn’t sound right, that doesn’t make sense, but in their spirit, there’s more freedom being behind bars than not behind bars. We use birds and cages as another symbol of being caged, but being free…Africa AIDS, the word for that will be Truth. The Africans have been lied to through slavery, through all these different years, they’ve been lied to. And right now, there are a lot of lies happening with the AIDS issues. So, the Truth will set you free. And then we want to tell a story about Islam and then we want to tell a story about post-modern…Those are the five that the Lord’s laid on our hearts and our challenge is to go find them.

Did you see any other miracles associated with this film, other than Mincaye getting his passport, which Steve told us about?

Mart Green: Well, a couple of things happened and I’ll send you the stories.

I Wondered if I Would Ever See That Plane Again.

by Steve Saint

In the making of “Beyond the Gates,” an incredible docudrama about the death of five missionaries at the hands of ‘savage’ Amazon jungle people, a little airplane plays a major role. The wife of the pilot calls it “the modern missionary mule” as she describes how that little airplane revolutionized the effort of taking physical and spiritual comfort to people deep in the jungle. That sweet ‘wife’ is my mother and the pilot, Nate Saint, who was killed when I was just a boy was my hero and my Dad.

The docudrama, however, is just a companion piece to a full-fledged feature film intended for release in theaters. As detailed plans were being made for the feature film, it became clear that a replica plane would need to be re-created to play the role of N5156H or ‘56 Henry’. That is how my Dad’s plane was affectionately known by the people who flew in it to their homes in the jungle, or to the hospital for lifesaving attention that was unavailable within the jungle. To those people and thousands of Indians living in what was often referred to as “the Green Hell”, that little Piper Family Cruiser was much more than a machine. It was a friend. 56 Henry and it’s sandy haired pilot in his grease stained khakis were a popular duo in the Ecuadorian jungles beyond the reach of roads, medicine, and news from the outside world.

When Dad and his friends, Roger Youderian, Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, and Ed McCully were speared to death on the little beach where they had just made the first friendly contact with the dreaded people known as ‘Aucas’, 56 Henry was killed too. His wings and fabric were hacked with the very same machetes that the five young missionaries had dropped to the people as tokens of friendship.

Finding an exact replica was a tough but exciting order to fill. And I was asked to fill it.

The Piper aircraft company only built 237 of their model PA-14, known as the Family Cruiser. Proud PA-14 owners extolled the virtues of the Family Cruiser, and they would not sell. Finally, through a Northwest Airlines mechanic, who knew a small town pastor who knew an old friend of a proud owner who had died and left his PA-14 orphaned, I found one for sale in Northern Minnesota.

I met N4225H in a little hanger on the edge of the Great North Woods, which shares only the size of its trees with the Amazon rain forest. The air temperature was just above zero and both of our blood was thick and sluggish. All I knew for sure on our first date, that cold night at the end of 2002, was that 25H had no operable radios and we were a long adventure from her new home at the Indigenous Peoples’ Technology and Education Center in central Florida. A borrowed road atlas would serve to tell us where we were, an inexpensive fishing GPS would tell us where to go, and our eyes would provide our only weather forecast.

I made a list of what it would take to transform 4225H into 56 Henry. It would need major renovation, a new engine, instruments, modern radios, navigation equipment, and clothes. It was painted in its original white with red trim. But 56 Henry had been painted a bright ‘Cub’ yellow to make it show up better in case of a forced landing in the endless green of the Amazon jungle. We had our work cut out for us.

Then it dawned on me. “What good would it do to spend months of time and tens of thousands of dollars to convert 25H into 56 Henry with the wrong registration number emblazoned on both of its wings and its tail?” Registration numbers on airplanes are not like license numbers on a car. On the contrary, they are very personal and unique. In an airplane, the pilot identifies himself by his plane’s registration number in every radio transmission. “Chicago Center, 5156Hotel, request”. “56Hotel, Chicago Center, say request.”

I called the FAA to learn what had become of 56 Henry’s ‘N number’. A nice lady explained what I already knew, “The original plane that carried that ‘N number’ was destroyed in South America in 1956.” … “Now N5156H belongs to a flying club owner in Salem, Oregon.”

There was no way that a stranger in Salem, Oregon, much less an entire flying club, was going to give me back my Dad’s registration number 46 years after the fact. And besides, the FAA would have to approve it.

I lay awake at night imagining what opening line I would use. But I simply could not think of a good way to ask Joan for her personal ‘N number’. Finally, I just called. After a couple days of phone tag, in which I was the only one calling, a receptionist put me through. “Hi, Joan?” “This is Steve Saint calling from Florida. … You don’t know me....”

That is as far as I got. The voice on the other end cut in, “Are you Nate Saint’s son?” (No way! Out of 300 million people in the country, I call a total stranger on the opposite end of the country and she knows who I am.)

When I acknowledged that I was Nate Saint’s son, Joan took over the conversation. “When my sister and I were little girls our parents wanted to be missionaries. It never worked out, but every year it seemed, almost like a family tradition, they would read us a book titled Through Gates of Splendor.”

“Well, I got interested in missionary aviation and learned to fly. I joined a flying club and now I’m the president and my husband and I own it. About ten days ago, a new member joined and I asked him if he would like to read the book. He started to look at the pictures and blurted out, ‘Hey, the airplane in this book has our ‘N number’!’”

“Can you believe it?” Joan queried. “I have read that book since I was a little girl and never realized that we had your Dad’s ‘N number’!” (YES!!! YES, YES, oh YEEEESSSS!!!) The conversation was definitely moving in the right direction. Now I had my opening, but Joan was not finished with her story.

“I called my sister.” “Guess what?” I asked her, “Remember that missionary story Mom and Dad used to read us? Well, you won’t believe this but I just found out that one of our club planes has Nate Saint’s registration number on it.”

Her sister responded, “You think that is a coincidence, wait ‘til I tell you what just happened to me! Last night I went to a Steven Curtis Chapman concert and met Nate’s son Steve and Mincaye, one of the men that killed Nate.” Joan explained to me that she thought her sister was mistaken. How could she have met me? And surely she couldn’t have met a member of the tribe. Why would an Amazon warrior be here in the U.S. and why would he and I have been at a concert in Washington State?

Joan and her sister were stunned. (Talk about stunned, I was speechless and amazed.) “Then it occurred to me that maybe you were a pilot, so I asked my sister. ‘Do you have any idea if Nate’s son is a pilot too?’”

“Oh sure, in the middle of the concert, they played a video as Steven Curtis sang about this story. It showed Steve Saint flying and living with the same people that killed his dad.”

“That is when it occurred to me,” Joan told me, “that you probably want your Dad’s ‘N number’. So, my sister and I have been trying to figure out how to get your address and now you’ve called. I imagine that is why you’ve called too, isn’t it?” …. Joan told me that she would give me the ‘N number’, and I sent her some video footage of 56 Henry in an old film titled “Through Gates of Splendor.”

After a great deal of building at I-TEC, I took 4225H to Ohio to be painted by Missionary Maintenance Service (MMS). Several weeks later, my wife, Ginny, and I flew to Ohio to pick it up. At the hangar, they opened the doors and, ‘TADAA!’ there in front of me was not the PA-14 that I had left with them, but ’56 Henry’ itself. I had not seen that old friend since the dramatic day in January of 1956, when I watched my hero fly away for the last time.

On our way back to Florida, Ginny and I decided to stop at the little airport near where my Mom lives. I called her on my cell phone. Ginny reminded me, “Remember what Mom said in the ‘Documentary’, ‘One thought entered my mind as I watched him (Nate) leaving, I wonder if I’ll ever see that little airplane ...again – and I never did.’”

As Ginny and I taxied up to the fence where Mom was standing, I watched her face. She was concentrating all of her attention, trying to see Ginny and me. But, suddenly I saw her expression change. Her focus changed from Ginny and me to the little yellow airplane that we were in – and she did see 56 Henry again.

God really does write great stories, doesn’t He?

Angels, Yes, I think it was Angels

by Stephen Saint

A number of years ago Olive Fleming Liefeld and her second husband Walt visited the site in the Ecuadorian jungle where Olive’s first husband Pete had been speared to death, along with Ed McCully, Roger Youderian, Jim Elliot and my father Nate Saint.

Flying into a remote jungle airstrip they were met by my father’s sister Rachel. Aunt Rachel and several members of the Waodani tribe led Olive and her husband down to the sandbar my dad named Palm Beach.

Seeing for the first time the place where her husband had been killed, brought questions back to Olive’s mind – questions that had gone unanswered for over thirty years. Answering her questions, with Aunt Rachel translating, was Dawa, wife of one of the attackers who was present during the attack. Dawa, still a teenager at the time, hid in the dense cane bordering the far side of the river, opposite Palm Beach, afraid to actually watch or take a more aggressive role.

As Dawa recognized Olive’s interest in what had happened that memorable day – a day that shocked and transfixed much of the world, both Christian and non – she began to volunteer information that she thought might be of interest.

In the middle of her commentary she pointed to a place above the jungle canopy bordering the ridge just south of Palm Beach. “That is where we heard the Cowodi (foreigners) singing,” she stated matter-of-factly. As Aunt Rachel translated, Olive stopped her, “What does she mean she heard foreigners singing above the trees?”

Dawa said they were dressed in cloth like she saw a group of Cowodi do who sang in a church she visited with Rachel in the U. S.

Olive, Walt and Aunt Rachel wondered if it could possibly have been a choir of angels. What a wonderful and humbling tribute that would have been from a gracious God who had just had five sons killed, their spear riddled bodies dumped unceremoniously in the river by the beach where they had just two days before had an exciting and completely friendly first contact with two women and one man from the same village where their killers lived.

Olive wanted to include this account of angel visitation in her book, Unfolding Destinies, so she asked me to ask the three surviving Waodani warriors who had been part of that fateful killing party for verification. The opportunity came when I flew to Ecuador to help members of the tribe bury Aunt Rachel after she died of cancer.

One by one, each of the three men told me that they saw what appeared to be lights in the same place where Dawa had said she saw the heavenly choir. They were further away, which might explain that what they saw was different. But all of them said they heard singing. Nevertheless, they were somewhat tentative in their description.

Very recently when a project was initiated to make a feature film and a docudrama about the “Auca Story”, the script writers wanted to include the “angels singing over the Palm Beach martyrs.” As I reviewed the script I felt uncomfortable including any detailed reenactment of something that I was sure had taken place but which had only been vaguely described.

In January, 2002, I was asked to take the documentary film team to Ecuador to interview the Waodani who are the other half of the story. In the interviews with four of the five remaining Waodani survivors who took part in the Palm Beach attack in which my dad and his four friends were killed, I tried to elicit more definition to what I had been told previously, but without success.

The day after wrapping up the filmed interviews with the Waodani, the film group and I were joined by two friends of ours – Kevin McAfee and Steven Curtis Chapman. They had flown out to join us to do filming for Steven’s upcoming tour which will feature the “Auca Story,” as well as to film some footage for the documentary. Steven and I were sitting in the cooking house talking while Kimo, one of the warriors I had just interviewed, was trying to communicate with a member of the film team.

I was startled to hear music coming from the thatched long-house immediately behind us. Then I realized that Kevin was just checking out the sound equipment he had brought.

Suddenly Kimo turned towards the music and listened intently. After a minute he commented, “Manami ihindabopa,” (“Just like I heard it”).

I didn’t understand what he was referring to until I put together the obvious fact he was referring to the music and remembered that I had recently asked him about what he had heard at Palm Beach.

Kimo resumed his sign language conversation. Suddenly he turned towards the music once again and very specifically affirmed, “I have heard that before, long ago. That is what I heard, just like that, when your father died.”

I explained to Steven Curtis Chapman what Kimo was saying, then called to Kevin to hold the music at that spot. It was clear that Kimo was referring especially to one motif in the music as being what he remembered.

I invited Kimo to enter the long-house with us. Unfortunately, Kevin could not tell us specifically where on the CD the music Kimo was referring to was located. Kevin started playing various pieces on the soundtrack. I couldn’t remember enough of what it sounded like to identify it. As the fifth or sixth piece started to play, Steven Curtis Chapman commented, “I think this might be it.” Almost simultaneously Kimo declared, “I saw lights like stars and that is what I heard.” Then he added, “When I heard that long ago, I didn’t know what it was. I was afraid. Hearing it I knew we had done a bad thing there. Now, no longer living angry and hating, I see it well that you have returning brought this back to us.” (They don’t have a word for instrumental music that I know of). Then he got up and left the long-house.

Kevin pulled out the CD to find the title of the piece Kimo had identified. “You won’t believe this!” Kevin exclaimed. “Look,” and he pointed at the CD; “It is cut #8.”

Jesus told us, “Go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations.” My father and his four friends joined the ranks of thousands of “God followers” who have given their lives to fulfill that commission.

The title of the soundtrack Kimo recognized as being what he heard after killing my dad and Jim, Pete, Roger and Ed – a piece written by Ron Owen especially for the documentary film (being made to tell the story of God’s plan to reach a tribe of people off in the Amazon jungle who were insignificant in almost every way except that God loved them and wanted them to know they could become His children throughout the sacrifice of Iota “God’s only child, a son.”) – is “Every Tribe, Every Nation.”

God has entrusted “His very good carvings” to us! But only the uninitiated or extremely unobservant are wont to believe that He doesn’t still have His hand in seeing that His message reaches every tribe, every nation, every tongue and every people.

I have never questioned God’s right to use my father’s life. Dad turned his life over to God as a young boy. I have never asked for an apology from the men who killed him, and I have never received one. I never hated them or held anger against them so there was no forgiveness needed. I just accepted my dad was gone and with Jesus. It never occurred to me that I should forgive them for something which, though they meant for evil, God very clearly intended for good.

But as a father, I have agonized over what I have thought must have been going through Dad’s mind as he lay dying out in the middle of nowhere, betrayed by the very people he and his friends had so carefully and methodically befriended. His failure would leave Marjorie (my sweet mom) a widow. He would never teach his two little boys to fly. His little girl would never sit on Daddy’s lap to hear another original bedtime story. He would never again fly sick Indians to the new hospital he and Roger had been working so hard to complete. His passion for sharing the message that had set him free with people who had never heard was suddenly ended.

I have imagined all these years that this must have been the pain of Dad’s last conscious minutes of life. But now I believe that I was wrong. If Dawa, Kimo, Yowe, and Mincaye heard an angelic choir from the world beyond, I have no doubt that Jim, Ed, Pete, Roger and Dad were made even more aware of their presence. They didn’t die alone. Now I do believe that God sent a reception committee to sing for them and to escort them into His presence.

As I listened to music, just written, which Kimo clearly asserted he had heard at Palm Beach, my heart swelled with a sense of well-being. God took what five men could not keep and exchanged it for something they cannot lose. It’s our turn now to make the same deal and give our lives away!

Steve Saint with Mincaye - who martyred his dad

Nate Saint Photo with "George"