June 27, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Witness:
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
And we continue here on our American stories, and we
love to tell stories about every facet of American life,
and periodically those are faith stories, because we know that
faith animates so many Americans in their walk and in
their day to day lives. Elizabeth Elliott has been described
as one of the most influential Christian women of the
(00:31):
twentieth century. Let's get right into the story. Here's Greg Hanglin.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Through Gates of Splendor is a nineteen fifty seven best
selling book written by Elizabeth Elliott. Upon release, the book
was so popular that it competed with John F. Kennedy's
Profiles and Courage in terms of sales. Through Gates of
Splendor tells the story of Operation Alca, an attempt by
(00:57):
five American missionaries. I'm Elliott, the author's husband, Pete Fleming,
Ed McCully pilot Nate Saint and Roger Euderian, a participant
at the Battle of the Bulge in World War Two,
to reach the Alca tribe of eastern Ecuador. All five
men were killed by the tribe. In nineteen sixty seven,
(01:20):
a documentary film, also titled Through Gates of Splendor, was
narrated by Elizabeth Elliott herself. Thanks to the folks at
Vision Video, we are about to hear this story. Here's
Elizabeth Elliott.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
The Republic of Ecuador, three thousand air miles due south
of New York City, is one of our friendly South
American neighbor nations, Pete Do. Its capital city is just
below the equator, nine thousand feet up in the Andes.
This is where the story began. At one time or another,
(01:58):
all of us Jungle missionaries stayed with Nate and Marge
Saint in their rustic and thoroughly functional house. Marge managed
to find time to take care of her three children
and supply the jungle missionaries with everything from fresh beef
and fruits to screens and nails. Whenever Nate took off
(02:19):
with supplies, it was March who bought, stored, packed, weighed
and even helped Nate load them into the plane. She
kept his ground log, knew his position in the air,
and stood by at all times with shortwave radio.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Reported you got to land over.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
The friendly Keats with whom Jim, Pete and Ed worked.
All knew Nate's little yellow plane and weren't afraid of it.
They even begged for rides. Even some of the well
known tribe of headshrinkers called Hivaos had heard the words
of the Lord Jesus from Raj and others, and some
had come to believe Nate was very ingenious. He invented
(03:13):
a sort of pod on the wing struts which would
release a parachute with supplies. When Jim and I were
just married, we opened a new station at a place
called Puyopungu. For five months, we had no airstrip, and
Nate dropped some of our supplies to us by parachute.
When the airstrip at Puyupungu finally passed Nate's testing procedure
(03:37):
and he made his first landing with us, we were
as excited as the Indians. It gave us hopes of
opening more stations, of getting around more often to visit
the Indians. There was one group of Indians no one
had ever visited and come out alive. They were the
aucas feared even by neighboring Indian tribes. Day when Nate
(04:00):
had flown into Arahuno, where ed Marylou lived, they decided
to make another search. Everyone knew they were there somewhere
in the jungle. Alcus had killed a Quichu Indian near
Ed's station. Only a few months before. The five Fellows
had talked and prayed a lot about reaching these people,
(04:21):
but it seemed a very remote possibility until that day
in September nineteen fifty five, Ed and Nate were just
about to turn around and fly for home when they
saw the house. They didn't see any people, but there
was no question about it it was an Alca house.
(04:41):
Long before this, Nate had devised an air to ground
exchange by means of a bucket suspended on a long
cord from the plane. Even dropped a telephone so we
could talk back and forth with the plane. As the
plane circled slowly in the air, the bucket dropped to
the vortex of the cone. Don't ask how he figured
it out. Aviation experts are still trying this. The boys
(05:06):
decided was just what they would use to try and
contact the Alcas. Years before, when the shell plane had
dropped gifts, the Alcus thought they had fallen from the
stomach of the plane because it had been wounded or
frightened by the lances they had thrown. So it was
important that the Indians see that the new visitors had
the power to give or withhold the gift right up
(05:28):
to the moment of delivery. For fifteen weeks, they made
regular flights over the village, dropping gifts free fall, with
streamers attached so the Indians could find them easily. When
the boys began to make bucket drops, the Alcas even
built a platform so they could get up nearer the plane.
You can imagine the excitement when one day the Indians
(05:49):
sent back a roasted monkey in the bucket. Subsequent flights
brought feathers, combs, even a live parrot. Encouraged that the
Alcus had accepted the gifts and returned offerings of their own,
the men searched constantly for some clearing where the plane
might land and they could carry out their mission of
(06:11):
meeting the Alcus face to face. Each trip, the men
planned and prayed, and each trip contributed something to their
meager store of knowledge as to the habits and attitude
of these primitive people. Finally, the day came when they
believed God's time had come for them to go and
meet the Aucas. Nate had explored the Kudodai River and
(06:34):
discovered a patch of beach on which he could land.
They called it Palm Beach. Back at Shelmeta. Marge had
regular contact with the party on the beach, taking down
the messages in a code we had devised because we
wanted to keep the operation quiet until the men had
made the first successful contact. While so far they had
(06:55):
seen no alcas, they believed they were in the area
were probably watching their every move. As the missionary party
made camp on the beach, a shaft with ribbons was
stuck in the ground so the aucas would identify the
men as those who had dropped gifts from the air.
Jim had prefabricated a treehouse with his electric saw in Shandia.
(07:19):
Nate had flown it in piece by piece, and they
worked all day getting it up so that they would
have a defensible position in case of sudden attack. While
Jim and the fellows were on the beach, I was
at home in Shandia, listening every chance I got to
the radio messages between Palm Beach and March. Marge was
indispensable whenever Nate was away. She knew where he was
(07:42):
every hour, she knew how much gas he had on board.
She'd run outside, take a look at the sky and
let him know just what kind of weather he could expect.
For landing. Without radio, the flying program would have been impossible.
On Friday from January sixth, nineteen fifty six, after three
(08:05):
days of waiting on the beach, three Alcas appeared. The
fellows called the young man George. Of course, neither party
understood the other, except for a few words that Jim
had learned from an Alca girl who had left her tribe.
George seemed completely at ease, loved our insect repellent, and
even asked by signs for a ride in the airplane.
(08:27):
The younger girl, promptly nicknamed Delilah, was fascinated with the
texture of the plane, rubbing her body against the fabric
and imitating with her hands when she wasn't scratching the
plane's movement. Then late in the afternoon they left. The
men waited for them to return. On Sunday at noon,
(08:49):
Nate radioed, Marge, looks like they'll be here for the
afternoon's service. Pray for us.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
This is the day.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
We'll contact you at four thirty. But at four thirty
there was only silence.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
And when we come back, we continue with this remarkable story.
And you're listening to Elizabeth Elliott herself, and we love
it when we can find material, pull from archives and
hear directly from voices that are from the past. Elizabeth
Elliott's story continues here on our American Stories, and we
(09:39):
return to our American Stories and to Elizabeth Elliot, and
again we're going to go back to her storytelling and
hear her concluding words from our last segment.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
On Sunday at noon Nate radioed March. Looks like they'll
be here for the afternoon's service.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
This is the day.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
We'll contact you at four thirty. But at four thirty
there was only silence.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
That is until the January thirtieth, nineteen fifty six issue
of Life magazine hit the newsstands. The magazine costs twenty cents.
Life Magazine circulated to eight and a half million American
homes every week. But on page ten of this issue,
there's a stark, black and white photo of five young
(10:35):
women sitting around a kitchen table. It takes up almost
the entire width of the oversized two page spread. There
are half eaten sandwiches on the plates in front of them,
and toddlers are wiggling in their laps and on their shoulders.
They're listening to a man with his back to the camera.
The man is telling them about the search party that
(10:57):
found the dead bodies of their five husbands. The alca
had speared them, all of them to death. The man
has just told them that they are now widows. The
headline reads, go yee and preach the Gospel, five do
and die. Within days, the story of their sacrifice had
(11:20):
circulated around the world. People were amazed, in an era
of peace and prosperity, that Christians were still willing to
pursue something bigger than money or the American dream. The
story of sacrifice and surrender for the sake of reaching
a remote tribe with the Gospel was compelling even to
those who questioned or mocked the faith of the missionaries,
(11:43):
and they weren't done, most notably Elizabeth Eliot and Nate
Saint Sister Rachel Saint. Here again is Elizabeth Eliot.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
I went back to Shandia, where Jim and I had lived,
and continued to work with the Quichuas. People all over
the world began to pray for the Alkas. I prayed too,
but it seemed a faithless prayer. At times, I asked
God to open a door somehow, but I had no
idea what to suggest? I asked him to send somebody
(12:15):
in there. Somebody could tell them what the five men
had wanted, to, tell them that the God who made
them actually cared about them, and that he was worth trusting.
I told the Lord I was willing to go if
he wanted me to, but that seemed absurd too. If
five men had been killed, who would ever succeed. I
(12:40):
knew that God could do it if he wanted to,
and that was the reason for prayer. Prayer is not
a vain thing. In November nineteen fifty eight, two Alca
women came out of their tribe right into a Quichua village.
I met them and they came back to Shandy to
(13:00):
live with me. Dayuma, the Alka girl who had given
Jim some help on the language, had been with Rachel,
Saint Nate's sister, for several years now, and Rachel had
some valuable language data which she shared with me. I
used this as a basis and began to study with
Mintaka and Mangkamo, the two who were with me. One day,
(13:23):
when the three got together, Dayuma, Mintaka, and Mankamo, they said,
we're going home. So they went and Rachel and I
waited for them. When they returned, they invited the three
of us, including my little girl Valerie, to go and
live there. We had prayed for this. Others were praying
(13:45):
for it too. We knew that this was God's doing.
We went. It took us three days by foot over
jungle trails and streams, by canoe down the Kuradai and
up the Anya Jungle rivers, and then by foot again
to the Tiueno. Here we came face to face with Alcas.
(14:15):
The first one we saw was Delilah Diyuma's younger sister,
the very one who had been friendly to the five
men on the Kuraai beach two days before they died.
I had to keep reminding myself that these these very
people were the ones who had killed the men. They
were called one of the most savage tribes in the world.
(14:38):
What made them savage? They were human beings. They laughed
and played, they bathed, They showed no hostility to us,
And yet I learned they had their own strict ideas
about right and wrong, even if they were different from ours.
They believed it was wrong to kill people, except under
(14:58):
certain conditions. Some of them said they thought the five
men were cannibals. All outsiders were cannibals in fact, and
so of course, if they were coming to eat the Alcus,
the obvious thing to do, the noble and right thing
to do, was to kill them. But now Mintaka and
Mankamo and Dayuma had succeeded in convincing them that there
(15:21):
were outsiders who were quite all right. But these foreigners
would come and live in the village and tell them
stories about a man named Jesus. He was a good man.
They should listen to these stories and learn to talk
to Jesus to pray. So, just as Mankamo had promised
me months before, her people said, yes, let them come.
(15:43):
We won't need to kill any more. And so I
took up life for the Alcus. We decided that the
best we could do was simply to live as much
like them as we could, to share what they ate
and the things they did. They were kind to valery
(16:04):
in Me. They gave Rachel a place to sleep in
one of their shelters. They turned over a whole house.
They called it a house to valery in Me. When
the roof began to leak, they mended it for me.
None of the houses was any more than a roof.
There were no walls, no floors, no doors, and no privacy.
(16:29):
The problem of communication was a constant one. I couldn't
put together more than a sentence or two, and those
were very short ones. Rachel and I never ceased trying
to analyze and classify the language data, trying to reproduce
it verbally with the proper into a nations and nasalizations,
and all the other things which make a foreign language,
(16:51):
and especially an unwritten language difficult. Just try pronouncing a
W with your tongue flat in the front of your mouth.
They do it in a word like women, and both
the vowels are nasalized. Besides, Valerie had no trouble. She
did better with a three year old's memory and mimicking
(17:12):
ability than I did with all my language files, tape
recorder and systems of mnemonics. She showed them picture books
and taught them how to hold a crayon and draw.
This was the best kind of language study, the attempt
to understand and to be understood. The Alcas rarely counted
above three. But Dioma explained that one day in seven
(17:34):
was God's Day, and on that day she was going
to talk about him. Everyone was told to come and
sit down and be quiet. She told them simple stories
from the Old Testament or stories of Jesus from the
New Diouma told them that Jesus says we must not kill.
So right away some of the men stopped making spears.
(17:56):
There were occasions when they needed to spare a wild pig.
With careful explanation to us about what they were for,
they made new ones. These men received us as their
own relatives. They were the same ones who killed Jim
and Nate, rog and Pete and Ed. They had their reasons.
(18:17):
God had his for allowing it to happen when five
men had asked him to guide them and had trusted
him for this guidance and protection. They had sung before
they left home that last morning, the hymn to the
tune of Finlandia. We rest on Thee, our shield and
(18:37):
our defender, we go not forth alone against the foe.
Strong in Thy strength, safe inn keeping, tender, We rest
on Thee, and in Thy name we go. They succeeded
(18:57):
not in converting the Alcas, not even in speaking to
them of the name of Jesus, which the Alcas had
never heard. The Indians could not have imagined the real
reason for these white men being on that beach. They
simply took them as a threat to their own way
of life and speared them. But the men succeeded. They
(19:20):
did the thing they had set out to do. They
had obeyed, gone, they had taken literally his words. The
world passeth away, and the lust thereof. But he that
doeth the will of God abideth forever.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
And great job catching that and snagging it. That's Greg
Hangler catching that peace. And you were listening to Elizabeth Elliott,
And what a faith story indeed, and the end. So
much of a faith walk, if you've had one, or
taking one, or thinking about taking one, has to do
merely with obedience and doing what your God commands you
(20:02):
to do. And sometimes those are hard things. Terrific storytelling
indeed about faith. Elizabeth Elliott's story here on our American
Stories
And we continue here on our American stories, and we
love to tell stories about every facet of American life,
and periodically those are faith stories, because we know that
faith animates so many Americans in their walk and in
their day to day lives. Elizabeth Elliott has been described
as one of the most influential Christian women of the
(00:31):
twentieth century. Let's get right into the story. Here's Greg Hanglin.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Through Gates of Splendor is a nineteen fifty seven best
selling book written by Elizabeth Elliott. Upon release, the book
was so popular that it competed with John F. Kennedy's
Profiles and Courage in terms of sales. Through Gates of
Splendor tells the story of Operation Alca, an attempt by
(00:57):
five American missionaries. I'm Elliott, the author's husband, Pete Fleming,
Ed McCully pilot Nate Saint and Roger Euderian, a participant
at the Battle of the Bulge in World War Two,
to reach the Alca tribe of eastern Ecuador. All five
men were killed by the tribe. In nineteen sixty seven,
(01:20):
a documentary film, also titled Through Gates of Splendor, was
narrated by Elizabeth Elliott herself. Thanks to the folks at
Vision Video, we are about to hear this story. Here's
Elizabeth Elliott.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
The Republic of Ecuador, three thousand air miles due south
of New York City, is one of our friendly South
American neighbor nations, Pete Do. Its capital city is just
below the equator, nine thousand feet up in the Andes.
This is where the story began. At one time or another,
(01:58):
all of us Jungle missionaries stayed with Nate and Marge
Saint in their rustic and thoroughly functional house. Marge managed
to find time to take care of her three children
and supply the jungle missionaries with everything from fresh beef
and fruits to screens and nails. Whenever Nate took off
(02:19):
with supplies, it was March who bought, stored, packed, weighed
and even helped Nate load them into the plane. She
kept his ground log, knew his position in the air,
and stood by at all times with shortwave radio.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Reported you got to land over.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
The friendly Keats with whom Jim, Pete and Ed worked.
All knew Nate's little yellow plane and weren't afraid of it.
They even begged for rides. Even some of the well
known tribe of headshrinkers called Hivaos had heard the words
of the Lord Jesus from Raj and others, and some
had come to believe Nate was very ingenious. He invented
(03:13):
a sort of pod on the wing struts which would
release a parachute with supplies. When Jim and I were
just married, we opened a new station at a place
called Puyopungu. For five months, we had no airstrip, and
Nate dropped some of our supplies to us by parachute.
When the airstrip at Puyupungu finally passed Nate's testing procedure
(03:37):
and he made his first landing with us, we were
as excited as the Indians. It gave us hopes of
opening more stations, of getting around more often to visit
the Indians. There was one group of Indians no one
had ever visited and come out alive. They were the
aucas feared even by neighboring Indian tribes. Day when Nate
(04:00):
had flown into Arahuno, where ed Marylou lived, they decided
to make another search. Everyone knew they were there somewhere
in the jungle. Alcus had killed a Quichu Indian near
Ed's station. Only a few months before. The five Fellows
had talked and prayed a lot about reaching these people,
(04:21):
but it seemed a very remote possibility until that day
in September nineteen fifty five, Ed and Nate were just
about to turn around and fly for home when they
saw the house. They didn't see any people, but there
was no question about it it was an Alca house.
(04:41):
Long before this, Nate had devised an air to ground
exchange by means of a bucket suspended on a long
cord from the plane. Even dropped a telephone so we
could talk back and forth with the plane. As the
plane circled slowly in the air, the bucket dropped to
the vortex of the cone. Don't ask how he figured
it out. Aviation experts are still trying this. The boys
(05:06):
decided was just what they would use to try and
contact the Alcas. Years before, when the shell plane had
dropped gifts, the Alcus thought they had fallen from the
stomach of the plane because it had been wounded or
frightened by the lances they had thrown. So it was
important that the Indians see that the new visitors had
the power to give or withhold the gift right up
(05:28):
to the moment of delivery. For fifteen weeks, they made
regular flights over the village, dropping gifts free fall, with
streamers attached so the Indians could find them easily. When
the boys began to make bucket drops, the Alcas even
built a platform so they could get up nearer the plane.
You can imagine the excitement when one day the Indians
(05:49):
sent back a roasted monkey in the bucket. Subsequent flights
brought feathers, combs, even a live parrot. Encouraged that the
Alcus had accepted the gifts and returned offerings of their own,
the men searched constantly for some clearing where the plane
might land and they could carry out their mission of
(06:11):
meeting the Alcus face to face. Each trip, the men
planned and prayed, and each trip contributed something to their
meager store of knowledge as to the habits and attitude
of these primitive people. Finally, the day came when they
believed God's time had come for them to go and
meet the Aucas. Nate had explored the Kudodai River and
(06:34):
discovered a patch of beach on which he could land.
They called it Palm Beach. Back at Shelmeta. Marge had
regular contact with the party on the beach, taking down
the messages in a code we had devised because we
wanted to keep the operation quiet until the men had
made the first successful contact. While so far they had
(06:55):
seen no alcas, they believed they were in the area
were probably watching their every move. As the missionary party
made camp on the beach, a shaft with ribbons was
stuck in the ground so the aucas would identify the
men as those who had dropped gifts from the air.
Jim had prefabricated a treehouse with his electric saw in Shandia.
(07:19):
Nate had flown it in piece by piece, and they
worked all day getting it up so that they would
have a defensible position in case of sudden attack. While
Jim and the fellows were on the beach, I was
at home in Shandia, listening every chance I got to
the radio messages between Palm Beach and March. Marge was
indispensable whenever Nate was away. She knew where he was
(07:42):
every hour, she knew how much gas he had on board.
She'd run outside, take a look at the sky and
let him know just what kind of weather he could expect.
For landing. Without radio, the flying program would have been impossible.
On Friday from January sixth, nineteen fifty six, after three
(08:05):
days of waiting on the beach, three Alcas appeared. The
fellows called the young man George. Of course, neither party
understood the other, except for a few words that Jim
had learned from an Alca girl who had left her tribe.
George seemed completely at ease, loved our insect repellent, and
even asked by signs for a ride in the airplane.
(08:27):
The younger girl, promptly nicknamed Delilah, was fascinated with the
texture of the plane, rubbing her body against the fabric
and imitating with her hands when she wasn't scratching the
plane's movement. Then late in the afternoon they left. The
men waited for them to return. On Sunday at noon,
(08:49):
Nate radioed, Marge, looks like they'll be here for the
afternoon's service. Pray for us.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
This is the day.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
We'll contact you at four thirty. But at four thirty
there was only silence.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
And when we come back, we continue with this remarkable story.
And you're listening to Elizabeth Elliott herself, and we love
it when we can find material, pull from archives and
hear directly from voices that are from the past. Elizabeth
Elliott's story continues here on our American Stories, and we
(09:39):
return to our American Stories and to Elizabeth Elliot, and
again we're going to go back to her storytelling and
hear her concluding words from our last segment.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
On Sunday at noon Nate radioed March. Looks like they'll
be here for the afternoon's service.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
This is the day.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
We'll contact you at four thirty. But at four thirty
there was only silence.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
That is until the January thirtieth, nineteen fifty six issue
of Life magazine hit the newsstands. The magazine costs twenty cents.
Life Magazine circulated to eight and a half million American
homes every week. But on page ten of this issue,
there's a stark, black and white photo of five young
(10:35):
women sitting around a kitchen table. It takes up almost
the entire width of the oversized two page spread. There
are half eaten sandwiches on the plates in front of them,
and toddlers are wiggling in their laps and on their shoulders.
They're listening to a man with his back to the camera.
The man is telling them about the search party that
(10:57):
found the dead bodies of their five husbands. The alca
had speared them, all of them to death. The man
has just told them that they are now widows. The
headline reads, go yee and preach the Gospel, five do
and die. Within days, the story of their sacrifice had
(11:20):
circulated around the world. People were amazed, in an era
of peace and prosperity, that Christians were still willing to
pursue something bigger than money or the American dream. The
story of sacrifice and surrender for the sake of reaching
a remote tribe with the Gospel was compelling even to
those who questioned or mocked the faith of the missionaries,
(11:43):
and they weren't done, most notably Elizabeth Eliot and Nate
Saint Sister Rachel Saint. Here again is Elizabeth Eliot.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
I went back to Shandia, where Jim and I had lived,
and continued to work with the Quichuas. People all over
the world began to pray for the Alkas. I prayed too,
but it seemed a faithless prayer. At times, I asked
God to open a door somehow, but I had no
idea what to suggest? I asked him to send somebody
(12:15):
in there. Somebody could tell them what the five men
had wanted, to, tell them that the God who made
them actually cared about them, and that he was worth trusting.
I told the Lord I was willing to go if
he wanted me to, but that seemed absurd too. If
five men had been killed, who would ever succeed. I
(12:40):
knew that God could do it if he wanted to,
and that was the reason for prayer. Prayer is not
a vain thing. In November nineteen fifty eight, two Alca
women came out of their tribe right into a Quichua village.
I met them and they came back to Shandy to
(13:00):
live with me. Dayuma, the Alka girl who had given
Jim some help on the language, had been with Rachel,
Saint Nate's sister, for several years now, and Rachel had
some valuable language data which she shared with me. I
used this as a basis and began to study with
Mintaka and Mangkamo, the two who were with me. One day,
(13:23):
when the three got together, Dayuma, Mintaka, and Mankamo, they said,
we're going home. So they went and Rachel and I
waited for them. When they returned, they invited the three
of us, including my little girl Valerie, to go and
live there. We had prayed for this. Others were praying
(13:45):
for it too. We knew that this was God's doing.
We went. It took us three days by foot over
jungle trails and streams, by canoe down the Kuradai and
up the Anya Jungle rivers, and then by foot again
to the Tiueno. Here we came face to face with Alcas.
(14:15):
The first one we saw was Delilah Diyuma's younger sister,
the very one who had been friendly to the five
men on the Kuraai beach two days before they died.
I had to keep reminding myself that these these very
people were the ones who had killed the men. They
were called one of the most savage tribes in the world.
(14:38):
What made them savage? They were human beings. They laughed
and played, they bathed, They showed no hostility to us,
And yet I learned they had their own strict ideas
about right and wrong, even if they were different from ours.
They believed it was wrong to kill people, except under
(14:58):
certain conditions. Some of them said they thought the five
men were cannibals. All outsiders were cannibals in fact, and
so of course, if they were coming to eat the Alcus,
the obvious thing to do, the noble and right thing
to do, was to kill them. But now Mintaka and
Mankamo and Dayuma had succeeded in convincing them that there
(15:21):
were outsiders who were quite all right. But these foreigners
would come and live in the village and tell them
stories about a man named Jesus. He was a good man.
They should listen to these stories and learn to talk
to Jesus to pray. So, just as Mankamo had promised
me months before, her people said, yes, let them come.
(15:43):
We won't need to kill any more. And so I
took up life for the Alcus. We decided that the
best we could do was simply to live as much
like them as we could, to share what they ate
and the things they did. They were kind to valery
(16:04):
in Me. They gave Rachel a place to sleep in
one of their shelters. They turned over a whole house.
They called it a house to valery in Me. When
the roof began to leak, they mended it for me.
None of the houses was any more than a roof.
There were no walls, no floors, no doors, and no privacy.
(16:29):
The problem of communication was a constant one. I couldn't
put together more than a sentence or two, and those
were very short ones. Rachel and I never ceased trying
to analyze and classify the language data, trying to reproduce
it verbally with the proper into a nations and nasalizations,
and all the other things which make a foreign language,
(16:51):
and especially an unwritten language difficult. Just try pronouncing a
W with your tongue flat in the front of your mouth.
They do it in a word like women, and both
the vowels are nasalized. Besides, Valerie had no trouble. She
did better with a three year old's memory and mimicking
(17:12):
ability than I did with all my language files, tape
recorder and systems of mnemonics. She showed them picture books
and taught them how to hold a crayon and draw.
This was the best kind of language study, the attempt
to understand and to be understood. The Alcas rarely counted
above three. But Dioma explained that one day in seven
(17:34):
was God's Day, and on that day she was going
to talk about him. Everyone was told to come and
sit down and be quiet. She told them simple stories
from the Old Testament or stories of Jesus from the
New Diouma told them that Jesus says we must not kill.
So right away some of the men stopped making spears.
(17:56):
There were occasions when they needed to spare a wild pig.
With careful explanation to us about what they were for,
they made new ones. These men received us as their
own relatives. They were the same ones who killed Jim
and Nate, rog and Pete and Ed. They had their reasons.
(18:17):
God had his for allowing it to happen when five
men had asked him to guide them and had trusted
him for this guidance and protection. They had sung before
they left home that last morning, the hymn to the
tune of Finlandia. We rest on Thee, our shield and
(18:37):
our defender, we go not forth alone against the foe.
Strong in Thy strength, safe inn keeping, tender, We rest
on Thee, and in Thy name we go. They succeeded
(18:57):
not in converting the Alcas, not even in speaking to
them of the name of Jesus, which the Alcas had
never heard. The Indians could not have imagined the real
reason for these white men being on that beach. They
simply took them as a threat to their own way
of life and speared them. But the men succeeded. They
(19:20):
did the thing they had set out to do. They
had obeyed, gone, they had taken literally his words. The
world passeth away, and the lust thereof. But he that
doeth the will of God abideth forever.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
And great job catching that and snagging it. That's Greg
Hangler catching that peace. And you were listening to Elizabeth Elliott,
And what a faith story indeed, and the end. So
much of a faith walk, if you've had one, or
taking one, or thinking about taking one, has to do
merely with obedience and doing what your God commands you
(20:02):
to do. And sometimes those are hard things. Terrific storytelling
indeed about faith. Elizabeth Elliott's story here on our American
Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club
Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com