God Gives Strength

One day some American students decided to spend some of their free time looking at real savage life. (With our Belarusian students it's different. Most of their free and busy time they are being devoured by an unknown macabre force that draws them in just the opposite direction: towards civilization, which, needless to say, starts behind the doors of the Western embassies.) But whenever their same-aged counterparts, who have been living their lives on the other side of the above-mentioned doors, have some free time, they don't feel like going someplace like Chicago (they've had enough of that); they feel like getting away from civilization. They don't feel like going too far, though, like to Russia (that's much too exotic!), but jungles with genuine savages – that's just the ticket. The companies that provide such tours are not afraid of what the future holds for them.

So, the students flew to Ecuador, going in a civilized way as far as they could and then on with three Huaorani Indians in a prehistoric way by foot through the woods.  After some 14 hours of those walking exercises they paddled downriver in large dugout canoes and finally reached their destination.

Sitting by the campfire in the dark of night, the students talked to their compatriot who'd spent most of his life in Ecuador, deep down in the jungles. One of the students, looking around at the friendly and polite Indians, asked the American where the real savage Huaorani, that they had been hearing so much about, were. The answer was that the ones that led the students to this camp and were now sitting with them by the fire were the most savage savages that could be found among the Huaorani tribe, or, as they call them in Quechua, the Aucas, which means exactly that: savages.

The Aucas' fame was notorious. From the sixteenth century every attempt of the civilized world to come into contact with the tribe had the same result: blood and death. Conquistadors and Jesuits came, gold and rubber hunters, oil companies and soldiers. The jungles met everyone with animosity, hatred, arrows and spears. To tell the truth, most of the apostles of the civilized world were no angels either, so it was really difficult to make out who was taking whose tooth and eye as revenge. On this frontier of two worlds it was not to be doubted that "all have sinned", both the civilized and the savage.

The students had really serious doubts that they were not being cheated with having to do with fake "savages", and the American suggested they ask some of the older Huaoranis where their fathers were.

"My father has been dead a long time ago," answered the lady who was asked the first. "He was speared". It was said in a tone that suggested that any other way of dying would have been unnatural.

Four others repeated the same pointing on their own bodies where the fatal wounds were made when the spears pierced the bodies of their fathers.

"Ask Ompodae," said one student. They had liked this affectionate mother of ten kids. "My father was speared, too," Ompodae said. "He speared him." And the woman pointed at an old man who was sitting close by. "He killed my father and almost all of the rest of my family, too. Living angry, he speared them all."

"My God, I was just sitting next to him!" jerked back one of the young men.

"Maybe, that's enough! Can't you find anything else to talk about?" said another.

But one more Huaorani woman, pointing to an elderly man with an innocent and gentle face who was sitting by the "jungle American", said, "This guy speared my father, my brothers, and my mother and baby sister whom my mother was nursing in her hammock. He killed them all and then took me and made me his wife."

The tourists were flabbergasted. "How could she live with the man who murdered her family?" one of the young ladies whispered in terror. The students had no more questions. They just whispered something to one another looking really scared. And here the Ecuadorian American put his arm around that same butcher with the innocent face and quietly said, "He killed my father, too." There was no quieter spot in all of South American jungles at that moment. The students were afraid to breathe aloud. But then one of them was bold enough to ask, "And how do they live now?"

The American translated the question and the Huaoranis started saying one after another that before in their tribe everyone lived the way he willed. The children that were not convenient to care for were just being thrown away. When a man knew he was dying he begged others to bury him alive so that his spirit wouldn't wander without solace after the body died. One of the ladies said that she had strangled her daughter with her own hands to meet the demands of her speared and dying husband. He didn't feel like leaving this world alone and needed someone to be company for him. The one son whom she refused to kill was the students' lead guide and was now sitting with them by the campfire.

And then they started to tell how missionaries came to them and told them that the Man Maker sent his Son to die for people who hated and killed one another.

"Badly, badly we lived back then," said one Huaorani lady. "Now, walking God's trail which he has marked for us on paper, we live well. People still die, but if living you follow God's trail, then dying will lead you to heaven. But only one trail leads there. All other trails lead to where God will never be after death."

The spellbound civilized audience didn't know what to say to that. But the jungle evangelist wasn't satisfied with their silent appreciation for her message. "Have you heard me well? Which one of you wants to follow God's trail?"

In the eerie silence of the wild jungle one civilized hand was raised into the night air. The lady joyously clapped her hands. "You'll leave from here, but one day we'll see each other in God's place. And you," she looked around at the other Americans, "I will never see you again if you don't follow God's trail. Think well on what I have spoken, so that dying, we will live happily together in heaven."

The name of the American who put his arm around his father's murderer's shoulder was Steve Saint. In 1956 many in America heard about Steve's father, Nate, and four other young missionaries. The four missionaries were Jim Elliot, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, and Peter Fleming. Nate, Jim and Ed were friends since college days. They went as missionaries to Ecuador and had prayed for years for the Huaorani tribe that had never heard about the peace with God that came into the world with the death of Christ. At the end of 1955 the friends decided it was time to go.

First, they had to somehow show the Huaorani that they came to them with good intentions. And to do that they had to find the Huaorani. Nate and Ed flew over the area many times and eventually spotted one small Huaorani cleaning.

The three men rounded out their team with two more: Pete Fleming, a friend of Jim and Ed, and Roger Youderian, a veteran of the World War II paratroopers, who possessed jungle savvy. All five were aware of the risk they were taking but, being aware of it, still went. They didn't go ahead in blind thoughtlessness, though (they all had families), and they tried to learn about the Huaorani as much as possible from as many as possible. They learned several Huao words and phrases from a Huao girl named Dayuma, who had fled almost certain death and lived "within civilization". Nate's sister, Rachel, with whom Dayuma lived, kept studying the Huao language believing that God would let her live with the tribe and teach the Huaorani God's truths.

The missionaries began making regular overflights to drop friendship gifts from the plane, calling over a loudspeaker, "We like you. We are your friends." Then they decided to drop gifts in a bucket. The gifts from "upstairs" were machetes, metal axes, aluminum cooking pots and brightly colored ribbons and "downstairs" in response they put some treasures into the bucket: Huao combs, a feather headdress, smoked monkey and even a live parrot. The weekly flights were continued for three months. Then the Americans found a small sandbar only about 6 miles from the Huaorani settlement. They called it "Palm Beach". On January 2, 1956, Nate Saint flew the four other men in one by one, and they set up camp there. Then they started to fly to the settlement from the beach to let the Huaorani understand that the plane was landing somewhere close.

Three days were spent in waiting. Then the men suddenly saw two women come out of the jungle onto the opposite bank. They were dressed in the Huao way, i.e. not dressed at all. Two missionaries waded out into the river to greet the women. When it was apparent that the strangers were friendly, a Huao man appeared from out of the thick of the wildwood. He had been very wise and prudent to have sent "ladies first".

The Huaorani were treated to hamburgers, shown all kinds of strange things and devices and fellowship was in full swing (if you can call fellowship something that is happening between two sides, each of which cannot understand the language of the other). The wise and prudent gentleman turned out to be truly brave on top of all of his virtues and volunteered to have a plane ride. He was especially thrilled to fly over his settlement; so much so that he even tried to crawl out the open doorway onto the strut, having lost all of his wisdom and prudence.

Then the Huaorani left. The next day there were no visitors, but on January 8, Sunday, Nate, while flying around the beach, spotted a party of ten Huaorani on their way towards the missionaries' camp. At noon, he radioed his wife, "Looks like they'll be here for the Sunday afternoon service. This is it! Pray for us. Will contact you again at 4:30, over and out." It really was over and out.

Nate's wife knew that for sure as her husband was always punctual, but she didn't hear from him neither at 4:30, nor at any other time that day. The next morning another pilot flew to the beach and saw the plane stripped of its covering and the body of one of the missionaries in the river. Four days later a ground party made up of missionaries, Quechua Indians, and military personnel found the other bodies, pierced by wooden Huao spears. The Americans had their guns with them, but even before they landed on the beach, they had promised one another and God that they wouldn't fire at the Huaorani, no matter what would happen.

As Nate's son, Steve, who was almost five on the day when his father was murdered, found out many years later, the missionaries had died by way of accident, you might say. The same brave Huao man who had sent ladies first, brought about the whole mess when he itched to have a second wife (Dayuma's sister, by the way) against the will of her mother and brother. He and his wife-to-be left the tribe and when they were found, to divert attention from his own indiscretion, the wise and prudent man cast blame on the foreigners. He "revealed" to his tribesmen the evil plan of the strangers, whined that he had hardly escaped death from the hands and guns of the bloodthirsty aliens and so he heated up the rancor of the Huaorani to the boiling point which, as it was said, had been close enough to that point for several centuries.

But then nobody knew the truth, nor could anyone know. And it's a question yet to be answered: whose courage is to be admired more, who were more the heroes of faith here: the five men who laid down their lives as living sacrifices or two women who came after them, Rachel and Elisabeth.

Two years after the tragedy Nate Saint's sister, Rachel and Jim Elliot's widow, Elisabeth went to live with the Huaorani! They provided some basic medical help, studied the tribe's language and what they learned they immediately put to use with the most noble purpose that any human language can be used for: over and over again they told the tribe which had been spearing one another about Christ, who had died not only for the American women, but also for the Huaorani, the Aucas, the savages. Elisabeth later returned to civilization, and Rachel died among the Huaorani, having lived with them for 37 years. Every year her nephew Steve went to stay with her when he had school vacations.

Over the years, Steve has had the opportunity to speak and write about all this many times. But what he wants most to talk and write about is not what happened in the jungle 34 years ago, but what is happening there now and what could happen there in the future. What happened is that the "generation of murderers" turned to Christ, received the New Testament in their own language and, with the help Steve and his organization I-TEC (Indigenous People's  Technology & Education Center) http://www.I-TECusa.org  , is learning to live in a new way, or new ways. What is happening now is that the generation that was born after the Great Huaorani Revival is being drawn not so much to "God's trail", but, like us, to comfort and Western gimmicks. The Huaorani parents complain to Steve that their children, after being given the candies and Coke by the missionaries during Sunday school, protest when the parents give them the banana drink with which everyone used to quench their thirst. The children don't want to eat the normal smoked monkey meat anymore, like all decent people do. We can hear something in common here with what we have, can't we? 

Tementa, Huaorani; Beatrix, Queen of Netherlands; Alexey Prokopenko, Russia; Mincaye, Huaorani; Steve Saint, Ecuador; Yuri Smirnov, Belarus

And all of this is very interesting, too, and you could talk about this at length, but still, the most surprising thing for us, Belarussians, in this whole story is forgiveness and reconciliation. Steve told me this about his experience in the Czech Republic:

They told me, "Here in our country the Communists are gone. Everybody wants to kill them now. They said, "If we do that, there'd just be anger and animosity. If people can learn how to forgive each other. How did you forgive them?"

I said I never did. It never occurred to me that I should forgive for doing something they didn't know what they were doing and something that God obviously wanted to use them in doing. If God wanted to use them, then who was I to say, "You wronged me", because you forgive someone only when they wrong you... When I was a little boy and we were going to a church and they said, "How did you get over being angry with God for allowing this to happen?", my mother was surprised and answered that she was never angry with God. "It's O. K.", they said. "You can tell us the truth." And then she explained, "You need to understand: Nate and I gave our lives to the Lord years before that. If God had said to me, 'What is your first choice?' I would have chosen something other than this, but that's why we made Christ the Lord of our lives: because we knew that He would choose better. And if this is what He chooses, then it's well with me. This is the way we'd go."

And I saw that growing up and I saw that she loved the Huaorani, my aunt loved the Huaorani and I think that that's the heritage that parents and not just parents and family, but the whole country together can establish when we say, "I am going to give up my rights to be angry, I am going to give up my rights to have somebody apologize and I am going to be the one to establish this new way." And when we try to do things like that, it's God who comes in and gives us power.

There is a man that I was in business with years ago and I felt that he wronged me and I've held a grudge and when my daughter died last week, the first thing I thought of was what we could do to make a memorial to my daughter. And immediately this man came to my mind and I realized I've held a grudge against him for 5 years. That's the memorial that I need to give for my daughter: I need to forgive him. And then the Lord began to work in my heart and instead of wanting to forgive him when he came to the funeral, I felt that it was I who needed to apologize to him and it was honest and heart-felt and we were reunited again. And I thought, you know, that's what should be our response to God's sending His own Son.

And when my daughter was laying there and her body looked perfectly well, 20 years of age, and yet I knew that she was dying and it was nothing that I had done, it was nothing that I gave her, it was something that was happening beyond my control... And I thought, "How can a father take this?" And my heart was just breaking, because it was my daughter and I loved her so dearly. And then I thought: God gave His Son. Christ wasn't taken from Him; He willingly gave Him for us. And what should be our response to that? Our response should be that we not only forgive others, but we go and apologize to them for even holding something against them.

But that is not the natural instinct, that is something that God does when we allow Him to work in our hearts.

– In our country some think Americans are spoiled greenhouse Christians. In recent years we became much more pampered, too. They call it persecution now not when a missionary is murdered or believer is sent to a concentration camp for 25 years, but when the state doesn't allow you to build a "temple" or doesn't register a church as a legal body. And when you look around: at the Americans, the Dutch (the interview was taken in Amsterdam. - Yu. S.) and at yourself, you cannot help but think: will there be people ready to go, who will risk all, who will not duck out, who will do it for free and not for a salary nor for a piece of candy with Coke?

– To start with, I am not an American. I was born and raised in Ecuador, I am an Ecuadorian citizen. My skin is North American, but I am Ecuadorian inside (To prove the 'southerness' of his inside Steve rolled up the sleeve of the shirt on one of his arms and showed me some samples of body art that didn't look too civilized. - Yu. S.). What concerns being spoiled...

When I lived in Mali, they said, "Over here, in a Moslem country, when you become a Christian, they hold a wake, whereas in the US, when you become a Christian, they hold a party." I went to two colleges; one was a Christian college, where everybody was a professing Christian, and one was a secular university where there were very few believers. But I found it easier to be a Christian at the secular university. One day I was just humming a song walking across campus. And some students were walking past me and they got way behind me and they turned on and yelled back to me, "Hey, are you a Christian?" I said, "Yes", and they yelled, "We are, too!" And all because they heard that song. But in a Christian college nobody ever said that.

You know, I think, one of the hardest places to be a Christian is when there isn't persecution, because persecution tests the church. When it's easy, we forget what 'a Christian' means, and become picky: Are you a Lutheran? A Presbyterian? I don't understand that. For me, if you are a Christian, Christ is not only your Savior, but your Lord. You need to die for yourself.

At the funeral, a week ago, parents kept coming up and kept saying, "I don't know how you are doing this. I couldn't do this, I couldn't go through this." The reason they didn't know is that they didn't understand the strength that God could give to lose a loved child. I didn't know that either until I went through this myself. I didn't have to know that before, until it happened. I don't know what it's like to go through persecution. But I am confident, when you go through it, God gives strength...

...If we want to take it, as Nate, Jim, Roger, Ed, Peter, Rachel, Steve and many many others wanted to take it.

Yuri Smirnov

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