“Shandia to Shell Mera. Shandia to Shell Mera. Over,” Jim said over the radio. Betty could hear the franticness in his voice.
After a long pause, Marj’s voice came back: “I read you, Shandia. Shell Mera is standing by. Over.”
“Marj, bad news. The river is eating away the bluff under the hut. We are only five yards from the edge now. I’ll try to keep you posted, but if you don’t hear from me at two o’clock, you’ll know the house is over the edge. Over.”
“Shell Mera reading you, Jim. Will pass the message along. God bless you, and be careful. Over and out,” Marj replied.
Betty slumped back in her chair. Tears coursed down her cheeks. What was happening at Shandia? Were Jim and Pete all right? She stayed close to the radio for the next twenty-four hours, hoping Jim would relay another message. The radio was silent. Betty could stand it no longer. Someone had to do something! Betty persuaded a runner for Dos Rios to trek to Shandia to find out what had happened to the missionaries. She sent along with the runner a loaf of freshly made bread for Jim.
Betty had wanted to go along herself, but the Conns would not hear of it. It was the wet season in the Oriente, and there had been a lot more rain lately than normal. The trail would be muddy and difficult to negotiate, especially for someone unfamiliar with it as Betty was.
An agonizing two days passed before the runner returned to Dos Rios with his report. All the missionaries were safe, but their belongings were a different matter. All of the buildings at Shandia had been destroyed, and the flooded Atun Yaku River had swallowed the land on which they had sat. Shandia was no more. The only good news was that many of Jim’s and Pete’s belongings had been saved, even though they were sodden.
The runner also produced a hurriedly written letter from Jim. The letter was like manna from heaven to Betty. In it Jim described how the bluff that the settlement was built on had given way in the face of the surging river and how all the buildings had been lost along with part of the airstrip. Jim wrote that he doubted a plane could land there now and that the aerial wire needed to send out a radio signal had been lost in the chaos. He also wrote a few private thoughts meant only for Betty. “I wished for some reason that you were here—I do not know why, for we could not have a moment together,” Jim wrote.
That was enough for Betty, who sprang into action. She recruited some of the Quichua Christian men from Dos Rios to go back with her to Shandia to find Jim and help him in whatever way they could. They set out that afternoon. The trek was hellish as they slipped and slid through the mud, but Betty was determined to be by Jim’s side as quickly as possible.
The next day, Sunday, the group finally arrived at Shandia. The first runner Betty had sent was right: Shandia was no more. Even the land where the mission buildings had stood was gone. The whole place had been obliterated from the face of the earth. Where there had once been land and buildings there was now the angry, flooded Atun Yaku River.
Jim was delighted to see Betty and the group she had brought with her to help. Without a radio antenna or a landing strip, they had been completely cut off from other missionaries and unable to let them know the condition of things at Shandia.
After a happy reunion with Jim, Betty got right to work sorting out wet belongings, discarding ruined items, and draping the rest over bushes to dry.
As she worked, Betty kept a close eye on Jim. He was having trouble walking because his feet were raw, bloodied, and bruised. He’d explained that his feet were in this condition because in the frantic effort to save their belongings he had lost his shoes in the mud and had cut and bruised his feet walking around barefoot in the jungle in the dark. But it wasn’t Jim’s feet so much that bothered Betty; it was something else. Jim did not seem to be able to concentrate for long. He jumped around in his conversation and sometimes gazed off into the jungle, losing all track of what he was talking about. This was not at all like Jim.
The next day more help arrived in the form of Nate Saint and Dr. Tidmarsh. Nate had landed the MAF plane at Pano, and the two of them had hiked in together to see what they could do to help.
Dr. Tidmarsh frowned when he saw Jim. He took Jim’s temperature, asked him a few questions, and then made a pronouncement—malaria! The diagnosis made sense to Betty. No wonder Jim had seemed so distracted.
Dr. Tidmarsh insisted that Jim lie down right away, and he was not to get up until he was told to. Jim did not even argue. He just did what he was ordered to do.
For the next two days Betty looked after Jim as he drifted in and out of consciousness. She was grateful that Nate and Dr. Tidmarsh had come to help her and Pete. Ed also arrived to check out the damage and help wherever he could.
It took a week of Betty’s nursing before Jim had the energy to think straight, and then he wanted to talk about only one thing: what did they do next? He questioned the strategy God had in mind for them when He had allowed Shandia to be destroyed.
The men and Betty discussed all sorts of ideas. The most obvious was that perhaps God was trying to spread them out more widely as missionaries. Eventually they reached a consensus that Jim, Pete, and Ed should explore the area around them to see whether God might be leading them somewhere new. Betty agreed to stay at the campsite beside what was once Shandia and take care of their belongings while the three young men mounted an expedition to investigate.
The men set out early one morning in a dugout canoe. Jim was still weak but determined to play his part, though he promised Betty that he would stop and rest if he felt the need to do so. Betty knew that would not happen. Jim’s thirst for adventure would win out over resting and napping every time.
Betty wasn’t sure how long the men would be gone, but she used the time to continue learning Quichua. Local Christians came every day to sit with her and bring her food, and they were happy to talk with her in their language. As a result, she made rapid progress in learning Quichua.
Twenty-one days after setting out, the men returned. Jim looked fit and well, and the men had a lot to share. The big news was that a Quichua man named Atanasio, who lived in a clearing on the Puyo River, had begged the missionaries to send someone back to start a school for his children and the others in the area. As far as anyone knew, no unchurched Quichua had ever asked white people to come and teach him or her their ways. Jim was jubilant!
As Betty listened to the men talk, it was obvious that they saw Atanasio’s school as one of two areas that God wanted them to focus on. The other area of focus was to rebuild Shandia. Betty wondered about who would be assigned to each mission outpost. Jim soon took her aside to explain the situation.
“As we see it, we’ve already invested a lot of work here in Shandia,” Jim began. “The Indians know and trust us, and we shouldn’t give that up. It makes sense for Ed and Marilou to move here, especially since they don’t know the language yet and the Indians are used to having a missionary around. Of course, Ed will need either Pete or me to stay with him, at least until he knows enough of the Quichua language to get by.”
Betty nodded. It made perfect sense to her.
Jim continued. “We also think Atanasio’s invitation is a sign from God that we should begin a station down there, too. It would take two people to start the station. The sensible thing would be for Pete to stay here with Ed and Marilou and for me to start the new station. But I’ll need a partner.”
Betty could feel her heart pounding.
“So…” Jim continued, “how soon will you marry me?”
Chapter 14
Life Together
The marriage of Betty Howard and Jim Elliot took place on October 8, 1953. The ceremony, held at the Registro Civil in Quito, lasted all of ten minutes. Ed and Marilou McCully and Dr. and Mrs. Tidmarsh were the only witnesses. It wasn’t the type of wedding every bride would have enjoyed, but it suited Betty, who had no desire to plan a large wedding in the jungle. What mattered most to her was that she and Jim were finally able to embark upon their new life together as a married couple.
Following the wedding, Jim and Betty flew to Panama for their honeymoon and then on to Costa Rica to visit Betty’s brother Dave and his wife, Phyllis. Dave and Phyllis were surprised to see Betty and Jim together at their doorstep and even more so when they learned that the two were married. As the word filtered out to relatives and friends about their wedding, Betty and Jim began receiving a steady flow of congratulations and best wishes.
Two weeks after their wedding, the newlyweds were back in Quito working hard to gather the information and supplies needed to set up a new mission station at Atanasio’s clearing. The area they were going to was called Puyupungu, and Betty liked the sound of the name. The place would be their first home together.
Both Betty and Jim still had boxes in storage at Quito and had never unpacked some of the things they originally brought with them from the United States. The two of them set to work sorting through their belongings. It was exciting for them to see things they had forgotten they owned. It almost felt like unwrapping wedding presents.
After a few days of unpacking and sorting, they had quite a collection of usable items, including an assortment of garden tools, aluminum cooking pots and pans, a portable stove, and an old tent someone had given Jim before he left Oregon. These items were all duly rewrapped in heavy, waterproof paper, ready to be shipped to their new home in the Oriente.
Once everything had been organized in Quito, Betty and Jim rode the bus down the eastern slope of the Andes to Shell Mera, where Missionary Aviation Fellowship’s base of operations in the Oriente was located. Shell Mera was also the home of Nate and Marj Saint and their two children, Kathy and Steve. Once at Shell Mera, Betty and Jim made preparations for the rest of the journey to their new home.
Puyupungu was not an easy place to get to, even by jungle standards. There was no airstrip into which Nate could fly them, after which they could trek the rest of the way. The only way to Puyupungu, given all the baggage they had to transport with them, was upriver by canoe. Jim set about arranging for canoes to take them to their destination. When everything was organized, Nate drove Jim and Betty to the end of the road, where Betty was relieved to discover the canoes waiting for them. Soon the Elliots’ belongings were piled into the canoes, and Betty was waving farewell to Nate. She and Jim were under way on the final leg of the journey to their new home together in the jungle.
The Indians talked and joked as they paddled upriver. Betty could understand some of what they said, but she knew that she would have to continue to study Quichua diligently.
That night Betty and Jim slept in their own “house,” a tiny bamboo hut with a thatched roof. Atanasio had made a big ceremony out of presenting the hut to them. Once the Elliots moved in, everyone, including all of Atanasio’s wives and children, peered in between the bamboo slats to check on what the strange white people were up to.
Exhausted from the journey upriver, Betty went to sleep that night on a small folding cot, her heart overflowing with gratitude. She awoke about a half hour later with things crawling all over her.
“Jim, light the lamp,” Betty whispered.
Soon she wished she had not asked him to do that. Now she could see the hundreds of roaches swarming around in the hut. More dropped down from the thatched roof above them like tiny parachutists. There had been cockroaches at San Miguel, but nothing could have prepared her for this. Betty found it impossible to get back to sleep. Every time she pulled the sheet tightly up over her face, somehow a roach would find a way to crawl under it and across her body.
The next morning Betty talked Jim into pitching the old tent they had brought with them. She explained that she could not cope without sleep, and she would gladly trade a snug-looking hut for a roach-free tent. The tent, a large one, sixteen feet square, proved to be a much better option for living quarters, especially after Jim had outfitted it with a bamboo floor and built a small lean-to kitchen next door.
