The missionaries talked about the best way to encourage this growing interest and decided to hold a Bible conference at Shandia after Christmas. Since by now Jim and Pete were able to speak fluent Quichua, the time seemed right to offer the Indians some in-depth Bible teaching.
Two days into the conference, Jim sat down to write to his parents. He sighed deeply as he wondered how to convey a sense of what it was like to host a series of Bible studies in the jungle. He thought about the meetings he’d attended every Sunday as a child in Portland. The children would all sit quietly beside their parents. Everyone would stand when it was time to sing a hymn and listen respectfully when one of the church elders got up to preach. Even if their minds were a thousand miles away, their bodies were still and quiet.
It was not that way among the Indians of the Oriente, however, who had no concept of being quiet, let alone reverent. The Indians even brought their pets to church with them! Monkeys perched restlessly on the heads of their owners, grooming themselves and reaching out to swat anything that came too close. Parrots, tethered to ropes, beat their wings and strutted up and down their owners’ arms. Quichua women used church as a time to groom their children, picking lice from their hair, scraping their feet to pull out any protruding prickles or thorns, and cleaning their finger and toenails with twigs. The men would stand and stretch in the middle of the service, yell to passing people, or wander outside to use the “bathroom,” which happened to be the outside wall of the church.
Jim tried to describe it to his parents. He had to admit to himself, though, that unless a person had experienced this behavior firsthand, it was hard to imagine just how distracting it could be.
Still, when the Bible conference was over, Jim was delighted to discover that some of the eighty or so Quichua Indians in attendance had been listening. Two of the teenage girls, Eugena and Carmela, asked to be baptized and after a question-and-answer time, it was obvious they understood fully what they were asking for. The next Sunday, Jim baptized the mission’s first two Quichua converts in the Talac River.
The success of the Bible conference also led the missionaries to rethink their plans for the future. Jim had to admit that with the McCullys’ house rebuilt and the airstrip repaired, Shandia was by far the best place for a central mission base. And with the growing interest the local Quichua Indians were showing in the gospel message, there was the potential to start a strong, thriving church that could eventually be taken over by the Indians themselves.
The more the missionaries talked, the more they began to think of Shandia as the hub of a wheel, with a number of smaller mission outposts spread along the rim. Since the goal was to train Quichua Indians to take the gospel message to others in their tribe, it seemed sensible to concentrate on an area where the multiplication strategy had the best chance of succeeding.
Before Jim and Betty left Shandia, they decided that Puyupungu should become a part-time mission station. Jim and Betty would return to their tent, and Jim would finish building a hut to serve as the permanent mission house. Then the couple would alternate several months at a time between running the school and a medical clinic in Puyupungu and living at Shandia.
As Jim and Betty trekked back to Puyupungu, they knew it was not going to be their long-term home. They expected, however, that it would take them a year or so to get everything established. They had no idea that in just a few short months they would be living in Shandia.
Just as he was putting the finishing touches on the new mission house, which featured screened windows and a roach-proof ceiling, Jim received a letter from his father in Portland, Oregon. His dad wanted to come down and help him with a building project.
Not having seen a single member of his family since waving good-bye to his parents in San Pedro two years before, Jim was obviously delighted, but one thing concerned him: His father wanted to help him build something, but there wasn’t much more to build at Puyupungu. It made more sense for his dad to help with the rebuilding at Shandia. In May 1954, after school had been dismissed for the summer, Jim and Betty packed up their belongings, loaded them into dugout canoes, and paddled up the river to Shandia. A few days later, they flew out to Shell Mera to meet Mr. Elliot as he arrived on the bus from Quito. Jim and Betty had something exciting to tell him. He was going to be a grandpa! Betty was expecting their first baby, due early in the new year.
Mr. Elliot fit right in at Shandia. All his adult life he had been interested in missionary work and had tried to interest his children in it. Now he had his reward as he watched his son go about the work of being a missionary in the jungle of the Oriente.
Meanwhile, Ed McCully had been investigating other jungle locations that would make good outstations. He told Jim about a promising location called Arajuno. Until five years before, the well-known area had been a thriving Shell Oil exploration station, just like Shell Mera. Ed, who’d flown over the site several times with Nate Saint, reported that it was only a twelve-minute plane ride southeast of Shandia. Large numbers of Quichua Indians lived in the area. Arajuno even had a well-constructed, though overgrown, airstrip. There was just one catch: Shell Oil had abandoned Arajuno not because it had run out of oil but because of the Auca Indians.
Arajuno was situated right on the border of Auca territory, and the “neighbors” had been less than friendly. In 1947, three Shell employees, two Quichua Indians and one American, had been speared to death by Aucas. This had made it difficult for Shell to recruit more workers, but eventually Shell convinced enough Quichua Indians and foreigners that it was safe to return to oil prospecting. They were wrong. In 1948, eight Shell workers were speared to death in an ambush. After that, no one would work there, forcing Shell Oil to abandon the site altogether.
Now Arajuno was a ghost town. The tennis court was overrun with creepers, the hotel was tumbling down, and the bakery and general store had all but rotted away. The town had even had a narrow-gauge railway, on which a rusting steam engine still sat, a monument to a bustling past.
Should they pursue Arajuno as an outstation? For days, Jim and Ed wrestled with the difficult decision. They had not been invited by the local Indians to live there, as they had been in Puyupungu, and given their past history, the Auca Indians may well resent visitors. After much prayer, Jim and Ed felt they should begin making day trips to Arajuno to see what kind of response they would get from the local Quichua Indians.
Jim also began to pray that one day Arajuno might be a gateway through which the Auca Indians could be reached with the gospel message. The Aucas may have lived only forty miles away by air, but they were an eternity away in their understanding of God. Jim continually reassured himself that one day God would show him a way to reach these people.
Chapter 11
From the Air
On February 27, 1955, at Shell Mera, blonde-haired Valerie Elliot was born. Her parents could not have been more proud. Following the birth, Jim and Betty stayed a week at Shell Mera. Jim spent his days helping to build a medical clinic that would serve the missionaries of the Oriente. At lunchtime, he would stroll back to the Saints’ house to see how his wife and new baby were getting along.
Betty and Marj Saint had a lot to talk about, especially since Marj also had a new baby son, Philip, born just two months before. Raising a baby in the Oriente had its own special challenges, and Betty was grateful for all the advice she could get.
In the evenings, with the crater of Mt. Sangay glowing red in the distance, Jim and Betty would sit at the table and talk with Nate and Marj Saint. Sometimes Johnny and Ruth Keenan, the new pilot and his wife who had come to help the Saints, would join them.
It was during these times that Jim relayed all that was happening at Shandia. Just weeks before, Jim, Pete, and Ed had held another Bible conference, which had been a great success. About one hundred Quichua Indians had attended. When the conference was over, four young men had asked to be baptized. Meanwhile, Marilou McCully had given birth in Quito to her second child, Michael. And Pete Fleming was now married to Olive. After spending time in Quito so that Olive could learn Spanish, the couple had returned to Shandia.
Inevitably, the conversation each night would turn to their neighbors, the Auca Indians. Nate knew more about them than anyone, since he and Marj had been at Shell Mera for seven years and had gathered many stories in that time. He supposed there was some truth in each story, but the Aucas still remained elusive. And although the stories made Nate cautious about his safety as he flew near Auca territory, he fervently expressed his desire to communicate with the Aucas and show them there was a better way to live than in an endless cycle of hatred and revenge. Jim seconded the motion.
The missionaries also discussed Arajuno. Nate had agreed to help Ed McCully clear the abandoned airstrip there and find the best site on which to build a house. Since no one wanted to take more risks than were absolutely necessary where the Auca Indians were concerned, Nate shared some good ideas on how to reduce the risks. Jim watched as Nate sketched plans for a battery-powered electric fence to skirt the perimeter of the property.
At the end of the week, Jim and Betty returned to Shandia with their new daughter. As Nate brought the Piper Cruiser to a halt at the end of the airstrip, the missionaries’ Quichua friends ran out and surrounded the plane, crowding around Jim and Betty and the baby when they climbed out. They were fascinated with Valerie’s fine blonde hair and tiny pink fingers. None of the Quichuas had ever seen a white baby before.
Once the Elliot and McCully babies were settled in their new routines, it was time for the adult team at Shandia to strategize. Should the McCullys move to Arajuno? Should someone move back to Puyupungu? The group faithfully prayed about these important questions before making any decisions.
As March progressed, the team agreed the McCullys should move to Arajuno. But a few days hence, the missionaries received a chilling reminder of how dangerous such a move would be. Another Auca attack took place close to Arajuno. This time, the Aucas had killed a mother and her two children and stolen their canoe.
The news did not dissuade the McCullys. They were sure Arajuno was where God was leading them, but they would take every precaution they could, including having Nate Saint set up his electric fence around the house.
Once the decision to move had been made, Ed and Nate quickly set about clearing the airstrip at Arajuno. As soon as they could land a plane there, the two men spent entire days in the abandoned settlement piecing together a house. Ed was hoping to open a school and a church there one day soon.
At about the same time, Pete and Olive Fleming decided they were ready to take up the challenge of moving to Puyupungu. The ministry model Jim had been working toward was finally starting to take shape. Jim and Betty would remain at Shandia, which would serve as the hub of the mission, while the McCullys would be at Arajuno to the southeast and the Flemings at Puyupungu to the south.
Life in the jungle was never dull. New challenges were always arising, as were new obstacles that had to be overcome. Jim was working hard translating the Gospel of Luke into the Quichua language as well as running school, church, and Bible classes. He also had to respond to countless medical emergencies. Sometimes he would hike for miles through the jungle to attend to an Indian who had been bitten by a snake or had broken a bone or had suffered any other type of injury. On occasion, he trekked through the jungle to retrieve a tool someone had “borrowed” from him while he wasn’t looking. The garden Jim had planted needed constant attention. Weeds had to be pulled from among the beds of vegetables and flowers, and thousands of crawling and flying bugs had to be kept away from the tender plants.
