Jim’s passion for planting flowers was particularly puzzling to the Indians, who saw no reason to cultivate something that couldn’t be eaten. The Indians would nudge each other and wonder aloud why anyone would put such energy into growing something as useless as flowers!
While Jim and Betty were busy in Shandia, the Flemings reopened the school at Puyupungu. Jim made regular trips there to encourage Pete and Olive and to visit with Atanasio.
In July, Jim’s brother Bert and his wife Colleen came to visit from their mission station in Peru. The two brothers had a great time together and even managed a visit to Arajuno to see the McCullys. In Shandia, Bert witnessed the largest baptism held so far. Fourteen people were baptized at a small beach on the Talac River. It was a particularly satisfying baptismal service for Jim because the candidates had been discipled by some of the older Quichua Christians. The Quichua Christians were beginning to understand the need to take on the responsibility of the church themselves.
Jim had been particularly pleased when he interviewed Kupal Angu, one of the men wanting to be baptized. Everyone knew that Kupal Angu had had a violent argument with his wife a year before and had thrown her out of his hut. Kupal Angu’s wife had not come back. The Quichua Christians had told Kupal Angu that he must make things right with her if he truly wanted to become a Christian and be baptized. At first, Kupal Angu refused, but then he finally gave in. As a result, he and his wife were reunited and baptized together.
Of course, the baptism was done Quichua style. As everyone gathered at the small beach to watch, the combined weight of three girls perched on a sandy bank caused the bank to give way. The girls came tumbling down onto the beach. Howls of laughter erupted from the crowd. Meanwhile, the boys took turns throwing stones into the river to see who could land his closest to Jim.
On September 29, not long after the baptism, Jim, Ed McCully, and two Indian helpers were scheduled to go to Villano to hold some meetings for a group of Quichuas who had not yet heard the gospel. The day before, Jim caught up with Ed in Arajuno, where Nate Saint was to rendezvous with them and fly them to their destination. Since there were too many of them for one flight, Nate was going to fly Jim and the equipment in first and then return to pick up Ed and the two Indian helpers.
Jim was anxious to get to Arajuno. Two weeks before, Ed and Nate Saint had spotted an Auca settlement from the air. Jim had not yet had a chance to ask Ed any questions about what they’d seen. He had been at Arajuno only a few minutes before he began peppering Ed with questions, and soon the story was tumbling out.
Nate Saint had been on his regular Monday morning grocery delivery flight to Arajuno when he had noticed it was an unusually clear day. He’d estimated he could see about seventy-five miles in any direction. As he touched down at Arajuno, Nate had had an idea. Why not take Ed up and look for the Aucas?
Ed had jumped at the idea, and half an hour later the two men were soaring over the jungle. Nate told Ed what to look for, but it was unlikely they would see the Aucas themselves; there were perhaps only five hundred to one thousand of them spread throughout the territory. What they needed to look for were areas of land that had been cleared of trees to grow manioc or wisps of telltale smoke curling up from a communal fire.
As Nate pointed the plane eastward, Ed looked intently out the window. About fifty miles from Arajuno, Ed thought he spotted an area that had once been a garden. Nate circled it in the plane, but neither of them was sure whether or not the treeless patch was manmade. The patch could have simply been the result of several old trees falling down.
The men flew on, and while Ed scoured the sea of trees below, Nate kept a close eye on the fuel gauge. Low on fuel, the men soon had to turn back. Just as Nate was calling it a day, he spotted a slight dip in the tree line about five miles away. With an anxious glance at the fuel gauge, he told Ed they would fly over and check it out before heading back to Arajuno. Both men kept their eyes fixed on the dip. The closer they got, the more excited they became. The dip was still there, only now it was a clearing—a cultivated clearing. They had found the Aucas!
Nate and Ed strained to take in the unique sight. Below them in a series of circles lay fifteen distinct clearings. But more exciting were the thatched-roof huts dotted among the clearings. The two missionaries strained as far forward as they could for a better view, but there were no Aucas in sight. Still, Nate and Ed had no doubt the village was being used by the Aucas.
As much as they wanted to stay and explore more, Nate could not risk staying over the area any longer. He switched to the reserve fuel tank and headed for Arajuno.
Ed’s story of the Auca huts encouraged Jim. Now, on their way to Villano, a twenty-minute flight southeast from Arajuno, they would have to fly over Auca territory. Jim’s heart raced at the thought of spotting the Aucas for himself. As soon as Nate took off, Jim pressed his face against the window, willing himself to see the elusive Aucas, or at least some sign of their presence in the jungle. Alas, he saw nothing. Disappointed, he climbed from the plane at Villano and unloaded his bags. Still, although Jim hadn’t seen any Aucas, maybe Ed would on Nate’s return trip with him.
Jim waited restlessly for the Piper Cruiser to return. Finally, he heard the buzz of an engine and then spotted the plane above the tree line. He ran to meet the yellow MAF plane carrying his friends.
Ed leapt out as soon as the plane came to a stop, a huge grin lighting his face. “We found more Aucas,” he announced jubilantly. “And this time, only fifteen minutes from Arajuno!”
A chill went down Jim’s spine. Was God trying to tell them it was time to reach out to the Auca Indians? After all, Nate Saint had spent seven years flying over the jungle and had never once spotted them. Now, in just two weeks the Aucas had been spotted twice!
From the time he was a young boy sitting in a pew at the local Brethren assembly in Portland, Jim had considered missions. Now he was a missionary, and a unique and awesome challenge had been laid before him. The opportunity seemed to be opening up for him and his fellow missionaries to share the gospel message with a tribe of Indians who had survived alone in the dense jungle for thousands of years.
To Jim, it was as if every course he had studied in college, every church meeting he had attended, every Bible verse he had memorized was leading him toward this one great purpose of reaching the Auca Indians with the gospel message.
Chapter 12
A Plan Is Hatched
It was Sunday night, October 2, 1955, and four men were sprawled on the wooden floor of the Saints’ living room in Shell Mera. Everyone was focused on a map of the Oriente and, in particular, an area directly east of Arajuno—Auca territory.
Some might have said it was a coincidence that the men were there together, but not Jim Elliot. Jim held a strong conviction that God’s hand had moved to bring the men in that room together at this time.
Johnny Keenan had been flying Jim and Ed back to Arajuno from Villano when a fierce storm blew up out of nowhere. To avoid the storm, Johnny had been forced to divert to Shell Mera. When the storm didn’t let up, there was nothing else to do but spend the night at Shell Mera and hope that the weather would be suitable for flying in the morning.
And now, here they were—Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Nate Saint, and Johnny Keenan—intently studying a map of the Oriente and hoping to find some clue about what to do next.
All of them agreed that the pace of “Operation Auca,” as they had dubbed it, was picking up speed. Not only had there been two sightings of Auca settlements in the past two weeks, but other things were falling into place as well. With Johnny Keenan to share the workload, Nate Saint had time to help plan for, and even take part in, a face-to-face meeting with the Aucas. Similarly, Jim’s work at Shandia was moving ahead quickly. There was now a nucleus of twenty-five Quichua Christians in the church, and some of them showed considerable promise as leaders. This freed Jim to concentrate on other things.
At the same time as things were moving ahead in Shandia, Ed and Marilou had been accepted by the Quichua Indians at Arajuno. Although several of the Indians claimed to have seen Auca footprints around the outside of the McCullys’ electric fence, there had been no attacks. And now that an Auca settlement had been found just fifteen minutes away by air, Arajuno would make a great starting point for an expedition into Auca territory.
Many challenges were yet to be overcome if Operation Auca was to move ahead. While finding the Auca settlements had been a positive first step, the eager missionaries still didn’t know how to convince the Aucas that they were friendly and meant them no harm. That was going to be difficult. If the Aucas spoke the Quichua language, the whole process would be much easier, but they didn’t. They spoke their own language—one that didn’t sound anything like the language of their Indian neighbors.
As the men contemplated the challenge before them, Nate Saint reminded Jim of something. Nate’s sister Rachel, a missionary with Wycliffe Bible Translators, was working to gain an understanding of the Auca language from an Auca woman named Dayuma, who had left her tribe a number of years before. Dayuma lived at Hacienda Ila, a large plantation south of Shandia.
Jim nodded. He recalled hearing about this Auca woman from some of the Quichua girls at Shandia. The girls had said that Dayuma had the long earlobes of an Auca, but she no longer plugged them with balsa earrings. Instead, she dressed and acted more like a Quichua.
“Is Rachel at Hacienda Ila right now?” Jim asked Nate.
“No,” Nate replied, “she’s at a conference in Quito for a couple of weeks.”
Jim breathed a sigh of relief. As much as he would have liked to involve Rachel in their operation, the men had already agreed not to tell their plans to any more people than was absolutely necessary. Many of the other Indian tribes in the Oriente, not to mention the Ecuadorian military, would have loved to know the Aucas’ location so they could strike back at them. Since it seemed that most people would rather see the Aucas dead than alive, the Aucas’ whereabouts could not leak out. Operation Auca would have to remain a secret.
Since Hacienda Ila was only a four-hour trek from Shandia, Jim offered to walk there, visit Dayuma, and find out what he could about the Auca language from her. He promised he would be careful not to raise her suspicions.
The group also considered how they could prepare the Aucas to meet them. As they discussed their ideas, Nate Saint described a technique he had developed called the spiral-line drop for lowering things to the ground from his airplane. Nate would fly his plane in a tight circle over a particular spot and then lower a canvas bucket on the end of a long length of rope. As the bucket was dropped toward the ground, the rope would form a spiral. The bucket would then hang steady in the middle of the spiral, as though it were in the eye of a hurricane. Using this ingenious technique, when there was no airstrip nearby to land, Nate had been able to deliver items to missionaries on the ground and receive items back. The technique was also a lot more accurate than just dropping things from his plane and hoping they landed in the right place. More often than not, “bombing” an area didn’t put things where they should go, and a missionary would sometimes have to scamper up a tree to retrieve supplies. The spiral-line drop had proven invaluable in emergencies. On several occasions, when the person on the ground had no radio, Nate had dropped a telephone in the bucket so they could communicate directly.
Now the spiral-line drop could be put to a whole new use. Nate could use it to send gifts of friendship to the Stone Age Auca Indians.
