As the bus bumped along, the snowcapped peak of the volcano Mt. Sangay came into view. Jim studied the map to get their bearings. They were now in the central Oriente and close to their destination, Shell Mera.
Finally, the bus navigated one more dog-legged bend, rolled along for a half mile, and screeched to a halt outside a general store with a sign that read SHELL MERA. They had arrived. Jim felt like pinching himself, first to see whether it was true that he was in the upper reaches of the Amazon jungle and then to see whether he could find some circulation in his numb legs, which had been cramped into the tiny, hard bus seat for thirteen hours!
Jim and Pete were the only ones who got off the bus. Waiting for them was a man who strolled over and shook their hands. He introduced himself as Bob Wittig, the Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) pilot who would be helping them with the survey. Bob led them a short distance back up the road to the MAF station. As they walked, Jim counted about thirty buildings in Shell Mera. From talking with Dr. Tidmarsh, he knew the town had been hacked out of the jungle by the Shell Oil Company, hence its name. The town had served as Shell Oil’s base for oil exploration in the Oriente. Three years ago, the company pulled out of the region. It sold most of the buildings at a bargain price to the Gospel Missionary Union, which established the Berean Bible Institute in the buildings to train local Indian Christians.
The road to the MAF station ran parallel to a long, neatly cleared airstrip. At the end of the airstrip, on the other side of the road, stood a tin-roofed house.
“Here we are. This place is a pilot’s dream,” said Bob Wittig, waving his hand toward the hangar next to the house. Inside the hangar was a four-seat, yellow Piper Pacer aircraft. A trail led from the hangar, across the road, and out to the end of the runway. “Nate knew what he was doing when he set this up,” he added admiringly.
The man Bob Wittig was referring to was Nate Saint. Nate had built the house and hangar in 1948 when he arrived in the Oriente to establish a base for Missionary Aviation Fellowship. Nate was a jungle pilot and airplane mechanic, and his wife Marj was an excellent radio operator and hostess. Together they ran the MAF base that serviced a number of mission stations dotted across the surrounding jungle of the Oriente.
Jim had heard great things about Nate and Marj Saint from missionaries in Quito, though he wasn’t going to be able to meet them on this trip. They were back in the United States on furlough, and Bob and Keitha Wittig were filling in for them.
Keitha Wittig welcomed Jim and Pete into the MAF house, which was named Shell Merita, meaning “Little Shell Mera.” Soon they were all seated on folding chairs and sipping juice. The cool juice was refreshing to Jim after the long bus ride from Quito. As Jim continued to enjoy it, Bob Wittig explained the plan for the survey. He would fly Jim and Pete over large tracts of jungle while they scanned the area for settlements and marked them on a map. Then they would have a better idea of how many Indians lived in the area and where.
It sounded great to Jim and Pete, and the week of surveying sped by. When they were finished, many small and previously unknown settlements were marked on the map. What the men didn’t have on their map, though, were any dots showing Auca Indian settlements. The Aucas were the people Jim’s informant had told him about two years before at the Wycliffe Summer Institute in Oklahoma City. Only sketchy details were known about this obscure tribe.
Bob Wittig told Jim that two months before, the Aucas had killed a family of five Quichua Indians who had accidentally strayed into Auca territory. The Aucas had a reputation for showing no mercy. Killing seemed to be a way of life for them. According to Bob, from a very young age the Aucas learned the ways of hatred. Small children were sung lullabies with lyrics based on the names of the people whom that family hated and wanted to kill. No one in a family group was ever allowed to forget whom they had a grudge against. Since every act of murder had to be avenged by another act of murder, a cycle of killing continued unbroken. It was even rumored that in some Auca settlements there was scarcely a person over twenty years of age; all the adults had been murdered.
This just made Jim more anxious than ever to find a way to break that hatred and show the Aucas that there was a better way to live. Still, Jim would have to be patient. He had more Spanish lessons ahead of him before he would be able to return to live in the jungle permanently. And of course, he had been called to work with the Quichua Indians. However, he told himself that while he was doing that, he would keep an eye out for opportunities to reach the Aucas.
Before Jim and Pete headed back to Quito, Bob Wittig flew them over Shandia and pointed out the thatched roof of Dr. Tidmarsh’s abandoned house. Since the airstrip was completely overgrown, they were unable to land and take a closer look. Still, at least Jim had an aerial view of his future home fixed in his mind.
Back in Quito, Jim told Betty everything he’d seen and learned in the Oriente. Jim and Pete had seen Shandia! Now they were more eager than ever to master the language and make the move to their new location. With but a single obstacle keeping them in Quito, Jim and Pete threw themselves into their Spanish lessons with renewed determination.
At the end of July, five months after arriving in Quito, Jim and Pete got some great news. According to Dr. Tidmarsh, they had made such good progress learning Spanish that they didn’t need a whole year of lessons. It was time for them to start making plans to move to Shandia.
In preparation, Jim and Pete sorted through all the equipment and supplies they had brought with them from the United States. Since they wouldn’t be able to take everything with them to Shandia at once, they sorted out those things that would be useful immediately and placed them into two backpacks and two other bags. The rest of their belongings were stored away at the Gospel Missionary Union compound.
While Jim and Pete were getting ready to move to Shandia, Betty was making plans of her own. She had heard of the need for missionaries who could translate the Bible into the Colorado Indian. To help with the translation work, she and her newly assigned partner, Doreen, would live in San Miguel, a remote village about a fifteen-hour drive west of Quito on the other side of the Andes Mountains.
Much to his dismay, Jim learned that it would take a letter about six weeks to get from Betty in San Miguel to him in Shandia. He wished she would be stationed somewhere closer and more accessible, but he knew that like him, Betty had been called to work among the Indians of Ecuador and must go where God was leading her. Still, he had enjoyed having her close by during their stay in Quito. Now it was time to do what God had called him to: minister to the Quichua Indians in Shandia.
Chapter 6
Shandia at Last
At 6:00 a.m. on Friday, August 15, 1952, an overloaded bus lurched out of the marketplace in Quito. As it began its twisted downhill trip to Shell Mera, Jim Elliot perched quietly in one of the narrow, hard seats. Beside him sat a young boy who looked shyly out the window. He was one of eighteen boys from Quito whom Jim and Pete were escorting to Shell Mera, where they would all participate in a week-long boys’ camp. After helping with the camp, Jim and Pete would move on to Shandia.
As the bus rumbled along, Jim tried to sort through his feelings. On the one hand, he was excited. He was finally on his way to live in Shandia, and he relished the challenge that lay ahead. After six months of sitting around in Quito learning Spanish, he was finally going to be a missionary.
In spite of being excited about what lay ahead, Jim felt sad. Yes, every mile the bus carried him away from Quito was a mile closer to Shandia, but it was also a mile farther away from Betty. Jim had risen extra early that morning just so he could walk one last time past the house where she was staying. He had wanted to yell up to her window to see if she was awake. In the end, he had just stood there and said a silent good-bye. Now that he was on his way to Shandia on the east side of the Andes Mountains while Betty was going to San Miguel on the west side, he wondered when they would see each other again.
The bus wound its way past Mt. Cotopaxi, shrouded in swirling morning mist, and then headed south through Ambato and Baños until finally, late in the afternoon, it screeched to a halt in Shell Mera.
As Jim and Pete and the eighteen boys scrambled from the bus, Dr. Tidmarsh was waiting for them. He had come down to Shell Mera several days earlier to help set up the boys’ camp. As Jim walked around the bus a couple of times to get the circulation in his legs going, the bus driver climbed onto the roof of the bus and unloaded their belongings. Jim checked to make sure all the bags were there, and when he indicated they were, the bus disappeared in a cloud of dust. Jim and Pete and Dr. Tidmarsh led the boys to the Berean Bible Institute, where the camp was to be held.
Jim enjoyed his week at camp. Everyone arose at 6:00 a.m., when they had “café,” a light breakfast of sweet-bread rolls and hot chocolate. After café, it was on to group Bible study and singing, followed by a morning snack of bananas and roasted corn kernels. Then it was time for a team game. Soccer was the boys’ favorite. After lunch, they took a siesta, or nap, compensation for getting up so early. When siesta was over, everyone went swimming in a stream about ten minutes away. After dinner there was another short Bible study, and then it was bedtime.
When Jim wasn’t with the boys, he was following Nate Saint around, trying to gain every piece of practical advice he could about living in the jungle. Nate and his wife Marj had lived in Shell Mera since 1948.
Jim was particularly interested in Nate’s garden. He took cuttings from some of the most successful plants growing there and stowed them away meticulously in his backpack for the trip to Shandia. By the end of the week, he had collected, among other things, rose, geranium, and hibiscus cuttings; coffee bean plants; poinsettia seedlings; and a variety of orchid roots. Jim was itching to start his first tropical garden when he finally moved to Shandia.
One week after the group had arrived in Shell Mera, the sun rose golden across the eastern jungle. Jim was brimming with excitement as he loaded his belongings into MAF’s Piper Cruiser, which Nate had just flown to Shell Mera from the United States. The plane was painted the same distinctive yellow as the other MAF plane, a Piper Pacer, in which Jim had flown during the aerial survey. Nate carefully supervised the loading of the plane. He made sure the weight of their heavy backpacks and other belongings was distributed evenly in the back. When they had loaded enough for the first trip, Pete and Dr. Tidmarsh climbed in. They would fly to Pano, northeast of Shell Mera, and then Nate would return for Jim and the rest of their belongings.
Nate cranked the engine of the Piper Cruiser until it burst to life. The engine purred smoothly while Nate checked his instruments. Nate set the flaps and revved the engine slightly, and the plane crawled forward. Nate taxied across the road to Ambato and out to the end of the runway. As Jim watched, Nate gunned the engine, commanding the yellow plane to pick up speed and race down the runway. Moments later, the Piper was clear of the ground and climbing into the still, morning air. It banked to the left and headed away from Shell Mera. Jim watched until the plane had vanished in the brilliant glow of the morning sun.
About one and a half hours later, the buzz of Nate’s plane filled the air as Nate circled around Shell Mera and came in for a landing. As soon as the yellow plane taxied to a halt in front of the MAF hangar, Jim began to load up the last of the cargo. Soon he and Nate were aloft, zipping along above the jungle, headed to Pano, the nearest airstrip to Shandia. As Jim watched the mass of green vegetation pass below, he marveled at the ease and convenience of flying. It would take the plane about twenty-five minutes to cover the thirty-five miles to Pano. Nate explained to Jim that the same journey on foot would take several days of difficult hiking through dense jungle. Jim now understood why Dr. Tidmarsh had told him that clearing and repairing the overgrown airstrip at Shandia needed to be their first priority.
