A month later, Betty moved in with the Conns, a missionary family who lived at Dos Rios on the edge of Quichua territory. Everyone in the Conn family spoke fluent Quichua and promised to help her learn the language as quickly as possible. Betty wanted to do whatever she could to hurry along her wedding day.
Betty had been with the Conns only a week when she received a letter from Doreen. All of Betty’s language notes and files on the Colorado language were gone. They had been in a suitcase that Doreen had put on top of a bus en route to Quito. When Doreen went to retrieve the suitcase, it was gone, and with it a year’s worth of Betty’s work. Betty was devastated. Everything had been handwritten, and there was no backup copy. Betty wrote to Jim and told him the terrible news, but she didn’t expect him to understand what it felt like to lose a whole year’s work.
Indeed, at that moment, Jim might not have understood what it felt like to lose a year’s labor, but he soon would.
Chapter 8
The Angry River
June 14, 1953: Jim Elliot sat writing by the light of a kerosene lamp. “This may become known as the season of the big flood,” he wrote in his journal. Several of the older Quichua men helping with the construction of the new house for the McCullys had told him it was the worst flooding they had seen in thirty years. The rain had poured down without interruption for five days. Being from Oregon, Jim was used to rain, but nothing could have prepared him for the torrential sheets of water that now fell from the sky. It was impossible to get away from the noise of pelting rain and the thunderous roar of the swirling, flooded Atun Yaku River at the bottom of the bluff. It was also impossible to go more than a few steps outside without getting soaked to the skin. And it was too wet to continue work on the McCullys’ new house, which was painfully near completion.
The construction had seemed to drag on, but now a fine-looking new home sat adjacent to Jim and Pete’s hut on top of the bluff. It had been built of the best materials. It was perched on concrete piles and was clad with sturdy wood planks and had an iron roof. Between the new house and the schoolhouse, which sat about one hundred yards back from the edge of the bluff, the men had also built a new medical clinic. For Nate Saint to fly in the materials for these new buildings, they’d had to clear more jungle and extend the length of the airstrip.
The rain was pounding when Jim turned off the kerosene lamp and headed for bed. It was still pounding when he awoke the next morning and peered out the screened window toward the river. He could barely see a thing through the deluge, but he could hear the angry roar below. The last time Jim had checked, the river was flooding high above its normal level, and its surging waters were carrying away huge trees and other vegetation that had been ripped out by their roots from along the riverbank.
Jim sighed deeply. There would be no work on the McCullys’ new home today. Just another day of inside work. Still, before he settled down, Jim needed to check on some things outside. He slipped on a raincoat and opened the door. A wall of water was cascading off the roof, and Jim was drenched before he even reached the bottom of the steps. The first thing Jim wanted to check was the small generator shed, which housed the generator for the school and the new clinic. As he battled the rain, Jim recalled the excursion he and Pete had made two days before. They’d followed the trail down the river until, without warning, the riverbank fell sharply away directly in front of them. A chunk of rock and sand larger than a football field disappeared into the swollen river.
The power of the swirling river had amazed Jim. By the time he’d returned to Shandia he was a little worried. Since the generator shed sat on the edge of the bluff above the river, he had tied one end of a thick rope to the generator and the other end to the sturdy orange tree that grew in front of their hut. Jim didn’t think the bluff would give way, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.
Now, as the rain continued to beat down relentlessly, Jim wanted to make sure all was still well. Through the sheets of rain he couldn’t seem to make out the shape of the generator shed. When he touched the rope he understood why. It was stretched taut. Jim picked up his pace, sliding his hand along the rope as he went. Suddenly, the rope disappeared over the edge of the bluff, which was now about ten yards closer to the house than it had been. The land on which the generator shed had stood was gone, and the generator was dangling in midair, swinging above the angry waters of the Atun Yaku River.
Quickly, Jim ran back to the house to get Pete. They rounded up several Quichua men, and the group heaved on the rope until the generator was safely back on the bluff. Someone slid two planks of wood under the generator to act as skids, and they all dragged the generator back beside the schoolhouse, where Jim hoped it would be out of harm’s way. But what about the other buildings? When they had laid the foundation for the McCullys’ new house, Jim had assumed it was far enough from the edge of the bluff. Now he wasn’t so sure.
Cautiously, Jim made his way over to the nearly completed house. The good news was it was still standing. But the bluff had crept within fifteen yards of the front door, half the distance it had originally been. There was little Jim could do but hope and pray that no more of the bluff eroded. Jim began retreating to his house to get out of the rain, until he noticed with alarm that the edge of the bluff had advanced just as close to his own hut.
Inside, Jim and Pete wondered out loud what might happen if the rain didn’t stop in the next couple of days. Many hours of labor had gone into building the McCullys’ new house. The wooden planks on the side of the building had been painstakingly overlapped and nailed in place, and the concrete had been hand mixed and poured into forms to make the piles. The roofing iron had been flown in by Nate Saint a few sheets at a time, slung under the belly of his yellow Piper Cruiser. And now, just a few days short of completion, the whole structure was in danger of being destroyed.
The more they discussed it, the more Jim knew what had to be done. He just wished he didn’t have to undertake such a mammoth task in the midst of the torrential rain. He and Pete and a group Quichua workers were going to have to carefully tear down the McCullys’ new house and stack the building materials away from the edge of the bluff.
When Jim told Pete what had to be done, Pete was not at all surprised. He’d already come to the same conclusion. They rounded up a workcrew and began. As one group of workers pried the sheets of roofing iron and planks of siding off the house, a chain of men moved the materials to the safety of the schoolhouse.
It took them a day to dismantle what had taken two months to build, but it had to be done. The building materials used to construct the house were too expensive to simply be abandoned and allowed to be swept away by the river.
The day after they dismantled the McCullys’ new house, the rain stopped. This allowed Jim and Pete time to inspect the damage done by the river. The ground was so softened from the rain that during their inspection Jim’s boots disappeared six inches into the mud with every step. Now that the rain had stopped and the swollen river was receding, Jim privately wondered whether they had done the right thing by pulling the house down.
Over the next several weeks, it continued to rain off and on, though not as heavy as before. And the ground was not drying out enough to allow reconstruction of the McCullys’ house. Then on Thursday, July 30, Jim awoke to another deluge pelting the thatched roof of the hut. As little rivulets streamed down the window screens, Jim wondered whether the jungle would ever dry. Every piece of paper in the house was damp. Jim’s boots grew a fresh batch of mold overnight, and Jim had been wearing the same musty-smelling clothes for over a week. Because of the rain nothing would dry.
After breakfast, Jim and Pete worked together on their Quichua dictionary. It was hard to concentrate, but there was nothing else they could do. It was just too wet to get anything done outside or to visit people in their huts.
When the two men broke at noon, Jim prepared lunch while Pete made a routine check outside the hut. Jim had just put a pot of water on the Coleman stove for coffee when Pete burst back into the living room. Pete yelled, “We’ve got to get out of here! The river’s eating away under the bank. The house could be gone anytime.”
Jim rushed outside to see for himself. As he did so, a massive mudslide fifteen feet from the hut plunged into the river with a whoosh. Pete was right, they had to get out—and fast.
Jim began to throw their kitchen things into a large bucket. Then he stopped and thought for a moment. Kitchen things weren’t the most important things in the house; his language notes were. Jim grabbed a box and began emptying the contents of the living room bookshelf into it. Meanwhile, Pete was frantically throwing everything he could into boxes.
Suddenly, Jim stopped. The radio. They would have to dismantle the radio. Someone would have to climb up on the roof and retrieve the aerial. But was there time? And what would Marj Saint think when she tried to reach them and there was no reply? Jim dropped what he was holding and rushed for the transmitter. He needed to get a message out to Marj while he still could.
“Shandia to Shell Mera. Shandia to Shell Mera. Over,” he called into the microphone, hoping Marj was nearby the radio in Shell Mera.
Finally, the radio crackled back, “I read you, Shandia. Shell Mera is standing by. Over.”
Jim didn’t have time to say much. “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.”
While Jim was on the radio, Pete had been out in the torrential rain rounding up a team of helpers. None of the Indians lived as close to the edge of the bluff as the missionaries. And even if they would have to abandon their huts, it would take them only a few minutes to unhook their hammocks, collect their food baskets and spears, and flee. It wasn’t that easy for the missionaries. Jim and Pete had been at Shandia almost a year and had gathered quite a collection of things.
The helpers formed a line from the house to the schoolhouse along which they passed Jim and Pete’s belongings. The schoolhouse was still well back from the bluff’s edge and seemed to be the safest place to store their goods.
Jim did his best to wrap the papers and books in plastic before handing them down the line, but he knew they were racing against time. Things did not get packed as well as he would have liked. He cringed when he saw some pages from his Quichua dictionary go toppling into the mud. One of the helpers quickly picked the mud-covered paper up and shoved it back into the box.
The McCullys had stored eleven barrels of clothes and household items in Jim and Pete’s house. Jim laid each barrel on its side and rolled it to the top of the stairs, where he let it go. The Indian helpers then rolled the barrels into the jungle and stacked them. It was exhausting work, and by the time Jim and Pete started prying the split lengths of bamboo off the walls of their hut, the Indians had little energy left to carry the loads to safety. Despite their exhaustion, Jim and Pete had more work to do. Every item they lost now would have to be replaced later, costing both money and time.
“Get out! Get out!” the Indians suddenly yelled as they dropped the boards they were hauling and fled into the jungle. Jim, who had just unscrewed a cupboard from the wall, caught the panic in their voices. If men who had lived all their lives on this ground said it was time to leave, it was time to leave. Jim stuffed the screwdriver into his belt and bolted out the door. Whatever was left would have to be abandoned.
