Jim kept running until he reached the edge of the clearing. He heard a massive thud behind him. He looked just in time to see his house roll slowly onto its side and disappear over the bluff into the raging river below.
“That won’t be the end of it!” yelled Pete grimly from his perch on the schoolhouse roof. “I think we should get out of here. It might all go into the river.”
“But what about the clinic?” asked Jim, unable to imagine abandoning their newest building to the swollen river.
“We don’t have time!” Pete yelled back.
Jim had an idea. “It’s not that big. How about we put a rope around it and drag it away from the edge. We could use some planks from our house as skids.”
“It’s too top heavy,” Pete called back.
Jim was thinking fast. He hated to lose the new building, especially the thatched roof. With so many people living around Shandia, the special fronds used for roof thatch were in short supply. “We could tip the building on its side and drag the roof off it to safety,” he suggested, uselessly wiping the rain out of his eyes with a sodden handkerchief.
“It’s worth a try,” Pete replied, “but we’d better move fast.”
Within ten minutes, Jim had it organized. On the count of three, ten men pushed on the side of the clinic. The building toppled over, dangerously close to the edge of the bluff.
“I’ll go around back and tie the rope to the roof,” Jim told Pete.
Jim cautiously made his way around the toppled building. As he bent over and began tying the rope to the thatched roof, the ground around him groaned, then suddenly fell away into the river. Jim found himself balancing on a thin finger of earth that jutted out from under the building. He grabbed the rope to steady himself.
“He’s dead!” yelled one of the Indians.
“No, I’m alive!” he called back and then instructed, “get me a machete!”
Jim held on desperately to the roof, his heart thumping audibly as he waited. At any moment that piece of ground he was balanced on could dive into the raging river, taking him with it. The building itself now balanced precariously on the edge of the bluff. Jim had no way to squeeze back around the clinic. His only escape route was through the roof.
After what seemed like an eternity, Jim heard a rustle and then saw the gleaming blade of a machete poking through the thatched roof. He grabbed it and pulled it all the way through, flipped it around, and grasped it by the handle. Then, with frantic swings, he hacked a hole in the roof. As quickly as he could he clambered through the hole and along the wall of the overturned clinic to the door, through which he climbed to safety. As Jim emerged from the clinic building, a cheer went up from the Indians.
“Let’s get out of here!” Jim yelled as he ran toward the jungle once again.
Somewhere along the way Jim’s shoes slipped off in the gooey mud. Jim was vaguely aware they were gone, but he did not have the energy to reach down and pull them free. He continued on barefoot. About fifty yards farther, Jim reached the place where some of their belongings and the McCullys’ barrels had been dumped. The whole scene reminded him of the aftermath of a tornado. Jim sat down heavily on one of the barrels, noticing with surprise that his feet were bleeding. Pete sank down beside him.
Ten minutes later a roar shook the jungle. It could mean only one thing: The clinic had gone over the edge. A chill ran down Jim’s spine. What if more of the ground underneath them was being eaten away by the river? Jim looked around. He was surrounded by towering trees with huge roots that had been anchored there for a hundred years or more. Yet Jim had seen trees bigger than these tossed like twigs down the swollen river. As difficult as it was to face, he had a strong feeling they should move everything farther away from the hungry river.
Worse still, Jim began to fear for the schoolhouse and all the equipment and building materials now stored in it. He discussed his fears with Pete, who admitted he had the same fears. Jim and Pete asked the Indians to help them move all of their things another fifty yards into the jungle. As they began tearing apart the schoolhouse, Jim posted one of the Indians near the edge of the bluff to stand watch. He gave strict instructions for the man to yell as soon as it got too dangerous to keep stripping the school.
Six hours later, at three o’clock in the morning, all of their equipment and building materials were safely stowed far from the raging current. Jim and Pete gratefully accepted the invitation of one of their Indian helpers to stay in his hut for the night. Jim was asleep in seconds, more exhausted than he’d been in his entire life.
At 5:00 a.m. Jim was awakened by shouting. He pulled off the damp blanket he’d been sleeping under. As he tried to stand, he winced with pain from his swollen, cut feet. He hobbled outside to see what the frantic shouting was all about.
Pete awoke too, and followed Jim outside. The two men met Valencio, one of their helpers, who was running through the jungle at breakneck speed. “It’s gone!” he yelled, breathing heavily and beckoning for the two missionaries to follow him.
Jim was wondering what was gone as he limped along behind Valencio. When the Indian stopped abruptly and pointed, Jim could see for himself what was gone. The land where the schoolhouse, playing field, and part of the airstrip had been was gone—swallowed by the river.
Jim turned away. He couldn’t bear to look. A whole year’s work had been washed away. He reached out and put his hand on Pete’s shoulder. The two men stood in silence. There was nothing to say. The mission station at Shandia was no more.
Chapter 9
A New Direction
It continued to rain for two more days. There was nothing Jim and Pete could do but sit in the hospitable Quichua’s hut and watch. Then, finally, the rain retreated. But as the sun came out, the jungle turned into a giant steam oven. Millions of gallons of water kept evaporating and condensing on the leaves of the tallest trees. Jim longed for the kind of crisp, dry sunshine that would dry their papers and clothing.
With the end of the rain came the job of figuring out what exactly had been saved from the flood and assessing the extent of the water damage. A quick count of the McCullys’ barrels revealed that there were now only ten of the original eleven. Jim sighed. The missing barrel had probably been stolen. Jim had known there was such a risk, but there was nothing he could have done to prevent it. Rather than worry about what was missing, he decided to be grateful for all the things that had survived.
Jim’s resolve to be grateful quickly evaporated when he noticed the wire for the radio aerial was missing. Jim distinctly remembered placing it near the top of the red box in which the radio had been stacked. Without the aerial, he wouldn’t be able to call Shell Mera and update Marj Saint on the state of their circumstances.
Thanks to Betty, Jim had an alternative to fall back on in getting a message to the outside world, even if it was a lot slower. After hearing Jim’s last radio message to Shell Mera, Betty had persuaded one of the Indians at Dos Rios to trek to Shandia and investigate how Jim was getting on. The man had arrived the night before with a letter for Jim and a loaf of Betty’s homemade bread. Jim was amazed by the determination of his fiancée. He hadn’t even considered sending a messenger out to Pano or Shell Mera with news, because he doubted he could find anyone willing to risk such a trek with the river in flood. Yet somehow, Betty had convinced someone to take a letter for her to Shandia.
Now the messenger could take a letter back to Betty and let her know the fate of Shandia. All Jim needed was a pen and some paper. He cast his eyes about the chaos that surrounded him. Where would he find a pen and a dry piece of paper? The items weren’t easy to find, but finally, after hunting through several boxes, he managed to find a few usable sheets of paper. The paper was limp but not too wet to write on. He sat down under a tree and began to write. Holding nothing back, he told Betty everything that had happened. “Shandia is no more,” he began. “The first house went about 3:30 p.m. on Thursday….”
The letter brought a swift response. Within twenty-four hours, Betty had trekked through the jungle to get to Jim. With her was a small band of Quichua Christians from Dos Rios. Once again, Betty surprised Jim with her determination and courage, and right away she set to work sorting and hanging things on bushes to dry. Jim was, of course, thrilled to have her with him, but he found it difficult to concentrate on her conversations. He kept drifting off. At first, he put it down to tiredness; he hadn’t slept much in the past week. But even after a good night’s sleep, he felt dizzy and vaguely out of touch with reality.
The next day, more help arrived. This time it was Dr. Tidmarsh and Nate Saint, who had flown to Pano, where they had left the plane and hiked the rest of the way. Dr. Tidmarsh took one look at Jim and ordered him to lie down. “Malaria,” he said, shaking his head. “You must have caught it while you were moving your things to safety. You need complete bed rest.”
For once, Jim did not argue. He climbed onto of a pile of bedding and lay down. Dr. Tidmarsh then unwrapped the strips of torn bedsheets Jim had bound around his feet. As he did so, Jim’s mind drifted off, and for the next week Jim was in and out of consciousness.
In the meantime, Nate Saint returned to Shell Mera to collect Ed McCully, who had come down from Quito to survey the damage.
After a week of rest, Jim felt well enough to get up for short periods. During these times, he joined in discussions about what to do next.
Jim, Pete, and Ed McCully began to ask themselves some serious questions. Now that there was nothing left of Shandia, should they rebuild it in the same place? Was God perhaps trying to get their attention and lead them to a better place? Jim felt those questions could be answered only by traveling to other areas in Quichua territory and searching for more suitable sites. He and Pete had lived at Shandia for nearly a year, but because of all the building and language studies, neither of them had traveled far from the immediate area. Now that all their responsibilities had been swept away by the river, they had time to explore and see if God might be leading them somewhere new.
Betty waved from the bank of the river as the three men climbed into a dugout canoe with several Quichua Indians. The plan was to spend two or three weeks plying the waterways that crisscrossed Quichua territory and find a suitable location for a new mission station. Betty had agreed to stay behind in a tent and watch over their belongings.
Several days into the journey, they paddled down the Puyo River to the point where it met with the Pastaza River. At the junction of the two rivers, Jim spotted a group of huts. “Let’s pull in here,” he suggested.
An hour later, the three missionaries were squatting together outside one of the huts, talking to a small Quichua man who had introduced himself as Atanasio. The man didn’t seem at all afraid of the three strangers and quite happily told them about his life. Atanasio explained that he lived in the hut with his two wives and fifteen children! Jim smiled. He’d already noticed several pairs of eyes staring shyly at them from behind the bushes.
Atanasio invited the group to stay for lunch. One of his wives spread a banana leaf in front of the guests and then loaded boiled manioc onto it from an aluminum pot that hung over the fire.
As they chewed away on the manioc, Atanasio looked directly at Jim and said more as a statement than a question, “You will come back? You will open a school for my children?”
“What did he say?” asked Ed McCully, who understood only a few words of Quichua.
“He’s inviting us back. He wants us to start a school for his children!” said Jim.
The three men looked at each other. This was a rare invitation indeed. It normally took a long time to win the trust of Indians, and even longer to be invited to live among them. Could this be where God was leading them to set up a new mission station? It certainly seemed possible.
