As Rachel continued her translation work, conceptual breakthroughs in her understanding of how the Waorani thought often occurred in the most unlikely ways. One day Akawo asked Rachel, “Does God stay in his hammock away up there in the sky?”
Rachel thought for a minute and asked herself: Why not think of there being hammocks in the house God is thatching for them up there? It was as good as any interpretation she could come up with, and it was an interpretation she knew the Waoranis would be able to get their thoughts around.
Rachel and Betty had been in the jungle for two and a half months when they decided they needed a break from the harsh realities of jungle living, and from each other. Rachel thought Betty was the most stubborn person she had ever met, and Betty told Rachel she felt the same about her. They often clashed over the best way to go about the translation work, and by December 1958 they were both exhausted. Rachel and Dayuma headed to Limoncocha while Betty and Valerie went to stay with Marilou McCully at a guest house in Quito.
Rachel and Dayuma arrived back at the village first, and Betty returned in March 1959 with a letter for Rachel from Cameron Townsend. In the letter, Uncle Cam told Rachel that he had found someone to write the story of Dayuma’s life. The writer was Emily Wallis, a fellow Wycliffe worker. Emily had just completed writing the book Two Thousand Tongues to Go, which told the story of Wycliffe Bible Translators since its founding. Rachel had mixed feelings about Uncle Cam’s book idea. Although she felt that Dayuma’s life story was worth writing about, Rachel was wary of what more exposure to the outside might do to the fragile Waorani tribe.
Chapter 14
Spiritual Changes
Rachel glanced at the calendar hanging on the woven bamboo wall. It was April 17, 1960, Easter Sunday. The calendar and the radio messages she received from the outside world were the only way Rachel could tell one day from another. Dayuma was still trying to get her people to count off the days in increments of seven so that they could have Sunday once a week, but it was an uphill battle. People would forget to count a day and then start from the beginning again, so that some “weeks” were ten or twelve days long.
Clapping and chanting started outside as Rachel wound her long hair into a bun, reached for her Bible, and walked across the clearing to where Dayuma had gathered a crowd. The people were singing one of the songs Dayuma had made up for them. When the singing had finished, Dayuma started talking to the people about God’s Carvings, as she often did. In ten minutes she had covered the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Then she gave a warning: “All of you, not believing, will be thrown out of heaven, just as you throw worms out of your corn. Do you understand? Not believing, the devil will snatch you.”
Dayuma then turned and looked each person in the eye. “Who will say, ‘Yes, I love God. Yes, I believe. Yes, I want to live well and take God’s trail to heaven?’” she asked.
Several green parrots alighted on a nearby kapok tree as Dayuma went on. “Will you, Dawa?”
“Yes,” Dawa answered, her voice strong and certain.
“And Gimari? Will you also take God’s trail?”
“Yes, I will love God too,” Gimari replied.
Dayuma continued around the group in the same manner, but no one else wanted to join Dawa and Gimari.
Still, Rachel was delighted. Just eighteen months had passed since she come to live with the tribe, and now two people had decided to become Christians. Later that night Rachel walked down to the river alone and wept for joy. All of the heartache had been worth it to hear Dawa and Gimari speak up in the church meeting.
Rachel and Dayuma started teaching the two new converts from the Bible, and Dayuma prayed with them every day. The converts’ progress was slow but steady, and although no other Waorani joined them in their new faith, all of Dayuma’s family became more relaxed around Rachel. Their suspicions of her motives for coming to the tribe—especially revenge for the killing of her brother—began to slip away.
Rachel and Dayuma made another trip to Limoncocha in January, and when they returned, Kimo rushed to meet them on the trail. He was beaming from ear to ear.
“We counted the days, and on God’s day we spoke God’s Carvings to one another,” he said.
Rachel squeezed Kimo’s hand—and wondered whether he would be the next Christian convert in the group.
That Sunday Dayuma spoke to the group about forgiveness. “Look at that monkey out there,” she said, pointing to a pet howler monkey one of the children had tied to a tree with a vine. “It is tied with a vine, just the same way we are tied to our sins until God cuts the vine and sets us free. See the water in the little river? When we are believing in Jesus, our sins are buried in water deeper than that.”
Then she told the story of meeting Chief Tariri in the United States and finding out that he had been a headhunter before he became a believer. “Now he teaches his people about God,” Dayuma told the group.
Later that morning Rachel made her scheduled radio transmission to Limoncocha to update the mission leaders there on her situation. When the transmission was finished, she turned the large knob on the radio and quickly scanned the dial for any other transmissions, though she seldom picked up any other signals. This time, however, through all the crackle and static came a voice she knew well. It was Chief Tariri transmitting on a Wycliffe radio from his hut in Peru!
“Come quickly,” Rachel called to the group, who all appeared in seconds. “Listen. This is Tariri, the chief Dayuma met across the great waters.”
The crowd hunched in closer to listen to his words.
“What is he saying Nimu?” Dawa asked.
Rachel listened carefully. Although she could not recall all of the Shapra dialect, she recalled enough of it to piece together what the chief was saying. “He is telling someone, ‘Since I believed in Jesus I live well. Instead of killing, I try to love and help everyone, even my enemies.’”
The airwaves went dead, but the impression left from actually hearing Chief Tariri’s voice was electrifying. For the next two or three days, Rachel heard many people asking each other, “Did you hear what the headhunting chief said on Nimu’s talking machine?”
Then on the fourth morning Dawa came to Rachel. “Uncle Gikita is now like Tariri. Talking to God, he walks to and fro in the forest,” she said.
Rachel wept privately, overwhelmed with the spiritual changes that were beginning to take place around her.
That Sunday Dayuma challenged everyone. “When the foreigners get together, they ask those who know for sure that God has made their heart clean to tell each other. Who among us will speak what God has done in his heart?”
Dawa spoke up. “I did not live well before. But now I love God with all my heart.”
After a period of silence, Dyuwi began counting on his fingers. “I killed this one, and this one, and this one.” As Rachel looked on, she knew that one of the fingers represented Dyuwi’s part in killing Nate and the other four men. “That was before I knew Jesus. Now He has cleaned my heart,” Dyuwi finished.
Kimo, who was also one of the killers, interrupted. “Jesus’ blood washed my heart clean. Loving Him, I now live.”
No one else spoke up, but that was certainly enough excitement that morning for Rachel, Betty, and Dayuma.
Later in the day, as Rachel was writing in her journal, Nimonga came to visit her. He was a third member of the killing party at Palm Beach. Rachel chose her words carefully as she spoke to him. “Nimonga, did you understand God’s Carvings this morning when Dayuma spoke about God forgiving sins?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“And will you say yes to God?”
“I will,” Nimonga replied.
Gikita was the next man to seek Rachel out. He tried to count how many people he had killed in his lifetime but became frustrated when he ran out of fingers and toes. “Not knowing God, I did not do well,” he said. Rachel was touched to see that Gikita had tears in his eyes. “Now, knowing God, I will do better.”
A week later, the fifth killer, Minkayi, confessed his desire to become a Christian. “Believing, I am now walking Jesus’ trail to the sky,” he announced jubilantly one Sunday morning.
Not long after this, Rachel received a startling radio message. “The president of Ecuador is coming to Limoncocha, and he wants to meet some Aucas at an official ceremony,” the voice on the other end of the radio announced. Rachel knew that it would be rude not to show up, and she wondered which members of Dayuma’s clan to take to visit such an important man. Eventually she decided to take Dayuma, Kimo, and Dawa. Together the four of them walked the trail to Arajuno, where they were picked up by a JAARS airplane and flown to Limoncocha. Rachel observed with amusement as Kimo sat with his face pressed hard against the airplane window throughout the flight, watching the jungle pass beneath him.
The JAARS plane arrived at Limoncocha just ahead of the two official airplanes from Quito carrying President Velasco Ibarra and his entourage, among them Uncle Cam, who had flown in from North Carolina for the ceremony.
Representatives came from each tribe in Ecuador that Wycliffe Bible Translators was working among. Rachel guided Kimo and Dawa to their place in the crowd gathered for the official ceremony. Just as the ceremony was about to get under way, rain began to pour down, and the formal introductory ceremony had to be canceled. But Rachel soon learned that President Ibarra did not mind too much. In fact, he was really only interested in meeting members of the fearsome Auca tribe, and soon Rachel, Dayuma, Kimo, and Dawa were led into a building for a private meeting with the president.
“Mr. President, may I present Miss Rachel Saint. You met her several years ago when a group of SIL workers came to your residence to be presented to you,” Uncle Cam began.
President Ibarra nodded slightly to acknowledge that he remembered the occasion.
“And this is Dayuma,” Uncle Cam went on. “She is a young Auca Miss Saint found working at a hacienda in the Oriente.”
Uncle Cam was about to continue the introduction when Kimo cut him short. He suddenly stepped forward and rubbed his hand over the president’s bald head.
Rachel could feel her cheeks turn bright red with embarrassment. “Please excuse him, Mr. President. He must be swatting a bug,” Rachel sputtered by way of apology.
“I don’t think he’s ever seen a bald head before, and he wants to know if it’s real,” Uncle Cam interjected.
Everyone laughed, even the president, who reassured Rachel that he was not offended by Kimo’s action.
Finally Kimo and Dawa squatted on the floor, and Dayuma sat on a low stool nearby, keeping a careful eye on them lest Kimo do anything else that might embarrass Rachel or insult President Ibarra.
The meeting continued. President Ibarra wanted to know how Rachel and Betty had been able to pacify the dangerous Auca killers.
“We give all the credit and glory to God, Mr. President,” Rachel said. “He is the One who arranged all of the circumstances for us to safely enter their territory.” Rachel went on to tell the president more of the specific details about the events that had led up to her and Betty’s going to live among the Waorani. She also filled him in on Kimo’s and Dawa’s backgrounds.
“So this man is one of those who killed the missionaries,” the president said rhetorically, pointing to Kimo. “And the other four involved in that attack have also stopped killing. How did this happen?”
Rachel explained to the president how the same message of forgiveness and faith in Jesus Christ to change a person’s heart serves all people everywhere.
“But what can this man comprehend of God?” President Ibarra asked, once again pointing to Kimo.
“Why don’t you ask him? I will translate for you,” Rachel responded.
“Very well,” the president replied. Then addressing Kimo, he asked, “Who is Jesus Christ, Kimo?”
Rachel translated his words. Kimo thought about them for a moment as a broad smile spread across his face. “He is the One who came from heaven and died for my sins. He is the One who made me stop killing. Now I live happily with my brothers.”
