This week we feature the first epilogue written in 1958 from “Through Gates of Splendor.” In this epilogue, Elisabeth recounts the miraculous and redemptive door that opened to her (with her two-year-old daughter Valerie) along with Rachel Saint (sister of Nate Saint) when they were invited to live with the Aucas, thus bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to them. Next week we will conclude this series with Epilogue II.
NOVEMBER 1958
Nearly three years have passed since that Sunday afternoon. Today I sit in a tiny leaf-thatched hut on the Tiwanu River, not many miles southwest of “Palm Beach.” In another leaf house, just about ten feet away, sit two of the seven men who killed my husband. Gikita, one of the men, has just helped Valerie, who is now three and one-half, roast a plantain. Two of his sons have gone to the forest, shouldering their skillfully-made blowguns in search of meat to feed the fifteen or twenty Auca Indians who are at present in this clearing.
How did this come to be? Only God who made iron swim, who caused the sun to stand still, in whose hand is the breath of every living thing—only this God, who is our God forever and ever, could have done it.
After the death of the five men the pilots of the Missionary Aviation Fellowship continued making gift-drops to the Aucas. Apparent friendliness on their part was unchanged, but we know now that we could never base our judgment of their attitudes on that.
Rachel Saint, sister of Nate, the pilot, patiently keeps on with her study of the Auca language with the help of Dayuma, who came to know the Lord Jesus and began to pray, with thousands of others, for the entrance of the Light to her tribe.
One day in November, 1957, I was at the McCullys’ former station, Arajuno, when two Quichua Indians from the Curaray River arrived to tell us that there were two Auca women at their house. I went with them immediately, and there at the Quichua settlement where the rescue party had spent a night, I met Mankamu and Mintaka. Mintaka was the older of the two women who had come to “Palm Beach.”
Later these two women went with me back to Shandia, where I began the study of their language, praying constantly that the Lord would take us into their tribe. His answer came first in a promise which He gave from Nehemiah 9:19 and 24–”Yet thou in thy manifold mercies forsookest them not in the wilderness: the pillar of the cloud departed not from them by day, to lead them in the way; neither the pillar of fire by night, to shew them light, and the way wherein they should go … So the children went in and possessed the land, and thou subduedst before them the inhabitants of the land … and gavest them into their hands.”
When Rachel and Dayuma returned from a visit to the United States, we went to see them, and the three Auca women—united after more than twelve years—started to talk of returning to their people together. This they did, on September 3, 1958. Remaining among them for three weeks, telling them of the kind foreigners they had come to love, the three returned once more to Arajuno where Marj Saint and I were waiting for them. They brought with them seven other Aucas, and an invitation for Rachel and me to come and live with them in the tribe.
Thus, on October 8, 1958, we arrived. The longed-for entrance had been made. The Aucas were friendly and helpful, receiving us as sisters, building us houses, sharing their meat and manioc. They say they killed the men only because they believed them to be cannibals. Basically it was fear that led them to what they now regard as a mistake.
But we know that it was no accident. God performs all things according to the counsel of His own will. The real issues at stake on January 8, 1956, were very far greater than those which immediately involved five young men and their families, or this small tribe of naked “savages.” Letters from many countries have told of God’s dealings with hundreds of men and women, through the example of five who believed literally that “the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”
So, with this entrance we ask that those who have helped us by prayer will continue. We would remind you that it is only an entrance. Besides this group of fifty or so with whom we have contact, there is a “downriver group” who are the mortal enemies of these. Will God also lead us into that “strong city”?
“Thou art worthy . . . for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.”
**Excerpt originally published Through Gates of Splendor, pp. 253-255