Elisabeth Elliot (For Teens)

An American missionary linguist and writer, born in Brussels in 1926 and raised in a devout Philadelphia family. She worked in Ecuador from 1952 to 1963, lost her first husband Jim when the Waorani killed him and four other missionaries in 1956, then lived among the Waorani herself. Back in America she became one of the best-known Christian authors and radio speakers of her time. She died in 2015.

Yes. It tells of the death of a woman she tried to help, the murder of her language helper, the killings of 1956, her conflict with Rachel Saint, her own bluntness, the debate over her teaching on women, the hard side of her third marriage as her biographer describes it, and her long years of dementia.

It is the refrain of an old anonymous poem that Elisabeth Elliot quoted throughout her life. It means that when you can't see the whole road, you don't have to. You only have to do, in faith, the duty in front of you, and leave the rest to God.

No. Some of the men who took part in the killings did later become believers and leaders, but the change was slow and uneven, killing did not stop all at once, and other Waorani groups went on feuding for years. Elisabeth Elliot said so herself in a 1996 epilogue to her most famous book.

She went to live among them in 1958, learned their language and gave them medical care. She did not excuse what they had done, but she did not hate them, and she refused to describe them either as monsters or as noble innocents. They were people to her.

From the full-length biography of Elisabeth Elliot, which draws on her own books, Jim Elliot's journals, her parents' published letters, the authorised biography by Ellen Vaughn and the work of historians such as Kathryn Long. Where the sources disagree, this edition says so. Her own writings are still in copyright, so her thoughts are told here in paraphrase.

They invited her, through Dayuma and two Waorani women, Mintaka and Mankamu, who had lived in her home. She was one of the few outsiders learning their language, and she believed God was calling her to make Christ known to them. She did not think being a mother released her from obeying, or that obeying guaranteed safety.

That you can trust God without getting explanations; that waiting and doing the next thing are real faithfulness; that honest questions belong in prayer; and that even heroes are cracked clay pots God chooses to work through.