Quichua First

“Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.” — Ecclesiastes 4:9 (KJV)

Late in January 1953 Jim came up from the eastern forest to Quito, and Betty came up from the western one. After five years of careful letters and long silences, Jim asked her to marry him. She said yes. Neither of them treated it as God's prize for waiting. It was a new step of obedience, and it came with a cost straight away.

Jim was committed to the Quichua people of the eastern rainforest, and he thought a wife who couldn't speak to them would be lonely and of little use to the work. So he made a condition: learn Quichua first, and then they would set a date. A man who had kept her waiting five years asked her to wait again. The full biography says fairly that this suited Jim's plans more than hers. It also says she agreed freely and never afterwards called it a grievance. She was a trained linguist; she knew how easily a missionary could live among people for years and understand little. If she was going to share the work, she wanted to share it properly.

She moved to a mission station called Dos Ríos and learned fast. That summer the river beside Jim's station at Shandia flooded and swept much of it away, so he was busy rebuilding. By autumn she knew enough Quichua to satisfy him.

They were married on 8 October 1953, Jim's twenty-sixth birthday, at the government registry office in Quito, in Spanish, as Ecuadorian law required. A handful of friends came. There was no church service, no procession, no reception. They weren't too poor for more; they both disliked show. Their families learned the news by letter. After a short honeymoon in Panama they headed into the forest.

Their first home was a tent. A Quichua headman named Atanasio at a place called Puyupungu had asked for a missionary and a school, so the newlyweds lived under canvas while a simple building went up, cooking over a fire among relentless insects. They seem to have enjoyed it. In 1954 they moved back to the rebuilt station at Shandia, into a house Jim built. Jim spoke Quichua by ear, easily and warmly, and preached. Betty heard the patterns underneath, and she could write the language down and teach others to read it. He was the preacher; she was the one with the notebook. On 27 February 1955 their daughter Valerie was born.

Later in life Elisabeth firmly discouraged people from imagining a perfect marriage. They had twenty-seven months together. By her own account they were happy months, and ordinary ones too, full of the small irritations of two strong-willed people sharing one small house.

From his first months in Ecuador, Jim had heard about another people, living between the Napo and Curaray rivers. They had killed outsiders who came into their land, and they killed one another in long-running feuds. Outsiders used a Quichua word for them meaning “savages.” Their own name is Waorani: “the people.” Jim longed to reach them. Betty knew the risks and didn't pretend she found them easy. But she didn't try to talk him out of it. In September 1955 two of Jim's friends, flying over the forest, finally spotted a cluster of Waorani houses.

Ecclesiastes is an unromantic book, but it makes an exception for teamwork: two are better than one. Love and obedience weren't opposites for Jim and Betty. Their marriage was a real love match and a real working partnership, and that doesn't only apply to marriage. God puts people with different gifts side by side on purpose.

One thing to do this week: think of someone whose gifts are different from yours, a sibling, a teammate or a friend. Tell them specifically one thing they do well that you couldn't do.