Palm Beach

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” — John 12:24 (KJV)

Five men took part. Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming worked among the Quichua. Ed McCully lived at Arajuno, the station nearest Waorani country. Roger Youderian, a former army paratrooper, worked with the Shuar people. Nate Saint was the mission pilot who flew for them all. Every one of them was married, and four had young children. They called their plan Operation Auca, using the insulting word for the Waorani that most outsiders knew, a word the Waorani have rightly resented.

From October 1955 Nate flew in tight circles over the Waorani houses, lowering a bucket on a long line so it hung almost still. Week after week the men let down machetes, cooking pots, cloth and beads, and shouted friendly phrases through a loudspeaker. Jim had learned the phrases from Dayuma, a young Waorani woman who had fled her people years before; it later turned out he had learned them imperfectly. After a while the Waorani began tying gifts of their own to the line. To the men it looked like friendship. They kept the plan almost completely secret, afraid that publicity would wreck it. Their wives knew. Most colleagues didn't. Historians have since questioned both the secrecy and the speed.

On 3 January 1956 Nate landed on a sandbar on the Curaray River. The men built a shelter in a tree and called the place Palm Beach. On Friday 6 January three Waorani came out of the forest and waded across: a young man, Nenkiwi; a young woman, Gimari; and an older woman, Mintaka, who matters later in this story. They spent most of the day there. Nenkiwi even went up in the plane. The men were elated. Saturday, no one came.

On Sunday 8 January Nate saw what looked like a group of men walking towards the beach. Shortly after noon he radioed his wife Marj and promised to call again at half past four. At half past four the radio was silent. It never spoke again.

What happened was pieced together years later from Waorani who were there, and the accounts don't agree on every detail. Nenkiwi had gone off with Gimari without the older woman who should have gone with them, and to turn anger away from himself he told his relatives that the foreigners had attacked them. The Waorani already believed outsiders were dangerous; some believed they ate people. A group of men, led by an older warrior named Gikita, decided to kill them. While women showed themselves across the river to draw the missionaries' attention, the men attacked with spears. The five had guns, but they had agreed beforehand not to use them against the Waorani. Most accounts say shots were fired into the air. Nate's watch was later found stopped just after three o'clock. All five men died.

Six years earlier, on 28 October 1949, Jim had written in his journal: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” It is now one of the most quoted sentences in missionary history. But he wrote it as a young man testing his own heart, not as an epitaph. On the sandbar he didn't expect to die. The five went in hope, not looking for martyrdom. The sentence isn't a plan for dying. It's a decision about what to hold loosely.

This is a hard chapter, and it's worth holding two things together. These men were brave, and they refused to kill even to save themselves. They also made decisions that people who loved them have questioned. And the Waorani weren't monsters. They were frightened people acting on a lie and a long habit of violence. Real stories are like that. Jesus said a grain of wheat has to fall into the ground and die before it bears fruit. That evening, by the silent radios, nobody could see any fruit at all.

One thing to do this week: read Jim's sentence again and ask yourself honestly: what am I gripping that I can't keep anyway? Your free time, your image, your phone? Choose one way to loosen your grip on it this week for God's sake.