Appendix C: Chronology of the Life and Times of Elisabeth Elliot

“My times are in thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me.”

— Psalm 31:15, KJV

The dates below are meant as orientation. Where the sources disagree, or where a date is approximate, that is noted.

1926 – Elisabeth Howard is born on 21 December in Brussels, Belgium, the second child of Philip E. Howard Jr. and Katharine Gillingham Howard, missionaries. The family returns to the United States while she is a baby.

1927 – Jim Elliot is born on 8 October in Portland, Oregon.

1930s – The Howards live in Germantown, Philadelphia, and in 1936 move to Moorestown, New Jersey. Philip Howard becomes editor of the Sunday School Times. The family grows to six children: Philip, Elisabeth, David, Virginia, Thomas and James. Summers are spent at Gale Cottage, Franconia, New Hampshire.

1939–1945 – The Second World War.

1941–1944 – Elisabeth attends Hampden DuBose Academy, a Christian boarding school in Florida.

1944–1948 – Wheaton College, Illinois, where she studies classical Greek with a view to Bible translation. She meets Jim Elliot, a friend of her brother Dave.

1948–1952 – A restrained courtship, conducted largely by letter. Elisabeth studies at Prairie Bible Institute, Three Hills, Alberta, and trains in linguistics with the Summer Institute of Linguistics.

1949 – Jim Elliot graduates from Wheaton. On 28 October he writes in his journal that he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

1952 – Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming arrive in Ecuador in February. Elisabeth goes to Ecuador independently later in the year and works among the Colorado (Tsáchila) people at San Miguel de los Colorados. The Shandia station is destroyed by a flood.

1952–1953 – During her first year in Ecuador her language helper, Don Macario, is murdered; later a suitcase containing much of her language work is stolen.

1953 – Elisabeth and Jim are engaged in Quito in January. She learns Quichua in the eastern jungle. They marry in a civil ceremony in Quito on 8 October, Jim’s twenty-sixth birthday, and live among the Quichua at Shandia and Puyupungu.

1955 – Valerie Elliot is born on 27 February. From about September or October Nate Saint and his companions make gift drops to a Waorani settlement.

1956 – On 3 January the five missionaries land on “Palm Beach”, a sandbar on the Curaray. Friendly contact follows on 6 January. On 8 January Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Roger Youderian and Nate Saint are speared to death. Life magazine publishes a photo essay. Elisabeth stays at Shandia and continues the Quichua work.

1957 – Through Gates of Splendor is published. Rachel Saint and Dayuma appear on the television programme This Is Your Life (June) and at Billy Graham’s Madison Square Garden crusade (July). In November two Waorani women, Mintaka and Mankamu, come out of the forest and live with Elisabeth.

1958 – Shadow of the Almighty, the life and journals of Jim Elliot, is published. In September Dayuma, Mintaka and Mankamu go back to their people and return about three weeks later with an invitation. In October (on the 8th, by the date usually given) Elisabeth, Valerie and Rachel Saint go with Dayuma and the two women to live among the Waorani, who call Elisabeth Gikari.

1961 – The Savage My Kinsman is published. Late in the year Elisabeth leaves the Waorani and returns to Quichua work.

1963 – Elisabeth and Valerie return to the United States and settle in Franconia, New Hampshire.

1965 – Kimo and Dyuwi baptise Steve and Kathy Saint, Nate Saint’s children, in the Curaray.

1966 – No Graven Image, a novel, is published.

1968 – The Liberty of Obedience and Who Shall Ascend, a life of R. Kenneth Strachan, are published. Margaret Leitch, wife of the theologian Addison H. Leitch, dies.

1969 – On 1 January Elisabeth marries Addison Leitch. They move to Hamilton, Massachusetts, where he teaches theology at the newly formed Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

1973 – Addison Leitch dies of cancer on 17 September, aged sixty-four (a few sources give 18 September).

1974–1976 – Elisabeth serves as an adjunct professor at Gordon-Conwell.

1975 – These Strange Ashes, an account of her first year in Ecuador, is published.

1976 – Let Me Be a Woman is published. In the mid-1970s Valerie, engaged at the end of 1974, marries Walter Shepard; they later have eight children.

1977 – In December Elisabeth marries Lars Gren (born 1936), a former salesman trained as a hospital chaplain, who had lodged in her home. They later live in Magnolia, Massachusetts.

1981 – The Mark of a Man is published. She is writer-in-residence at Gordon College.

1982 – Discipline: The Glad Surrender is published. The Elisabeth Elliot Newsletter begins.

1984 – Passion and Purity is published.

1987 – A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael is published.

1988 – Gateway to Joy begins on Back to the Bible radio. Loneliness is published.

1989–1990 – On Asking God Why (1989) and A Path Through Suffering (1990).

1992 – The Shaping of a Christian Family is published.

1995–1996 – Keep a Quiet Heart (1995) and Quest for Love (1996). A new edition of Through Gates of Splendor (1996) adds an epilogue acknowledging that events among the Waorani had not unfolded simply.

Late 1990s–about 2000 – Her memory begins to fail, and she is diagnosed with dementia; accounts differ over the year.

2001 – Gateway to Joy ends after thirteen years.

2002–2003 – Secure in the Everlasting Arms (2002) and Be Still My Soul (2003).

2003–2004 – The newsletter ends (2003), and she gives up public speaking (2004).

2006 – End of the Spear, a feature film about the events of 1956 and the friendship of Steve Saint and Mincaye, is released.

2015 – Elisabeth Elliot dies at home in Magnolia on 15 June, aged eighty-eight. Her funeral is held on 23 June at Gordon College, Wenham, and a memorial service at Wheaton College on 26 July.

2019 – Valerie Elliot Shepard publishes Devotedly, from her parents’ letters and journals. Kathryn T. Long publishes God in the Rainforest.

2020 – Ellen Vaughn publishes Becoming Elisabeth Elliot, the first volume of the authorised biography.

2023 – Vaughn’s second volume, Being Elisabeth Elliot, and Lucy S. R. Austen’s Elisabeth Elliot: A Life are published.

2025 – Lars Gren dies in Little Rock, Arkansas, on 2 April, aged eighty-eight.