Wednesday Facts
Today is Wednesday. It's no
Friday but it's not Monday, either.
To honor the fact that we are in the middle of week, I will tell you five facts of life, about me or someone else, faith, world and existence in general.
And what I want from you, my readers?
I want to know about you!
Leave me your facts, so I can enjoy reading them!
They can also be about you, your life or anything you find fascinating in this world or in the world beyond.
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| Me with Jim and Elisabeth Elliot's godson. Behind us there are the pictures of the five missionaries that were killed by Waoranies. |
Today’s post is about
someone very influencial into my coming to Ecuador.
I must admit I have not
read Jim Elliot’s story.
But my parents have.
My mother read it when she
was a teenager and she felt she was called to serve in Ecuador with Kichwas.
It took many years but one
day she was able to come and do just that.
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| Original school house for Jim Elliot School in Shandia, Talag, with my dad on the steps. |
I took my friend to
visit Jim and Elisabeth Elliot’s house in Shandia, Talag, on Sunday. The house
is the school they build and founded for Kichwa indigenous people here in
Amazon. It is a museum now but it’s not actually open because the community
hasn’t had enough money to get it fully restored. But the Jim Elliot School
(named after Jim Elliot) is part of our program and the headmaster, who is also
Jim and Elisabeth’s godson and knew them personally, was kind enough to open it
for us and show us around. He told us that his parents actually took Jim Elliot
into the community and taught him to be a Kichwa. His father taught Jim to
fish, hunt and speak Kichwa. He was very proud to say that Jim could speak
Kichwa just as well they can and he had no accent at all.
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| Special Education classroom at the Jim Elliot School. |
1.
Philip James "Jim" Elliot (October 8, 1927 – January 8, 1956) was an evangelical
Christian who was one of five missionaries killed while participating in Operation
Auca, an attempt to evangelize the Huaorani people of Ecuador. While at Camp
Wycliffe, Elliot practiced the skills necessary for writing down a language for
the first time by working with a former missionary to the Quechua people (called
Kichwas in Ecuador). The missionary told him of the Huaorani – also called the
"Auca", the Kichwa word for "savage" – a group of
Ecuadorian indigenous people considered violent and dangerous to outsiders.
Elliot
was born in Portland, Oregon, to Fred and Clara Elliot. In 1945, Jim Elliot
entered Wheaton College, a private Christian college in Illinois. While at
Wheaton College, Elliot became interested in one of his classmates, Elisabeth
Howard, who was also his roommate's sister. He took advantage of opportunities
to get to know her and her family better. They agreed that they were attracted
to each other, but not being convinced of God's leading, they did not
immediately pursue a relationship.
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| A house in Shandia, Talag. |
2. Elisabeth Elliot (née Howard; born December 21, 1926) is a
Christian author and speaker. She was born in Belgium, and her family included
her missionary parents, four brothers and one sister. Elisabeth's brothers
Thomas Howard and David Howard are also authors. The family moved to
Pennsylvania when she was a few months old. She has lived in Franconia, New
Hampshire; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Moorestown, New Jersey. She studied
Classical Greek at Wheaton College, believing that it was the best tool to help
her with the calling of ultimately translating the New Testament into an
unknown language. It was here that she met Jim Elliot. Prior to their marriage,
Elisabeth took a post-graduate year of specialized studies at Prairie Bible
Institute in Alberta, Canada, where a campus prayer chapel is named in her
honor.
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| A view inside the house. |
3. Jim Elliot and
Elisabeth Howard went individually to Ecuador to work with the Kichwa Indians;
they married in 1953 in the city of Quito, Ecuador. Elliot and Fleming (other
missionary) arrived in Ecuador on February 21, 1952, with the purpose of
evangelizing Ecuador's Kichwa Indians. They first stayed in Quito, and then
moved to the jungle. They took up residence at the Shandia mission station in
the Ecuadorian Amazon region. On October 8, 1953, he married fellow Wheaton alumna
and missionary Elisabeth Howard. The wedding was a simple civil ceremony held
in Quito. Ed and Marilou McCully were the witnesses. The couple then took a
brief honeymoon to Panama and Costa Rica, then returned to Ecuador. Their only
child, Valerie, was born February 27, 1955. While working with Quechua Indians,
Elliot began preparing to reach the Huaorani.
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| Jim Elliot School's first grade students perform a traditional song in Kichwa. |
4. Shandia (pronounced SHAN-dya)
is a town located in the rainforest of eastern Ecuador. It is inhabited mostly
by Indigenous Peoples of the Kichwa Nationality. It was used as a mission
station by missionaries Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming from 1952 to 1954. Fleming
later married and moved to a different station, but the Elliots stayed there
until Jim's death in 1956. Jim's wife, Elisabeth Elliot, continued to work
among the Huaorani for 2 more years.
Now it is visited by
local missions groups sponsored by the organization Youth World. The teams
minister to the village and are currently helping to build a site that will
later train pastors. A small jungle get away can also be found in the village.
It is run by the villagers and is used mainly by the occasional hiker who
wishes to explore the surrounding jungle.
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| A special education student from Shandia sings while three regular students dance. |
5. Elliot and four
other missionaries – Ed McCully, Roger Youderian, Pete Fleming, and their
pilot, Nate Saint – made contact from their airplane with the Huaorani using a
loudspeaker and a basket to pass down gifts. After several months, the men
decided to build a base a short distance from the Indian village, along the Curaray
River. There they were approached one time by a small group of Huaorani and
even gave an airplane ride to one curious Huaorani whom they called
"George" (his real name was Naenkiwi). Encouraged by these friendly
encounters, they began plans to visit the Huaorani, without knowing that
Naenkiwi had lied to the others about the missionaries' intentions. Their plans
were preempted by the arrival of a larger group of about 10 Huaorani warriors,
who killed Elliot and his four companions on January 8, 1956. Elliot's body was
found downstream, along with those of the other men, except that of Ed McCully
which was found even farther downstream.
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| Kichwa women from Shandia. |
6. Jim and Elisabeth
Elliot’s daughter, Valerie (born 1955), was 10 months old when her father was
killed. Elisabeth continued her work with the Kichwas for two more years. Two Waorani
women living among the Kichwas, including one named Dayuma, taught the Wao
language to Mrs. Elliot and fellow missionary Rachel Saint. When Dayuma
returned to the Waorani, she created an opening for contact by the
missionaries. In October 1958, Mrs. Elliot went to live with the Waoranies with
her three-year-old daughter Valerie and Rachel Saint. The Auca/Waorani gave
Elisabeth the tribal name Gikari, Wao for "Woodpecker." She
later returned to the Kichwas and worked with them until 1963, when she and
Valerie returned to the US (Franconia, New Hampshire).
7. Life
magazine published a ten-page article on Elliot's and his friends' mission and
deaths. After her husband's death, Elisabeth Elliot and other missionaries
began working among the Huaorani, where they continued evangelistic work. She
later published two books, Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of
Jim Elliot and Through Gates of Splendor, which describe the life
and death of her husband. In 1991, the Jim Elliot Christian School was created
in Denver, Colorado. In 1997, the Jim Elliot Christian High School was founded
in Lodi, California.
In 2002, a
documentary based on the story was released, entitled Beyond the Gates of
Splendor. In 2003, a musical based on the story of Jim and Elisabeth
Elliot, entitled Love Above All, was staged at the Victoria Concert Hall
in Singapore by Mount Carmel Bible-Presbyterian Church. This musical was staged
a second time in 2007 at the NUS University Cultural Centre. In 2006, a
theatrical movie was released, entitled End of the Spear, based on the
story of the pilot, Nate Saint, and the return trip of Saint's son attempting
to reach the natives of Ecuador.
I found most of these facts from Wikipedia and in the book about Jim Elliot's life.
You can find a Wikipedia article about Jim Elliot.
There is also an article about Shandia.
And a very interesting article about Elisabeth Elliot.
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| A view, from inside of the house, to the Shandia of today. An evangelical village, proud of it's heritage. |
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