Dogwood Valley Homesteading

Nate Saint, on a Wing and a Prayer

                                                 

This book was very good.  Nate Saint was always interested in aviation.  He went into WW2 with the hopes of becoming a pilot, but the Lord had other plans.  After the war was over he was contacted by a missionary that had crashed her plane in El Real, Mexico.  Nate went to fix her plane and started praying about being a missionary.

Two years later (1948), he had fell in love, married Marj, and moved to Shell Mera (meda) a base in the jungles of Ecuador.

In 1952, Nate and Marj got to go back home to the States for a while.  While they were here, she had to buy enough clothes to last them for 5 years.  Can you imagine having to but enough clothes for your family to last them for 5 years?  Wow, what an undertaking.

Nate had a burden for the Auca (ou-ca) Indians.  These were savage people, but they needed to hear the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Auca means "naked savage" and that is exactly what the WERE.

Shell Oil Company came to the jungle to find oil.  They tried to make friendly contact with the Aucas, but were not successful.  At  one time, the Shell people thought if they dropped gifts from the plane that the natives would stop killing their employees.  When they made their first drop,  the natives started throwing their spears right before they started dropping gifts.  So in the natives mind, they hurt this giant bee and the gifts were what was coming out of it's wound. 

But when Nate and his 4 missionary friends did this, the gifts were excepted by the Aucas.  They made the drops every Thursday and the Aucas were waiting.

They finally had a friendly contact with 2 Auca women and 1 Auca man.   But  because of a lie told by the Auca man, the next contact was not friendly but deadly.

All 5 men were speared to death.  But the families of these men stayed in the jungles of Ecuador and did make friendly contact and now 1 out of every 10 Aucas is a christian.

 



 

The Truimph of John and Betty Stam