Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Religion

An ongoing story of faith, forgiveness

The now-mature man went back to the Ecuadorean jungles where he lived as a child to teach a variety of new things to the very tribe that had killed his father 50 years ago.

By GAIL HOLLENBECK
Published January 21, 2006

DUNNELLON - Steve Saint was just 5 years old when his father, Nate, and four other missionaries were speared to death in the jungles of Ecuador. He believes God is the author of the story in which he found himself and that everything that happened in January 1956 and the events that followed were part of God's plan.

"That's offensive to some people," Saint said in a recent interview with the Times. "But when I found out how the killings took place and what motivated them, I came to realize that everything had to work out just exactly right for this story to happen. This was really unlikely."

Saint spent part of his childhood among the Waodoni tribe that had killed his father. His aunt Rachel and Elisabeth Elliot, wife of one of the slain missionaries, went to live with the tribe to carry on the work the men had begun.

Several members of the tribe became Christians. Saint was baptized in the river where his father had been slain.

Mincaye, the man who had speared his father, became a "tribal father" to him.

In 1994 Saint's aunt died and the Waodoni asked him to come and live with them. He agreed and moved from Central Florida back to the jungles with his wife and children. Saint believes the continuing work in Ecuador is evidence of God's plan for the Waodoni.

"When the tribe asked me to go back down to live with them, they didn't ask me to go down as a missionary," Saint said. "They wanted me to come down as family. They told me that just like they had taught me the skills that I needed so that I could live out in the jungles when I was a little boy, they wanted me to teach them to do specific things."

What the Waodoni wanted Saint to teach them was "the medicine thing, the tooth thing and the airplane thing."

"They also asked me to teach them how to defend their territory, meaning they didn't know how to interact with foreigners. They didn't know anything about contracts and rights and things like that," Saint said.

"I began teaching them and had to learn most of that stuff myself," he said. "The airplane thing I knew, but I didn't know the tooth thing."

When they began building an airplane in the jungles, other tribes came and wanted to learn as well. But Saint was too busy with the Waodoni's needs to help the others.

"When the Waodoni heard that I'd said "no' to the others, they said, "Let's teach all the people.' They asked me to teach them so that together we could teach everybody."

In an effort to teach the tribes, nine years ago Saint began the Indigenous People's Technology and Education Center, based in Dunnellon.

Growing beyond helping the tribes in Ecuador, the nonprofit provides tools and training by volunteers in many underdeveloped areas of the world. The goal is to equip native people to help their own people.

Mincaye has traveled with Saint and helps in areas such as dentistry.

The Waodoni have come a long way.

"Elisabeth Elliot and Aunt Rachel were invited to go in, and what the Waodoni wanted them to do was to teach them this new trail, this new way of living," Saint said. "Their biggest problem back then was that they were killing each other and being killed by outsiders. So they went in and helped them with that, and it just happens that what they needed was one and the same. The authority that came from "Waengongi,' the creator who the women revealed to them, said don't hate and kill. That gave them a reason to solve their biggest problem, and that was to stop the killing."

End of the Spear, a motion picture about the slaying of five American missionaries in Ecuador, was released in theaters throughout the country Friday. It is playing at the Regal Hollywood Stadium 16, 2801 SW 27th Ave., Ocala, 352 861-2699. Information about the movie may be found at www.endofthespear.com

The print and audio book End of the Spear, by Steve Saint, and the documentary Beyond the Gates of Splendor, narrated by Saint, may be ordered through Cornerstone Christian Supply, 344-2470, or online through www.amazon.com

Information about volunteering to help at I-TEC, the Dunnellon ministry of Steve Saint, may be found at www.itecusa.org or by calling 352 465-4545.

[Last modified January 21, 2006, 01:33:17]