This Week's Story
click here to play audioFive young men, a dream team, for their dangerous mission, disappear!
This Week’s Story relives American history and the Bible through brief inspiring stories presented on mp3 audio recordings and text for reading.
Five Young Men Disappear on Operation Auca! part one
“Barbara, do you remember shocking news from January 1956?”
“I do, Todd. I was happily sitting on a big old metal bed in the private basement living room my sisters and I decorated. It was a Saturday afternoon when I was a seventh grader living in Sumas, Washington. My morning chores were finished and I was diving into fresh mail. My favorite choices were magazines: Life, Saturday Evening Post with its continued stories, Time and Look.
“Suddenly I was seeing the speared bodies of five young men. Before me was a ten-page photo spread and text about five missing American men lying dead in the Curaray River of Ecuador. Eight-foot-long spears protruded from their bodies.
“The spread was in the Life magazine issue for January 30, 1956. I noticed the photographer’s name was Cornell Capa and I felt the jungle, river, and violence surrounding him. He was with a search party of Ecuadorian soldiers, Quichua Indians, and a United States military officer. They joined a second search party who had hiked and canoed through the jungle.”
“I know Life magazine specializes in photos representing national and world news that capture attention, especially with human trauma and courage. I learned later the pictures of the speared men riveted the attention of people in many countries, certainly the United States.”
“Over the next years the names of the five men and some of their family members became familiar to me. Todd, you are a generation younger than I, what do you know about the five guys?”
“I know their names, Barbara. Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, and Pete Fleming! They were between ages of 27 and 32, Christian missionaries, husbands and fathers. Each was committed to sharing the good news Jesus is to an isolated and hostile tribe. The tribe had about 500 to 600 people scattered in the Ecuadorian Amazon jungle. They knew nothing about Jesus!
“When I first heard about the tribe, they were called Aucas. Now the people call themselves Waorani, which means “the people.” In the 1900’s they moved frequently and were hard to find. For food they hunted and gathered. They roamed an area about the size of the state of Connecticut in the U.S. It covered about 7,700 square miles or about 20,000 square kilometers.”
“Gwen, I understand that recently you have been investigating Operation Auca. What have you been finding?”
“The story of what happened when the five missionaries made their first contacts with the Waorani is carefully recorded in many books, journals, film documentaries, interviews, and on-going contacts with the Waorani.
Many retailers sell primary sources. Check out Amazon for purchase of Beyond Gates of Splendor, Under the Shadow of the Almighty, Jungle Pilot, and End of the Spear. Jim Elliot’s wife, has been a prolific writer and speaker. She writes on many topics of spiritual challenge and growth, always with terse realism.
Today, Todd Warren, Gwen Crawford, and I, Barbara Steiner, are speaking as Adrian Novak records and edits. I will continue research and writing.
Next week we will present Operation Auca as it occurred in 1956 with the air drops.
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