The End Of The Spear: Let God Write Your Story

From the time I was young, I have had a common experience with hundreds of people. Once they find out that I am Nate Saint’s son, they will say to me, “Oh, I will never forget the day I heard the news of what happened to your father. I remember it like it was yesterday.” And I remember too.

We lived on the edge of the Amazon jungle and my dad was my hero. Instead of having a car in our garage, we had an airplane, which I thought was normal. Everyday I would watch and try to help my dad get ready for the flights he would take that day. Then, I would stand on the bank by our house and watch dad lift off in his little Piper PA14 airplane and fly off into the jungle. In the afternoon, I would return to that same bank and wait for my hero – my dad – to fly back in from his missions. And I never knew what he would bring back with him. Sometimes he would bring back other mis-sionary kids who were going to school up in the mountains. At other times, he would bring back In-dians who were sick or who had been bitten by snakes and other animals. Every afternoon was excit-ing as I waited for the plane to return because, even if he came back empty-handed, it was still my dad returning.

Then one day, I watched my dad fly off into the jungles, and he didn’t come back. After my dad was gone for several days, my mom took me into her room, and said, “Stevie-boy, Daddy isn’t coming home.” I was confused because I couldn’t imagine anything that would keep my dad away. “Why isn’t he coming home?” I asked. My mom explained, “He went to live with Jesus.” When she told me that, I was excited because I had already learned that to live with Jesus was what we all wanted to do. Looking back, I remember wondering why Dad didn’t take us with him. Though I didn’t quite under-stand God’s timing at the time, I soon began learning how God works.

A couple of years later, our little home was filled with excitement again. We learned that Dad’s sis-ter, my Aunt Rachel, along with “Aunt Betty” (Elisabeth Elliot) and a Waodani woman named, Da-yume, were making plans to move into the jungle. They were setting out to live with the very people who had killed my dad, and the four men I called “Uncle Jim (Elliot)”, “Uncle Pete (Fleming)”, “Un-cle Ed (McCully)” and “Uncle Roger (Yourderian).” As women, they were hoping to establish a con-nection with the Waodani so that they could learn about “God’s carvings.” Dayume, who as a girl had fled from killings within this same tribe, had become a “God follower” and led the way.

Then came the day when we received word that the women felt like the way was clear for my family to join them in the jungle. Since I was the son of a man who had been speared, everyone wanted to protect me. But all I knew was that I was so excited I could hardly wait. I was so anxious to meet the people my dad had loved, and for whom so many people, including my mom and I, had prayed. When I stepped out of the little bush plane on that jungle airstrip, I expected the Waodani to crowd in around me and investigate my clothes, my skin and my hair like so many other Indians had done. In-stead, they all stood back. They seemed to be concerned as they talked between themselves. Finally, one old woman separated herself from the group. She came up to me and started patting me very carefully. She still seemed to be uncertain about something. Then she opened my elastic-waist pants and began to give the tribe a running commentary of what she saw in my pants. When she was done, they all giggled and seemed to relax. I later learned that since, at the age of 10, I was almost as tall as the adults and didn’t have any obvious features, they didn’t know what I was. Since they were practi-cally naked and not hiding anything from me, they couldn’t understand what I was hiding from them.