1.25.2012 JIM ELLIOT, SAINT

1.16.1955 cast down on this Lord's day morning. just came up from meeting with 25 indians, mostly schoolboys and young women. felt as though i preached powerlessly, without unction, and the resultant effect was evident. restlessness, interruptions, playing. almost no adults come..no adult men. my first thot is that they have tired of the preaching, that they do not enjoy it. i may be preaching too hard. then i think that i am worried too much during the week with the finishing of the house - right up until saturday supper. translated and preached from titus 1 but felt little life or even continuity in what is said. i have paid dearly for giving up my early quiet time. it is surely obvious in my preaching. marriage has been a hindrance. betty doesn't like me to get out of bed amorning without some little loving. just now she came in 'so mad' because somebody stole a fruit from the backyard.

my concerns are other, i fear. house and furnishings MUST take second place now. getting the indians out to meetings and individual witness to them has got to be my foremost concern. a wants to be baptized, but he did not come out to meeting today. i must speak personally with b,c and d as well as to a before the young men's conference feb 4. i feel resolved now, but don't know who long it will stay strong with me...

..abstinence is not easy in the last months of pregnancy, and i have felt much untamed desire these couple of weeks. God save me through march! (daughter valerie was born 2.27.55)

i am sorry to have neglected writing here. many times fresh thots have come and i have failed to record them so that now they are gone...

5.16 this has been a busy morning and one of those that doesn't leave one with a great deal of satisfaction after its doing is all done. morning reading was in II thess. 3: 'if any man will not work neither let him eat'. yesterday i had told 3 girls to come to work; 6 came to clean 2 measly cultivated clearings. ..more than 20 women brought platano and chicha (a staple of the indian diet) and i outraged them all by buying enough for only 2 weeks - i had sufficient for one week already..

then the workmen on the teacher's house needed 2x4's planed. i planed..after a session in school on the splendor of solomon. then it was sizing and grading over 200 new 2x4's for the school building. then the girls arrived who had been cleaning the cultivated areas and wanted me to buy their platano. domingo wanted ink powder for boards. a boy came to buy 5 dallars worth of rails for senora rosa down river. the workmen had cut a 2x4 too short and needed a hand. venancio's leg needee massaging and he wanted to sell me beans (i had to give him some yesterday as he said he had nothing to eat). had to tell the men to start weaving roof and not to stand about doing nothing. then they all wanted to work the whole day. e wanted $ for 30 lbs of peanuts and his mother wanted a sack ed had not given back to her. f wanted his work $ and the gun that pete sent down from quito to sell. pete had been on the radio, and now it is urgent that i write f. believers' meeting this afternoon. g at limon chikta is in bad shape with snakebite. i was there friday and yesterday and must go again tomorrow - an hour or so both ways. betty and the baby both have colds. i have just eaten a good lunch.

case- snake- comments- symptoms-

wangana shishin little local swelling, blood loss considerable hematoxic
anemia
paula shishin bleeding at gums, capillaries bitten on heel

sabella andi shishin bit on finger; never saw case hematoxic; bitten on foot

indi pitalala dead in 48 hours alone in forest

carmela's uncle shishin ? dead in 24 hours

venancio motolo tissue destruction

cuchicara bushmaster-rotting of flesh; treated with sulfas and hand
penicillin; hand dried
juan grifa pitalala tissue destruction; anemia; some vomit- immobile fingers
ing of blood
orkenia cerda shishin cut, sucked; horse serum injected; ankle
retching
casiano unknown dead in 24 hours fell flat immediately; had to be
carried

july 19 - venancio tapui and i baptized 14 this morning after the gospel meeting. no other missionary here, so had the believers in for examining yesterday. it was a 4 hour session and we saw evidence of real discernment on the part of a, b, c, d and e, as well as venancio tapui. i felt lonely in doing it and did it with some fear that i might be mistaken. we decided to ask 4 young girls to wait, and they were very unhappy this morning. my flesh often lacks the deep feeling that i should experience at such times and there was a certain dryness to the form this morning, but i cannot stay for feelings. so cold is my hear most of the time that i am most always operating on the basis of pure commandments, forcing myself to do what i do not always feel simply because i am a servant under orders.

and there was enough of the physically distracting this morning to save one from walking on the clouds. a part of the cliff gave way and 3 girls sat down on the beach amid shrieks and laughter. the schoolboys threw stones in the water. f's son fell headlong off the airstrip onto the beach and set up a great wail just as she was being baptized. venancio failed to get f's face under. a group of mockers from the priest's came by and taunted the baptized ones about bathing with their clothes on. but God is my witness that i have fulfilled His word as i knew how.

november 20 - let hervaco and venancio have the whole service this morning. would to God that they could handle everything by themselves...

also read parts of 'behind the ranges' and am resolute to do something about it in my private devotional and prayer life. in studying spanish i left off english bible reading and my devotional reading pattern was broken. i have never restored it. translation and preparation for daily bible lessons is not sufficient to empower my soul. prayer as a single man was difficult, i remember, because my mind always reverted to betty. now it's too hard to get out of bed in the morning. i have made resolutions on this score before now but not followed them up. tomorrow it's to be - dressed by 6 a.m. and study in the epistles before breakfast. so help me, God.

november 26 - spent friday and saturday morning..with the conns and fullers in pano. in the afternoon (ed was in quito), nate (saint) and i made my second auca flight.

flew down the river to the grass shack where there are fenced cultivated areas but no people. noted an increased amout of cutting down the forest and land clearing since my last visit. they seem to know what to do with machetes and axes. on the way up we dropped a pair of pants at the first house because a woman there had on a greay slip - or so it seemed from the air. the second house has a model airplane carved on the house ridge and there we dropped a machete, a pair of short pants, and i saw a thing that thrilled me. it seemed an old man stood beside the house and waved with both his arms as if to signal us to come down. aucas waving at me to come! at the next house they have made a large clearing and built a bamboo platform on which one -a white-shirted one - stood and waved. nate dropped a roll of t.p. and several streamered combs into the trees at the edge of the clearing to try and give them the idea that we want those cut down, too. dropped a machete there, too, with streamers which they got. dropped a pot and an axe head on the string and they tied something with a red ribbon on, but we lost it.. God send me soon to the aucas.

december 31 - a month of temptation. satan and the flesh have been on me hard. how God holds my soul in His life and permits one with such wretchedness to continue in His service i cannot tell. oh, it has been hard...i have been very low inside me struggling and casting myself hourly on Christ for help. marriage is divorce from the privacy a man loves, but there is some privacy nothing can share. it is the knowledge of a sinful heart.

these are the days of the new year's believers' conference on the sermon on the mount. yesterday i preached and was helped on 'whoever looks on a woman...''let spirit conquer though the flesh conspire.'

(the diary ends on december 31,1955. two days later jim and 4 other men, pete fleming, ed mccully, nate saint, and roger youderian, went to a little sand spit on the curaray river which they named 'palm beach'. they set up a camp in hopes of establishing contact with the auca indians. on january 6, 1956 their hopes were realized when 2 women and a man appeared out of the jungle and spent several hours with the missionaries. verbal communication was not possible, but there was every indication that the indians were friendly and trusted the missionaries. the auca man demonstrated complete confidence by accepting a ride in nate saint's airplane. 2 days later the 5 men were speared to death.

the story is told in detail in 'through gates of splendor'. jim's biography, 'shadow of the almighty', traces the preparation of his own soul for this assignment, and 'the savage my kinsman' is the story of how nate saint's sister rachel, my daughter valerie, and i went to live with the auca indians in 1958.)