The Widow Who Returned

Jim Elliot Died Here

Five young missionaries went to the Waorani.

They came not with an army.

They came with a message.

They came because they believed that the people hidden in the Ecuadorian rain forest were not beyond the reach of the Gospel.

They established contact.

Then the spears came.

Jim Elliot was dead.

Four other missionaries were dead with him.

To the ordinary eye, the mission had failed.

But the story was not over.

The Question

What does a widow do when her husband has been murdered?

She may flee.

She may seek justice.

She may grieve.

She may close the door forever on the people responsible.

Elisabeth Elliot did something almost incomprehensible.

She went back.

She Did Not Abandon Ecuador

Elisabeth Elliot remained in Ecuador with her little daughter, Valerie.

She continued working among the Quichua people.

She wrote about Jim and the five missionaries, making their story known to the world.

But something was happening inside the forest.

The very people whom Jim had tried to reach were beginning to come within reach.

A Waorani woman named Dayuma, who had escaped from her people, became a bridge between the outside world and the Waorani.

Then two Waorani women emerged from the forest.

The door opened.

The Invitation

The Waorani eventually invited Elisabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint to come and live among them.

Think about what that invitation meant.

These were the people whose warriors had killed Jim Elliot.

Yet Elisabeth accepted.

In October 1958, she entered the Waorani settlement of Tewæno with her little daughter.

She did not go as an avenging widow.

She went as a missionary.

Into the Village of the Killers

Elisabeth learned the Waorani language.

She lived among them.

She ate with them.

She cared for her daughter there.

She listened.

She learned.

She began communicating the Gospel through the language and stories of the people themselves.

And then came one of the most astonishing details in the entire story.

Some of the men who had participated in Jim's killing were still there.

One of them, Gikita, was close enough to little Valerie to help her roast a plantain.

The widow of Jim Elliot was living among the men who had killed him.

And she was there because she believed that they too needed to hear the Gospel.

The Gospel of Forgiveness

The Bible message Elisabeth brought was not merely a new religious vocabulary.

It was a message about forgiveness.

The Gospel crossed a boundary that human beings normally regard as uncrossable:

the boundary between the murdered and the murderer.

The one who had lost her husband did not treat the people as permanently condemned by what they had done.

She came to tell them about the Savior.

The Spear Did Not Have the Last Word

Among those who eventually professed faith was Yowe, identified as one of the men involved in the killing of the missionaries.

The story that began with five bodies lying in the Ecuadorian forest had begun to turn into something else.

The killers were now hearing about the One whom the missionaries believed had conquered death.

The death of the missionaries had not stopped the message.

It had carried the message deeper into the forest.

From Language to Scripture

But a Gospel that is to become the possession of a people must eventually become speakable in their language.

So the work continued.

Language had to be learned.

Words had to be understood.

Biblical concepts had to be communicated.

Stories had to be translated.

The Gospel of Mark was eventually translated into Wao.

In 1965, the Wao Gospel of Mark was dedicated.

The people for whom Jim Elliot had given his life were now receiving the Gospel in their own language.

The Reversal

The chronology tells its own story.

What appeared to be the end became the beginning of another chapter.

The spear had not silenced the Gospel.

The grave had not silenced the Gospel.

The death of the missionary had not ended the mission.

“He Is No Fool…”

Jim Elliot had written words before his death that became famous throughout the missionary world:

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

His life became the illustration.

But Elisabeth's life supplied the second illustration.

She did not merely remember his sacrifice.

She followed its direction.

Jim had gone toward the Waorani.

After his death, Elisabeth went toward them too.

The Widow Returned

There is therefore a deeper story than the story of a missionary martyr.

It is the story of a Gospel that refuses to stop at the boundary of death.

A husband dies.

A widow returns.

A language is learned.

A message is translated.

A Scripture is given.

And the people who had once killed the messenger begin to hear the message.

The widow returned.

And the forest heard.