Persecution Blog

Missionary Pilot Shares The Rest of the Auca Martyrs' Story

Growing up the home of missionary parents in Ecuador, Gene Jordan has always known the story of five men—Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian—who gave their lives in the jungle to reach an isolated Indian tribe.

But for Gene, it wasn’t a far-off story. The five martyrs and their surviving families were close friends of Gene’s parents. One of Gene’s prized possessions is a picture of him, age 2, standing with Saint in front of the famous, yellow Piper Cub airplane later shredded by spears on the riverbank.

As a teen, Gene helped Mission Aviation Fellowship pilots wash their airplanes and clean up the hangar, always hoping for an empty seat on the next flight. As an adult, Gene became one of those pilots and was sent back to Ecuador to follow in the footsteps of “Uncle Nate.”

Listen as he shares reflections on a life serving in missions, and the difference the gospel makes in the hearts of individuals, and even entire villages, as the people find in Jesus a reason to live.

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Nate Saint Memorial School: End of an Era

The end of an era comes next month.

In August 1985, I clutched my mom’s hand and squeaked my rubber flip-flopped way down the gravel path from the Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) “base” to the cinderblock Nate Saint Memorial school. Miss Carolyn Wolfram greeted me and the three other kindergarten students and we took our places at the red, yellow, blue and green desks.

David’s parents were with Gospel Missionary Union, running a conference center for training local church workers. Rebekah’s dad was an anesthesiologist at the HCJB mission hospital in town. And Cristina’s parents worked with the local church while her dad trained to be a pilot with my dad at MAF.

I completed all of my elementary education through the sixth grade at Nate Saint Memorial School. In my era, the school hosted around 30 kids in kindergarten through eighth grade; all of our parents were involved in various ministries and denominations and types of mission work in the tiny town of Shell, perched on the edge of Ecuador’s Amazon rain forest.

At NSMS, as we called it, classes were frequently put on hold so the school children could perform a song for visiting tour groups from the U.S. We marched in the town parades proudly carrying a banner with Nate Saint’s name on it, and when we got tired of standing in the hot sun, our teachers would exhort us to set an example for the Ecuadorian schools, because they knew we were the “evangelical” school.

Class sizes were small, and like a prairie school house, often contained multiple grades. After the teacher got the third graders working in their math workbooks, she might quietly read the English assignment to the fourth graders on the other side of the room. When there were political strikes and no one could travel around town, we had classes in homes, books spread out on dining room tables with our mothers overseeing us.

Thursday afternoons were for swimming, when the whole school would pile into the rattley GMC mission vans and head for the river. The teachers would try to make sure we didn’t drown in the fast current while I worked up the courage to finally jump off that big rock into the deep spot.

When the eighth graders needed frogs to dissect for science class, they first spent an evening out behind the school, capturing toads and dunking them in formaldehyde from the hospital. The surgeons’ wife came over on Tuesdays to have us draw still-life paintings.

Every day on my way home from school, I’d pass the long wooden house of the Brethren church planters who were working with the indigenous people, including many of the Waodani (the tribe responsible for killing Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Pete Fleming and Roger Youderian). Waodani teenagers lived with them for months at a time while completing their education in Shell, education that wasn’t available in the jungle. The hope of the church planters was that these young people would return to their villages with a firm spiritual foundation that they could share with their communities.

The school for the children of missionaries founded in 1966 in memory of those missionary martyrs—Nate Saint Memorial School—has run its course. Fewer missionaries are needed in the region, and more are choosing to homeschool their children.

The end of an era has come, but its purpose was well-served. My kindergarten teacher, Miss Wolfram, would go on to have a 32-year-long career serving the mission community, in Shell and later in the capital city at the boarding school. She’s retiring this year.

Several schoolmates went on to become missionary pilots. One is serving as a military chaplain. Another is a church planter in Mexico. One girl ministered with her family in Yemen. Another one trains pastors in the Dominican Republic. My sister and her family work with youth in Ecuador. And then there’s me: privileged to serve persecuted Christians around the world. Christians who are just as willing to sacrifice their lives in order to share the gospel as the school’s namesake, Nate Saint.

Dory P and her husband both work for VOM. Dory grew up calling Nate Saint’s sister “Aunt Rachel” and Jim Elliot’s widow “Aunt Betty.” She and her husband serve on VOM’s staff.

VOM Radio: "When We Say Yes to God"

When God called Leanna to missions she was a young woman fresh out of college. Then God specifically called her to a part of South Asia known as "the graveyard of missionaries." He led her down a different path from most foreigners at the time; Leanna lived in a village, drinking dirty water, sleeping on a grass mat and subsisting on lentils and rice. As she lived through the hardships of village life she was able to introduce people to a God greater and more powerful than the millions of Gods in their faith: Jesus Christ.

Listen as Leanna shares about how Jesus is reaching people in South Asia with demonstrations of His power, and how believers are persevering in spite of persecution and hardship. She’ll also advise American believers how to reach out to those we know with the gospel, and equip us to pray for more than a billion people who live in South Asia.

Learn more about Leanna’s ministry at TellAsia.org; order a copy of her book, Treasures in Dark Places: One Woman, a Supernatural God and a Mission to the Toughest Part of India (affiliate link).

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Missions: "Safety Is Not Our Primary Goal"

There are 2.8 billion unreached people on earth; they will live their entire lives without ever hearing the gospel message of Jesus’ love for them.

Andrew Scott wants to motivate and mobilize Christians around the world to GO to those billions and reach them for Christ. Andrew is the President and CEO of Operation Mobilization – USA, and the author of a book called SCATTER: Go Therefore and Take Your Job With You. Andrew wants to see more American Christians understand that people from every vocational background—doctors, businessmen, engineers, artists—are called to share His glory with the nations.

Listen to his advice for those feeling a call to live and represent Christ among those 2.8 billion unreached people, and pray that the Lord of the harvest (Luke 10:2) will send out more workers—and maybe even send you.

Visit the Scatter Global site to learn more about getting involved with God’s work around the world. Order your copy of SCATTER: Go Therefore and Take Your Job With You (affiliate link).

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VOM Radio: YWAM Founder Loren Cunningham

Loren Cunningham is the founder of Youth With a Mission (YWAM), an organization that has equipped and sent more than five million people on short-term mission trips. God called him to ministry at age 13, and later gave him a vision to call and equip waves of young people to wash up on every continent on earth to share the gospel message.

Listen as Loren shares about how God called him, and some of the amazing things he’s seen (and eaten!) over his years of ministry. He’ll also offer advice for those listening for God’s call now, and share how YWAM prepares workers to go to the world’s hardest places with the gospel.

Finally he’ll share how the Bible lays the foundation for great spiritual awakenings, which is the reason VOM and YWAM are distributing Bibles all over the world. Listen and learn from one of the great missions leaders of our time, this week on VOM Radio.

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Stories and Cookies

Lily and I had been friends for several months and I looked for ways to spend time with her. Christmas was approaching and as I wanted to bake cookies for our family and friends, I invited Lily over with the promise of lots of cookies as payment for her help. She readily accepted.

Lily and I worked to roll cookie dough, melt chocolate, and strategically place tiny Christmas bells on dozens and dozens of cookies as I shared with her the story behind the Christmas celebration. My telling of the Christmas story was sprinkled with comments such as, “Can you hand me the baking soda?” and “Don’t add too much flour as it makes the cookies too hard.” Stories and cookies go well together.

“Have you ever heard that story of Isa (Jesus) before?” I asked Lily. “No,” she replied, and we kept talking as I packed cookies in containers for her to take home.

We continued to meet a couple times a month over a meal, a movie or taking walks around our beautiful city.  Our friendship was a strange one at best; she was a Muslim, I was a Christian. I was born in the United States, and she had never left her city. I was twenty years her senior, married with children and she was still single, visiting her parents in the village on weekends. In spite of the differences, our friendship blossomed. We got together often that year.

The next year, I invited her again to make cookies at my house. I asked her if she remembered the story of the birth of Christ and she told it back to me just as she had heard it the year before! Then the questions came: “Do you believe it was a miraculous birth? Why did God plan for Isa to be born in a stable? Why was Herod so determined to kill him? Is this a true story? Really?”

I had invited Lily and several other people over for a Christmas Day meal, but as several things came up, I decided to cancel the meal. A few days earlier my husband had to make an unexpected trip back to the US, two of my children couldn’t make it home for the holidays and our youngest was sick in bed with an unexplained fever. What was to be a day of celebration seemed to be one of calamity.

My mood was cloudy and sullen. I didn’t feel like having company. I didn’t feel like celebrating at all!

“I just can’t do this, Lord. What a poor witness I will be for my Muslim and Christian friends today. I do not have the strength nor the joy to celebrate and tell the story of your birth today. I just can’t!”

I waited for Him to speak. He whispered to me, “My grace is sufficient for you TODAY.” His words flooded my soul with peace and a renewed strength to get to work, His work. As I prepared the meal, I began to think of our lives like a pair of lifeless mittens lying on a table. We are useless unless the hand of God fills us and brings us to life, an abundant life, filled with His Spirit, His strength, His joy.

My thoughts began to turn and give Him praise for all that He is, all He did for me and all that He will do.

My guests came, we prayed, ate, and then sat around the table, laughing, talking, asking questions and discussing the topic of God well into the night.

It was a wonderful day. A day of sustaining grace. A day of amazing grace.

The last person to leave was my friend Lily. As she was putting on her shoes, she looked at me and said, “I want to know more. I want to study your book and go to church with you.”

As she studied God’s Word and learned of his love for her, God touched her heart. My friend Lily is now my sister in Christ. The simple act of making Christmas cookies together, plus a little faithfulness on my part, opened up the possibility for Lily to meet God. Gloria in Excelsis Deo!

TM is a VOM staff member. She lived for many years in Malaysia and Indonesia before coming to VOM.

Missions: "You Can Do This"

"Steve" and "Mai" left behind the American Dream to serve God in Southeast Asia--a place Mai had left decades before as a refugee and said she'd never return to. But God began to call them, and Steve and Mai submitted to His will.

It wasn't easy, especially leaving children and grandchildren in the United States to move to Asia. But as God opened each new door, Steve and Mai said "yes" to His plan. God led them to set up a simple recording studio with used equipment they purchased on eBay. Steve went online and taught himself basic audio editing skills. Today they are producing Christian radio programs and Christian music in the language of Mai’s tribal people; Steve edits the programs even though he doesn't speak Mai's tribal language.

Steve and Mai's story will inspire and encourage you that when God calls, He will always provide what is needed to accomplish His plans if we’re willing to say "yes," and take the next step. What door is God asking YOU to walk through for His Kingdom?

You can connect with Steve and Mai's work in Southeast Asia at AheadHillTribes.com.

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Missions: "Are You Willing to be Willing?"

"Bob" and "Kasey" were living the "American Dream." Bob retired from a good job, but in retirement he began to experience what he calls a "Holy discontent." He felt God calling him to lay everything on the altar.

Bob and Kasey began to pray, committing themselves to do whatever God asked of them. Today they are ministering in Central Asia, training believers to dig deep into the Scripture and to reach more people for Christ.

Yes, there have been sacrifices. But they say Jesus is worth every sacrifice they've made as they share the joy and excitement they are finding in serving Him and serving people in His name in Central Asia. Bob and Kasey challenge us to think about what God may be asking of us, and remind us that we're never too old to make an impact for Christ's Kingdom.

Listen also to learn more about this year's International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church and how you can get a free video to share with your church body to encourage them to pray for persecuted Christians around the world.

 

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Still Persecution in Cuba?

The United States and Cuba have resumed diplomatic relations after more than 50 years of animosity. President Obama recently visited Cuba. But has anything changed for the church or for Cuban Christians?

Pastor “Jose” is a Cuban church leader, and he’ll share this week a reminder that Cuba is still a communist nation and that our Christian brothers and sisters there are still persecuted. But Jose also has exciting news: Cuba’s Christians are not afraid of the government or persecution and they are boldly sharing the gospel. House churches are being planted and are growing, in spite of efforts by the government to exert control and instill fear in believers.

We’ll also welcome back to the studio “John and Mary,” working among Muslims in Europe, to hear how persecution happens even to Muslims living in free nations in Europe. Mary also offers advice to people sensing God’s call to missions.

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Missions: God's Love Compels Us

“Brother John” helps lead the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. He has served as a missionary in Muslim nations, and today is involved in recruiting and sending mission workers to the hardest and most unreached places in the world.

Listen to VOM Radio this week as Brother John shares the challenge of sending workers into harm’s way, what motivates him to keep sending even after some workers are martyred, and the joy of seeing God move in Muslim nations. John also shares thoughts on how American churches can do a better job of preparing and inspiring more people to hear God’s call to take the gospel to the world’s toughest places.

We’ll also hear more from songwriter Steve Merkel about using music to share the love of Jesus around the world, and his experiences in Islamic nations.

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