Kimo, Ecuador, Hunter/Gatherer June 15. Kimo. Kimo Lived in An
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Kimo, Ecuador, Hunter/Gatherer June 15. Kimo. Kimo lived in an Ecuadorian jungle, and his tribe’s name was Waodani, but because of their stone-age mentality and violent ways, neighboring tribes called them the Auca, which means “naked savages.” As a boy, Kimo was was taught what all the Waodani were taught: that “he must spear and live or be speared and die.” Today’s story takes place eight years after Kimo and some other natives surrounded a small group of missionaries and speared them to death. One of the missionaries was Nate Saint, a jungle pilot. On this date in 1965, Kimo baptized Nate’s children, Steve and Kathy Saint. God can turn a place of senseless death into a place of life. Dark-green leaves spilled from the jungle on either side of the muddy trail that Kimo and about twenty others walked. Marj Saint and her two older children, Steve and Kathy, had chosen the destination. They were hiking out to the sandbar where, eight years before, Nate Saint, her husband and their father, had been killed and buried. They crossed a ridge, forded streams, descended toward a river, and now—in dugout canoes— poled downstream. When Kimo stepped out of the canoe onto the sandbar, memories rushed at him. Here the foreigners had shouted—in his language—“We are your friend!” But he—along with Dyuwi, Mincaye, and three others—spear-killed the men who had given them gifts. The men had guns, but didn’t shoot them. They only cried out, “Why are you doing this?” Now, Kimo’s heart hurt. His tribe, the Waodani, had once been the most violent society on earth. But because of the Creator’s Son, the people changed. Kimo looked at Steve’s and Kathy’s Aunt Rachel. When she came to live with the people who had killed her brother, Kimo was surprised. She had told them the Creator’s Son came down to the dirt to save His people from the darkness in their hearts. Kimo believed her. And he stood taller. Tomorrow he and the others would give this killing place new memories. Kimo scanned the beach. Jaguar tracks printed the sand, and it was growing dark. Some of the Waodani gathered cane poles and palm fronds to make shelters, and others fished for supper. Evening mist settled, the fires burned, and monkey meat and fish stewed in the pots. The next morning, the group gathered for a holy ceremony. The light-skinned children, who visited during school vacations, would be baptized with two Waodani teens. Kathy and Steve had honored Kimo and Dyuwi by asking the men to baptize them because the Creator’s Son had changed the warriors into God-followers. Kimo spoke to the Creator. “Seasons and seasons ago,” he prayed, “we came here to do a bad thing that made Your heart cry. But now look! We have come back to this same sand place to make Your heart happy.” After the prayer, Kimo lowered the children into the river. When he raised the children, and the water ran off, their faces were bright. Kimo told them to follow God’s trail—living happily and at peace. Afterward, the other warriors led the family into the edge of the jungle. They pointed to a tree stump. “This is where the five foreign God-followers built their sleeping house when they came to bring us God’s carvings and teach us to live well,” they said. It was also where the God- followers were buried. “Look!” Marj pointed at the ground. Four plants with bright-red flowers grew. “Wouldn’t it have been special if there had been five?” “But, Mother,” said Steve, “wasn’t Ed’s body found and buried farther downriver?” About ten feet downriver from the tree-house stump, they saw another plant with the same bright-red blossom. Jesus said, “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life” (John 10:10 NLT). Do you have a place of death—literal or metaphorical—that needs to become a place of life? Ask God to take your death place from the clutches of destruction and remake it into something good. God can turn a place of senseless death into a place of life. Based on an interview with Steve Saint, 2019. Saint, Steve. End of the Spear. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, SaltRiver Imprint, 2005. Do You Want to Learn More About This Man? When Jim Elliott, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Nate Saint, and Roger Youderian contacted the Waodani, only about five hundred existed. In-tribe killing was so prevalent that the tribe would have died out. But God used the death of the five missionaries, with Rachel Saint and others, who taught Jesus’ teachings to the tribe, to change Waodani culture. About 25 percent of the tribe have become Christ-followers. Christ’s gospel almost completely stopped the killing. Sixty years later, the tribe has multiplied and is growing rapidly. .