Dayuma was intrigued by the last statement, and she wanted to know how a body could come back to life after it was dead. Using the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead by Jesus, Rachel carefully explained God’s power to resurrect the dead and how after we die, our spirits go to be with God in heaven. That was where Nate’s spirit had gone, she explained, and one day her spirit would go there also, and she and Nate would be reunited. It took a while, but Dayuma finally grasped the concept, and Rachel watched her face light up in delight.
Not long after Rachel arrived back at Hacienda Ila, don Carlos and many of his workers moved to Hacienda San Carlos farther along the Anzu River. Rachel knew that don Carlos had been building the new place for several years and that it was an even larger plantation than Hacienda Ila. Since Dayuma was moving to the new hacienda, don Carlos assumed that Rachel and Mary Sargent would also move to the new location. And that is what happened.
At first the move had a positive effect on Rachel’s language work. Dayuma was promoted to house girl, giving her greater opportunity to spend time with Rachel during the day. But there were also new pressures on the language partnership, brought on by all the media attention the death of the five men at Palm Beach continued to generate.
After the killings, the widows had designated Betty Elliot to write an official account of the tragedy. The ensuing book, titled Through Gates of Splendor, went on sale in bookstores in August 1956. The book was an instant best seller. At the same time, Reader’s Digest published an article about the killings that was widely read. Every day, it seemed, someone tried to contact Rachel or one of the five widows to learn more details about the killings and about the Aucas. In a letter to her parents, Rachel explained the difficulties this caused.
The picture has changed considerably. A year ago we were the only ones taking an active step toward learning the Auca language, and now the whole world is interested. This has made it exceedingly difficult for me. I will appreciate your special prayers that the Lord will enable me to do my part quietly. I have no desire for publicity—but I do feel I should continue with Dayuma. I have a love for her and she for me, and the Lord knows my heart. Nate himself always hoped the way would be made for me to reach the tribe.
The prayers of Rachel’s parents appeared to go unanswered, however. Hacienda San Carlos became a crossroads for adventurers, writers, and curiosity seekers, who all wanted, and in some cases demanded, Dayuma’s attention. Some of them even suggested to don Carlos Sevilla that he contract Dayuma out to them as a guide. Rachel was very gratified by Dayuma’s response to this. “When God tells me to go, I will go,” she said.
Soon Rachel was hardly able to spend any time at all with Dayuma, and she wrote in her diary,
Prayed for faith to continue without discouragement. Only the Lord can prosper the work while we’re hearing the language for only about three hours a week—but He can, or He can change the circumstances.
In the meantime, everyone seemed to have a plan on how to reach the Aucas. MAF workers came to Rachel with the idea of sending Dayuma up in a small plane and using a loudspeaker to broadcast the gospel to her people. Rachel balked at this idea because she was not sure exactly what Dayuma might say in the excitement of the moment. Dayuma had a deep hatred for the men who had killed her family, and Rachel feared that she might use the opportunity to threaten them, thus destroying any hope of future trust between the Waorani and the missionaries.
Rachel was also concerned about taking the only fluent speaker of the Waorani language outside of the tribe and flying her over dangerous jungle terrain. It seemed to her, as she was sure Nate would have pointed out, to be an unacceptable risk.
Still, many people questioned Rachel’s judgment in the matter, and Rachel was glad when she learned that Dr. Kenneth Pike, her linguistics teacher and director of SIL, was coming to visit. By now Ken had married Cam Townsend’s niece and was a world-renowned linguistics expert.
When Ken arrived at Hacienda San Carlos, Rachel poured out all of her frustrations to him. Ken listened patiently and assured Rachel that she was doing the right thing. “Keep up the good fight,” he encouraged. “Surely there will come a time when you will use this language to reach many people.”
Rachel held on to these words, though at times her faith in them all but evaporated. Her hope of reaching the Waorani was stretched nearly to breaking point when she learned what had happened to Dr. Tidmarsh, an elderly Plymouth Brethren missionary whom Jim Elliot had replaced at Shandia. When he heard what had happened to his young replacement, Dr. Tidmarsh returned to the Oriente in the hope of carrying on the work of reaching the Waorani. He had been staying in a small cabin in their territory, spending the weekdays and weeknights there and the weekends at Arajuno. One Monday when he returned to his cabin in the jungle, he found the place in a shambles. Two crossed spears were in the doorway, and two more were thrust into the windows. One spearhead had several pages from the Bible on the end of it. Betty Elliot later identified the pages as coming from Jim’s Bible. It was not a good sign, and Dr. Tidmarsh did not stay in the jungle.
When Rachel heard about the incident, she despaired at how anyone was going to get close enough to the Waorani so that they could see that their visitors meant them no harm.
Meanwhile, the work learning and understanding the Waorani language continued slowly. One break in the monotony came when don Carlos allowed Rachel to take Dayuma to Quito for Christmas. By now, Marj Saint was running the HCJB missionary guest house in the city, and she made the two women feel welcome.
Marj’s three children were doing well. Kathy and Steve, the oldest two, were attending the Christian Missionary Alliance school at the end of the street.
Rachel enjoyed her time with Marj and the children, but most of all she loved to sit and watch Dayuma interact with the missionaries. It was the first time that Dayuma had been around a large group of Christians, and Rachel could tell that it was having quite an effect on her. Within days Dayuma was asking Rachel to tell her new Bible stories, and Dayuma’s face shined as she listened to them.
By the time the two returned to Hacienda San Carlos, Rachel was convinced that Dayuma had understood the gospel and had accepted it. This conviction was borne out by Dayuma’s eagerness to tell her young Waorani friend Winaemi the new Bible stories she had learned. Although the two young women spoke together in Quichua, Rachel understood much of what Dayuma said. When she had finished relaying one of the Bible stories, Dayuma turned to Rachel and said, “If you teach her about God, she will come to love Him. Now she loves Him just a little bit. I will tell her lots, and then she will come to love Him lots.… Why was I not caused to love Him long ago?”
Rachel thought of the missionaries who were waiting to reach Dayuma’s people with the gospel as soon as they appeared ready to receive it—or at least would not kill them at first sight.
In April 1957 Rachel received a very strange request from Cameron Townsend. At first she dismissed the request outright, saying it was too outrageous to consider. But as she prayed about it, Rachel came to believe that God wanted her and Dayuma to comply with Uncle Cam’s request. By June the two women were on their way to Hollywood, California!
Chapter 10
Surprises
It was June 1, 1957, one year and five months since the five men had been speared to death at Palm Beach. Rachel was sitting in a large commercial airliner with Dayuma at her side, clutching her hand. The plane was circling Miami International Airport, preparing to land. This was their first stop in the United States. After they had cleared customs and immigration in Miami, they would board another airplane for the final leg of their journey to California.
Rachel had been asked to bring Dayuma to the United States to take part in a television show about don Carlos Sevilla, to be titled The Daniel Boone of Ecuador. Cameron Townsend was eager for Dayuma to appear on the show. He had written to Rachel in Ecuador, explaining how important Dayuma’s appearance on the show could be in spreading the word about what Wycliffe Bible Translators was doing in the Oriente. And although that was not the focus of the show, Uncle Cam hoped that in the course of being interviewed about don Carlos, Dayuma might say something to publicize the mission’s work.
At first Uncle Cam’s argument had not swayed Rachel as she contemplated the enormous culture shock involved in bringing a Waorani woman to the United States as well as the possibility of Dayuma’s dying from a Western disease to which she had no immunity. But in the end Rachel decided to go along with Uncle Cam’s request, recognizing that he was the leader of her mission. And now Rachel and Dayuma were en route to Hollywood.
Finally the plane landed in Miami, where the women deplaned and where Dayuma’s cross-cultural education began. Rachel watched Dayuma’s eyes get as big as saucers at the sight of so many white faces. When they stopped to buy a snack, Dayuma did not know what to make of all the food choices arrayed before her. And when she did finally choose some potato chips, she complained to Rachel that they were much too spicy. As they sat eating, Dayuma looked around at the crowds of people coming from and going to airplanes and asked, “Rachel, do all of these people love God?”
Rachel took a deep breath and wondered how to tell Dayuma that all of these people had access to the Bible but very few of them read it or lived by it.
After their stopover in Miami, Rachel and Dayuma were soon in the air, winging their way toward Hollywood.
On Wednesday evening, June 5, Rachel took Dayuma to rehearse for the television show about don Carlos Sevilla. As she sat on a platform decorated with palms and a thatched hut, Rachel chatted with Ralph Edwards, who would be hosting the show. As she sat talking, she heard the unmistakable voice of her father from off stage. Rachel was surprised and confused that the producers of the show had gone to the trouble of making a tape recording of her father for her. Then out of the corner of her eye she saw someone approaching the stage. Rachel turned to look—it was her father!
“What are you doing here?” Rachel asked as she rushed to hug her father. Just then her brother Sam stepped onto the set, followed by several old school friends from Huntingdon Valley. By now Rachel was too shocked to move. As Sam walked up and kissed her, he whispered into her ear, “Don’t make it hard for Ralph, Sis. He’s working against time.”
In an electrifying second, Rachel realized what was happening. She was the subject of the show, and it was not a rehearsal at all. The cameramen were filming the show and broadcasting it live! At the same moment Ralph Edwards, with a huge grin on his face, looked into the camera and announced, “Rachel Saint—this is your life.”
Since she had spent the last several years living in Peru and Ecuador, Rachel did not realize that This Is Your Life was a hugely popular television show in the United States. Each week an unsuspecting celebrity or interesting person was lured by some ruse to the studio, where the person was surprised with the news that he or she was the featured guest. On the show, one by one, people significant in the guest’s life were brought out to offer anecdotes about the person. And with the ruse about filming a show on don Carlos Sevilla, Rachel had been lured onto the show, which thirty million people were now watching live.
Barely able to comprehend what was happening to her, Rachel tried her best to explain the unfolding events to Dayuma as a stream of people were brought onstage. There were her childhood friend Beryl Walsh Adcock from Huntingdon Valley, her parents and brothers, Dr. Addison Raws from the Keswick Colony of Mercy, and Loretta Anderson from the Shapra tribe in Peru. The only person Rachel was not surprised to see was don Carlos Sevilla, as she had expected him to show up sometime during the “rehearsal interview.”
