DAN WOODING, of ASSIST News Service, speaks to Frank and Marie Drown about their new book, Unmarked Memories: Five friends buried in the jungle of Ecuador…
For veteran American missionary, Frank Drown, 88, that fateful January day in 1956, when he discovered the bodies, in the dense Ecuadorian jungle, of Jim Eliot, Pete Fleming, Nate Saint and Roger Youderian, was something he will never forget.
Trying to hold back the tears, Frank Drown who, along with his wife Marie, had worked for 37 years with the Jivaro Indians of eastern Ecuador, who were known for their head shrinking, spoke first about the occasion when he found the body of his friend, Nate Saint, the MAF pilot.
Nate Saint, one of five missionaries killed by Waodani Indians on 8th January, 1956. PICTURE: Courtesy MAF.org
“We wrote this new book because I was the one that went back to Ecuador to try and find Nate Saint, Jim Elliott, and the others who were my people, my good friends. I had hoped that they’d be alive because I didn’t know they were dead when I went, but we found out the terrible news about the murders shortly after we got there.”
During an interview during the “Meet the Missionaries Day” at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, California earlier this month, Drown said, “Nate had a spear at the top of his head, and a big cut on his face. We didn’t find Ed McCully (the other murdered missionary), but the Indians found him weeks later, and they said they buried him. However, I don’t know whether they did or not.
“On discovering the four bodies, I had to make a choice. We could have flown them out, but they were in such bad shape with fish eating on them — and I didn’t want their wives to see them that way — so I thought it was better to remember them the way they were when they were alive. So we dug a hole on the beach and buried them and I knelt on their grave and prayed.”
Drown added: “Nate Saint was my pilot and he ferried lots of missionaries out to the places all over the country.”
Frank Drown was in Southern California to help launch a short book that he, and his wife Marie, have recently written called Unmarked Memories: Five friends buried in the jungle of Ecuador, which tells the story of the life-changing events that took place on 8th January, 1956, when the five American missionaries ventured into the eastern rainforests of Ecuador, where they made contact with the Aucas, also now known as the Waodani. With a homicide rate of 60 per cent, the tribe’s behavior placed them on the verge of self-annihilation.
“We wrote this new book because I was the one that went back to Ecuador to try and find Nate Saint, Jim Elliott, and the others who were my people, my good friends. I had hoped that they’d be alive because I didn’t know they were dead when I went, but we found out the terrible news about the murders shortly after we got there.”
Drown said that when he and his search team first arrived, they couldn’t find the bodies of the men who he eventually discovered had been killed on a beach after the five men had participated in what was called “Operation Auca.”
“When we couldn’t find them, I told the pilot of the helicopter who was helping with the search that, if they had been killed, then the murderers would have just thrown their bodies in the river. I then asked him to start hovering over the river and then he spotted a leg down there. So we went to the river and sure enough I reached out and pulled one of them out.”
The missionaries’ story that was initially made famous in the pages of Life magazine with a series of startling pictures from photographer Cornell Capa, but now the Drowns have been able to give more insight into what occurred all those years ago.
“We were in Ecuador ten years before they were and then Nate came in and he became our pilot,” said Frank Drown in a previous interview. “He flew us all over the jungle, and we did lots of things together. Before he came, I walked on the land, and it was such a blessing to be able to fly. One minute in a plane is worth an hour on the ground.”
Marie then entered the conversation. “All of the missionaries that were killed were our good friends,” she said. “Marj Saint was a good friend of ours. Before we ever met her, she sent in with Nate, a tray of ice cubes, and we hadn’t had ice cubes for years. We made lemonade, and it tasted like something we’d never known before. It was so different with ice cubes in it.
“I remember another time when Nate came to see us and he and Marj were expecting their first child, and we had a son Ross Drown, who was born in 1948, and a year later, in early 1949, their first baby was born. When Nate was with us, he saw Ross and Frank playing with a ball, and Ross would repeat, ‘Figh!’ and daddy would say, ‘Throw the ball way up high!’ and he’d say ‘Figh!’ and they’d throw the ball back and forth. Nate said, ‘I can’t wait until ours is born.'”
“(W)e went, not knowing whether they were dead or alive. The trip took two-and-a-half days, part walking, part by dug-out canoe, and we got down there and found the airplane all torn to pieces, and nobody there. It was a sad day.”
Frank said that he had given Nate a radio to go into the jungle, but as the missionaries wanted to keep their mission secret, they just spoke in code.
“They didn’t want other people to know what they were up to so that, if it did happen and they made contact with the tribe, they didn’t want a whole rush of all the people wanting to go in there to,” said Drown. “So I knew that and they told me what he was going to do and I loaned them my radio so they could take it along, and I knew where they were. I also knew what frequency they were going to talk back to me because it was my radio. And so I listened to them, and one day only, on Friday when they had a good contact with the Indians and they called back and said it was great. ‘The neighbors came,’ one of them said.”
Drown said that as he was on the network of radios so they could all talk to each other, and on the Monday morning he received an urgent message from Marj, Nate Saint’s wife.
“Marj said, ‘We haven’t heard from the men since yesterday. They were supposed to talk at 4:00 and they didn’t answer. We’ve lost contact with them.’ And she wanted to know if I would be willing to go and form a rescue party and go down into that jungle down there and see if I could help them.
“It was terrible, especially as I heard that another MAF pilot had flown over there and he could see the little airplane down on the beach where they’d landed, but he couldn’t see anybody around, and I knew this was bad news.
“Still, we went, not knowing whether they were dead or alive. The trip took two-and-a-half days, part walking, part by dug-out canoe, and we got down there and found the airplane all torn to pieces, and nobody there. It was a sad day.”
He explained that the US Air Force had dispatched a helicopter to the area and they could see straight down into the water of the river where the plane was and they said they saw some bodies.
“So we picked them up,” said Drown. “There were two of them. Jim Elliot was the first one that was found, and then Pete Fleming, and then I was told that there was somebody downstream and so I went to help pick him up out of the water.
“After I had gone and buried the men and came back home, we had three days of rain and I was there at Ed McCully’s house because he lived the closest to these Waodani, and I had time to think this whole thing through.
“God could have stopped this anytime along the way. It’s understandable that if we just had a big shower there wouldn’t have been a sand beach for them to land on. When they first landed, the tire was ripped and the tube was showing. God allowed those men to go and to die and you may say, ‘Well, that is wrong.’
“Folks, a private never tells the general where you’re going to fight. And so, as God’s people, we go where God puts us; that’s where we work. And God will take care of us until He’s ready to move us out of this world, and so that’s the way it is. And God did that. He wanted those men to die so that He could talk to our people here in America that you need to give your life to God and sacrifice. We don’t want sacrifice. We don’t want pain. We don’t want anything like that.
“But listen, folks, if we’re going to win the world to Jesus Christ there’s going to be more, and we need to serve God with all that we’ve got, whether it’s life or death. For Marie and for me, it has been many years of staying there and living with those people and seeing them come to Christ, so it’s not up to us to say where we’re going to serve or how, but it’s up to God.”
“Well we all have to admire somebody that wants to go take the Gospel where there might be danger and they were willing to do that and now the Aucas have heard the Gospel although not all of them have accepted it, and I believe they have several churches among them now.”
On a previous visit to Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, the couple shared their story along with Steve Saint, the son of Nate Saint, Mincaye who, as a young warrior was one of the tribesmen who killed Saint’s father, Nate, and the four other young missionaries, and is now a believer and has been reconciled with Steve and the Saint family.
The story was movingly also told in the movie, End Of The Spear, in which the filmmakers explore the story from the tribe’s perspective – and the remarkable way God changed the tribe’s violent ways.
Frank Drown then paid tribute to the five missionaries, whose story was also told in Elisabeth Elliot’s classic book, Through the Gates of Splendor. (Elizabeth was the widow of Jim Elliot.)
“Those men that gave their lives for the sake of the Gospel,” said Drown. “They knew the danger of those Aucas as they had killed everybody who came into their territory. They went because they knew they had souls and they wanted them to find Christ.”
Drown said that many of the Aucas – now known as the Waodani – has since come to a faith in Jesus Christ, many through the ministry of Nate Saint’s sister, Rachel, Nate’ son, Steve, and also Elizabeth Elliot.
What affect did the murders of those five missionaries have on the Aucas?
“Well we all have to admire somebody that wants to go take the Gospel where there might be danger and they were willing to do that and now the Aucas have heard the Gospel although not all of them have accepted it, and I believe they have several churches among them now,” said Drown who now lives with Marie in Kansas City, Missouri, but spends much of his time working among the native peoples of Canada.
Asked when he planned to retire, Drown smiled and said, “What am I going to retire for? Just to sit in a chair! No, no, no. When people need the gospel and I can help them, I’m obligated to do it.”
He added, “Just as long as I can move, I will continue to tell people about Jesus.”
~ http://missiontotheheadhunters.com
