Forty years after five missionaries lost their lives in the Ecuadorian jungle, the killers explain what really happened.
 

Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, and Ed McCully, three college friends working as missionaries in Ecuador, had a burning desire to follow Jesus' command to take the gospel message into all the world. They had prayed for years for this primitive group that had never heard the redemption story of peace with God through the death of Christ. Now the men began to feel they should act soon or perhaps lose the opportunity for peaceful contact.

The three men rounded out their team with two more: Pete Fleming, a friend of Jim and Ed's, working in Ecuador with the same mission group, and Roger Youderian, who had been working with the Jivaros, known as the "head shrinkers" of the Ecuadorian jungles. A veteran of the World War II paratroopers, Roger possessed a jungle savvy and an ability to live and travel like the Indians.

Here were five common young men whose unifying distinction was less their inherited abilities or acquired skills than their commitment to seek God's will and to carry out his purposes for their lives. They were aware of the risk they were taking but felt it was justified, though they could have had no idea of the impact their martyrdom would someday have.

After three days of waiting on the beach, the men suddenly saw two naked women step out of the jungle onto the opposite bank. Two missionaries waded out into the river to greet them.

When it was apparent the women were being well received, a man joined them on the beach. Nate Saint's journal records that the three Indians seemed relaxed and acted in a friendly manner. They shared the missionaries' hamburgers and Kool-Aid and carried on an animated conversation as if their every word were understood.

Why did savages kill the five friendly missionaries two days later? Why did the missionaries not defend themselves with guns against primitive spears? Why leave five young women widowed, nine children fatherless? What had caused the savages to kill the very men who had called to them from the plane that they were friends, who had exchanged gifts with them on a line dropped from the circling plane?

Click here to read the revealing article in the Christianity Today  magazine of the detailed account of why and how the missionaries were martyred as told by the killers to Steve Saint, the son of the slain pilot Nate Saint.