Chapel 11-2-2018 Valerie Elliot Shepard

good afternoon everybody like to welcome you to unity Christian unity high school students 284 of us we have some guests we have home schoolers and their parents that have joined us in the middle section let's give them a welcome we have some kids from local public schools that are here as well so thank you for for coming you came as individuals and families so welcome to you as well we have orange CD Christian middle school up in the corner there we're pretty fired up and we're all kind of fired up because it's Friday it's been a great week we've got a lot of things accomplished next week we're pretty excited here at unity or our volleyball teams going to state and so we have a very short week next week so we're kind of excited about that but we're really excited to hear our speaker today and would just like to say a few words of welcome and a little bit about our speaker when I was 10 I remember my mom came home from the Christian bookstore and she had this little cartoonish book I think was called gates of splendor and I would call it a comic book although it wasn't a funny story it was a sad story it was a story of a missionary Jim Elliot and his friends who were killed bringing the the Lord to a tribe of people that had not heard of Jesus before and that was a very powerful story and I remember I remember it when I was when I was young when I think it was about 10 years old wow I don't know how many years ago this movie came out but there's a movie called the end of the spear raise your hand if you've seen this movie Wow a lot of you I know here at Unity we watch scenes of this last week in chapel to kind of prepare for today and I think in world cultures class the entire movie I believe is is watched as well and the end of the sphere again is the story of Jim Elliot and his friends we are really pleased today to welcome Valerie Elliott Shepard the daughter of missionary Jim Elliot to our Chapel today I believe she's doing a missions conference tomorrow and lots of people are coming to that here at unity and we're just excited to have her Valerie and her husband Walter have spent 41 years in ministry she's the mother of eight children she has taught in many Bible studies she's a speaker a missionary and a church planter and today she is sharing her story with us will you please join me in welcoming Valerie Elliot Shepherd before you show any pictures on the screen I'll just tell the basic story and then we'll look at the pictures good afternoon everybody I'm happy to be here I was your age once a long long time ago and I'm also happy to be in a Christian school you are very privileged to be in a Christian school my mother homeschooled me first second and third grade in the middle of the jungle we were in the Amazon jungle in Ecuador my parents met each other at Wheaton College in Illinois both of them very sure that the Lord had called them to the mission field they met because they were both in Greek and wanted to translate the original Greek New Testament into a language whatever language the Lord called them to work with and they fell in love but my father told her the surprising thing that he was sure of that God had called him to be a single missionary that was pretty awful news for my mother when she realized she had fallen in love with him so over five years they were in different parts of the country and preparing for the mission field after my mother graduated my father graduated a year later but they started writing letters and they were very much in love but they were very very sure of one thing they had to do the will of God before they could give in to their feelings and their love for each other my father was just not sure whether God would ever let him get married so of course my mother didn't know whether she would get to get married to this man and they only saw each other five times in five years for very short visits so a book is coming out in February of their love story that I have put together and it has all their letters almost all their letters and many many journal entries so I'm very thankful to share that story with the world I'm also very thankful to just be their daughter because even though I don't remember my dad I was ten months old when he was killed they both my father and mother stood for obedience to God how many of you kids have been challenged to obey God first can you put up your hands if you have been challenged to obey God first okay a few tentative ones well I hope someday you will say I'm there I want to obey God before my own feelings come infront of that so they wrote to each other and then they eventually ended up in Ecuador two months apart from each other and had to learn Spanish together and their love blossomed even more but my father was still saying I need to be a single missionary to the jungle Indians for a year before I will know whether I'm supposed to get married he had been told that women could not handle the Amazon jungle how many of you girls think you could handle the Amazon jungle I bet many of you could most of you probably could yes there are dangers but it was the climate that back then they used to say women can't take that my mother was a strong and brave and healthy woman very healthy so once my father began to recognize her strength not only in the in Quito as they climbed mountains together but then they went to two different parts of the jungle my father went to the Amazon jungle my mother went to the other side of the Andes the western side and both were working with Indians so as they wrote to each other eventually my father recognized that God was calling him to marry my mother so in 1953 they got married I was born in 1955 they worked among Quechua Indians who are a little bit more civilized but during their college years they had heard about the Alka Indians who are now called the wild ami and if you have seen end of the spear it is about the wild Ani Indians and what happened with the five men there's an even wonderful documentary that my mother made in 1958 called through gates of splendor which also the same name of that comic book that your principal read when he was 10 and there is a book that has been published since 1958 through gates of splendor that is still a best-seller among Christian in book Christian bookstores so my mother kept on writing books but when we were in the jungle we had the opportunity to go and live with these Indians that had killed my father now a lot of people think that these five men were real martyrs for their faith but if you have studied what a martyr is a martyr is someone who stands for his faith and is told to give it up or he will be killed and Muslims are doing this to Christians they're saying if you will give up who you who you believe in and bow to Mohammed then we won't kill you but there are Christians being killed because they are standing up for what they believe well actually these five men were being friendly to the Indians who were called al cos now called wild honey and they were dropping gifts to these Indians for 15 weeks in a row they dropped a bag of gift actually it was in a bucket and they just gave useful things in the bucket this plane would fly over their little village there were 40 people in the tribe 10 men women and children so many of the men had been killed among the Indians because this tribe was known as a very savage killing tribe so these men and women began to see this plane come every week in 1955 and drop this bucket which stayed on a cable attached to the plane and they dropped this gift and the alkis began to take the gift out and within two to three weeks the AL cos began to replace a gift with their gift one of their gifts was a pet parrot a macaw another gift was the little combs they made for their thick black hair another gift was a roasted monkey's paw now they ate monkey all the time so they roasted it over a fire and you always had the taste of burnt fur in the monkey meat and these gifts were brought 15 weeks in a row and when these men would come actually it would be the pilot and one of these four men that were killed with my father they each had a turn going with the pilot and yelling out of a megaphone the end the alka language we want to be your friends we've come to meet you come to meet us and the out cos began to wave and they called it the yellow bumblebee that came they didn't know anything about machines or the outside world and they were a naked tribe they didn't know anything about clothing didn't see the point of clothing at all so this is what began to happen they saw this plane coming and this gift they thought fell out of the stomach of the plan of the bumblebee and eventually Nate Saint who was the missionary aviation fellowship pilot found a place that was within walking distance of this little village of Indians and he found a place he could land a plane and the five men prayed and prepared and planned to be on that beach to meet these Indians for as long as they could as they would want to get to know the language because they only knew a few phrases they had learned from one Alka why o'donneii who had fled the tribe because of hostility and violence so they would say we want to be your friends they would wave and eventually Nate's ain't found this beach my father prepared a fabricated wood fabricated tree house that they could live in they would have four men sleeping up on the tree house and then one on the beach on guard because Pumas Panthers snakes could come and of course the snake could go up the tree so there was always a man watching every four hours and within a couple days three Indians from the tribe they'd been dropping the gifts to came and visited with them for the afternoon they had no Spears with them that's how they killed they had killed a few shell oil workers a few years before this happened so they were suspicious of these white men but they knew the white men had been dropping gifts to them so too a man came out from the tribe and they spent the afternoon they ate hamburgers for supper with the five men and then they went home in the evening well the men were very happy and excited because it had been a friendly face to face contact with them and two days later Nate st. the pilot and by the way end of the spear the movie is mainly about Nate st. from the son Steve's perspective so it's not about my dad but of course my dad was one of the men Nate st. flew over the village to wave at the people and he saw nobody came out from under the houses they lived in batch truth huts with no walls and he radioed back to his wife which he did at least twice a day when he was in the air to tell her what was happening and he told her that the Indians were gone from the village they didn't come out from under their houses and it was completely empty no not even children were running about so he said well we hope that they are coming to the beach they figured it was about a three hour walk from where their village was to the beach and they called it Palm Beach and then they in the afternoon when Nate st. went back to his group of men and he had been going daily for supplies because the plane can't hold many weeks worth of supplies he came back and he said to the men I think they're coming there this way because their village is empty he told his wife that he would call her at 4:30 on this shortwave radio from the plane so he called he did not call at 4:30 the wife was listening waiting and she knew her husband was always very quick and prompt to call at the time he said he would call so she waited she called the radio call number for him there was no answer by 7:30 that was 4:30 in the afternoon she didn't here by 7:30 she had alerted every one of the wives that's four different wives besides her that something had happened to the guys because they hadn't called and by Monday morning they still hadn't heard anything they hoped that the men were being held hostage by the Indians so they sent out a search party on Wednesday they still were trying to call actually the Ecuadorian Army and the American Air Force flew over in a helicopter on two different days one of them did not see anything the second one did see bodies in the water and so when the search party arrived on Friday this was from Sunday when they hadn't heard from them Friday the search party they'd been walking from the different key to a villages that had sent some Indians and a missionary with them to find the bodies and they found four of the bodies riddled with Spears all of them still in the water one body had floated down river where a kitra had found it later a couple of days later so these men didn't actually get to be martyrs like they are called but in a in a figurative sense they went because of their faith they sang a song before they got there with their wives all together at Christmastime they sang we rest on thee our shield and our defender we go not forth alone against the foe strong in thy strength and in thy keeping tender we rest on thee and in thy name we go they sang that all together one of the wives said you know that you may be killed they all knew the danger because these Indians were known as killers and the husband said and I don't remember which one it was it might have been Nate st. he said we're ready to go to heaven but they're not they need to know the gospel so their hope was that they would learn enough of the language as they continued these friendly contacts that they would be able to tell them about Jesus but what had happened with among the Indian tribe as after those three visitors came on the Thursday or Friday afternoon they had gone back and the younger woman had said I think they're cannibals I think you should go and kill them so it was just the whim of this young woman they had been suspicious of white men there is no cannibalism in Ecuador so they must have thought that white men must be cannibals they had no no experience of good friendly white men so that's how it got started the Indians decided from Friday to Sunday talking and talking and talking there were several who said I don't think they're cannibals they've been kind to us they've been good to us and then there were several who are saying no they've been there probably two they're tricking us they're gonna kill us and eat us so that's why they went and ambushed the five men and killed all five of them now when Nate Sainte said they're not ready to go but we are they were going in faith and in obedience to this Indian tribe wanting to share the gospel so we're going to show some pictures of what it looked like in Ecuador and I got to live with these Alka Indians when I was three and a half and that all happened because my mother had continued to pray as all of the wives had continued to pray for these Indians Lord they need the gospel when my mother when my father was in college he had written in his journal Lord I want to sing over the out cos and that man he wanted to see them come to Christ and then we everybody would sing and rejoice because souls were saved but he never got to actually sing over the out cos probably until later in heaven when many alkyds decided to follow Jesus so that happened when I was three and a half and we were invited to live with the tribe so we'll go through some pictures I need to move all right can all of you see it or is this in the way okay let's go Equador anybody know what the word ecuador means you can yell it out yes equator thank you so it was right on the equator we had sunshine at six o'clock in the morning and sunset at six o'clock in the evening all year round time never changed we had a rainy season and a dry season but in the jungle Amazon jungle we had rain once or twice a day in the dry season and three to four times a day in the wet season okay so we were in to the east of Quito where we lived was where the Kitsch was were and the outcomes were just a couple days walk from where the key to is where you can go to the next slide these are some of the creatures that live in the Amazon jungle I'm sure some of you have studied this what's in the Amazon and that Ocelot in the middle was caught one day one night by the Alka Indians that we lived with they came and woke us up because their chickens had been disappearing every night and they made a trap and there was the Ocelot in the trap they woke us up during the night we went with a flashlight over to the cage they had built and this thing was snarling and just as mean as a tiger but much smaller than a tiger so that's a very common animal in the jungle that monkey up in the left hand your right hand corner up there is a very popular pet among the Indians and I had one but I think they're mischievous and naughty so I don't like monkeys we had a parrot there always making lots of noise so even though they're beautiful they're very noisy okay let's go to the next slide this is my mother and father on the day of their wedding in 1952 they got married in a civil ceremony that just means they went to a judge in Quito who married them and they were supremely happy because they had been in love for five years and now they knew God had given them the go-ahead to get married and they found a verse in the scripture that said this is our God lo we have waited for him go on to the next slide this is the first house actually my mother and father lived in a tent first that was so leaky continually getting more leaks that my father worked on a house built of bamboo and thatched roof and screen windows so this was they got married in October 1953 and this was in February and March they got to move into the house my mother thought she was in a palace compared to being in the tent to the next slide this is my father with one of the key to ax Indians he was are the biggest indigenous tribe in both Peru and Ecuador and their language is very similar to Spanish and not too hard to learn so my father had told my mother you have to learn Quechua before we get married and she learned it in three months because she wanted to get married so next slide this is the beginning of our home being built in Shan dia which was a key to a mission station and that's where my father and Pete Fleming worked for almost a year before he realized that God was going to give him a wife and so there was grandpa Howard you can't see it grandpa Elliott excuse me my father's father came down from Portland Oregon to build this house it had concrete floors it had concrete up to about waist high and then it had screen windows and a tin roof and it had running water so it was an even better palace for my mother to move into and that's the house I lived in until I was eight other than the two years we lived with the outgas next slide this is my father holding a snake you can't see it very well but it is wrapped around his wrist and his fingers and it is a non poisonous snake but there are lots of snakes in Ecuador and he was rather brave so he just enjoyed having that picture taken of him next slide my father on the beach where the men were killed and he has a feather crown made out of macaw feathers and this was one of the gifts that the outcast had sent back up in the bucket when the men had been dropping a bucket weekly next night he isn't that beautiful the Amazon jungle and this is called a tributary of the Amazon River and there are many many many tributaries from the Amazon so this is just a little river called the CUDA die CUDA die river and this is where Palm Beach was Nate st. was very skilled to be able to land his plane on soft sand you usually can't do that with a little plane but he was able to okay next slide this is not an Indian that I remember but this is exactly what the out cuz look like and if any of you have wanted to have gauges in your ears this is what your ears will look like as you get older they stretch out and they look pretty ugly so there you go that's that's a y o'donneii that is their own people name that's their people group name the Y o'donneii okay next slide my father on your right and Pete Fleming and Ed McCully my father and and Edie were both net wheaton together Edie was bound for being a very good lawyer because he won all the debates in oratory and won oratory prizes and Pete Fleming was going to be a English professor in Seattle Washington and my father convinced both of them that they should go to the mission field and so he was the one that really drew them to Ecuador but they prayed of course they prayed a lot about whether they should go and they felt God God called them to Ecuador and that is the parrot that was sent up in the bucket next slide this is the tree house they lived in for almost a week next slide and these are the five men that were killed Roger you darien was quite a hero in World War two he helped fight against the Germans in Holland and as I said Pete Fleming was going to be a professor my father was one that went to Wheaton and majored in Greek Nate st. was a pilot he had been in the army also and Ed McCully as I said was bound for either a football career or a lawyer career and all of them felt called to go to Ecuador next slide so this is the day that the three alkis came and had a friendly visit with the five men and you can see from Nate Saints face they're very happy and he had been showing him this little model balsam wood airplane and how the airplane landed and the Elco was fascinated with it but he also wanted to ride in the airplane so Nate took him up in his plane flew over the little jungle and when he saw the houses and the people come out from under the house he started to open the door to the plane to get out and Nate had to grab him and say no no you can't go out there so that's they called him George but he was one of the key event of the killers and he also has balsa wood in his ears next slide this is me my mother thinks it was the very afternoon that my father was killed so you can understand why I don't remember him as a baby but all I know what I know about my father is that he was totally dedicated to obeying God standing for Christ and I'm very very thankful that I got to live in the jungle both among the Quito Indians and then later and among the alkanes it was a very unusual thing that my mother and I were invited to live with the out cause it was because two women fled their tribe the same tribe that we knew because of violence people kept getting killed and these two women arrived at a key to a house we lived three hours from that key to a house one of the key to us came and told my mother to alkyl women have come to our house probably the men are in the in the trees and they're going to kill us all Keach was were very afraid of the Elka's and my mother went right away with her tape recorder in a notebook and she took this three hour walk and met these two women and they were perfectly blase happy to be at the key to a house of course they couldn't communicate the key to us couldn't communicate with them but they were there because they had run from the violence that was in their village and you can go to the next slide this is a baptism that one of the missionaries was able to do among this was a key to Indian later on some of the the wild Ani Indians were baptised with Steve st. when he was older and the wonderful thing is next slide my mother and I in shell Mehta which was the place where mission aviation fellowship had their plane and the station where all of the missionaries went to first before they went out to the jungle but Nate Nate knew that these missionaries in different parts of the jungle always needed supplies they needed food as well as medical supplies and so that was his job every day flying supplies to the different jungle stations and Roger you Darien and his wife were at one jungle station and Pete Fleming and his wife were at another young jungle station and my mother and father etc so we had come in to Shell meta probably to have a dentist look at our teeth so that was that day and go on to the next slide this is me in the key to a house where the two alkyl women had come and keep switching between Alka and why Oh Donny and I'll explain that the kechi was called the AL cos that word Alka because it meant savage to them and they when they came to understand who God was and who Christ was through my mother died uma and Rachel st. they said we don't want to be called out cos anymore because we're going to stop killing and that's they just decided like that there they all decided they should not kill anymore and that's how those two women who came to this house my mother invited them to come live with us and they stayed with us almost a year and mother slowly was beginning to learn their language and at the end of that time they said we're going back to our village we want you to come with us and that other lady Rachel Saint because we want you to tell us about God we know that killing is wrong so they had their own moral code some of you in high school have heard the people groups all over the world have their own moral codes and we have in the Bible that we have eternity in our hearts so we know there's a God even if we've never heard of Jesus the alkis knew there was a god they knew there was a creator before anybody had gone to tell them that and they didn't know about Jesus so when Die Yuma and my mother and Rachel came to tell them they said we want to follow God's trail next slide this is my mother with one of the alka Indians and she is one of the women that was first came out of the tribe to visit Akitas and then invited us back to live with them this is my mother and me obviously I'm perfectly happy when you all were three and four and five you didn't care whether you lived in Iowa or wherever you lived you lived wherever your parents had brought you and so I was I knew there was some dangers but I was not really afraid of much so I was perfectly happy playing with the Indian children next slide I had a birthday when I turned for a cake was sent with the parachute airplane dropped weekly for us and so I had a birthday party with my little friends my mother used to say in one of the documentary she made called three gates of splendor note that they're wearing the proper suits you have a birthday suit no clothes at all so they were wearing no clothes okay next slide the man with I am talking to on the right is one of the killers as I said there were 10 men in the tribe and all of them went to ambush the five white men they became our friends they were kind to us when they had extra food they offered it to us extra fish extra monkey meat they taught me to suck the brains out of a monkey after it had been roasted of course so he was one of the killers and they were perfectly peaceful and kind to us and we're very very thankful for those two and a half years we got to live with them diamo one of the alkis had fled the tribe many years before she had been with Keita's and they all wore this style of clothing same top navy blue skirt and so dye yuma and Rachel decided that all the out cos needed to wear clothing my mother was not for changing their culture she was there simply to bring the gospel but Rachel and I Yuma felt they should all wear clothes so they started bringing clothes for the alkis to put on next slide these this is Barbara you derry sorry this is Roger you Darian and his wife Barbara and their little boy and she had just that boy when her husband was killed but she was expecting her a second baby oh I'm sorry I see they don't see the little girl there too they have two children and that is all they had next slide this is Marge st. Yong and Marge st. older mink ie was one of the killers and Steve st. got to know him very well because Steve went to to Ecuador and lived with the alkis for a year and a half and mink ie became a very very dear friend and his chief Saints children called mink ie their grandfather because he had actually killed Nate Saints they figured out from the description of the men that he was the one that actually speared Nate Saint but because of Christianity because of Christ he had of course asked for forgiveness and and wanted to be Steve Saints friend and Marge st. of course became his friend two out of the five widows there are only two still living Olive Fleming and Barbour you Darren Darian let's go to the next line this is Mary Lou McCauley and her husband Edie she is crying in the right hand picture because she was being interviewed by Steve st. for another documentary called beyond the gates and she was telling the story of when the men went and so that's why she has tears they had two boys and she was expecting her third when her husband was killed next story next slide this is olive fleming peat and olive on the left and this is her now she lives near Wheaton Illinois so not too far from here okay next slide me and my mother my mother got dementia and she was about 75 and she died in 2015 I loved reading to her since she didn't read much to herself anymore after she got dementia next slide that's it end of the show okay and we're supposed to stop when I need I need some sign from somebody when we're supposed to stop it is 3:25 okay all right thank you all for listening and may I may I just remind you that obedience to God is far far more joyful than giving in to your feelings so if you read the Word of God and you follow Christ you will be a happy person and that's why I wanted to title my talk God wants you to be happy or happiness is what God wants and I'm truly happy because not because I've lost my mother and father but the fact that I know Jesus the one that they served I want you all to be happy too so choose to obey Him thank you [Applause]

Channel: Unity Christian High School

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Length: 35min 13sec (2113 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 02 2018