Don’t Kill Us!

The following is a read aloud story for July 2006. This is one of a series of stories especially written for Awana Clubs, home-schoolers, Sunday school classes, VBS, mission conferences, or just the fun of reading about people in a wild land called: “The Amazon Rain Forest”. Print them out. Collect them. E-mail them to others who would like to get these stories. Use them for the glory of God. We are changing the pace a bit. For the next few months I want to share some true stories of people and events that have happened in the Amazon jungle. The story you are about to read is absolutely true. I was there. God was there! It is just a fear-filled memory now as it happened July 8th and 9th, 1973. I was 34-years-old and Nadine and I were pioneering a new work with a new tribe in the deep isolated jungles of the Amazon. The Culina people were very primitive and killing one another all too frequently. And we were right in the middle of it!
The old story teller, Douemi (Dough-way-MEE)
(Missionary/cultural observer with the Amazon tribes for many years)
Serving with New Tribes Mission, Sanford, Florida

My journal entry for July 9, 1973 reads, “At midnight we were standing under a star-filled sky with a fattening moon slowly heading West. At our feet lay a dead man whose life was now past and whose eternal soul was forever gone…how dreadfully sad! Who knows the deep sorrow we feel at seeing a lifeless corpse of an Indian man who never knew Jesus personally. We gave him some Gospel, BUT PERHAPS TOO LITTLE TOO LATE!”
Isanaua. We had nicknamed this man “the gorilla”, as he was of larger stature than the average Culina. Stout. Thick. Strong. He was the brother of our village chief, Nodia, and he was a killer. Nodia, himself, had killed nine different Culina before he was 30-years-old, and Isanaua had killed his share. They were friendly to us and wanted us to live in their village, but they always had murder on their minds. Revenge killings for past crimes against their clan members. It was a vicious cycle of kill “them” because they had attacked and killed “us”. Interclan warfare.
But what happened on Sunday, July 8th, was not a revenge killing. Isanaua had two wives and yet when a new family came to the village with a teenage daughter, he wanted her for a wife too. He talked to the girl’s father, Iba, and apparently Iba accepted a payment for his daughter to be Isanaua’s third wife. Something was given in exchange. But the young lady decided she did not want to be wife # 3! And she certainly did not want to be married to a “gorilla”. So, Iba and his family took their daughter when Isanaua was not home and they fled up the jungle river to another village. When the man came home, he was humiliated and shamed by everyone knowing he had been rejected by the young teenager. He immediately put on the war paint…completely covering his face with red dye and got his grown sons to do the same. Off they raced by trail to kill Iba and his family!!
We were a young missionary team. Ray Mellott, a World War II veteran, had just flown in to spend a few days building his house and his wife, Lena, stayed out at the town. Mark Emsheimer, a young man in his 20s and single, was hosting Ray in Mark’s newly made house. And Nadine and I had small children at home, including a baby boy, Brad, who had just arrived in May. A young man from Oregon, Dan Danforth, was there to help us finish up our new house. We had never been in a situation like this before. The evening of July 8th Isanaua and his clan ambushed and murdered Iba as he was coming down the river in the dark to escape. They blasted him with shotguns. Fortunately, only Iba was killed in the ambush and the other members of his family escaped into the woods. But about 11:30 at night we were all awakened by the frantic shouts and screams and wailings of women outside our house, “YOUR PEOPLE HAVE KILLED MY HUSBAND! IBA IS DEAD! YOUR PEOPLE KILLED HIM!” Iba’s wife was frantic. Mark, Ray, and I decided to go over to the village and there we found the blasted body of the Indian man. Iba’s clan and family were just sure that Isanaua and his people were going to come in the night and kill them all. The women kept going down the trail and shouting, “DON’T KILL US! DON’T KILL US!” They would shout out our names into the dark telling the unseen enemy that we were also there!
Fear. Cold, clammy fear. Would they attack? Were they actually out there in the dark? How were Nadine and the children doing over at the house with Dan as their sole protector? Nadine admitted she slept very little. Ray and Mark and I sat by the body talking about eternal souls. Death is so final. No more hope to save this soul. He was in Hell. These are terrible realities to Bible-believing missionaries. We were just learning their tongue and we hadn’t the language well enough to tell them of Jesus and what He did for them on the Cross. How frustrating! We listened all night to the women wailing and shouting out “DON’T KILL US!” One time I heard a noise in the dark and I sprung up and walked down the trail a few feet and shouted, “ISANAUA, IT IS I!! IT IS DOUEMI! DON’T KILL US!” We learned later they had not even come to the village that night and were actually far, far away fleeing from the fear of avengers who would be after them!
Have you ever been in a fear filled circumstance? Your heart beats rapidly and you begin to sweat even on the coolest of nights. You keep repeating to yourself, “Fear not!”, but you keep fearing anyway. It is a human response. But God has promised to never leave us or forsake us…and He never does! When you get scared about something…a noise in the dark or whatever…just pray to God and He will calm your heart. He always does! Read Psalm 91 and especially verse 5 which says, “thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night”. Even if that “terror” is a wild, gorilla-like man!