Lisa Barry: All this week on Gateway to Joy, Elisabeth Elliot is going through one her journals to trace the hand of God in her life. Yesterday she talked about the Quichua women who invited her to take a five-hour walk through the jungle back to their camp. Can you even imagine taking on such a trek? It's beyond me. But in page after page of Elisabeth's writing, we discover that even in the most incredible circumstances, God was in control and leading step by step. Let's learn more about that journey into Auca civilization as we begin this Tuesday edition of Gateway to Joy. Here's Elisabeth to get us started.

Elisabeth Elliot: "You are loved with an everlasting love." That?s what the Bible says. "And underneath are the everlasting arms." This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot, continuing my story today of the sequel to the story called "Through Gates of Splendor"?the story of five men who were killed in 1956. This is my story of the tremendous privilege that God gave me of making contact about a year and a half later with two members of the Auca tribe. No one else had gone in there and come out alive, but these two women showed up. God enabled me to be at the right place at the right time.

I wrote in November of 1957, as I was sitting there in a Quichua house with two Auca women on one of the tributaries of the Curaray River, where the men had been killed. I wrote, "I can sense even a feeling of complete security here. ?Oh, they wouldn?t come here. We?re fine here.? But that was like Jim?s ?We feel very secure in our tree house.? But a horse is a vain thing for safety; so is an Indian house or anything but God, who is my strong tower.

For the last weeks in Shandia"?the station on which Jim and I had worked together?"I had a sense of imminent destiny, a sense of something moving me away. I had been wondering what the next step would be, moving one step at a time. Each time I slept on my bed, I thanked God for its blessed comfort and wondered how long it might be before I?d be sleeping on a bamboo bed with Aucas."

Well, I was mistaken about the bamboo bed, because the Aucas didn?t have any of those. But when I did go to live with the Aucas later, we always slept in a hammock. Little Valerie slept on a bamboo slab. But I had not gotten to the Auca village itself. Remember?I?m still with Quichua Indians, and two Auca women are there with me.

So I?m writing, "The toads and frogs are making a great buzzing, clicking, croaking and quacking and zinging noise. The tiny kerosene lamp makes me crouch low to see the paper, which contributes to a backache. Total food today?a good breakfast, half a cheese sandwich at 2:30 on the trail, two papayas when I arrived, and a cup of coffee just now. Mankamu is holding a child?s head on her lap, running her fingers through her hair." Mankamu is one of the two Auca women.

"8:40 p.m. We are all on the upper level of the house now. They have put two Auca women in a tiny bamboo-walled room with the two Quichua women. Mankamu has been singing, or perhaps crying. The singing was something like this: [Auca singing]." It seemed to me like a very mournful and a very boring tone, but it went on and on and on.

The next day my journal continues. "It is 9:30 a.m. The plane flew over at 8:00 and Johnny, the pilot, shouted that Dr. Tidmarsh is on his way." He is the man with whose wife I had been staying for a few days. Dr. Tidmarsh was a British missionary.

"The hours drag and the misery of sitting on a tiny block of wood, while clouds of flies attacked legs all the way up to my thighs, the heat and smell of termite nest smoke and smoke in my eyes, all helped to destroy any feeling of romance. But I thank God from my heart for bringing me here.

It?s now 12:45 p.m. The Quichuas who did not go fishing have spent the entire day sitting. The women have managed to cook up a few pots of food. Men twiddle a stick, pick at an old fiddle, kill flies with a wooden paddle, pick scabs. One woman takes her husband?s trousers from the clothesline strung across the house and uses them for a potholder to take the huge clay pot from the fire, in which she has cooked the manioc. She takes off leaves and vines, which form the top, and she throws the yellow sticks out onto a large wooden tray.

The dogs barked at 1:50. Both women got quite excited and happy. Mankamu used a word that sounded like "ayamo" when an airplane went by at 2:00. The Quichuas now tell me that they can find Auca footprints in their plantations now since the dogs barked 20 minutes ago. They found yuca sticks broken off. Yuca is their main staple food that they cultivate. So when the Quichua Indians found yuca sticks broken off with the milk still running out of them, they knew of course that outsiders had been there. The only possible outsiders would be Auca Indians."

So you can imagine that there was quite a measure of fear among the Quichua Indians. There was no way for any of us to understand the language that these two women, Mankamu and Mintaka, were speaking. So we were all a little bit on edge. Yet the Lord continued to give me such a peaceful confidence in His direction.

"2 p.m. I just had a bath with a bunch of Quichua and Auca women. 2:45. I am now sitting at a feast in the next house?delicious boiled fish and plantain. Right now five people are slurping the broth from two plates with four spoons.

I had thought when the pilot shouted to me from the plane this morning, ?Dr. Tidmarsh is on the way,? that if he was, something must have happened, because that was 8 a.m. and it was now 2:45.

Mankamu has strings tied just below both knees. Mintaka has nothing." I learned of course that all Auca Indians wore strings; some on their knees or above their knees, some above the arm, and one string around the hips, and nothing else.

So I wrote in my journal, "I have learned today to appreciate more than ever in my life the comfort of a chair. I am simply exhausted with squatting. And the flies! Oh, the flies! It?s incredible to me that these Indians can spend day after day like this, simply waiting for time to pass, no diversion even to kill it with, no goal, no hurry, no duties. Talk about a simple life! What is the Gospel to do in a culture like this? The Quichuas here use the old-style fire, for the most part. Three 10? foot logs, which serve as seats. The 10?-foot logs of course can reach outside the house, because there is no wall on the first floor of this particular Quichua home."

So they bring in three 10?-foot logs and build the fire of course where the three logs come together. They would sit on the logs while the end of the log was burning. So they served as seats and as stands for the pots and firewood all in one. This obviates cutting firewood, too, for these logs are so many feet long.

"Dr. Tidmarsh, the British missionary, arrived at 3:40 with tape recorder. He realized when he got here that he had no tape. A man arrives an hour later with tape. His wife obviously had realized that the tape was left behind.

So Dr. Tidmarsh played the tape recorder for these two Auca women, and he spoke in Spanish, Quichua, and he had a couple of Auca words that he had learned from a girl who had left the tribe many, many years before. It was interesting to watch the responses of the Auca women, Mankamu and Mintaka. When she heard her own voice on the tape recorder, she laughed aloud.

Mankamu began to cry at about 6:30 in the evening. Of course, none of us could ask her what was wrong. 9:10 p.m. Aucas just passed the house, apparently. All the dogs were barking. The Auca women were talking about someone named Muipa. Their gestures indicated that Muipa could be a very dangerous man."

My journal continues. "Friday, November 15, 1957. Pouring rain. The river has swamped all the beaches. Dr. Tidmarsh will not be able to return today to Arajuno. It looks now as though we will not be able to get the Auca women away from here. The Indians here fear reprisal should the other Aucas come out and fail to find the two women."

I?ll put in my parentheses that of course you can imagine the quandary that we were all in?all the Quichuas and I?not knowing why these two women had come out, not knowing if perhaps they might be a decoy and would just be preparing the way for further spearings.

My journal says, "As my thinking runs now, I must stay here with them so as to, number one, get all the language material possible while the bird is in the hand; number two, try to keep them happy. So this means, number one, a house. Should it be here in this community, which is about a mile from an airstrip? The Indians have offered to Dr. Tidmarsh a piece of land for a house. B) Should it be on the airstrip, which might be dangerous unnecessarily?"

The second decision I was going to have to make was "Shall I have them bring Valerie down? I feel that she must be with me. I have been here now for two whole days, and Valerie was left back with the other missionary lady."

I?ll continue with my story tomorrow.

Lisa Barry: You've been listening to excerpts from a book called THE SAVAGE, MY KINSMAN, as well as some of Elisabeth?s journal writings that chronicle her missionary work after the five men were killed in Ecuador. I've heard this stuff so many times, and yet I sit in amazement every time. It's an incredible story that your friends just won't believe it if they don't hear it for themselves. That's why you might want to purchase a copy of this one-week series. It's called JUNGLE STORIES and you can order it from Gateway to Joy. Or you can read it all for yourself in a book titled THE SAVAGE, MY KINSMAN.

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Elisabeth tells more about the Auca women next time, so make sure and join us for the next Gateway to Joy.