Dear Church Family,
I received an email this week that featured an obituary. I rarely get such content, but this proved to be so noteworthy that I must share parts of it with you. The deceased gained fame 64 years ago after five missionaries were found murdered along a jungle river in Ecuador. By our standards, he was not a smart man. He could only count to twenty because that was how many fingers and toes he had. Yet as news spread of the evil act that he and five other members of his primitive tribe, he became known around the world.
Incredibly, within a few years he was traveling the world telling people about what he had done. Millions of people heard in person his story. A movie was made about him and the bloody act that left multiple families in grief with five widows taking care of several children. Even harder to believe is that a son of one of the dead grew so close to this man he called him “Grandfather” and traveled with him on his speaking tours – even sleeping in the same room. That son, named Steve Saint, wrote the loving obituary.
The man’s name was Mincaye. The book and movie “The End of the Spear” tell the story of how the Gospel radically changed a man who was raised in a primitive, violence-filled tribe and lived in the Amazon rain forest. Steve Saint writes the theme of Mincaye’s talks was, “We lived angry, hating and killing for no reason, until they brought us God’s markings. Now, those of us who walk God’s trail live happily and peace.” A maxim that I quote from time to time certainly proved true in his life, “God loves us so much He accepts just the way we are. But God loves us so much He does not let us stay the way we are.” Mincaye visited our church as least once and maybe twice with our beloved Catherine Peeke translating his words into English in a similar way to which she translated the Bible into his native language.
Note the depth of how God changed the one-time head-hunter. Steve Saint reflected, “I have known Mincaye since I was a little boy when he took me under his wing and had his sons teach me to blowgun hunt. He was one of my dearest friends in the world. Yes, he killed my father, but he loved me and my family. One of my grandsons is named Mincaye.”
WOW! His life was a glorious demonstration of the power of the Gospel to change a life that was lost in sin. All of us are as evil as Mincaye. By faith in Christ and His righteousness we have the same power of change in us as Mincaye. May God change us to be more like our Savior.
With great hope,
Pastor Gillikin