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We didn’t go to a third world country just to build a house and see how we could survive in the Peruvian rain forest. We went there to take the message of the Gospel to a primitive tribe of Indians.

Our neighbors considered us to be intruders, and we were. We had not been invited to invade their territory. Those Indians did not welcome strangers. I knew of the shaman’s threats to kill my family – and he could have made good those threats.

I was always aware that we were living among vicious headhunters who killed with only the slightest provocation.

Used by permission
William Jaimeson

God had sent me there to show those people His love. He told me to go back into the dark Aguaruna homes and tell them that Jesus loves them. Those heathen Indians hadn’t been left out of John 3:16

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son.”

But I soon discovered that there was no way to say in the Aguaruna language “God loves you.”

I knew God wasn’t mad at the mothers for killing their babies. He loved those mothers. He wasn’t angry with the murderer who killed the man whose skeleton Ramon and I found along the jungle trail. He loved that murderer too. That was the jungle culture to which I took my family.

Hundreds of books have been written about David Livingstone, William Carey, Hudson Taylor, David Brainerd and others; but those missionaries themselves did not write any of those books.

David Livingston floated down many African rivers but I can’t find a single book or letter in which he wrote about those adventures. I wanted Dr. Livingston himself tell me about his first convert and how he met the challenge of communicating the Gospel to people who did not speak or understand a word of his language. I wanted him to tell me how he made word lists and deciphered strange tribal languages without any linguistic training. Dr. Livingston was a medical doctor. I wonder if he did significantly more than Genny and I did treating a tribe of jungle Indians.

You will have to read the book to see how God used two missionary kids with absolutely no medical training to treat more than 1800 patients the last year we were at the Cusu mission.

Don’t miss the chapter entitled “The Pastor Killed The Baby” to read how God miraculously spared my family.

I have awakened many nights in a cold sweat contemplating what would have happened that rainy Sunday afternoon if that child had died. Those 30 angry Indians armed to the teeth with their primitive weapons had not come to me for prayer or help. They weren’t bringing me a sick child expecting me to do a healing miracle. They knew the baby was dead and they had come to kill my family. There would have been no ceremony, no discussion, and no kangaroo court to condemn me. No one would have come to my defense. Within minutes there on that muddy hillside I would have watched those savage headhunters split the skulls of my four children and then my wife Genny, knowing my turn was next. Our bloody bodies would have been left lying in the mud for the vultures. They would have burned our home and every other mission building to rid the jungle of our spirits. I wonder how long it would have taken for word of that massacre to reach the outside world? It was a serious incident. Only God’s intervention spared our family that day. Every time my mind goes back to that near tragedy, I can only say, “Thank you, Jesus.”

“Flinner, did anyone get saved?”

I don’t know. Just because a man begins to act and dress like a Christian doesn’t mean he is a Christian. I had no way to know what was going on in a heathen mind and a heathen heart.

Look at this picture of an Indian with his wives and children kneeling in our front yard.

I’ll never forget that drunken Indian kneeling in the mud. He had four wives. He’d killed a dozen people including some of his own children. He was bound by the diabolic power of the witchdoctor. His world was one of fear, darkness and demonism. He didn’t know what sin was or how to confess it. He knew nothing about heaven and hell. He could not understand the concept that there is a God who loves him.

If that Indian attended your church next Sunday morning and went forward to get saved, what would he have to do to be accepted by your church community as a believer? Could he be a Christian and keep his four wives? If not how would he get rid of the ones he couldn’t keep? The only solution for him in his Aguaruna culture would be to kill them. Would he have to give up the intoxicating drink masato before God could save him? The man wore a miniskirt. Is that the appropriate dress for a Christian man?

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