Dewey's legacy

I piled out of the six-seat airplane into thick, deep mud hidden by tall grass. My heart still raced from my first jungle airstrip landing. We cleared tree tops on final approach by inches before rumbling into axle-deep ruts in the grassy muck. Thick brown mud now dripped from surface of the previously red and white Cessna 206. I was amazed these airframes withstood such abuse on each landing, day after day, year after year. But this was normal operations for jungle aviation. This is missionary aviation in Ecuador.

I was still reeling from the landing when I noticed our Ecuadorian pilot Freddy, knee deep in weeds, his head bowed in prayer. Beside him stood an older gentleman, grasping Freddy’s arm and wearing one knee-high rubber boot. His other foot was bare, as if in his hurry to meet the plane he had not taken the time to don his second boot. He prayed aloud, rapidly and energetically, giving the impression that he had more to say that time would permit. There was something about him – an earnestness, a passion far deeper and more real than anything I had seen before.

Dewey, as they call him, spoke only Waorani, a language foreign to all of us, yet I learned that he meets every plane that lands and pulls aside every pilot to pray for them. Here, where there is no flight schedule and planes arrive at any time, he is always there, waiting to pray. You would never guess that once upon a time, he greeted the pilot of the first airplane he’d ever seen with a spear. He and his tribesmen killed that pilot and all four missionaries that spilled out of the little yellow airplane in 1956. That was simply their way. They knew no life but suspicion and revenge.

But now the Waoranis’ violence has given way to wide smiles of welcome. Someone said they believe they would have died out, murdered each other into extinction, if they had not met God’s love when they did. Now they love to laugh and play and sing songs of praise. They’re still deadly accurate with a blow gun or spear, but their warmth and the love of Christ in them is transparent across any language barrier. And those five martyrs surround Dewey with an almost tangible presence of brotherhood, as if they know they died for this and it was worth it.

How I’d love to sit at Dewey’s muddy feet and listen to his story. What enables him to live so fully from the depths of his heart, to be so completely real that his heart is unmistakably evident to a complete stranger? It reminds me of the old song, “What Kind of Joy is This?” Someday, I might be able to look at the brightly feathered spear we bought from the Waorani without being overwhelmed by emotion, but hopefully not soon.

So we’re back safely in the US, with the last vestiges of gastric entertainment running its course while a piece of our hearts lingers in Ecuador with the people and the brave missionary pilots who serve them ( http://www.maf.org/ ).

Pictures and stories of our Ecuador trip are posted on our website: http://www.geocities.com/dlkohout/ecuador/ecuador