Trust and obey

”I have now met four of the seven men who killed our husbands,” 31-year-old missionary Elisabeth Elliot wrote to two friends from an Ecuadorian jungle. It was October 1958.

Two-and-a-half years earlier, a group of Waorani Indians, known locally as Aucas or “savages,” had speared to death Elliot’s husband, Jim, along with his four male companions, on a river beach. The missionaries had been attempting to befriend the unreached tribe. The Indians thought the white men were cannibals.

Now Elliot—along with Valerie, her 3-year-old daughter, and Rachel Saint, the sister of one of the murdered missionaries—was sleeping in a leaky, leaf-thatched hut, eating roasted monkey limbs, swatting gnats, and listening to frogs, cicadas, and chanting Indians at night. The young widow and single mother was voluntarily doing what seemed crazy—living among the very tribe that had massacred her husband. She and Saint hoped to translate the Bible into the Waorani language.

After Valerie asked if one of the tribesmen was her daddy, Elliot explained that no, these were the men who killed him. “Oh,” said the little girl.

“New situations are only new arenas for faith to be proved,” Elliot wrote to her friends. “Pray that my faith rest firmly in the Pioneer and Perfecter.”

‘God’s ways are mysterious and our faith develops strong muscles as we negotiate the twists and turns of our lives.’ —Elliot

For the next half-century, Elliot made resting in God a life message. She was a best-selling author, speaker, professor, and radio teacher, encouraging readers and listeners to trust and obey a sovereign God, whatever the circumstance.

Elliot died June 15 at the age of 88 after a decade of dementia and a series of mini-strokes. She is survived by her daughter, eight grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, and her third husband, Lars Gren, 78.

ELLIOT WAS BORN ELISABETH HOWARD IN BELGIUM TO MISSIONARY PARENTS. The family returned to the United States while Elliot was still a baby, and her father became editor of The Sunday-School Times in Philadelphia. At home, he led the family in daily hymn singing and readings from the Bible and authors like Charles Spurgeon and Jonathan Edwards. He kept a dictionary near the dinner table so the six children (“Betty,” as friends called her, was the second oldest) could look up unfamiliar words. They often set out extra plates for missionary visitors.

By her request, at the age of 14, Elliot began attending Hampden DuBose Academy, a Christian boarding school in Orlando, Fla., where she read the works of Amy Carmichael, whom she later called “my first spiritual mother.” At Wheaton College in Illinois she studied Greek in order to prepare for Bible translation work. There she met Jim Elliot, who was also preparing to be a missionary translator.

The two fell in love, but stayed single (and chaste) for five years, uncertain whether God would ever allow their individual missionary callings to merge.

To their profound delight, God did. They married in Quito, Ecuador, in 1953.

But 27 months later, Elliot was the widowed mother of a 10-month-old baby.

The story of the martyred missionaries made national news, including a feature in Life. Elliot was asked to write an in-depth account. The resulting book was an instant bestseller.

“Through Gates of Splendor was the defining missionary story for evangelicals in the 20th century,” says Kathryn Long, a history professor at Wheaton. “In the hands of Elisabeth Elliot it really became a story of God’s work.”

After Jim was killed, she could have left the field altogether. Instead, she chose to continue the work among the Waorani tribe, living among them for two years (Saint stayed her entire life). Ultimately, five of the tribesmen responsible for the massacre (there were six involved, not seven) made professions of faith. Today, about a quarter of the Waorani people are practicing Christians.

During her decade in Ecuador, Elliot studied three indigenous languages but met opportunities for deep discouragement: Her Indian translator was murdered, and a suitcase stuffed with three years’ worth of translation notes disappeared from the top of a bus.

After returning to the United States permanently in 1963, Elliot rediscovered romantic love in the form of Addison Leitch, a religion professor she married in 1969. But tragedy struck again: Leitch died of cancer four years later.

Reflecting on her earthly losses, Elliot wrote in 2003, “God’s ways are mysterious and our faith develops strong muscles as we negotiate the twists and turns of our lives.”

It seemed a mystery to Elliot when, after Leitch’s death, one of her lodgers—a man 10 years her junior—professed an interest in her. She promptly ordered him to move out. But the man, Lars Gren, persisted, clearing her driveway of snow and driving her on errands. The two married in 1977.

THROUGHOUT HER LIFE, ELLIOT AUTHORED 28 BOOKS on topics like missions work, discipline, suffering, courtship, family life, loneliness, and obedience. Some books were controversial for including nudity (in photos of tribal members) and for raising difficult questions about missions work.

She spoke at women’s conferences. At the prompting of one of her fans, she began the Gateway to Joy radio program, which ran from 1988 to 2001, offering practical insight on motherhood, spiritual disciplines, and theology. She wrote her notes for each 12-minute radio recording on a single 3-by-5-inch index card.

In both her books and radio talks, she was known for her conservative views of gender roles in marriage and the home. She took aim at modern feminism in Let Me Be a Woman: “The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian does make me a different kind of woman.”

Elliot didn’t mince words and could be blunt. She disliked sentimentality. She was also naturally shy. “A lot of people saw her as cool, as wanting to keep people at arm’s length,” says Arlita Winston, a family friend. “That was not the real Elisabeth Elliot.”

Rather, beneath the surface she nurtured a “deep and loving warmth that connected quickly with others going through sorrow,” Winston said.

Fans sent constant letters, and Elliot faithfully responded with handwritten or typed notes, dispensing succinct counsel. One such correspondence resulted in a deep friendship with Glenda Revell, a woman who confided she’d been nearly aborted by her own mother, and had experienced an abusive childhood.

Elliot volunteered to be a substitute mom. She began signing her letters to Revell, “With my love, Mother.” She let Revell’s four children call her and Gren “granny” and “gramps,” and invited the family to their oceanfront home in Gloucester, Mass.

“All the mothering that I missed out on, I have had because God crossed our paths,” Revell says. “I was a street urchin, really. There was nothing that would have recommended me to her.”

She was willing to prod her friends, sometimes with a dose of humor. She once asked Winston, who was recovering from a season of discouragement, “Arlita, why aren’t you teaching?”

Winston balked. “What would I teach?” she said.

Elliot replied dryly: “Well, try the Bible.”

Winston subsequently started a women’s Bible study that grew to 100 people.

Elliot devoured books, especially classical literature. She played the piano and had memorized many hymns—favorites included “How Firm a Foundation”; “Jesus, I Am Resting, Resting”; and “Like a River Glorious.” She exercised daily, walking, bicycling, or swimming in the ocean. She loved dog shows, plays, and whale watching.

Gren last year told WORLD Elliot had met the onset of chronic memory loss the same way she met previous bereavements: with peace.

“While it is perfectly true that some of my worst fears did, in fact, materialize, I see them now as ‘an abyss and mass of mercies,’ appointed and assigned by a loving and merciful Father who sees the end from the beginning. He asks us to trust Him,” she wrote in 1996, borrowing the “mass of mercies” line from 17th-century Englishman Sir Thomas Browne.

She emphasized it: “Trust Him! Do what He says!”