Newberg man was nearly one of slain missionaries in Ecuador

(Reprinted, with permission, from
The Newberg Graphic)

By SCHELLENE CLENDENIN
     It was January 1956. Bill Cathers and his wife were huddled around a radio in Michigan. They were trying to determine whether their missing friends were alive or dead.
     More than 50 years later, the 80-year-old’s memory is fuzzy on who informed the couple of the international broadcast. But the longtime Newberg resident remembered the newscast.
     In a somber voice, Cathers recounted the story of five missionaries — four of whom he had trained with and planned to join — who had gone missing in an Amazonian jungle in Ecuador. The men — Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Jim Elliott, Pete Fleming and Ed McCully — were later found murdered by a tribe of Indians whose reputation was legendary for its violence.
     Bill and his wife, Irene, cried at the loss of so many friends.
     The story of those men, and their families’ work to bring religion to the tribe, is told in the current nationwide film release, End of the Spear.
     Had Cathers’ not needed to return his family to the States for medical treatment, Cathers, and not Youderian, would have died in Ecuador. Youderian was Cathers’ replacement.
    “I became a good friend of Jim Elliott at Wheaton College,” Cathers said. The friends often talked about making a mission trip after graduation to somewhere in the world where the population most needed to hear the gospel.
     McCully, a fellow Wheaton student, and Fleming, a friend of Elliott’s, were recruited for the mission project. The group made its way to South America. At first, Fleming, McCully and Cathers lived together with an older missionary couple, learned about life in Ecuador and worked with the Indians.
     After six months, “Irene and I went to the western rain forest to help out a missionary family who were going home on furlough,” he said. Elliott, Fleming, McCully, and their wives, continued preparations for the mission trip.
      The group was working with a tribe of Quichua Indians. They hoped to learn enough of the indigenous languages to eventually make contact with the Acua Indians. The Acuas, now known as the Waodani, were the most violent tribe in the area. They often raided and killed other tribes, but also killed their own tribe members.
    “Anyone who wanted to reach Waodani had to go through the Quichua country,” he said.
     Enter Nate Saint, a pilot. Saint was a member of the Mission Aviation Fel-lowship, a group that flew missionaries ready to spread the gospel into hard to reach areas. Youderian signed on for the trip and the men prepared to visit the tribe.
    “We knew they were violent,” Bill Cathers said. “That was the Acua reputation.”
     The men had had recent contact with an Acua woman who eventually told stories about the tribe, how it raided similarly speaking tribes and killed one another to solve problems.
     But the missionaries had a goal. “This was religious belief,” Cathers said. “We believed that if we could reach them and make friends we could tell them the story of Jesus and his teaching.”
     In 1956, after initial contact by the missionaries, an Acua tribesman lied about the American men, saying the missionaries had attacked them. Nine Acua tribe members speared the missionaries where they camped on “Palm Beach” near Ecuador’s Curaray River.
    “We were terribly shocked,” Cathers said. The couple wondered who would care for the widows and their children and the mission stations, school, medical services and young churches there. And Cathers felt guilty. He should have been with his friends, he thought. Then Youderian would still be alive.
      “Irene and I packed up and went back down there,” he said. “We went to live with Elisabeth Elliott, who later went in with the Acua.”
     In 1958, Cathers remained to care for the mission stations while Elliott and her daughter Valerie traveled down the river to the Acua settlement, where they lived for two years.
      In 1964, Cathers returned to the United States, years before Steve Saint, son of pilot Nate Saint, returned to Ecuador to make peace with the people who killed his father.
     Cathers became a social worker, eventually ending up in Newberg where he took over care of children in difficult situations and started Chehalem Youth and Family Services.