NATE SAINT
1923 - 1956

"And people who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives…and when the bubble has burst they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted."

Nate Saint was 32 years old (born 1923), and devoted to flying. He had taken flying lessons in high school and served in the Air Force in Wwii. After the war, he enrolled in Wheaton College to prepare for foreign mission work, dropped out to join the Missionary Aviation Fellowship, established a base at Shell Mera (an abandoned oil exploration camp in Ecuador) in September 1948, and flew short hops to keep missionaries supplied with medicines, mail, etc. Once his plane crashed, but a few weeks later he returned to work in a cast from his neck to his thighs. 

Nate provided an essential service to those missionaries in the mission stations deep in the jungle. 

Jim Elliot and Peter Fleming arrived in Ecuador in 1952. They decided to take the gospel to the Auca indians and started working with Nate to establish a mission station. 

In 1955 they began their attempts to get to know the mysterious Auca tribe. They decided to drop gifts to the Auca tribe from Nate Saint's aeroplane. Eventually they agreed that the time was right for them to go into Auca territory. They flew in and established a base. They made initial contact with some members of the tribe and contacted the missionary post by radio to tell them that things were going well. That was the last time that contact was made.

The five men were Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Nate Saint, Roger Youderin and Peter Fleming. Their bodies were recovered and their equipment and personal property was brought back. Their story has become one of the great missionary tales throughout the world. Many, many people have been inspired by these men.  The deaths of these men, a personal tragedy for their families, has become a world-wide testimony of faith in Christ and dedication to the work of God, which is much, much bigger than the conversion of a jungle tribe to Christianity.