This Week's Story
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Reaching Waorani with the Gospel or missions to the moon are not prescriptions for cowards.
This Week’s Story relives American history and the Bible through brief inspiring stories presented on mp3 audio recordings and text for reading.
Missionaries and Astronauts Live with Faith and Sacrifice! part two
The vision of reaching the Waorani tribe in the 1950’s was becoming real! Operation Auca was more than a dangerous impossibility. To the five American men each day’s preparations drew them closer to making contact with the isolated hostile tribe roaming jungles along the Curaray River of Ecuador. Could the men reach these unreached people and share the Gospel? Would their air drops to Waorani build friendship?
The missionaries knew that faith in God and a willingness to accept sacrifice was essential. Their vision was not to create an American outpost for the United States. They knew that a tribe being decimated by tribal arguments could have peace. The people could have their language written. They could learn to read and write. They could receive medical help. The message of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection could bring life to them, not extinction.
We people of the age of early space exploration to the moon remember the early astronauts and spacecrafts. Astronauts committed to dangerous missions involving lengthy preparations and intense work. For some astronauts it ended in death, as it did with the five Christian missionaries in Operation Auca.
In Apollo 8 three astronauts, Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman, travelled for 76 hours to lunar orbit with NO certainty they would reach the Moon or return safely to earth. They proved to be in the first spacecraft with a human crew to leave the Earth’s orbit. They reached the Moon and orbited it ten times, saw the far side of the Moon, and demonstrated the possibility of future lunar landings. They returned safely to Earth. Before returning to Earth, they surprised and inspired earth dwellers.
Christmas Eve on December 24, 1968 Anders, Lovell, and Borman WHILE orbiting around the Moon broadcast to Earth and sent pictures of the Moon’s surface and the Earth. All three astronauts shared in reading Genesis1: verses 1 through 10 from the King James translation of the Bible. The broadcast could be heard by humans in countries around the Earth. It was mind-boggling! No words could describe the experience.
Bill began with Genesis1:1 through 4. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light; and there was light.’ And God saw the light, that it was good and God divided the light from the darkness.”
The earth’s population hushed and listened.
In the 1950’s the five missionaries were speared, left families, and in the 1960’s death and life accompanied the astronauts, but it cannot be said their legacy is defeat. It is the success of sacrifice and faith, and the courage that can inspirei future generations.
Soon we will meet the families explore the character and strategies of the five missionaries.
Our recording team today is Todd Warren, Gwen Crawford, Carlos Gamez, and Barbara Steiner. Please follow thisweeksstory.com.
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