by Michelle Adserias
Being a missionary was in Elisabeth Elliot’s to DNA. She was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1926, where her parents served as missionaries. When she was just one year old, they moved to Germantown, Pennsylvania where her father continued teaching and ministering to people as the editor of the Sunday School Times. Elisabeth became the oldest of six children.
After graduating from high school, Elisabeth attended Wheaton College. She had her heart and mind set on becoming a Bible translator for an unreached region of the world. It was there she met Jim Elliot, a fellow student who shared her burden for people in remote areas of the world.
Initially, Both Jim and Elisabeth went to Ecuador on mission trips, but to different areas. After they married, in 1953, they had one child, Valerie. As a family, they served the Quichua tribe for three years, winning many souls to Christ. During this time, they had occasional contact with the Auca tribe and a new ministry vision was born.
Jim Elliot and four other missionaries began trying to reach the Auca Indians, an aggressive tribe that had never heard the Gospel. They began by dropping gifts from Nate Saints’ airplane. In time, they found a strip of sand where they could land and make contact. They shared some promising, friendly exchanges with a few members of the tribe. But the Auca people feared the men were coming to take their land and livelihoods. On their next visit, all five men were killed.
The women left behind had a decision to make. They could return home, bitter and angry about losing those they loved, or stay and finish the work God had begun. Elisabeth and Rachael Saint, Nate Saint’s sister, stayed on in Ecuador with the Quichua people. While there, two Auca women stayed with Elisabeth and they forged friendships. God opened the door for Elisabeth, her young daughter, and Rachael to return to the Auca tribe and share Christ’s love with them.
The forgiveness Elisabeth and Rachel showed the people who had killed their loved ones was a living, breathing example of God’s forgiveness. These two women, acting out of obedience to God in heart-wrenching circumstances, were able to bring many of the Auca people to Christ.
After two years in Ecuador, Elisabeth returned to the United States. She remarried but lost her husband to cancer just four years later. She then married Lars Gren. They parted at her death in 2015.
In addition to her extraordinary ministry in Ecuador, Elisabeth wrote 24 books and toured throughout the country, teaching and inspiring men and women to live every day passionately serving their Savior.
“Ordinary work, which is what most of us do, most of the time, is ordained by God every bit as much as is the extraordinary.”
Elisabeth Elliot
