Very few people will know the name, and fewer still will mourn his passing, but Mincaye Enquedi passed away peacefully at his home in the tiny village of Tzapino, in April. The way he came to Christ is, however, well known.
Mincaye, meaning ‘wasp’, was born into the violent Huaorani tribe, called the Aucas or ‘savages’, in the Amazon Rain Forest of eastern Ecuador, South America. Historically, every encounter with this remote tribe had ended in death. On 8 January 1956, five American missionaries found this out, to their fatal cost, when they were tragically killed in the jungles of Ecuador.
Some six months earlier, with the intention of being the first Christians to evangelise the previously unreached Aucas, the missionaries began making regular flights to drop gifts over Huaorani settlements. After several months of exchanging gifts, the missionaries established a camp at Palm Beach, a sandbar along the Curaray River (a few kilometres from Huaorani settlements) on 3 January 1956. Sadly, their valiant efforts came to an end a few days later, when all five – Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming and Roger Youderian were attacked and speared to death by the tribesmen. While their missionary vision was to win the Aucas for Christ, the headlines broadcast only one fact: the five missionaries had signed their own death warrant and wasted their lives for nothing.
