The Mantle on the Tarmac

When missionary pilot Nate Saint was killed by Waodani warriors in Ecuador in January 1956, his son Steve was just five years old. The boy grew up hearing stories of his father's final flight into the jungle — the yellow Piper Cruiser circling above the Curaray River, the five men who stepped onto that sandbar and never came home. Steve could have walked away from that legacy. He could have let grief become a wall between himself and the people who killed his father. Instead, he did something Elisha would have understood. He went back.

At age seventeen, Steve Saint returned to the Waodani and lived among them. He learned their language, ate their food, built airstrips alongside the very men who had thrown the spears. Mincaye, one of the warriors responsible for Nate's death, became like a grandfather to Steve's own children. The work his father began with five men on a riverbank, Steve continued with an entire community.

In 2 Kings 2, Elisha watched Elijah ascend in a whirlwind and picked up the fallen mantle from the ground. He struck the Jordan and cried out, "Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?" The waters parted. The same God who empowered the master now empowered the servant. Steve Saint discovered what Elisha already knew — when God calls you to pick up a mantle, He provides the power to carry it.