As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
Isaiah 55:10-11
Ancel Edwin Allen (1956)
Pilot Project
Hearing about the deaths of American missionaries Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully and Peter Fleming (see January 10) made Ancel, a trained pilot and mechanic, all the more determined to use his skills to take the Gospel to the unreached. Just nine months after these five were brutally killed by Auca Indians in Ecuador, Ancel too was martyred.
Having served in the United States Air Force as a radio technician during World War Two, Ancel had obtained his private pilot’s licence while operating an airport. His upbringing had had a Christian influence but it was not until 1950 that he committed his life to Christ. In 1953 he entered a missionary technical course and during his final semester he met the director of a small mission called Air Mail From God that operated in Mexico. Ancel and his wife Naomi felt led to join this work.
The pair started work with zeal in mid-August 1956; Ancel flew the plane while Naomi dropped copies of John’s Gospel into the villages below. Other Christian workers later followed up on the ground. This technique angered some of the villagers and on 21 September, gunmen in the village of San Bartono, Morelos, shot down the plane Ancel was flying and he was killed. Naomi was not on board on this occasion.
Mexican believers helped Naomi bury her 33-year-old husband the following day and she was greatly encouraged by those whose lives had been transformed by the Gospel. In Ancel’s short service of just five weeks, they had distributed 55,000 copies of the Gospel.
He whose head is in heaven need not fear to put his feet into the grave.
Herman Hooker (1804-65)