I picked up this book thinking it might be similar to a Jim Elliot or Nate Saint missionary story.

But Bruce was a 19 year old boy who went about being a missionary in all the "wrong" ways. His Lutheran parents couldn't understand his personal relationship with Jesus or his desire to go to South America to work with the Indians. The Motilones, a murderous tribe no less!

The mission board denied him and he picked up his studies again in linguistics, thinking that God must have other plans. But God

I picked up this book thinking it might be similar to a Jim Elliot or Nate Saint missionary story.

But Bruce was a 19 year old boy who went about being a missionary in all the "wrong" ways. His Lutheran parents couldn't understand his personal relationship with Jesus or his desire to go to South America to work with the Indians. The Motilones, a murderous tribe no less!

The mission board denied him and he picked up his studies again in linguistics, thinking that God must have other plans. But God kept nudging him and so he went anyway. The man who was suppose to pick him up in Venezuela never did show up and that was only the beginning of a long series of "untraditional" events that would befall him as a missionary. Bruce came near death many times, experienced "shunnning" from other missionaries. But God provided money, "happenstance circumstances" and an eventual meeting of the Yuko and then the Motilone Indians. Bruce went on to acquire a brother of the tribe, Bobby, and they were as David and Jonathan. Much needed sanitary and medical help was brought to the Indians and Bruce found a way to bring the necessities without intruding on the Indian's many ways and customs. Eventually their language was established as a written one and the Gospel was translated.

The greatest lesson Bruce learned was that he didn't need Jesus to intervene and change all the trouble he was often up against. "If it weren't for Jesus, the Motilones would be pushed back into the jungle until they were slowly but surely eliminated! If it weren't for Jesus, there would be no struggle. It's not in spite of Jesus that Bobby died. It's because of Jesus...There was still so much to do...so many things that Christ had called me to do. It would take more pain, more loneliness. Maybe death. Why was it so hard? Why? Then I saw Jesus...think I see, It's the Cross." I held up my hand and put my thumb across my forefinger. "It's for this cross."