Book Review: God Planted Five Seeds

Johnson, Jean Dye
God Planted Five Seeds.
Sanford, FL:
New Tribes Mission,
1966.


Jean Dye Johnson’s image for her title is straight from the mouth of our Lord, “Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:24) It was the darkest years of World War Two and thousands were dying on the battlefields. What did it matter that five unknown Americans died in a Bolivian jungle?

Johnson’s story begins chronologically with Cecil Dye and a “Cloud Club” outreach he started in a rented room in Saginaw, Michigan. Over a period of months, Cecil and his brother Bob became acquainted with Paul Fleming and gradually a plan evolved for an interdenominational mission to new tribes. Offers of support also came in but they all had some strings attached. “Paul and Cecil rejected all such. They would rather ‘look to the Lord.’…Through missionaries from Latin America, they learned of the unreached tribes of Bolivia, which now became their goal.” At this time Joe Moreno joined the group, offering to be “a flunky for Cecil Dye.”

By the opening of 1943, Cecil and four other men plus Joe Moreno plus some of their families were assembled in Roboré, in eastern Bolivia. Their target was the Ayoré tribes of the Sunsa Hills. For months they worked to piece together some of the language and the culture and to pinpoint their locations, then they started cutting a trail through the jungle to reach these people.

As these five men worked on the trail, communication with their families continued. Then, in November, 1943, all feedback ceased. No more was heard of Cecil Dye, Bob Dye, Dave Bacon, George Hosbach, or Eldon Hunter. Two search parties were sent in but bodies were never found.

Joe Moreno then took over leadership of the mission and worked tirelessly to track down other Ayoré groups and make contact, while the author worked out details of words, phrases, and grammar in their language.

In August, 1947, a band of Ayorés made friendly contact with two railway engineers but not until about June of 1948 did the Ayorés become friendly enough for eleven of them to sleep over in the author’s 15-feet-square, dirt-floored room. Joe arranged for the Ayorés to transfer to a palm grove called Tobité, and there, with extensive help from other missionaries on the team, they clothed and fed the “barbaros”, learned their language, taught them a bit of agriculture, and finally were able to present the gospel.

In April, 1950, an Ayoré turned up in Tobité and, in incidental questioning by an anthropologist, related most of the story of the killings of the five men. In fact, one of the killers had even been in the village.

This is the gist of Johnson’s story. The details can sometimes be revolting (Ayoré burial practices) or can tug at the heart-strings (“I like your Jesus.”)

God Planted Five Seeds is a story worth reading. We have to consider each of these five men as one of God’s elite. In that part of Bolivia there were thousands of “civilized” people who needed to hear the way of life more clearly— but these men heard God’s call to tell the Ayorés of Jesus—people who had NEVER heard of Him. Many trusted Christ, to the extent that when Johnson wrote this story twenty years after the killings she could conclude, “God had planted five seeds. With a full heart, I had seen for myself the harvest.”

Reviewed by Glenn Wilson. Special thanks to Phil Proctor for the recommendation (and for his many years of faithful service with New Tribes Mission).

Footnotes to the Book “God Planted Five Seeds”

 

1. Our own Mary Gemmell Dickson was a child in the missionary school in Esmeralda, in Cochabamba Valley, Bolivia, when the killings took place. Her parents were with the Bolivian Indian Mission and worked in the mountains at 11,000 feet. Some of the students at her school feared for their own parents who worked in the jungles. Thankfully no other lives were lost at that time.

2. Peter & Mima Horne, mentioned early on in the book as “Scottish Brethren missionaries” who hosted these five men, were from Isa Penman’s home assembly in Scotland— Waterside Gospel Hall in Irvine. In later life, they retired to Scotland but missed their adopted land so much that they finally moved back to live out their days in Bolivia. 

3. The final footnote for the moment relates to the railway station in Arica, Chile, where the missionaries had to prove that they were really transporting their own musical instruments. This was the railhead at the start of the journey to La Paz in Bolivia. See the attached photos by G.Wilson, of the “rock” at Arica, and the old railway station itself (“FERROCARRIL DE ARICA A LA PAZ”).  Ì