ILL-FATED MISSION

Slain American Missionary Warned Mom He Might Be Killed

“You guys might think I’m crazy in all this but I think it’s worth it to declare Jesus to these people,” he wrote to his parents.

John Allen Chau, the 26-year-old American missionary killed by an isolated Indian tribe on a remote island over the weekend, wrote a message to his parents acknowledging that he might wind up dead shortly before he was shot by an arrow. “You guys might think I’m crazy in all this but I think it’s worth it to declare Jesus to these people,” he wrote Friday, a day before he was killed. Chau seemed fully aware of the risks he was taking in approaching a tribe on North Sentinel Island known for firing bows and arrows at any outsiders. “Please do not be angry at them or at God if I get killed—rather please live your lives in obedience to whatever He has called you to and I’ll see you again,” Chau wrote to his mother and father. Friends interviewed by CNN said Chau was determined to visit the island even though it was declared off limits by Indian authorities. He reportedly was not deterred even after his first attempt at winning over the island's residents ended in tribespeople destroying his canoe and leaving him with arrow injuries. A child also reportedly fired an arrow into a bible he was holding up to show them. “God, I don’t want to die. WHO WILL TAKE MY PLACE if I do?” he wrote in a diary entry detailing that first encounter. “Why does this beautiful place have to have so much death here?” A day later, on Nov. 17, he returned again and fishermen later reported seeing tribespeople dragging his body around. Police have yet to recover his body.

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American ‘Killed by Isolated Tribe on Indian Island’