June 12. Steve Saint. Steve was born to missionaries in Ecuador—missionaries who wanted to reach a tribe whose basic teaching was, “[You] must spear and live or be speared and die.”
And when Steve was five, natives speared his father, jungle-pilot Nate Saint, to death. After a time, the violent tribe did repent and turn to Christ, and one of the men who had attacked Nate Saint ended up baptizing Steve.
After high school, Steve went to the United States and built a successful business career.
But Steve’s Aunt Rachel, also a missionary, had been serving the tribe for thirty-six years. And when she died at the age of eighty, that same tribe asked Steve to come back to the jungle to help them.
So Steve, his wife, and their four teenage children moved back to the jungle. That’s when Steve realized that providing technology could make the tribe self-sufficient.
And he traveled back to the United States and founded Indigenous Training & Equipping Company (ITEC), which develops tools and sustainable training for missionaries. They equip indigenous Christ-followers to meet needs and share the gospel.
Today’s story features Steve testing an ITEC device.
God can be trusted. Give Him your pain.
Steve mounted a wing onto an old hatchback car with the hatch removed. He was testing a fixed wing for possible use on the “Maverick,” ITEC’s flying car. Since ITEC didn’t have a wind tunnel, Steve would simulate one.
He rigged a push-pull cable in the back of the car to manipulate the wing so he could measure lift. He asked an intern to drive the car, and Steve climbed into the safety harness in the back. The intern drove 30 mph.
40.
50.
“Let’s try 55,” Steve said.
The next thing Steve remembered was the faint voice of his sweet wife Ginny. He couldn’t feel his body.
He lost consciousness.
He woke. Saw clouds going by, flickering. Decided he must be in a helicopter. If he was, this injury was a bad one.
The safety straps on the flying car’s wings had broken. And the wing sliced open the top of Steve’s head down to his skull. A severe whiplash caused his spinal cord to swell and cut off circulation.
Later, as he lay in the ICU, Steve survived in a dark cave of agonizing pain. He heard Ginny’s voice. But he didn’t dare open his eyes. When he did, the pain monsters surrounded him.
Then the doctors took out part of Steve’s spinal column to allow for the swelling, and they inserted metal rods. People throughout the world prayed for his recovery. But Steve said, “Please don’t ask that God will restore me to my normal, previous uninjured life. Pray that God will write this chapter of my life His way. I want God’s ‘Plan A.’”
Steve’s determination to surrender to God’s best didn’t mean anything was easy. Now classified as an incomplete quadriplegic, Steve faced weeks in a rehab hospital and years relearning how to do even simple tasks. Where were his hands? Could he learn to move his legs? Most normal function would never return. He said he was as “dependent” in some ways as his “three-year-old granddaughter.”
This man who had roamed the jungles of Ecuador, built successful businesses, and eventually founded ITEC, now felt incapable.
“Having something to do that is worth doing and the ability to do it is one of the great gifts of life,” said Steve. “There is no pain I suffer greater than having to go days at a time without being able to do anything productive.”
And people treated him differently. “When I sit in a wheelchair and other people are standing up, I become invisible,” said Steve. “They will talk about me as if I’m not there. My body doesn’t work, but my mind does. I’m still a person.”
Steve admitted it was a “harsh, humiliating, painful road.” But he trusted God. “It’s either going to be my story or God’s. When we let God write our story, He doesn’t promise that all the chapters will be easy. …God frequently starts his best stories with the hardest chapters. Trusting God to take away pain is acceptable, but trusting God’s will and His love when He doesn’t take away the pain, that’s our greatest opportunity to demonstrate faith.”
Steve encouraged others to let God make sense of life’s hard chapters. “In North America we tend to put makeup on our life-scars. But people with life wounds want to be ministered to by people who have scars where they have wounds. Our scars give us credibility and give the wounded hope that God can heal them, too.”
“Then Satan… smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. …Then his wife said to him, ‘Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!’ But he said to her, ‘You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?’ In all this Job did not sin with his lips” (Job 2:7–10 NASB).
Do you deal with pain God hasn’t removed yet? God can be trusted. Give Him your pain.
Based on an interview with Steve Saint, 2019.
ITEC. “Steve Saint.” Accessed 2020. https://www.itecusa.org/steve-saint/.