09/10.19 OUTSIDE MAGAZINE 69
that initial contact, some of the guys went
spear fishing and caught what they call “cutt-
a-la,” a grouper or sea bass with big lips—
they caught two and each weighed about
30lbs. After first going poop in the water, I
built the kayak and we put the two fish on top
and, inside, my small pelican. [That] con-
tained pencils, my contact response kit (for
arrow wounds), abdominal pads, chest seal,
dental forceps for arrow removal, picture
cards, multivitamins, multitools (including
one my brother gave as a groomsmen gift that
has my name engraved on it) and, unfortu-
nately, my passports. I had my waterproof
Bible and some gifts: scissors, tweezers, safety
pins, fishing line, hooks, cordage, rubber
tubing and my new Speedo towel.
I set off toward the north shore. As I got
closer, I heard whoops and shouts from the
hut. I made sure to stay out of arrow range
and as they (about 6) yelled at me, I tried to
parrot their words back to them. They burst
out laughing. Probably were saying bad
words or insulting me. Then two dropped
their bows and took a dugout to meet me. I
kept a safe distance and dropped off the fish
and gifts. At first they poled their dugout
past the gifts and were coming at me, then
they turned and grabbed the gifts. I paddled
after them and exchanged more yells.
Here’s where this nice meet and greet
went south. A child and a young woman
came behind the two gift receivers with bows
drawn. I kept waving my hands to say “ no
bows” but they didn’t get the memo, I guess.
By this time the waves had picked up and the
kayak was getting near some shallow coral.
The islanders saw that and blocked my exit.
Then the little kid with bow and arrow came
down the middle. I figured that this was it, so
I preached a bit to them, starting in Genesis
and disembarked my kayak to show them
that I too have two legs. I was inches from
[an] unarmed guy (well-built with a round
face, yellowish pigment in circles on his
cheeks, about 5ft 5") and gave him a bunch
of the scissors and gifts. Then they took the
kayak. Then the little kid shot me with an
arrow, directly into my Bible which I was
holding in front of my chest.
I grabbed the arrow shaft as it broke on my
Bible (on pp 933, Isaiah 63:5–65:2). The head
was metal, thin but very sharp. They left me
alone as I half-waded, half-swam through
the broken coral to the deep where I knew
their dugouts couldn’t reach [then] swam
almost a mile back to the boat. Although I
now have no kayak nor my small pelican and
its contents, I’m grateful that I still have the
written word of God.
LORD is this island Satan’s last strong-
hold where none have even had a chance to
hear Your Name?John first met Casey
Prince in Cape Town in
2012 as part of a group of
ORU volunteers helping
Prince’s soccer outreach
program for fatherless
boys. Every few years
after that, John would fly
to South Africa to stay
with Prince, his wife, and
their two children at their
bungalow in Ocean View,
a windswept township
on Cape Town’s Atlantic
coast. It was here that
John spent his last weeks
before the Andamans.
Prince calls John’s plan
for North Sentinel “so
extreme” in its audacity. But he says it was
also something John arrived at through
sober reflection. Leaving college, Prince
says, John confronted the usual questions:
What to do with his life? What was he best
at? What did he enjoy? His answers followed
conventional Christian logic. “Our way of
looking at it would be God sort of birthed
all these interests in John,” Prince says. “He
gave him a heart for the outdoors, this love of
adventure. He prepared him by him going to
these places around the world. He gave him
this way of connecting with people.”
There were also abundant signs pointing
John to North Sentinel if, like him, you were
looking for them. ORU’s creation myth was
that its founder, Oral Roberts, was told by
God to send his students “even to the utter-
most bounds of the earth.” That sounded a
lot like the Andamans. On one of his scout-
ing trips, John realized that his mixed-race
heritage would help disguise him as a fish-
erman from the Karen community, Chris-
tian seamen originally from Myanmar who
were his best bet for getting a ride to North
Sentinel. “God, I thank you for choosing me
before I was even formed in my mother’s
womb,” he wrote in his journal.
Ocean View, meanwhile, turned out to be
a ten-minute drive from a regional hub of
All Nations, a missionary group specializing
in converting remote tribes. While in Cape
Town, John would drop by for advice and
encouragement. He also met a South African
missionary, Pieter V., who had reached the
Jarawa by sea. It all fit. Even John’s initials,
J.C., pointed to a holy purpose.
John Middleton Ramsey, who met John
on an evangelical tour of Israel in 2015, con-
cedes that whether you buy John’s reason-
ing comes down to whether you share his
faith. Speaking from his home in Cologne,
Germany, Ramsey says: “If you don’t be-
lieve, then what he did seems ludicrous.”In a missionary context, however, Ramsey
insists that John’s plans were more rad than
crazy. He describes a subculture among
young American missionary men that com-
bines piety, celibacy, and Indiana Jones.
Ramsey says he has spent weeks illegally
handing out Christian flyers and prosely-
tizing on trips to the Middle East and Asia.
He has other friends who have made expe-
ditions to meet isolated tribes. When John
told Ramsey he had to go to North Sentinel
because the Sentinelese were the most dif-
ficult people on earth to reach, Ramsey re-
plied that it sounded awesome. “I’ve moved
in those circles all my life,” he says. “And I
won’t lie—it is fun.”
Ramsey and Prince point to John’s me-
ticulous preparation as further evidence of
a sound mind. He persuaded an All Nations
chapter in Kansas City, Missouri, to train
him how to meet remote tribes and to act
as his support base. He took a nine-week
course at the Canadian Institute of Linguis-
tics on learning unknown languages. Before
his departure, according to All Nations, he
tried to immunize himself against 13 infec-
tious diseases. In Cape Town, Prince says he
watched John “preparing himself mentally,
physically, and spiritually. He was aware of
where he was headed and appreciated the
dangers, and he was quite measured and
cautious and doing his homework. He had
read a ton. He took his physical health very
seriously, eating well, exercising, trying not
to bring disease there.”
One afternoon, Prince says, John went out
in the freezing Cape Town swell, rolling his
collapsible kayak over and over, making sure
he could survive a wave. Another time, John
told him he wanted to go jogging but was
worried about being mugged. “He is about
to go someplace that’s completely wild and
unmapped,” Prince laughed, “and he’s anx-
SA ious about running down to Kommetjie and
UM
YA
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HA
ND
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A fisherman
pulls MV Halen,
the boat Chau
used to reach
North Sentinel