While Don Richardson was a student at Prairie Bible Institute in the 1950s, his heart burned in anticipation of bringing the good news about Jesus to an unreached tribe. He and Carol found their prayers answered in 1962 as they sailed out of Vancouver harbor toward Netherlands New Guinea. Before long, they were deposited by a missionary plane among the Sawi people, a group of tribes living in the trees of the interior rain forest.

The jungle floor was too damp for permanent dwellings, so the Sawi helped Don and Carol, and their infant son Stephen, build a tree house in their neighborhood. Carol learned the ways of the Sawi women while Don spent time with the men, attempting to understand their language and reduce it to writing. Afternoons would find the Sawi males in one of their treetop wo…