Week 1: Introduction — Setting the Stage

1.What did you already know about the Auca martyrs before picking up this book? What drew you to read it, and what do you hope to take away?

2.Elisabeth Elliot wrote this account while still in acute grief, just months after her husband's death. How does knowing the author's personal stake in the story affect the way you approach it?

3.The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) forms the theological backbone of everything these men did. In your own words, what does that commission demand of ordinary Christians — not just ordained missionaries?

4.The title comes from a line related to missionary martyrdom — the idea that death for a believer is not an end but a gate into splendor. What does that image stir in you? Does it feel like a living conviction or a distant theological concept?

5.Five men, five families, one unreached people group. Even before the story unfolds, what questions are you already carrying into the reading? Write them down so you can return to them at the end.

6.How does the concept of an 'unreached people group' sit with you spiritually? Do you believe, as these men did, that eternity without Christ is real and that someone must go?