This time, when he hired a man to plant them, he laid down the rules carefully. “You plant them, but my family and I eat them. You don't eat any, okay?” The native argued with that, until Nate pulled out a fancy sharp knife and offered it in payment.

But when the three years had passed and the fruit began to ripen, they once again began to disappear. Once again, Nate was furious. This time he decided to close down the trade store, where the natives got their salt and such things.

That worked - too well. The natives said “What is the use of us hanging around anymore?” and they moved back into the jungle. So Nate ate his pineapples alone.

Now he was a missionary without anyone to talk with or preach to. He said to Linda, “We might as well go home, if all we are here to do is eat pineapples!” So they reopened the trade store and the people returned. More pineapples disappeared.

The time came for Nate and Linda to return home on furlough. There, they attended a seminar on giving everything you own to God. Nate thought of his pineapple garden. “Well, I've got nothing to lose,” he thought. “I'm not getting any pineapples anyway.”

Back in the jungle, he knelt down beside his precious pineapple plants and told God that he was giving up his rights to those pineapples. “Now they're Yours, God,” he prayed. “If you want us to eat them, fine. But if you don't, that's fine, too.”

Once again, the pineapples got stolen. But this time Nate didn't get mad. And the natives noticed.

“Too-wan,”¹ they said, “you have become a Christian.” Nate felt like telling them that he had been a Christian for twenty years already, but instead he asked them, “Why do you say that?”

“You didn't get angry with us when we stole your pineapples.”

What a revelation that was! All these years, Nate had been telling them to be kind to each other, while all the while he had been guarding his rights and getting angry.

But soon they had another question, “Why aren't you angry anymore, Too-wan?”

“Because those pineapples aren't mine,” he told them triumphantly. “I gave them to God.”

That did it! The people were afraid to steal from God. And the pineapples finally started to ripen. This time, Nate and his family were able to pick and eat those pineapples. They ate some and they gave some to the natives. And finally, many of the natives began to give their lives to Christ and were converted.

Nate realized that this principle of giving everything to God really worked and he started giving other things to God.

The natives started bringing their trinkets for Nate to fix. He wasn't getting much translation work done anymore, but he said, “My time is Yours, Lord, and if You want me fixing tables, chairs and harmonicas, fine.” One day he was fixing a chair, when a native stopped and offered to hold it for him. After they finished, Nate said, “Well, aren't you going to ask me for some salt?”

“No,” the man replied, “Remember? you fixed my shovel last week, now I help you fix your chair." Nate stared back in shock. It was the first time the natives had done anything for him without asking for pay. The people started saying, “Too-wan always told us to love each other, and now he has started to love us!"