7,924 miles.
That's the distance from Vancouver, Wash., to North Sentinel Island, where the body of John Allen Chau still remains.
Chau, a Vancouver-based explorer, Instagram photographer and self-styled Christian evangelist, traveled to the island in the Bay of Bengal this month, after explaining to his parents that he felt a duty to tell the inhabitants about Jesus.
The Sentinelese, however, reject contact from the world outside their island.
Chau was reportedly shot with a bow and arrow by Sentinelese tribesmen earlier this month. As of Nov. 28, his body has been on the island for 11 days.
Indian authorities have not yet retrieved Chau because they don’t want to provoke a confrontation. Longstanding laws prohibit outsiders from visiting North Sentinel in order to preserve the culture and protect the islanders from foreign microbes.
Chau had planned to visit North Sentinel Island for years, according to the Washington Post. He received support from the missionary group All Nations, which is based in Kansas City, Mo.
In an interview with Christianity Today, Mary Ho, the director of All Nations, said that Chau had first reached out to the organization two years ago, but had felt compelled to visit the Sentinelese since he was a teenager.
Chau felt “that his life call was to take the love and the goodness of Jesus Christ to the North Sentinelese,” Ho said. “Every single decision he has made has been to thoroughly prepare himself for this life call, and to prepare him to love and care for the people well.”
In journal entries obtained by the Post, Chau confessed to God that he was afraid of what might happen to him. “If you want me to get actually shot or even killed with an arrow, then so be it,” Chau wrote on Nov. 15, just a day or two before his death.
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