Who was John Alley Chau?

Chau also worked with a nonprofit called ‘More than a game,’ a soccer program for disadvantaged children, including refugees. In 2014, Chau traveled to the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq to work with Iraqi and Syrian refugee youth.

Chau with a group of students around Mount Adams. (Instagram/johnachau)

Described as an “explorer by heart” by his friends, Chau had a love for outdoors and fervent Christianity. In an interview for a wilderness adventure website, Chau credits books like “Robinson Crusoe” and “The Sign of the Beaver,” behind his wanderlust.

In the last two years, Chau led several backpacking trips to Mount Adams in southwest Washington state for students at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

Hours before he was shot dead with arrows by an endangered tribe in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chau had written a letter to his parents, asking them not to be “mad at them or at God” if he was killed.

“Sorting through photos and realized that this is the first year since 2015 that I haven’t done an expedition into the North Cascades,” Chau had posted on instagram in July this year. (Instagram/johnachau)

“Rather please live your lives in obedience to whatever he has called you to and I’ll see you again when you pass through the veil. This is not a pointless thing – the eternal lives of this tribe is at hand and I can’t wait to see them around the throne of God worshipping in their own language as Revelations 7:9-10 states.”

He signed off his letter with his name and ‘Soli Deo Gloria‘, which is Latin for Glory to God alone.