“Brother Shannon our time together changed my life and I am grateful for your friendship and the joy of calling you my brother in Christ.  I can now sleep after 36 years of nightmares knowing that the people of SEA did not hold me responsible for the harm we did to them and their beautiful country… Also, tell Dave that he truly touched my heart with his tender heart for me and what I was feeling as I passed through areas that I had seen so many of my buddies bleed and die in.  He is truly a special servant of God and his concern brought great healing to my heart.”

Ross dug deeply into his past and paid a deep price of pain for what he shared with me next. He recalled vividly the memories that haunted him decades after his return from Vietnam. “My nightmares consisted of seeing my friends covered with blood and watching them die while I was helpless to save them.  I remembered Vietnam as a land of terror and death.  A place where just walking through a lush, green rice patty could bring more horror, death, and destruction than most people could ever imagine.

As I’ve spoken in churches throughout California this year, consistently Vietnam vets have come up to me after the service and asked, “How do the Vietnamese respond to Americans now?” I never knew that question was in response to a dreaded feeling that haunts many vets to this day – a fear that the Vietnamese they left behind hold a hatred for them and their actions in Vietnam. As an American, I can testify that I’ve always been welcomed with open arms by the Vietnamese – an experience that is difficult for many vets to accept. Ross helped me understand this more clearly as he shared,

“What I meant when I said that ‘just knowing that the Vietnamese people don’t hate us’, is that we so often had to destroy their homes and everything they owned to get to the VC.  I have seen old women and men look through tears and scream in sorrow because everything they worked for was taken away as we marched through their villages.  I have seen the children look at us as if we were heartless monsters because we took their fathers and grandfathers prisoners.  Every night I saw those faces, and each time they were saying, ‘I hate you.’

“This was reinforced by our own country when we came home, for they labeled us murderers, killers of women and children.  I can tell you Brother Shannon I would have died myself before I would have ever killed a child or his mother.  But then there are those women who wore black pajamas and carried AK-47s, who killed my buddies, and wanted to kill me – and I had to kill them to stay alive.  That haunts me, and will till I die. For every time I was forced into that situation I saw my own mother or sister being riddled with M-16 fire.

I have wished a thousand times that I had let them kill me, for I will go to my grave with guilt – for I was raised to respect and protect women. But then I was forced to go against my raising and nothing can ever change that, or at least I didn’t  think so.” Little did Ross know that was all about to change as a result of our discovery trip. While in a travel agent’s lobby in Saigon, he was reminiscing about his war experiences with another Vietnam vet. And as grace would have it, a Vietnamese woman behind the desk overheard their conversation, and interrupted them. Ross wrote that she said, “..her husband was killed during the war, and that he fought with Americans, and respected the American soldiers as great men.  I told her I was so sorry for her loss and she said, ‘I too am sorry for the way your country treated you.’   Then she said, ‘But I want to thank you for what you tried to do for Vietnamese people.  Thank you for fighting for my country.’” And with those simple words of thanks from a grateful Vietnamese woman, 36 years of nightmares for Ross were wiped away. He continued,

“That night in the hotel I cried but the tears were different – they were tears of relief, not sorrow.  Just knowing that I wasn’t bad and hated by the people I fought to set free from oppression. I am still experiencing wonderful healing because of you two special brothers and faithful men of God. I have spoken 26 times since returning to vets and military organizations – what a blessing, to be healed and bring healing to others whose minds have been haunted by the memories of war and the sorrows we caused. You are certainly welcome to use my words anytime you feel God can gain honor and glory through them.  I have such a burden on my heart for my fellow veterans for I know many came home physically but died in the war mentally.  Thanks again for your service for our Lord, and God bless and keep you always."

 
And so it was, that day in Saigon, November 2004, that a messenger who sojourned to a foreign land as the purveyor of grace was surprised by finding grace for himself; he who went to bring healing to a hurting land was healed himself; and the one who in the name of Jesus, asked for miraculous wonders that others might believe, received a miraculous wonder for himself – that his own belief was strengthened all the more. In a tender irony of grace, the messenger of grace was ambushed by grace.