Not An Empty Promise

Dangerous Roads Our winding twenty-mile mountain road from Bato to the highway was often mined by anti-government forces during the night, which was troublesome. Whenever we might have to travel that road we usually waited for the Vietnamese military to do their routine morning check for mines before we would venture out. We also had a policy to never travel in a military convoy which would welcome danger. Our Land Rover had a large white cross painted on both side doors and also clear words in Vietnamese identifying us as belonging to a Christian Mission Organization.Sometimes it seemed in the early days of the war, insurgents considered missionaries to be okay because they felt we were helping the people like they were supposedly doing. However, it was extremely disconcerting when in a different area of Vietnam Roy and Daphne Spraggett, a WEC couple and their two year old daughter were severely wounded from the blast of a bomb which had been planted in their house. So far, in our area though, we were able to continue our ministries of village visitation, teaching, preaching, medical, literacy and translation as usual. One day there was a medical emergency and Oliver was asked to take a very sick Vietnamese woman to the hospital in Quang Ngai. This was not an unusual request since ours was the only non-government Land Rover in the area, so naturally we were sometimes asked to help out in emergencies. I did not mention to Oliver that I had a very uneasy feeling about this particular trip. He left right after breakfast with the sick woman and two of our Vietnamese student pastors. I could not shake a feeling of foreboding. I went into our bedroom and knelt by our bed and began to pray for their protection. After a few minutes, I was reminded of part of a verse in the Old Testament: “No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper…” (Isaiah 54:17a). I prayed that it would be so. Of course there were no phones and no way to contact each other. That was a very long day for me. In the evening Oliver returned. It was good news to learn that he did get the sick woman to Quang Ngai where she was being cared for in the hospital. There was more to the story, however. He told me about how the day had started out for him. He also had an uncomfortable feeling that morning as he left. Soon after he was on the road he was reminded of a Bible verse: “You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, or of the arrow that flies by day (Psalm 91:5). He wasn’t thinking of arrows, of course, but of bullets. Feeling relieved and somewhat safe, since it was broad daylight and our vehicle could be identified as ours and not a military vehicle he drove past rice fields on either side of the road. Suddenly he noticed little bits of earth being kicked up on the dirt road in front of the Land Rover. His first thought was that it was rain drops but it was a nice sunny day! Horrified, he finally became all too aware of the fact that it was a spray of bullets hitting the dirt. He had not heard the sound of the gunfire because of the noise of the Land Rover’s loud diesel engine. Realizing that he was the target, he accelerated! Soon he approached the creek where the bridge had some days before been blown up by the guerrillas. This was about five miles from our house. As expected, there were a few Lambrettas on either side of the creek. These three wheeled Italian made vehicles were a common means of public transportation back then. They each accommodated up to ten passengers sitting on two benches on each side of the three wheeler. Sometimes two passengers would occupy the seats on each side of the driver. Because the bridge had been destroyed, arrangements had been made for passengers coming from or going to Quang Ngai. They would have to exit a Lambretta on the opposite bank and walk down through the shallow creek and up the other side and get in the waiting Lambrettas which would then take them to their desired destination. When Oliver reached the parked Lambrettas, because the Land Rover is a four-wheel drive vehicle, he would ordinarily have driven past them, drive down and through the creek and continue on to Quang Ngai. Instead, this time, he had a sudden very strong inward impression: Stop! He hit the brakes. Just then a spray of bullets from the trees in the distance hit the empty Lambrettas in front of him and to his left. He jumped out and got behind the left rear wheel. His passengers jumped out and scurried into a rice paddy and lay flat on their stomachs. Soon Vietnamese in black pajama-like clothing appeared. Oliver was pretty sure this was it. He was going to be killed or captured. The black pajama guys, though, turned out to be the Vietnamese Home Guard and they repelled the enemy. After some minutes everyone piled back into the Land Rover and Oliver drove down the creek bank, up the other side and continued on his way to Quang Ngai. I really had to shake my head in disbelief when he told me he had stopped on the way home at the creek to take pictures of where all of this had happened. Later we learned that our Hrey friends had somehow communicated a lot of displeasure to the enemy who apologized saying they didn’t realize it was the missionary. The apology was passed on to us. Another time, though, they shot at us as we were driving the opposite way along that same road one afternoon. Oliver hit the gas peddle and we roared home. On another trip to town, we had a different kind of dangerous road experience. We were winding our way from Bato on the narrow road towards the highway. There was a student pastor’s wife sitting next to me in the front seat. Suddenly, looming up in front of us as we came around a bend was a military truck. Unfortunately it was completely on our side of the road. Crash! My knees hit the metal bar under the glove compartment and made two deep knee-shaped dents in it. My knees were only slightly hurt – this could only be a miracle. A muscle in one of my feet had gotten painfully twisted. The gal next to me was thrown into windshield, smashing it. Amazingly, as it turned out, she was not seriously injured. Oliver was totally unhurt. I remember that there was a sudden and eerie silence after the awful sound of crashing metal and glass. We were not only stunned but then we became apprehensive as we realized we were in a rather vulnerable situation not knowing who might be in the nearby wooded hills. To our utter surprise and relief, within seconds, a military jeep appeared behind us. It was a South Vietnamese army captain, a great guy, who was a friend of ours. He apologized profusely realizing that it was the truck driver’s fault. He drove us all back to our house at Bato. Oliver made a crutch for me out of a mop handle so I could hobble about on my hurt foot. Meanwhile our captain friend had our Land Rover put on the back of a military truck to be taken to Quang Ngai. Oliver went with it, to a repair shop. He returned the next day and it was many days before the Land Rover was fixed and back in service again. We never pressed charges against the other driver. The pastor’s wife and I recovered eventually from our injuries. We knew that often the Vietnamese drivers of military trucks would be afraid of falling off the unguarded edge of the mountain road so they would tend to hug the mountain even when they were on the side of oncoming vehicles. Also, they were well aware of the possibility of encountering enemy guerrillas firing down at them from the hillside. Soon after this incident the same thing almost happened to us again and it was the same little driver in a military truck. There he was on our side of the road again with his big truck looming towards us. This time he flashed us a quick smile as he barely squeezed past us on his side of the road and went on his way. We were not smiling!