How can the "Viet Nam Encounters" return trips to Vietnam impact your life today?? _Just read below what these trips have done for the guy's that have gone on one!!
Please feel free to contact me for information: _Bob Smoker bobsmoker1@gmail.com 717 814-2901
_VNE Testimony's . . .
Bob Rummel Testimonial
Dec. 15, 2011
Near total silence! For 37 years if you summed up the time that I mentioned my experience in Vietnam it would not have added up to ten minutes. Why would I mention it? Nobody was interested. When I left Vietnam and arrived at the San Francisco airport in 1968 I was still wearing my jungle fatigues. Plucked by Huey helicopter from the jungle I had not had a bath in weeks. When I arrived at my home in Johnstown, PA there was no welcome home party for me. My brother told me to take a bath and my sister asked me if I could baby-sit that evening so she could go party. Back then Americans were not real impressed with nineteen year old paratroopers that had just survived 12 months of heavy combat with the 101st Airborne Division 12,000 miles away in South Vietnam. Nearly four decades would pass before the full impact of that bad experience would reveal itself. __________________________________________________________
On Christmas Day of 2004 I awoke early. My wife and my daughter Emily were still asleep. Just a few weeks earlier while on a deer hunting trip I had met a hunter who happened to be a Vietnam veteran. He insisted that I read the book “Namvet” by Chuck Dean and cared enough to mail a copy of that book. Alone on that Christmas morning I sipped coffee and I began to read. As I read the personal accounts of one young Vietnam veteran I began to cry. Years of suppressed emotions poured out and my tears became uncontrolled sobbing. My wife woke up and was mystified by this unusual event. After thirty-seven years of silence the vivid memories of Vietnam had come back and in a mighty way. _______________________________________________________________________________________
I am convinced it was a God thing. Just days later I received a phone call from a complete stranger. Pastor Bob Smoker (a Vietnam veteran) was on the other end of the line and he asked me if I had any interest in making a trip back to Vietnam. Under any other circumstances I would have just hung up on this guy. But because he introduced himself as a pastor and because I had trusted Jesus as my Savior years earlier I decided to give a listen. I met with Pastor Smoker and things began to fall into place. The thirty-seven years of silence, the trusting in Jesus, the hunter, the book, the tears, the phone call and now the real possibility of returning to the God forsaken land that brought to me so much anguish and pain. _________________________________________________________________________
Four short months later on May 8, 2005 I boarded a plane in Harrisburg, PA bound for Chicago, Hong Kong and finally Ho Chi Minh City in South Vietnam. I was traveling with Pastor Smoker, the pastor’s wife Jean and two other Vietnam veterans. The trip was organized by Grace Brethren International Missions. As I passed through Customs at the Ho Chin Minh airport I felt uneasy perhaps even fearful as I looked into the stern eyes of the Communist government agents. But when we cleared the airport and made our way into the streets of the city everything changed. We found ourselves amidst some of the gentlest people in the world and they loved Americans. In our two weeks in the country we traveled much and made many friends. We met ordinary people, doctors, businessmen and teachers. We made friends with families, young adults and children and even ex-Viet Cong fighters. Everywhere we went we were welcome and treated kindly. My return trip to Vietnam had changed my life. _____________________________________________________________________
When I returned home I possessed a new boldness and direction that could only come from God. I was always a timid and reserved Christian never speaking up and certainly never up front in any church ministries. That all changed. On behalf of veterans I became a public speaker at many events throughout Pennsylvania and was privileged to be asked to speak at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky in 2008 and at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington DC in 2009. I have been given opportunities to honor war veterans in our public schools and communities throughout Pennsylvania for Memorial Day and Veterans Day observances. But it doesn’t stop there. I have made my way to prisons, rescue missions and hospitals to pray with and encourage hurting veterans. _______________________________
None of that would have happened before my return to Vietnam. I was too quiet, too afraid, too bitter! My trip back to Vietnam first and foremost has given me a new path. Isaiah 43:7 says: “everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” God has blessed me beyond my own understanding. He has given me a purpose and that is to take stock of my dreadful and unpleasant experience in Vietnam and use it to bring glory to him. Romans 8:28 says: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” All things including the sufferings and sorrows of a God-awful war experience for a young man some forty years ago. ________________________________________________________________
Pastor Smoker and his wife Jean have been dedicated to serving as missionaries in Vietnam for many years. I have witnessed first hand their commitment. I have come to believe in them! The flight to Vietnam alone is rigorous and physically demanding. The heat is dreadful, the food and water can make you ill and the schedule is exhausting. Nevertheless, Bob and Jean are dedicated to their purpose and that purpose is bringing the knowledge of salvation through trusting in Jesus Christ to the heathen nation of Vietnam and to the people that Bob and Jean have come to love. __________________________________________________________________________________________
My role is to support Pastor Smoker in anyway that I am able. Primarily, my focus will be in making other Vietnam veterans aware of the opportunities to possibly return to Vietnam. Statistically, 285 Vietnam veterans die everyday. I am hopeful and prayerful that many of us veterans can use our personal experience and connection to that war to encourage the next generation to carry on the work of Matthew 28:19, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”
On Victory’s Side. . . . Bob Rummel
