Ho Chi Minh City (Old Saigon): Monday, October 14, 1996:
Following the press conference and lunch meeting with Dr. Khoi, the four of us representing Face the Challenge and Project C.U.R.E. returned to the recovery room to check on the children who had just come out of surgery. By then, the babies were awake, and Dr. Randy and Dr. Barry wanted to see how their patients were doing.
The scene I encountered next has burned a picture into my mind that I will never be able to forget. The mother of the terribly disfigured seven-month-old baby had arrived at the recovery room with her young husband. The baby boy was their firstborn child. He was the baby that was so disfigured that the mother had to extract the milk from her breast and feed the baby with a spoon, being careful not to drown the child. When the baby tried to swallow the liquid would come right back out of its face.
Cathy Bueche, a recovery-room nurse from Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver, and Leslie Turner, a recovery-room nurse from Kansas City, were taking care of the patients as they regained consciousness. The little boy was awake and was not crying … just whimpering, looking for the reassurance of his mommy.
Leslie handed the baby to the young mother, and she smiled from ear to ear. Then with her husband looking over her shoulder, the weight and impact of the occasion hit her. Her smiles momentarily turned to a look of disbelief, and you could tell she was struggling to decide if what she was seeing was for real or if she was sleeping and just dreaming another haunting and cruel dream about having a perfectly normal baby. She held the little guy tightly to her breast and then pulled him back up and looked straight into his face again. She could not hold the seven months of pent-up emotion inside any longer.
I have not seen many Asian women cry before, but this little, young mother could not restrain the emotion and the flow of tears. She cried softly for a little while. The tears dropped down on the baby as she held him again to her breast. Then she pulled him back and looked at him again, and when she saw her own tears on the baby’s body, she realized that the moment was not a dream. It was real. Far gone now, I’m sure, was the moment in the room where the baby was born, and she was handed the child for the first time, and the horror and disappointment had filled her mind while at the same time love for the precious child filled her heart. Gone now were the long hours of rocking and walking the child, looking down at his face and questioning why her baby, her very first baby, was to go through life like that. Had she done something wrong? Were they being punished? There were never any answers to her questions before, but now she was holding the beautiful baby of her dreams. She had loved him completely when he was deformed. Now she could love him completely whole.
As she looked once more at the baby, the little boy’s brown eyes met her eyes, and he tried to smile. That was more than she could handle. Her tears now flowed freely, and she sobbed. The young father, who had his arm around the mother as he looked on, dropped his arm, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a small, dirty handkerchief. He took the rag and began wiping the tears from the mother’s face as he himself quietly cried.
Something special happened in that recovery room on a hot Monday in Old Saigon city, Vietnam. Jesus came to visit and heal the torn hearts of a young Vietnamese couple who did not even know that his name is Jesus. And Jesus came to reward some obedient doctors and nurses as they saw for themselves the power of love at work in a part of the world historically torn by hate.
Earlier, I had traveled to Israel to deliver three cargo containers of medical supplies to the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center. I walked again the streets of Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem, and the shores of Galilee. I remember wishing that I had been there as Jesus walked the streets and countryside trails and healed the bodies and mended the broken hearts. But early afternoon on Monday, October 14, 1996, in a very modest hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, I walked where Jesus walked. I didn’t walk historically where Jesus walked; I walked with him today down the corridors of that hospital into that recovery room, where he gave me a personal lesson in his love and healing power. I shall take with me into eternity the looks on Dr. Randy’s and Dr. Barry’s faces, and on Ginger Robinson’s and the other nurses’ faces. And I will always hold as precious the picture burned into my heart and mind of that Vietnamese family of three, standing there totally bathed in an experience of boundless love.
As I left the recovery room, I could hear the mother begin to softly sing a lullaby to the child—or maybe it was angels I heard singing.
Next Week: What a Team of Talent!