I contacted my friend John Sawin,
the curator of the C&MA historical library in Nyack, New York to ask him if there were any
good missionary books that might be turned into dramas. His immediate response
was No Time for Tombstone by James
and Marti Hefley. This description of the story is taken from the flyleaf of
their book.
During the Vietnamese New Year celebration of 1968, citizens of the
free world were indignant to learn of an attack made by North Vietnamese and
the Viet Cong upon South Vietnamese cities and towns — an attack in which
several Protestant missionaries were murdered and others kidnapped.
In this book James and Marti Helfey tells the story of the assault on
Banmethuot in the Central Highlands. They focus their report on the capture of
Hank Blood and Betty Olsen, two American missionaries, and Mike Benge, a USAID
agricultural advisor.
Falsely identified as U.S. military collaborators, the three were
chained together and force-marched through the jungle for many months. The most
relentless enemy proved to be malnutrition, as the captives were denied basic
food necessities and medical care. Debilitation took its toll as first Hank,
then Betty died an agonizing death on the trail — but before their unwavering
courage and forgiving love for their persecutors touched Mike Benge’s heart,
and he found faith in God.
Eventually released from a Hanoi prison camp, this is Benge’s story as
told to the authors.
The book was published in 1974 and
the story was still very much alive and of interest to people in Alliance
church in particular. Vietnam was about to fall to Communist China and in fact
did fall as I was writing the story. Garth Hunt and other Missionaries who had
to escape from Vietnam in a rush were home and telling their story in as many
places as possible. The timing was right the story was of interest to our
churches. God seemed to lay His stamp of approval so I began to pray for his
wisdom.
The first problem was the story
took place in the jungle and they kept moving. There was no single location. My
experience had been with single stage sets in one location.
Problem two was we had no money to
create anything elaborate and no way to transport it anyway. Would just using
the people imagination work?
Problem three was the story was so
large that I did not know where to start and what parts to tell. I needed a
primary antagonist, not the entire Vietnamese army. I needed focus. The hero’s
were obvious.
Problem four was that it was a story
about all men and one woman. More women audition for the theater than men.
Would I even get the cast that I needed? I did not want to tour with one woman.
The plan from the previous year of rotating the cast would require two women —
what would I do with the other one during performances. No one would want to
sit around for am entire evening just watching. Then how many men would I need?
The whole cast had to fit into one 15-passenger van. How few would work? I
needed that information to begin casting and casting needed to be early in the
year before everyone had already made their commitments. I knew that only Garry
and Jeri-Lynn would be returning. They had no idea what we would be doing.
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| Hank Blood and Family |
By the time school began I had a
rough idea of the team I would need, but the play was far from written. But a
casting call was given anyway. Four girls auditioned and I was only going to
take one more. Jerl-Lynn was definitely in. Garry returned and there were only
three other guys so I took them all and went looking for at least one more.
Even with five guys I had no idea how we would look like an army marching
through the jungle. The girls were going to also have to be Vietnamese
soldiers.
If God was in this, and I was sure
He was, we would figure it out.
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| Betty Olsen |
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| Monument to missionaries who died at Banmethuot, Vuetnam |
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