"Help! What do I do now?": The adventures of a young missionary nurse in Vietnam

by Marilyn Faye Bennett

This is the story of two years of my life. They were perhaps the busiest, the most interesting, and yet the most frustrating I may ever experience. In retrospect I seem to have lived a lifetime in those 24 months. In these pages I have opened my heart and have shared with you my thoughts, my doubts, my fears, my blunders, my failures, and my triumphs. I have never claimed to be a writer, and it was not my idea to write this book. But the publishers persisted, friends have encouraged me, and I have finally complied.

In order to write honestly, one has to relive the events, to recreate the emotional atmosphere, to recall myriads of details. Some of my Saigon memories are painful, and yet I have had to reopen the wounds, regardless of the discomfort they bring, and I have wept all over again as I recalled the sad times. Yet many of my experiences were happy, and I have loved reliving them.

Missionaries have no immunity for making mistakes. They do not come especially equipped with tremendous reservoirs of saintliness, patience, tact, wisdom, strength, or courage. Instead they are just ordinary human beings, subject to all the common frailties, who find themselves placed in extraordinary circumstances. That God can take such imperfect instruments and use them is the miracle of Christianity. I hope that you will see how God worked in one missionary's life.

Paperback

Published January 1, 1976