Marva Hasselblad's father was a medical missionary in India; as a child she had learned Assamese. Her own turn for service...
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LUCKY-LUCKY
by ‧RELEASE DATE: Nov. 15, 1966
Marva Hasselblad's father was a medical missionary in India; as a child she had learned Assamese. Her own turn for service came in 1962 when she was twenty-five, just graduated as a nurse, when she went to Chan-Y-Vien, a hospital in South Vietnam, built with funds from Protestant groups in the United States and South Vietnam for a three year tour of duty. Hers is a story of spiritual and physical strength in action, for she found ""tears in Vietnam were useless""--there was too much to do to help a people dragged down and decimated by unceasing war. As the only nurse at Chan-Y-Vien, Marva succored and scrubbed, tended victims of snakebite, tuberculosis, bubonic plague, attended childbirth emergencies and major abdominal operations. She made many friends among her colleagues, among the American military, among the Vietnamese: she was the recipient of native hospitality and a fisherman's sailboat, an army truck, and a definitely ""not-me"" but sophisticated hair-do, the inappropriateness of which was underscored by a patient's death. Then there were the children, Phi and Hai, her special little friend, and Susan, with a Vietnamese mother and American father whom the Yoders adopted, and Kathy, who travelled home with her to become a Yoder daughter too. In the background threatening to come to the fore is the war, the strikes and strength (underestimated to Americans, she thinks) of the Viet Cong. The timelessness of service to humanity thus joins with a timeliness of circumstance to underline its appeal, which is primarily inspirational.