Small World, Small War

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Several weeks ago a U.S. Chopper went down in Iraq.

There was nothing on the six o'clock news on NBC, nothing on ABC, nothing on CBS, nothing on CNN.

Later that day my wife received a phone call from a dear friend in Arizona telling her to pray for her son-in-law in Iraq.

Her daughter had just received a call from the Department of Defense telling her that a U.S. military chopper had been shot down in Iraq and of the four soldiers on board, three died and one had been mortally wounded, clinging to life.

They could only tell her that her husband was one of the soldiers on board.

My wife's friend asked for prayers. I prayed for the men who died and their families, especially for our friend's son-in-law, "Thy will be done."

A couple of days later, my wife's friend called to confirm that the one surviving soldier was her son-in-law, and that he had been moved to a trauma center.

Last week, my oldest son who is a truck driver, called to tell us that one of his fellow drivers had just attended the funeral of a local family whose son had died in Iraq. He had been one of the three men on board a downed helicopter who died and that a fourth one had survived. "The only thing the family knows", his friend said, "is that the surviving soldier's family lives somewhere in Arizona".

About a week ago my wife's friend called again saying that her son-in-law has been improving so quickly that the military will soon be sending him to the front. "Please continue to pray for him", she pleaded in tears.