GA08088

Three chaplains tell their stories

by Dee H. Wade

SAN JOSE, June 25, 2008 — The Presbyterian Council for Chaplains and Military Personnel sponsored a luncheon on Tuesday during the 218th General Assembly. Those who attended heard three active duty chaplains tell their stories.

Chaplain Major John Kaiser, U.S. Army, described himself as a chaplain who is a “bond servant of our Lord Jesus Christ, working for repentance, restoration and reconciliation.” He also lives by the chaplains’ motto: “communicate, cooperate and collaborate.”

Kaiser is the command chaplain and instructor in ethics at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Fort Benning, Ga. The school is a Spanish language training facility for military, law enforcement and civilian personnel from Central and South America. It was once called the School of the Americas and has received much criticism because of reports that it trained soldiers of authoritarian regimes in the techniques of torture and political assassination.

But Kaiser disputes those claims and asserts that he teaches soldiers to be professionals with high ethical and moral standards, not to be terrorists. The school should not be blamed for the crimes committed by a few of its graduates, Kaiser explains, any more than Harvard University should be held accountable for the actions of the “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynshi, who killed three people and injured many more.

Kaiser wears a clerical collar with his standard issue Army officer’s uniform. It reminds him that he is a sheep of the Shepherd, he said. “But I’m also a sheep dog, protecting the other sheep from harm as a pastor of love.” Furthermore, the collar binds him to proclaim not himself, but Jesus Christ, as a prophet of the truth.

Chaplain Captain Terri Gast, U.S. Air Force, also spoke at the luncheon. As a pious, young girl she often prayed that God would make of her what he wanted her to be, but she sure didn’t think that God would want her to be a minister of any kind. But God did, as it turned out, and called her into an “oddball” ministry as someone would later name it.

She was a pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor, Mich., and then spent six years as a missionary in Lithuania. After that assignment, from 1996 to 1998, she was on the national staff of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) with the Worldwide Mission Division. Then she got a letter from the United States Air Force, informing her that there were too few chaplains and might she consider being one. So she did, even though she felt God set her up for this big curve in her vocational journey.

September 2007 through January 2008 found Gast in Afghanistan. She was assigned to a hospital where most of the patients were Muslim Afghan citizens. One patient was a little girl who was dying from burn wounds. As the family was gathered around the girl’s bedside, through an interpreter Gast asked the father of the family if she could pray with them. He nodded his head. She also asked the nurses to join them.

As they all held hands, Gast prayed — for the family, for the life of the little girl in the bed, for all the little quirks and qualities that made her uniquely herself. She gave thanks for God’s love, and asked God to be with all of them in this Afghan hospital room while life was flowing out, but flowing in, too.

Finally there is Navy Chaplain Dan Link. He told the story of one of the men he worked with, Petty Officer Michael Monsour, a Navy Seal and devoted Christian.

In September 2006, Monsour was deployed to Iraq, specifically to an insurgent-loaded area of Ar Ramadi. His squad of seals was caught in a fire-fight. One of his comrades was hit. Monsour left his cover and went into the street to pull his friend out of harm, while the two of them were under fire and Monsour was returning fire. The wounded Seal was saved.

For this act of bravery, Monsour was awarded the Silver Star.

Two weeks later, Monsour and two other seals were on a rooftop, overlooking an insurgent movement. The insurgents began to move against them with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades.  An insurgent managed to put a grenade on the roof. It hit Mansour in the chest and fell to the roof. Mansour had protection from the blast, but the two Seals did not. In that second, Mansour made a life-and-death decision. He jumped on the grenade, absorbing the blast with his chest. He died, but his comrades lived.

Navy Chaplain Link said, “Seals are trained to jump away from grenades. They are not trained to jump on them. Michael went against his Navy training that day in Iraq, because he was trained even better by Another, Another who died for him.”

For this act of bravery, Monsour was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

The chaplains’ luncheon was closed by Pat Kellenbarger, chair of the Presbyterian Council of Chaplains and Military Personnel. Before her prayer, she said that the Presbyterian Church needs to hear the stories of these chaplains. Then the church would know, and give thanks, and pray for chaplains like Dan Link and Terri Gast and John Kaiser.