Letters To The Wounded Warrior

Even good soldiers might take 'bullets' and collapse in defeat or disgrace. In the same way, millions of men and women in our world have been injured in spiritual warfare and are now lying wounded on the field. But God is raising up 'medics'-healers who are equipped with compassion and grace. Wounded warriors need grace-driven stretcher bearers, healers, and cheerleaders who believe in restoration and healing and are committed to helping them rise to fight again. It's our desire for this book to do just that!The enemy who entraps the vulnerable can be overthrown, but we must also have a strategy to rescue those taken hostage or left wounded on the battlefield. God has a loving message of healing and restoration for His church: "I will never give up on you, no matter how desperate your need. I am here for you, with a plan to raise you up."

A heartwarming dog story like no other: Tuesday, a lovable golden retriever, changes a former soldier’s life forever. A highly decorated captain in the U.S. Army, Luis Montalván never backed down from a challenge during his two tours of duty in Iraq. After returning home from combat, however, his physical wounds and crippling post-traumatic stress disorder began to take their toll. He wondered if he would ever recover. Then Luis met Tuesday, a sensitive golden retriever trained to assist people with disabilities. Tuesday had lived among prisoners and at a home for troubled boys, and he found it difficult to trust in or connect with a human being–until Luis. Until Tuesday is the story of how two wounded warriors, who had given so much and suffered the consequences, found salvation in each other. It is a story about war and peace, injury and recovery, psychological wounds and spiritual restoration. But more than that, it is a story about the love between a man and dog, and how, together, they healed each other’s souls.

Even good soldiers might take 'bullets' and collapse in defeat or disgrace. In the same way, millions of men and women in our world have been injured in spiritual warfare and are now lying wounded on the field. They are thirsty for a refreshing stream, to take a drink from the living water. God is raising up 'medics'-healers who are equipped with compassion and grace. Wounded warriors need grace-driven stretcher bearers, healers, and cheerleaders who believe in restoration and healing and are committed to helping them rise to fight again. It's our desire for this book to do just that! It is our hope that as you read this book you will have an encounter with the Holy Spirit, our amazing Comforter. If you have untreated wounds, open your heart to our loving God as you think on these things, letting Him apply His healing ointment and sooth you with His love. He's waiting with open arms to welcome you home. May these letters be like a refreshing stream in that desert place.

The 12 year-old was conscripted to fight a losing-war between Nigeria and the new state of Biafra. He was taken alongside his uncle on their way to harvest fruits in the rural parts of the Igbo heartlands, much against their will. It was determined as a desperate attempt of the nearly vanquished army in the uneven sided war of genocide waged against the much hated ethnic group. At that point in time, men and boys of almost any age were taken to combat to stave the impending defeat by the well trained and equipped assailants who used all at their disposal including: hunger starvation (total malnutrition and abject poverty) to achieve their end. After more than a year in the ill prepared role of a soldier; without a gun, the child- soldier was picked unconscious from the rubble of a bombed out shelter at a college compound that served as a make-shift army barrack. He was bleeding profusely and his left leg was shattered and he was unresponsive at the scene. His uncle who had tried to protect and keep him alive was also severely injured. However, both recovered, though with visible external and internal wounds. They shared the same hospital for wounded soldiers when the war ended; with the routing of the ill-equipped army that was fighting only for survival (with no meaningful arms, ammunition or military organisation) The intervention of the international Red Cross and the religious charities protected and sustained the wounded service men and all the ethnic population who symbolically considered all as wounded too. The end of the war saw the then 13-year old back at his secondary school. As his physical, emotional and psychological being was put together he continued his studies even to the highest level of academic and professional achievement. The novel ends with the former child-soldier receiving his accreditation and taking his Hippocratic Oath to practice medicine: (to care and save not kill.)

Few people today remember John Swainson. As a teenage soldier he lost both legs in a WWII landmine explosion. Back in the United States, following a meteoric political rise in the Michigan State Senate, Swainson was elected as Michigan's youngest governor since Stevens T. Mason. In 1970 Swainson was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court, becoming one of the few public officials to have served in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of state government. Then, in 1957, he was indicted on federal charges of bribery and perjury, and convicted of lying to a federal grand jury. Forced to leave the state Supreme Court and disbarred from practicing law, he became a pariah, sinking into depression and alcoholism. He virtually disappeared from public view. Lawrence M. Glazer re-examines the FBI's investigation of Swainson and delves into his 1975 trial in detail. He reveals new information from eye-witnesses who never testified and, in a poignant coda, relates the little-known story of Swainson's rehabilitation and return to public life as a historian.

Lt. Col. Tim Maxwell prided himself on being a hard-core Marine—a patriotic Devil Dog on his third tour of Iraq. Then his brain was shredded with mortar shrapnel. Today, Maxwell has a large angry scar on the left side of his head. He forgets words, his wife has to read to him, and he drags one foot when he walks. Yet he works twelve-hour days as commander of the Wounded Warrior Barracks at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. For these warriors, Iraq and Afghanistan will never quite be in the past. And the struggle never ends. Other stories in Wounded Warriors depict life inside an L.A. crack gang, ex-pat Vietnam War veterans in Thailand, and five days in Las Vegas with basketball anti-hero Kobe Bryant—all of it captured stylishly by the writer who has been called “the beat poet of American journalism.”