Ron Hutchcraft Ministries - A Word from Ron Hutchcraft

I don't think any of us will ever forget the images of the day that the Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City was destroyed by a terrorist bomb. They are images of that devastated building, the frantic rescue efforts there, and of a baby in a fireman's arms. It was a day of heart-wrenching tragedy and it was a day of incredible heroism, too. Literally, an entire city dropped everything to respond in whatever way they could to this life-or-death situation. The job was clear that day: rescue the dying whatever it takes.

A friend told me he's been coming to Ocean City, Maryland since the 1970s, when most of what you see now wasn't there. Not that many folks used to come to Ocean City. I asked my friend what changed that. "Oh, the bridge," he said. The building of what is called the Bay Bridge opened up this beautiful spot to many people who had never experienced it before.

During the Native American outreaches of our On Eagles' Wings® Team on eleven reservations one summer, I met a man with an amazing story. I'll call him Chad. Here is his story as he explained it to me. Chad was raised to be the last traditional chief in his tribe and a spiritual shaman. Like many Native Americans over the years, he was sent to a religious boarding school, where in Christ's name he was forced to dress, look and speak as a white man - and punished if he accidentally spoke a word of his own language. The anger that built up in him made him a most unlikely candidate to ever give his heart to this one he thought to be "the white man's God."

Chad wanted to die, so he went to Vietnam, hoping someone would kill him. He became one of the few good enough to be called a Navy Seal and then he went through the horrors of being a prisoner of war. When he returned from the war, he became a gang leader in a major city with some 10,000 people in his organization. He was stabbed twice, shot three times, and one night he found himself on an operating table with surgeons fighting long odds to save his life.