"Mai Greene Vietnam": Our Guests to Phan Thiet

Friday, January 14, 2011

Our Guests to Phan Thiet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URnQNVNhmRs

- - - - - Please click on link above to view video - - - - -

From January 3rd through the 7th we were blesseed to have a couple from our home church in Tualatin, Oregon come and stay with us. They are Ray and Patience Gifford. We are so thankful that the local government in Phan Thiet approved their living with us in the community rather than having them be sheltered from real Vietnamese life in a hotel. This video is nearly 15 minutes long, but I tried to keep it interesting. It shows some of the marvelous beauty that Vietnam has. I hope you enjoy it and leave a comment.

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Mai Greene Vietnam

Mai Greene is the wife of Doug Greene. "Mai Greene Vietnam" tells how the Vietnam War changed the course of Doug's life. It covers his 3 years in Vietnam serving as a soldier. You'll see how Doug met Mai and how their first child was born in Vietnam. You'll read about their lives in America helping Vietnamese refugees who relocated to Portland, Oregon followed by ten years of sending care packages to Mai's family in Vietnam. You'll see photos from 29 trips to Vietnam since 1990 to the present. Thank you for visiting. Please leave your comments and come back often!

Mai Greene's Background

Mai was never really sure when she was born. Using historical events and family recollections, we think she was born in 1941. Her legal name is Lam Thi Tu. The family name comes first in Vietnamese. "Mai" is a nickname and it represents a pretty yellow flower that grows in Vietnam. Mai was the oldest of 11 brothers and sisters. She only was allowed to complete the 3rd grade in school. Her father was and alcoholic and made her stay at home or on his farm to work so each of her younger siblings could go to school. From age 6 through 9 Mai had to work for another family as pay back for her father defaulting on money he owed and could not pay. This other family followed the teachings of Jesus and Mai soon learned to love them and to love Jesus. Mai learned her first English in an American hospital after being seriously wounded. Mai was the most resourceful of all her brothers and sisters and her God given talents helped her to make more income than all of her family put together. After the war with the Americans was over, her family struggled to stay alive. Again Mai came through for her family and sent care packages from America. She did this for 10 years from 1980 to 1990. Those packages helped her family immensely. From 1990 on Mai has returned to Vietnam to help her family and others. Most of Mai's family are Christian believers now. Mai loves to share about Jesus and His many miracles in her life. Mai has seen how the Vietnamese have hearts ready to receive Jesus as their savior. Oh by the way, in 2012 Mai's dad became 100 years old and still takes good care of himself.

Movies About Vietnam Are Mostly Wrong.

Have you seen Rambo, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now or any of the other high profile films made about Vietnam? All these films stretch the Vietnam War out of proportion. Only one film that I saw was even close to the truth. It is called: "A Bright and Shining Lie". For every American soldier carrying a rifle in combat, there were 7 other soldiers serving in a support position like: clerk typist; supply officer; cook; medic; truck driver; mechanic; communications, payroll, etc. I served three years in Vietnam and in our entire 18th Engineer Brigade, we lost only 3 people. One was a general that crashed in a small helicopter due to its mechanical failure. The other two lived in the same hootch I did. They had taken a long-boy (flatbed trailer) out to a job site with a big D-8 bull-dozer to do some touch up on a newly graded road. They were killed by snipers in the brush and bushes near by. M-16 brass was found near by so our company commander was not able to determine if the bullets were fired by Việt Công, N.V.A. or Southern soldiers. The AK-47 rifle was designed to fire both its own rounds and the rounds of the enemy, therefore the rounds could have come from the American made M-16 or an AK-47. No one knew for sure. Rumor had it a girl was raped earlier that month in a near by village and maybe the action was in retaliation of that. I remember being alone in my hootch area for a couple of days and being very sad to loose two friends. One had just received a "Dear John" letter from back home. I wrote all this to say my experience of three years in Việt Nam was different than anything I have seen in the popular movies. Very few of the soldiers cursed to the extent heard in the movies. True, 18, 19 and 20 year old boys away from home for the first time in their lives are not all going to lead perfect lives, but the movies I mentioned exaggerated the truth to rake in a better box office result. One reason why we only lost three people in three years was because both the governments of the North and South wanted and needed good roads, bridges and culverts. American engineer soldiers made the roads look like panaramic highways. Which ever side won the war would want nice roads to build their economic infrastructure with. I went back to see the old site of my company, the 864th Engineer Battalion Construction, in Dec. of 2007. There is a large complex there now that make vaccines for livestock and poultry. A large bust of Alexandre Yersin a French Swiss physician bacteriologist sits in front near the main gate. He was a co-discoverer of the bacillus responsible for the bubonic plague. His tomb located only a few miles away. He is revered in Vietnam even today. He died in 1943 at his home in Nha Trang, Vietnam.