The Salvation of a Vietnam Helicopter Pilot, Dick Waggener

My name is Dick Waggener. I graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle with a math degree in 1968. The young people of that time were passing through turbulent years, typified by the hippy movement, the strong emergence of drugs on college campuses, and the conflict in Vietnam.

Three days after my college graduation I received a draft notice, and subsequently served as a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam war in 1970 and 1971. I flew my last mission in Vietnam with six days remaining before I left the country. Ten ships flew into a rubber plantation north of Loc Ninh, and only five returned. A week later I was flown back to the United States, and within twelve hours of landing at the airport and receiving an “early out” from the army, I found myself a civilian on the streets of San Francisco, left to sort out for myself the meaning of human life.

Four years later, in 1975, through a brother in Christ who was meeting with the local churches, I received the Lord Jesus as my life and my Savior. Although I had been raised by Christian parents, had gone to some Christian meetings, and had occasionally tried to read the Bible, on that day I met the Lord Jesus, and learned the meaning of John 4:14, “...the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water gushing up into eternal life.”

Since that time I have had the extreme good fortune of being under the rich ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee. In particular, I was personally under the ministry of Witness Lee during almost all of the twenty-three years in which he released the monumental messages which have subsequently been published as the Life-study of the Bible. I can hardly begin to testify how these messages have changed my life and helped me to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 3:18a)

Today I am meeting with the church in Atlanta, Georgia, enjoying a very sweet and rich marriage life, family life, and church life. How I thank the Lord that He has brought me into such a rich enjoyment of Himself in the local churches. In the words of one of the hymns, “Every day the Lord is dearer than He ever was before!” (Hymns, #1152)