Christian Layman's League Remembered in New E-book
March 5, 2008 -- John Gunnison was serving in the U.S. Army Special Forces in the central highlands of Vietnam in mid-1970 when he was given a plastic bag full of items sent overseas by the Christian Reformed Layman's League.
At the time, the Layman's League, based in Grand Rapids, was busy every year shipping to soldiers in Vietnam thousands of bags that contained packages of Kool Aid, medicated hand wipes, a clean pair of socks, writing paper, a pencil, a copy of one of the Psalms and a portion of the New Testament.
The league is no longer in existence, but a new e-book has been published chronicling its history and offering stories of what the packages meant to some of the soldiers who were fighting in Southeast Asia.
Gunnison recalls that the bag didn't mean much to him at first. His mind was on other things - like staying alive.
But he recently saw an advertisement in The Banner, the Christian Reformed Church's monthly magazine, for an e-book written by Dr. Robert Plekker, one of the early supporters of the league. Plekker, a dentist, is an elder at Hope in Christ CRC in Bellingham, Wash.
When he found out about and then read the history, Gunnison says, it all came rushing back.
"One day I was walking past the company headquarters when the clerk motioned me over to a stack of boxes and tossed me a plastic bag," Gunnison recently told Plekker in letter.
Gunnison is a member of Trinity CRC in Abbotsford, B.C. He served for many years in Africa with the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (CRWRC) and Christian Reformed World Missions.
"I looked it (the bag) over as I walked backed to my quarters. I read the lettering on the bag and remember thinking 'this is nice'," says Gunnison. "But truth be told, apart from the material comforts, it didn't mean much to me at the time. I had wandered far from my Episcopal upbringing and I had never heard of the Christian Reformed Church."
He didn't throw away the bag or the scripture readings. Over the next few months, he says, he picked up the book that had been in the bag and tried to read through it, but "after a couple of attempts to read passages it was relegated to my footlocker."
When he was wounded that bag was shipped home with his other personal effects. "Eventually that bag was filled with miscellaneous medals, insignia and other stuff and packed away in a cardboard box with other stuff from my service days. I rarely opened that box but I never forgot about it," he says.
In his short history of the Layman's League, Plekker says they launched "Project Thank You" after CRC volunteers received a guarantee from the U.S. military that the packages would be delivered to soldiers on the front lines in Vietnam. When they began receiving positive responses from the soldiers, they expanded the program, including in the bag an introductory letter written by Rev. Marvin Baarman, then executive secretary of Christian Reformed Home Missions.
As for the history itself, says Plekker, he posted it earlier this year and then ran an ad in The Banner. "The reason I published it now is because we are losing more and more of our old board members, and the many (well over a thousand) volunteers who put these packets together on during the Vietnam War," he says.
He also wrote it for soldiers such as Gunnison, who have in turn written him to tell him what the package meant to them.
As it turns out, recalls Gunnison, he eventually "came to Christ through Peace Christian Reformed Church in Cedar Rapids Iowa." He then went on to attend Calvin Theological Seminary, where he met his Canadian wife.
"After our marriage we moved to Quebec. We lived there for several years and then served in Africa with World Missions and CRWRC. We returned to Quebec for several years but eventually found our way to British Columbia."
Fast forward now to when he saw The Banner ad. Until then, he really hadn't known much about the Layman's League, even though he kept the bag all of these years.
When he read about the history, he went straight to his computer and downloaded a free copy of "Project Thank You" and read it and then read it again. He learned of how the Layman's League began in 1967 "in the midst of societal disorder over the massive confusion of the war" and how the bag was a way "to befriend our fighting men in Vietnam." The history answered the questions that had lingered.
Finally, he says, he had discovered the whole story behind that bag that he still has as part of his memorabilia from the war. "I can't express what it's meant to me to learn the story behind that plastic bag after all those years. Thank You," Gunnison wrote to Plekker. "Thank you and all the others for Project Thank You and thank you for writing about it."
To download of a copy of Plekker's book, visit: www.JointHeirsPub.org
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Chris Meehan News and Media Relations Christian Reformed Church in North America www.crcna.org