“I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he admits.

Gehman decided to take a break before pursing a degree, and spent the next two years working at a porcelain plant in Pennsylvania.

However, before he could decide on a career path, Gehman was drafted into the Korean War. As a member of the Mennonite Church, he was granted status as a conscientious objector, and was assigned alternative service at a veteran’s mental hospital on Long Island, N.Y.

“I assisted with the care of the residents,” he recalled. “I provided for their meals, their toiletries, bathing — things like that.”

After two years of helping the doctors, nurses and patients, Gehman had a clear vision of his own future.

“At that point, I felt I could be of service to people by becoming a physician,” he said.

With a clear goal in mind, he enrolled at 91����Ƶ — graduating four years later with a degree in pre-med. He continued his education at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, and eventually completed an internship and residency at St. Luke’s Hospital in Pennsylvania.

“It’s where I met my future wife,” he said, smiling, adding that she worked as an obstetrics nurse.

The couple had a long courtship — due to Gehman’s decision to volunteer with the Mennonite Central Committee — they would wait seven years to be married.

Despite the time apart from his loved ones, Gehman felt called to serve with the MCC — which he says is an “agency that helps to take care of refugees or persons in countries that have great need.”

“I always took an interest in programs overseas,” he explained. “I was influenced in part by other physicians who had served.”

In 1965, Gehman was sent to serve at a hospital in Nha Trang — a coastal city in Vietnam. With the help of an interpreter, he treated a variety of medical issues-including tuberculosis, malaria, cataracts and respiratory disorders.

During his three and half years in the city, Gehman recalls how the Vietnam War slowly affected the hospital staff more frequently.

“When I first [arrived], I could travel almost anywhere I wanted,” he recalled. “Then, the war gradually built up and after that, travel was limited.”

After he returned from Vietnam, the MCC immediately offered him another volunteer opportunity in Nigeria, which was ravaged by civil war. Gehman agreed to go and spent a turbulent year in the southern part of the country.

“I was forced to treat things surgically that I had only assisted with as an intern or a resident,” he remarked.

After a marketplace was bombed, he remembers operating on limbs with “a textbook on one side and the anesthesiologists on the other.”

Gehman said he stayed calm by focusing on the singular task at hand, and credits his assisting staff for their service.

“I had good assistants I could rely on in the operating room,” he praised.

Although the work was challenging, he considered it a “rewarding” experience, and has no regrets about going on either trip.

After returning from Nigeria, he married Becky and settled in the Bergton area, where he still practices.

After decades of working as a doctor, some might ask why the 80-year-old physician doesn’t want to retire — but for Gehman, the answer is simple.

“What keeps me practicing medicine here is the tremendous relationships I have with my patients,” he explained. “That’s why I’m still working.”

Courtesy Daily News Record, Sept. 25, 2013

Vo Vo Tong Xuan, president of An Giang University, talks with 91����Ƶ President Loren Swartzendruber and 91����Ƶ history professor Dan Wessner during his recent campus visit. Dr. Swartzendruber paid a reciprocal visit to An Giang University in March, 2005.
Photo by Jim Bishop

The potential for learning in a virtual classroom setting is taking giant steps forward even as several courses are reshaping students’ world views at 91����Ƶ.

Associate Professor of International and Political Studies Dan Wessner has been crafting computer-based course work to interact with and learn from students at two universities in Vietnam. He terms the approach "IC3" – Inter-Cultural Communicative Competence.

Dr. Wessner, associate professor of international and political studies in the history department, arranged for 91����Ƶ students to converse by computer with Vietnamese students on a regular basis at An Giang University and Can Tho University, both in the Mekong Delta.

Wessner drew from his earlier experience as a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in Vietnam and his connections with Mennonite Central Committee personnel serving at An Giang University. This collaborative learning was augmented by Mr. Tran Quoc Thang and Ms. Nguyen Hoang Bich Ngoc, both Vietnamese students in 91����Ƶ’s MA in education program.

Kevin Docherty, an 91����Ƶ senior history/sociology major from Harrisonburg, and Erica Kraybill, a junior history major from Columbus, Ohio, use the Blackboard computer program to carry on in-depth conversation with students in Vietnam and Iran. Docherty plans to attend 91����Ƶ’s cross-cultural study seminar to Vietnam in May.
Photo by Jim Bishop

The first day of class, each Vietnamese and American student, none of whom was born during the Vietnam-U.S. War, was asked to write a paragraph of "first impressions" of the other

AKRON, Pa.- Earl and Pat Hostetter Martin grew up in Mennonite homes where politics remained separate from their parents’ lives, where voting was not considered a duty and where existence was grounded in the kingdom of God, not of the world.

But the suffering and death they encountered as (MCC) workers in Vietnam in the 1960s convinced them that the faith they had been taught – combined with the atrocities they were witnessing – forced them to speak to their government.

“When you see the effects of government policies, it doesn’t make sense to say, ‘I will be silent in the face of this destruction,'” Earl Martin said.

Since then, the couple has continued to speak to the “principalities and powers.” They will join a selection of scholars, theologians and pastors exploring the intersection of faith and politics at a Sept. 23-25 conference, “,” in Harrisonburg, Va., and Bridgewater, Va.

Held at 91����Ƶ and , conference sessions will explore how Christians in the “Believers Church” tradition understand their witness for God and their relationship to political authority in light of living in a democracy that is the world’s dominant power.

Churches usually associated with the Believers Church tradition include Adventists, Baptists, Brethren, Disciples of Christ, Mennonites, Methodists, Pentecostals, Plymouth Brethren and Quakers.

The conference focuses on the meaning of citizenship in the United States, said Steve Longenecker, professor of history at Bridgewater College and planning committee member: “The planners observed that the United States currently possesses and exercises unprecedented influence on a global scale. The conference is designed to clarify what it means to be both citizens of the state and members of the body of Christ.”

Sessions approach the topic from biblical, historical and theological perspectives, with speakers from academic circles and the broader church. Presentations will range from biblical sermons to academic papers to autobiographical narratives. Critical analysis will be interspersed with reflective worship, integrating scholarly, pastoral and activist perspectives.

The Martins will present their autobiographical reflections in “Believers’ Journeys and Politics.” Other conference sessions include “Believers as Sisters and Brothers in the Church Worldwide,” “Theological Perspectives on Political Authority,” “Believers and Political Authority in History” and “Believers and Political Authority in the Bible.”

Robert W. Edgar, general secretary of the , will address the conference Friday night. Edgar served eight years in the U.S. House of Representatives, followed by a 12-year tenure as president of Claremont School of Theology. An ordained United Methodist elder, Edgar has also been pastor of several congregations, a college chaplain and a candidate for the U.S. Senate.

The conference, the 15th in a series that addresses Believers Church issues, is sponsored by 91����Ƶ, Bridgewater, the MCC U.S. Washington Office, the Baptist Joint Committee Washington, D.C., and Church of the Brethren Witness/Washington Office.

To register or to learn more, see . Early fees must be postmarked by Aug. 27.

Marla Pierson Lester is a writer/editor for MCC Communications.