PREMONITION IN SAIGON by Karen Jentz

NOTE: This story can be found in the book Once to Every Man Nation – Stories About Becoming a Baha’i, published by George Ronald Publisher, Ltd. in 1985. It is reprinted here in March, 2024, with permission from the publisher. Karen has lived with her husband Jeff in Fairfield, Iowa for many years.

I became a Baha’i in the spring of 1975, at the exact time of the ending of the United States’ political involvement in Viet Nam. I had previously worked in the US towards the ending of the war, and was in Viet Nam in April 1975, working in a nursery where children were salvaged from orphanages and streets, fattened up, and sent to new families overseas.

As the pressures of life in Saigon became extreme, I no longer knew where my energies belonged, and felt an overwhelming urge to leave the country at all costs. Not comprehending, I obeyed the inner voice, telling those that I worked with only that I had to leave, and arranged to take a convoy of eight babies to Montreal. This mission accomplished, I decided to try to find some peace in North Carolina, where my parents had recently moved.

The evening of my arrival, we watched the news in horror, as pictures of the children I had been caring for in Saigon only a week ago flashed across the screen. The plane which was to transport them to the first home many would have known in their lives, crashed shortly after takeoff, and many were killed. Had I remained in Viet Nam I would have been among them. The faith in God which had sustained me during the long months in Viet Nam, was not tested, but faith in myself, in being able to act consistently and responsibility, was. I felt that I had run out on the children, and could find no peace for the anguish in my soul.

Then I spotted an ad for a Baha’i meeting in a nearby town. The featured speaker was Dr James Turpin, who prior to becoming a Baha’i had established several medical hospitals in Viet Nam. I was drawn by the fact that he, who so thoroughly knew the wrenching conditions that were tearing my own heart apart, could be addressing himself to a religion, and not to the purely social and humanitarian issues which seemed so pressing to me. I didn’t hear much of what was said at the meeting, but afterwards, as I went to talk to the speaker, I encountered a Baha’i who had declared his faith in Viet Nam. Through recounting his experiences, he turned my attention from Viet Nam to the Baha’i Faith itself. I attended a couple of firesides, visited his family on the Cherokee Indian Reservation, and declared my faith in Baha’u’llah two weeks after that first meeting.

I had discovered that the goals of my previous humanitarian and political work were sure to be realized through the Baha’i Faith. Instead of the slow salvage work which I had been doing, there was an already evolving new World Order which I could become a part of.