I was only seven or eight when one of our small-town West Texas heroes came home from Vietnam. He had lived three doors down from me, was a star on the high school football team, and had been in my father's Sunday school class before going off to Vietnam. He came back with one leg and a message. God told him, he said, that the war was wrong and that our church and our town needed to change our minds and hearts about racial segregation. Since he was never given the opportunity to stand in the pulpit and testify, he prophesied in casual conversation, but the results were the same: everyone talked about what he said, what had happened to him over there, and whether or not the war had messed up his head. One Sunday after church, my father commented to my mother that perhaps the boy had some mental problems from Vietnam, but that didn't mean that what he said was wrong. Soon my father, as a member of the local school board, began pushing for our schools to be integrated. 
 
Though that young Vietnam veteran never considered himself a prophet, I've come to believe that he was. And although our church didn't know what to do with him, he was formed by its members and taught from the nursery on up that God speaks and God calls, and that our job is to "trust and obey, for there's no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey."