The 700 Club with Pat Robertson

WAR HERO

Evander Andrews: Military Man of Faith

By David Kitchcart
The 700 Club

CBN.com – JUDY ANDREWS (widow of Master Sgt. Evander Andrews): Your heart is telling you, 'OK, he has been hurt. They’re just letting you know.' And your head is telling you, 'There’s no way they’re going to show up just to tell you that he is hurt.'

DAVID KITHCART (reporting): The news the Air Force representatives were bringing was not good. When they finished, Judy Andrews realized that her life as the wife of Master Sgt. Evander Andrews was now over.

JUDY ANDREWS: That day I had gotten a letter from him, and, probably within an hour before they showed up, I’d finished reading this letter. I opened the door and instantaneously I knew why they were there.

the Andrews familyDAVID KITHCART (reporting): Just a few, short weeks earlier, Master Sgt. Evander Andrews of the 366th Civil Engineering Squadron had been deployed from Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. His destination: the Persian Gulf emirate Qatar. On October 10, 2001, while performing his duties, Evander was struck and killed in a forklift accident. Operation Enduring Freedom had now suffered its first military casualty.

JUDY ANDREWS: And so they explained what happened, as best that they could, from the information that they had. I just looked and said, 'Can I call my pastor?'

MAJOR TOM WESTALL (Retired Air Force chaplain and Judy's pastor): I met the Andrews just about nine years ago. They were attending a church that I was attending, and I met them there. The Mountain Home Bible Church is a church plant we started about five years ago, and the Andrews were attending.

JUDY ANDREWS: One thing that Tom had talked about, and we have on a lot of our church stuff, is being a Christian in the real world, real Christians in a real world. People might not understand what that means, but when this happened, I called Tom, he called Mona, and Mona called everybody else. Meals were provided. The children were cared for. And Tom helped with all the military stuff. He’d tell me, 'Yes, you can go ahead and sign this. No, you don’t want to do that.' He’d listen to us talk, the children and I. He’d pray with us, with the children. We took them on our laps, and Tom took Ethan. He asked him what he did on Sunday. He said, 'You talk about Jesus.' He said, 'All right. Remember we talk about where Jesus is?' They said, 'Yeah, he’s in heaven.' And he said, 'Well, today your daddy closed his eyes on earth, but he opened them with Jesus. Daddy’s in heaven. Daddy’s OK.' My 2-year-old probably says it best: 'Daddy’s in heaven…wow!'

It’s like someone’s just wrapping their arms around and hugging you and you know that. For it me, it was like he’s placed like a blanket over me and just slowly he’d remove it and then he’d place it back. When things got a little bit unbearable, he’d place it back. It’s like he put me in a cocoon every so often so that I could have that time to just adjust to that particular moment.

I guess you either turn in and you ask God, 'Why?' and you get angry with Him, or you just learn, 'OK, God, you say that Your ways are higher than our ways. You know the beginning, You know the middle, and You know the end. You’ve provided the grace. You said You’d never leave us'. H’s there. I have that peace and assurance and know that He’s there.

DAVID KITHCART (reporting): Judy remembers Evander’s last weeks at home.

Tom visits with Judy and the childrenJUDY ANDREWS: Evander was very quiet spiritually. He had his moments that were very deep, but usually it was just very quiet. Right there at the end his attentiveness in church, his family prayers, just different things that he said were more noticeable. And not just to me, but to others.

MAJOR WESTFALL: We were talking about how Paul had invested his life knowing that he would give up his life in the true sense, and Evander was sitting right at the end of the chair. How little did we know that we would be looking at the notification we had a few weeks after that?

JUDY ANDREWS: I think in some ways, through some of the things he said, God was already preparing us for this time without us really knowing. Looking back you can see that.

DAVID KITHCART (reporting): The Andrews family now had to face Evander’s funeral. There was an initial memorial service at Mountain Home, Idaho, but, because of the unique circumstances of being the first U.S. military casualty in the war on terrorism, the Air Force requested that he be laid to rest with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetary. Tom spoke at both services.

MAJOR WESTFALL: I knew that when it got to Fort Myers, which is the chapel for Arlington, that many within the Pentagon in and outside of military uniform, cabinet-level people would be there. I said that this will not be a politically correct message, but it would be theologically correct. I developed a message out of Evander’s favorite verse, 1 Corinthians 15, coming face-to-face with the only true and wise and loving God, and I said Jesus Christ.

DAVID KITHCART (reporting): Tom had a special message for Evander’s son, Ethan. It was a continuation of what he had said to him in Mountain Home the Sunday after Evander was deployed.

Tom talks with Ethan at Evander's funeralMAJOR WESTFALL: It was not planned. There was no forethought. I stopped and I looked down at Ethan. I said, 'Ethan, your daddy is a hero.' He had a big smile, and I went on with the message.

At Arlington, in the midst of the service, I stopped and I looked at Ethan again. I said, 'Ethan, I told you at Mountain Home, your daddy’s a hero, and he still is.' He echoed out 'My daddy’s a hero' throughout that. At the graveside after the services were done and people were giving their condolences to the family, Ethan went over to the casket and he’s pointing to the casket. I said, 'Ethan, where’s your daddy?' He points upward. He said, 'With Jesus in heaven.'

JUDY ANDREWS: Evander was a behind-the-scenes guy. Ask him to do anything, and he’s more than willing to fix a car, drive a truck, cook a meal, build a shelf, whatever.

He’s a man of integrity, and I think something that a lot of people did not see of him was his way with his children. It wasn’t uncommon to see him playing chase and hide-and-seek with the kids through the house.

Evander did have a heart for God. He loved God. I mean, right before he left, he told me, he said, 'I’m coming back, but God is in control.' That’s important. People need to know that no matter what happens, things are hard and people die, but God is still in control. None of this has shocked him. He provides us with the grace and the strength to get through each day.

Now I have the responsibility of these four children, not just for rearing them, but for their spiritual growth, for their physical growth, for their emotional well-being. How is it that God can be glorified through this? We are learning to walk. I’m learning to walk, holding His hand and letting Him hold mine.

He provides us with the light that we need for that next step. We don’t have to see all the way down the road, just the next step. Sometimes that next step is a hard one.


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