All of a sudden, says Bethany, "it hit me and I began crying too. I thought, 'She is 16 and living without her dad who is suffering in prison.' I talk to my own dad four or five times a day. He always says to me, 'I am praying for you. I love you.' I do not know how I could go on without him."

Bethany asked Esther, "How do you do it? How are you not angry at God? How can you be the backbone in your family?’’ The girl answered, "God has moved and filled the void in my life when my father was imprisoned. God is my heavenly Father—the only Father that I need."

During their visit, the teens also interviewed a pastor whose house church has been repeatedly torn down by the police and were even forced to flee from a Christian youth camp when police suddenly arrived. No one was hurt, but the experience brought home vividly the danger of standing for Christ in Vietnam.

VOM carefully considered the safety issue before the project started and students were selected. "Because of the amount of trade going on between the United States and Vietnam," Nettleton explains, "it seemed very unlikely that the students would be arrested or held for any amount of time, although there was the potential they could be blacklisted and put on a plane out of the country. But we felt the risk was less in Vietnam than it might have been in other countries."

During the trip, says Nettleton, each of the teens had to wrestle with his or her own faith and what it means to follow Christ. The film shows one of the girls saying, “I don’t know if I would keep going to church and keep following Christ if people were sticking a gun in my face and threatening to kill me." At different times during the trip, all of the students had to answer the question: "What would I do?”

That’s really a crucial question for all Christians to ask, Nettleton says, but particularly for these young people, who are at the beginning of their lives and at the beginning of walking with Christ. "It's a powerful and important question and the answer to it can be life changing."       

Nettleton says he thinks every Christian should wrestle with such questions: "What would I do if they closed down my church? What would I do if someone put a gun in my face?" These are questions that Underground Reality: Vietnam presents – up close and personal. "It forces you to think about what the answers are for you," he adds. "That can only strengthen the faith, not only of American teenagers, but of American adults."

To order your copy of Underground Reality: Vietnam, visit http://www.ur-video.com/main_page.html or http://www.persecution.com/