Where To Go After War: An Interview With Afghanistan, Iraq Veteran Fernando Arroyo

Fernando Arroyo outside the Orange County Rescue Mission in Tustin, Calif. Photo by Paul Glader.

TUSTIN, Calif.— Fernando Arroyo suffered with PTSD and suicidal thoughts after he served in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq in the U.S. Army. He credits a divine intervention for saving him. Today, as the veteran services case manager at Orange County Rescue Mission, Arroyo helps fellow veterans struggling with PTSD, depression, anxiety, drug and alcohol addictions and other challenges get back on their feet and transition out of homelessness. He is also writing a memoir about his experiences that is due to publish in 2022.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Listen to the full interview on our podcast episode here on Apple, here on Spotify or here on Stitcher.

Paul Glader: Welcome, listeners. We're here with ReligionUnplugged podcast. I'm Paul Glader, Executive Editor of ReligionUnplugged. We're here in sunny Southern California in Orange County, and we're at the Orange County Rescue Mission today with a gentleman named Fernando Arroyo. It's Monday morning in August, and our troops are pulling out of Afghanistan, and we are seeing images on Twitter this morning of people trying to climb on airplanes, desperate, trying to get out of that country. There's going to be a lot of questions in the coming days about, you know, looking back on that era in the Middle East and the time spent, the money spent, soldiers' lives that we put in harm's way. So we're here to talk with Fernando today. Fernando is a veteran of the U.S. military, and I think the story in Afghanistan today going on in the world relates to people. Fernando, before we hear your story, could you tell us what your role is here at the rescue mission? 

Fernando Arroyo: My name is Fernando Arroyo, and I'm the veteran services case manager at the Orange County Rescue Mission. I help veterans transitioning out of homelessness who are dealing with overcoming PTSD, drug addiction and various other problems and even helping college and working veterans who need affordable housing. I like to describe myself as a life coach/pastor/mentor. I get to hear their stories and really just meet them where they are to find out what led them to homelessness, or if they're college or working veterans, just to hear their stories and get them whatever help they need. Whether that’s needing someone to talk to, prayer, counseling — I’m just here to offer them that. It’s a really amazing and rewarding career. 

PG: Yeah, well, we want to hear more about that, some of the dynamics of that kind of work. But we also want to hear  your story, which relates to your writing. Why don't you tell us about the title of your book and why you started? 

FA: The title of the book is “The Shadow of Death From My Battles in Fallujah to the Battle for My Soul.” It’s set to come out in March or April of next year. The reason I decided to write this is because it’s what we Christians call our testimony. It's my story of going through military training. I was in the airborne infantry — went to Iraq and then Afghanistan and then Iraq again and then back. I have experienced that brotherhood, that camaraderie in the military, to then getting out and just being all alone, not being able to find a community and really reaching a point of, you know, questioning whether my life was worth living. 

So many veterans have experienced that. More veterans have died from suicide than in combat, which is just a shame. And I'm sure that the veterans listening right now probably know someone who has committed suicide that they served with. It's just something that shouldn't happen. And the point of me sharing my story is to let veterans know that there is hope, that there is a way of finding community and, mainly, the hope comes from Jesus Christ. I want veterans out there to know that they're not alone. I want veterans to know that there is hope and that their life is definitely worth living. 

PG: Wow. Well, the book couldn’t be more timely. So why don't you go ahead and tell us your story from the beginning: where you grew up and how your life took you into the military.

FA: I grew up in the city of Bell Gardens, which is 15 minutes east of L.A. I didn't have much growing up — my brother and I slept on the living room floor.  But we were happy, and I had a good childhood. My parents were loving parents. Like many young boys, I was playing with toy guns and GI Joes and things like that. I remember I was about five or six years old, and I watched Operation Desert Storm on TV, and I thought, Man, that's so cool, watching these guys with rifles and camouflage and fighting against an evil tyrant, Saddam Hussein, and charging towards the gunfire. I thought, That's so awesome. I want to be one of them.

As I grew up, that desire to join never went away. No matter what else I learned in school, nothing was more important to me than to serve in the armed forces, and so I made the decision to join the Army. I heard about the paratroopers. I heard about the airborne infantry. I had never been on an airplane before, never left the country before — or went to another state, for that matter. You know, we were poor. We didn't travel. I saw it on Discovery Channel, this documentary on the 2nd Airborne, and these guys are loaded up, fully kitted in combat gear, and they're parachuting out of airplanes. And I'm like, Wow, that's so cool. I want that to be me.

So on Sept. 11, 2001, I was in high school. I was a senior at Bell Gardens High School. I remember my friend told me that there were some explosions at the World Trade Center. He just saw it on the news as he was leaving to go to school. I didn’t think anything of it, but when I got to my second class that day, the teacher had his TV set out, and all the students from the previous class weren't leaving. Everyone was just, you know, focused on this on the TV screen and what was happening. I watched the Twin Towers burning.

I watched people jumping out, committing suicide because they would rather commit suicide than burn alive. And then the second plane hit, and I thought, What is happening? Like everyone else, I wondered who was doing this. Later that day, I heard of al-Qaeda. I heard of the Taliban — Osama bin Laden's name started being thrown out there — that they're in Afghanistan, and that's where it was all done, in Afghanistan. I had wanted to join the military as a kid, and now I was at the age where I could, as a senior in high school.

So I talked to the Army recruiter, and I remember telling him that I wanted to be a paratrooper and wanted to be in the airborne infantry, and he laughed. He and the other recruiters laughed, and they were like, “OK, calm down. Like you want to be a war hero. Easy, guy.” They said, “Do you know what that is?” I said, “Yeah, you parachute out of planes and fight.” And they're like, “Yeah, but it's not nice. You're going to be in battle. You're going to be in the rain and the snow and the mud. It's not a pretty job.” I said, “Yeah, but that sounds cool. I want to do it.” 

So the recruiter offered me a $20,000 bonus to be a cook in the Army, but I just couldn't do it. I was like, “No, no, no. All my life I have wanted to join, and I want to fight.” So I turned down $20,000, joined the airborne infantry, 82nd Airborne. When I graduated, I was 17, so my parents had to sign and say that they were willing to allow me to join. Later my mom told me how hard that was. I didn’t know this till years later, but my dad did not want to sign. He was afraid that if I were to go to war and something were to happen to me, that my blood would be on his hands. 

At 17 years old, I signed up. My parents signed. I signed, raising my right hand. I graduated from Bell Gardens High School. That was in June of 2002, and then that August, I was in Fort Benning, Georgia. 

The first time I got on an airplane was at the LAX Airport to go to Fort Benning, Georgia. I was so scared. I remember that when the airplane took off, it was kind of shaky, but later I learned, like, that's just normal. I'm used to flying now, but my first time on an airplane was to go to train to parachute out of an airplane into war. At that moment, I regretted joining. 

But on that airplane, I encountered some people. I think these are divine appointments. On my first flight, there was a lawyer sitting next to me, and we talked for a bit, and I saw he was nervous. It turned out that he was a Christian and not just a veteran but a paratrooper. He told me, “You will not regret this decision, and God is with you.” And I thought, Wow, OK. On the next flight, I met another paratrooper. He encouraged me and was also a believer. Both guys brought up their faith and their past military experience, and it was an encouragement. 

PG: So that point in your life — just a side note, like, were you raised in the Protestant church or Catholic Church? Or when you say you were a believer at that point, what do you mean? 

FA: I was raised in the Protestant church, and at 13, I confessed my faith in Christ and was baptized. And so this whole time, I had been in prayer about joining the military. 

So I got to Fort Benning, Georgia, and it was an immediate reality check. You're tested. You're tested physically, mentally and spiritually. All the running, the pushups, the getting yelled at, the learning weapons — it's an introduction into a world of war fighting and being molded and transformed into realizing that it’s no longer about me and what I want.  

So I made it through 14 months of infantry school, and then it was off to airborne school, which is on-base. Then, Army Ranger School. Then, there’s also the special operations unit called the 75th Ranger Regiment. And once I get there, I’m a rifleman. We’re doing nighttime parachute jumps, training to take enemy airfields and training in urban warfare, fighting door to door. When I got there as a new guy, everyone in my unit had just gotten back from Afghanistan. 

So they were there right after 9/11, and they were doing missions with various special operations units in the mountains and the Pakistan border. They had a lot of stories. So I had to prove myself because they all were battle-hardened warriors, and I'm this new guy fresh out of airborne school. So I had a lot to prove. A month or two after I arrived, I volunteered for my battalion's recon platoon, called the Scout Platoon, and it was a two-week tryout. A lot of people didn't make it.

The first week was all just physical torment and a lot of military knowledge, recon, sniper tactics and being tested on all that. A lot of running, a lot of swimming. The second week was being out with a recon team, doing training missions, eating one meal a day, sleeping less than an hour a night, carrying heavy amounts of weight and just hiding in the trees and bushes and watching the enemy, taking pictures, drawing sketches, remaining unseen. That's our goal. We go there. We're the eyes and ears of the battalion. So I made it.

In that training, I went through six months at Fort Bragg after that, got some cool training, trained with Army Special Forces, and they taught us about foreign weapons — AK-47s, RPGs, different anti-aircraft weapons — which was really cool. And then that's when we got the call. But it wasn't to go to Afghanistan. It was to go to a place called Fallujah, Iraq. 

PG: OK, so what year was that? 

FA: That was in 2003, after the invasion. So we get the call. We get deployed. Fallujah is where I got my first taste of combat. It was intense. CNN was there. All the news people were there — Fox News, everybody. It was just a hot spot. It was the “triangle of death.” It's called the Sunni Triangle. Fallujah was at the center. It was at the time considered the most dangerous city in Iraq. Leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted terrorist in the world, more wanted than Osama bin Laden for the horrible things he did, the beheadings and all that — he was there.

And so I was there in Fallujah doing missions. And there were also a lot of special operations units there from the elite special missions unit of the Army. The Special Forces, Green Berets — we were all out there doing missions. My first taste of combat was the nighttime patrol in Fallujah, where we were going to do what's called a movement to contact. Basically, that's a fancy way of saying search and destroy. So we were going to go into the city, drive up and down the streets and kind of just put ourselves out there. So, like, Hey bad guys, we're here. Come and fight. Before we left the base, I could see bullets flying into the sky — glowing red tracer rounds and green tracer rounds. 

We intercepted radio communications and the insurgents later to be known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq, later to be known as ISIS. These guys were on their phones and radios saying, “When the Americans come into the city, we're going to kill them,” and they were challenging us to a fight. So we went into the city. As soon as we got into the city, all the shooting stopped. There was no one on the streets. So we knew we were being watched and that something bad was going to happen. We drove around the city. I got glimpses of guys with cell phones in alleys. I knew they were spotters, but there was nothing we could do to them. They just had cell phones. So we finally made it to the outskirts of the city. I'm not sure if it was the Tigris or Euphrates River — I think it was the Euphrates River, and it's a swampy area. 

That's when I heard two explosions, loud booms that shook me from the inside. I watched two red-glowing rockets — RPGs, rocket propelled grenades — flying 5 feet over my head. They blew up behind me. This all happens in seconds. Bullets start flying. I start shooting back. It was an out-of-body experience. I'm using my pack for an infrared laser to shoot at the muzzle flashes I see in the tall grass. At the same time, we're trying to get out of that kill zone where the ambush is taking place. We're trying to drive out of there.

Next to me, to my left is Sergeant First Class Lopez, and to my right was Corporal McGuire, my team leader. Corporal McGuire was shooting his two- or three-grenade launcher, and he said, “Hey, there's a guy running with an AK.” And I saw the guy running with his AK. I put my pack for the infrared laser on his chest. I opened fire, and I watched him. I watched the bullets go through him. And then he just fell into the swampy grass and kind of just got swallowed up by the earth.

And just like that, I ran. I shot 30 rounds in my magazine. I yelled, “I'm reloading.” I put in the new magazine, got my weapon, let the boat go forward. I'm locked and loaded, operational, ready to engage, and cease-fire is called. It was over. I didn't feel anything. It was just like an adrenaline rush. What I did didn't hit me — that I just shot a human being. I didn't think about it until the next day when we were given orders that we were going to go back in the daytime to that same spot. And that's when my brain was saying, Don't go. It's dangerous. You're going to die. But I had to face that. And as the deployment went on, that’s really what war is. 

You have to face your fears every day, and you just learn to live with your adrenaline and fear.

PG: So how long did that last, and how did the arc of the rest of your active-duty military career go? 

FA: The deployment was seven months. Honestly, I didn't want to leave Fallujah. I thought about what I could do for the rest of my military time here, my four years, because it's what I signed up for. It was exciting, but I had to leave. When I came home, I started to see the side effects of combat on my mind. In the middle of the night, I would jump out of bed panicking. My heart is racing. I'm looking under my bed, and I'm wondering, Where's my gear? I'm going to die. I don't have my gear. Oh my God, what's happening? And then I realize, Oh wait, I’m in my bed.

So when I came back from Fallujah, I saw some things weren't right. But I just kind of shook it off and lived with it. I had a job to do at that point. 

PG: Did you think you would spend your whole career in the military?

FA: Oh, I wasn't sure at the time. I was dating my high school sweetheart, and we started getting pretty serious. I thought I was leaning towards getting out after my four years and getting married and having a career in law enforcement and living a regular life, you know. 

But then I got the call to go to Afghanistan as a paratrooper. It was to provide additional security for the first-ever free elections since the removal of the Taliban. Al-Qaeda was on the run, and people were going to vote for the president of their choosing. The Taliban was threatening that they were going to kill and bomb anyone who voted and going to destroy the polling sites with suicide vests, suicide car bombs, all that.

So we got the call. I went to Afghanistan. We did missions, counter IED missions. We did sniper overwatch missions, watching these polling sites to make sure they weren't being booby trapped. We did a few raids to kill or capture high value targets. We were doing missions between Zumar and Gardez, Afghanistan, along the Pakistan border, making sure that it went smoothly, and they did. The people voted for — what's his name — Hamid Karzai. I believe he was elected. And then we came back home. 

It wasn’t as exciting as Fallujah, but we were rocket attacked. I did go into villages and have to have close encounters with the Afghan people, Afghan fighters. 

Again, when I came back, I would wake up at night looking for my weapon, but it’s not there. My family started noticing and then my girlfriend. I was just withdrawn. I just didn’t want to talk about it. 

But when I came back from Afghanistan, I went to pre-ranger school, and then I went to Army Ranger School. And that was like a whole challenging experience to go through. I recycled the second phase, the mountain phase. That was terrible, being out there in the snow-covered mountains of Dahlonega, Georgia, the Appalachian Trail, and eating one meal a day and being pushed physically, mentally to my limits. That was hard. I graduated Class 605 Army Ranger School, and then when I came back, I was supposed to get out a few months shortly after. But then the Army said we were going back to Iraq for a year, and they needed the manpower. I was stop-loss. So the Army said we were going back to Iraq. It's going to be for a year.

That's when my world started going down. That's when I was kicked out of the recon platoon because I didn't want to reenlist because my plans were to get out and get married. This girl I was dating, she said, “I am sorry, I can't do another deployment. You're going to be gone for a year.” She broke it off with me, and I was heartbroken. But the Army was saying, “You're not getting out. You're going to war.” I was pretty angry. 

I had kind of started straying from God. The only time I would really pray was when I was going to go outside the wire, which is leaving the base to go on missions, on combat operations. I wasn't going to church. You know, if I ever encountered our chaplain, maybe it was a brief encounter, but I wasn't reading my Bible. 

When all this came crashing down, I blamed God for it. Now, looking back, it's like, Well, how can I blame God for it if I wasn't even in a relationship with God? 

Then I went to war. So the one-year deployment turned into a 15-month deployment, and I lost several friends, close friends. 

So I got back from a 15-month deployment in Iraq, and it's Oct. 27, 2007. I take a two-week vacation, and then I'm told that I have 10 days to get out of the Army. And that's it. Like that's goodbye. I have 10 days to set up medical appointments, to do medical screening, to turn in my equipment.

It all ends with getting a piece of paper that is called a DD-214. That is the only proof that I served. It says what I did and where I was. It has all that information for employers in the future for my own records. And they told me, “Thank you for your service. Here's a piece of paper, the DD-214. Make sure you make a lot of copies of that because that's the only evidence that you served.” And that was it. 

A few weeks later, I was in college, but in my mind, I was still in Iraq. 

PG: OK, so you're in college. Where did you go to college? 

FA: I started off at Cerritos Community College. I did my general education there. I thought college would be fun, but it was a culture shock. I didn’t know who to trust. I go from being a part of a band of brothers to now being alone and not relating to any of these other kids complaining that they have to write a 10-page paper, and I’m dealing with trauma.

I didn't feel safe. Whenever I got home after school, there was no one home. I had to grab my pistol and go room to room looking in every room, in the closets, under the bed just to know that no one's hiding in the house so I could at least be able to relax while I watch TV. But I didn't get help for several years. I did my two years of general education. I was accepted to U.C. Irvine, the University of California, Irvine. I studied criminology, and my goal was to be in law enforcement. They ask a lot of questions — very thorough background checks — and I couldn’t lie.

I admitted to carrying a gun, a concealed pistol, which is a felony in California without a concealed carry permit. With my war experiences, they did not think that I was fit for law enforcement, and I was rejected by many agencies. So I found myself working at Costco in the city of Commerce as a shopping cart collector because I ran out of the GI Bill, and that's what I was living off of. And I'm not in school. So now I need to get a job, and I'm collecting shopping carts. 

I remember just feeling like a failure, not having a brotherhood, not having a circle. I was going to church — I did start going to church after the Army — but I was afraid to share with them what I did in combat. I had this idea in my head that they’re all so, you know, good and innocent, and if I shared that with them, they would kick me out and say, “You’re not a Christian. How dare you? You hurt a lot of human beings.”

So I carried around a lot of shame and guilt for my service, and I wasn’t opening up. I wasn't happy with my job collecting carts at Costco. Then that's when the nightmares hit an all time high, where it got to the point I was afraid of going to sleep. I hated my life, and I would think that the best days of my life were behind me. I would think, I'm alone. I'm a failure. I'm just a shopping cart collector. I think it's time for me to check out. I think it's time for me to end my life. There's really nothing worth living for.

I was drinking heavily at night just to pass out so I could go to sleep without nightmares. I decided that it was time to end my life, and I grabbed my pistol and put it in my mouth and thought, I’m going to end my life. I remember putting the pistol in my mouth, taking the safety off. It was a 1911 pistol. I heard the click of the safety being deactivated. And then I put my thumb on the trigger, and I thought, OK, I'm just going to squeeze it. It's going to be over, you know. That's it. And in my mind, I said a prayer. I said, “God, if you're there, save me.” It's like I wanted to know that God was there. I wanted to know that I wasn't alone because I felt so alone. I mean, it's such a dark and lonely place to be. The Taliban couldn't kill me. Al-Qaida couldn't kill me. But I'm going to kill me. 

And then I remember hearing a boom, like something slamming. And then I opened my eyes, and I dropped the pistol, and I was scared. My heart was racing. I started tearing up, crying, and I looked up, and my Bible fell off the desk. So something pushed it. It sounds so crazy and so unbelievable to share this story time and time again. But that's what happened. And I was scared. And I remember I prayed, and I asked God for forgiveness. And I prayed, and I cried, and I said, “I give up.” 

I finally gave up. I had been living my life thinking, Well, I'm a paratrooper. I went to war. I'm an Army Ranger School graduate. I'm a tough guy. I don't need help. I’m living a lie because of my pride. My pride was killing me, and then I finally reached a low point and admitted that I needed help and that I couldn’t live my life without God — that He is the only one who would save me. I did not have the strength, but He did, and He could give me that strength, and that He would help me. 

PG: So let's talk about that next chapter — what happened after that low place.

FA: So after that low place, my buddy Lewis Espina and I reconnected. He also served in the Army, and he works for the Department of Veterans Affairs. His job is to get veterans connected with help. He kept reaching out, saying, “Hey, come on. Talk to someone.” For a long time, I was like, “No, no. I'm not going to do it. You know, I'm not weak. I'm hard. I'm a tough guy, you know, an airborne infantry, ranger school guy. I don't need that help.” 

But after breaking down — and I believe it was God's timing — he happened to reach out to me again. He never gave up on me. And I said, “OK.”  He set up appointments for me at the VA. And that's when I met for the first time with a clinical social worker at the East L.A. VA clinic. His name was Bob Weemes. I'll never forget the man. First the receptionist gave me a packet to fill out, and they had all these questions of, “Have I seen war? Did I ever hurt anyone in combat? Did I lose friends in combat? Was I having nightmares? How often?”

I lied. I lied. I said, “Nope, I'm good. Everything's great. I don't drink. I don't have nightmares. From a scale of one to ten, I'm a nine and happy.” I was still hiding even though I fell to my knees and cried and said, “Lord, I need help.” You know, God's opening these doors. I'm getting the help. The opportunity to get the help was there, and my pride was still in the way. So then I fill out this packet, turn it in, and then after a few minutes, Bob comes out and says, “Come on with me.” I go to his office. It's me and him. He closes the door. He said, “I reviewed your answers, and according to your answers, you're good. You don't need help. So you there's nothing we can do for you.”

I said, “Great, can I leave?” He says, “No, not so fast.” He says, “I think you're lying to me.” And I was kind of shocked. Like what? And he pulls out my records. He had my military records, my 214, and he says, “Your answers do not match your military history. You were awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge Ranger Tab. You've been to Iraq twice, Afghanistan once. You're going to tell me that as a paratrooper in the airborne infantry, you went to Iraq and Afghanistan, and you never experienced any hardships? I think you're lying.” And I didn't say anything. And he says, “I'm here to help you. Even if you've committed murder, that stays between us. I am here to help you, but you have to let me in.” 

And I was thinking, Do I get up and just run out of there, or do I finally get the help that I know I've been wanting? I need it. I know it. I knew I wanted to kill myself. This was it. Either I surrender and get help, or I walk away. 

So then I said, “OK, fine. What do you want to know?” And then that's when he started asking me the tough questions. “How many drinks did you have on Friday?” And I told him I had like thirty six beers. He said, “With who?” I said, “No one. I was alone.” He asked me if I was having nightmares. I said yes. He asked me how much sleep I was getting. I was averaging maybe two hours of sleep a night. I was exhausted. He asked me if I had lost friends in combat. I said yes. He asked me if I had hurt people in combat. I said yes. And then he looked at me, and he said, “Fernando, you need help.”

And that's when I broke down again, and tears started coming out. And that was the point where, from then on, I was open and honest. I met with Bob twice a week, and I shared, and he helped me to process the trauma and the loss. He helped to put everything in perspective — the pain and suffering that I experienced. That was so liberating and freeing. I was living a lie. I was living a lie. 

I wasn't alone. It turns out I was self-sabotaging because of my shame and guilt like so many veterans are doing. They reject community because they feel that if they share what they've experienced, they're going to be shunned, that they're going to be ridiculed, that they're going to be cast out. That is not the truth. When I finally had the courage to share with my church what I had experienced, I was welcomed with open arms and with love. They prayed for me and encouraged me.

I could have just done that from the beginning and experienced healing early on. But because of my pride and because of the lies, I thought that what I did was just so disgusting that they would ridicule me and cast me out. Well, it turns out being a Christian means you are someone who admits that you are a sinner and you are broken and that only Christ can save you. And I missed that. I forgot about that. 

And knowing that I'm forgiven by God, knowing that I have a community was so freeing that I found my calling, and it was to serve God. And that's when I decided to go to seminary. 

PG: So where did you go to seminary, and what were you seeking there? 

FA: So as I started getting help and attending church, I started doing more at church. Eventually I had like two jobs: as a youth pastor and also as an associate pastor. I was preaching, and I thought, Well, I better study the Bible because I know I want to make sure that what I'm saying is accurate.

So I went to Biola University Talbert School of Theology, and I was in the Master of Divinity program in pastoral care and counseling because I knew that from my experiences getting help now, I wanted to turn around and help people. And I didn't know who I was going to help. I wasn't sure. But as God would open doors, I realized it was to help veterans at Biola University. There wasn't much for veterans when I got there. There was no veteran center like U.C. Irvine had. There was one counselor to help veterans out. Unlike U.C. Irvine — they had a veteran center, multiple counselors, so many resources for veterans, and none of that existed at Biola. 

Then I started meeting veterans, and I heard that some of the veterans were creating community. Two staff members, Katie and Jennifer, were also working with the veterans to create a community. It was difficult to find out who's a veteran and invite them. It started off with having maybe like a monthly barbecue where maybe 8 to 12 veterans would meet, to then creating the Biola Veterans Association, being recognized by the president of the university, Dr. Barry Corie, as being a sort of an unrecognized community. He made it a point to connect with us.

Once the Biola Veterans Association was created, I was finding out who’s a veteran, connecting with them face to face and making sure that they were plugging into the other veterans and doing that. I got to hear their stories, and I got to pray with them and counsel them. A lot of these guys were fresh from overseas, and I would tell them I went through that stuff. I went through the same thing to be able to go through what I went through, overcome that and now be able to turn around and help them. Eventually, Biola University opened the Biola Veterans Center, and now there's a strong community of over 150 veterans. 

Today, Biola is a really veteran-friendly university. I'm glad I was there for that, for the opening of the veterans center and that, knowing that it's a better place for veterans today.

But then it was time to move on, and Joey reached out to me a week after I graduated seminary and said that he heard about all the stuff I was doing to help veterans and that they were hiring a Veteran Services Case Manager at the Orange County Rescue Mission. So the Orange County Rescue Mission recognized that veterans were different. We have a certain lingo, a certain experience. We do things differently in a military way, and in order to help veterans, Jim Palmer, he thought, You know what, we need to create a community of veterans just like these universities, just like Biola — recognize where veterans can click and can share their experiences. They wanted the case manager for the veterans to be a veteran so that he can relate. They were seeing a lot of veterans, and because of the flow of veterans into the rescue mission, they opened the Tustin Veterans Outpost to provide housing for these veterans and to create a community. 

PG: So for listeners who don't know much about Orange County Rescue Mission, as I understand it, there's 12 different facilities, and we're sitting at this one right now — the Village of Hope, which is incredible — but maybe just put like a couple of sentences of context of the outpost and how it fits with the the broader operation here. 

FA: So the Orange County Rescue Mission has several campuses. The Village of Hope is for people transitioning out of homelessness, out of jail or prison. And it's a back-to-work program. Here they work on themselves. We believe it's not about just providing someone a house. It's the rehabilitation process. You have to ask, “What led you to homelessness? What led you to prison?” We provide therapy and counseling so that you can overcome that and find a job and live a happy and healthy, successful life. So that's the Village of Hope. The Tustin Veterans Outpost is where the veterans live, but they have access to the Village of Hope. 

At the Veterans Outpost, we have three categories of veterans. We have transitional veterans who are veterans coming out of homelessness, drug addiction, jail or prison. Whether they suffer from PTSD and fell into hard times, they're now able to come to this community of veterans. They live at the Tustin Veterans Outpost with veterans. Every morning they're transported to the Village of Hope, where they have different duties. They either work in the kitchen or the warehouse, but they're receiving counseling. They're receiving the word of God. They're working on those things that caused them to fall apart.

Then we have college veterans. We provide affordable housing to full-time college-enrolled veterans who are on the GI Bill or VOC rehabilitation. They can apply for our program and have this housing and have access to counseling and to all the resources of the Village of Hope.

Then we have the working veterans where maybe they have a job, they’re a full-time employed veteran, and they're just not making enough money right now that they can afford a place to live. So we offer them an affordable place to live, and we offer them budgeting classes, and they can live for two years at the Tustin Veterans Outpost, save money and get back on their feet and find permanent housing and be stably housed and have a career. 

And yeah, so we do a lot for the veteran community. 

PG: To kind of wrap up the questions, I mean, when you reflect on all that you told us and went through, and now we've got people coming — you know the context, right? We've got people coming back from Afghanistan. Now, again, those images today of Afghan people trying to get out with Americans. You know, people are already hearing questions like it's embarrassing for America. Was this a waste of people's time? With all this kind of conversation out there, do you regret the time? How do you reflect on your time? Do you feel if someone asks you, you know, was it worth it? 

FA: So reflecting on my time in Afghanistan and seeing what's happening now, I think that what we did was noble. We gave the Afghan people the opportunity to be a self-sufficient nation, to experience freedom, to be free of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and these oppressive terror organizations. But we really can't force people to fight for their freedom. They have to want to fight for it.

So it's mixed feelings, where looking back, I know that what I did — especially the mission I had when I went to Afghanistan to provide security so that the people could vote for the first time who knows how many years since the removal of the Taliban, to be able to decide who they want to lead their nation — that was noble. I do not regret that, to watch the men and women of Afghanistan vote and have their fingers marked red because they put their fingerprint on a voting ballot, saying that they choose who they want to be their leader and just seeing all those pictures on the media and they're smiling and their fingers are up.

For a long time now in Afghanistan, since we were there, women's rights have dramatically changed for the better. In Afghanistan, especially in the major cities, they've experienced Western civilization, freedom. And right now what is happening is they know in their hearts that that freedom that they've experienced and tasted is being taken away. The Taliban, they're not there to play around. Today I heard from Pastor Jack Hibbs. He posted online about how he's in contact with Christian missionaries in Afghanistan. And they're asking for prayer because the Taliban is slaughtering people. They are murdering people right now in small villages, and it's not being covered by the major news media. That is sad.

At some point, yes, we did have to get out of Afghanistan, but I believe it could have been done better — not just this rapid withdrawal so quickly that now people are comparing this to the fall of Saigon in Vietnam. Really, I wouldn't be surprised if the Afghan people feel like we just turned our backs on them. My prayer is that they would make the decision, like early on here in the United States, where it's up to them to fight for their country and fight for their freedom. I pray that they would pick up arms — that's my opinion as a veteran — and fight for their freedom, fight for their country, and that Afghanistan would be a better nation because the people of Afghanistan make it a better nation. 

PG: And for all the men and women coming back from Iraq, Afghanistan and, you know, I do sort of wonder about, you know, your book, you know, some of our angst about time spent. Maybe we should spend more time looking at the people who were over there, you know? So what do you hope your book accomplishes, and what do you hope your message accomplishes to, you know, to the men and women who served over there and to those of us who didn't but may be in a position to be helpful to them? 

FA: So my book is coming out in March or April of next year. And then the title is “The Shadow of Death: From My Battles in Fallujah to the Battle for My Soul.” It's my story, my testimony from combat to then transitioning to the civilian life and finding my calling — which truly, as a believer, our identity and our calling is found in Christ — and what I'm hoping that this book does, even if I mean best case scenario, that veterans would come to know Jesus Christ and His soul and His love and experience salvation. 

At a minimum, the suicide rate is unacceptable. That 22 veterans a day are committing suicide is truly … it's a tragedy that more veterans are dying, taking their own lives than than are dying, that died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan combined — that veterans would find hope and know that their life is worth living and that there is community that there is there are fellow veterans. 

There are people who truly care for them, people who support the troops, churches, Christian churches that would welcome them and pray for them and minister to them. I don't want veterans to get out and believe that they're alone because the truth is, they're not. And I want them to find love in Christ and find community. That's the main goal that I have. 

PG: Great. Well, so people are watching your book now. Can they go to a website, or Twitter, or watch on Amazon or what? How can they connect with you if they want to? 

FA: So right now, Fidelis Books is the publisher on Instagram. And if you want to know, I mean, it's about just pretty much staying posted. So on Instagram, @paratrooper_fernando_arroyo, and then you can find me on Facebook and Twitter.  

PG: Awesome. Thanks so much for telling us your story today. And good luck with finishing up the book, Fernando. 

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached at 1-800-273-8255. The Veterans Crisis Line
and Military Crisis Line can be reached at 1-800-273-8255.

Jewels Tauzin is an intern reporter at ReligionUnplugged.com. She’s a student at Barnard College in New York City, where she also contributes to “Bwog”, a Columbia student newspaper. She has previously interned at the Mississippi Center of Investigative Reporting, Trinity Episcopal, at Girls’ Life magazine and at The Bridge: The Memphis Street Paper.