In the first hours after a bomb exploded outside the Khobar Towers Housing Complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in 1996, then-Air Force Staff Sgt. John Orlando started praying with the other survivors.
“I was overwhelmed with this feeling of grief and mourning, I just wept,” he said.
As his comrades started gathering at a secure location, his commanders sent the newcomers to Orlando for encouragement, knowing Orlando was a believer.
Now decades later, Orlando – who was honored with the Purple Heart for the injuries he sustained that day – has retired from the Air Force and is serving as the senior pastor of Olive Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. But his ministry began while he was still in uniform.
“(I was) able to minister to people while I was in the military – in the office, in the field, wherever,” he said. “I had the opportunity to lead people to Christ.”
Ministering to people couldn’t have been further from his mind when Orlando first joined the military. He said he signed up not long after high school as an escape from a lifestyle that was quickly leading to nowhere. He served first as a security specialist and then in administration.
The Air Force gave him direction and discipline, but it didn’t give him meaning. For 10 years Orlando spent his days working and his nights partying – and growing increasingly dissatisfied with life. He said he’d go to clubs with his friends, then start talking about the meaning of life and “waxing philosophical.”
Meanwhile, his father converted from cultural Catholicism to an authentic Christian faith and began to share his faith with his son. God put others in his life too, like a friend who came to faith and stopped going out to party with Orlando. This friend urged Orlando to surrender to Christ.
Finally, standing in front of the fridge after another night out, Orlando said it just hit him: “Give (Christ) your life,” he told himself. “Just do it!” He read John 3:16, got on his knees, and prayed a simple prayer.
“I tell people that the ground shook and there was lightning and thunder,” he said. This didn’t actually happen, but Orlando still knew right away that he was different.
Orlando’s life changed completely after his prayer, and his friends noticed immediately. One even asked, “What are you going to be now, a preacher?”
The friend turned out to be a prophet, Orlando said.
That was 1994. The next year Orlando met his wife, Ursula, at a Bible study. She was also in the Air Force, first as a morse code operator and then as a graphic designer.
“She’s the smart and creative one,” he said.
They were married in 1995, and the next year Orlando was stationed in Saudi Arabia. On the evening of June 25, 1996, he was watching a movie in a common room when a truck packed with fertilizer and explosives detonated just outside the perimeter fence.
“There was a flash of light, a thud, glass all over the place. We were on the ground,” he said. “We didn’t know if we were being attacked, if people were coming over the fence or not.”
Orlando didn’t realize he’d been hurt until he looked down and saw the blood pouring from his left leg.
Medics had to dig the glass out of his leg, and Orlando said he considers himself blessed; while he has long-term nerve damage, he only notices when he applies pressure to the area. Nineteen service men and women died in the attack, and as an administrator, Orlando knew many of them.
Orlando said he’s been able to move forward after the attack. “I think the Lord has helped me through that,” he said.
He stayed in the military for the next decade, retiring in 2005. But the second half of his career was focused on preparing for pastoral ministry. He said he felt the call shortly before the bombing, and for years he pursued a college degree through night school, fretting at the delay.
“I was very frustrated. I’d say, ‘I want to serve the Lord,’ and my wife was like, ‘You are serving the Lord, right here,’” he said.
The dream of becoming a pastor, he said, was becoming an idol.
“The Lord really had to teach me a lot,” he said. “Do your work as unto the Lord. In his sovereignty and purpose this is where he has you. Glorify the Lord right here, right now.”
Orlando completed his undergraduate studies after he retired from the military, then went on to Westminster Theological Seminary. Again, he struggled to keep his focus.
“The main reason (to go to seminary) was so that I could grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ,” he said. “I’m thankful for all those years of the Lord teaching me that, because if I had become a pastor without that, it probably would have been a train wreck.”
Now, Orlando’s military background shows up in his punctuality and discipline. He said he likes to keep meetings on task, and he’s more prone to action, less likely to fall prey to “paralysis by analysis.”
And as he leads and comforts his church through the various trials of life, he said he prays for discernment.
“We live in a fallen world, and here’s the promise: it isn’t that we aren’t going to have tragedy or suffer – in fact we know that we are, and as Christians we’ve been appointed to suffer. But the great promise is that the Lord is with us,” he said. “He’s walking with us in Christ through the valley of the shadow of death.”