Joy Around the Campfire

My journeys around the world the past thirty years have profoundly convinced me that if you plan to travel from success to significance in this lifetime, you will do so over the road of compassion. Your true measure of greatness will always be determined by your care for others ... not the accumulation for yourself. I know that it sounds a bit revolutionary, but the pulsating motivation behind your drive for accumulation should be the recognized opportunities for making other people "better off." 

We had traveled to the fascinating, but terribly needy, country of Tanzania with our free medical clinics. Our doctors and nurses on that trip were mostly from the Vanderbilt University community, and we had excitedly looked forward to what could be accomplished within the borders of the Serengeti. The night before we were to pack up and leave the Serengeti, we had all gathered to relax with tea and biscuits around an open pit fire at our rustic campsite. Our team had been overwhelmed the previous days by the raw-edged medical needs of desperate people. 

I knew that would be the last night I would spend for a while under the starlit sky of the majestic Serengeti. My mind had gone back to the words of Dr. Albert Einstein,"A person first starts to live when he can live outside of himself." Our medical team was totally spent, physically, but bursting with joy and satisfaction. They had outperformed their own expectations. They had lived to the limit . . . outside themselves. 

We had all been privileged to share the experience of a lifetime by taking the talents God had given to us and unselfishly using those talents to ease the pains of terribly hurting people half way around the world. There were scores of kids who needed immediate attention for malaria, serious skin problems, or even tetanus. Others suffered with severe respiratory problems, chicken pox, or TB. 
 

Two days before, we had all witnessed the dramatic episode where the talented medical team had been able to "bring back to life" a young girl who had been in a deep coma and had been carried to the medical site by her grieving mother. David White had leaned over the limp body of the girl as she lay on the makeshift examination table with IV tubes in her that dangled from the rafters of the dirty building. He spoke softly into her ear, "little girl, Jesus loves you ... we love you ... your mother is here ...open your eyes, sweetie." She not only opened her eyes but the next day walked with her mother back across the Serengeti to their home! 

On the last day of our clinic a middle aged mother had been brought to us. She had accidentally tripped and fallen into an open cooking fire the afternoon before. She had not only received terrible facial burns, but the fire had also destroyed one of her eyes, removing it from the socket. Nowhere else on the Serengeti could she have received emergency help or medications to relieve the excruciating pain. Our team had cleansed and treated the wounds, packed the burned eye socket, and had left ample medical supplies and instructions with family members for taking care of the injured mother in the weeks ahead.

The medical team experienced true joy that last night, because during the past week they had been reminded of one of life's great secrets. If we are to live fulfilled and satisfied lives, we must move outside the tightening circle of our own personal concerns and start investing in the lives of others. There is something miraculous and wonderful about not only giving away your riches but, also, giving away yourself! In the process of giving away yourself you will discover the surprise package of true reward and eternal fulfillment. What I hoard, I lose . . . what I try to keep will be left and fought over by others . . . but what I give to God and others will continue to return forever.It's no wonder Dr. Albert Einstein's comment that, "A person first starts to live when he can live outside of himself," makes so much sense! Come to think of it . . . he was a pretty smart guy!
 

The Magic of the Experience (cont'd from "Food Angels)

I had observed lots of other feeding programs around the world, but never had I witnessed it accomplished in such orderly fashion. Each child received two slices of bread. All stood quietly as they devoured the bread slices. Monica then passed out plastic cups that were soon filled with the thick nutrient drink.

Heather circulated among the kids, looking for the ones suffering from malnutrition. She would walk up and pop a flavored vitamin pill directly into the hungry child's mouth. Nearly all the smallest children received the vitamins. "No one else would do this if I didn't," Heather told me as I followed her from child to child.

The last food handed out to the kids was some sweet puffed rice treats out of a giant plastic bag. Monica went to each child and pulled out all the puffed rice treats she could gather in her two hands and gave it to the child. The children were trained to pull up the front of their little dirty shirts and make a pocket to hold the goodies. That way, no empty plastic bags were left to litter.

Then came the zinging "teachable moment" of the whole "Food Angel" operation. Heather called an older child over to the back of her truck and showed the child some shoes and clothes she had brought with her. She asked the older child whom he thought the shoes and clothes would fit. Then Heather had him take the clothes to that person. "You see," she whispered to me, "I have just involved that child in becoming a loving caregiver. He will never forget that feeling for as long as he lives!"

I was thinking about Heather the other day when I received a message on the social network from a lovely mother who had taken her daughter to our Project C.U.R.E.warehouse in Tempe, Arizona. She, much like Heather, wanted to set up an experience of care-giving that her daughter would never forget:

". . . we live in Gilbert, AZ and were able to volunteer at your (Project C.U.R.E.) warehouse in Tempe. That has been one of the most memorable things my daughter has done.Seeing the needs of others, and her love of science, she has decided to attend the University of Arizona and study medicine. It's because of people like you who encourage and inspire other generations to continue with an important cause. We look forward to continuing to help out with Project C.U.R.E." It is a great privilege, and an incumbent responsibility, that each of us makes it possible for those around us to have the magic of the experience of learning how it feels to make other people "better off."

When Heather's hungry children had gobbled up their bread slices and had finished drinking their gruel, Monica and the two men collected the plastic cups, poured some fresh water out of an old gas can into a large plastic pan, and began washing the cups for the children at the next feeding station. A daily ritual of tender, loving kindness unseen by the outside world. Unnoticed? Not on your life: " ... assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My bretheren, you did it to Me." Matt. 25: 40 NKJV 

Food Angels

"What you do is what you believe . . . the rest is manipulative psycho-babble." 

In the destitution and squalor of South Africa I found the real deal. No talk . . . all walk. On the outskirts of Johannesburg hundreds of fathers and mothers were dying and many hundreds of children in the shantytown communities were left as orphans as a result of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Refugees kept pouring into the hopeless shantytowns from neighboring countries looking for food and work. 

For some reason Heather and her three friends, known as -the "Food Angels," had taken it upon themselves to feed and clothe a portion of those abandoned children. Three of the four were of Scottish decent and five years prior all three had chosen to leave their lives of sufficiency and move into the squalor of the shantytowns. 

Heather took me over to the edge of the dirt trail and pointed to three trees off on the western landscape. "Our shanty is near the center tree. You can barely see our shack from here. We moved out here five years ago. It really surprised the people to see the only European-looking people moving into a shanty with no toilet or water. This has been our home and this is our beloved work," said Heather, an older woman who could not disguise the physical results of a harsh life. Her husband's shaggy beard was matted and mostly gray, his bushy hair held down by an old black stocking hat.

The quartet had settled on five locations throughout the crowded shantytown communities. At exactly the same time every day they would show up at the designated feeding spots. Heather and her small group traveled in two vehicles throughout the shanty camps. One was an old blue car with a rack attached to the top. Fifty-five small plastic stackable chairs in colors of blue and red were fastened to the rack by a worn rope. The other vehicle was a small white pick-up truck with a camper shell on the back. 

The group would go to grocery distributors and bakeries located in the Johannesburg area where they would be given loaves of bread, raw vegetables and large plastic sacks filled with puffed rice snacks. Another distributor gave them cases of a malty nutrient drink sold as a dietary supplement. I studied the ingredients and was impressed. Surely, no child would starve to death if they were consistently getting looked after by Heather and her crew.

On Tuesday, Anna Marie and I traveled over the rutty trails of the shantytowns with the "Food Angels" on their rounds. At the first stop, scores of ragged, dirty kids had gathered, cheering and waving. Upon arrival, Heather's husband unloaded the 55 blue and red stackable plastic chairs.Monica was the fourth member of the group. She was a teen who had been orphaned when small and had become the song leader, cheer leader and crowd controller at the feeding stations. Monica had the shanty kids sounding more like a children's touring choir than a bunch of ragamuffin HIV/AIDS orphans.

"This is the only meal these kids will get today. Most of them are AIDS orphans. See that little boy over there by the truck? He has AIDS. See that little girl over there? She has AIDS and is noticeably dying. And see that seven-year-old boy there? He has AIDS passed on to him by his mother before she died.That boy is the son of a witch doctor here in shanty town. See his beads and leather straps? But he is also dying of AIDS. We just keep showing up and loving these precious children. We can't take them all home with us, so we have come to make our home with them.

"What you do is what you believe . . . the rest is manipulative psycho-babble."

(To Be Continued)

First in Line

I always chortle a bit at the homespun wisdom, "the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese!"

In our culture we have been fed the breakfast of champions and coached in the necessity of being first in line. It's really important to always be first in line . . . or is it?

Recently, I was in the quaint Balkan country of Bulgaria. I loved it enough that I wanted to go back at the first opportunity. I had agreed to travel from Colorado to Sofia, Bulgaria to work with Mr. Carl Hammerdorfer, the Country's Peace Corps Director. With the Peace Corps and Project C.U.R.E. working together as a team, we were able to accomplish some very ambitious projects of rebuilding and refurnishing some strategic medical facilities in Bulgaria.

The curious history of Bulgaria dates back to the 5th and 6th centuries B.C. Genghis Khan had traipsed through the region with his bloody band and left his influence everywhere. The severity of the subsequent Roman occupation altered the social fabric as well as the landscape. Remains of the Roman walls, forts, ports and coliseums are abundant. The Ottoman Turks later raped the women, pillaged the economy and defaced the real estate, as did the communists more recently. While visiting the thriving cities of Plovdiv, Sofia and Bourgas, I pledged that I would one day return on my own time and do some antique procurement.

One Tuesday was spent assessing a medical facility in the area of Starosel. Near the site was an ancient ruin that had just recently been unearthed. It dated back to the 6th century B.C., and consisted of some cult temples and wine-making operations of the Thracian Sect. The Bulgarian landscape in that district was punctuated with earthen mounds that the farmers had plowed around for many centuries. Their curiosity recently had driven them to dig up some of the mounds and explore the contents. They discovered the evidence of rumored traditions from past centuries.

Tradition held that the Turks had multiple wives. But when the husband was killed, or died of natural causes, his favorite wife would be buried with him. Since it was a great honor to be buried with the husband, and thereby seal your place of honor and importance in history, disputes would often break out among the surviving wives as to who was the most favorite and who would be first in line to be buried with the husband.

So, to settle the disputes in a terminal way, the two top contenders would be bound together by leather straps at one ankle and one wrist. There was no way to get away from each other. Then they would each be given a dagger and allowed to settle the dispute by death. The one successful survivor would then be killed as well and placed in the tomb with the husband for posterity of fame.

Many of the earthen mounds have been excavated now, and scientists indeed have found such fatal wounds as knife punctures to the skull in the wife's skeleton.

When I heard of this morbid tradition, I thought to myself, "there surely must have been a diplomatic way to defer all that posterity and glory to the other jealous contender by simply acknowledging that you were definitely not the most favored, and even share some anecdotal stories of how you had messed up along the way and not fully satisfied the husband at some point!"Demanding to always be first in line seems to me to be pretty costly and may deserve the consideration of at least another 30 minute "rethink." Sometimes it just might be more prudent to be the second mouse and keep the cheese.

Perfect People

In Colombia, South America, 1997 was a year of lawlessness and murder. The drug cartels ran unchecked not only in the cities but in the rural mountain districts. No one was safe and the frightened victims from the countryside would try to escape the violence and guerrilla warfare by rushing to the cities to find food, protection and perhaps work. “Invasion Cities” were built overnight out of junk and trash on land where folks had no business to squat. Single mothers with a half dozen homeless kids would hunker down under cardboard or a piece of sheet metal to keep out of the rain or scorching sun. Once there, they would be slapped with the cruel reality that there was no food, no protection and no work. There were 32 such invasion cities in Monteria. 

“Barrios” were a little different. The city would give the poor dwellers permission to build on the land or would sell the land outright to the people for a small price. The shelters in the barrios were constructed out of gathered stones or concrete blocks. But the characteristic level of abject poverty was the same ... no job ... no money ... no hope! 

I went into several of the squalid huts. Because of the recent heavy rains, the floors of the invasion city units were soggy mud holes. The sewage ran down the center of the make shift roads or behind the huts. As little babies crawled along the floors and through the mud, I watched with amazement and wondered why far more of them did not die from lung congestion and parasites. My feeble coping skills acquired over the years totally failed me when a pair of haunting, hungry eyes locked in on mine with a panicked plea: “please help me ... I have no hope to get out of here!” 

Then, like a burst of warm Colorado sunshine, I experienced a bit of the Divine. In front of me was a small, whitewashed building that was being used as a school. Alita was only 15 years old; she was the teacher. Over the years she had walked out of the barrio every day to attend a small Catholic school in the city. “I knew I wanted to do something for these children in the invasion cities and barrios,” she told me.

Alita had gone through the 10th grade but had given up her opportunity to enter the 11th grade in order to start teaching the children of her neighborhood how to read and write. She had never received any teacher training, but simply taught as she had been taught. 

She could only teach the children a half day because she had 90 children as students... 45 in the morning and 45 in the afternoon. The week before she had another 15 children come, but she simply could not handle them and had to turn them away. “I was able to bring some bananas today to my school to feed some of my students who have been going hungry. I did not eat today, but that is just fine,” she told me. I looked around her little whitewashed "school" building with pictures and artwork fixed to the outside walls, and I stopped and thanked God for Alita. The work of the world does not wait to be done by the perfect or pretty people. God’s work is accomplished by people of great compassion who will pour out their own lives so that others are “better off!”

Apples and Seeds

One of the greatest lessons I ever learned as a Cultural Economist I learned from the American legend, Johnny Appleseed. He helped me understand the economic principle of "leverage." Born in Leominster, Massachusetts in 1774, as John Chapman, he was raised on a small farm and his favorite place in the whole world was his father's apple orchard.

When traveling settlers would pass by he would ask questions about the fertile lands of the frontiers of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Those curious conversations spawned the inspired dream of one day planting apple seeds throughout the new frontier. By 1792, when he was 18, he headed west.

Johnny Appleseed received all the apple seeds he desired free of charge from the cider mills. Contrary to the popular image of him spreading apple seeds randomly, everywhere he went he preformed, rather, as an intuitive entrepreneur. He extensively planted nurseries of apple tree seedlings, built fences around them to protect them from the animals, and partnered with a "local" to care for the investment. The partner would sell the trees and keep part of the proceeds for himself. Johnny would return every year to tend the nursery and collect his share. The partners were encouraged to sell the trees on easy credit and even be generous in accepting items of barter in exchange. Additionally, he directed the new tree owners to cider mills where they could sell their newly-grown produce for cash. He became a very popular and loved man.

It was from the power of story about Johnny Appleseed that I learned the concept thatyou can count the seeds in an apple, but you can never count the apples in a seed! The power of multiplication through leverage is astounding. And you can never really quantify the true potential for growth by simply measuring what you hold in your hand today. As you place those seeds in the rich, fertile ground of your new frontiers, the silent miracle of multiplication takes place. Soon you will have seeds from many, many apples growing in the autumn sunlight waiting for you to harvest the plentiful crop. Then, once more those multiplied numbers of seeds can again be replanted with the exciting expectation of an exponential harvest.

I was walking the other day through the aisle-ways of one of our eleven Project C.U.R.E. warehouses here in the U.S. The pallet loads of neatly wrapped and inventoried medical supplies and pieces of medical equipment were stacked on three levels of steel warehouse racking. There was no less than 25 million dollars worth of precious medical inventory in that 75,000 square foot warehouse ready to be loaded on ocean-going cargo containers to be shipped to the most needy and hurting people in the world. I started chuckling aloud to myself.

"I have a way," I said to myself, "to count and value the inventory of this warehouse today. But only God can calculate the leveraged and multiplied effect these donated medical goods will have on the economies of the poor, recipient countries. When the broken and diseased citizens become healthy contributors to their gross national production, economic miracles can take place. It takes healthy people to have healthy economies. These millions of dollars could turn into billions of dollars of value to those developing countries!"

Fifty years after Johnny Appleseed was dead and gone, apple trees and orchards graced the landscape of those frontier communities. No one has ever tried to calculate the economic and cultural impact of his efforts, because, "You can count the number of seeds in an apple ... but you can never count the number of apples in a seed."

The Plague of Entitlement


“ENTITLEMENT” is defined as a feeling or belief that you deserve to be given certain privileges ... someone owes you something just because you are you. I am coming to believe that this “entitlement plague” is perhaps more to be feared throughout the world than malaria or dengue fever!

I have traveled in well over 150 countries and have viewed this pandemic everywhere. One day I was in the Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. I was negotiating the logistics for sending millions of dollars of donated medical goods into the country following the ravaging earthquake centered in Gyumri.

Rouben Khatchatryan was a leftover communist bureaucrat who had assumed the privileged position of gatekeeper in the new administration. Rouben was a large man with no way to stretch his brown wool suit coat around his gigantic stomach. When he laughed, the light bounced off his gold teeth and around the room like the sparkles from a disco ball. During my first meeting with Rouben, he boldly announced to me,“There is a law that says that the rich countries have to send money to the poor ones, so you must send money to me here at this address so I can optimize my region.” The only thing that was ever optimized was Rouben’s own wallet. Because of him the area didn’t stand a chance of solving its plight.

A short while later I was traveling in West Africa. It was a difficult drive from Lome, the capital of Togo, north to the city of Dapaong in the northwest corner, close to the border between Ghana and Burkina Faso. During dinner that night at the En Campment Hotel, our discussion at the table wastroubling.  It became quite apparent that our Togolese friends, on average, knew almost nothing about economics, business, governance or how the “real world” works.

One of the top leaders of Togo declared emphatically, “Well, Europe and USA just have to come here and give us more money until we have enough. Someone must simply take it away from them and give it to us because we need it.”  That sparked quite a lengthy discussion.

I received some great insights that night.

The whole attitude of “entitlement,” or “you owe me,” really has become a great enemy of progress and human dignity, not only in West Africa and Armenia, but all over the world, including our own culture in America. It is one thing to “graciously receive” ... it is quite another thing to “expect,” and worse yet, “demand.”  Personal self-esteem and feelings of worthiness have really suffered in pandemic proportions because of this contagious plague.

Once the collective human minds and spirits of a people embrace the notion that someone “owes them something” for one reason or another, it totally changes their character and their self-motivation and the perception of their own worth. It seems to neutralize the component of “personal responsibility.” They fall into the trap of seeing themselves as “victims” and from that perspective they are totally blinded to creative possibilities within their own grasp.

Once they have transferred responsibility and accountability to someone else, and that new source fails to produce the expected answer to all their needs, then they feel a legitimate “right to blame those who failed them,” and emphatically to devote all energies to being angry and vengeful. And where blaming starts, creative growth stops! Additionally, the plague totally eliminates any exercising of true compassion toward anyone else.

Ironically, today many developing countries are endeavoring to build their future economic systems on the idea of expecting or demanding that “the rest of the world needs to step up” and give them more.  And, at the same time, they are blinded to the great opportunities of independent and sustainable growth and development so near to them.  Blame and greed will trump the spirit of positive initiative. Malaria and dengue fever can kill your body ... “entitlement” can kill your soul!

Strange and Unaccustomed Paths

One of the most satisfying episodes in my life was when the United States Department of State awarded my efforts with one of their highest humanitarian recognitions, the “Florence Nightingale Award.”

In the Fall of 2002, Congressman Cass Ballenger in Washington, D.C., and Ambassador Martin Silverstein from Uruguay called me and asked, “How fast can you get away and travel to Uruguay to do your Needs Assessment Study, and get some donated medical goods to that country before its economic crisis deepens into a political crisis that would be hard to reverse?” The congressman served on the International Relations Committee, where he was Chairman of the Committee on the Western Hemisphere.

I agreed to drop what I was doing, and I quickly traveled to Montevideo, Uruguay. Thanks to the help of the Embassy staff and the office of the Congressman, the project turned out very successfully, and for that I was given the coveted award. But the thrill of the ordeal was greatly enhanced by the fact that from my childhood I had been a great admirer of Florence Nightingale. When she was a little girl she wanted to be a nurse, but her family thought it to be less than dignified, considering the deplorable practices and facilities where nurses had to work at that time.  But during the Crimean War in 1854, soldiers from England were sent to the front to fight.  Many were wounded without any access to hospital care.

Florence Nightingale offered to go to the front.  She was given the opportunity to gather up some nurses and travel to a battlefield hospital near Constantinople, in Turkey.  There she discovered a most dreadful scene where nearly 2,500 British combat men lay helpless and unattended in the very worst of surroundings. The unsanitary conditions were deplorable, with open sewers and filthy clothing and blankets. There were no medical procedures or provisions available to the men, and many were dying, not from their original wounds, but from rampant disease and infection spawned from the filthy conditions.

The leadership skills of the calm, but forceful, nurse attacked not only the problems of the immediate situation, but Florence Nightingale determined to attack and change the British health care system altogether. The new female recruits organized themselves into a cleaning brigade. They cleaned out the rats’ nests, washed down the facilities, scrubbed down the patients, even to their flea-infested scalps. Nothing escaped the cleanliness of the new brush brigade. Immediately, there was a dramatic drop in the death rate in the field hospitals. The wounded soldiers began to respond well to the medical treatment. The morale jumped by leaps and bounds. The nurses’ approach had consisted of hard work and cleanliness. Even when there was no money available from the British government, Florence Nightingale went personally to donors and raised money for medical supplies and bedclothes. Some believed that she was able to reduce the mortality rate of the wounded soldiers by as much as 75%.

All of Britain declared her a heroine upon her return to London.  But Florence Nightingale’s own health was in shambles. Following the war she was pretty much home bound for the remainder of her life. But she never gave up the successful fight to radically reform Great Britain’s health care delivery system. From her bed she continued to put the pressure on health officials and parliament to implement reform. As one person she was able to leverage her position and influence. She became an “Agent of Change” for the entire philosophy and protocol of the British health care system.

But the part of Florence Nightingale’s story that so intrigued me, and made the State Department’s award so special to me, was the nurse’s own quote when questioned about her accomplishments:

“If I could give you information of my life, it would be to show how a woman of very ordinary ability has been led of God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do in His service what he has done in her. And if I could tell you, you would see how God has done it all and I nothing. I have worked hard, very hard. That is all; and I have never refused God anything.” 

A Badge of Love in the Jungle

Outside the airport terminal, Dr. Horner was waiting to pick me up. Our destination was San Juan Opico, El Salvador. The paradise had just come through a difficult 12-year civil war. Dr. Horner was quick to explain to me about one of the hazards of El Salvador. "The unemployed men have become bandits." He then pointed out the 212 bullet holes in the vehicle in which we were riding. Dr. Horner promised that as long as I was with him, he would try to stay away from any roads where the bandits hung out.


I was in El Salvador to inspect the new "Clinica la Esparenza" facility that Project C.U.R.E. had completely furnished with medical goods and also determine how we would partner with other hospitals and clinics in the region. It was very rewarding to see all the medical goods being moved into the new clinic and being set up. All of those items were once in our warehouse in Denver.

We drove to a village called Chantusnene. It was a typical "invasion city," like I had seen in Haiti, Colombia, Peru and other places. The ragged refugees had gathered bits of cardboard, tin and wood to build crude shelters. They had no water supply, no sewer, no electricity, and no security. Dr. Horner wanted to introduce me to some of the destitute families they were trying to serve in the shanty dwellings.

There were mothers with babies balanced on their hips, and children in tattered clothes. Toothless men with worn out shoes came to meet me. Dr. Horner was especially eager for me to meet one of the families he was helping. He had just recently been able to gather some wooden posts and a few pieces of sheet metal for a roof to protect Maria's little family from the rain.

Maria and her husband and children had lived on their little farm in the mountains. One day a marauding military band came to their farm and demanded all their eggs and goat milk to feed their troops. Later they returned and demanded the chickens and goats to slaughter and eat. Once again, the terrorists returned, put a gun to the head of Maria's husband and demanded that he join their insurgency group. When he refused, the soldiers lined up the family in front of their own humble house and killed the husband in cold blood as the children watched in terror. They told Maria and the children to leave. They would return by Friday, and if they were still there, they, too, would be murdered. Maria gathered her children and fled to San Juan Opico for refuge.

By the time Dr. Horner had found the mother, her children were literally starving. She had had only a single cucumber for them to eat in the two previous days. Dr. Horner gathered food and took it to the tree where Maria was living. After about three trips of taking food to Maria, a man slipped into the space about 4:00 a.m. where Maria and her three children slept, and put a sharp knife to her throat. He told her he was taking all her food that had been brought and demanded all other food that would be delivered to her in the future. She was warned that if she mentioned what had happened to anyone or did not comply, he would return unexpectedly at night and slit the throats of her children one at a time and, last of all, kill her. He told her his family had been there longer than hers and deserved the food ... he would provide for his hungry children ... even if it meant killing hers. Horner never returned to the woman's shanty to deliver food. Rather, he had the oldest boy, who now came to the orphanage school, take small supplies of food home each day in his school backpack. 

I went with Dr. Horner to meet the brave young mother. He told her about me and about the medical clinic that would be able to give her children good health. Maria's eyes filled with tears. "Why would this man come here to help us?" She stood for a moment, overwhelmed. Then, making a sweeping hand motion toward her little family and touching each child on the head, she looked back at me and leapt toward me wrapping her small arms around me, sobbing, as she buried her face in my white shirt. I held her momentarily. As Dr. Horner and I walked away I looked down at my soaked shirt. I didn't want her tears to evaporate or disappear. I wanted to wear them as a badge of love. I prayed that somehow God would dispatch a small band of angels to care for and protect this little widow who had seen more of raw life than I would ever experience.

How Does That Happen?

The agent in Imphal, India came out to the steps of the small airplane, “I think you missed your flight connection in Calcutta, but check with them there and see if you can get a seat on the later flight into Delhi at 10:00 p.m.”

“But,” I protested, “My Thai Airline flight to Bangkok departs from the Delhi International Terminal and not the domestic terminal at 10:00 p.m. That won’t work even if I were early, and I am nearly two hours late!” He lowered his umbrella over his head and walked away in the rain. To make things worse, my Delhi flight from Calcutta was also delayed. I did not have a ghost of a chance to make the Thai Airline connection. My flight would leave at 12:05 midnight and I would be nowhere close by.

I stopped mid-step and prayed, “Oh God, I don’t usually hassle you about such trivia, but I really need help on this one. It wasn’t my being dilatory or sloppy or lazy or late on this one, but I’m in trouble. Please help me. I really need to get home to Denver.”

As soon as the plane from Calcutta landed in New Delhi I took off running for the terminal. They had not even opened the cargo doors of the plane. It was after midnight. It would take at least 20 to 30 minutes to get the luggage from the plane to the terminal, but I could get instructions in the meantime on how to get across to the other side of the airport runways to the International Terminal.

The luggage arrival room where the carousel belt was located was still dark as I went past. No one had turned on the lights and no one was yet in the room. I stopped dead in my tracks. From the corner of my eye I noticed a single bag on the idle luggage belt. Impossible! It was my luggage! There was no explanation for it being there. I grabbed the bag and made a dash for the entrance of the Domestic Terminal. I stopped long enough to ask a woman at a kiosk for the best way to get to the International Terminal. “Well,” she blurted, “it sure won’t pay you to take the free shuttle, it takes an hour, leaves on the hour, and has already left.” I found it would take me at least 30 to 40 minutes by taxi, depending on the traffic.

While standing there I noticed an Air India counter back inside of the security area I had just exited. I decided to go for it. I walked right up midstream through the throng of people pushing their way out of security.

The security guards, dressed in their military uniforms, got this puzzled look on their faces when they saw me boldly walking right back through the oncoming crowd into the security area. When one moved toward me, I just put up the palm of my hand toward him and smiled kindly at him. He stopped and just looked at me.

There was a man standing at the desk. “I need your help very desperately, sir,” I said. “Your plane was delayed form Imphal to Calcutta and now I will miss my international flight on Thai Airway to Bangkok. How can I get to the international check-in counter for Thai Airway?” He reached for the radio on his belt and at the same time said, “Follow me closely and bring your bag.” There was a van waiting for me. As we left I hollered out, “Please call Thai for me . . . Thank You!”

Our route did not take us 40 minutes, but took us right across and down the active runway with lights flashing. We hurriedly went through several military checkpoints with only a tootle of the van’s horn.

“I will take care of your check-in … you go with this lady! Had you been one minute later I couldn’t have done this.” It all happened so fast. I slumped into my seat, “Thank you, God!” How do things like that happen? Did an angel carry that bag? Did it fly through the air by itself? Did its molecules unassemble, then, reassemble on the baggage belt? I wonder a lot about what I don’t know!