BETTER OFF

I think it’s time that someone bring to the discussion table the difference between the concept of “greed” and the idea of the pursuit of someone’s “best interests.” The two concepts are not the same. However, the  intent to confuse the two has some ideological appeal, and as usual, time aids in the erosion of many traditional words and concepts. 

Historically, greed has been considered one of the Seven Deadly Sins. It is a sin of excess and inappropriate expectation—the “me first regardless of cost or consequences.” Greed is not always easily identifiable in the beginning, and that makes it confusing. But be assured that sooner or later, harbored greed will surface into observable behavior. Another thing I have noticed is that greed delivers a different result from what was anticipated in the beginning, and sad and terrible consequences of greed may take a long time to surface.

Pursuing one’s best self-interest, however, is not necessarily greed or selfishness. It has to do with appropriate expectations and comes along as a necessary component in the “free choice” package. When you are given daily alternatives, it is the expected behavior to choose that which is highest, best, and most fulfilling. Of course people pursue their own self-interests; thus the beauty of individuality and divergent creativity. Pursuit of their own self-interests includes seeing their families become better off. It also includes their concerns for their friends and neighbors being better off, as well as the entire citizenry of their communities. 

I am a businessman and an economist—a compassionately involved cultural economist dedicated to helping other individuals in the wholesome fulfillment of their self-interests.

I often tell people that “I have decided to give the best of my life for the rest of my life helping other people be better off.” So what on earth does that mean? Albert Schweitzer acknowledged, “I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” Serving other people includes the concept of helping them become better off. 

Lately, I am running into more articles and interviews where I hear frustrated folks bashing the concept of anyone advancing or moving ahead in their circumstances, saying, “They are getting more education and trying to acquire more skills just because they want more of the pie, and I get less of the pie as a result. They are just greedy, and it’s not fair.” Or “The earth is sufficient to meet every man’s need . . . if only those profit people would just stop their greed.”

I have two dear friends, husband and wife, each of whom is a talented medical doctor. They are highly motivated, full of energy, and are Nigerian.Their burning passion was to build a fifty-bed hospital in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, with a fine radiology department, laboratory, and well-equipped operating room. Impossible!

Dr. I. C. Ekwem and Dr. Linda Ekwem heard about Project C.U.R.E.’s work in Nigeria. They pursued me aggressively and even secured the money, purchased airline tickets, came to Colorado, and stayed at our home in Evergreen. They shared their dream and passion with Anna Marie and me. They showed us what they had already done to accomplish their dream. I really wanted to help them become better off, so we helped them finish and furnish their dream hospital. Today, the Ebony Hospital stands as a miracle near the shores of the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. 

The doctors Ekwem were aggressive, passionate, and persistent in pursuit of their self-interests. They wanted to see their hospital become a reality.Today they are better off, and hundreds of patients are alive and not dead, and thousands more are healthier. All are better off. But I implore the cultural levelers to never bash my friends as “greedy” and assign them to their contrived category of “selfish.” Acting in one’s self-interests is not the same as being selfish. Making good choices that serve one’s best interests is different from greed.

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STEPPING STONES

Every act of kindness defines our character and becomes a stepping stone toward heaven.

We become the sum total of every moment and every event of our lives on earth. Every episode forms our stories and writes in time the adventures of our lives. The enjoyable experiences, as well as the tough spots we encounter, set up occasions that demand a response. Our responses then set into motion the actions that give rise to the consequences of our intentions. And lo and behold . . . we then have what we call character. That character becomes our temporal as well as eternal identity. But character is built one episode at a time.

One of the great privileges afforded me in traveling to nearly every corner of the world was being able to quietly observe the countries, cultures, and character of the people. Though the mores and folkways varied vastly, the core similarities of the people were astounding. Many times I was overwhelmed by the responses of individuals to the opportunities of goodness presented to them.

While working in Lilongwe, Malawi, in eastern Africa, I encountered a delightful twenty-two-year-old man named Fletcher Mutandika. I listened carefully as he unwrapped his story for me:

One night an old, shriveled woman came gently but insistently
knocking at the apartment door of the boarding school I was
attending. She was holding an emaciated baby in her hands.
She pleaded for enough milk to help the baby stop crying.
looked at the starving baby and quizzed the old grandmother.
I learned that her daughter and husband had both died recently
of HIV/AIDS. The grandmother could not care for yet another
orphaned child, but she was desperately trying to keep this baby
from dying and being buried with the dead mother.

Fletcher was faced with a character-defining moment in his life. How he responded would set events in motion that would have far-reaching consequences.

Fletcher’s own mother had been orphaned when she was just ten years old. When Fletcher was a child, his mother had told him what it was like to grow up alone, with no family. But by God’s love and mercy, she had eventually gone to school and married a young man, who later became a Presbyterian preacher in his native country of Malawi.

As Fletcher stood in the doorway gazing at this grandmother and her grandchild, something happened inside him. He not only came up with some milk for the starving baby, but he also took the baby to receive medical attention. Sadly, it was too late to save the child, and she was buried with her mother three days later. But Fletcher decided in his heart that from that point on, he would get involved in helping with the orphan situation in Malawi.

Five years earlier, a census had been taken that estimated the number of orphans in Malawi at more than a million. Old grandparents who should have had someone looking after them were trying to care for fifteen or twenty little kids. Many of the grandparents’ children had died of HIV/AIDS-related illnesses, leaving all their living offspring to be raised by someone else. It wasn’t uncommon for a child to be orphaned two or three times. Both parents would die, and the children would be taken in by an aunt or uncle, who would also subsequently die and leave all the kids orphaned again. Nor was it uncommon for young children to be heads of households, trying to raise their brothers, sisters, and cousins after the deaths of their parents. But with no adults around, who would teach the children how to cook, plant crops, tend the goats, or even fetch water? 

By the age of twenty-five, Fletcher was operating his own day-care center for orphaned kids in Lilongwe. He was caring for 750 orphans in his program, but his day-care concept had an interesting twist to it. He didn’t want to break up extended families if it could be prevented. Instead, he wanted to make it possible for the families to retain some of their original identity. He wouldn’t take the kids on a full-time basis, but he gave them a place to go before and after school, and he even helped purchase their school uniforms and pay their school fees. After school, the kids would flock to Fletcher’s pavilion, where all would receive a good, hot meal. Then he would send them off to a relative’s hut to sleep for the night.

Every act of kindness bestowed on those 750 orphans defined Fletcher’s character. Every episode transformed the story of his life. Even to this day, Fletcher continues to build stepping stones to heaven not only for himself but for countless others in the country of Malawi as well.           

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ANXIETY

During the recent holidays I had the occasion to observe and ponder the pesty phenomenon of anxiety. It’s the great equalizer . . . the common denominator of earthlings. What would life be like if we didn’t have the ability to make it complicated? Without anxiety and complication, who would be left to purchase those over-the-counter sleep and indigestion medications? Those who embrace anxiety are hugging a thief who will gleefully strip away their peace, security, and happiness. No one is better off for having invited the vagabond of anxiety for a sleepover. You can’t change the past, but you can certainly ruin the present by allowing anxiety to mess with your future.

I quietly chortle to myself when I hear my friends tell me how fortunate I am to have spent so many years in the “peaceful, laid-back cultures” of Africa, Asia, and Indonesia. They make it sound as if Americans have some sort of exclusive lockdown on angst, apprehension, and fretful stress. We almost pride ourselves on the perceived exclusivity of frantic panic and disquietude. We almost take as truth that no others work as hard as we do, no other culture accomplishes as much as we do, none goes as fast as we do, none deserves to worry as much as we worry, and none works as hard at deserving to wear the badge of anxiety as we do. 

However, what I’ve learned is that the misery of anxiety is universal. It’s prevalent in all cultures. Trouble seems to create a capacity to handle even more trouble. In your lifetime, you’re going to see a lot of anxiety, and you had better be on speaking terms with it. I loved the story Max Lucado told about one fellow who experienced so much anxiety that “he decided to hire someone to do his worrying for him. [So] he found a man who agreed to be his hired worrier for a salary of $200,000 per year. After the man accepted the job, his first question to his boss was, ‘Where are you going to get $200,000 per year?’ To which the [boss] responded, ‘That’s your worry.’”

In case you’re one of those under the misperception that all foreign cultures are tranquil, composed, and nonchalant, I must tell you I’ve witnessed some pretty bizarre cases of anxiety in foreign countries. In 2001, on one of my first trips to Kinshasa, Congo, my host from the ministry of health insisted we travel north out of the city to Bandundu on the route to Mbandaka. The route runs south of the equator right into the great Congo River Basin, with its virgin tropical rain forests. The road is highly traveled out of Kinshasa, but the quality of the highway deteriorates the closer you get to Bandundu.

During the trip, our driver made a sweeping curve off the highway and drove down a steep plateau to the river basin. Then he steered our Land Rover to the side of the road and stopped. We all got out. My hosts pointed out to me the location of a tragic incident that had taken place about six months earlier. It had been raining, and a portion of the highway had washed out. That wasn’t necessarily unusual in that area, but in the past, whenever there was a washout on the highway, drivers would simply steer their cars onto the jungle floor, drive around the washed-out area, and then return to the roadway and continue their travel. However, on that day, things didn’t go as usual.

The first cars pulled off the highway and attempted to drive on the jungle floor, but the rain had softened the ground, and the cars got bogged down in the mud and became helplessly stuck. Large trucks followed, honking their horns. The drivers knew full well that with their driving expertise, they could easily get through if they could pass the stuck cars. But as they passed the cars, they also became stuck. Cars and trucks just kept coming as drivers became impatient. Anxiety levels began to rise, and tempers flared as drivers drove a little farther out into the jungle, thinking they would find solid ground and be able to pass all the stupid people who had gotten stuck. But they, too, got stuck.

The protocol of African highway management doesn’t afford such conveniences as planned detours or traffic officers to direct vehicles in such situations. Some drivers tried to turn around and go back, but there was no way to do this, because the traffic just kept coming around the corner and down the steep road off the plateau. The only option available to them was to shake their fists and swear at the incompetence of the others ahead of them and then try to go out even farther to get around the washout. Each driver thought he was the exception and could find a way around either to the left or the right.

Before long, there were well over 250 large trucks and cars jammed up in that area. No emergency vehicles could get through to help. No one had food. The thirsty people began to drink contaminated flood water. They became sick with dysentery. Several died of dehydration. Other people died of heart attacks. One pregnant mother went into labor. But there were complications with the birth, and the mother bled to death, and the baby died as well. A couple of drivers were beaten to death as fights broke out. It took weeks to unscramble the mess and clear out all the vehicles. My hosts explained to me that the vehicles were spread out over a kilometer into the jungle, where drivers had tried unsuccessfully to pass each other. A total of more than twenty people died as a result of the fiasco.

Plato once advised, “Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.” The unusual consequences of anxiety in the Congo River Basin that day certainly attest to the wisdom of that counsel. As the old preacher and theologian Charles Spurgeon used to say, “Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strengths.”

After that serious illustration, let me offer you another option for handling anxiety. I once overheard a fellow exhorting some of his friends with what I would call “wisdom with a warp:”

      If you can’t accomplish something all at once, just take it little by little.          That way you only spend a small part of each day not accomplishing anything,
             and you can take the rest of the day off!

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ACCEPTANCE AND RECEIVING

In our discussion last week, we concluded that when it comes to commodities  such as kindness, justice, and righteousness, you should spend exponentially more than you earn. It should be the rule of thumb that lavish and exorbitant behavior is the investment rule of the day. You can throw all restraint overboard and be totally thriftless.

Another key to life, however, is found not only in exercising and dispensing kindness, justice, and righteousness, but also in graciously accepting occasions of kindness, justice, and righteousness. Once people stop doing this, they cease to live. 

George Orwell once wrote, “Happiness can exist only in acceptance.” You may dream of being happy, you may sincerely wish you were happy, but until you allow yourself to open up and embrace happiness, it won’t be yours to experience. Or as Woody Guthrie used to say, “Take it easy, but take it.”

I vividly recall an experience in the country of Kyrgyzstan in central Asia, where I was taught well that receiving the goodness coming my way depended upon my willingness to accept it. I had visited all of the individual republics of the old Soviet Union over the course of my travels. The history of that region, which boasted eccentric characters like Genghis Khan and Timur Tamerlane, was rich and colorful. People would gather around fires at night and listen to ancient tales of adventures along the old Silk Road. This historic road was the primary trade route in that part of the world for centuries, stretching approximately seven thousand miles from China to the Roman Empire. 

But over the years, sailing ships replaced the camel caravans that plodded across the shifting sands of central Asia, and upstarts like Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev played their dirty political games and rearranged the geoeconomic chessboard.

Prior to my trip to central Asia, Project C.U.R.E. had received several official applications for medical assistance from ministers of health, hospitals, and clinics located in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. My schedule at the time would only allow me to travel there during the first two weeks in February. My itinerary had me flying from the United States to Germany, and then to Almaty, Kazakhstan, and eventually to Bishkek and Osh in Kyrgyzstan. An epic winter storm, however, changed all my travel plans. I arrived, eventually, in Kara-Kulja, Kyrgyzstan, by automobile. The storm was so severe that the entire region had run out of natural gas and electricity. The local hotels had nothing to offer, so I was invited to stay at a farm home. 

Traditional Kyrgyz homes were built on a compound, with several separate buildings joined together by a fifteen-foot-high wall and a large metal entry gate for protection. One building served as a bath house, another building housed the cooking facility, another was for sleeping, and yet another building was for eating. I was served dinner while sitting on the floor on frayed carpet and leaning against a pillow.

Because of the cold, we all wore our coats during the meal. The hot food that had been brought in from the cooking building, in addition to our body heat, took off some of the chill.

After dinner, the old patriarch of the family invited me to join them as they slept in the kitchen building around the open cooking fire. There was no other heat. I glanced around the small building where we had eaten and decided that it was tolerably warm. I told the family I’d be all right staying there for the night if they had some blankets I could use to make a bed on the floor. I didn’t want to impose on them or intrude on their privacy. That was such a stupid choice, but they respected my decision and didn’t argue with me. They brought in a quilt and some leather horsehides to use as covers.

During the night, the temperature dropped dramatically, and the blizzard moved in with full gale force. The snow began to blow through the chinking of the ancient log walls and covered the floor and my bed. I was so cold that I tried putting my head under the blankets to consolidate my body heat. But that didn’t work at all. The old horsehide blankets smelled terribly like a barnyard, and I could count the length of time my head was under the covers in nanoseconds. 

Finally I rummaged through the contents of my suitcase in the darkness and pulled out all my clothes to either put on or use as covers. I even took a couple of preworn undershirts and promptly wrapped my head with them, turban style, to stay warm. I actually worried about the possibility of freezing. I kept thinking about the open fire in the cookhouse. Why wasn’t I there? 

As the condensation from my breathing turned to ice around my face, a crazy thought flitted through my brain: “If you can’t be content with what you’ve received, be thankful for what you’ve escaped.” I was going to be thankful for making it through the night. 

I could have experienced warmth and comfort if only I had accepted the hospitality I had been offered. I might have dreamed of being warm. I might have sincerely wished for snuggly comfort, but because I had forfeited the offer to open up and embrace the warmth of the kitchen fire, comfort wouldn’t be my experience that wintry night.

In the future, I needed to do a better job of learning an important lesson. In order to receive a kind or helpful gesture, I would have to graciously accept the offer and then receive it. The offer to sleep by the family fire didn’t become mine that frigid night in Kyrgystan because I failed to accept the offer . . . So I nearly froze to death. Since that night, I’ve wondered just how many other occasions during my lifetime I’ve failed to benefit from something good because, for one reason or another, I didn’t accept and receive what was intended to make my situation better off. 

These days, I’m trying to be a lot more open to accepting and receiving what I’m offered!

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SPEND MORE THAN YOU EARN

I’m convinced that when dealing with simple but priceless commodities like kindness, justice, and righteousness, we should spend more than we earn. Because of the debt-oriented structure of our present economy, people and organizations are allowed to do things they could not otherwise do. In our culture, many things are too expensive for people to buy with the cash they have on hand. Debt enables them to make purchases they couldn’t otherwise afford by allowing them to pay off debt with small monthly installments that include the price of the item as well as interest.

Companies as well as individuals can utilize debt to leverage the return on the equity of their assets. That portion of debt to equity is used to determine the riskiness of the investment. In other words, the more debt per equity, the riskier the investment. At that point, debt becomes dangerous for both individual and corporate borrowers. 

Although debt can appear helpful, it can also become a burden and a hazard to your personal well-being. The real trouble comes when the cost of servicing the debt grows beyond the ability to repay what is due. Usually that inability happens because of insufficient income or poor management of resources, coupled with increased interest rates, late fees, and penalties. 

Historically, excess debt accumulation has been blamed for many of the world woes, as well as the tragic breakup of many long-standing relationships. I grew up following the Great Depression and the stress of World War II. The accepted advice of that era was, “Who goeth aborrowing goeth asorrowing.” Or as Ezra Pound said, “Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt.”

Benjamin Franklin gave this advice on debt: “Rather go to bed supperless than rise in debt.” And Samuel Johnson expressed his concerns about debt in these words: “Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.” 

Following the Depression, most people saved up enough money under their mattresses to pay cash for their automobiles and other major purchases. They believed that home life would cease to be peaceful and beautiful once they needed to depend on borrowing and debt. As kids, we were instructed to run from debt as if it were the plague or an addiction. Today we’ve grown quite accustomed to words like bankruptcy, foreclosure, short sale, bubble, meltdown, and universal default, as well as expressions like “too big to fail” and “spending more than you earn.”  

Living with debt seems to be the attitude and structure of our economy today. I have, however, discovered a wonderful alternative economy when it comes to earning and spending, as well as spending more than you earn. I’ve become convinced that when it comes to commodities such as kindness, justice, and righteousness, you should spend exponentially more than you earn. With those commodities, it should be the rule of thumb that lavish and exorbitant behavior is the investment rule of the day. You can throw all restraint overboard and be totally thriftless. You can never bankrupt your assets of kindness, justice, and righteousness no matter how much you withdraw from the account. Consider the immeasurable dividends you can gain when you lavishly invest these assets:

• Kindness—People universally long for others to show kindness to them. After all the traveling I’ve done around the world, I’ve concluded that people will be exactly as happy and kind toward you as you are toward them. That was true in North Korea, Pakistan, Congo, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Showing benevolence, courtesy, tact, gentleness, patience, and unselfish consideration sends a signal of kindness that pays great dividends.

• Justice—Everybody carries around a psycho-spiritual scorecard labeled justice. It’s a high-tech device that’s placed somewhere up front on the inside of one’s forehead. Justice has an extension cord that runs down to the heart, and it’s emotionally activated when issues of fairness, due process, equity, integrity, fair treatment, reasonableness, and reparation come into play. You can never go wrong dispensing way more truth and justice than you ever dreamed possible. Spending more justice than you could ever earn will always prove to be a blue-chip stock investment.

• Righteousness—More than likely, you find your greatest fulfillment in living from freely pouring goodness, virtue, fairness, respectability, honor, and dignity into the lives of others around you. Righteousness is a powerful phenomenon that keeps you alive in the hearts of others long after the action onstage is over and the audience has gone home. That’s because the source of righteousness is from a different economy. 

In the debt-oriented structure of our present economy, people and organizations are allowed to do things they could not otherwise do. But there is usually a tragic downside that accompanies the use of debt. In this alternative economy I’ve discovered, people are allowed to do things they could not otherwise do because they transfer into their lives such qualities as kindness, justice, and righteousness. In our culture, we have to utilize debt because of the reality of limited resources. But there’s no limit to the supply of kindness, justice, and righteousness, because they flow freely from God’s economy, and you simply can’t outgive God! 

Here’s my simple challenge: Try it. Freely invest in the lives of those around you the simple riches of kindness, justice, and righteousness. Spend out of your limitless supply. Plant the fertile seeds and watch the astounding harvest as the people around you do things they otherwise could not have done                    

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GROUP PROCESS

Henry Ford once said, “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” I’ve learned something over my years of travel: Folks running around wearing the same soccer jerseys are not necessarily a team. Sometimes teamwork happens; sometimes it doesn’t. Fortunate is the occasion when some relatively likeminded folks get together, and the psychodynamics result in successful interaction and accomplishment. 

One of my most enlightening but disappointing experiences happened in Krasnodar, Russia, near the Black Sea and the Caucasus Mountains. A group of nine people from a large organization in Arizona requested that I take them with me to the old Soviet Union. Following the collapse of the Soviet Federation, they had selected an ethnic group close to the border of the Georgian Republic to adopt. All of the team members claimed common objectives and articulated well their sincere desire to help this group. They had even selected one person to be their team leader. Project C.U.R.E. was donating about half a million dollars’ worth of medical goods to the project.

We all traveled together from Los Angeles to Moscow in an uncomfortable, smelly Russian Aeroflot plane, simply because one of the group members had discovered that it would save them one hundred dollars. By the time we reached Krasnodar, I sensed quite a reservoir of ill will among members of the group, even though they had been long-standing acquaintances. At a formal dinner in Krasnodar, a prominent member of the delegation decided to unleash a salvo directed at the elected leader. It all went downhill from there.

It was agreed at one of our prebreakfast meetings that I would take only two of the men with me to my meetings with the ministers of finance and health in Krasnodar. The others agreed to stay busy shopping. But as it turned out, they had other plans. Instead of shopping, they waited in an outer office at the ministry building until the agreed-upon delegation arrived. Then the entire group suddenly appeared from around a corner, followed us into the minister’s office, and made themselves quite at home. It wasn’t just awkward; it was diplomatically unconscionable.

My efforts to correct the errant ways of the disjointed group weren’t successful. And even though the half-million dollars’ worth of donated medical supplies were delivered and distributed to the appropriate medical institutions, the full potential of doing good in Krasnodar was wasted. The members of this group were all wearing the same jerseys . . . but they certainly weren’t on the same team!

Fortunately, over the years I’ve had the rewarding privilege of being part of many productive groups that have interacted successfully and accomplished significant goals.

As I’ve observed hundreds of successful groups make a positive difference, I’ve noticed a specific process that takes place as a group comes together, finds its identity, and moves toward accomplishing its goals. This team-building process is characterized by five distinct stages:

1. Groping —The first stage is marked by an incessant flow of questions. Groping for validation, clarification, and significance is a natural first response in a group: “Why are we here?” “What is our specific task?” “Is this worth my time?” “Do we need a mission statement so we can validate our findings?” “Are we sure we need to try to solve this problem? Who cares?” 

2. Griping—Not surprisingly, group members begin to gripe during the next stage. Working through differences is completely normal as individuals with unique personalities, interests, and abilities come together to form a unified group identity: “This isn’t a good location for us to meet.” “This isn’t very convenient.” “I have to take my kids to day care, so I can’t meet this early.” “Can’t we meet at the coffee shop?”

3. Grasping—Eventually the new cluster of individuals begins to focus and engage their common intellect as they deal with the assigned issue and start to understand its scope and sequence.

4. Grouping—As the new group consciously works at interacting with one another, a certain magic takes place. The group experiences a melding, a bonding, a solidifying of purposes and personalities.

5. Group action—In the final stage, individuals have melded together into a unified whole and use their collective strengths to implement the appropriate plan of action.

As coach Vince Lombardi used to say, “People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses or the problems of modern society.” 

Isn’t it delightful to see people who are wearing the same jerseys actually become a team?

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ON BEHALF OF ALL THE WOMEN IN UZBEKISTAN Travel Journal - 1996: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan (Part 9)

Friday, June 28, 1996: Andijon, Uzbekistan: Today started out at a quick pace. The newspaper reporters and the television people were gathering at Ahunov Uktem Nabievich’s office. He is the chairman of the Andijon Regional United Committee for the Republic of Uzbekistan and is one of the main leaders in Andijon. He works in the same office building as Ted Elder, only up on the top floor.

We gave a briefing to the committee and the reporters regarding Project C.U.R.E.’s work in Central Asia. Then, we informed them about Ted’s activities in teaching English to the people of Andijon, aiding in health-care development, and supporting of small businesses, and reminded them how all our efforts tied in to helping and encouraging the wonderful people of Uzbekistan. At that point, the media folks were ready to go outside in the garden area to do some video shooting. The TV people interviewed me first near a fountain area. The interviewer was very generous with his comments about Project C.U.R.E. and the fact that we were bringing over half a million dollars’ worth of medical goods to Andijon. The newspaper reporters’ interviews were quite short, and they said they would have more questions after the presentation of the containers.

Our media interviews made us run late for getting to the presentation site. One official from the health department could not stay for the whole ceremony and left early. Ted Elder had arranged for the containers to be located in a very secure storage area, unloaded from the trailers, and set on the ground. Everything was perfect. When will I quit fretting about details that God has already successfully worked out?

The head medical man opened the ceremony with some remarks and then turned to me to make the presentation. During the presentation I called for Dr. Erkin to come up and stand with me. That was a signal to the medical people that he was not to be cut out of the loop. Dr. Erkin’s face just glowed. I tell people that Project C.U.R.E. is not political – but we sure are diplomatic.

During my part of the presentation, I took the liberty to give my personal testimony as the reason for Anna Marie’s and my being there to give the medical supplies. I told the audience that it was a special day for me because once again God had given me the opportunity to fulfill my vow to him to use my energies to bring honor and glory to him and help as many people around the world as possible by distributing donated medical supplies to help their hurting hearts and bodies. All through the testimony about God giving me a second chance with my life and about giving away our wealth so that we could start over again, the men in crowd were really into it, nodding their heads and agreeing.

After I spoke, the head man responded. Then Ted spoke, another man spoke, Don spoke, Dr. Erkin spoke, and so on, but before the ceremony came to a halt, something strange happened.

The woman reporter from the Uzbekistan national newspaper signaled that she had something she wanted to say to the crowd. “I have never before in my life met anyone who has given away millions of dollars to help other people. On behalf of all the women in Uzbekistan, I would bend down and kiss the ground this man walks on for his acts of kindness to other people. I hope the men of Uzbekistan who will now be making lots of money from business, will follow this man’s example.”

We were all kind of speechless as we realized that the Holy Spirit had been faithfully ministering while we talked. I guess that we will never know just where the ripples of obedience will travel before they lap up against the shores of eternity.

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ANYONE FOR SOME FERMENTED MARE'S MILK? Travel Journal - 1996: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus

Tuesday June 25, 1996: Andijon, Uzbekistan: Upon arrival at the Andijon airport Dr. Erkin Djumabaev was there to pick us up. I had met Dr. Erkin, a very prominent doctor, on a previous trip to Uzbekistan. He had insisted that should I ever return to Andijon I would stay at his personal home. I had agreed. So, from the airport Anna Marie and I proceeded to Dr. Erkin’s home. His wife is also a doctor—a cardiology specialist. But she was away with their two daughters visiting her mother. So, Dr. Erkin was a little shorthanded trying to handle company from America all by himself for the first time. However, as is customary in Central Asia, the typically constructed Uzbek’s home is a high-walled compound that houses not only the parents but also the children and their families. Dr. Erkin is one of two children. His sister is married and lives elsewhere, but Dr. Erkin lives in the same compound with his parents and will look after them until they die.

Their home was quite spacious and very comfortable even though it was very traditionally Uzbek in style. All the buildings were constructed around a center courtyard. Usually families plant a garden in the middle courtyard. Dr. Erkin had planted grass. He said that it is the only home in Andijon with grass. He wanted it to look American. He had seen lawns on television.

Uzbek families also typically keep their pigs, chickens, sheep, and a cow or two inside the compound with them. Dr. Erkin had none of those. Instead, he owned a giant male Great Dane dog that stood almost tall enough to look Anna Marie straight in the eyes.

As Dr. Erkin was showing us to our rooms, he stopped by the bathroom to show us how to use the pump system. However, when he turned on the switch for the pump, nothing happened. There was no running water.

In Aktau, there was only some cold water … and it was brown from the rusty iron pipes in the city. In Dzhambul, we had no hot water and had cold water only part of the time—usually none when we needed to take a shower. But in Andijon, there was no water at all … none. Dr. Erkin’s maid found some water somewhere and filled the plastic tub in the bathroom. While we stayed there, we dipped the water out of the plastic tub, leaned our heads over the bathtub, and poured water on our hair to wash out the shampoo.

We met Dr. Erkin’s mother and father. Both are extremely well positioned in the city. His mother graduated from medical school in Moscow in 1957. She is a Jew, so they sort of banished her to the remote republic of Uzbekistan to practice her profession. There she met Erkin’s father, who had just begun to practice surgery. They fell in love and married, and it had never been widely published that she is Jewish or that Erkin is half Jewish. She was very interested that Project C.U.R.E. sent three containers of medical goods to Tel Aviv last year.

Wednesday, June 26

After a breakfast of bread, sausage, and cucumbers, plus green tea, we went to Ted Elder’s office. The Andijon government had allowed him to rent for a very reasonable price, a street-level suite of offices on the city’s main street in a very important building. All Ted’s team are there on visas to teach English and computer skills to the locals and to conduct humanitarian and health programs for the people. If they don’t perform those functions in a measurable way, they are out of the country. They have also taken up helping the locals fill out forms to get grants of monetary aid to help them start new business enterprises.

At that meeting I received some exciting news. The two containers we shipped have arrived and are being cleared through customs. They will be in Andijon in time for us to make formal presentations on Friday.

It must be understood that this was a miracle. There is no human way possible to control the timing of a container’s arrival at a destination. It takes a minimum of six weeks to ship a container to a destination, but it can take up to several months for delivery under poor circumstances. Andijon, Uzbekistan, is considered to be “poor circumstances.” The container was shipped from a port in the USA to Riga, Latvia, and then put on a slow train to the end of the old Soviet line … Andijon. You can plan and coordinate a date for a formal presentation of a container, but it takes a miracle, plus a little, to have that container arrive on that specific date.

I had gone through all that when the people in Ethiopia had planned to make a formal presentation to the St. Mary’s Hospital in Axum, Ethiopia, on a certain Wednesday. I told them that there was no way we could plan for a presentation on a certain date, because a thousand things on the water or on the land could easily alter the arrival date of a container. And even if the load landed in Eritrea, Africa, in good time, it still had to be trucked across Ethiopia to Axum on roads that had not existed three years prior. Well, guess what! We were scheduled to make the presentation in Axum, Ethiopia, on a Wednesday morning at 10:00. Late on Tuesday the big truck came chugging into town, and on Wednesday morning it was positioned in front of the hospital at precisely 10:00 for the presentation.

That certainly couldn’t happen twice within sixty days, halfway around the other side of the world. And yet it looks very much like a repeat heavenly performance is taking shape. Ted got busy and notified the local Russian newspaper, the Uzbek newspaper, the television stations, the officials at the health ministry, and every other dignitary he could think of. Friday will be the day of the presentation.

Following my meeting with Ted, I was scheduled to meet with Turdaliev Kozimjon, head of what could be called a “new business incubator.” His job is to support new entrepreneurial efforts and encourage bringing in joint-venture partners, especially from the West, to help build the economy of Uzbekistan. He had many questions and suggestions or opportunities for people to start a business in Andijon. We discussed everything from cotton-textile opportunities to importing gas camp stoves from Iran. I want to stay in touch with Mr. Kozimjon. Young Christian business students from, perhaps, Colorado Christian University or other schools would find a ready spot to work out of that man’s office. 

At 1:00 we all went to Dr. Issif Yadgarov’s office at the medical institute. He had invited us to lunch at his office before touring his facilities. Compared to anything in the US, the neurology department was really sad. That facility should have been the finest possible, because it is the training institution for all other doctors in that field. But it was scary.

Dr. Issif followed me all the way out to the car with his doctor son Deemus translating. He once again begged us to help his children get out of Uzbekistan and get situated in America. Both Dr. Issif and his wife are Russian Jews and are fearful of the future for their children.

In the evening we were invited to Dr. Don and Sylvia Ellsworth’s house for dinner, but I could not eat a bite of food there. I had gotten hold of some very bad mutton in the rice pilaf at Dr. Issif’s office at noon. The very thought of food made my liver quiver.

Back at Dr. Erkin’s home, I spent a miserable night … extremely hot, no water. Just miserable.

Thursday, June 27

In the morning I was feeling better, but I was still a little queasy. Dr. Erkin had gone all out for breakfast. In addition to bread cakes filled with mutton meat and fat, onions, and whatever else, we had fruit, tea, and something very special. Dr. Erkin had also gone to great lengths to procure for us a very special kind of milk. He said it is known for being very clear and will keep during travels for a very long time. He wanted us to try the special milk he had gotten for us. I took a sip of it. It was the worst-tasting stuff I have ever had in my mouth—even worse than stale camel milk and tea!

When I asked him what it was, he couldn’t answer me because he was swigging his glass down to the very last drop. Finally, he explained that it was fermented mare’s milk. It is a delicacy, and it will last a long time without spoiling. As far as I was concerned, it was already badly spoiled. It was twice as sour and bitter as buttermilk, and extremely yeasty tasting. I had visions of a whole barn full of a herd of dairy brood mares lined up with milking machines that had been altered to fit a horse. Then I envisioned a more realistic picture of a grubby old Uzbek farm woman having patience stripping out an old mare that didn’t even care if she were being milked. I was not sure what all went on in the process of fermenting the milk, but I did know that when several of Dr. Erkin’s doctor friends came over after breakfast to meet us, they went directly to the porcelain bucket, took the dipper, and with great enthusiasm dipped and drank the white brew until it was all gone. I even think I noticed some of them licking their lips.

Next Week: On Behalf of all Women in Uzbekistan

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SHEEP HEADS and EYEBALLS Travel Journal - 1996: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbek, (Part 6)

Friday June 21, 1996: Dzhambul, Kazakhstan: People were beginning to slow down eating the piles of food. We were then served two strange entrées. One was a briny mutton soup. The other was more of a delicacy. It was tea that had been brewed in an old traditional samovar. The tea was mixed half-and-half with camel’s milk and had a very rich wild-animal taste to it. The briny mutton soup was outright gamey.

As we munched on sweet cakes and drank our camel-milk tea, the governor went into a long discourse. I think the great amounts of cognac and vodka had, indeed, loosened his tongue. He wound up by saying that they had chosen Mr. Jackson as the honored guest because of his heartfelt love expressed during his toast. So it was tradition to celebrate and honor Mr. Jackson with the ceremonial presentation.

All the women who had been in the tent left, and the tribal men all moved in closer and tighter around both sides of the front table. Then through the doorway came two men carrying platters. On one huge platter was the boiled fat and meat of a freshly killed sheep. On the other platter was the boiled head of the sheep totally intact. The boiling process had loosened and split the black skin of the sheep’s head, making it look even more grotesque than it was. But I could see very plainly that eyes, ears, brains, teeth, and tongue were all very well together.

With great pomp they set the ceremonial sheep head down in front of me. I began thinking, I only came to this Marriott coffee shop to have a little oatmeal with raisins, brown sugar, milk, and bananas, and a slice of toast with marmalade jam … and now look what I’m faced with.

I leaned over to Nadia, our translator, who was sitting next to me, and asked what I was supposed to do with the thing. “You must take the first bite of it … and ceremonially you must eat the eyes.”

Oh, sure!

 I reached over, put one hand on the top of the sheep’s head, and tore off an ear and bit down on it. I then quickly passed the platter to Nicholi. An old tribesman next to Nicholi saw that I didn’t know what to do with it, so he motioned for Nicholi to pass it to him. He then took out a sharp, narrow knife about eight inches in length. He grasped the sheep’s head in his left hand, pried open its mouth, and ran the knife up through the tender meat, through the sinus cavity, and with great precision, right out through the eye socket of the skull. Obviously this was not his first date with a sheep’s head. His skill with the stiletto had preserved the eyeball in perfect shape. With about three quick twists of the knife and a downward motion, he removed the eye, a round core of brain, and a lot of something else back out through the sheep’s mouth cavity. Johnny Carson would have paid great money for this elder’s act on his show in the days before his retirement. That was funny … but what came next wasn’t. The old man reached over the top of Nicholi and handed to me the fistful of prized parts. I thought, Okay, how do I get out of this?

I smiled graciously, took the eyeball and other parts in one hand, held up the remaining bit of the ear with the other. I worked my way up to my knees from my sitting position while still holding the vital parts in my hands. The pressure was on. I started out on another impassioned speech about how honored we were to be their guests. I thanked them for their accepting us into their family and how we would always remember them with love and gratitude. “I neither feel worthy of all you have done for us, nor worthy to accept this honor by myself.”

I thereupon took another bite of the ear, reached over a couple of new friends and handed the entire moist handful of parts down to Tyler. Everyone broke into applause. After all, I didn’t want to hog all the ceremonial spotlight.

I heard him mumble, “Thanks a lot.” He was stuck. There was no one else to pass it to, and it was on their land that he was going to drill his oil well.

He said later that his dad had been in a situation just like that years ago and had told him that the secret to the matter was found in a simple formula: “Don’t look, don’t bite … just swallow.”

I’m sure I’ll remember that next time. Everyone was having a great time as the party ended.

I took lots of pictures, and eventually we got into the vehicles and headed out. I thought surely we would head back to Shepte village … but no. The governor and his top Kazakhs got into our van and also followed in one of their vehicles. They had two more historic sites to show us. One was a mountain called the Sleeping Lion and had great tribal significance to them, dating back to the fourth century. I won’t tell the story here, but it was very similar to the story of Masada in Israel in the Roman-Jewish history of the first century.

It was still very bright and hot as we loaded up to see the last site on their agenda. I looked at my watch, and it was nearly 7:30 p.m. I was hoping that the next point of interest would be just a quick drive-by look-see, because it was almost a four-hour drive back to Aktau from where we were.

We headed up into a dry mountain region. Suddenly I realized that we were following a rusty iron pipe that was coming from somewhere on up into the mountain pass ahead. We gained elevation quickly, and off in the distance, I could see green shrubs and small trees in that mountain crevasse. At the end of all driving possibilities, we got out and started walking … still following the rusty iron pipeline. Sometime in the past someone had dammed up the stream of spring water and funneled it into the pipe. We kept walking up through the narrow pass between two sheer rock outcroppings. At a bend in the rock formation, we turned a sharp right. There, hidden away, was a rock basin where the cool spring water was spilling over the granite lip and on down the mountain. It was a great place, in the middle of miles of sand, to stop and rest.

Anna Marie and I had no more than gotten seated when the rest of the group walked around the corner. I was ready to turn around and head back down the mountain, but the governor had different ideas. Someone spread a piece of greasy paper on the ground and plunked down four rocks, one on each corner of the paper. Next, out of nowhere came a long, ugly tube of camel intestine, with horse-meat sausage bulging out. The drivers had also packed up a fresh supply of cognac and vodka.

Anna Marie and I looked at each other and simply rolled our eyes. To these desert people who eat sand every day as a regular diet, the cool water and mountain shade are like heaven to them. They began going through the same ritual of offering their snacks to us. We politely refrained. I looked at my watch and knew it would be late when we got all the way back to Aktau.

Our trip back was an absolute experience of beauty. The sun slowly set over the desert, and all along the roadway we watched the camels as they flopped down in the sand to sleep for the night.

Friday, June 21

This morning Anna Marie and I checked out of the hotel, finished our business in Aktau, and then headed for the airport. I didn’t know what we would have done in Central Asia if we had not had angelic and human assistance. Nicholi, Tyler, and Nadia saw to it that we got through customs and passport control and headed out to the plane. They had also phoned ahead to Almaty, the capital city of Kazakhstan, and arranged for Olga to not only meet us but to also purchase our tickets for the flight to Dzhambul.

We had about an hour and a half between flights, which gave us an opportunity to get acquainted with Olga. She saw to it that we got through customs and passport control and then said good-bye. The horse-trailer shuttle truck was just getting ready to leave the terminal as we came out of the building. We took off like crazy and just barely got on as they closed the side doors. The shuttle took the whole load of people a very far distance from the terminal to another Yak-40 Russian plane. Everyone was pushing and shoving as they left the trailer and walked to the plane to be loaded through the stairway that dropped down from the tail of the plane.

Somewhat jostled and bruised from the Asian crowd, Anna Marie and I made our way halfway up the tail stairway. The woman looked at my ticket and began yelling words I couldn’t understand.

I looked at her and asked, “Dzhambul?”

She hollered, “Nyet, nyet, Dzhambul.”

We had gotten clear out on the far edge of the runway, the trailer shuttle had left, and we were on the wrong plane. She led as we pushed our way back down the stairway through the shoving people at the bottom and out under the wing of the plane. There she found a man with a radio phone and called for a trailer-truck to come back out and pick us up. The flight to Dzhambul was scheduled to take off at 7:30 … It was now 7:30.

Finally the shuttle came rumbling out across the tarmac to pick us up. This could be real serious, I thought. No one spoke English, and we almost got on the wrong plane to a destination city about which I had no idea. It was very possible that we could have gotten off that plane in an unknown city, with no return flights for at least a week and absolutely no contact phone numbers or visas.

We had the long ride back to the terminal. By now it was really late. The plane to Dzhambul had probably already taken off. I was thinking about how I could get back in touch with Olga and get her back out to the airport to pick us up.

The trucks that pull the shuttle trailers were very separate and totally without communication possibilities between the riders and the truck driver. There was no way to even vent my frustrations by yelling, “Dzhambul … Dzhambul” to the driver. He simply drove up to the terminal, hesitated, and then took off. Fortunately, while he was hesitating, we jumped off. I ran back into the terminal and found some uniformed people. I just kept showing my ticket and saying, “Dzhambul, Dzhambul.” Finally another angel appeared, smiled, took us back out to the tarmac, hailed another shuttle trailer-truck, gave explicit instructions to the driver, and sent us on our way.

When we pulled up behind the Russian Yak-40 that was bound for Dzhambul, the tail ladder was still down. We ran over and started up into the plane. The woman there scowled at us. Something had delayed the plane, and they were not happy. But that delay allowed us to get on, stash our suitcases in the luggage bins behind the strap curtains, and slide into the two available seats. Anna Marie and I looked at each other, smiled, and breathed, “Thanks, again, Lord. It’s a wonder that you let two stupid little kids like us run loose all around this world. We’re sorry that we take up so much of your guardian angel’s precious time keeping us out of scrapes … but thanks.”

We landed in Dzhambul about 9:30 p.m., but it was still as light as if it were 5:00 p.m. Ruth Bittle, back at our office in Denver, had been able to contact Kazakhstan through e-mail and fax via the Caleb Project, and sure enough, Steve Unangst arrived in time to meet us in Dzhambul, Kazakhstan, instead of Tashkent, Uzbekistan. That saved us one whole day’s drive by automobile.

Steve took us to an apartment flat previously owned by some Russians. There we met Brett and Maria Westbrook from Muncie, Indiana, who were to be our hosts for the next four days. Anna Marie would now begin to experience the Central Asian lifestyle—no showers, no hot water at all, and no cold water about 75 percent of the time. Everything has to be purchased at the bazaars, and luxuries are things that are rumored about when groups gather and discuss what they read in leftover US or UK magazines. Life for many here is really difficult. Since the Russians began leaving around 1990, over 50 percent of the men in the city were unemployed, and 70 percent of the former factories and plants had shut down.

The Westbrooks fixed us a fine dinner of noodle soup and Kazakh bread. We even had some tea before we went to bed.

Next Week: Opening Historically Shut Doors

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THE SPIRIT OF JACOB MARLEY

Marley was dead, to begin with” starts out Charles Dickens in his Christmas masterpiece A Christmas Carol. “There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.” Dickens intended to give Marley a position of authenticity and place him in a position where no one could argue with his established wisdom. He was already dead, but now he had access to knowledge as to where he was and why he was where he was. Somehow, Marley had bargained for the chance to revisit his old, selfish business partner, Scrooge, and give him one more thin chance to mend his greedy ways.

After Marley made his scary entrance through Scrooge’s double-locked doors, dragging the chains he had forged in life link by link, he got down to giving Scrooge his otherworldly advice.

“It is required of every man . . . that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world—oh, woe is me!—and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth and turned to happiness!”

Scrooge stabbed at a chance to turn down the heat of Marley’s message: “Speak comfort to me, Jacob!”

“I have none to give. . . . No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I!”

Scrooge couldn’t deflect the message, so he tried a little flattery: “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob.” 

“Business!” the ghost cried, wringing his hands. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!” Then Jacob Marley’s ghost went on: “I am here tonight to warn you: that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate.” 

I have personally tried to discipline my behavior over the years to revisit the words and spirit of Charles Dickens’s Jacob Marley, not only at Christmastime, but throughout the year. His powerful advice, however correct or incorrect his theology, is as necessary as oxygen. Humankind truly is my business; that’s the “why” behind the past years of Project C.U.R.E.! “No space of regret can make amends for a lifetime of misused opportunities.” The common welfare is my business. “Charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence” must be the mainspring and clockwork of my life every day.

The message of Marley should remind us that the chains of life that we forge link by link, day by day, should not be chains that shackle us to the greedy accumulation of possessions in this world; rather, the crafted links should become chains that bind our hearts together with kindness, justice, and righteousness on this earth. 

     Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (Wheaton, IL.Tyndale, 1997), 3,4,16,18,19.

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