Crossing through the Empty Sea

OK, I'll admit that is a lame pun. What you don't get it? Well, who was the first biblical figure to complete training in the Missionary Training Center? Yes, of course, Moses who led Israel through the eMpTy Cee! But the amazing thing is that your mind becomes so much sharper when you enter these gates that little trivial bits such as this stick to your brain like velcro. It is because this is a house of learning, a place where mental energy and physical exertion are applied in liberal quantities.

What is it that is being taught? That is perhaps the true genius and miracle of this place, because it is not just a place to pack the mind with words and ideas, but rather it is a place to refine the soul and purify the intent, to learn that it is who you are and how you connect to your fellow men that matters far more that what you know. So not surprisingly, lesson one is listening to understand. It is learning to ask caring and meaningful questions with the hope of sensing the needs of those you go from here to serve and help. This skill is true for missionaries who go to serve in humanitarian service capacities, as well as those in proselyting roles. We've focused this past week on how we can help relieve suffering among the poor and needy and it is clear that this only happens when we have listened to understand the needs of the community we seek to serve.

The key skill being taught was explained quite clearly by an Apostle of Jesus Christ, Elder Jeffrey Holland, who spoke to the assembled missionaries here and in six other similar locations across the world last Tuesday. Although missionaries from previous eras had used systematic presentations to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ, often memorized (and I will admit that as I lay in bed one morning this week an oft repeated sentence from those discussions rolled through my mind repeatedly in Vietnamese, "throughout history, whenever God has had something that he wished to reveal to his children..." perhaps triggered by my learning the night before the term for "prehistoric" (tien su)) those methods didn't truly reach the learners perhaps as they should. He went on to explain how an encounter with an initially hostile Czech woman who had lost her husband and daughter in about 1936 epitomized the need for what might be called "individualized" teaching, teaching led by the inspiration of the spirit through a prepared and worthy missionary. Thus missionaries are ordained to "Preach my gospel by the spirit." (Let me know if you'd like to hear more of Elder Holland's remarks.)

Perhaps most fascinating is seeing who these missionaries are that are found laughing and teasing one another in the lunch room at one point, and sitting outside on a bench quietly reading from the scriptures at another, or puzzling over a new alphabet and a totally new grammar for a language different from their home (and sometimes that is English!) Who are these energetic and eager young people heading out to teach the world to sing the song of redeeming love? They are young Chinese saints from Beijing or Harbin heading to Detroit, or Cleveland like young Samuels going up to Zarahemla (See Book of Mormon, pages ). They are charming young women from Blue Bell, Utah or rural northern California heading for the coast of Maine or the White Mountains of New Hampshire. They are the Elder Mannons from Bangladesh going to save souls in Cebu, or the sister from Myanmar going to Temple Square, or a Tongan sister learning Spanish to teach in Nicaragua. How else shall we have peace in the world, but when young people understand and reach across boundaries of language, culture, race and economics to come to a oneness in the doctrines and practice of faith, hope, charity and love? They are each remarkable stories! Pause and listen to the background of the next one you meet and you will be amazed.

Sisters Dao and Lim

We've rubbed shoulders this past week with a retired well-driller and his wife from Idaho heading to Ghana to oversee humanitarian operations there, a former Canadian prison warden and his German-accented wife heading to Kota Kinabalu, Malasia (yeah, I hadn't heard of it either!) to search for ways to serve the poor and needy, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist or otherwise, there. Both of these stalwart couples were heading off for their second such adventure, not content to do just one. The other humanitarian couple are bravely heading to Ukraine. And while the story is repeated regularly, we are barely scratching the surface of what needs doing, the limitation being not financial resources, but people willing to serve. There are lots more details at www.LDSCharities.org, including some great video.

Our formal launch comes tomorrow when we take the first flight, although our routing has become the first part of the adventure, due to the need to accompany, medically, a missionary who has beome ill and unable to continue his mission, back to his home. So we'll stop in Malaysia on our travels.

Art Along the Way

Lewis took this photo while we were in Salt Lake listening to some of the interesting men and women there who are involved in fostering the church's domestic and international humanitarian and welfare resources.

And this painting reminded us that we hope we don't look this tired when we come home.

Week One of an Anticipated Two Doing Orientation

Across the street from where we are now.

The Wasatch Mountains out our window

The good people we've been spending time with.

It's been a pleasant group.  The younger two on the ends are Eythan Barney and Nellie Kacher who have been two of our fearless and extremely competent teachers/discussion leaders.  

All of us older missionary types were organized into small groups like this one.  One thing that was fun was to discover that the man standing behind his yellow-sweatered wife is Richard Cannon who was a high school classmate of Lewis's siblings and who remembers them fondly.

We've spent this week discussing and reviewing and trying to put into practice principles ranging from heartfelt listening to teamwork to a wide range of religious principles including faith in Christ, the hope-filled nature of repentance, commitment to God, working without guile, patience, brotherly love, unselfish service and seeking to communicate with God and understand his will on a daily basis.  All of it very good stuff.

Next week we're slated for a week of humanitarian service training with six other missionaries who have other international assignments (Accra,Ghana, Kiev,Ukraine and Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia); lots of nuts and bolts of how it works and how to make those efforts work as intelligently and effectively helpful as possible. 

We're currently scheduled to start our journey west to the Far East on Monday June 1st.  We were first told that our trip itinerary is ticketed through L.A, then to Hong Kong, and then to Cambodia.  However yesterday Lewis and I were asked if we'd mind making a trip that's a little longer, traveling to Malaysia en route.  One of the young missionaries who works nearby became quite ill this past month and needs to head home to his family there.  The physicians who are taking care of him are hoping and expecting that he will be feeling well enough to travel towards the end of next week.  If he is we will go with him to help him make that journey safely.  Well, actually, it's Lewis and his medical skills that are wanted to go with him.  I'm simply the motherly company that's part of the hopefully helpful Hassell package deal.   :-)

Still no word on whether or not our Vietnam visas have been approved.  So we're still looking at the possibility of some time of indeterminate length in Phnom Penh.  We'll keep you posted.

Losing one's self and Finding one's self in the era of Selfies

When I was first called to serve a mission as a young man of not quite 19, I looked forward to the experience as an adventure, a challenge, and a lot of work. I threw myself into the daily routine, the work and the lives of those we met such that I recall walking down a side street in Saigon one evening, and thinking to myself, "Gee, I can't remember what I did before I came." And it felt good to be so wrapped up in something meaningful and so much bigger than myself. The fact that we were eight or ten missionaries responsible for a city of then about 8 million facing a daunting task didn't seem to register with me. But when we were asked to leave precipitously, and in many respects miraculously, some months later, it was perhaps understandable that one felt as though there was a lot left undone. Somewhere in the next few confusing days and weeks as we watched the political situation unravel from our new post in Hong Kong, the mission president's words (promise?) to us that "you'll all have the opportunity to go back" seemed like a vain hope, at least in the immediate term.

I'd only had a few months of the language, and though I could converse, I was far from proficient. But after a few months in Hong Kong, the presence of some refugees who needed to be ministered to out near Fan Ling on the Chinese border, prompted my re-assignment to that area where for the next several months so until the camp closed my companion and I taught in Vietnamese two days a week, plus held Sunday Services there, and worked the remainder of the week in Cantonese. It pre-saged a pattern that would continue for almost four decades through my life. The obscure language I had thought I was going to learn as a missionary, became a highly sought skill, or at least enough of a novelty, that with surprising predictability, opportunities arose every so often to refresh my skills, and now and then learn a few new phrases. At first they were teaching chances with immigrant or refugee families being resettled in the US. After we were married, we were invited to provide mentoring and support to the newly formed Vietnamese congregation in SLC until I graduated from medical school and the  branch moved to Taylorsville. When we lived in Boston, the opportunities were fewer, but not unknown. And when we took our first job in California, one of the assistants who helped me in the lab was a Chinese Vietnamese person. There we also eventually connected with a young man (Hung) whose family had been taught the gospel of Jesus Christ in Saigon, accepted and been baptized just before we had to abandon that outpost. Amazingly, he had made it to California, met LDS missionaries at his door one day and, because they could not find his member records anywhere, chosen to be re-baptized. Ultimately the rest of his family, including his father, were reunited there, each having had a tough path of their own.

The story became more poignant when I got an invitation to join a veteran's group doing humanitarian work in Vietnam on an exploratory visit in 1989. That first sojourn back to Vietnam was remarkable in many ways, including the experience of holding a worship service with Bro. Que, the father of Hung, with members of our host group and representatives of state security looking on. We sat together with members of the provincial People's Committee and I spoke on behalf of the group in Vietnamese to these "victors" who had obviously eyed other Americans a couple of decades earlier across the boundaries of a war, and yet we felt a great desire on their part of move on, to metabolize the pains of war and build a more positive future, which they seemed to feel included more such contacts with the west.

There followed more visits, some more successful than others, some setbacks, and some triumphs where what we tried to do to help seemed to strike a resonant chord in their harmonies. We made many friends, and ultimately some of them came to visit us as well, staying for a few days up to several months in our home, first in Maine and later in Oklahoma.

These friendships ultimately led me to consider the possibility of working with a lab partner there to develop a first rate lab that could be a model for the country, and the region. We held several exploratory conversations, going so far as to begin to develop a business plan, but I ultimately realized that doing so would significantly shift my perspective on the country from a labor done from a selfless motive of service to one where I was also trying to achieve a financial return, even though the social merits might be great. I felt I didn't want that to color my interactions, rather like the admonition to avoid loaning money to people you love and wish to retain in friendship.

After many of my trips I would return home with countless ideas of how to make things better there, and how to extend the good we were trying to do. These often became quickly swallowed in the demands of life at home, the needs of my employer, my other church duties, and the needs of a growing family. Each of our children became a part of the adventure there in some manner, through visiting along with me, or meeting the people that came into our home, or traveling together with others on a project. Some learned a few phrases in the language, though I was a poor teacher. And they probably breathed a sigh of relief when they left for college without having been asked to live and attend school there!

But, having been called by prophecy and set apart by those in authority today, now the purposes in all of this preparation begin to fall into place, like lost pieces of a puzzle, as one friend recently phrased it. The separate strands of effort, the endowment of understanding, of cultural savvy, the language skills (enough to be dangerous), and most of all, the knowledge of what the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ can do for people, as well as a healthy appreciation for how God wishes to govern his affairs on earth and in the church, we stand as tools in his hand, not so much interested in our selves, as in the growth of goodness in a world dearly in need of more good. And that, interestingly, is what "Mormon" means.  www.mormon.org

The Ongoing Saga of the Call Assignment and Some Time with the Moving Angels

Official Letter:   Humanitarian/Welfare mission, Phnom Penh Cambodia.  Your mission president may change your assignment.  Report for orientation on May 18.

Mission President:  We're thinking we would like to change your assignment to "Member/Leader Support" (MLS) and are looking at how to manage that.  

VN Govt.:  Can't switch while you're here.  You have to leave the country and reapply if you want to switch.  It will take 30 days or so from application to approval if you do.

Humanitarian/Welfare supervisors in Hong Kong: Welcome! We understand that you will be serving as Humanitarian missionaries in Hanoi.  We'll arrange for your welfare training in the US before you come.

Humanitarian/Welfare missionaries in Hanoi: Welcome!  One problem: The host organization contract states that they will not host more than two couples at a time in the country.  We have two couples here already and none are scheduled to leave before August.  And there is one more couple already scheduled to arrive to replace the two who leave then.

Mission President:  Good to know.  We'll start the church support visa applications now.

Humanitarian/Welfare supervisors in Hong Kong: Good to know.  

Wheelchair specialist trainers in the U.S.: Welcome! We'd like to meet with you before you leave for a couple of hours of wheelchair training.

Wheelchair specialist trainers in Utah:  Well, maybe not. Never mind.  We hear you won't be needing that training.

Us: Hi, Mission travel department.  Here is the postcard you wanted us to send you so that you can make our flight reservations.

Mission President:  We need the following documents from you to put together your application.....

Mission Travel Department: We haven't made your travel reservations yet.  We are waiting to hear about the timing of your visa.  We might need to delay your start date.

Mission President:  We've finally gotten all the papers submitted.  The last time we did this it took 3 weeks to get approval. This one may take longer because we are requesting that you be able to work both in Hanoi and in Ho Chi Minh.  It might be wise to delay your start date.

Harried, Slightly Anxious Assistant Manager at the Church Missionary Department: We might need to delay the Hassells?  They have been assigned and called as Welfare/Humanitarian Services missionaries.  If they don't do Welfare/Humanitarian training the last week of May as scheduled then they'd have to wait until the next one in July.  The only way we can allow them not to do Welfare/Humanitarian Training is if we get the senior missionary coordinators in the Welfare Services Department to sign off on that.  And it is my understanding that they will receive instructions from the Welfare Department managers on their welfare assignments in Vietnam. Please see the attachment which explains how welfare department missionaries work with mission presidents.

Mission President: Dear Brother Harried Assistant Manager,  You can keep them on the regularly scheduled date.  We can find work for them to do in Phnom Pehn while they wait for their visa.

Harried But Now Less Anxious Assistant Manager at the Church Missionary Department: We"ll keep them on the schedule.  Will they have their passports or are they currently being held by the Vietnamese government as part of the visa application?

Church Travel Specialist: I have their passports. I'll send them to them during their orientation training.

And the saga continues. 

Four more days until the first segement of the journey.

Many thanks to Ngoc Tran, Li Chao Zhao, Kasey Gillespie, Beau Shaw, and Ryan Flake for helping us load furniture into the UHaul this evening and unload it into a storage unit in the midst of a solid Oklahoma rainstorm.  And to Armi Albers for her amazing cleaning skills. We could never have done it without you. You were angels. And we treasure our friendship.

Should you decide

Your mission, should you choose to accept,

Is not measured in the miles you'll go

With time nor dollars spent retiring your debt,

But in the quiet, in the stillness, afterglow.

The choice you've made 'ere hence you came,

While legion angels in ranks opposed

Cried in derision to besmirch your name,

As any other who His plan followed,

Is one so blithely simple, it's divine,

Re-made, affirmed in words or actions daily.

The details of the mission are a plan sublime,

But not one without danger in each alley,

Where now the hidden scoffers don protean form

As friend, or neighbor, colleague or commander

To persuade, coerce, your valor to their norm,

Or just distract attention 'till you wander,

Letting trivia consume your precious time.

Be on your guard! Alert! Remember--

What's written in your heart from prior clime--

That He did choose to come and be Redeemer.

And you chose too, to always follow Him

Though blinded eyes and foggy mem'ry be

The test of we who walk 'mid earthly light so dim

Until that morn when with a perfect clarity shall see

As we are seen and know as we are known.

With heart transparent and no motive hid, 

Whom will you bring to bow before the throne?

Will they be clean from every sin they did?

This your supernal mission greets you now--

Bring all-- the dirty, broken, failing and the injured--

To feel His touch, through you their Savior know,

And find your own true healing heart fulfilled.

Chaos and Creation

I wonder what was going through our minds when the creation of the world was going on, in preparation for our mission down here to earth. Did we ever look around and say-- this is a mess; it's never going to come together in time! Did we come up short and say something like "why are you playing around with these massive reptiles and amphibians?- Oh, they're to spark the imaginations and challenge the memories of five year olds in the future, and keep the archeaologists employed? well, ok, as long as I don't have to figure out how to cook them."

I bring that up because the archaeologist of the future on unpacking the storage unit where we are depositing all the treasure and detritus of our 35 years of married life is going to come to some odd conclusions, no doubt. This single, unpaired ski pole? One of the inhabitants must have had only one arm! In actuality of course, this tool has the important use of being used to hang and retrieve a very high wall hanging from the front stairs, and occasionally support climbing plants in the garden.

We're now in the middle of the beginning, and racing closer to the end of the beginning, or at least the end of the prelude. Thankfully today is a day of respite and fasting, and even though the seemingly countless tasks around us will be calling in their progressively strident voices "Do me, now!" we may have the calm to resist most of their calls and devote ourselves to the matter of spiritual preparation to represent the Savior as a minister of his word, and a doer of his works. I'm sure that each of my friends and family could muster a lengthy list of spiritual peccadillos that I should likewise respond to ("Fix me, now!") but I know you are too kind to begin down that path. Or perhaps you have the same faith that I do, that being that in God's curriculum for each of us, there is an order of his own, and he grants us space to take each progressive task, which in his wisdom is divinely suited to our eternal destiny. Today, I can in confidence simply ask him to help me through the next lesson I need to learn, to solve the next issue in my life. And he will.

The kitchen was packed this week, save for a few remaining utinsils, so I can now state with confidence that it is possible to cook pancakes (or rather one pancake) in a wok, undoubtedly a useful skill when heading to the Hong River bank. Likewise, my office is nearly empty of my fabulous collection of journals and stacks of paper. I think I observe there that the key to making the decision about whether something is importnt enough to keep is to let it sit in a pile and age a good year or two, at which point, the decision becomes infinitely easier. And most of the business cards accumulated in small stacks are likewise either "sure glad I know them," "who was this?" or "no longer works there" and thus similarly discardable. But one doesn't do that with the relationships hopefully behind them.

We will be "set apart" as missionaries, or as we'd like to call ourselves, "thien vien," loosely translated as "volunteers for the good" in one week, marking the end of the prelude, and the beginning of the exposition. There may still be elements of chaos around us, but most of our lives will by then be packed into one of two places-- the two bulging suitcases that will accompany us, or storage unit 671. Maybe there'll be a poem in there somewhere.