Things are not as they seem

How I love that poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- "A Psalm of Life". The grave is not our goal and our souls do live on. It is not the end to have enjoyment or sorrow -- he calls upon us to act and leave our footprints in the sand. Let us be up and doing says he -- the lives of all great men remind us.

It is our choice to be happy or sad. It is our choice to remain where we are or move on. It is our choice to be a victim of circumstances or be in the hum of life doing and becoming. It is our choice to have a relationship or to let it go. And those choices, however hard are freeing to our soul for we are placed here for such choice. I rejoice in the choices we have before us.

Right or wrong choices bring us experience and are for our good. I rejoice on both sides of the coin. It is our time to be alive.

There is so much silence in my journal over February, March, April, and now May. Yet I feel so much movement afoot in my life. It feels so good to work so hard. Many of my patients have gotten better. I've continued to write songs, programs, and poems. I've so enjoyed the life of recording weekly as I work on albums on some of the best instruments in our town. I finally got a set of drums up today next to a great piano that I'm doing the recording on. It gives me a chance to work out percussion, bass, and other ancillary parts.

I've read more than the last 2 years combined. It is so fun reading a book for fun. It is so fun reading books by topic and summarizing them for patients. It is quite a kick to read a book and attempt to glean what I need from it for my life, right now, right here. I've loved trying out grand pianos in various locations. I've played them until I'm exhausted. I've played guitar until I have blisters on my fingers. I feel an urgency to life and it makes life easier for me.

Oriental medicine has become like poetry in motion to me. It is like a second wind of understanding. I'm sure it will continue to grow and blossom in a world that so desperately needs choices in healing. Reality to some people is nonsense to others. Everything is as it should be -- how boring life would be if we all felt the same, talked the same, and agreed on everything.

Falling Off the Bus on a Chilean Mission

It was late in the evening and we had returned from a missionary meeting in Santiago. For some reason the last bus out to Mellipilla was packed. I remember letting everyone go ahead of me -- including my companion. When it came to time to grab the bus

I had only one hand on a bar and one foot on the platform.

The bus barreled down the road happily on its way and I found myself facing the back of the bus. After a time my hand and foot went numb and I was unsure if I could make it. By that time we were out into the country with no houses around us and I didn't seem to be able to think clearly anymore.

I remember saying a prayer and asking my Heavenly Father to help me

but my strength did not increase.

I finally said a final prayer and left my fate into His hands and let go. As I did I became aware of this whistle sound. A policemen appeared in the middle of nowhere and had blown a whistle to stop the bus. At the time I let go, the bus was slowing down to stop and I wasn't even hurt. He made everyone pack on the bus tighter and I then had both hands and both feet secure.

I'm sure this story is not unique to my mission and that every missionary has a point in their mission where they had to

let go and trust the Lord.

I think life is that way. Letting go often opens the doors we need to go forward. I wonder to this day how that policeman appeared in the middle of a country road with no buildings in sight. I am grateful to a true and living God who hears and answers our prayers.

Remembering Who We are on a Chilean Mission

I had come home after a long day of missionary work. We seemed to have a rhythm of work and people to see. We had made it back a bit later than usual in Puente Alto. As my companion went into the room ahead of me, I had barely made it into the door when I heard someone running behind me. So I pulled back out of the door and heard someone slip. The son of the family we lived with had slipped on the rug and came down hard on the door. I caught my head between the door jam and the door. Pulling out I reached up and pulled my hand over my head and come down with blood. I passed out.

The next day I remember waking to a little girl pressing a small cotton ball on my upper lip and smiling.

I couldn't remember who I was or who she was.

It took me a month to remember again who I was. I forgot all the discussions. I got up slowly, groggy and read the journal that I had worked on early in my mission. It was an abbreviated story of my life from when I was about 5 to the present. Hmm, I was a missionary.

Sometimes

it is not easy to remember who we are even when we know who we are.

I did re-memorize the discussions. Eventually, I remembered I was the senior companion and turned in a report on the incident. My Mother told me this Christmas of 2006 that the President of the mission called her saying I would probably be sent home. Hmm, I think my slow recovery and slowness to action but still my slow stick-to-it-ness kept me on the mission. I don't think I ever saw so many people join the church. I think when they saw my pain and struggle that they took the time to find the truth -- what, after all motivated me to keep waking up like a dead man white as a sheet and face each day preaching the gospel?

I saw many missionaries face illnesses, deaths of those around them, set backs, and failures; and

each time they overcame them they were stronger.

I didn't realize it at the time. I think if we all wrote these faith promoting stories down they would fill volumes.

A Smokey City on a Chilean Mission

I was in Mellipilla as the second city on my mission probably in early 1973. I remember arriving in Mellipilla in the only taxi that would take me because of the smoke, nails on the road, and general chaos. Tires were burning on many corners of the local streets and this

black soot was thick in the air.

Many cars were off the road because people were bending nails and placing them on the roads so that cars would get flats. Somehow we made it fine that night.

My new companion told me that I was the counselor in the branch. I had the assignment to teach priesthood meeting but not to worry about it because

no one ever came to priesthood meeting.

He was right. No one arrived for priesthood meeting and there was a big hole in the church wall. Only one family arrived for sacrament meeting. The branch president without his family.

So I remember thinking that I had the lesson so I would at least teach someone. I took the rolls of the church and visited all the boys that were priesthood age. I asked everyone to be ready next Sunday as we would be by to bring them to church. Now that seemed funny because we walked everywhere! So

we formed this line of boys early in the morning

and one by one had them all at the church.

I remember the branch president arriving that morning and asking me as he came into the room, what are you doing? I replied, "I'm teaching the priesthood lesson." He sat down and said to me that

he would never be late to priesthood again.

And he was never late again. Other missionaries would call me as each of the boys that came to that class went on missions. And the craziest thing happened. When the boys came to church, suddenly

as if by magic all the girls came too.

It was fun seeing the church too full to handle all the members in the sacrament hall.

And we mixed mud and straw and patched that church wall ourselves. The members helped us wax the floors, white wash the newly repaired wall, and re-commit to a wonderful branch of Mellipilla. Some of my best memories are back there still, my heart is still with them.

Gems of Royden Glade from Chilean Mission

1972. It was a cold, rainy night when I took the bus down to Los Angeles, Chile. For a summer in Chile was equal to the winter in the United States. By the time I arrived I was chilled to the bone. After two weeks of solid rain the sun let up and I discovered a volcano right out our window. It would be another two weeks before we would see the sun again. Rain came down in this 45 degree angle. We tracted every day and came back at noon to change clothes. Fungus infected our shoes. At times people would let us in, because of the rain they felt sorry for us. As soon as we would tell our story we were escorted right back to the rain. By the end of the summer I contracted a bronchial disorder and was down for about two months.

President Royden Glade made a surprise visit nearly at the end of my illness. What a big guy -- tall, strong, and quite caring. He sent me to warmer climates when he heard about my history of bronchitis as a child. He later told me he played basketball on his mission.

He encouraged me to make my mission "my mission."

He said it might not be the way he would serve a mission.

It would be a few years after my mission before I began reading management books on empowerment. It required giving back the freedom to the workers to take on the responsibility of the tasks at hand.

In Melipilla I had organized a team of youth from our local branch to compete with the Catholic basketball teams. We had played a few times on their courts and they invited us to play as a team. The priests asked us to see if we could get other missionaries to come play their best team in the tournament. President Royden Glade let me get some of our better missionary players. I think it was a great opportunity to see if we would have good sports on both sides. Everyone seemed to love it.

I remember President Royden Glade teaching that

we should never talk against someone's faith

because we might be successful and there might not be something to replace it. Simply declare the gospel to them and let them embrace it.

In Melipilla after a day of tracting in one of the central park areas, a member of the church sat down beside us on a park bench. She said she was struggling with joining our church so she went to her Catholic priest. He turned to her and said he knew our church was the true church of Jesus Christ because he had read The Book of Mormon. Only he couldn't join because the Catholic church was his livelihood and his only source of income. I wonder if that was one of the priests who invited us to have the missionaries come and play basketball.

John 10:4 "And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice."

Musical Preparation Day on a Chilean Mission

Preparation day to me was

the freedom to write.

I often wrote a song either on piano or guitar -- sometimes in Spanish. I loved to send the poems home to friends with all kinds of reactions. It kept my sanity knowing that the creative spirit within me had a voice despite my serving the Lord on a mission.

One time a girl friend wrote me a letter asking if I received her letter. I wrote her back saying I didn't receive it. She told me then it didn't matter. So after my mission I had to ask her -- what was that all about? She told me she felt the poems were not about missionary work and that bothered her -- she wondered about my seriousness as a missionary. She figured if it didn't arrive then it was meant to be lost. We continued to be the best of friends.

I always found it so relaxing to find the end of the week and a bit of time to dream. Nearly 50 percent of all letters and mail did not arrive in either direction. Some of it was censored with black lines crossing out what the censor felt was inappropriate. In made me appreciate the freedom of sending mail unopened.

Freedom, I wrote, is more than the words that you give.

At the end of a tape of songs, I would send it all to another girl friend who was a fan of my songs. She saved them for me upon my return. All of them made it safely there. How amazing that in the midst of all that lost mail -- those songs survived the passage one hundred percent. And our friendship remains precious to this day. "I am just 21, feel like I've just been born. Can't say I'm 6 foot four, I'm not six foot four of anything ... I'm not six foot four of anything."

Life picked up and went on but

the impact of those dreams still inspires me today.

As the scriptures say that a small helm in a ship has a big effect -- sometimes those small but steady things we do carry on and on. My whole life has been blessed with songs I wrote reflecting the emotions of the moment.

I left my mission and began studying piano under a PhD and spent hours playing piano scales and practicing everyday. It seemed the harder I tried to play what was written, the worse I got at it. He finally told me to stop. He asked me why I would ever want to play the piano. I told him I was a songwriter and wanted to enjoy the world of music. He laughed. Let me hear one of these songs he said. So I did. Then he said, stop trying to learn music -- you already play and could play most anything by rote already.

So in 2008, a High Priest Quorum leader asked me to play the hymns in priesthood meeting. He quietly said, choose any hymn and that will be fine for us. So I did.

Every week I had something prepared.

And every chance I got I was on the piano playing through the hymn book. Suddenly I could read music. And because I can write, I can arrange it as well. Go figure!

I asked my friend Amy who plays an incredible piano what she did to play by sight so well and how long had she done it. She said, "I started when I was eight." She practiced like 30 minutes to an hour everyday and by college she had the reading part down. And she said that to learn how to read you should pick things you can read and slowly read it so that you read every note. If you choose too difficult of music, you will not be able to progress. I began to see that I was trying too hard, too quickly.

Some of those simple songs come back to over and over from my mission. "Do what the Lord tells you to do, let not the world lead you astray, open your ears -- hear out the King, open your hearts -- with happiness sing" ... in Chinese medicine it is the joy that opens the heart.

Expressions of joy surround our service to the Lord and others. "as my prayers lay me down to sleep, and I am taken to another world but I love you." Maybe this story is more of a reflection. Most of my stories have truly been reflections looking back -- and I hope that we all take a few moments and share the wealth within us for having taking a step down that road as a human being, and a step down that road in life. As a wonderful friend and fellow musician once wrote,

"life like the day is one the run."

(Thank you Skip Andrews)

Quaking a Bit on a Chilean Mission

Boy, do I remember earthquakes in Chile. One day we had finished our prayers and were getting ready for the day. I had finished getting ready and sat down on the bed. Boom, the bed started shaking so violently that it was hitting the back of my calves. The rest of the family in the house went nuts and were yelling at us from the inner courtyard. We both didn't know how to react. I think we were numb. I think fear is not the right word,

we had said our prayers and we were on a mission.

What better place to go through an earthquake?

Going out the courtyard we looked into the kitchen at the huge pot they used to cook up oysters. They hung it on a peg using one of the two handles. It was swinging in an arc fully 180 degrees from side to side. I admire that family so much because of their stability in trying times. The dad was an ex-mayor of the city. All of his land had been removed from him that he could not live on. He had five homes before and now he lived in his last remaining home. He took us out to the country to show us his holdings there. We looked all around as far as the eye could see on a hill -- it all had belonged to him. He gave it to various people who worked for him to prevent losing all of it.

He, his wife and his family were full of faith in liberty.

They lived a life exemplary of those founding fathers who formed our country. I admire his courage in the midst a real battle of territory and rights. In the midst of their own earthquake they displayed courage and fortitude. His children carried within them dignity and respect for human life and liberty. I think I carried back home with me a new found respect for those who gave us our liberty in the United States.