By
Professor Warner Woodworth, BYU
Author’s
note: As I have done throughout 2005 -- in 26 speeches at Harvard,
Wharton Business School, Stanford, BYU as well as LDS firesides
and seminars in Panama -- this article is dedicated to the hundreds
of thousands who lost their lives in the Asian tsunami, and
the millions more who survived, but now struggle in poverty.
May we never forget.
Ever dream about wanting to change
the world? Have you sometimes felt powerless as you witness
massive human suffering around the world? At times, have tears
filled your eyes as your television shows children’s bodies
on the nightly news?
Then this story is
for you. It’s a tale of taking action, reducing human suffering,
and lifting the poor. Let me say at the outset that throughout
2005, I have enjoyed the many events held to commemorate the
200th Anniversary of Joseph Smith’s birth in 1805.
I’ve participated in conferences and seminars on his history,
his teachings, and his eternal doctrines. I’ve heard choirs
sing, orchestras play beautiful music, and even attended a new
opera. Many LDS groups held dance and/or musical programs. Others
performed dramatic plays, and the media coverage has been extensive.
Volunteers look on and cover their ears as fireworks precede
the launching of the first boat rebuilt after the tsunami.
But the most meaningful tribute
to the Prophet Joseph’s life for me this year did not occur
in a scholarly seminar, or a large center for the performing
arts. Rather, it occurred in a remote jungle area, far from
Utah and church headquarters, where most people had never heard
of Joseph Smith or his religion.
This article is the story of a
humble little band of Latter-day Saints who actually dared to
practice what Joseph taught during this year of many celebrations.
But it was not done for big crowds or public relations purposes.
Rather, it was done quietly, devotedly, as an act of personal
and collective consecration.
This is the true saga of how a
group of dedicated BYU students and friends started out a new
semester and ended up changing the world. We began assuming
it would be simply another course on theoretical concepts and
abstract tools, but ended up as an experience of individual
transformation.
Wave of Hope volunteers crafting the trade of brick laying
at Tap Tawan Village.
The tragic devastation of the December
26, 2004, Asian tsunami shocked people around the world. Ten
days later, I stood in front of my new class at the Marriott
School, and began by quoting the words of the Prophet Joseph.
I knew them by heart since they had become a kind of anthem
that had guided my life for decades. He boldly declared his
ideal of consecration and stewardship thus: “A man (or woman)
filled with the love of God is not content with blessing his
family alone, but ranges through the whole world, anxious to
bless the whole human race.” (Roberts, 1961, p. 227)
The Challenge
As one whose role is to “profess”
something, I challenged the group to literally consider how
we might try and practice the Prophet’s call to action in our
own lives, two centuries after his birth. I felt this simple
sentence broadens our purpose on earth and moves us beyond the
limited confines of the typical Mormon family as just the small
nucleus around us. Instead, Joseph enlarges our vista. His words
are a call to action. Some of us began to informally refer to
our plans as the “Joseph Smith Tsunami Rescue Brigade,” a tribute
to his anniversary.
With that simple beginning,
I challenged the class to consider how we might design a project
that could lift a few of the tsunami’s survivors: What could
be done? How might we proceed? Does college, and more particularly
a business school, have any use in alleviating human pain and
pathos?
Wave volunteers assist a villager in the construction
of his house at Bang Sak.
Taking the Prophet’s words and
applying them in our day as a pragmatic memorial to him, we
began to design a humanitarian strategy to empower the poor
who survived the terrible tsunami. We formed a project under
the umbrella of a not-for-profit foundation called Empowering
Nations. It grew out of a similar BYU course taught several
years earlier. For this new effort, one student suggested we
call our new project “Wave of Hope,” a sharp contrast to the
tsunami’s huge waves of destruction, death, and hopelessness.
So this is our story — one of faith, sacrifice, and genuine
consecration.
In the paragraphs below, I seek
to do four things: 1) provide an overview of the 12/26 Asian
disaster and give it a comparative context; 2) draw on the humanitarian
legacy of Mormonism; 3) articulate how this effort mobilized
many LDS volunteers; and 4) report a few significant impacts.
The Asian Crisis
The need for global
aid was unprecedented in history as the 9.0 earthquake and 500
mile-an-hour powerful tsunami waves of up to 60 feet high wreaked
havoc of epic proportions. Eleven countries throughout the Indian
Ocean were affected, from Indonesia to Africa. Official death
rates range from 280,000 on up, but the unofficial toll may
be much higher. For example, in Thailand — where we decided
to help — government estimates were that 8,500 were killed,
but such a number does not include some ten thousand missing
aliens, mostly Burmese laborers who, because of desperate conditions
in their own country, had been doing menial jobs in the tourist
area of Khao Lak, Thailand. The same occurred elsewhere as well.
Wave of Hope volunteers teaching english at
Bang Sak School.
Thus, it may be assumed, that the
region’s total death toll was closer to half a million people.
Hundreds of aftershocks since 12/26 continued to keep people
on edge throughout 2005, including an 8.7 quake that killed
hundreds more on March 29, 2005.
With millions more severely injured,
without houses, jobs, schools or medical care, the overall need
was almost unfathomable. Experts estimated that some places
like Sumatra and Sri Lanka were set back decades. Towns and
villages were completely demolished, industries destroyed, education
systems decimated, and transportation in shambles. Infrastructure
like roads, bridges and rail lines were obliterated. Wonderful
beaches and upscale tourist amenities disappeared. Tens of thousands
of families lost their loved ones. The so called “survivors”
lacked food, water, shelter and security.
Government relief from nations
around the earth was quick and helpful. Billions of dollars
were promised, and groups like the Red Cross and United Nations
were soon on the scene. The LDS Church joined the effort, partnering
with a Muslim relief agency. However, many of the large, multilateral
organizations withdrew from damaged areas after a few months.
Much of the promised cash from world governments has still not
yet materialized, and some of it never will.
It's all fun and games at Laem Pom Village
as the women are busy shoveling sand for foundations.
Hence, the time seemed ripe for
us as individual Latter-day Saint volunteers to go and serve.
The tough and complex work of jump-starting the Thai economy
and rebuilding destroyed villages was imperative. We were not
a big, rich nongovernmental organization (NGO), with millions
of dollars and donors. We were just a small group of college
volunteers who possessed the moral energy and some new skills
to make an impact. We couldn’t do everything, but we felt we
could each do something.
As we saw it, many Americans seemed
stunned by the horrendous devastation of the tsunami. Some wrote
out checks to provide emergency aid, as did people from various
other nations. Then Hurricane Katrina and other storms smacked
into the U.S. itself, and media attention shifted to those calamities.
Today the press has largely turned
from agony and death to “important” new events such as the Grammy
Awards and upcoming college football bowl games. Meanwhile,
tsunami orphans suffer. Broken-down families try to eke out
an existence as refugees in tent camps. Day-to-day survival
has become the norm for millions of individuals.
The local schoolchildren surround the bookshelves,
tables and benches made and delivered by the Thaikea project.
A Context for Comparison
To put the tsunami disaster in
context, let’s reflect on the terrible toll 9/11 exacted in
New York by terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. It
was truly a reprehensible event. Yet in the tsunami, many Asian
coastal villages lost over 50 percent of their population and
infrastructure. New York City lost under
3,000 people, much less than one percent, and was set back only
for a few months after the airliner attacks.
This is not to minimize the tragedy
of 9/11, but to simply show the scale of how it contrasts with
the tsunami. After 12/26, the region of Banda Aceh, Indonesia was turned into a massive junkyard of twisted
steel and cement, uprooted yards, rubble from tons of cars,
and thousands of human corpses strewn over the area, becoming
a large breeding ground for terrible diseases such as dengue,
malaria and other infections.
The waves rushed to engulf everything
in their path, sucking up bodies and violently smashing debris
with massive waves three yards high, going as far as six miles
inland. That would be equivalent to destroying Manhattan from
the tip of the island at South Street, taking down everything
in its path clear up to 85th Street. Gone would be
the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, buildings such as the Empire
State, and Chrysler, all the big retail giants, Greenwich Village,
Broadway and its theater district, the train stations, and half
of Central Park.
The percentage of those killed
in the destruction of the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh was 60 percent, according to UNICEF officials. Its equivalent,
if applied to New York City, would total a staggering 4.8 million
people. In Sri Lanka, the tsunami death toll was 24,000, with
another 7,000 missing. More than 1.5 million people in that
country alone were forced to flee their neighborhoods, including
880,000 who no longer have houses at all.
Again, the comparison between these
two tragic sagas is not to diminish the extent of 9/11. But
the contrasts suggest how much worse the New York attacks would
have been if the results were proportionally equivalent to the
shockwaves in the Indian Ocean. I believe both 9/11 and 12/26
will both go down in the history books as epic calamities on
a huge scale.
So Wave of Hope was launched as
a response by a few individuals to see how much we could do.
In our early labors, some non-LDS we sought input from considered
us as a kind of “Students-Without-Borders” project growing out
of a college course. It was Organizational Behavior 490: “Becoming
a Global Change Agent/Social Entrepreneur.”
The class consisted of 33 registered
students. Approximately half of them were undergraduates from
sociology, international development, pre-med, business, the
sciences and/or humanities. The other half were masters degree
seekers: MPA, MBA, accounting, law, education, social work,
and so forth.
In addition, about a dozen other
students from across campus sat in on the class. They either
couldn’t carry the extra credit hours because their course load
was too heavy, or they only learned about the course after the
add deadline had passed. One person even drove an hour from
Salt Lake City each session to participate. But they all joined
in, read the required scholarly material, took the tests, and
participated on a service-learning team. No one received credit
as a grade for their commitment to join Wave of Hope and go
to Thailand. However, individuals were graded according to their
rigorous academic performance: heavy reading, quizzes and tests,
papers on self-reliance, social entrepreneurship, project design
and/or implementation, OB team skills and planning strategies,
and in-class presentations.
In addition, more than a thousand
hours of collective volunteer group project work occurred outside
of regular class periods. Students also attended four other
Wave of Hope meetings during certain evenings: a devotional
experience with guest speakers from Thailand, a new volunteer
orientation and training session, a Khao Lak logistics briefing session,
and a final send-off meeting at the end of April.
The Legacy of Mormon Humanitarian
Outreach
As Latter-day Saints, we have a
rich heritage of responding to aid those in need. In the past
couple of decades, some of us have been blessed to help develop
such programs as the Church’s Humanitarian Services in the 1980s,
which grew out of the suffering of millions of Ethiopians in
East Africa. In the late 1990s, Latter-day Saint Charities was
formed as an NGO to assist impoverished families around the
globe. In 2000, the Perpetual Education Fund became official,
thereby enabling college-age church members in the Third World
to begin a better life.
In addition, private and family-initiated
non-profit projects have likewise grown. From only a couple
of Mormon-based NGOs started in the 1980s, today there are at
least 200 such social enterprises.
However, the story of LDS humanitarianism
goes back over a century and a half. Do you recall hearing of
the pioneer travelers buried in the Wyoming blizzards of the
1850s? I want to draw a parallel between the long-ago suffering
and death they experienced, and the plight of today’s tsunami
victims in Asia.
The tragedy
of both the Martin and Willie handcart companies — trapped by
fierce, early winter storms in the 1850s — is one of the most
painful episodes in Mormon history. They were unexpectedly caught
in early winter storms, deep snow, and subsequent exhaustion.
With hundreds of miles yet to travel, their meager supplies
dwindled rapidly. Provisions that had been expected along the
way were nonexistent, and desperation settled in. The remaining
amount of daily flour to be consumed was cut from a pound per
person to a mere three-quarters of
a pound, and then to only ten ounces.
As our pioneer
predecessors faced the challenge of struggling up and over the
Rocky Mountains in deep snow, severe concerns increasingly weighted
them down as they attempted to survive. Bitter cold seeped through
their few layers of worn-out clothing. Wet items became harder
to dry, even at night around a campfire. Overexertion, fatigue,
and gnawing hunger began to take their deadly toll.
First the elderly
and some of the infirm began dying — along the trail or during
the freezing night. Then the young, and even some of the strong,
started to die. Fathers who had pulled their little ones through
snow drifts one day would die during the evening while their
children slept. Family members would go to bed huddling together
in a tent, and have to awake in the morning and check to see
who had died during the night.
Snow, mud, frostbite,
starvation and bleeding feet — all were evidence of the tragic
demise of many souls. While some succumbed to the ravages of
the early ferocious Wyoming winter, survivors lacked the strength
to even bury the deceased. Instead, the two, five, or thirteen
bodies of the dead during a single night would simply be piled
together and covered with snow to await the resurrection. I
believe the graphic story of their rescue has implications for
those of us today who have resources to help suffering people
across the globe in 2005.
As the handcart
pioneers were being brutalized by these extreme conditions,
word of their imminent demise reached Salt Lake City. At the
General Conference on October 5, 1856, Brigham Young stood before
thousands in the tabernacle and announced:
Many of our
brethren and sisters are on the plains with handcarts, and probably
many are now seven hundred miles from this place, and they must
be brought here, we must send assistance to them…
I shall call
upon the Bishops of this day. I shall not wait until tomorrow,
nor until the next day, for 60 good
mule teams and 12 or 15 wagons. I do not want to send oxen.
I want good horses and mules. They are in this Territory, and
we must have them. Also 12 tons of flour and 40 good teamsters,
besides those that drive the teams….
First, 40 good
young men who know how to drive teams, to take charge of the
teams that are now managed by men, women and children who know
nothing about driving them. Second, 60 or 65 good spans of mules,
or horses, with harness, whipple trees,
neck-yokes, stretchers, lead chains, &c. And thirdly, 24
thousand pounds of flour, which we have on hand….
I will tell
you all that your faith, religion, and profession of religion,
will never save one soul of you in the Celestial Kingdom of
our God, unless you carry out just such principles as I am now
teaching you. Go and bring in those people now on the plains.
And attend strictly to those things which we call temporal,
or temporal duties. Otherwise, your faith will be in vain. The
preaching you have heard will be in vain to you, and you will
sink to Hell, unless you attend to the things we tell
you.
Brigham the
Prophet then counseled church members about how to treat the
survivors who would be rescued and brought into the Salt Lake
Valley:
I want to have
them distributed in the city among the families that have good
and comfortable houses; and I wish all the sisters now before
me, and all who know how and can, to nurse and wait upon the
new comers and prudently administer medicine and food to them.
To speak upon these things is a part of my religion, for it
pertains to taking care of the Saints…
The afternoon
meeting will be omitted, for I wish the sisters to go home and
prepare to give those who have just arrived a mouthful of something
to eat, and to wash them and nurse them up. You know that I
would give more for a dish of pudding and milk, or a baked potato
and salt, were I in the situation of those persons who have
just come in, than I would for all your prayers, though you
were to stay here all the afternoon and pray. Prayer is good,
but when baked potatoes and pudding and milk are needed, prayer
will not supply their place on this occasion; give every duty
its proper time and place…
Some you will
find with their feet frozen to their ankles; some are frozen
to their knees and some have their hands frosted… We want you
to receive them as your own children, and to have the same feeling
for them. We are their temporal saviors, for we have saved them
from death (Hafen and Hafen, 1960, pp. 120-21,
139).
Of this poignant story of poverty-stricken pioneer suffering,
death, and survival, James E. Faust of the First Presidency
(1997) declared:
Now I think
our prophet today is telling all of us, in this day and time,
to go and bring in those people who are out on the plains. I
am impressed with what President Gordon B. Hinckley said about
this event in the October 1996 general conference: “Wonderful
sermons have been preached from this pulpit, my brethren and
sisters. But none has been more eloquent than that spoken by
President Young in those circumstances” (p.7).
These words,
too, gave Wave of Hope a sense of calling and caring. In 2005,
Wave of Hope volunteers began to build models of post-tsunami
service and useful tools to rescue the contemporary poor among
Thailand victims. We realized that the people of Asia might
not require teams of horses, but they were desperate for shelter.
Instead of “pudding and milk,” they needed an income sufficient
to buy rice and beans. They also needed education for their
children, and their schools rebuilt or reopened.
Clearly, the
situation for many Latter-day Saints in America today is a far
cry from that of the pioneers more than a century ago. Many
dwell in luxurious homes with ample garages to hold one’s Mercedes
Benz or BMW, along with snowmobiles, dune buggies, and boats.
Some stand in church meetings to express gratitude for all the
"comforts" of life, glad they do not have to make
the sacrifices and endure the hardships that their ancestors
suffered. However, much more is needed to lift the poor today,
including sharing our financial resources. Writing a check to
assist devastated villagers along Asian coastal regions was
a good thing. But some Latter-day Saints were able to even do
more.
Several years
ago, President Hinckley told newly called mission presidents
at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, "The day of
sacrifice is not over." Some of those in attendance wondered
what he meant, as have others who heard the prophet's message
second-hand. But to me the implications are clear: It is not
enough to merely donate ten percent as a tithe to God and assume
everything is all right. Nor is it sufficient to engage in conspicuous
consumption patterns, yet pray for the "poor and needy"
every morning. We must give of our time and resources, including
financial means, as instruments for personal and family consecration.
By taking such action, not only are the world's poor blessed
and lifted up, but those of us who truly give, also enjoy greater
joy and spiritual purpose in our lives. This is the legacy of
Mormon humanitarianism.
A Call to
Action
The pioneers
sacrificed in their era, and so must we today. I interpret President
Hinckley's words to suggest that we must give in order to nurture
others, even until it hurts. Even though it may not be convenient. This is what consecration
signifies. Otherwise, it is not a real sacrifice.
In early 2005,
we felt we should reach out to sustain those poor, destitute
Asian families who struggled and suffered greatly. Mormonism
is a religion that requires taking care of the poor and filling
their temporal needs — food, clothing, education, and jobs.
Wave of Hope developed superb tools for channeling our resources
to lift the poorest of the poor today, whether they were contemporary
pioneers suffering in the "Martin's Cove" of modern
travail, or non-LDS individuals needing to be rescued from the
destruction of 12/26.
Another motivation
prompting our tsunami effort was the Lord’s call to action in
D&C 58:26-28 wherein he declares: “It is not meet
that I should command in all things…. Verily I say, men should
be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of
their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; for
the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves.”
These admonitions
are consistent with hundreds of others such as Jesus’ teachings:
“For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty,
and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in… Inasmuch
as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren,
ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:35-40).
I believe that
the principles of Mormonism and those of the larger Christian
world, as well as Hindu and Buddhist teachings, all suggest
that we are, indeed, our brother’s keeper. In our course on
global change agents, I attempted to help students develop a
sense of stewardship. They became part of a work in which we
human beings learned to go beyond ourselves. Wave of Hope global
change agents became able to think more consciously and broadly
than themselves, and respond to the
suffering of others. As social entrepreneurs we became able
to look beyond the here-and-now to greater social justice in
a better future.
Wave of Hope Results
Because of the support, donations,
and mobilizing efforts of many, Wave of Hope has had huge results.
Some 90 dedicated volunteers were able to travel to Thailand
in 10 teams to carry out reconstruction efforts of those devastated
by the coastal tsunami. They included individuals from 7 countries
and 14 universities. Some 22 older BYU alumni from across America
with backgrounds as CPAs, entrepreneurs, management consultants,
homemakers, and others also gave of their skills. Wave of Hope
became a unique collaboration of many people from across
the world, including 40 volunteers who worked on the U.S. Support
Team, helping with project design and fundraising. An additional
13 in-country advisors gave technical assistance, management
expertise, and other training to ensure success.
The TA in my BYU course, Enoc Velazquez,
who was born in Mexico, grew up in Canada, now lives in Panama,
and was a Peace Corps leader in Kenya, defined our task. “We
needed to match volunteers’ skills with on-the-ground problems
in Thailand in order to maximize our impact.” Some critics
had told us we would be lucky to get five volunteers and raise
$8,000. But ultimately we raised more than $200,000 (cash and
in-kind goods) and recruited 143 committed individuals.
Over a five-month period, we served
in the hot, humid Khao Lak region of the Pang-Na province of
Thailand, where the tsunami had devastated whole villages and
left some 10,000 Thais either killed or tragically missing.
Our volunteers served to restore the quality of the victims’
lives. Instead of desperation, they gained dignity.
The Joseph Smith Brigade gave more
than 14,000 hours of service to many different projects, laboring
with other volunteers from around the world. On beaches we gathered
debris for miles, and worked in the ocean with divers to clean
up trash from homes, hotels and shops taken out to sea by the
tsunami. We were able to clear away many tons of garbage. Other
Wave volunteers helped the Thais construct and paint furniture
for their homes and play sets for their schools, teaching Thai
adults how to use donated power tools.
Many of our social entrepreneurs
worked with the Thais on their house rebuilding efforts in the
villages of Thap Tawan, Laem Pom, and Bang Sak, preparing and
pouring foundations, raising walls, installing roofs, applying
plaster finish, and painting the completed houses. In all, we
helped in the construction of more than 120 houses. Still others
worked in the boatyard, applying waterproofing caulk and paint
to the newly constructed boats for fishermen who had lost their
livelihoods. Additional LDS social entrepreneurs taught children
English in the schools, as well as to adults who needed to improve
their language skills for future tourism jobs.
The BYU student fundraisers generated
money with which to buy supplies. With them, Wave of Hope assembled
and delivered more than 700 school and hygiene kits to impoverished
families suffering in the survivor camps, played games and sang
songs with orphaned children. The total value of clothing, quilts,
and kits exceeded $4,100. We also completely funded the building
of a long-tail fishing boat ($4,000) that will be named “The
Wave of Hope” as a memorial to our efforts.
Various income-generating projects
were started. An example is that we formed and trained a group
of men and women in pearl jewelry making. The effort, called
Tsunami Pearls, was officially launched as a worker-owned cooperative
on the same day as Utah’s pioneer celebration last July, commemorating
the arrival in Salt Lake Valley of Mormon pioneers more than
150 years ago.
Speaking to this group of Thai
villagers, I mentioned the significance of the pioneers in our
history of the West. They overcame debilitating poverty. They
established several hundred United Orders to create jobs, begin
incomes, and build family self-reliance. That effort grew in
the western United States as the foundation for the strong educational
and economic systems we have today.
I promised the “Khao Lak pioneers”
that they could do the same. We are beginning to market the
co-op’s jewelry in the U.S. Our strategy is to continue funding
this start-up venture until it creates long-term jobs for tsunami
victims and eventually becomes sustainable. Other income-generating
projects may also be established in the future as we evaluate
viable possibilities.
Our lives as Latter-day Saints
were changed as we served those trying to recover from the devastation
on their own. The tsunami victims were aided in their efforts
to rebuild their lives and were blessed by the dedication and
consecration of our volunteers’ time and money, as well as by
the generous contributions of many donors.
Readers are invited to get more
details about this project, as well information about the future
efforts of Empowering Nations, on our website at www.empoweringnations.org. Out little
band of global change agents came back from the summer’s Thailand
service feeling we truly did understand the Prophet Joseph’s
call that if we’re “filled with the love of God “ we will “range
through the whole world, anxious to bless the whole human race.”
Wave of Hope has made a difference in the lives of many — the
tsunami victims especially, but the volunteers as well. None
of us will ever be the same.
References
Faust, James
E. “Go Bring Them in from the Plains.” Ensign, July 1997,
pp. 2-7.
Hafen, LeRoy
R. and Ann W. Hafen. Handcarts
to Zion. Salt Lake City, 1960.
Hinckley, Gordon
B. “Reach with a Rescuing Hand.” Ensign, November 1996,
pp. 85-86.
Roberts, B.
H. (ed.) History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, 1961, 3rd ed., vol. 4, p. 227.
