Week 17: Two Heart Strings

This week I must admit we felt our heart strings being tugged in two different directions. Not wanting to be totally absent from the 2018 Shingo Conference in Orlando Florida, two of our daughters, Rebecca and Monica attended and manned the Arches Leadership booth. Monica’s one-year old, Howie, was the perfect mascot. It was great for our daughters to meet so many of my dear friends from over the years and to meet them in the context of the work that I was so privileged to be a part of. One of my daughters commented that she learned much more about her father by discussing with my friends at the conference the ideas presented in my new book “Hearing the Voice of the Shingo Principles” they were introducing to people.

So that was one tug.

The other tug came from an experience we had this week with a young man who is the son of a woman whose husband died a couple of months ago. She has a large family and one of her children, a sixteen year-old boy with Downs Syndrome snuggled up next to my shoulder during the first day of a two day conference being broadcast from Salt Lake City. Each session was two hours long with three sessions the first day and two the second. The conference actually occurred the previous week but it took one week for everything to be translated into Bahasa Indonesia.

Since Sister Miller and because we still “tidak bicara bahasa Indonesia dengan biak” (don’t speak Indonesian very well yet) we were using headphones and listening to the same talks in English. The boy has had difficulty with his ears and his brothers call him “deaf” since birth but he does mumble and must have some partial hearing, somehow. I put my Bose noise-cancelling headset on him, and showed him how to adjust the volume on my desktop. He immediately pushed the dial all the way to full volume and jumped up in his seat with eyes wide and startled. He then buried his head in my chest and started to cry happy and could not stop for five minutes.

He listened to the next six hours of conference with the biggest smile on his face with full volume blasting. Of course it was in English and I knew he didn’t understand a word but when the choir sang he would wave his arms in time with the music as though he were conducting the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Others around us who believed him to be almost deaf were shocked to see him keeping time with the music and deeply moved. The entire experience was one of the most touching ever in my life. 

I began to wonder how much hearing does this young man actually have? Sister Miller and I made arrangements to take him and his Mother to an audiologist I have gotten to know quite well from repairing my finicky hearing aids. The office agreed to look at him for free and see if they could help.

It only took a minute to put a scope into his ears to see that both of his ear canals were totally blocked with wax, growth, infection and what looked like who knows what but it made us all want to cry. They could not even do a hearing test but readily agreed to refer him to a very good Ear, Nose & Throat specialist who will evaluate what can be done to treat and hopefully remove some of the blockage in his ear canals. Everyone deserves to be able to hear the best they can. I know this from my own experiences with bad hearing. We are all optimistic that this young man’s hearing might be improved.

Lack of money and access to good health care is a serious problem in Indonesia. Often preventable and curable illness goes under diagnosed and untreated leaving many people sick and disabled requiring the permanent care of poor families in small multi-family “rumahs” (homes).

Yes, it is true that from time to time we feel some heart strings tugging for home and grandchildren but when we feel the tugs calling for our help, it is easy to put it aside and are grateful to be able to minister to others. We love the “bangsa Indonesia” (people of Indonesia) and know that they are loved by God in exactly the same way that He knows and loves the people in Utah, California, Illinois or New York. 

This is just a simple example of our endless experiences with deep rewards that come to us as missionaries for the Lord. We are so honored and humbled to serve God and our fellowmen.