My Solution To Your Problem Will Always Be Wrong

If I learned anything in our 2 weeks at the MTC it was this - my solution to your problem will always be wrong.  Let me give 2 examples of this principle, the first was told to us during a field trip to welfare square, the other was from a book I've just finished reading.

The first story is about a young single mother in a run down area in Detroit, she was a recently baptized member of the church.  She'd quit coming and one of the bishopric members went to visit her.  She had 2 small toddlers and her house was in such disarray, the bishopric member sat down and talked with her.  He asked her what was her greatest desire.  She wanted to finish high school and become a lawyer.  He asked what the ward could do to help her accomplish this dream.  She said  "if someone could watch my children for 2 hours everyday so I could take classes to finish up my GED."  He told her that he'd send over the Relief Society President to talk with her.  The Relief Society President came and sat and talked with her about her goals. She left thinking this young woman needed much, much more than 2 hours of babysitting each day.  She organized an army of women who came in and cleaned and cleaned the house.  The young woman never returned to church.  She was ashamed and embarrassed.  Now this is a lesson for ME, because that is probably what I would have done.  I'm sometimes like a bull in a china shop, I have a tendency to think I know how to solve everyone's problems, without listening but most of all without  much input from the one whose problem it is.  I know all my children are all nodding their heads in agreement, but I think I'm starting to get it, finally.  

Here's an excerpt from a book I just finished reading  Little Princes by Connor Grennam.  This is a great book about child trafficking in Nepal not many years ago.  It gives a lot of information about the culture of Nepal, even today and is a fascinating story.  

Connor came to Nepal in 2004 to work for 3 weeks in an orphanage.  He never left, well sort of, he comes frequently back to the children's home he started in 2008.

"Even around the house, the children at Little Princes could entertain themselves far more efficiently than I ever could.  I made a mistake early on of buying them toy cars during one of my trips to Kathmandu-eighteen little cars, one for each of them.  They loved them so much they literally jumped for joy.  I felt like a Vanderbilt, presenting gifts to the less fortunate.  The longest-surviving car of the eighteen lasted just under twenty-four hours.  I found little tires and car doors scattered around the house and garden.  Nishal and Hriteek, the pair of six-year-olds, shared the last car between them, sliding the wheel-less chassis back and forth across the concrete front porch a few times before running out to play soccer with a ball they had made out of an old sock stuffed with newspaper.

Though they would never admit it, the kids had far more fun with the toys they made themselves.  One boy, usually Santosh, would take a plastic bottle from the trash discarded through out the village.  To this bottle he strapped two short pieces of wood, binding them with some old string.  He collected four plastic bottle caps and some rusty nails and pounded them into the wood with a flat rock.  And voila! he had built a toy car.  When it wobbled too much going down the hill, he discovered that he could stabilize it by filling the bottle with water.  Soon it was racing down shallow hills and crashing into trees.  Because he had constructed it, he was also able to fix it.  By the end of the day, all the children had built their own cars.

I never bought them anything after that.  Instead, I helped them search for old bottle or flip-flops they could use, or saved for them the toothpaste boxes.  Those boxes were so popular that we had to set an order in which each child would receive his discarded box.  They didn't really do anything with them except keep them, to have something to call their own.  The cars they made, or the bow and arrows they made out of bamboo, or the little Frisbees they made out of old flip-flop plastic-those things were all individual possessions.  They happily shared them with others in Little Princes, but at the end of the day the toy or the piece of prized rubbish would go into their individual cardboard containers that were large enough to hold their two sets of clothes and everything else they owned in the world."

My calling here is to help these people in Nepal search for the "old bottle, or the toothpaste box,"  to help them find solutions to their own problems if indeed they want solutions.  Have you noticed that the church does not have school bag projects or humanitarian kits or neonatal kits put together by members of the wards anymore.  That is because that was OUR solution to their problem.  Now those things are done in the individual countries, the church purchases products that are common to the area where they are needed, for two reasons,  money is going back into THEIR economy and members are helping THEIR own people, and the church is probably saving millions of humanitarian dollars by not having to ship those kits.  Brilliant!  I'm starting to get it.  These pictures are of problems that I've seen in the last couple of weeks, I would have a different solution, but they are figuring it out and making it work.

This is our street, it looks sort of like a war zone, they are widening the roads.  I read in the local newspaper a few days ago that now that they've got things torn up they may run out of money before they are able to rebuild.    My solution????????????

These are the water tanks that are on all of the houses, pumped from the ground up.  We have solar heating so sometimes we have hot water but most of the time NOT ????

  

The local grocery store - I do not however shop at this one.   I shop at Bompettini's (sp)  it's a cross between a Costco and Reams grocery store.











Human wheelbarrows?????

The local barbershop - Kent's about ready for a haircut, do you think he out to try this place out, only 60 rupees (about .75.   ????

This is one of the funniest signs I've seen, this is in our branch meetinghouse in the bathroom.   Nepali's have to be shown how to use our Western style toilets, last night Brother Rempp was telling us that before the members of the branch go to the temple, they have a class on how to use the toilets in the temple, THEY ARE NOT TO STAND ON THE SEATS.  Below is a brand new Nepali toilet in the plumbing store.  They can however stand up on this one.

Now you know cows are sacred in the Hindu religion.  They are all over and cars and people move over for them as they wander down the road.  My solution - steaks for dinner,  ha, ha.


The next pictures were taken when we were at the Helping Babies Breathe training.  We are at a hospital - unbelievable - my solution - tear it down and start from the ground up.

        Windows inside the hospital - yuck.  I really hope I never get sick enough to have to go to the hospital.

                                                Hospital walls

  The people are waiting at the hospital clinic - it is only open from 10:00 - 2:00.  Most of them walk miles to be seen, only to wait in line and then have it close before they can see a doctor.  Someone is there serving up watermelon to those waiting in line.

          This water buffalo is waiting in line at the hospital clinic.  There were about 4 of these big guys.

 This is our lovely home, but looks can be deceiving.  Because of the monsoon season, it really smells musty, the walls are all cement, we do not have air conditioning or heat.  In the winter we're told it's much warmer outside than inside.   But compared to most people here we are in heaven.  No more complaining from me.


Our week has been just getting ourselves organized.  We've had a plumber here for 2 days trying to get our toilets fixed.  It would take about 3 minutes to flush them, they are working better now.  The plumber brought about 2 tools, we had to go to the plumbing store to pick up supplies for him.  He made a washer out of tape and used a lot of duct tape to fix things.  I wonder how long all those repairs will last. But I know my solution to their problems will always be wrong and I'm getting to understand that here in Nepal.    

 This next week we are meeting with church leaders from Hong Kong and government officials, we're also going to ride the elephants in Chitwan, pictures to come in the next few weeks.