JOURNAL HIGHLIGHTS: Roads I Have Traveled, Excerpt # 2 Ukraine & Atlanta, 1997

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

(continued): Ukraine/Atlanta: January, 1997: As soon as Mark returned to the USA, he called me and we talked. Who could help us? How would we get everyone together? Where would the money come from to finance such a project? It was the holidays; would anyone be available to get together on such short notice?

Everything had to be finalized for presentation to the Ukrainian Parliament in about thirty days. Would it be feasible to bring a group of the top Ukrainian leaders to the US for a symposium? We would have to do a crash course for them in basic democratic, capitalistic, free-market economics and make sure they understood the concepts well enough to debate them on the floor of parliament. A majority of the members would have to understand and buy into a new paradigm of economic thinking. It is one thing to talk about freedom. It is quite another thing to allow the consequences of freedom to move in and upset cultural institutions that have been established for many years. No other republic of the old Soviet system has ever been so bold.

But even if the Ukrainians overcame the boldness factor, they were faced with the awesome reality of logistics and implementation.

As Mark and I talked, we began to get excited about the historic possibilities of such an undertaking. We both encouraged each other and caught ourselves saying, “Let’s go for it.” If we could help implement the free-market changes into Ukrainian medical law, perhaps we could use the model to influence other former Soviet republics.

 

I had personally met many of the ministers of health from other Eastern European and Central Asian countries. Maybe we could just roll an adopted Ukrainian medical-law package right over into the other republics. It suddenly became a challenge worthy of our focus and efforts. With God’s help we would “go for it.”

Mark got busy working with Edward Gluschenko in Kiev on choosing the appropriate Ukrainian leaders to bring to the US. A national board of directors meeting of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) was to be held in Atlanta, Georgia, January 11–13, 1997. The board offered to let us utilize some of their conference space at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel near the airport in Atlanta. They encouraged us in our efforts and pledged to assist in any way they could.

I got busy on the economists. We really needed at least one heavy hitter with the recognized economic credentials. Immediately a person came to my mind: Dr. Paul Ballantyne, head of the economics department at the University of Colorado (CU) in Colorado Springs. He was my economics professor for several graduate courses I had taken at CU in the early 1980s. I have found him to be a wonderfully devoted Christian gentleman, and we have developed a warm friendship over the years. He encouraged me to become part of the Colorado Council on Economic Education and furthermore had offered his advice and helped proof my original manuscript for my gold award winning book What’cha Gonna Do with What’cha Got?

Dr. Ballantyne is also a good friend with internationally famous Dr. Michael Novak, author of many economics books, including The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. He had introduced me to Dr. Novak at an economic conference held in Vail, Colorado, in the mid‑1980s. If Dr. Ballantyne wasn’t available for our meeting with the Ukrainians, perhaps he could persuade Michael Novak to have mercy on us.

I had lost Dr. Ballantyne’s home phone number, and the university was on Christmas break, so I contacted the folks at the Colorado Council on Economic Education and finally weaseled the number out of them. When I reached Dr. Ballantyne, he and his wife were just on their way out the door to spend Christmas with their son and his family. I barely caught him.

In as short a time as possible, I tried to tell him about my involvement with the Ukraine and about Project C.U.R.E.’s humanitarian, spiritual, and economic mission. He quietly listened as I painted the picture of how I terribly and undeservedly needed his help, even though I knew there was really no reason for me to be optimistic about his assistance. I explained how I needed a real expert who could quickly and convincingly present the fundamentals of Adam Smith and free-market economics to a bunch of ex‑Marxists who are desiring to reform their health-care system.

When I shut up, he nearly knocked the phone out of my hand with his reply: “Jim, how very interesting that you would call. I have thought of you many times and wondered if you are still working with the Brazilian government on their debt repayments. Let me quickly bring you up to date on what I have been doing in addition to my work at the University of Colorado. I have been teaching free-market, democratic capitalism courses at Sumy State University in the Ukraine. In fact, my wife has been accompanying me and teaching English courses at the university using the Bible as her English textbook. We’ve had some absolutely wonderful opportunities to witness for Christ, and one family over there has adopted us and made us the godparents of their children.

“I would be pleased to help you in your efforts to aid the Ukraine, and I have the dates of January 9–12 open and available between my CU class schedule. Now I’d better run, or I’ll miss my plane to celebrate Christmas with my son and his family. Here’s my son’s phone number; let’s talk about the details.”

I hung up the phone and cried.

Continued Next Week: Historic Conference in Atlanta

© Dr. James W. Jackson

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

  

www.jameswjackson.com 

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

JOURNAL HIGHLIGHTS: Road I Have Traveled, Excerpt # 1 Ukraine 1997

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

(Note: These following Journal entries represent one of the finest episodes of the early life of Project C.U.R.E. We happened to be at the right place at the right time to providentially influence the scope and sequence of change in the health care delivery system in the country of Ukraine. Later, those seeds of change lapped over to influence change in other countries of the old Soviet Federation. My heart is again warmed as I share these journal entries with you. JWJ).

Ukraine: January 10, 1997:

Earlier in these writings, I chronicled the details of our involvement in the remarkable republic of Ukraine that had been a part of the former Soviet Union. Project C.U.R.E. had shipped literally millions of dollars’ worth of medical supplies to the cities of Vinnitsa and Kiev, Ukraine. In fact, Project C.U.R.E. had donated and shipped over eighteen tons of medical library books to the National Pirogov Memorial Medical University in Vinnitsa. The institution can now boast of having the finest English-language medical library in all of Eastern Europe.

I had the opportunity of meeting many of the high-ranking government officials in the Ukraine and toured a high percentage of their medical facilities while conducting our Needs Assessment Studies.

I returned to the old Soviet Union and the Ukraine in September of 1996, accompanied by Dr. Brian McMurray, Dr. Mark Johnson, and several other wonderful people from the Nashville, Tennessee, area. The trip was very successful, and Project C.U.R.E. followed up the visit by sending another approximately $750,000 worth of desperately needed supplies to the Ukrainian hospitals. I thoroughly enjoyed being with Dr. Brian McMurray. He and his wife became Christians only about a year prior to our trip. His high energy level and enthusiasm for doing something for God and helping the needy people in the Ukraine was contagious. It was refreshing to just be around him and watch his excitement focused on the medical needs of Vinnitsa.

But I was equally impressed with the young Dr. Mark Johnson. He was in his mid-thirties and had already gained a great deal of respect in the medical community as a urologist. It was Mark’s first venture away from the sophisticated hospitals of Nashville and the Vanderbilt medical community.

I will never forget as long as I live Dr. Mark’s first encounter with the university people the day he arrived in Vinnitsa. He had procured and taken along with him some state-of-the-art urology probes and scopes for bladder, prostate, and kidney procedures. His intent was to train the medical-university surgeons and professors in advanced urology techniques and then leave the high‑tech instruments with them. They would be the first in the whole area of the old Soviet Union to be trained in how to use the equipment and perform the procedures.

When Dr. Mark arrived to meet with the department leaders at the university, he discovered that there was no interpreter to translate the doctors’ Russian into English or his English into Russian. But true to his young American ingenuity, Dr. Mark never let the mishap throw him off beat for one minute. He simply unpacked all his urology equipment and medications, pulled out a large piece of clean paper, and began to draw pictures for the university doctors. After he had completed his masterpiece on the human anatomy, he began writing labels in English on all the appropriate body parts. When finished, he pushed the pictures over to the Ukrainians and motioned for them to label all the pictures in Russian. Next, they practiced saying the names of the body parts in both English and Russian. Equipped with pictures, urology instruments, and the names of body parts, Dr. Mark then proceeded to explain and illustrate the use of the new probes and scopes.

The Ukrainians were absolutely delighted, especially when they realized that Dr. Mark had brought all the equipment for them to keep and use.

After Dr. Mark had spent the entire day with the Ukrainian doctors, they took him to dinner to celebrate their new friendship. Fortunately, by that time the interpreter had caught up with them, and things went a lot easier. At dinner, with the aid of the interpreter, Dr. Mark gave the Ukrainian doctors an explanation of why he had come all the way from America to be with them. He explained what Jesus Christ had done in his life and how he had changed the lives of his entire family and their lifestyle. Now he was there to share Christ’s love and concern with them. 

The doctors arranged for Dr. Mark to operate on some of their patients the next morning. He was able to demonstrate the urology equipment and explain the latest medical procedures. I went into the operating room while Dr. Mark was doing the procedures. They had given him Russian operating scrubs and a tall stovepipe baker’s hat worn by the surgeons. I must admit, it was one of the proudest days of my life with Project C.U.R.E. What was taking place halfway around the world from Denver, Colorado, and Nashville, Tennessee, had to be making God smile.

The day after Thanksgiving, Dr. Mark Johnson and Dr. Brian McMurray went back to Vinnitsa and held free clinics at a Russian Orthodox church, a Pentecostal church, and several of the Baptist churches in the area. On that trip they each took with them their eleven- and twelve‑year‑old daughters. Their entire families were now locked into sharing the love of God through medicine with people they had never even known existed two years before.

While returning to the airport in Kiev for the flight back to the USA, Dr. Mark asked Edward Gluschenko, our English-speaking liaison in Ukraine, what we could do for them that would be uniquely helpful. Edward explained that the Ukrainian legislature was in the process of determining the direction of the health-care industry in their new republic. In the past, Ukrainian medical philosophies and practices had been sternly dictated by the Soviet designers in Moscow, as in all the other republics. Ukraine’s health-care delivery system was rigidly centralized. Doctors and other medical personnel were simply workers of the state assigned to take care of the sick people of the Soviet Union. There was no invitation for creativity and no tolerance for deviation from mandated procedures.

Now, with the collapse of the Soviet regime, Ukraine was facing a historic opportunity for change. Now was the time to change the philosophical direction of health care for the first time ever. Edward explained to Mark the desire to take full advantage of the fortuitous timing and build into the new system some basic cornerstones of free market, non-centralized medicine. The new laws were to be voted on by parliament in late January or early February of 1997. Those new laws would set the direction for the future of the medical profession.

The only problem was that no one in the Ukraine knew enough about free-enterprise economics to even begin to formulate the concepts, let alone articulate in a written proposal to the legislature the articles expected to be voted into the new law of the land. Edward asked if Dr. Mark might know of anyone who might be able to help them at this juncture.

Continued Next Week: A Bold and Crazy Plan 

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

 

 www.jameswjackson.com 

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

JOURNAL HIGHLIGHTS: Roads I Have Traveled; Excerpt # 8, June 2002

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Thursday, June 13

(continued): Israel, West Bank, Ramallah: June 6-14, 2002: At about 3:45 Thursday morning I woke up to the cleric’s call to prayer from the Muslim mosque. When I heard it, I started chuckling out loud. The episode that was playing through my head was another Muslim cleric wailing another early morning call to prayer. It was in the village of Diorbivol out in the Saharan Desert along the Senegalese River in the West African country of Senegal. I was laying on a woven straw mat listening to the call to prayer. Just on the other side of a fence from me was a scrawny rooster who had given up trying to wake up the sun and had gone to mimicking the cleric on the top of the tower with the loudspeaker. Perhaps it was the funniest thing I had ever heard.

Thursday morning I wasn’t in Senegal. I was in Ramallah, West Bank. I couldn’t help laughing. Part of the laugh was from recalling the psychotic old rooster, the other part from the unspeakable joy I felt knowing that the tanks were leaving Ramallah, meaning I would be free to leave.

We called a taxi and even before breakfast, Mohamed and I made our way through the torn up streets of the city to the ministry of health for the Palestinian Authority. The taxi driver had to make a number of different attempts and detours to finally get us to the right building, but we made it in spite of the leftover roadblocks.

We had an exceptional meeting with the minister of health. I explained how pleased I was to have made the connection with Red Crescent, who would see to it that our medical goods made it into West Bank without all the problems we had previously encountered.

The minister of health listened and asked a few questions about our previous experience in West Bank, Gaza, and Beirut, Lebanon. Then he said, “Look, I am really sorry that you had problems before. But, I guarantee you will not have any problems this time. Here is a list of the items that we desperately need in our small hospitals and clinics throughout the West Bank regions. Everything that Red Crescent brings in has to go through me right here in this office.”

“Let me see if I am hearing you correctly,” I responded. “If I worked directly with you I could shortcut the whole process and not have to ship the donations in through Jordan? And you will guarantee safe passage and delivery to the hospitals we designate?”

“That’s right,” he assured me.

“If that’s the case,” I added, “then I’m sure we can help fill the list of your needs for the smaller hospitals and rural clinics as well.”

Our time was getting very short. Mohamed, realizing that I had to get to Tel Aviv to catch my flight that evening, had decided that we could make one more set of assessments on our way. He had called Jerusalem and told them we would meet with the Palestinian Charitable Society at two o’clock.

Mohamed’s brother-in-law took us down to the center of Ramallah where the taxi vans all gathered. We found a taxi that would take us to the military checkpoint at the edge of West Bank.

We were dropped off and checked by three groups of Israeli guards. We were cleared quickly when we showed them our US passports. We then walked about the length of two blocks through the concrete barricades over to the Israeli zone. Once on the other side we scrambled for a taxi with a yellow license plate, which would be authorized to take us into Jerusalem.

Once inside the city we met up with Mohamed’s uncle who took us to the Arab section for our meetings with the Palestinian Charitable Society. There were several clinics that offered free medical services to hardship cases in the eastern section of Jerusalem and the outlying Arab communities.

My suggestion to them was to work directly with the health minister in West Bank and with Mohamed as to the logistics of getting the needed supplies from Project C.U.R.E. delivered to the correct recipients.

When we were finished with the needs assessments in Jerusalem I was escorted through the narrow streets of the old city and shown all the traditional sites including the Church of the Sepulcher, the Via Delarosa, the Dome of the Rock, the Mount of Olives, and the Jewish Wailing Wall.

We ended up on a very narrow street with high stonewalls on either side. We paused in front of a small metal door easily unnoticed if it were not familiar to you. Mohamed’s uncle reached into his pocket and retrieved a key and unlocked the small door. I was ushered in and to my surprise there were six additional doors waiting on the inside of the wall. The small homes within the old walls of Jerusalem were over 500 years old and presently occupied. The uncle and his wife lived in one of the units three days a week; the other four days they stayed in Ramallah.

I was served another cup of strong Arab tea and we sat out in a little porch area inside the old wall. I let my imagination run the gamut wishing the old walls of Jerusalem could reveal to me their secret stories of days gone by.

It was time for me to leave for Tel Aviv and the Ben Gureon Airport. Mohamed’s uncle used his cell phone and called a family friend who owned a taxi. We walked from the narrow streets to a parking lot near the old Wailing Wall. The taxi had the correct registration numbers allowing its movement out of Jerusalem and into Tel Aviv. There on the street corner in old Jerusalem I said goodbye to some newfound friends from the Palestinian corner of the world.

As I flew Air Canada flight #887 back to Toronto and then on home to Denver, I had some time to reflect on where I had been and what Project C.U.R.E. was becoming. Not many people had had the opportunities afforded to me. I had been able to get acquainted and live with people in their own environment and culture, not as a tourist or stranger, but as a friend. It had been from that position that I could feel and observe their hopes, their disappointments, their anger, their concerns for their families, their beliefs, their religious practices, as well as their love for me. I had greatly valued the privileges of my life.

I was sure I should have been able to come up with something really intelligent to say about the Middle East’s historical situation since I had now been intimately involved in it for over 15 years. The truth was I didn’t know what to think. I had cataloged a lot of observations, read a lot of background material, tried to stay current on the present happenings, and asked a lot of people for their opinions. I had no assurance at all that there would be any satisfactory arrangement until the end of times. I couldn’t help but wonder as I was making my way back home if we were not already a part of those end times.

But, above and beyond all that, it had been a rich experience to be able to share help and hope with countless numbers of people who needed to see the everyday working out of God’s love in a real world. What an outstanding privilege!

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

  

www.jameswjackson.com

                

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

JOURNAL HIGHLIGHTS: Roads I Have Traveled; Excerpt # 7 from June, 2002

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Tuesday, June 11

(continued): Israel, West Bank, Ramallah: June 6-14, 2002: At 3:45 a.m. the Muslim holy man would usually mount the prayer tower at the local mosque and sing out his call to prayer. When there was no call to prayer, I knew that Tuesday was going to be another troublesome day.

 

How could he give a call to prayer?  How would anyone respond and go to the mosque for early prayers if they couldn’t leave their houses? The tanks and soldiers still held Ramallah under siege.

There was no way to get to the e-mail store. Besides, there would be no one there anyway. I kept trying to reach Anna Marie by telephone. Finally I was able to contact her and assure her that I was all right even though the situation was quite tense.

Tuesday was a frustrating repeat of Monday. Nothing moved outside. No dogs barked, no voices of children, no honking of horns … only the sounds of shelling and tanks and helicopters.

About sundown the loudspeakers announced that the curfew would soon be lifted so that people could go out and get food and more water. Everyone waited but the announcement of the lifted curfew never came. It would mean another long night.

The electricity was returned, and the local television news reported that a large number of Ramallah residents had been taken captive and arrested. It apparently had been a very well planned operation to extract known terrorists. Until they got the ones after whom they had come, they would simply stay. They were obviously in no hurry to leave.

While we were just sitting inside the house waiting for something to happen and hoping that nothing would happen, I had lots of time to talk to Mohamed about what he felt it would take to bring peace and why Arafat had rejected the peace initiative of Israeli Prime Minister Barak. One of the underlying contentions held by the Palestinians was that the United Nations had no jurisdiction in the first place to disenfranchise the Palestinians and allow the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. So, the state should be dissolved and the land should revert back to the rightful Palestinian owners, who were now displaced refugees, and reparations should be paid for the past grievances.

Over the hours we had some pretty frank and insightful discussions. Meanwhile, outside there was no confusion as to who was in charge.

Wednesday, June 12

No wake-up call to early prayer by the holy man on the tower at the mosque. It was not a good sign. I jumped out of bed to see tanks still in the streets. After showering and dressing, I went to the room where Mohamed was sitting and joined him in a cup of real strong tea.

“Well,” Mohamed said with an uncertainty in his voice that questioned his own statement, “they have announced that they will lift the curfew this morning from 8 to 11 a.m. for the people to go out and buy bread and get fresh water. But the checkpoints are not allowing any delivery trucks into West Bank or particularly Ramallah, so there will not be anything for sale that is fresh anyway.”

Mohamed’s brother-in-law had agreed to come by and pick us up in his car. He wanted to go as quickly as possible to the center of Ramallah to see if anything had happened to his business during all the shelling. It would give us a good chance to see what had taken place the first three nights and two days of the siege.

It seemed to me that everyone wanted to go downtown to check on their businesses. By 9 a.m., everyone was trying to make it through the central roundabout. The army tanks had not worried much about going around the roundabout, just up and over it.

The streets were a scarred mess and the sidewalks and curbs broken. Lots of cars were smashed with tank track marks over their hoods or right up over the center of the car. Most of the side streets were blocked off with huge mounds of dirt and rocks, which had been dumped sometime within the past 60 hours. We stopped at the outdoor market, which had been quickly assembled, and bought some stale bread.

Mohamed’s brother-in-law’s business had escaped any damage, but an entire two-story building close by had been blown up and burned. “They claim al Qaeda terrorists were hiding in there and were using the building to store explosives and weapons.”

One of the saddest things happened as we passed Mohamed’s old high school. On Saturday he had pointed it out with pride and told me stories of when he had attended. Wednesday morning the walled fence had been broken down and the school lot was full of tanks and personnel carriers. “Look at that. That’s where we used to play soccer when we were boys in Ramallah. Now it’s a parking lot for the Israeli army!”

But as I listened even during the highly charged emotions of the day, I never heard any remorse for the suicide bombings or condemnation of Hamas, al Qaeda, Islamic jihad, or other terrorist groups. Rather, many referred to them as the “underground resistance” groups for the ultimate freeing of the Palestinians.

Eleven o’clock came all too quickly. We had made it home safely with a little time to spare. But some cars were still speeding back to their places of safety as the shelling started up again.

Our conversation Wednesday took a little turn. We had faced the fact earlier that we would have to scrub the idea of visiting Jenin, Nablus, or even Bethlehem. Now the problem was: “How would I catch my flight back to Toronto and on to Denver when I was in a virtual lock down in Ramallah?” We had come to the conclusion that if the tanks were not moved out and the curfew not lifted so I could freely get back to Tel Aviv by Thursday morning, then we would call the US embassy in Tel Aviv and have them come and escort me out of the West Bank.

Later Wednesday afternoon Mohamed called the minister of health’s office and asked if we could have an early meeting on Thursday morning if by any chance the curfew were to be lifted. The minister agreed. 

Next Week: Out of West Bank and into Jerusalem

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

  

www.jameswjackson.com 

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com