INVINCIBILITY: Vietnam

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: In 1998, I made fourteen major trips that included 30 countries. In that year I made three separate trips to Vietnam. In the next four blogs I want to lift out and share four short incidences that took place on just one of those Vietnam trips: April 22-30, 1998.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: April 1998: My first needs-assessment trip to Vietnam took place in October of 1996. Project C.U.R.E.’s involvement in Vietnam actually began two years prior to that date through our contact with Dr. Randy Robinson; his wife, Ginger; and their organization Face the Challenge. My October 1996 journal entries chronicle our partnership with Face the Challenge. We jointly went to Ho Chi Minh City (Old Saigon) and were part of the effort that resulted in over sixty surgeries being performed on kids and young residents of the Ho Chi Minh City area.

In many ways that trip greatly affected my life. Witnessing the talented surgical team using Project C.U.R.E.’s donated medical goods in the operating and recovery rooms indelibly underscored in my heart and mind the undeniable value of our mission to take medical supplies into developing countries around the world. The lives of the children and parents, who were so radically changed during that trip alone, merited all the combined efforts of Project C.U.R.E. over the past eleven years.

I was glad I had actually gone into the operating rooms and closely observed the restructuring of the little faces and bodies of the children. I was glad I had been present to see the tears and looks on the faces of the parents when their children were returned to them in the recovery rooms. The children, who had been so disfigured from birth, were handed back to anxious moms and dads, who were more often than not in shock when they saw the kids and realized for certain that their own flesh and blood had been given beauty and a second chance at living normal lives.

While thinking back on the 1996 trip, and at the same time anticipating my upcoming trip to Vietnam, I was struck by another startling realization. Life is precious. Life is short. The length of life is totally unpredictable. Our tendency is to begin to think about ourselves and our friends in terms of invincibility. We will always be here. Our friends will always be here. Drastic change is neither thinkable nor acceptable, especially while we are involved in doing “God’s work.” We will always be protected from harm, and our families are somehow guaranteed to never be subjected to grief or pain or loss resulting from our endeavors. That possibility just doesn’t occur to us, or if it does, it is instantly rejected by a good inoculation of denial. We simply get another shot of invincibility like the yellow fever or cholera shots we get before going into the African jungles.

But that ideal of invincibility is not always the way real life works. Bill LeTourneau worked closely with Face the Challenge and Dr. Randy Robinson. He was also my front man making all the necessary arrangements for the surgical trip in October of 1996. 

 

Putting all the details in place necessitated that Bill travel to Vietnam many times before my departure for Ho Chi Minh City. Bill, who at the time was forty-one years old, had a natural talent for diplomacy and negotiating. In fact, it was Bill who helped me tag the right contacts in Ho Chi Minh City, which eventually produced meetings at the Vietnamese ministry of trade, where I proposed a working relationship between North Korea and Vietnam, with Project C.U.R.E. orchestrating the international countertrade of Vietnamese rice for North Korean iron ore to help keep the people of North Korea from starving to death. Bill sat in on those meetings with me in 1996.

Two weeks ago, Dr. Robinson’s group, Face the Challenge, returned to the hospitals of Old Saigon to once again perform cranio-maxillofacial surgeries on little kids. They are once again using Project C.U.R.E.’s medical supplies, which our staff sent to Ho Chi Minh City a few weeks ago.

Once again, Bill LeTourneau was in on the advance detail assignment to prepare for the surgeons and nurses, who would arrive later. Everything was properly set up with the local doctors, the hospitals, the hotels, and the shuttle buses. The parents of the children who would receive the reconstruction surgeries had been notified of the scheduled day the team would arrive. Because of my scheduled trip to Hanoi, I opted not to return to Ho Chi Minh City with the medical team.

During the days and often into the nights, the medical team performed their life-changing surgeries. But one morning Bill didn’t show for breakfast. At the age of forty-three, he had died alone in his room of a massive heart attack. Bill not only left his wife, Julie, and his two kids, Joseph and Jackie, but he also left a lot of us with hurting hearts and another opportunity to revisit our stubborn beliefs that our lives and endeavors on this earth are somehow invincible.

My prayer is that God will bring healing to our hearts and be especially near Julie and the children as they try to sort through the emotions and trauma of such an unexpected tragedy. I know today that heaven is richer because Bill is there, but I also know that we all feel a little pillaged today, and a whale of a lot more vulnerable.

© 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 # 5 Ukraine and Atlanta January 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): After sharing some other more generalized observations of international health-care systems, I began to describe the unique role Project C.U.R.E. plays in providing donated health-care products to newly developing countries around the world. I explained how we are presently shipping medical goods to over forty different countries. Then I related to them the way Pro­ject C.U.R.E. got started and a bit of its colorful history. The group was fun to talk to because of the extreme diversity of the individuals, combining the Ukrainian delegation with the board of directors of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) resulted in a very interesting mix. 

While I was talking, one of the AAPS board members raised his hand. I stopped and acknowledged him; then he asked, “Mr. Jackson, just why are you doing what you are doing, and why are you here helping the Ukrainians rewrite their laws?” Dr. Ballantyne, who is famil­iar with my past, just looked at me and grinned. I knew he was wondering just how I was going to handle the question.

I began to tell them what a dramatic difference God had made in my life—how he had changed me from a person who was totally consumed with accumulating wealth for myself to a person devoted to sharing God’s love by helping hurting people around the world. As I glanced across the room, I saw Dr. Raisa Burchak, the wife of Dr. Fedir Burchak, the legal advisor and personal confidant of the president of the Ukraine. She had her lace handkerchief out and was crying. Perhaps it was the first time she had ever heard about the transforming grace of God.

I finished my part of the speaking agenda by challenging everyone there to consider moving from a personal position of success to a position of significance in their lives: “Do some­thing significant that will last forever.”

After the session, Dr. Fedir Burchak and Raisa came up to me and hugged me. Dr. Raisa said, “I learned many things during these hours, but perhaps the greatest thing I learned I learned from your heart.”

Sunday, January 12

It is necessary for me to return to Denver early, so I will be unable to personally say good‑bye to my new friends from the Ukraine when they board their flight for their return trip. But as I left the symposium and boarded my plane to fly home to Denver, I had to stop and thank God for allowing me to be a small part of such a historic occasion.

Who would have ever believed on December 17 that all the necessary elements for success would have come together in such a short time and allowed us to actually organize, offer, and present this economic symposium?

I don’t know at the moment how the newly proposed health-care laws will be accepted in the Ukrain­ian Parliament, but I rest in the fact that when Dr. Mark Johnson and I saw the need to help, we were able to respond in instant and complete obedience. I will always hold as extremely valuable the memory of how God blessed our simple efforts to help and brought together all the correct people in such a short span of time, and did it in a way that brought honor to God and dignity to the efforts. 

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

TRAVEL JOURNALS

by Dr. James W. Jackson

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

I remember being told when I was just a little kid that one of these days your whole life will suddenly flash before your eyes. I decided there and then that I was going to make sure that it was well worth watching!

I also recall from one of my classes at the university that in order for a happening or situation to become a living adventure you somewhere down the line have to recount it. Where I was born, where I lived, and where I have been is probably not too important. But what I have done with all the time and all the collected information of my lifetime probably should be of interest. Steve Jobs of Apple fame used to say that the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do it. I believe that Project C.U.R.E. has, indeed, changed its world.

From the very beginning of Project C.U.R.E., I felt impressed . . . almost like a thumb in my back . . . to try to capture the story and document the facts by keeping a careful and faithful journal of the endeavors of Project C.U.R.E. I felt compelled to write down the chronological flow of events while in motion so that the indisputable miracles would be substantiated by written narrative and photographic evidence of the times, and not reconstructed later by relying on lukewarm memory and salvaged bits of souvenirs.

I asked for help from God with the task and he has been faithful to me with the journal-keeping from the beginning until about 2008, when it was required of me to stop the pace of international travel. I have spent hundreds of hours on airplanes, boats, trains, helicopters, and in the strangest of places around the world, writing down words on computer keyboards and pads of paper. Those writings documented the names of places, people, and descriptions of events that permanently recorded the fascinating phenomenon of Project C.U.R.E. It became commonplace to find myself writing while stranded in a cheap hotel in Da Nang, Vietnam, with the ravaging flood waters preventing me from even leaving the building, or to still be writing down words in the darkest African night while sitting in my tent in the heart of Tanzania, a pen in one hand and a flickering oil lantern in the other hand.

Before the start of each trip, I would pray specifically that God would give me wisdom and favor: favor with the people where I would be working in the foreign locations, and wisdom from God to be at the right place at the right time saying the right things to the right people.

In places like North Korea, Cuba, northern Pakistan, Afghanistan, Beirut, or Iraq, I would have to be careful and hide my writings in my belongings so that my written observations would not be discovered during searches of my bags and held against me as spy material. I had to be equally careful with respect to the thousands of photographs which I have taken in my attempts to further substantiate my written findings.

It was my goal to have each journal entry finished in narrative form by the time the landing wheels of the passenger jet touched the tarmac of Denver’s airport. If I allowed one day lapse before I had written it all down, I would lose some of the sharp details of the trip. So, on long international flights, I would be the guy at night in the economy section with the cabin light on trying to finish my assignment.

Now we are preparing to publish all twenty-five years’ of narrative travel journals. It is going to be a huge endeavor, and will necessitate several volumes. This will be as close to the actual accounting of the history of Project C.U.R.E. available anywhere. Reading these original, un-cut journals will allow my friends to travel with me to thousands of locations worldwide and be a part of the philosophical and logistical development of the first quarter-century of the organization.

I have written books and articles based on stories from the travel journals, but none of those writings can give the progressive description of what was happening with Project C.U.R.E. on this side of the oceans as well as internationally. I can think of no better way to share so completely with my friends the thrill, heartbreak, frustration, and triumphs of the incredible global work of Project C.U.R.E. I’m delighted and honored that you’ve chosen to join me on this educational journey .  

Next Week: An explanation as to how this journal introduction will work. 

© 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

SUPPOSIN': A PERSONAL CHOICE

by Dr. James W. Jackson

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

It was a beautiful March day in Israel. My son Jay and I were traveling with Shaul Amir, an executive of the large Assaf Harofeh Hospital in Tel Aviv. Shaul wanted to introduce me to some of his close friends who were very important Israeli government people in the city of Haifa. We drove north, with the Mediterranean Sea on our left and the Jordan River to our right, to the base of Mt. Carmel, and then on toward Sidon. Before we reached Haifa I, spotted a signpost that pointed to Zarephath.

“Shaul,” I excitedly asked, “is that the same Zarephath that is mentioned in the Holy Scriptures when they talk about Elijah and wicked King Ahab and how God made it not rain for three years?”

“How would you know anything about our old prophet Elijah?” Shaul inquired with a bewildered expression. “How would you know anything about Zarephath? You know I grew up just over there on the side of Mt. Carmel. I rode horseback all over this area when I was young.” We had a marvelous conversation as we drove on. I told him all I remembered about the story and he filled in the local color.

You see, King Ahab was the most wicked king Israel had experienced to that time. And his foreign wife, Jezebel, was twice as evil. God got their attention by sending Elijah to the king so he could tell Ahab that God was going to stop the rain until he sent Elijah back to see him later. Jezebel and the king didn’t like the message, so they decided to kill the messenger (nothing new in history).

Eventually, God had to send Elijah to the village of Zarephath, where he arranged for an old widow to hide him and take care of him until the rains started again. When Elijah arrived at the edge of the city, there was the old woman gathering sticks to build a fire. “Please bring me a glass of water,” requested Elijah. As the woman turned to fetch the water, Elijah called to her and said, “Oh, yes, and while you are at it, please bring me some bread, also.”

That was enough to trip the trigger of the old widow. She was thinking what a stretch it was to even consider getting the old man some water, since there was almost no water available because of the imposed drought. But now he was asking for some bread! She replied, “I don’t have any bread, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son that we may eat it – and die.”

Elijah responded, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. For this is what the Lord God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land.’ ”

The woman went away and did what Elijah had told her to do. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family, for the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry as the Lord had said through Elijah. (I Kings 17:7-16)

Shaul, Jay, and I had a spectacular time discussing the story about the village of Zerephath on our way to Haifa. Whether we risk our life on our belief in the economic concept of scarcity, insufficiency, and lack, or dare to believe in the possibility of abundance, is really and finally up to us. . It is our call. It is like what my old dad used to say: “Be alert to the image you hold in your mind, because you ultimately become what you think about all day long.”

Many times as I would be in flight somewhere on the millions of miles I have flown in the past thirty years, I have thought about the strange and glorious adventure Anna Marie and I started on when we decided to risk our lives on this call to obedience and abundance. At the beginning of the adventure it looked more like “de-abundance” than abundance. We had spent our life radically accumulating wealth for ourselves that would last us until we died. We had worked hard and acquired sixteen times more than I had thought we would ever have in our entire lifetime. But, it was not satisfying. We were doing well, but we were not doing good. We were not happy, and as I looked around none of our friends who were addicted to accumulating more and more were happy, either.

After a lot of discussions, we decided to give away what we had accumulated and start over again. Perhaps we needed to learn that God couldn’t trust us with heaven’s riches until we could be trusted with no riches. I never suggest that anyone else do just as we did and give away all his or her accumulation. But for me, I had to break the radical accumulation addiction and I needed to do it cold turkey. I needed to change from a person who was bent on getting to a person who was bent on giving.

A mental and spiritual disposition of getting springs from a fear that there is only so much available in the scheme of things and we must hoard, covet and redistribute what someone else has for our own taking. The doctrine of shortage promotes bondage; the doctrine of abundance promotes freedom. After all these years I have come to believe that it is through relinquishment that you come to true abundance. To have relinquished the old paradigm and embraced a new and different concept of abundance was the best business deal I ever made in all my life. But the choice to move from a paradigm of scarcity, choice and cost to one of abundance, choice and fulfillment is a very personal decision.

I have often thought how Washington Carver must have felt in his experiments with the lowly peanut . . . we are merely scratching the surface of the scientific investigation of the possibilities of sufficiency and abundance. Our new adventure required us to purposefully let go of those things that we had considered as our security blankets, but were in fact items of bondage. We then had to allow a new image of trust and expectation to become our security. We kept focusing on My God shall supply all your needs . . . (Philippians 4:19). In starting over we had to push to the edge of the cliff, and then walk over the edge, expecting that there would be something beneath our next step or else we would be taught how to fly.

Now, some forty years after that decision and launch of the adventure, some of the results are being tallied. Over one billion dollars’ worth of medical goods have been donated through Project C.U.R.E. into over 130 countries around the world. Because of the help of over 16,000 volunteers and staff at Project C.U.R.E., literally tens of thousands of people are alive and economies are stronger. We had purposefully chosen to take our hands off the things that would last for a short time so that we could lay hold of the abundant things that would last forever. The best business deal we ever made was to choose, along with the old widow from Zarephath, to exchange what we could not keep for the abundance we could not lose.

Next Week: Supposin’: In Search of a Solution 

© Dr. James W. Jackson  

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

 

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