What Does It Mean To Have A Battle To Fight?

What does it mean to have a battle to fight? Hey, Tyler. Brandon, what’s going on,man? Oh, not much. Um, I made a I made aspecial recipe last night. Mulligan stew. No, it wasn’t any of Dad’s weird foodlike tomato gravy. Oh, that was the worst.Do you remember when he mixed You remember when he mixed tomato soup with broccoli cheese soup?I think it was split pea soup in powder form and the powder was still like It’s kind of like those backpacking meals thatnever quite rehydrate. I It’s like the first time I think I’ve ever puked at dinner. Like you take a bite of the soup andlike there there’d be like powder. I couldn’t eat peas for like the next 20years. Oh man. Yeah. I remember sitting there. It felt like forever just looking atthat thing and and he was like, “You gotta eat it.” He’s like, “Guys, you gotta get it down. Your boys got to eat it.” I was looking for the dog. I was lookinglike anything I could do. Try to like shove it over like dump it into the next guy’s bowl. Maybe Rex got it or something.So, but uh anyways, I made sour chili and sour cream enchil chickenenchiladas. Oh, nice, man. Oh, it’s good. Yeah, I got I got all these leftovers. You got to come down.Good for you, man. So, you know, you you know how to do it right, too. Yeah. Um, but anyways, I don’t want towaste any more time on on us talking because I got literallyum one of my favorite people here and somebody who has had a a great impact onmy life. Um, and I’m just really grateful to have him. So, we got Wade Roberts here from Become More. Um, andwe’re going to dive into what he does, but uh just really really happy to have you here, Wade. Thank you for beinghere. Yeah, thank you. Um, so Wade, how how I met Wade wasum my my other brother Rex. I don’t I don’t know exactly. I think he knows Lloyd Wade or I don’t know how, buthe got connected into this organization that goes to Cambodia. And that’s kind of all I knew. And I was like, “Hey, Iwant to like take my son and and do this.” And and then so I actuallyfollowed through. We did it. And it it was like much more for me than I than Ithought it would be. Um and we went we went what felt like all the all the waythrough Cambodia and experienced all kinds of things. Um and uh and and whatI saw Wade building was incredible. And so I just wanted him to talk about it today, share his story, why he does it,um and and uh just share with you the audience an example of a man who is fighting afight and um has a battle to fight. And so Wade, if you could just start back,like how did you even get into all this? Like how did this happen? How did you develop it? Where did it start?Yeah, that’s a great question. So for me, the first connection that I had toanything Cambodia related actually comes about 25 years ago. I served an LDSmission in Fresno, California, Cambodian speaking.Uh from that I then came back home, went to school and uh got married. Uh savedup for my first year anniversary. took my wife and I over to Cambodia thinkingit would maybe be romantic or something like that for our first year anniversaryand uh and my eyes were opened. I I had never seen poverty. I had heard the thestories uh from my mission. I’d heard about the war. I was aware of the genocide that had taken place in the thelate 1970s. And I was generally aware of the idea ofpoverty and famine and people were that were lacking, but I had never personallyexperienced it or seen it. And so I wasn’t aware of of how bad it could really be. So this first yearanniversary trip that my wife and I took over 20 years ago now was kind of thelaunch point for me. It it uh it pricricked my heart in a way that I couldn’t unsee and I couldn’t unfillsome sort of moral obligation to to do something about what I saw. So I shiftedgears in school. I started studying different things that I felt maybe couldhelp me. I was I didn’t know how to help, but I wanted to help. So I Istarted going to Cambodia pretty regularly. Um I eventually took a classthat was called development economics and I realized that there was this wholefield of something that was approaching this problem that I had no idea about. And the professors were great. Theytaught uh and showed some case studies of some policy, some interventions, somethings that had been done to to use incentives which we know works in economics to reshape things and createopportunities for development and growth sometimes for entire countries. And thatreally that really intrigued me. And so from there uh I was encouraged and uhfollowed up on went to graduate school and uh pursued a PhD in economicsand for the next several years uh went back and forth to Cambodia to collectdata on a problem that I observed at the time that was massive related tolandmines and residual ordinance that was left over from clear back to theVietnam era. A massive problem in Cambodia,a problem that we like most of us Americans don’t even think about, right, or understand at all. Um,even even you just saying what you just did, it’s like I’m I’m I’m less connected to Cambodia than you areBrandon is now, too. And so even that would maybe warrant a little bit more of an explanation.Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And so I mean the the the short story of it is is uhlandmines have been used for quite a while now as a measure of war. Andalthough they’ve been considered and deemed to be an immoraluh measure of war because they don’t discriminate and once they’re laid inthe ground without a map with no way of finding them that’s cheap then fordecades after that war is over they continue to wreak havoc on a population.They’re also landmines are designed to maim, not kill. Uh so in in time of war,it’s strategic because if you if you have something that kills someone, you lose one person. If you have somethingthat mames someone, you lose three people because you have to now take careof that person, drag them off the field, provide medical services. It’s a more of a it’s a strategic way of winning a warthat was played for quite a long time now. In all fairness, this is still being used. Most of the world has signedwhat’s called the Odawa Convention. It’s uh it’s essentially a an agreement thatfollows from what we would know as the Geneva Convention. Essentially, the rules of engagement of a war and not touse them, not to sell them, not to anything related to landmines. Uh thethe big three that have have not yet signed the Odawa convention clear back from 1997are China, Russia and the United States. We get to sign. So as far as theproduction, the selling, the use, the whatever, we still have some big players, uh probably the three biggestplayers that have yet to sign the the act. And so they they are still being made and used andinteresting. Yeah. Um I I don’t want to put you on the spot, but uh and maybe maybe you don’tknow this, but do you know the numbers of like how many people like post warhave been hit by a landmine? Yeah, I do. So it’s it’s something Ispent quite a bit of time on. Uh my area of specialty is primarily, of course, focused in Cambodia. At the time,Cambodia was the most landmine ladened country on the planet. So, no countryhas uh has been beyond that until recently now with the the conflicts thatwe’re seeing uh with Russia’s border. Uh but Cambodia uh you know post any sortof war in some years you know they were having tens of thousands of peoplemaimed. Wow. as a residual problem after war is over. The the official count is muchdifferent from what is is probably realistic given uh what we know of howmany were sold and how many were actually put into the ground. So the the total count in Cambodia is probablysomewhere between 24 and 33 million landmines.Whoa. Which is beyond the population count, by the way.Wow. Um yeah. And that I mean just when you think about that just an innocent childor just whoever um all of a sudden is maimed like that that’s horrific. UmWade as you’re talking about this I’m thinking to to to me your story is kindof you see that problem and you’ve researched that. But another thing thatI know about you is is what you said about your trip with your wife, the povertyum really struck you. And the other thing too is that the the trauma fromthe genocide and I think again a lot of Americans don’t understand that. And soit’s a country with with all these different things going on. Um a lot of a lot of pain and a lot of healing and andit really hasn’t been that long. Um, and so for you as as you as you like look atthis, how do you like do you get overwhelmed when you when you when you see these problems? How do you how doyou approach it? Yeah. I mean, there’s always a sense of, you know, you could do more. And for me,the way that I try to look at it is having experienced some success withwith this specific problem. The long story short is we we researched this foryears, we found that the problem as it was described, everything was considereda landmine accident. And when you hear the word accident, you probably think ofcertain things like I did, which is like there’s a random kid walking in a randomfield with no knowledge of anything being there, no intention of finding alandmine and boom, an accident happens. That’s the image I had in my mind. Andso I imagined that that is what was happening because that’s the word thatwas being used. Okay. As I did my research, I found that in talking withthousands of people and visiting so many people that had the accidents themselvesover a number of years, I found that the pattern in the story was very differentfrom this concept of random accidents. Instead, it was following a behaviorwhere the poor and the vulnerable were intentionally looking for metal thatthey could break apart and sell in the scrap markets.So, the poverty was driving absolutely these these accidents, right? Yeah. Soas part of the process of what we did is we got it recategorized and we now callthem landmine incidents. So an incident is economicallyincentivized. Okay. And now when you look at them almost all of them are nowcalled incidents historically if we look at what they were. Okay. So byunderstanding that that’s key. So, as an economist, we recognize incentives andyou can build incentives and if you understand incentives are just, you know, something that’s in place thatmotivates behavior. That’s it. Okay? So, we we make them all the time. We make up rules for our kids. We’re we’re creatingincentives. Now, maybe we made them right. Maybe we didn’t understand it and we have to have versions of it orwhatever. But in at the basic level if you create an incentive you’ll you’llshift or uh modify behavior for people. Okay. So in understanding that at a verybasic level, the incentives that were at play were poor people or vulnerablepeople, mostly both, would go out, rent metal detectors, looking for this stuff,knowing it was risky, making their best guess at how to break it apart, where tosell the scrap metal, and they would do that for a period of time successfully until they had an incident result inmaming or death. And by understanding that the incentive at play here is thatthey were looking for income. Okay. And breaking down the process to understandat what point in that story did the problem really occur. Most of the timeit wasn’t when they found the ordinance. It was when they broke it open. And theywould do, you know, everything you can imagine a young boy will do. It’s mostly young men that do this. They’ll throw itdown. They’ll hit it with rocks. They’ll hit get hammers. They’ll go up to a little cliff edge and throw it down.They’ll light it on fire and run. All of the things that you can imagine they would do, they’ve doneand uh you know, and maybe they’re successful for a little while and then and then it they’re not. So, inunderstanding that, we were able to then advocate for policy that would intervenebefore it became massively dangerous. Okay. So, we’ve introduced what’s calledan on-site payment program, which is where when they find the ordinance, theymake a phone call to the local authority that is trained in explosive ordinancedisposal. They come out and they weigh the ordinance that day. It’sorchestrated at a village level and they weigh it and then they pay them cashthat day at a rate that is higher than they could get if they engaged in theillegal behavior and took all the risk on themselves. So they still now havethey have a greater incentive to do this especially with no risk attached than they have to do what they were doingwith a lower pay and all risk. So we found that by implementing it we put it into one of the provinces in Cambodiafor a pilot program and after month one we looked at the data and the leaders inthat area said this is clearly working let’s let’s launch this for the country of Cambodia and it became the officialpolicy in Cambodia starting back in in 2007.Nice. Yeah. So we’ve found a massive reduction. Um we’ve gone from in somecases 30,000 people a year to under 100.So the vast majority have been disconnected. Having said that, the landmine problem is not gone inCambodia. But the most important part for me is the part where landmines wereimpacting people. Right? So, if landmines are still in the ground, but they’re not killing people or mamingthem, that’s a much better scenario. And that’s that’s currently where we’re at. As far as getting rid of the landmines,we’ve got many years ahead of us giving funding and other complications.Yeah. Wow. Man, I’m just I’m I’m sitting here and hearing this for the first time.Wade Brandon, I I just want to say before I ask my question here, Brandon came home from his trip with you acompletely changed man. And maybe we want to get back into that a little bit later on in our conversation, but hejust said, Tyler, like I’m just thinking about all the good you’re doing in the world, notonly in Cambodia, but the way that you’re structuring your the way you do it so that you’re changing the lives ofsomeone like Brandon living in, you know, Utah County. You’re changing his life at the sametime that you’re saving young men’s lives in Cambodia at the same time. Um,and I just I just I’m starting to see all these dots connected in ways that I wouldn’t think to connect the dots. Andsomehow you you saw that. I’m wondering a couple of things. One is you go on this trip and maybe we need to let youfinish your story. You go on this trip on your first anniversary and things start to go into motion, but this is ayears’sl long process that had to come with a whole bunch of turmoil, a wholebunch of struggle, a whole bunch of red tape, a whole bunch of like some people will go on a trip and go like, “Oh, wow.That was crushing. Like, I should do something about that.” I’m wondering like what helped you stay the course andactually stay engaged in this and why? Yeah. Okay. So for me, I mean, um, inlooking back, of course, I didn’t realize this fully at the time, but, uh,what appeared to be a massive initial disadvantage in my life, which is havingbeen born with cystic fibrosis and a shorter life expectancy, turns out tohave been a major advantage in motivating me to get things done. Now,if you have the perspective that you won’t live to be 60 or 70 or maybe even40, when I was born, life expectancy was 8, it’s changed. It’s now, you know, in the40s for someone with CF. Uh I’m now 47. So, I’ve I’ve done quite well. They’vethey’ve come out with some amazing medicine that that is really helping with the lungs and things like that. So,however, uh when I was, you know, first married, uh I didn’t know that I wouldlive to C40. For me, it was if you want to leave impact, you have to do it now.You don’t have time to wait. We did have to um sell our house. We It’s the onlyplace we had any any equity or money and move back in my parents’ basement. Mywife was kind enough to make that sacrifice and for 3 years we lived in myparents’ basement um as newlyweds and with our first child uh in an effort tobe able to pay for trips to go to Cambodia. Uh but for me, it was the area that I I wanted to be able to have animpact in some way so that I would know that, you know, my life mattered andthat people were better off because I was here. And I think we all have that. We all want that legacy. Uh we usuallyjust have a misalignment in time and and we’re able to say, “Well, I want that,but it’s not appropriate to do yet. Let me wait until fill in the blank. Waituntil I have enough money. Wait until I have enough free time. Wait until you know I’m not as busy.” And for me, Ididn’t have that as an option. It was either you need to go do it now or youneed to be okay with the fact that you didn’t do it. Wow.Holy cow, man. And the attitude of that, like when you say what was a massive challenge becoming a blessing, I don’tthink most people look at it that way, but you’re saying that it gave you the sense of urgency that allowed you to goand basically do in half a lifetime what most people think about doing in a full one.Yeah. You know, I I look at life a little uh differently now. I spend quite a bit of time in Cambodia with thecharity. I’m out in Cambodia about a third of the year. I head out again here this Thursday. Uh we’re developing somereally cool things. We’re doing uh we’ve moved from landmine stuff I haven’t done for years. Now we’re doing developmenteconomics. We’re helping to support villages. We’re doing a very unique approach where we’re we’re looking atholistically and we’re looking at building a sustainable process inside of a charity which is you know unheard ofuh in order to provide villagewide support in areas of health education anda vehicle of savings or economic development so that the the economy can develop. We’re also very data driven andwe’re tracking it and these things are are huge and and so I I continue now togo out and do these things. But as I do it, I’m learning from them. Uh beingable to speak the language. I spend a lot of time with leadership there with the with the local wise man who is isquite wise. He gives uh some incredible feedback about things that’s changed theway I perceive things. One of the things related to this that’s helped he talksabout levels of consciousness and levels of consciousness he breaks it into threeand I found this the more I think about it the more meaning it has. The first level of consciousness as he says isgiven to all men. We have it when we’re born. It allows for all of the automaticprocesses of our body to work. We breathe naturally. Our heart does it. Our eyes work. All of these things ifyou’re still alive then you have that first level as as freely given. Thesecond level of consciousness as he describes is something that you can get at any time of your life. It’s a it’scalled the great awakening and it’s when you decide to stand up as an individualand fully accept responsibility for you. Everything you do hasconsequence and you no longer place it on anyone else’s lap. You take fullresponsibility for self. And some people do this young, some people do it inadulthood and some people never do it. Then he talks about the last level,third level of consciousness which not a lot of people reach in life. And this isuh is such a great awakening that it’s when you become aware of the fact thatyou are actually responsible for your neighbor.Now that sounds really strange to some until you start thinking through it. Now who is your neighbor? Well, anyone thatyou have the capacity to influence or impact. It could literally be your neighbor. It could be a sibling. Itcould be someone on the other side of the planet. In today’s world, I would argue it is because we have the capacityto impact or influence all the way on the other side of the world.So that’s a moral reckoning. That’s uh reaching a point where you actually haveto accept that progress is limited as an individual and requires at some point tomove forward requires the efforts of others and the actions of others and I’mable to extend an opportunity to someone on the other side of the planet toprogress in a way that they could not extend that that same opportunity tothemselves. And that’s what charity is. It’s doing for others what they cannotdo for themselves. And by the way, I’m in need of charity, too. There are things I can’t do for self that othershave done for me. And so, that’s where the that greatest level of consciousness, as he talks about, comesis when we fully become aware that we have that responsibility to neighbor.And now we can choose to do one of two things. lean fully in and do it or closeyour eyes and pretend you didn’t see it.Wait, I feel like you’re calling me out. Like I Oh, dude, you just like totally slapped me in the face.I I I went on a walk yesterday and I was trying to figure out something to listen to and couldn’t find the right music andor the right podcast and so I just turned it all off and the only thing I could think about was it’s time to loveyour neighbor more. Like it’s time to step in. And it was just like pounding in my heart. And then here you here youare coming on today and sharing that like um a and and I think to your pointlike you either lean in or you don’t. You either you either do it or you don’t. And um you’re a great example ofa man who’s doing it. Um it seems Brandon just before we move on to that Ijust I’m stuck on those three levels of consciousness. It seems and I wonder Wade you might have more thoughts onthis. You almost have to have the second level of consciousness to even get to the third level of consciousness.You do because because it’s the choice. And this is where I think we we talk a lot about in our in our platform, we talkabout needing purpose, needing a battle to fight. And in your case, what you’re demonstrating is is that the battle tofight is trying to step into third level consciousness of I know who I am and Ihave to use my choice to make somebody else’s life, to make this world a betterplace. And that and that actually I’m guessing I’d love for you to speak to this. I’d love to even if you can even Idon’t even know if you can tangibly speak to it but that in a weird way isit’s almost self- serving because the quality of your life increases so much more when you’re engaged in that way ofliving with that kind of purpose. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it’s something I I love um havingconversations about. I like to dive deep and understand things. I’ve been studying natural law a lot lately uhwith the help of this this guy, his name’s Omi. He’s uh people go to himfrom all over Cambodia. When you’re called to be a wise man there, you it’sa lifelong calling. Um and you have two main functions. Number one, it is yourobligation to collect wisdom. And number two, you must share it with anyone whoasks. And I can ask a question of him and he will sit there as long as is necessary for me to gain anunderstanding of what it is he’s teaching. And uh he he’s incredibly wiseand we’ve had some great discussions. Something that comes to mind as you guysare are bringing up specific points is you know when you scrape away all of thelayers of self and you know this might get a little bit into the realm of you know you have toconsider what was before you were here but most people have a similar beliefsystem. They believe at least that they were somewhere and they were something before they came here. But when youscrape away all the layers of self, what is left? And that question I’ve uh Iinitially went to the wise man and he asked me in my belief system, what is itthat’s left? What is it that God never gave you that you are before he selectedyou? I think that’s a key principle to be aware of. And so, of course, in LDStheology or Christian theology, you can you can at least trace it back to the concept that you were something thatlike an intelligence. You had intelligence and you could make decisions. And so, that’s as far back asI could get. And he challenged me and he said, “You’re right, but what is the pair? What is the everything in natureuh does it never exists alone. So, what is the coupling? What’s the pair to decision-m? What else could you do?” Andit was weeks of me contemplating this and drawing blanks. Uh finally I metwith him again and it clicked. And uh so in saving a lot of time as you’rethinking through that, what I found the pair to be that’s not emphasized verywell with vocabulary or jargon or in in religion or even in secular science, butthe pair of decisionmaking is discernment. M now the key there is in English it’s alittle weird because we we use the word comparison okay and comparison has a negative connotation right and lots ofaddages that line up with negativity like you know comparison is the thief of all joy and all of these things butactually as he pointed out fundamentally and critically if you could not discernif you could not make comparisons you would not have the capacity to makedecisions in any way other than random and progress is not possible no matterwhat you consider progress to be towards it would not be possible without thefull pair of discernment and decision-m so being able to discern first and thendecide and then it’s a full loop they call them karmic cycles it’s a full loop where the consequences that naturallyfollow again inform your discernment for the next round. And that process isfundamentally who you are. You’re constantly doing it. I’ve never met a human that is bad at making acomparison. It’s just we’re not fully owning the fact that we have an obligation to do so. At all at allmoments, you should be discerning and deciding over and over again until you refine it and hone it and get better atit. the way like when you’re talking about discernment, are you discerning it tofigure out truth, to figure out how to create love, to figure out how to like may is it about just survival? Like asyou’re going through this process um or is it just faith you’re discerning? Um you you don’t knowexactly why, but just your next move, everything. Yeah, discernment is a wide cast net. It’scomparing all of the available information and history and knowledge and wisdom in order to move forward inanything that you’re currently doing. Okay? So, I’ll give you an example. For me, uh I’ve I’ve been able to teach atuniversities for a number of years and have lots of students to be able to talk with about these topics. And one of thethings that I find interesting is that when you think about your moral obligation or what is imperative for youto do with your time, your resource, your energy in order to assist other people. It’s really interesting thatwhen you ask the question, who is it that you’re responsible for?We all have a very quick kind of knee-jerk reaction. Most of the time itgoes something like well my kids, my wife, maybe my siblings or parents. Andthen after that it gets a little fuzzy. It’s like um maybe if somebody asks me for help or myextended family or we have these like concentrically expanding circles of obligation, right? And being able toremove those layers and say, “Well, wait a minute. What about if we push on that just a little bit here? Let’s say youhave $1,000 to to use to help someone. Do you havemore of an obligation to use that for the guy that lives on your street or theguy that shares race or gender or religion? Or do you have more of anobligation to use that resource in a way that will benefit humanity the best? Mnow I I propose that in answering that question you first have to say okay thethe most important question you’re answering that reveals how you feel about that is do you value all peopleequally now we want to say yes right ethically we feel like that’s the right thingmaybe culture would judge us if we say no we don’t want to say that you know we value life less if it has theseattributes qualities or from this country, that would definitely not be a popular thing to say. But if you look athow people actually use their money, you would have to argue that people actuallyvalue those that look like them the most. Oh, interesting.That’s how we’re spending our resource. So, if we start to flip the argument and say, well, let’s say that we’re lookingat in one extreme case, if you use the $1,000,okay, which it it would require more than this, but let’s just keep the numbers easy to uh to provide someone awalking dog, okay? They’re they’re 100% blind. they need help getting around andyou’re able to use that resource to afford a dog that can help get them around and and give them eyes, so tospeak. Or you could take the same resource and take it to subsaharan Africa andprevent 100 people from ever having river blindness.What is the most appropriate use of the resource? Now, interestingly, theanswers borne out in in fact come down to, well, do I know the blind man?And is he like me? Right now, these are uncomfortable things for people because we all we’reall doing something right now in this conversation that aligns very well with what we just talked about withdiscernment and decision-making. We’re all thinking, “How do I stack up? What have I done? Is this in alignment withmy past behavior? You see, everybody’s good at the discernment if they’re trying to do it.And the discernment is an ongoing, as you said, that’s back to what you were saying about we have an obligation togain as much wisdom and share it with whoever asks. The discernment is the process of developing the wisdom. So,so, and that’s where maybe it would be different with the walking dog question. And it’s like most of us go like, “Yeah, the river blindness one affects morelives.” The person who’s had life experience with an emotional supportanimal and the goodness that has brought to their life has a different level of discernment than the person who’s beento Africa and seen river blindness. So, so those decisions are being made based off of the ongoing process ofdiscernment if we’re doing it consciously. Yeah. The the hard thing that I I’m have likeyou’re getting me thinking, Wade. I love this. um like how do Iit seems like I just have my perspective. So I live within this likelens that I that I live in. And so like I might not know that I could save ahundred Africans from blindness. Um and and but I might know that person whoneeds the dog. And if I knew I could save a hundred people from blindness, it’s a no-brainer for me. But when Ionly have this perspective in front of me, um, like I guess what does thatmean? Like h how do I open my eyes up to a whole new lens, a whole new perspective so that I can bless as manypeople as I possibly can, right? Yeah. I think, you know, we’re startingto see a move towards what’s called effective altruism, which essentially ischarities are starting to realize that they need to be transparent in uh inrevealing impact. Not a lot of charities are are good currently at measuring dataand delivering data to people so that they can see uh how much, you know,something is is changing lives. That’s the there’s an obligation there on the part of the charities. But you know, youcan also be asking them questions and then you can discern which organizations are attempting to do this and can theyshow me what a dollar does like how much good is it actually providing? You know, it’s and then you’d be amazed likethere’s uh so for instance with water uh one of the things we do in villages whenwe first go in and want to provide support is we have to have enough enough things going on so that people aren’tdying from basic problems, right? And the water in these rural areas of Cambodia, they’re drinking from uhvisibly brown streams. All right. And so we’ll go in and we put in water systems.We’ve got a couple different types. We’ve got the bioand filters. We’ve got the uh reverse osmosis systems that areincredible. And and uh pretty much Taiwan standard water comes out of thesesystems, right? And those systems are about $20,000 and they provide for 350 families in avillage. It’s a massive system. And when you start looking at we we measure the flow on the the system. So I we can tellyou how many gallons are being used per month. We can, you know, uh project thatout over the 20 years of of its expected life before you’ll have to replace things on it. And when you do the mathon it, then I can actually tell you that for every dollar we’re spending on a water system, we end up getting 7,000gallons of water. Wow. And now this is not just water. This issafe drinking water. We actually had to rebrand it out there. instead of uh clean water because of the way the wordclean translates in kamay um it it has some problems with being confused withjust the visibly not brown water. So we actually call it safety water becauseevery time you call it safety water when people are new they’re like well wait a minute what’s the unsafety water? Oh,well, and that creates a conversation, right? And now now you have more information that you can discern. You’re like, okay, well, you all you got to dois go to the school where we put the water system in and forever you’ll have access to safety water, right? And thenyou start seeing health health outcomes change and uh you know, we’ve got we’vegot eight of these systems in in different villages, but we’re also tracking data for 85 villages. So weactually know what the rate of different problems are and how much things change when you just put water in uh and howmuch health outcomes rise, right? So those are all important things and andyou can look at every program and be able to say when we’re spending in this way, these are the measured outcomes.This is how it’s moving the needle. And maybe it’s not moving the needle, right? We’ve got several areas right now thatwe’re testing in order to see if it moves the needle. We have a theory that it will. We’re putting it into place,but many of these areas, no one’s ever actually done the academic rigor that’srequired in order to prove it. Okay? So, for instance, um feminine hygiene.Okay. So, um, it’s a a topic that maybe doesn’t get discussed a lot, but inthese rural areas of Cambodia, essentially what we have going on is asgirls mature and become women and start their period, every girl is uniquelydiagnosing and solving the problem of the period without the assistance ofanyone. Oh, wow. not their mother, not someone at school, not someone from the healthclinic, they’re all trying to figure it out. And what we see is that uh a verystrong correlation exists between the timing of when girls start their periodand the dropout rate from school. Oh, interesting. Now, they’re correlated. We’re not sureyet if they’re causally linked, so we’re testing it. So, we’ve rolled outfeminine hygiene programs. They’ve got reusable pads. They’ve got all the information about it. They can make itthemselves. We’ve got ongoing uh education at the school. Every every month they have an hour of additionalinformation that’s being taught to them. We minister of health involved. So, there’s this big wraparound, you know,uh initiative that goes into it. And now for a number of years, we’ll track it and we’ll see how did that thing impactthe attendance rate at school. And as a scientist, I have to say, well, I think it’s going to impact it, but I actuallydon’t know. I have to wait for the data. And whatever the data says is truth.Right. Right. Wade, we’re going to run low on time and there’s a couple things I really want tohit with you. Um uh and and I get this one is probably similar to what you werejust talking about. Um but having you come on like we got to talk about those fat cows like umlike I saw some the the contrast between the cows that that you have going onthere and and the normal cows in Cambodia. If you could just talk about like that and and what that means andwhy you do that a little bit, that would be awesome. Yeah, absolutely. So, our basic model, we’ve realized that whilemost charities are going to try to specialize in one thing, if you want to change things or people in a significantway, they have to at least have basic health. They have to have theopportunity for education. So, we take care of those things. Okay? But thenthose things by themselves are not enough to create the conditions thatwill allow for development to take place. You actually also have to have athird area which is essentially you have to have the ability to save money. Okay?So these areas where we’re at most people will make about a $160 a day.They’re what’s called extremely poor. So a lot of them are not even meeting basiccaloric requirements right they go without food. Uh so what we’ve done iswe’ve gone out and we’ve looked at what is the best vehicle of savings in thisarea and it could be something different in a different country but the model is still consistent. You have to have theability to produce savings. So we compared stuff in agriculture, things you can grow, you know, rice or corn orwhatever in the area, uh, to different things like animal husbandry. And what we found is that the highest return oninvestment, if you tweak the model and do it right, is found in cattle. So wehave a fat cow program. The typical Cambodian cow is what’s calledemaciated, like super skinny, like skeletal as you saw when you were there, right? Yeah. Like, wow, that thing looks like it dieda year ago. So tiny, right? So, we’re talking a full adult female is 400 lb.Okay, so that’s uh about a third of what it should be if she’s, you know, healthyand strong. The type of cows in Cambodia, we usually have like the the yellow Chinese cow and the Brahma cow,which is from India, the one with the hump on the back, and then some mixed breeds that have both. And so, uh, the short story of howthis works is skinny cow model, which is what they’re currently doing, is typically a young male not going toschool that walks his cow for 4 hours a day, grazing on random weeds that don’thave much protein in them, taking them generally to a river where they can drink, and then bringing them back home.Okay, that model produces horrible results. 46% of those cows willdie before they’re old enough to breed at age four. And it’s age four becausethey’re so skinny and it delays the onset of puberty. Okay? When we shift tothe model that we have where we brought in some of the western information abouthow to do this the right way, we vaccinate our cows which protects uh most of the problemsand then we actually build a cow stable. We bring the food to them as targetedfeeding. We brought in a king grass which didn’t exist in Cambodia that uhhas 12% protein. We feed that to them and uh we teach them the right way toactually raise their cows. Then what we get is by the age two just like we havein our country these cows can become breeders and they can have a baby every year. And when you start multiplying andcompounding the differences between the models we found that there was a five times return on investment if weinvested in cattle. So yeah, we have these uh this fat cow program that we doas a village, but then where the magic comes in is we’re able to lean intokarma, which is a more than a strongly held belief. We’ll say in Cambodia, it’sa knowledge. Everybody knows that whatever it is that you give in action or intentionwill be returned to you. Not maybe, absolutely, and in every condition.Whereas here it’s kind of like, well, if you take a pen from the bank, if nobodysaw you, you might get away with it. No, no, no. You got away with nothing, right? More than a pen will be takenfrom you in value because of your action. So, what we did here is we modeled the cows using karma. When ahousehold gets two cows, essentially what happens is they have one that is their families and they have one thatthey take care of for the charity. That cow will have about 16 babies over its lifetime. And all of those babies fromthe charity cow will go forward to more poor families in that same village.And for the family cow, they get all of the babies from their cow except thefirst one. The first one is a give that they give to their neighbor in order tocreate a karma cycle that connects them. And they believe then in doing so ithelps bind them to their neighbor, but they will receive more than that in blessings and it helps us speed up howquickly we can get cows to the entire village. So that model’s worked verywell and uh they’re fully on board with it. And so that’s what we have going onuh rolling forward. We’ve got four villages so far out there that have somedegree of support uh from fully supported to partially supported. But of course, we’re always looking forexpansion and to get people involved. And as you know, Brandon, going out there, you get to pretty much you meetthese families, you see the impact, you get to see all the programs. And boy,that’s the other side of it is getting Americans to have what we call a fulfillment trip experience becausereally the Cambodians with the model we have set up, they don’t necessarily need us to go out and create development forthem. We’ve got lots of employees that are doing that. What we really need on the trip ourselves is we’re looking tobe fulfilled. We’re looking to be to go out there and immediately, as you know,from day one when you’re there, your mind is opened to discerning all of these different things that you didn’tsee yesterday. Yes. You’re doing the math in your head all the time, like, “Holy crap, this is how people live. Boy, my problems seempretty small right now.” And when you have that experience with your family, it will bind you in a waywhen you come back home, you’re connected more. You have these common experiences, but you also now feel somesense of moral obligation for a give back. Maybe it’s to that village, maybe it’s to Cambodia, maybe it’s to adifferent country, and that’s okay, but do something with what it is that you have to give.Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. that the way you just described the fat fat cow programslike you know you think someone’s someone’s hungry let’s give them some steak you know not someone’s someone’shungry let’s figure out a grass with more protein so we can grow more cowsmore families can be and and and the point that I really want to highlight here is Wade is running a charity thatis doing it right there’s research um he he’s about sustainability ability. Um,this is going to live on long after Wade is gone and um, and it’s like havingfirsthand been there. Um, I took my son and the impact that it had on him, butto see the children that we got to meet there and the communities and thingsactually changing. I saw these water towers. I saw the water. Um, and uh,it’s just something that’s awesome to be involved with. So Wade, how how do people get involved with Become More? Umwhat what would be helpful? Yeah, honestly, uh become more chararity.org is our website and theycan check that out. Uh I my contact information is right on there as well if they if anyone’s interested in reachingout. Honestly, the things we could use right now, we’ve got a couple schools that need to be sponsored for a year uuntil they are sustainable. We’re always in need of of more water support as well. And if we’ve got people orlisteners that are looking to sponsor a village and the fat cow program, we needsome uh we need some donors to help uh help us with this model. And then we also invite them to to come out and seeit. I mean, you sponsor a school and then set up a time next year to come out with your family and and see the school.I I uh you you tell that story about like who do you help and and we help people who are like us and we don’tthink about the people on the other side of the world that look different than us and you know I took my son there and hehung out with this this kid his age this Cambodian kid who had had quite a story and um spent about two days with him andby the end when uh when we had to split up my son just was in tears and theycouldn’t speak the same language. Um they didn’t know any words like and they were like wrestling together and playingtogether and loving each other and they were like best friends and um theCambodians are our brothers and sisters and um and need help like anybody else.And um Wade, I just want to thank you for not just for coming on today, but for all the work that you’re doing, thegreat example that you are to me of a man who lives with purpose and and uhloves and supports our brothers and sisters. I I really do appreciate you a lot. Oh, absolutely. And thanks for allyou’re doing and and helping spread the word. And this really is something, you know, we we can impact others. Um, thelast thing I’ll say with that is I had a dramatic mind uh mind shift years agothat really really helped me put it into the right perspective. When I firststarted doing projects like this, I went and talked with a professor friend of mine and I said, “Poverty is so big.I don’t feel like I could possibly ever do anything that mattered.”And she being quite wise and a lot more experienced than me, she said, “Wade,poverty is so large, anyone can touch it.”Yes. Such a great way of looking at things. Um, I just want to echo what Brandon said, Wade. I I can feel thingsstirring inside my own soul and my heart. Um, you you you seem like a wealth ofresource when it comes to wisdom and the ability to help this world. Um, I hopethat our listeners are feeling some of what I’m feeling right now because I’m thinking about my own life and thethings, hopes, dreams, desires, identity of who I am, who God created me to be.And I I’m feeling a little bit of a stir and a call to action. And I just I would just throw that out there to anybodyelse listening who’s feeling some of those same things. Whatever it is that you’re feeling right now,follow through on that. Go get some more wisdom. Go gain some more discernmentand continue to step forward on that path. Uh because that’s where life’s really at. That’s you can feel it oozingout of you. Way the life that you’re living is life. It’s it’s rich. It’sfull. It’s probably really difficult, too, when you even touch that, but uh it’s life. So, thank you for coming andinfusing that into our show today and to my life today. And uh for anyone listening, if this is valuable to you,you can obviously visit uh become more become more chararity.org, right?Yeah. Yeah. And then also, we’d love to have we’d love to hear your feedback. Get on and throw out some uh some reviews andmention Wade. And um until next time, you guys, keep on keeping on.