When President Harvey Brown took over the missionary work in Thailand, he brought with him a certain gusto, a joie de vivre that was exceedingly infectious. He wanted his Elders and Sisters to work hard, but he also wanted them to enjoy themselves. His philosophy was that when the missionaries had a chance to mingle with the ordinary Thai people they would find hundreds of golden contacts who would be interested in knowing more about the Church.
To help push this philosophy along, he suggested that the Elders and Sisters in the mission begin an aerobics exercise club, to be called, in Thai, “Wing Phua Chiwid”, which, literally translated, means “Run for your life”, but would be better translated as “Run for Health”. (Let me just add that President Brown was of a Falstaffian build and could hardly run more than few yards himself!)
The club was based on the book “The New Aerobics” by Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper, formerly of the United States Air Force, who had pioneered aerobic workouts to help strengthen the heart. Each missionary was supplied with a copy of the book and told to make it a part of their early morning scripture study. We were supplied with bright yellow t-shirts with the logo “Wing Phua Chiwid” in Thai blazoned across it, as well as electric blue running shorts. It was up to us individually to provide our own running shoes, which proved to be beyond my financial resources at the time, so I did my jogging, with my companion, in my Florsheims. I developed numerous blisters on my tootsies, until my companion, Elder Heier, took pity on me and bought me a pair of running shoes for an early Christmas present. We set a goal of running two miles every morning, which I found thoroughly exhausting and exhilarating. As President Brown had hoped, our constant appearance at the local park, warming up and jogging around, aroused curiosity in a few health-conscious Thais, and they began to join us each morning for the run. We explained to them the correlation between good health and the Word of Wisdom, and then would ask permission to come visit them in their homes to explain the rest of the Church’s teachings. We always got a warm welcome to do so.
It then became a game of cat and mouse, since the Thais consider appointments, especially at their homes, as extremely flexible. If they say they’ll be home at 6 to receive you, you can be fairly certain they will be nowhere around their house until after 8 that night; they are not trying to avoid you, they are simply people of an impulsive nature – if they are suddenly invited out for a party or a movie or a swim on the beach, they go, never bothering to notify anyone who might be coming over because they realize that in most cases the people who said they were coming over would not be coming over anyway – at least, not if they, too, are Thai. We, as Western missionaries, of course, always kept our appointments to the minute – but after a dozen or so pointless trips to empty houses, we would double book or even triple book our appointments. In other words, we would schedule 3 different families all for the same time, and hope that at least one of them would be home. This worked out well, and we began teaching families about the Gospel.
The program lasted about four months before a General Authority came to visit our mission, saw the program in action, and decided it was not exactly what missionaries should be doing. Plus, many of the Elders and Sisters developed bad shin splints, due to the faulty nature of the running shoes available in Thailand at the time – they were Chinese imports that had absolutely no arch support and would fall apart after the first rain. Many of us were limping around as if we were walking barefoot on carpet tacks. We were to give our Aerobics book to a Thai member and encourage them to continue the running club, but we had to bow out and go back to spending the early morning hours in prayer, planning, and scripture study.
I didn’t mind that much; I found out that running was not one of my talents – my companions always left me far behind, eating their dust.
Besides, for most of my mission I had to struggle with a bicycle – which also came from China – that was made of cast iron. These behemoths must have weighed a hundred pounds each, and to peddle them around for tracting and street meetings, not to mention discussions, was about all the aerobic exercise I could take. We never had to lock them up, since they were too heavy for the Thais to steal!
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