Elder Cloward: India Bengaluru Mission: E-mail March 2, 2015: "Push start a bus? Isn't that a little extreme?!"

But one thing that I'm learning is that in India- nothing is too extreme.

I've push started cars before, even a truck or two, but I never thought I'd find myself behind a 2 ton passenger bus that's stalled in the middle of a busy street.

We were walking back from lunch on Saturday with the other elders from our apartment when we saw a bus sitting on the side of the road. Normally a bus on the side of the road wouldn't attract our attention, in fact that's normally where the drivers park them when they get out to have lunch, but when we noticed that the bus was inching along because of one lone Indian pushing from behind we knew we had to do something. We rushed over to him and as the five of us started to push it started moving a little faster, but unfortunately we realized that it would require a lot more elbow grease than we had on hand to get it going fast enough to start up. To my surprise though all of the sudden the bus started to roll faster and faster until it felt like it was almost moving on it's own, and as a glanced around to see what the cause was I saw a huge crowd of Indians who had rushed to our aid. I was mildly disappointed when I realized that it wasn't the push-ups I've been doing every morning that got the bus going that fast, but at the same time I was filled with love and gratitude for those people who dropped what they were doing to come and help us. Almost everyone here in India is like that. They all believe that even if you don't know someone you're still his brother and it's your responsibility to help him when he needs it. I see it time and time again when we're searching for someone's home and we can't decipher the code of an address that we're given and anyone we ask will drop what they're doing to show us, and often come with us, to navigate the Bangalore spiderweb until we find the right house. I love these people, and I feel honored to be able to serve them.

To finish the story though we were able to get the bus rolling again and as we continued on our way we were a little more sore than when we started, but we were happy nonetheless. This experience also taught me a powerful lesson about teamwork and unity. On our own we could barely get the bus moving, but after everyone stared pushing it took less than 30 seconds to get it revving again. It's the same principle in work, in a sports team, in a family, and in the church. One reason the church gives so many callings is so that we can all get behind this work and together move it forward with speed and power. That's called Synergy, when the combined efforts of many is greater than the sum of the individual efforts. That's a principle by which God works, and it's a power that if we can learn to harness in our own lives with those around us we can truly do great things.

Oh, and I heard that the Layton East Stake is going on trek this year. To all of those youth who don't want to go because they're lazy and don't think that pulling a handcart will help them later in life let me tell you that I sure was grateful when I was behind that bus for the handcart-pulling muscles I developed on my trek. Rarely do we know how these simple activities will bless our lives until after the fact. I testify of that. ;)

Aaaaaaaaaand pictures!