I’m going to take a bit of a departure for today’s blog and talk about a different kind of speaker and author:  Greg Mortenson.  If you haven’t heard of Greg, or the work he is doing in Pakistan and Afghanistan, then click on over immediately to Amazon.com and find his first bestseller, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time, or his second book, Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

Greg’s story is extraordinary, and part of what is so extraordinary about it is that he would be the first to tell you that he is an ordinary man with average abilities.  Greg was a mountain climber, trained as a medic, and he agreed to climb K-2 in the 90s with a team of climbers partly in order to honor his younger sister, who had recently died of the effects of severe epilepsy. 

He didn’t make it to the top, and on the way down, he was sick and emaciated and ended up in a small Pakistani town where he depended on the kindness of the villagers to nurse him back to health.  In order to repay the kindness of those people, he vowed to them that he would build them a school.  The story of how he did that after several years of struggle is amazing, inspiring, and unique. 

Now, two decades later, Greg travels the world speaking about his experiences and the importance of bringing education to Pakistan and Afghanistan in order to promote peace there and indeed around the world.  He continues to work with his Central Asia Institute to build hundreds of schools in the region, in this way helping to educate tens of thousands of young Pakistanis and Afghans. 

Three Cups of Tea became a phenomenal bestseller, with more than 3.4 million copies in print around the world, I think in part because Greg shows us that another way of interacting with the world besides declaring war on it is possible – and indeed far preferable.  His message of hope and education deserves to be heard, and to be spread, as widely as possible. 

Greg maintains a punishing speaking schedule, and continues his work for part of the year in Asia.  You can see him on Bill Moyers Journal here: http://to.pbs.org/6Ai6ZG.  I recommend both books — and catching Greg at one of his speeches — in the highest possible terms.  He’s a quiet man with a powerful presence and message that the world urgently needs to hear.