Making the World Smaller, One Story at a Time

Written by: Melanie Springer Mock, George Fox University Professor of English

NEWBERG, Ore. — Dr. David Krier has been on so many trips overseas, he can no longer name them all, nor can he recall the number of nations he’s visited. Krier has a spreadsheet for that, at any rate—one that tracks the countries he’s visited during his decades-long work traveling and volunteering around the world.

What the retired St. Paul physician does remember are the stories of the people he’s met during his journeys, including his fellow travelers, but also those he’s encountered and befriended while serving in their communities. In January, Krier published a book collecting these stories as a way of highlighting what life can be like in remote parts of the world, as well as affirming the importance of intercultural relationships.

The book, “Discovering More: Enriching Lives Throughout the World,” also tells Krier’s own story of transformation and how hearing a sermon at a Carlton church in 1987 inspired him to begin traveling and volunteering, first in Mexico, and then in countless (by his count) other countries.

Krier was raised in Dallas, Oregon, and settled in Carlton in 1982, where he had a small medical practice. He joined a Newberg clinic in 1988, just as his family moved to St. Paul, to the land where he and his wife raised four daughters. In 2001, Krier began leading trips for medical professionals, and in 2007, he created Volunteer Voyages, which combines volunteering and tourism but is open to all—not just those who practice medicine.

Through Volunteer Voyages, Krier has helped remote villagers in Peru build cooking stoves out of locally sourced material and taught refugees from Myanmar, living in Thailand, how to create clean water filters. Among other places, Krier has also led trips to Vietnam, India, and Guatemala, where locals learned about water sanitation and how sand can be used to filter water for cooking and drinking.

Krier cannot tell you his favorite trip or favorite place to visit, simply because he’s loved them all.

“Every time I go someplace, it was the best place to go,” Krier said. “They all have something different and exciting about them.”

Krier’s current excitement is his work with the Kukama tribe in the Amazon basin of Peru. A village chief is sending Krier stories from the tribe in Spanish. A team of translators, writers and editors will make those stories available in English, collected in an edition Krier hopes to produce, tentatively titled “Kukama Chronicles.”

Krier hopes the book’s proceeds can help alleviate the poverty that the Kukama people experience, while also sharing the tribe’s rich culture, myths and history with the wider world. He also has ambitions to retranslate the stories back into a Spanish book that will give the Kukama people access to their stories in written form.

This kind of exchange is fundamental to Krier’s work, he says, as he sees value in “getting to learn about a culture by being inside that culture.” Krier is also hoping that the Kukama Chronicles project will lead to further opportunities, supporting a team of volunteers to collect and tell the stories of often-isolated people groups around the world.

While the work aims to support the communities Krier and his volunteers visit, he believes the volunteers often gain more from the trips than the recipients of the volunteer work.

“Many people who volunteer have a better outlook on how life works in general, and how people in poverty can maintain themselves and show resilience,” Krier said. He added that volunteering can lead to self-satisfaction and “a surprising sense of self-worth.”

Traveling to remote areas of the world has not been without challenges, Krier said, and he has witnessed tragic circumstances that are “hard to talk about.”

“These things are unexplainable and unexpected,” he added, affirming that he has learned from those experiences, changing him and the volunteers in ways that improved their work. “Everything we do we have a chance to learn from.”

Krier’s book, “Discovering More,” details some of the challenges he’s faced in his years of volunteering around the world in a series of stories that reflect the author’s love for storytelling. He also provides advice for readers interested in finding “More” in their lives by helping others.

“In these years of political, religious, and ethnic turmoil, seemingly everywhere in the world,” Krier writes, “we need some sane voices dedicated to helping one another. We can honestly make a difference.”

It’s clear that Krier is trying to do just that, making the world a bit smaller and kinder, one trip and one story at a time.

“Discovering More” digital e-book is available for purchase now through Amazon. Krier said he hopes to have physical books soon. He plans to use the proceeds from the book sales to fund the Kukama project.

Learn more at the Volunteer Voyages website.