On the Death of Hser Nay Moo

Today I leave off my reminisces about growing up in Pocatello to reflect on the tragic death of Hser Nay Moo. This death touches us deeply because of the deep involvement of our son, Andrew, with her and the rest of the Karen people in our neighborhood. But I begin with a little about Andrew.

Andrew's four older brothers and older sister, like his mother and father before them, had served missions for the LDS church, but it seemed to me, at least, that Andrew was an unlikely candidate. It seemed to me that two necessary practices to qualify for such a calling were the habits of heartfelt prayer and diligent scripture study. Andrew seemed remiss on both counts. His prayers consisted typically of single sentences, and very short sentences at that, just to "get it over with". For example, when called upon to say the pray before meals his typical prayer was a quick, "bless the food that it will be good". His scripture problems stemmed from a deeper problem, that is, his dislike for academic subjects generally. He always said he wanted to study to be a lawyer--something I have always strongly discouraged in all my other children. With him I didn't say anything, feeling confident that there was no way it was going to happen. There were two or three things, however, that could be (and can be) said in his favor. He loves music, both singing and playing the piano, including, of course, the hymns, which he did at church meetings. The other was that he loved to perform community service. I doubt that in his whole life he has done ten dishes at home, but at scout and community activites, ten thousand dishes. Occasionally, even his academic performance would surprise us. He struggled in precalculus, but went ahead with AP calculus, where, of course, he also struggled. But in his AP art history he did very well. And whether he did poorly or well in a class he always got a high citizenship grade, for which we were, naturally, very grateful.

Last summer, or early fall, there was a lunar eclipse. He announced that he was going to get up at 4 AM to view the eclipse. Since he was difficult to arouse for school or work at much later hours, I felt confident that he would sleep through the eclipse, but, sure enough, at 4 AM he walked out the door and met his friend, Steve Burton, and went out to where they could get a good view of the eclipse. Little did we know how much that eclipse would change all our lives--especially his.

While viewing the eclipse he met some young men from Burma, Karen people who had recently come to this country as refugees. They were living in the South Parc apartments, about three blocks from our home. How or even why they bounded is beyond me. They could not speak more than a few words of our language and Andrew could not speak even one word of theirs, but bond they did. For the next seven months, right up until the night he left for his mission, he spent almost every free hour with the Karen people. After dinner he would head (usually, head back) to the South Parc apartments. I would always ask him when he would be home and he would almost always respond with "9 or 9:30". Sometimes he made it by 10, but more often than not, I would trudge over to the apartments and knock on the one door that I knew housed a Karen family. Sometimes he was there, most often he was not, but I would mutter the one word of English even the older people seemed to understand, "Andrew". There face would light up and they would get one of the younger children to take me to where he was. He never complained about my coming, but I complained about having to. Andrew took them to doctor's appointments, school functions, and to friends' homes that were in other parts of the valley. He was deeply involved with missionary work with some of them, but was never pushy about it.

On the night he was set apart as a missionary, I had to go with him to the apartment complex, because, of course, missionaries are required to have companions at all time, and I served as his. I will never forget the scene, 30 or 40 of their people gathered together in an apartment and they sang songs. Finally, in tears, they all came up to Andrew one by one and gave him a farewell hug.

Monday night at about 8:00 we were just starting Family Home Evening because my wife, Shauna had had to work at the Hale Center Theatre for the early show. We got a call from Eldon Farnsworth, telling us that one of the Burmese was missing and could our daughter, Rebecca, go help with the search, since, she had been over with Andrew on several occasions. We all went over and found that it was Hser Nay Moo who was missing. The other searchers, mostly people in our ward and the service missionaries assigned to work with the Burmese people, wanted to search the surrounding areas, but Shauna protested. "We need to go through every place in this complex." But she was assured (incorrectly, it turns out, tragically, that the police had already done that), so we went out looking over vacant areas and knocking on near-by doors. Had the apartments been searched she might have been saved, or at least, discovered much earlier. We live in convoluted times. The local police are very careful to follow Constitutional niceties, although, the Constitution was never intended to cover local affairs, and the federal officials--bureaucrats, executives, Congressmen, justices, are essentially oblivious to the Constitution unless they happen to notice how it might be used to give them some sort of political or economic advantage.

Shauna decided after a short while searching that she would call Andrew. This is, of course, considered a no-no because he was in the mission home, but after a lengthy explanation of why she was calling, she was allowed to talk to him. He knew exactly where she would go if she were not still in South Parc. There was a Burmese family, not Karen people, who lived just a block from us, who she had, he said, visited one time, because they had a daughter her age. She also visited with the daughter of a friend of one of the Burmese mothers, who also had a daughter her age. We immediately went to visit the Burmese family, only to discover that they had moved out (under duress) and left no forwarding address. We went to the other family and asked the mother to call her friend to see if perhaps they had come over and taken Hser Nay Moo home with them for a sleep-over wtih their daughter. Of course, they had not.

Like so many others, we are saddened that there are people in our society who will do what was done to Hser Nay Moo. There are now five men in custody who will be sent to jail at public expense for years. Because of cultural and language differences we will probably never really know why they have done this horrible thing, unless they, like so many of our own people, have picked up some of the unspeakable practices that plague our time. We can but pray for the family and their friends, so wonderful, so close to each other. Andrew often told us, "you know not all the Burmese are alike, they don't even like each other." For those he knew and loved, our hearts go out. For Andrew we can but assure that he is doing the one thing that can really eventually make a difference. We can only do that one heart and one soul at a time.