Extraordinary adventures: Local writer has met Mother Teresa, Mandela, Frankl

Pecan Plantation resident Kris Jaeckle has always had adventure in her life, even from the beginning — ever since she was born on the way to her father’s next military duty station.

From there, the adventures never strayed far from Jaeckle’s life, as she was constantly on the move with her father, John Jaeckle Sr., during his Air Force career.

But it wasn’t until a tragic romantic breakup occurred that Kris got to experience some of her most thrilling and exciting adventures yet.

In 1991, Kris became part of the staff of the Young Presidents’ Organization, a global leadership community of extraordinary chief executives, according to its website.

All members of YPO are the top chief executive in their business or organization.

“If you do a little research on YPO, you can be a CEO of any company around the world, but it has to be of a certain size, have a certain number of employees and then the person gets kicked out when they turn 50 because they're no longer a young president,” Jaeckle said.

YPO allowed Kris to experience the world in a unique way, giving her to the opportunity to meet several well-known individuals, all while reporting directly to some of the world’s top CEOs.

“For the next seven years, I just did all these fun things in New Zealand, South Africa, London, Vienna, Mexico City, Whistler, Italy, and the people who came were all such exceptional people because they were all leaders who had started their own companies,” she said.

Kris got to meet the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, and Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl when they were keynote speakers during some of the events.

She was also lucky enough to meet Mother Teresa, an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary, who was honored in the Catholic church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta.

“I bumped into somebody when I was in Florence that I never thought I'd see again, but I had learned that my next assignment was in Bombay, India, which is now Mumbai,” Kris explained. “When I got to my assignment in India, the sweet couple that I had met a few months earlier in Florence, Italy, invited me over to their house and as we sat and had tea, the wife kind of casually mentions her parents live in Calcutta. I said, ‘Oh, I want to go volunteer for Mother Teresa, but I can't get in,’ and she said, ‘Oh, my father is her bookkeeper, so if you want to fly in, my parents will pick you up, introduce you to Mother Teresa, and you can stay for as long or as short as you want.’ I ended up volunteering for her.”

Some of her other experiences included waltzing in Vienna's Hofburg Palace; participating in Speakers Corner and being asked out by Prince Edward in London; experiencing ghettos — as well as safaris — in South Africa during the fall of apartheid; narrowly avoiding "Stendahl Syndrome" in Florence yet being sensorily overwhelmed in Calcutta; helicoptering around the World Trade Center and wandering the empty Met in New York City; and becoming an adrenaline junkie (starting with a 1,200-foot bungy jump) in New Zealand.

Ten years ago, Kris felt compelled to start writing a book about her adventures.

“I used to just tell people the stories and they wanted to hear it over and over again, so finally I went, ‘It'd be kind of fun to write a book.' I just started writing maybe a chapter a year,” said Kris, who is now 56. “Some of the stories are about the neat people that I met, and some of them are about adventures that I would have in certain countries. Each chapter has the history of the place that I go, and then I just talk about adventure, so it's sort of like history, adventures, how my life changed and how I matured.”

GLOBAL ADVENTURES:

A DIVINE JOURNEY

Her book, “Global Adventures: A Divine Journey,” details Kris’s nine years of her involvement in YPO, and was self-published in February.

Kris said the book was inspired by the book “Eat, Pray, Love,” by Elizabeth Gilbert.

“She goes through a really bad divorce and she goes traveling around the world and she talks about how she matures and grows through it all, so I made the book a little bit like that because it has some personal growth as well as the travels,” she said. “I just wanted people to really be encouraged because I went through a lot of hard times, and I turned it all around for what I learned from the situations and what the adventures were like.”

"Global Adventures” is now available at Target, Walmart, Books-A-Million, Amazon, Kindle and will soon be published on Audible, with Kris, herself, narrating the full 30 hours of her book.

According to her bio, Kris has always wanted to inspire people and make a difference in their lives. The influence of her mother’s desire to help others and her father’s servant heart and strong leadership tendencies made her a natural fit in the executive education arena.

When she left her YPO job, she realized she had grown and matured in ways she never expected, and — in a very spiritual way — finally let go of the heartbreak of her lost love.

“Another aspect to this story is that you can have a really interesting life even if you never marry,” she said. “I've been single for a long time and thought I'd be married, but it hasn't happened yet. I have just always been open to what my life offered me ... and have had a great life so far.”

Kris has started on her next book, which will be titled, “Gotham Adventures,” detailing her experiences in New York City.

“It was really unusual because I had been around the world in all kinds of third-world countries and just dangerous places, but I was in a part of New York City and this guy … started to attack me,” she said. “I'm spiritually oriented, so I kind of called out to God for help, and the man dropped me, but that was like the start of all the adventures in New York City. Somehow my life just has to have exciting things going on.”

When Kris is not working, she teaches Pilates or sells real estate in the Dallas and Pecan Plantation area.

When not exercising or drinking her Starbucks, Kris is usually reading, connecting with her friends or traveling — trying to get content for her next novel.