Shawn Waddoups arrived for his first day of work at the State Department a fresh-faced former missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a self-described “geek about politics.”

On his second day, hijacked commercial airliners struck the World Trade Center and Pentagon, pitching the country into turmoil and changing international relations forever.

Saturday, as the State Department representative with a provincial reconstruction team in Nangarhar, Afghanistan, Waddoups said lessons learned that day still guide his work. The BYU grad has been advising officials there for the past 15 months on how to build a government that's more responsive to its citizens' needs.

"What's going on in places like Afghanistan when people don't have hope, when they don't feel that they have anything to work for for their future -- that can have real repercussions for us back home," Waddoups said in a phone interview from Kabul. "It makes a real difference."

That's why, in a teleconference with President George Bush and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan on Friday night, it felt so good to report the progress that's been made, he said.

"Really what [Bush] took away from the conversation was there's a lot of progress, a lot of hope that's being generated, a lot of possibilities that are being created," Waddoups said. "President Karzai turned to him and said, 'Yeah, that's why we need you to stick with us.' "

Waddoups said he told Bush a story about one of the many battles his team has fought over the past year and a half: the bustling poppy industry. The crop -- which sprawled over 50,000 acres in the region -- was a cash cow for locals, who sold it to opium developers. Waddoups remembered on his first day in the country, he sat down with the provincial governor and told him the poppy trade needed to stop. The governor replied with "inshallah" -- a common Middle Eastern phrase meaning, "if God wills."

"A lot of times when somebody tells you, 'inshallah,' it means maybe, in a while, if I get around to it," Waddoups said.

But the governor was serious, Waddoups said -- and reaffirmed it with an invitation to cut his hand off if the trade wasn't ceased. Earlier this year, Nangarhar was pronounced a poppy-free province.

"The governor was able to hold up [during the teleconference] and show he still had both his hands," Waddoups said.

Life is not always as glamorous as talking with the White House, he said, but the Middle East has a unique charm nonetheless. He described his area as "the St. George of Afghanistan -- winters are lovely, but you pay for it in the summer."

Better than anything, though, is the opportunity to make a difference, he said. That's why he spends every day meeting with anywhere from one to half a dozen political leaders -- and not just people associated with the ruling regime, but tribal and religious leaders as well.

"More than building roads, more than digging wells, the real challenge is to help Afghans have confidence in their future," he said.

Waddoups returns home in six weeks. His wife, Carol, and 7-year-old daughter have relocated to Virginia, where he plans to join them. The prospect is thrilling, he said -- but it will be tough to leave behind all that he's worked on.

"I'm ecstatic that I'm going to be back with my family," he said. "But I've never had such an intense experience as I have here in Afghanistan. It's one of those places in the world where stuff happens throughout history."

• Ace Stryker can be reached at 344-2556 or astryker@heraldextra.com.