An Empty Tomb

I have spent this week in El Paso alone. My roommate and friend Jake has been home for the week and I have been left by myself. It has been a busy week at work but when I get home and am sitting on my bed it is hard to keep my spirits up. I have thought a lot about trial and weakness in our lives and how the Savior provides us the only way to overcome. I wrote an email to my family and wanted to post it here because I think  that the things that I have felt are significant to any person, especially those who have been weighed down with sorrow for whatever reason.

My dearest family,
I am sitting on my bed in my apartment here in El Paso thinking about all of my blessings and you all came to mind. I had an experience yesterday that has had a significant impact on my life and I wanted to share it with those that I love. I was in the preoperative holding area interviewing a sweet little lady prior to her hernia repair. In actuality she was not that little but that is not significant to the story. The lady was genuinely happy and pleasant to everyone that she met. She introduced her daughter and grandson to everyone that came by and you could see how proud she was of them. I was wheeling her back to what was to be a one to two hour procedure that turned into a 7 hour one. The longer you are under anesthesia the deeper you get and the harder that it can be to control. The narcotics and gases that we use saturate into the adipose tissue and builds up. Anyway when you wake people up from a deep anesthesia or sometimes even light anesthesia they talk about deep secrets or misdeeds or whatever they happen to have ingrained into their subconscious mind. Some people come out swinging and swearing like a drunken sailor and others just wake up without incident. In this case, as this lady began to emerge from her anesthesia she began to pray out loud. She raised her hands to heaven and praised God that she had woken up and then began to thank the Savior for saving her. Over and over she repeated the words, "Thank you Jesus, thank you for saving me". We were wheeling her on her bed to recovery and the whole time she had her hands extended to heaven and she wept as she thanked God. I do not know what religion the lady was and it does not really matter. What I do know is that her love of God and the Savior is so deep that it was the first conscious thought she had. She has a relationship with Him. She knows, as King Benjamin taught, that we are dependent upon God for everything, that we ourselves are nothing. God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to earth to save His children. Christ did what no one else could, breaking the bonds of physical and spiritual death which we celebrate at this time of year. My prayer is that each of us can come unto Him "and be perfected IN Him". There is no other way nor name under heaven through which we can be saved. Moroni taught this in the 12th chapter of Ether 27th verse. This is a familiar scripture about our weaknesses and how they can be made strengths. I have read that scripture so many times but had missed some of the meaning until the crucible of my current situation. Through the eyes of my trials I now see what Moroni was saying, at least to me. "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness." Weakness is singular, it does not say weaknesses, meaning our struggles or tendencies toward certain temptations. I think that it refers to our imperfect, corruptible, fallen state, something that can only be changed through our relationship with the Savior and our dependence and exercise of the atonement though that relationship. So as we come to the Savior we see our weakness and our need for redemption. "I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them." So according to the scripture this weakness is given to us to make us humble. In the same chapter of Ether in the 39th verse there is a little different use of the word humble or in this case humility. Moroni is talking about seeing the Savior face to face and speaking to Him, Moroni says, ". . . He (the Savior) hath talked with me face to face, and that he told me in plain humility, even as a man telleth another . . ." I think that this use of humility referring to the state in which Christ talked to Moroni is a little more accurate. Christ spoke to Moroni as himself, as He is. When we are humble we strip ourselves of all pretense, self-aggrandizement, and pride and see our weak and fallen state as King Benjamin and King Lamoni's father saw. They realized that the only way to overcome our weakness is through our relationship with Christ, and yes, as some evangelicals have put it, accepting Him as your personal Savior. So a quick recap, weakness is given to men, inherent in our mortal condition, realizing our weakness (after coming to the Savior which is really the only way to see your weakness) helps us to be humble or to see ourselves as we truly are utterly dependent upon the Savior for all, this leads us to exercise faith in Him, and through our exercise of faith through the atonement and our relationship with the Savior through it, we become strong because the Savior is strong, as we take the yoke with Him His strength becomes our strength and we can truly become perfected IN Christ (Moroni 10:32-33). The whole point of our weakness is to bring us to the Savior, to help us to have a relationship with Him. Weakness is an opportunity, an invitation, to come unto Christ. I pray that as you struggle with life that your first conscious thought will be of the Savior and that you look unto Him to save you from your weakness for there is no other way. I know that the Savior suffered in Gethsemane and on Golgotha's hill was crucified. I also know that He rose triumphant from the tomb on the third day and that He continues to live today and desires a personal relationship with each of us. What better time of year to develop that relationship. I love each of you and receive strength from you all. Happy Easter.
Brett

El Paso: Or as my Dad calls it Hell Paso

 I have Cami to thank for our awesome living situation. She met a lady while working in the temple cafeteria and mentioned to her that I would be in El Paso. She told Cami that she had two brothers that lived there and would check with them to see if they knew anyone with space for us. So, long story short, we are living with the widowed mother-in-law of one of the brothers. She has a three bedroom apartment all to herself, so now we are keeping her company. She is hardly ever here and neither are we so it works out well.

 I am here with another guy from my class named Jake. We each have our own room and share a good sized bathroom. There are three other guys coming down next month but this place it too small to accommodate all of us. I feel sort of guilty but what can you do.

 I didn't have to work yesterday or today and so I went hiking with my classmate in the scenic state park right off of one of the freeways. I guess it is beautiful in its own dry, brown way.

 It seems like the desert is an unfriendly place. The plants are sharp and mean-looking and mostly covered in thorns. You get the definite impression of "Go Away" in a place like this.

I got sunburned on the hike and when I complained about it to my wife she laughed and said that it had been freezing and snowing off and on all day back home. What a difference 800 miles makes.

This is the Texas Tech University Medical Center where I work. There is a cemetery right across from the parking garage which I thought was a little weird. They are doing massive renovations to the hospital itself so it makes finding your way around even more complicated. Work is going pretty well and I am finally feeling better about being here, partly because I get to come home in less than a week for a short visit.

Peru In Pictures

Here are some of the images that I have wanted to post. I have excluded most of the gross surgery pictures but you can still get a pretty good idea of what we were doing.

This is an impressive image of a lady with a tumor that was compressing on her optic nerve which we operated on with the Peruvian neurosurgery team.

This is the image of the young man below who was in a traumatic accident two years previous

We were going to rebuild this guys nose and fix his mouth so that he could close it. However he was scheduled for surgery on our last day but ate lunch and so we could not fix him. He was obviously very upset but we will do it next year.

This is the image of the infant pictured below she has a cleft nasal septum instead of a cleft palate.

We were not prepared to be able to do a procedure this complicated. This infant would be best served by a group like the Shriner's who would bring her and her family to the states until she was fully recovered. The guy holding her is Dr. Dean one of the surgeons.

This patient has a huge underbite that we fixed. She looked incredible afterward.

This is her preoperatively

This is her postoperatively.

This young lady has a very small lower jaw and essentially no chin. The surgeons lengthened her lower jaw and took hip grafts to make her a chin. The next picture is of her surgery and may be a little gross to some. Proceed with caution.

You can see the hardware that holds her newly extended jaw.

This young lady has Curzon Syndrome which causes this characterist look. We fractured her lower orbits and pulled them forward to protect her eyes from trauma. The images of this procedure are pretty graphic and as this is a family blog I will not post them.

This is the image of a lady who's jaw had to be rebuilt after an accident. They took grafts from her hip to rebuild the missing portion

This is what she looked like preoperatively.

There was an observation window over the OR so you could watch what has happening.

Me, Brandon (the nurse anesthetist I came with) and a Peruvian anesthesia resident

Doing my anesthesia thing.

Me, Brandon and the anesthesia team at the hospital.

This is the city of Cuzco which sits at about 11500 feet. You have a pretty good headache and some people get nauseated until they get used to it

This is an Incan made wall that was discovered under a Spanish built cathedral ofter the outer walls had collapsed after an earthquake. Apparently the Spanish tried to cover up the old Incan traditions and temples with their own.

The famous joints that are perfectly fitted.

We went on a city tour of Cuzco which included a local market. This is Coca leaves used in making cocaine. The locals make a tea with it that helps with altitude sickness and makes you feel full without eating.

The diet is very full of grains and starches. Protein like meat is pretty expensive.

They grow a lot of produce as well.

Apparently Peru claims the origin of the potato. They claim over 1000 different varieties.

Certainly gives a new spin on "out of the horse's mouth". They boil this in a traditional soup which I missed out on sampling.

Taken out of the window of our tour bus on the way to a city called Ollantaytambo where we saw patients and prepared to go to Macchu Picchu.

The city of Ollantaytambo, again taken out the bus window.

The lines of people waiting when we arrived. There were two lines, one for dental care and another for general medical care. I was in the latter. Notice the very bright traditional colors and the top hat type headwear. Many of the patients needed interpreters to translate Quetchua into Spanish. Quetchua is the native Incan tongue and has no written form.

This is the dental side. They ran a bunch of chairs at the same time.

This is me cleaning a venous stasis ulcer on the medical side.

Me with the fields of Allantaytambo, the red field is quinuoa.

This is a ruin in Ollantaytambo.

I like this picture with the huge Andes in the background.

The switchback road to Macchu Picchu which bus drivers take at breakneck speed

Macchu Picchu in the clouds. The big mountain in the background is Wuanna Picchu which I climbed. It rained the whole day and the ruins were covered in clouds a lot of the time.

Impressive stairway.

Beautiful Andes with the Urubamba river below.

Pretty flower on the top of Wuanna Picchu

The trapezoidal doorways common in Incan architecture.

Crazy!

Incan lawn mowers.

Surreal!

The bridge, we couldn't cross it but I was more worried about the steps coming out of the wall. I wouldn't use them.

Picture of the ruins taken from the Sun Gate at the end of the Incan Trail.

Kids at a school in Aguas Calientes where we took crayons and other supplies.

Me and an Incan maiden with Pachaquetek in the background who was the Incan ruler that spread the Incan empire.