The Results are In

Law Fair Day

On Tuesday Joseph attended the Law Fair Day held at the University of Utah. The Law School Fair has over 130 law schools and approximately 450 students attend, not only from the University of Utah, but also Utah State University, Southern Utah University, Westminster College, Weber State University, and Salt Lake Community College.

Joseph enjoyed talking to representatives of most of the law schools he is interested in attending.

Voting

While Joseph and Tim were at the Law Fair they both took the time to VOTE early.

LSAT Scores are In

Joseph recieved the results of his law school application test this weekend. He got a score of 160, this represents the 83 percentile of all those in the US who took the test. He was dissappointed since he has been getting in the 90th percentile on many of his practice tests. But his score is good enough to get him in an excellent law school. Scoring better that 80% of those across the USA seemed pretty good to Mom and Dad. Ethan and Cheyenne were proud of Uncle Joe (right).

"Adventures"

"Calls to Adventure"
Elder Neal A. Maxwell spoke of “the new and surprising challenges which God may place in front of us” as “ calls to adventure”. (". . . A More Excellent Way": Essays on Leadership for Latter-day Saints, p.42). There have been several adventures the past couple of weeks. Lets review in reverse order:

Emergency Room Adventure
About Midnight Saturday night/Sunday AM Joseph began having signs of Autonomic dysreflexia. Basically this means his body is telling him something is wrong but he can't tell where since he can't feel any pain below his shoulders. His blood pressure soon hit about 250 and we called 911. The ambulence soon arrived. . . silently, because we asked them not to run the sirens and wake up the neighbors. Joseph was soon transferred to the gurney and loaded up for the ride to the hospital. Dad was told he could ride in the front and Mom brought the car. As dad was getting in the front seat of the ambulence he heard the horn blast loudly. He thought, "boy this will certainly wake up the neighbors, I wonder why they are doing that?" after another blast the crew came up and told him to watch out for the button on the floor. . . DAD WAS HONKING THE HORN." (sigh)

After we arrived at the ER, Joseph was given something for the excruciating headache from the high blood pressure and they began to work on the list of possible causes. They finally found that his suprapubic catheter was plugged. When they changed it out, his blood pressure dropped over a hundred points in 5 minutes. Things were back to normal by 6AM and we all returned home for a nap.

Basement Adventure
The saga of the basement began with the sewer backing up this spring. Finally by 9PM on Saturday night Dad declared the contruction complete. He has been working on the little half-bath that got torn apart with the construction of Joseph's room because all the plumbing and heating connections were through there. He finished building shelves, putting on the baseboard, chaulking and touching up the paint on Saturday. Whew. Now we just need to get the stuff back downstairs out of the garage.

Speed Skating Adventure
Friday afternoon Joseph and Tim went to the World Cup Short Track Speed Skating trials at the Olympic Oval in Kearns. It was terriffic. It is amazing how fast they go (about 40KPH). Dad enjoyed taking photos as usual and they both really enjoyed the experience. They were excited to see Apolo Anton Ohno skate. He has been the overall men's short track champion since 2001 and has won the men's title 8 times. (note the photo of him, left, ready to start his 500 m race--with Joseph in the background).

One of the most interesting races was the relay. With the various members of multiple teams on the ice, each taking turns pushing the others from behind, it is quite the spectacle.

LSAT Adventure
No news on the LSAT scores yet but Joseph has had responses from more than twenty law schools waiving his application fees. He is working finishing up the paperwork for his applications.
Real Salt Lake and the New Stadium Adventure
Joseph and Matt Smith went to the first game at the Real Salt Lake's new Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy last week. The stadium is fantastic. The team is close to cinching their first time in the playoffs.

General Conference Adventure
The General Conference work is finally winding down for Dad. Chris and Jeannie Wills from Birmingham England were here in their role with Church Audiovisual. They left last week. They are shown on the right stuffing the nearly 200 DVDs in English, French, Fante, Twi, and Igbo languages for West Africa that we send back with the Area leaders when they return from conference. (West Africa is one of the only areas of the World where the satellite system doesn't reach yet, so we provide them with DVDs). We also sent the Malagasy, Swahli, Amharic and Lingala DVDs along with Portuguese to the Africa Southwest Area.

LSAT TEST, Conference and Reunion

The LSAT Test

Saturday morning at 5:45 AM Joseph woke up and began getting ready for the first real standardized test he's taken in the last decade+ (He was in England and missed the SAT tests for university). The Law School Admission Test (see: http://www.lsac.org/LSAT/TheLSAT-menu.asp) is an amazingly difficult test. However Joseph has been preparing dilligently for months. They allowed accomodation for him so he could do the test including a proctor (photo on right) to mark his answers and monitor his use of the computer to dictate his written essay. He had to take his own computer, printer and peripheral equipment.

When he learned months ago he really couldn't do the "games" potion without drawing diagrams to help solve the problems he figured out a set up with a wrist brace and a pen in a strap on his left hand and forced himself to learn write and draw on a clipboard. Through hours of practice he was able to have the games section be the best part of his practice tests (it's one of the most difficult sections, where many fail who haven't prepared). The LSAT test was conducted at the UofU's engineering building.

It will be several weeks until the results are back but he is a peace about it. He prepared dilligently and throughly, had a father's blessing, then did his best.

EBM Mission Reunion

The whole family enjoyed the England Bristol Mission Reunion at the Taggart home on Friday night. We had 50-60 people come and everyone enjoyed visiting, renewing memories and making new friends. We always love the emails and messages on Facebook from our missionaries all over the world. We really miss those who are away and never get to make it. We have the reunion twice a year on the Friday before general conference and will until people don't want to come anymore. It is such a blessing to our whole family. It was fun to have the Taggart grandkids playing with the 'mission grandkids'.

General Conference

What a glorious general conference this weekend. The talks and music were brilliant and the spirit was amazing. Joseph attending the Sunday Afternoon Session with a great friend and really enjoyed it. One of his favorite messages from conference was from Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin's talk, he quoted a saying he often heard from his mother "Come what may and love it". There you have encapsulated in a phrase, Joseph Wirthlin's and Joseph Taggart's attitude on adversity and challenge. With faith and enthusiasm meet difficulties head-on and enjoy the ride.

I C thru U

On September 24th Joseph went to get X-rayed to see if he had a cracked bone in his hip from a fall. Everything went well and he didn't. But if transparency is good for the politicians perhaps it's could be good for the political science major.