"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.