Plus, lightning strike causes Angel Moroni replacement to step in atop a Latter-day Saint temple.
| ChurchBeat | | Wednesday, August 7, 2024 |
A Tale of Two Legacies and the Impact of BYU’s New Medical School on Future Generations Today (Wednesday) was my father’s 84th birthday. He died 30 years ago, so my six sisters and I have been texting about memories. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, we thought Dad was impossibly odd whenever he poured the crumby dregs of three different cereals together into one bowl, doused the unthinkable combination with milk and ate it with a wink and the mischievous smile that displayed his dimple. After some dinners, he scooped leftover rice in a bowl, added milk, cinnamon and a little sugar and ate it like a treat. Now we understand better that he was born at the tail end of the Great Depression, the last of four boys whose mother raised them while the young family struggled financially before better days. Lila Walch taught her sons not to throw away a butter wrapper without scraping it off to avoid waste. Dad’s birthday — and President Russell M. Nelson’s approaching 100th birthday on Sept. 9 — have me thinking about the endowments the two have worked to leave behind for future generations. The announcement by the First Presidency that BYU will launch a medical school prompted similar thoughts for Dr. Bob Carter, the chief of Harvard’s Neurosurgery Department. President Nelson is the chairman of BYU’s board of trustees, so the medical school will be part of his legacy as the 17th prophet and president of the church. That will mean so much more because of the historic medical career he had before stepping away from the operating room to accept a calling as an apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. President Nelson was, among other accomplishments, the first to perform an open-heart operation west of the Mississippi. He performed approximately 7,000 operations and trained others to perform open-heart surgery around the world. Dr. Carter carefully chose his words to describe what it will mean to future BYU medical students that President Nelson was the one at the head of the First Presidency and board of trustees when the medical school was announced. “This is a very special — I won’t say a capstone; I’ll never say capstone with President Nelson because you never know what’s coming next — but a very special mark of his imprimatur, because of his legacy as a physician,” Dr. Carter said. “I find it incredibly exciting.” |
FROM OUR SPONSOR BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY BYU students help to put independence back within reach In Ecuador, prosthetic devices have been too expensive for many people. BYU engineering and nursing students work with a local clinic to create inexpensive, sustainable prosthetics—putting independence back within reach. Because a Christ-centered education means not only learning a concept but applying what you learn in a Christlike way. Learn more. |
What I’m Reading ... Need a laugh? Our Meg Walter wrote a very funny piece about how we normal humans look in our race photos. One paragraph really stood out. See if you laugh as hard as I did. A man involved in the theft of a Jackie Robinson statue from a Little League park got 15 years in prison. The next day, a replacement statue was unveiled, paid for by Major League Baseball. Now that we have both American vice presidential candidates in place, here’s what J.D. Vance has said about faith, and what Tim Walz has said about faith. An iceberg is stuck spinning in circles in the ocean. “Round and round a city-size iceberg goes, stuck in a vortex over an underwater mountain. When it will stop, nobody knows,” writes the New York Times. My colleague Jacob Hess has completed a trio of interesting stories where artists talk about their portrayals of Jesus Christ. Here they are: Portraying Jesus in film. Portraying Jesus in paintings. Portraying Jesus in song. He also found more “beautiful songs about Jesus Christ are being created now than any time in history, including among Latter-day Saint songwriters.” |
Dr. Russell M. Nelson during an operation. (Provided by Nelson family) |
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