Sunday, July 31, 2011

Reality Check – Putting Everything into Perspective

We had an emotional weekend. We found out that on Saturday night, some kids we know were involved in a car accident. Seven teenagers from the same ward in Farmington had just finished a 3-day youth conference, and were traveling a short distance to swim at the home of one of Ryan’s swim team friends (Tyler). Here is one of the articles about the accident.

Gabe Hanson (15 years old, the son of one of my high school classmates) was killed. A young woman (Kauri) was flown by Life Flight to Primary Children’s Medical Center in stable condition. Lars, the young man who went back out into the water to swim the 400 IM with Ryan that I talked about in this post, was critically injured and taken to McKay-Dee Hospital by Life Flight. He sustained many injuries, including a punctured lung and other injuries to his lungs. He was in a medically-induced coma with a chest tube in order to try to speed his healing. This post on the blog his dad is keeping really touched me, and I left a comment.

Ryan and I have many people close to us dealing with very serious illnesses and injuries the past few months. We pray daily for a friend paralyzed in a snowboarding accident the day before he entered the Missionary Training Center, a 12-year-old friend who recently underwent a heart transplant, Lars and the other kids in this accident, and Ryan’s former scout leader who is fighting stage 4 pancreatic cancer. It has been good for Ryan to spend so much time thinking and praying for others. It has helped us both realize how blessed we are to be healthy and happy.

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