What we can learn from Malaria.

Or all you wanted to know about malaria, but were afraid to ask.

The disease of malaria was named because it was thought that one got it from breathing bad air. For many years it was not known that this was a parasitic disease that was transmitted to humans through the bite of a certain species of mosquito.

We still see many cases of malaria in the world today. About 3.2 billion people – almost half of the world's population – are at risk of malaria. In 2013, there were about 198 million malaria cases (with an uncertainty range of 124 million to 283 million) and an estimated 584 000 malaria deaths (with an uncertainty range of 367 000 to 755 000). Increased prevention and control measures have led to a reduction in malaria mortality rates by 47% globally since 2000 and by 54% in the WHO African Region. Source WHO

Since we probably will not get malaria, why am I talking about it? In a recent meeting I learned about one of our missionaries who died of malaria. It was sad and completely unnecessary.

We now know the cause of malaria and we know how to prevent it. Then why did the missionary die of the disease?  He refused to take the medication to keep him from getting the disease. He would not use mosquito repellant or sleep under the netting provided to keep him from getting bitten.  He either believed he was invincible or he thought that it really did not matter.

When we do not take our spiritual medicine we may suffer spiritual death as well. Just like the missionary who died of malaria, disregarding sound principles leads to spiritual illness and death (which is separation from God).  We then become the walking dead, as it were, oblivious to true joy, and experience the sorrowing of the damned.

In this state of blissful ignorance we wander on forbidden paths as described in Lehi's vision of the tree of life. We fail to hold on to the iron rod and fail to partake of the fruit of the tree, which was designed to make one happy.

Taking prophylactic medication to prevent malaria is important to keep us free from the ravages of the disease and possible death. Reading the scriptures, prayer and partaking of the sacrament on a weekly basis and incorporating the principles of the gospel in our life is the prophylactic spiritual medicine to keep us from getting spiritual malaria.

What do we do if we do get malaria? We treat it vigorously. We do not neglect it, thinking it will go away. Poor decision! We neglect it at the peril of our mortal lives. The same holds true of spiritual malaria. If we do not treat this vigorously, we do it at the peril of our spiritual lives and eternal destiny.

Just as malaria is introduced into the human body from an outside source, spiritual malaria does not come from within us; it is introduced through our exposure to the toxic ways of the world and our adopting them into our lives. The interesting thing about malaria is that it infects the red blood cells and replicates itself and destroys the substance that gives energy and life to our bodies. Spiritual malaria infects our spiritual life sustaining blood and slowly destroys it a little at a time until we are past feeling.

“In your life there have to be challenges… they will either bring you closer to God and therefore make you stronger, or, they can destroy you. But you make the decision of which road you take.”
-Elder F. Enzio Busche

Pay attention to your spiritual prophylaxis.  I do not want to see any of you die.

Love,

Grandpa

Cracked eggs

The other morning I was boiling some eggs for breakfast. The eggs looked perfectly good as I carefully put them in the water  I set the timer for eight minutes. Before I heard the timer go off I heard the water boiling over. Since I only put in an inch of water this signaled that one of the eggs had cracked and was spilling egg white into the boiling water causing the water to overflow.

I thought that this might be a good subject for my blog.

When I was in high school I worked for a creamery. We got eggs from the local farmers and prepared them for sale.  We were hired to candle the eggs. This process was to hold the eggs up to a very bright light. By so doing we could see if there was any blood in the egg. Although this would not cause any problem, the housewife who would use this egg would not find that very appetizing. We would also check to see if there were any embryo chicks in the egg. In some cultures this would be considered a delicacy , but in our culture this is extremely unappetizing.  We also checked for cracks in the shell. A cracked shell could allow pathogenic bacteria to enter the sterile white of the egg and cause disease to the person who consumed the egg in its raw state and make the egg rotten. The  most common bacteria to cause disease from eggs is Salmonella.

We would crack open the eggs with the cracked shells and drop them in a metal container and those eggs would be sold to the local bakery for cakes and other baked goods.

Each of us has a protective shell. Much like the egg, it protects us against the intrusion of the outside world and from it's contaminating influences.  We have to keep our shells intact. We do this by simple procedures.

When I was growing up we raised chickens. We knew that thin shells were easier to crack. In order to get thicker shells on the eggs we would feed oyster shell bits to the chickens. The oyster shells contain Calcium, which is metabolized by the hens and provides material for the production of the shell.

What we feed our spirit will strengthen our protective shell. The formula for this food for our production of protection is really as simple as small bits of oyster shell. I have written about it in previous blogs; daily prayer, daily scripture reading, weekly family home evening and partaking of the sacrament.

If we have small unseen cracks in our spiritual shell, just like the eggs, they will be made apparent by heat. The heat does not come from inside the egg and it does not come from within us. The boiling water manifests the crack in the egg shell. The pressures from peer groups and secular influences in our life will bring out the cracks in our spiritual shells.

There is no spiritual super glue. It is a maxim that prevention is better than treatment after the fact. If you find a crack in your spiritual shell, go back to eating the spiritual oyster shell calcium and this will strengthen the shell and prevent intrusion of unwanted things.

We all need constant protection in our lives.

Of Time and Money

Of time and money

It may not seem like there is any connection between time and money. We know however that if you spend time working you usually get rewarded with money. This is not the only connection.

We have here in this life only a limited amount of time available to us.

We also have only a limited amount of money.
But you may say that some people have a lot more money than most. This is true, but some people have more time than most.

When it comes to the point of the discussion, what we do with these resources of time and money make the difference in our lives and to some extent the lives of others as well.

I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said, "Do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of." My parents would often quote this to my brothers and me.

Christ said in a parable about a man who had money and goods and said that he would tear down his barns and build bigger ones to store his goods in. The upshot of the story was that the man died that very night.  What good did his money do? He ran out of time, and then the riches were of no use to him.

I might tell you a story of my good friend from high school, Donald Doughty, to further illustrate the point.  Don and I both played the clarinet. We occasionally did things together. One summer we went to Laramie to a summer band camp at the University of Wyoming. We competed for first chair first clarinet the following school year. My senior year Don went to the university and I became the first chair.

Don started smoking in high school. He went on to become a computer whiz kid. He sold his disk operating system and became a very wealthy man.
One day he came back to Lander to visit. He had emphysema and trouble breathing. He said that if he lifted the skin on his nose a certain way that he could breath easier. I did a little plastic surgery on his nose and he was appreciative of the result.

Because of his wealth and other circumstances his wife divorced him and made off with half of his fortune.

He found out that your grandmother worked for the travel agency, so she booked travel for him. She got a call from him one day from South America. He had been to Manchu Pichu and had gotten altitude sickness and ended up in the hospital where the doctor stole his cash. He was able to fly home where he wanted to get a heart lung transplant. Unfortunately he died before he could receive treatment for his chronic lung disease. 

So he wasted his time here on this earth and his money.

If you think that this in some way doesn't happen to many people, you are naive.

Time and money are to be used to improve ourselves and bless our fellow men. Any time we use time and money inappropriately we do not take advantage of the reason we were placed here on the earth. Christ made that perfectly clear when he taught here on the earth.

What are we to do with our time and money here on this earth? We are to do many things, but two things stand out to me. We are to do good and improve ourselves and others.

We have a lot to learn about everything. We should be constantly learning and improving ourselves. This is no time to spend our hours sitting on the couch watching TV and eating chocolates.

As the song goes; we have work enough to do e'r the sun goes down. We spend a lot of our time and money on things that have no eternal worth. Even our thoughts are subject to eternal scrutiny.
This does not mean that we must be at it 24/7, but it does mean we should be prudent with our time and money. We need to know that there will be an accounting that we will have to give to The Lord.

I must now at this point address a prevalent illness in our society. Because electronic devices are so ubiquitous, there are countless hours spent playing mindless video games. Most all of the games that I have seen have no socially redeeming value. Rarely does one learn anything useful or educational except how to maneuver a joystick. If those who indulge in playing for hours on end would use the time spent on the device to learn a new language, read some of the classics such as Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott or James Fennimore Cooper, or watch Pavarotti on You Tube, they would at least have something at the end to show for it.

There are so many good and uplifting things to spend your time doing, rather than squandering time at something that will not improve you and make you a better person.

You only have one life to live. Live it to make you a better individual and by so doing enrich the lives of those around you.

Love,

Grandpa

Decisions Determine Destiny

'Decisions determine destiny'

The home teaching message for January 2015 was by President Thomas S. Monson. The above quote was from that message.

Another statement from that message was; ‘history turns on small hinges and so do our lives’.

You, my grandchildren, will see how true these statements are. It is very important for you to make the correct decisions in your life. The commandments of God are a good place to start. The world will tell you that these are restrictive, but they are eternal laws of happiness. You can never break the commandments of The Lord you only break yourself against them.

I have learned that even the slightest deviation from the commandments of The Lord eventually brings sadness and misery into our lives. This may occur as a result of our own transgression or someone else's not keeping the commandments. As an example many innocent people died recently, because some terrorist did not heed the commandment to love their neighbor and 'thou shalt not kill'.

We will all make decisions that will turn out to be in error, but we should never make a decision that we know is contrary to what we know and have been taught to be right. We sing the song 'Do what is right, let the consequence follow.'

The nice part about this is that we can always make course corrections. We do not always have to continue down the wrong path. We may have to suffer the consequence of a bad decision, but through repentance we can avoid the eternal consequences.
The sad part about making poor choices is that they not only hurt us, but they hurt other people as well. We do not live in a vacuum. We are put into families for a reason. We were not hatched on a rock with no one to care about us or love us. When we make poor choices true parents do not say a Kaddish and never have anything to do with us. They may have their hearts rended and broken, but we are still bound by covenants to them and The Lord.

The parable of the prodigal son is illustrative of the principle of the love and patience of the father and most parents who are grounded in the gospel of Christ. We sorrow when those that we love make decisions, which bring us pain and bring undesirable consequences to the decision maker.

Unfortunately decisions do determine destiny and history does turn on very small hinges. When I was in high school we studied a number of Shakespeare's plays. He wrote Julius Caesar. Brutus and Cassius were key players in the drama. At one point Cassius says' The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings."

There is a false notion that has pervaded the thinking of men from the beginning that if the stars were not aligned in our favor that nothing we could do would change the outcome. Our actions do determine what happen in our life. As is often quoted from the poem Invictus, we are the masters of our fate and the captains of our soul.

D&C 93:39-40 lets us know that when we are disobedient the wicked one comes and takes away our light and the truth that we have, thus our decisions do have very subtle consequences that we may be unaware of.

Please make the right decisions so that your destiny will be all that you are capable of.
 
Love,

Grandpa

Heath Care

In a recent discussion I was made more acutely aware of the changes in health care and the challenges that these changes present.

In order to help my posterity with some of the things that will be of help in the next few years, I will post these suggestions on this Blog.

The access to medical care is changing and will continue to morph until it will no longer be the same.
The sources will change and the avenues will become more difficult to navigate.  It will be imperative for you to be proactive and not rely on outside sources.
The insurance that is now operative requires medical records to be kept electronically.  This makes them more subject to loss. There are malicious individuals who may hack into the computer and alter or destroy data.  My suggestion is that you keep your own Heath records.  They do not have to be paper, they can be digital but they need to be copied so you have a digital copy in a safe and secure place such as a flash drive backup, which you can care with you on your key chain.

Changes in providers either within the same city or as a result of our mobile population are inevitable. If you have your records in digital format it will save you time when you go to a new facility or provider.
What should you include in the medical record?

A list of medications
Any allergies
Previous illnesses (include everything)
Previous surgical procedures
Family illnesses
Immunizations with dates

Every encounter with a health care provider should be documented with date, diagnosis and treatment. Do not rely on someone else, at least make a note either in your smart phone, paper note book or your computer. Keep track of the medications prescribed.
 
The care will become more depersonalized, as ancillary caregivers become more the norm. We now find what I call 'doc in the box' or urgent care centers. In a recent trip to Arizona I saw an ambulatory care center next to a gas station. CVS pharmacies now offer medical care as well. I have entitled one of the reports to the church medical service committee "The new kid on the block". It was a list of pharmacies that offer immunizations on a no wait, no appointment basis with comparative prices.

When I was in practice we used the term 'medical home'. It was thought that if people had one place to receive medical care it was ideal. The doctor was then to direct them to specialty care if needed. It hasn't worked well, because some doctors were not well versed in taking care of patients and the patients went to specialists without a referral. Thus it became fragmented care with multiple practitioners prescribing without knowing what other medications the patient is taking.

Rather than being dependent on someone else, you need to keep your own medical records from now on.

Love,

Grandpa

The principle of the knock

The principle of the knock

This dispensation was ushered in by a small boy who wanted to know which church to join and had the temerity to believe that he would get an answer to a prayer.

You are well acquainted with the scripture in James, so I will not repeat it here.

There is also scripture that goes something like this, seek and you shall find, ask and you shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you[1].  Many years ago I wrote a little piece when I was stake president. It was before I had a computer, so I have no copy of that document. 

I will try and remember the gist of that.

One of the reasons that more people do not gain knowledge or a testimony is because they do not ask with real intent, if they ask at all.

The Lord works by principle. If we go back to Adam and all the prophets, they all had to ask before they received the knowledge they were seeking.

I think that when we are given things, whether it be material goods or knowledge, without any effort or sacrifice on our part, there is no appreciation of the gift that is given.

President Packer once gave a talk about advice. The sum and substance of the talk was if you ask for advice from a prophet (or any one else for that matter) and then decide not to follow it, you have wasted both his/their time and yours.

People cannot resolve problems by sweeping them under the rug and running away.

The scripture instructs us to meet together in private and resolve the issue that we are not esteemed to be enemies.

On May 2 2014 I wrote on my Letters from Grandpa Blog the parable of the father and the child. This details what happens often in our society.  We expect to have all our problems solved with little or no effort on our part.

I have made it my policy not to interfere with anyone’s agency. (I have written about this before.) If they seek counsel I will give considered insight, but will not do so unless they put forth the effort to ask and to act.

This is what I call the principal of the knock.

We often have a tendency to blame ourselves for our children's failures and shortcomings and do not realize that in spite of our imperfections and lack of good judgment, which we all have at some point, the individual is an agent unto themselves even at a very early age. They are the captains of their fate and the masters of their souls and through the atonement of Christ will overcome all things by obedience.

So knock, ask, and seek.  That is the principle of the knock.

Love,

Grandpa

---

[1] Matthew 7:8  Say unto them, Ask of God; ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

Sin like illness is best treated early in its course.

Sin like illness is best treated early in its course.
I have been learning about and associated with illness for fifty-six years. I have learned that in most cases early intervention is the key to a cure, or if not, at least an arrest in the progression of the disease.

I am usually able to make a diagnosis by listening to the symptoms and their progression through time.  In many cases I can make a diagnosis and prescribe treatment by listening to the patient describe the symptoms and their progression and ask pertinent questions. In some cases intervention of a surgical nature or hospital treatment needs to be instituted in order for the patient to return to some measure of health.

The earlier the treatment is instituted, the better the outcome. In some cases the patient waits too long and debility or death is the result.

Sin is much like disease. It, in essence, is spiritual illness. Sin is a transgression of the laws of God. Like physical illness, spiritual illness has symptoms and may result in spiritual death.

There are many times when we see someone who exhibits the symptoms of spiritual disease. Although there are many symptoms, I will enumerate a few that I have observed recently. One of the most prominent is outrage. It seems like when things do not meet our expectations; people demonstrate, riot, say nasty things on social media and generally act out their frustrations.

I was struck by a headline in the paper today with a national organization calling for a federal investigation of a local police action resulting in the death of a young man. The mother understandingly was upset, but would not let it alone.  She acted out to the point where she was charged with a transgression of a statute outlining how one should properly behave in polite society. It is possible that because of her actions she could be fined or serve time in jail to recompense her actions.

How utterly stupid to allow frustration or outrage to govern our actions. Although one can understand people’s reactions, they can never be justified. Our example, Christ, suffered far greater indignities, but paid them no heed.

By reacting to such injustices we separate ourselves from God because of our spiritual illness. There are those that would argue that He would understand how things were and look the other way. It was Christ who said, love your enemies and to pray for them that despitefully use us and persecute us. Christ never condones sin.

Why? Because it renders us unfit to associate with our Father who is perfect and cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance.

The gospel of Jesus Christ and the Father is one of healing to make us, his children, whole and well again, freed from sickness and iniquity.

Thus outrage and acting out is a symptom of a deeper problem or in other words spiritual illness. Elder Boyd K. Packer once gave a talk on letting things go. If we are whole spiritually we may have the feeling that things did not go like we would have desired. We may be anguished, but we would never act out or seek retribution. We would leave it in the Lord's hand and say, as He instructed, "Let The Lord judge between me and thee and reward thee according to thy works."

How do people get spiritual disease or sin?  They fail to do rather simple things: keep the commandments, pray earnestly, and immerse themselves in the scriptures so they can be acquainted with his voice.
We all come short of the mark, but it is the true saint who recognizes his errors and accepts correction and changes his behavior. This spiritual illness must be addressed early and often. If repentance is procrastinated then rationalization appears and we are bound in fetters, which may require major and painful extraction.

Another symptom of spiritual disease is dishonesty.  This includes lying and stealing. If a person has a pure testimony of The Lord Jesus Christ they will not rationalize their integrity. They know who they are and what God expects of them.  They will quickly correct any deviation from that spiritual plane that will bring them closer to God.  Lying and dishonesty are like a rapidly progressive disease.  If not treated it becomes a way of life and eventually the individual has their conscience dulled and they become past feeling and spiritually die even though they are physically alive.  The treatment must be administered early and in most cases is very painful.

Thus lying is not the disease, but a symptom of our lack of faith and conformity to God's will and commandments.  We have nothing to give to God but our obedience to His commandments. If Christ submitted His will to The Father, how much more are we in need of submission to the Father?

The cure for illness is varied and depends on the disease. There is no universal cure. Sometimes an antibiotic will take care of the problem or it may require surgery to make the person whole again or at the least be restored to some measure of health. In some cases chemotherapy or radiation may halt it for a while or provide a remission, but a person is never really restored to a pristine state.

In contrast, the cure for sin, if truly instituted is all-encompassing and total. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white.."

There is no universal antidote for poison, but there is a universal antidote for sin.  It is simple faith in Christ and true repentance. There is no substitute magic potion that will cleanse sin.  There is no substitute for Christ and his commandments.  To paraphrase an oft-quoted scripture in the Book of Mormon, I rejoice in Christ, I talk of Christ, I prophesy and testify of Christ and I write of Christ and hope that my posterity will look to Christ for their eternal happiness and salvation and remission of their sins. That they may know that it is only through the grace of the Holy Messiah that they will come back into the presence of their Eternal Heavenly Father to dwell.

Christ has the healing in his wings to heal all sin, but it can only come through the healing balm of true, sincere repentance. Therefore; my grandchildren, please repent and keep the commandments fully and completely and be whole.

Love,

Grandpa