On January 27, 2011 Eric Merkley was diagnosed with osteosarcoma. An aggressive cancer that we hope and the doctors to this point seem confident that is contained to one spot on his leg. Prognosis is good. Treatments and recovery will be long and painful.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Tornadoes


I just received my email from Elder Eric.  He loves his mission right now.  He loves the people and his companion.  What a great start right?  Here are a few stories from his email.

“This week I had a really cool experience with one of the Lao members in the ward.  I have a little voice recorder that I use to help me in my language study so that I can understand what people are saying better. I went to Maa Pang's house and I asked her to tell me how the church has helped her in her life and to tell me about how she joined the church. First of all, the story about how she came over to America is absolutely crazy and then she went on the tell me about how she joined the church, it is a super long story so I won’t tell you it, but she went on to say that she had cancer and she told us how the church had helped her so much in her life. I heard this and it really sparked my interest of course and I told her my story and experience with cancer. It was so amazing she started crying and I have never felt the spirit that strong as I have been speaking Lao it was so amazing I can’t even put it into words.”

He also had an appointment to meet his new Doctor at UC Davis.  He said that Dr Spraker had actually talked to this new doctor and told her that if she had any patients with Osteosarcoma or Ewings sarcoma to have Eric talk to them.  Apparently she has a patient right now that she wants Eric to meet, but first she needs to get permission from their parents.  So Eric is pretty excited about this opportunity to continue to talk kids through this cancer process he knows so well.  He went on to say “what better way to open people up to the gospel right? I love it because I still get to go talk to kids at the hospital and I love doing that!”

Apparently I will get to learn all the scary stories when he comes home, not to mention the story of getting out of the path of 3 tornadoes.  It is probably a good thing I don’t hear all the stories. 

 
All I can say is it is a good thing he is in Heavenly hands.


No comments:

Post a Comment