A Tale of Two "Callings"

Once upon a time, there was a little boy. This little boy LOVED to draw. He would spend hours sketching all kinds of silly cartoon characters.

As the boy grew up, he took art classes in school and thought that he had found his calling. He excelled in painting, drawing and cartooning. Everyone admired his work. He was even asked to draw comic strips for his high school newspaper. Yes, art school was the way he was headed. He wanted to be a cartoon animator, maybe work for Disney or Warner Brothers.

His art teachers assisted him in putting together a portfolio for different schools to review. Talking with and visiting different schools, he became excited at the prospect of attending one of them someday. However, his plan was to serve a two-year mission for the LDS church first, so his artistic ambitions where placed on hold as he put in the paperwork for his mission.

In September of 1996, the boy, now a young man, left for his mission to serve in the Guatemala City North, Guatemala mission. He would be learning to speak Spanish and be teaching the people there about the gospel of Jesus Christ. The young man hated the bugs, hated the sickness, and hated seeing the extreme poverty in Guatemala, but he loved the people, loved serving the Lord and, therefore, loved his mission.

After returning from Guatemala, however, the young man came to realize that he had changed. Perhaps for the better. Although he still loved his artwork, it suddenly seemed like the wrong direction for his life. He felt strongly that a career giving back to society in some more constructive way was where he needed to place his energies. Shortly after returning home, he had also met a young woman who had captured his interest. She was on her way to Utah to attend university there.

So, after the young man had walked away from art school, he wondered what direction to take next and following the young woman to Utah seemed like as good a plan as any. It just so happened that he had an older brother living in Salt Lake City, so he made arrangements to move in with him and look for work. It was there that a new seed of interest was planted.

The young man took a job at a children's hospital. To his amazement and good-fortune, he was given a job that required no prior hospital experience, special training or credentials. They trained him on the job to assist in the surgery unit. It was there working with the children coming in for various types of surgery that the young man fell in love with medicine and helping people become well. This was his true calling.

Now, some ten years later, the young man is finally going to live his dream. With the support of that young woman he'd followed to Utah who later became his wife, he has come to the opportunity that he has worked so hard for. He has accepted entrance to Touro University Nevada's College of Osteopathic Medicine in Las Vegas/Henderson to start this August!

From the young woman who has stuck it out all this time, I am so proud of Jacob. He's worked so hard, and I have really marveled at how he has persevered and achieved the feat that so many told us would be pretty much impossible. We knew the odds, we knew the requirements, yet somehow Jacob managed to pull off the grades and the test scores necessary (even after a four year hiatus from school while serving in the Air Force) to earn not even just one, but TWO med school acceptances, the other being a school in Denver.

We feel so overwhelmingly blessed to have been given this opportunity. Moving to Henderson will be a great blessing to our family, as well. Jacob has family there and our parents live within relatively easy driving distance just over the California border. As a matter of fact, this will be the closest that we've ever lived to family since we originally left for Utah all those years ago.

Who would have ever thought that the little aspiring artist would someday turn in a completely different career direction? Not even him.