New Year.

Elder Blotter of the Okanagon,

Well, we did enjoy our 60.00 minutes of conversation with our young stripling warrior up north.  It sounds like things are continuing to go well and you are actively engaged in the harvest.  A well known movie producer made a 4 DVD series entitled "The Bible".  It is quite well done, and interesting.  It is pretty accurate, with a little Hollywood bling thrown in.  You will like it. We have it on Blue Ray.  (yes, even the Blotters have gone Blue Ray.)   Anyway, it really surprises me how much things change, and even more how much things stay the same.  A covenant people begin in a promised land, and flourish under the blessings of the Lord.  Prosperity leads to excess and wickedness with pride and arrogance.  The wickedness increases and  societal norms begin to break down.  Good becomes evil, and evil good.  The few faithful are considered extreme, weird, and foolish.  The Lord sends disciples, teachers, and prophets as a voice of warning.  They are rejected, and the people  are destroyed.  This happened from the creation right on down to the present time, and on both continents.  We are in the same cycle now, and you are basically a modern Jeremiah, or Abinidai for that matter.

Well, the news of the week for us, is the visit of the Hevia family from Asturias, Spain.  Wow.  We have Juan, Begona, and Paula, with Claudia already in place.  They said that they wanted a 'ski holiday' and who better to provide that than one James W. Blotter.  Well, I took them right to Snowbird with visions of riding the tram and busting down the Upper Cirque.  Well, we got to the top and I realized that they really don't ski, and they don't have real mountains in Spain, and I have no concept of skiing difficulty.   A little crisis then unfolded as altitude sickness set in, panic seized them, and things melted down.  This was followed quickly by a 300 yard, sliding, yard sale of a crash with papa.  The tears were flowing and the whole mountain mobilized to save our Spaniards, from, well, me I guess.  Needless to say, they are done skiing, and now we have to find some way to entertain for 10 days.  

Aside from the above, we love the Hevias.  They are fun, and witty, and very much like us despite being a world and culture apart.  Juan and I are both 46, worry about our childrren, love our good looking wives, and hate taxes and big government. 

The timing is a little rough, because I am on the tail end of of my busiest month of my last 4 years.  Wow.  I have performed a mind boggling number of complicated surgeries this month.  Christmas was a blip on the screen for me in a life consumed by blood, sutures, wound, scopes and lasers.  While most families gathered around singing carols sipping cocoa I was using a Xomed high speed drill to drill a hole into the skull of a 79 year old Grandma to let this foul pus out of her head because it eroded it's way into her eye.   The only thing more complicated in my life is Jacey's soccer team!  I feel blessed, in that the Lord helps me with difficult trials.  I am an instrument in his hands to answer prayers and play a sacred role in their lives.  I alter the bodies created for them by the Great Jehovah himself.  That why l listen to the Book of Mormon on the way to work. 

Well, I hope it is a good one.  The Lord is counting on you to be that instrument in his hands!

Love

Dad