How I live my faith

The values and principles that I have embraced by being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints help me to become a better person both within and beyond the bounderies of my congregation. From my youth I learned to seek out the poor, both in purse and spirit. A great blessing of the LDS church is that it provides a framework for me to be able to do that. As a young man, I remember volunteering with my father at apple orchards whose produce went to the poor, knocking on the doors of members once a month to receive offerings to take to my Bishop for the benefit of the needy, and taking meals made with care by my mother to those who were sick.

But I also feel blessed that those same principles have given me a desire in later years to serve the needy beyond the walls of my church. Without the influence of eternal principles and the Holy Ghost, I very much doubt I would have had the motivation and desire to leave the comfort zone of my dental practice to provide dental care to the underprivileged. I doubt I would have found myself in the very remote jungles of Guatemala working side by side with great men and pastors of other faiths building schools for some of the poorest people in the western hemisphere. I doubt I would have found myself involved in the campaign to finish the job of eradicating polio from the face of the earth, even though the disease nearly killed my mother as a child. I doubt I could have helped raise nearly a million dollars for perpetual scholarships aimed at underprivileged kids in our local community. I doubt I would have ended up putting on a charity auction to raise $200,000 to be used by local and international nonprofit groups to better the world. I share this not to bring attention to myself, but only to assert that any good I have done in the world is due to a small portion of the Spirit of God within me, and I am so thankful and frankly humbled that my Father feels I'm worthy enough to assist in His Work.