Faith in God and His Gospel: Ancient America

Thousands of years ago, in the land of Antionum, a man named Alma, son of Alma, turned toward a crowd of poor villagers near the hill of Onidah, and cried aloud:

"Now, as I said concerning faith—that it was not a perfect knowledge—even so it is with my words. Ye cannot know of their surety at first, unto perfection, any more than faith is a perfect knowledge.

"But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.

"Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be true seed, or a good seed , if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves--It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.

"Now behold, would not this increase your faith? I say unto you, Yea..." (Alma 32: 26-29, Book of Mormon).

Surely those in attendance could feel as we do the power of Alma's words. And now his teachings, once hidden for centuries underground on plates of gold, can be read in every corner of the world.

For full chapter in Alma, go to: http://scriptures.lds.org/alma/32/35. Image: Alma's father, Alma, baptizes followers from land of Nephi in waters of Mormon (about 70 years before Alma's sermon above).

Planes futuros, sorpresas nuevas

The best possible option just became available: Wake Forest will let me do a masters (with a full tuition scholarship, a nice stipend, and other great benefits)! Brandeis would have been a good route for a PhD, but an MS at Wake Forest will be much better in my opinion. This way I will have an opportunity to get my feet better planted in physics before I decide on a doctorate program.

The faculty and grad students at Wake Forest are amazing! During my visit in February of this year, Dr. Guthold, Dr. Bonin, Dr. Macosko, and several other professors and students all made such an awesome impression. All three of the professors I mentioned (including others) are also heavily involved in biophysics research, and to my knowledge, at least two of them collaborate with the Wake Forest medical school. The student to faculty ratio for the physics department at Wake is also very small, so I will have a great opportunity to really get to know the professors and talk through difficult concepts with them. Plus what's really nice is that the faculty is so willing to work with me. For example, they said I could start with 600-level courses instead of 700-level ones in order to build a more solid understanding of the curriculum. With this route, I will be able to take less classes this summer and spend more time with friends and family.

My parents and I are planning to fly out a week or so before classes begin in August to visit campus and surrounding areas, plus maybe go see Duke and UNC while we're there. To give you a better idea of the university, it has two campuses (the Reynolda and Bowman Grey campuses) both in Winston-Salem, NC. Wake Forest has a student body of about 6,800 (about 4,400 undergrads and 2,200 grad students) and is currently ranked in the top 30 by US News and Report for National Universities. Its basketball team also does very well, too; in fact, at one point it even reached the No. 1 spot in NCAA Division I polls last year! As for the physics department, there are about 20 or so faculty members and about 30 grad students. The physics building, known as the Olin Physical Laboratory, is located on the Reynolda campus (the main campus of Wake Forest) right next to the library. During my visit we spent most of our time on the Reynolda campus in the Olin building. We did get to walk around campus for a bit though; wow, it is so green and well-kept! The buildings there also have a very interesting Georgian architecture. The surrounding area seems very nice, too (i.e. the cities of Winston-Salem and Greensboro). Check it out on Google Maps!

As for other news, this morning I was injected with bleomycin at the BYU Health Center. When I went to see the foot doctor, he took a quick look at my foot then said with a grim face (in essence): You have three options for curing the infection, all of which will be painful. We can either cut it or freeze it off, but chances are the infection will come back. Or we can use an air gun to inject you with bleomycin and entirely destroy it, BUT you will be in pain for about two days (you can imagine my reaction). After choosing the bleomycin, he gave me a friendly blast of it then sent me out to schedule my follow-up appointment. The last thing I remember though was agreeing to come back at 1 o'clock next week just as the pain started to settle in; before I knew it people were surrounding my past out body on the floor wondering what happened. Wow, the doctor wasn't kidding about it hurting! No worries, though. The nurses were all very nice and got me on my feet again.. well, sort of. Fortunately, the pain is mostly gone now (yeah, so much for two days.. no complaints here though). Unfortunately, the nurses say I might need to do one more injection since the infection was fairly large.

Yesterday I had some friends over for Sunday dinner after church. Joseph and Mitchell Kelly, Nick and Rachel Purse, Rachel's two friends Amy and Desiree, and Dan, his wife Becky and daughter Lili, all came. We had beef and cheese enchiladas with all the seasonings, chips and salsa, and arroz con leche (rice pudding) for dessert. We also played telephone charades, and had lots of laughs with that.

I am now officially living in Devonshire, too, an apartment complex on 700 N and University Ave in Provo, UT. It feels really nice to have roommates again! Living in my parents' condo definitely had it perks (plus we were saving a lot of money), but at the same time, it feels great to have someone to talk to and hang out with at the apartment.

Wait Chapel, Reynolda Campus

Benson Student Center, Reynolda Campus

For many more images of Wake Forest, check out: http://photographer.wfu.edu/archive/

El cajon de abril

My first nephew was born today!! Ethan Tyler McKell. He came early this morning just before my mom left Vancouver... so it looks like she really lucked out! Hopefully I'll get to see him in May for the blessing...

Plus more exciting news: Clemson University made me an offer today! Yeah, I later decided to check out pictures of campus on the internet. The scenery is gorgeous! It's up in the mountains and right next to a huge lake! (Check it out on google maps :)

So now I have Wake Forest and Clemson to decide between, plus Brandeis U (pronounced bran-"dice") which should let me know their decision in a week or two. It'll be tough to beat Brandeis though.. for example, they just received extensive grant money from the National Science Foundation to establish a Material Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC grant). You can read more about it here:

http://www.brandeis.edu/mrsec/index.html
http://mrsec.org/centers/brandeis-university/

http://thehoot.net/articles/3540

http://www.brandeis.edu/now/2008/september/mrsec.html

Last year I found out about the cool stuff going on in cell biology and physics, and since then have been totally hooked! The neat thing is that four of the biggest names in this area (according to what I can tell) are somehow all connected to Brandeis: Dr. Azadeh Samadani is a professor at Brandeis, Dr. Arpita Upadhyaya (a professor at Maryland) did her postdoc with Dr. Samadani at MIT where they worked together on some big-time papers, Dr. Margaret Gardel (a professor at Chicago) has a postdoc from Brandeis in her lab, and Dr. Jay Tang (a professor at Brown) did his PhD at Brandeis! Cool, huh?! Here are links to their websites if your interested:

http://www.brandeis.edu/azadeh/

http://www2.physics.umd.edu/~arpitau/
http://squishycell.uchicago.edu/index.html

http://biophysics.physics.brown.edu/

..plus living in Boston would be way awesome, I won't lie :)

Un cajon a la vez

As of late, I've been really anxious to hear back from the grad schools I applied to! I check the mail box each day, but unfortunately I keep getting boring grocery store coupons or sometimes just an empty box. Probably in the next couple of weeks though I should hear back from a bunch of them... This last weekend Ryan stopped by Provo for a bit to do some recruiting for PWC--he even got to go snowboarding with the new recruits (all expenses paid)! On Sunday, he hung out with some friends from Valencia while I dropped by Spanish Fork to see Grandpa.

As for school... if you've ever wondered why plants and animals look the way they do or why people have certain diseases, or wondered how to model temperature changes in a metal bar or standing waves on a circular membrane (yeah, probably not), or agonized over whether a solution actually exists to that complex differential equation you've been thinking about (you know, Ty, the one that always comes up during class break when you've got nothing else on your mind...), or how to figure out complex integrals or derivatives (things college math students worry about) with the click of a mouse, or what is the latest physiology topic talked about at BYU, or what fugacity and entropy of chemical reactions really means (which, along with me, you're probably wondering right now), or what the homework problems and answers are for Physics 106, 123, or 220 (classes I help out with), or how to image delicate membrane proteins hanging out in a bubble of liquid using a silicon tip the size of a single bacteria or smaller (this is what I do in the underground lab)... then you could say we probably have a lot in common.

As for other things going on... Ty just had a birthday yesterday. I tried to call a few times, but so far no luck. I did talk to Jami though and she says a flu has been going around Vancouver (though I think it's not too bad). She's also getting ready to deliver a baby boy in the next couple months! He'll be my first nephew!

Well better get back to physics homework: more exciting encounters with abstract patterns of motion inside two dimensional rectangles (basically a combination of complex math and simple shapes)...  hmm, maybe next time I'll just stick with "physics homework".

Saw you pulling up...

So today I got a new suit from missionary mall... seriously though, I spent tons of time trying on different styles and sizes--I kind of felt like I was in a donut shop: I was like (slow speech), "oookay... I'll get 1 plain black suit, 3 blue ties, 5 pairs of socks..., no 6 pairs of socks-- no, make that 4 ties, NO, NO! PUT IT BACK! PUT IT BACK! I want a Edwards brand, grey pin-stripped coat with 2 red ties and some shoe polish! --QUICK! Get the ladder!!" (this is a spin-off from Brian Regan... just in case some of you haven't seen it).

Yeah, so next week I'll be flying out to Winston-Salem, NC to interview with Wake Forest University!! Cool, huh? Yeah, I'm waay excited!! (You know, I don't think I've ever been to NC yet. Maybe I'll even wear my BYU sweatshirt to the Demon Deacons' basketball stadium :)...)