Update

Lots of stuff has happened since the last post on Oct. 5th. I'm still loving dental school, Tara has started her job and is very busy, Thanksgiving break was nice, but short, and now it's time to finish up the semester.

It's crazy to think that 1 year ago today (well yesterday if you want to be all technical) many of us in the class found out that we were accepted to dental school! I heard back from the Texas schools and UAB and I was most excited about Dr. Filler's call. He was happy and it was the last one I got so I was a little worried but super excited. I was walking out of 20& Grand to go somewhere, then I got the call, talked to him and ran back into the gym at 20&Grand and told Tara. It was a very happy time. Today, across the nation people are finding out about their dental school futures. Many do not find out today, and may even find out a couple of weeks before classes start, but we all end up in the same boat and go on this journey together. It's been rough sometimes, (especially around Fundamentals test day) but most of the time the professors are nice and the people are friendly.
Today, I was able to assist in the oral surgery clinic with a 4th year student. It was very interesting and we extracted #31 (mand. 2nd molar on R) and on another pt. extracted #28 & #29 (2 premolars on mand R). These went smoothly and I was able to assist well because I had worked with the residents at VUMC OMFS. Other notable experiences from dental school have been the first few weeks of operative dentistry. We were able to start drilling on natural teeth and our typodonts. We first learned Sealants, then PRRs (Preventive Resin Restorations) and then Class I (pit and fissure fillings).

In other news, Tara and I are both enjoying our church very much, it's called The Church at Brook Hills and the pastor David Platt is a very gifted speaker with profound knowledge and an amazing capacity to relate the Bible to our lives today. We feel like he really gets it. He's only 30 but he is very mature and has great passion for missions around the world and seeing God's vision come to fruition in Birmingham. You can view his sermons or listen to them too - very cool. We were a little skeptical about attending such a large church (4,000 people), especially after worshiping in a warehouse with folding chairs for 4 years at Midtown in Nashville, however, we feel like this is really the place that God has called us to be and we are growing in our faith daily. I just finished a book this morning called Jesus Wants to Save Christians by Rob Bell that was a great survey of the Old and New Testaments and talked about how many Christians today have lost the message Christ was bringing to the world. He also warned about empire (America) and how we are so blessed and we need to take care of the opressed, feed the hungry, reach out to people in need, etc. because those are the people He came to save. The problem with abundance is the need to spend all our money and effort to protect it (think a trillion dollar war on terrorism) and not spending our money to help people (what could a trillion dollars do to help aid world hunger, cure diseases, give clean water?) We need to rethink spending $8million on our church building renovations when 1/2 the world lives on less than $2 a day. Needless to say, it's a great read with some relevant points for today's Christians in America.
That's all for today!