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Whatta guy!

For those that don't know Joe (my brother), we adopted him when he was 5-6 from Korea.  He spent months, after the first several years of his young life beaten and abused by his mother (the scars physically and emotionally are horrid), surviving on the streets of Korea before being taken into an orphanage.  He is autistic, mentally retarded, ADHD, has Tourette's, and has had two kidney transplants (because his kidneys were highly damaged as a result of his mother beating him if he went to the bathroom).  I won't go into the disturbing things that happened to him after he arrived here... so awful.

Back to the incredible joy he is...

Every where you go someone knows him and everyone loves him!  You can be at any random place with him and hear over your shoulder "Hey! It's Joe!"

And though his life story reads quite tragically.... so much sadness... would you ever know it?  Not if you know Joe.  He is the happiest person I've ever met.  And with age his sense of humor has become sharper and wittier and quicker.

Tonight we went to Popeyes for dinner.... Joe knew it was a chicken place (that I've been to once since my mission.... and while I ate recalled why) and he wanted to do a comparison between it and KFC (his favorite).  He can rest at ease as he's a definite now on KFC.... and after I came home and threw up my entire dinner, I am too.




I loved being with Joe!  He insisted on paying for our dinner.  He's the most generous person I know by a landslide.  He gives me courage to keep pressing forward in life and to smile and forgive all along the way.  No one forgives like Joe.  To describe him in a nutshell would be; he has a heart of pure gold!

We went shopping after and as we were leaving the store parking lot in his joking silly way he kept saying "what the hell, Liz!?!?"  I told him (also in jest) that he had better stop that swearing... to which he replied "I can't, it's my Tourette's!"

Oh, goodness me....


*BYU did a small documentary on my uncle a few years ago and Joe's dialysis before his kidney transplant was highlighted during it:

http://www.byutv.org/watch/4be39338-2cc7-4a91-9c7a-5828a298e67b/iris-wayne-quinton

Recently my cousin Dana (who I really consider more my sister) posted this on her fb wall:




Hopefully the world takes the time to stop, listen and take notice of what they can learn from people like Michael and Joe...
They can give us gifts we could search the whole earth over for and never find unless we're really listening and opening our hearts.




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