Taylor Talbot

A few weeks ago, a new sister joined our Thursday Evening shift at the temple. Since Lisa is an assistant coordinator, she was involved in her training and got to know her pretty well. Her training is rather unique because Sr Talbot is blind.

She has a fascinating history but to do it justice would require a lot more writing than I want to do here so let me summarize. She started to lose her eye sight when she was around four or five but wasn’t diagnosed until she was eight. She has Retinitis Pigmentosa which is somewhat similar to Evan’s SMA. If both of your parents have the genetic defect then you have a one if four chance of inheriting it. Instead of the nerves slowly dying as with Evan, it is the gradual degeneration of the rods and cones in your retina. It starts with the peripheral vision and as it progresses you end up seeing things as if you are looking through a straw.

Sr Talbot has no vision in one eye and very little in the other. The cool thing is that Sr Talbot is a paraolympian. She competed in the Tokyo ParaOlympics, missed the next onebecause of Covid and is now training at the Olympic Training center in Chula Vista for the Paris ParaOlympics.

She had a serious struggle choosing between going on a mission or training for the Olympics and finally felt impressed to train. While here in San Diego she listened to President Nelsons recent broadcast to Southern California and loved it so much she sent him a thank you letter.

To make a long story short, the letter ended up in her Stake Presidents hand and that led to Sr Talbot being called on a Service Mission. She is now officially on a mission which involves her continued training, serving in the temple and giving a lot of speeches. Lisa invited her to teach her Relief Society class Sunday Feb 5. By all accounts she did a great job. We then had her over for dinner. She is a special young woman who is going to have a great impact on a lot of lives. She shared a lot of amazing experiences.