The following is excerpted from the Church News. To read the full article, CLICK HERE. 

Born April 14, 2015, with hypoplastic right heart syndrome — a rare and severe heart condition — Ridge Petersen has been on a journey that’s anything but ordinary.

Hypoplastic right heart syndrome means that the right side of Ridge’s heart didn’t develop properly. In essence, Ridge was born with only half a functioning heart. From the moment of diagnosis, his parents knew the road ahead would be challenging.

Ridge is the third of six sons of Tagg and Katie Petersen, who reside in Dallas, Texas.

With Ridge going from having half a heart to a new heart, ward, stake and community members have rallied around the 10-year-old.

The first few years

Ridge’s parents were notified of his heart condition on Dec.1, 2014, five months before he was born.

“We found out while I was still pregnant,” Katie Petersen recalls. “So, we could plan accordingly, like I had to deliver at a different hospital so he could get the care he needed right away.”

At only six days old, Ridge underwent his first open-heart surgery at Dallas’ Medical City Children’s Hospital. Two more invasive open-heart procedures followed — one at six months and another at age 3. These surgeries aimed to reconfigure Ridge’s circulatory system to work solely with the left side of his heart

“It was daunting,” Katie Petersen said. “But we knew that God was with us every step of the way.”

As Ridge sat in an interview with Church News, he smiled, explaining that he was on the heart-lung machine several times growing up.

President Russell M. Nelson, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, served on the research team that developed the heart-lung machine that supported the first open-heart surgery using cardiopulmonary bypass in Minnesota.

President Nelson was appointed as an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Utah by Dr. Philip B. Price in 1955. While working in that role, President Nelson built his own heart-lung bypass machine.

Last year, Ridge wrote a letter of gratitude to President Nelson for his groundbreaking research.

To read the full article, CLICK HERE.