The baptistry of the Logan Utah Temple is typically a very busy place on Saturday mornings. But the Luster family found themselves there alone. Not another patron entered as the family tearfully performed baptisms.
Just the day before, Brinlee Luster had been diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. The news was especially shocking because Brinlee was only 21. Colon cancer is most frequently diagnosed in people over 651, yet she had a large tumor obstructing her colon.
“Those first few days after the diagnosis were just horrific. Things really did not look good,” says Justin Luster, Brinlee’s dad. His emotions and mind raced as he braced himself for the worst while also trying to figure out the next crucial steps. In the panic, he didn’t even think about going to the temple. That was Brinlee’s idea.
“The first thing I wanted to do when I was diagnosed with cancer was go to the temple,” she says. “That’s where I feel complete safety. I don’t feel fear in the temple.” So there the entire family gathered. And the tears they shed together weren’t those of grief, but of hope.
“As soon as we got the door open and went into the temple, those heavy feelings of anxiety lifted and I felt peace,” Justin says. “We all experienced heavy feelings of the Spirit. We were all crying. I’m sure the temple workers wondered what was going on.”
When the Luster family left the temple that day, a long and difficult road still lay before them. But the view looked a little different.
“Because of our testimonies, there is hope,” Brinlee says. “Life is not bleak. It is not dark. There is light.”
Prepared for the Diagnosis
Brinlee hadn’t felt like herself for more than a year prior to her diagnosis. She endured intense stomach pain and debilitating fatigue, but doctor’s appointments led to more questions than answers. So, she pushed ahead with her life, graduating from Utah State University in 2022 and marrying her now-husband, Parker.
But the constant pain and the struggle to find a job after graduation left her feeling depressed. Around this time, she was asked to speak in sacrament meeting and felt strongly she should talk on hope. As she prepared, she began thinking about her Aunt Christina, who had passed away from cancer at age 27.
“I kept feeling really, really close to her and that I needed to read her testimony of the Savior that she gave to her doctor before she passed away,” Brinlee says. She asked her mom, Alyse, to find the testimony and send it to her.
“I could not find it anywhere,” Alyse says. “But then I had a prompting, out of the blue, to walk over to a book that was on our bookshelf. I opened up the book and there it was. It was important Brinlee got that testimony; the Spirit was guiding to her things she was going to need.”
Just two days before Brinlee gave her talk in church, she underwent a colonoscopy that revealed she had stage 4 colon cancer. Yet from the moment the doctor, with tears running down his face, told her what was happening, Brinlee was calm.
“Coming out of the colonoscopy, I had an absolutely unearthly peace wash over me,” she says. “I had a lot of other experiences that are too personal to share, but I feel like I was very spiritually prepared for what was to come.”
Alyse and Parker were with Brinlee in the hospital on the day of the diagnosis.
“You could see God work in her; she was being bolstered,” Alyse says. “Heavenly Father was really holding Brinlee, and she was holding the rest of us, which is ironic: the one who’s dealing with the hard lifted us.”
God would continue to work in Brinlee as, for a time, the intensity of the situation grew.
On a Time Crunch
Brinlee needed to have surgery and start chemotherapy as soon as possible. If she waited, her surgeon said, she could die. But there was something Brinlee wanted to do first: fertility treatment. Because chemotherapy would drastically reduce her chance of conceiving in the future, the couple would need to collect and freeze embryos if they wanted to have children. But the surgeon could only give Brinlee a two-week window to complete the treatment. Then he would need to operate.
“We were going to do whatever we could to be able to have children,” Brinlee says. So, seven months into their marriage, Parker began frantically Googling resources to help them cover the costs of embryo freezing, which can be between $15,000 and $20,000 out of pocket. They also faced the hurdle of scheduling with a fertility doctor on such short notice.
“We were on a time crunch for my life,” Brinlee says, adding that they prayed for help. “My sweet cousin, who had just gone through infertility, she lined me up with her doctor, and they heard my story and, miraculously, they were able to get me in in the perfect window.”
After an excruciatingly painful process (both physically and emotionally), viable embryos were secured. Now the cancer treatment could begin.
Closely supporting Brinlee was her identical twin sister, Mariela. The twins had always done everything together: going to the same college, choosing the same major, and even meeting their future husbands on the same day. But now their lives looked very different, and Mariela grieved watching Brinlee suffer.
“I was very scared; I took things really hard. I was always thinking about what was going to happen next,” Mariela says. “There was a time when she was going in for surgery, and I was really stressed out—I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t do any of that. And Brinlee gifted me a necklace that said ‘Have faith’ with a little mustard seed. She had such peace about it all. I definitely had to work for it a lot more. I had to be in the scriptures and communicate with God frequently throughout the day and really rely on Him.”
As Mariela and the rest of the family continued to seek Christ in the coming months, He showed up for them in undeniable ways.
Walking With the Savior
Alyse drove Brinlee an hour from their home in Heber City, Utah, to Salt Lake City to receive chemotherapy drugs every other Monday. The drugs left her completely exhausted and extremely nauseated for days. She broke out in rashes and lost hair and weight. Yet, when reflecting on the experience, she also speaks of the Savior.
“My relationship with Jesus Christ was absolutely strengthened through this experience. I always heard the words to the song ‘Gethsemane’ in my head when I was going to chemo treatments: Jesus climbed the hill to the garden still. His steps were heavy and slow.
“I felt like I was walking with Him. He was walking with me. We were together. I understand Him better now, knowing what human suffering is; I’ve never felt closer to death.”
Brinlee’s family members had their own sacred experiences. Her dad’s initial reaction to the diagnosis was anger. The family had been fasting and praying before the colonoscopy that Brinlee wouldn’t have Crohn’s disease, so when the diagnosis came back as stage 4 cancer, “it was a pretty rough day.”
“I felt a little bit picked on, like, why is this happening to us? Why does my daughter have to suffer like this?” Justin says. But he kept turning to God, even as difficult emotions raged.
“I had various spiritual experiences in the temple,” he says. “There was one where I received a message from God through the Spirit, which is always hard to describe, but the message was, You’re not the only father here that’s going through this. I’m her Father, too. I understand the situation, and it’s also hard for me.”
The family saw evidence of Heavenly Father’s awareness of them more than once. For example, the decision was made at the last minute for Brinlee and Parker to fly to Houston, Texas, to see a doctor. They could only get one first-class ticket at the front of the plane and one regular ticket at the very back of the plane. Brinlee took the first-class ticket. The woman sitting next to her asked why she was going to Houston. When Brinlee explained the situation, the woman stood up, walked to the back of the plane, and kindly insisted that Parker switch seats with her.
“She had lost a parent to colon cancer, so she had empathy for us,” Justin says. “When you see someone do that kind of thing for you, it’s a connection to the Savior.”
Brinlee felt connected to the Savior through the kindness of people in their ward and neighborhood. A Young Women leader she had growing up was “an absolute rock.”
“She was fighting breast cancer and doing girls camp when I was a teenager. I never knew the pain she went through until I was diagnosed,” Brinlee says, growing emotional. “She came over a couple days after I was diagnosed to talk me through it. Then for my last eight chemo treatments, she and another family friend gave me gifts to open up before each one. She was so thoughtful and spent so much time helping me.”
Relieved and Reaching Out
In December 2024, a little under two years after her diagnosis, Brinlee and Parker got the news: she was in remission. A blood test had detected no cancer cells. Colon cancer isn’t considered cured until at least five years have passed with no more cancer, but the family is grateful and relieved to be at this point.
“It’s easy to say now, but if you zoom out and look at all that we’ve learned as a result of this, we’ve become more than we were before,” Justin says. He is close now with neighbors with whom he was only cordial before, noting a time a neighbor came over just to share a bowl of blueberries. The two men hugged as they bonded over loss and challenges—something they’d never done before.
“We also know a lot of people have been touched by this story that we don’t even know,” Justin says. He occasionally posted about his experiences on social media and was amazed at how far the messages reached. For example, a man from Israel commented to say he was touched because he has a twin brother.
Brinlee and Mariela are reaching people in their own way, through a project they started together during Brinlee’s cancer treatments—a small business called The Port Studio. They designed crew neck sweatshirts with zippers at the neckline to provide easy access to a patient’s chemo port.
“Brinlee would always stretch out her shirts when she got administered chemo. And it was often freezing in those infusion rooms, even in the summer, so that sparked the idea,” Mariela says. The crew necks also have zippers on both arms for easy IV access, and there are no metal parts, so they can be worn during medical scans. The word live is embroidered near the wrist.
But more than offering a product, the twins want to offer hope.
“We wanted to create a platform in the cancer space that didn’t feel so negative. We wanted to create something to remind people, ‘Hey, your disease doesn’t define you. You can still have hope and live intentionally every day.’ The Port Studio is about inspiring other people going through illness,” Mariela says.
To the sisters’ surprise, their first shipment of sweatshirts sold out. They’ve since had customers from Switzerland to Saudi Arabia.
“I just think it’s the most rewarding thing ever,” says Brinlee. “We get pictures of people, of little kids, with our crew necks, and to me it’s a full circle moment. It is just so heartwarming to see these people get comfort from what we created. And that’s exactly what this is for us—an outlet to help other people.”
‘There Is Hope’
Brinlee’s focus now is to live with faith in the future, which isn’t always easy. “It’s not often talked about how hard it is after cancer. I was so buoyed up with faith, and God was so close to me in the beginning, but now it’s like I have to go back to real life,” she says.
She is navigating how to get her career and other aspects of life back on track after cancer’s disruption. The road ahead is uncertain, so she relies on what she learned while on the path now behind her.
“I don’t know how to really put it into words, but I think absolutely what I got out of this was hope, joy, and just giving your will to God,” she says. “Hope is essential to joy. I really was able to experience joy on a different level. Hebrews 12:2 talks about how because of the joy that was set before Christ, He was able to endure the cross. And also, I think He could endure because His will was swallowed up in the will of the Father.
“You, too, have joy if your will is swallowed up in God’s. You have hope for the future, you have hope for the eternities, and you can live in the midst of a trial with joy, with hope, with positivity, because you know that there is life after death. Death isn’t the end. God lives, Jesus Christ lives, and there is hope.”
Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the March/April issue of LDS Living Magazine.
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A reminder of His love
Note
1. Katella, Kathy. “Colorectal Cancer: What Millennials and Gen Zers Need to Know.” Yale Medicine, January 17, 2024, yalemedicine.org/news/colorectal-cancer-in-young-people.
