Two weeks ago at church I was reminded of an experience that I had on my mission that I would like to share. During the years of 1992-1994 I served a Spanish speaking mission in the San Bernardino, CA mission. At that time, we were allowed to listen to church music on cassette tapes. Before I left on my mission, I purchased a cool yellow am/fm cassette player. I decided that I would turn the knob (yes we had knobs and not digital) all the way to the end on am so that just in case the radio came on that I would not hear regular music. I wanted to follow the rules and be a good missionary. Well, I came to find out that not all the missionaries felt the same way and word got back to the mission president that some were listening to music that was not approved. We were instructed to send home any electronic that had a radio on it.
Needless to say, I was a little angry and did not think it was fair that I was being punished because others were not doing what was right. Several of my not so good qualities probably came out around that time however, I learned a valuable lesson. I decided that all the little rules that they gave to missionaries was basically to just teach us obedience to those little rules so that when the big ones came around it would be easy to choose the right.
Back to church two weeks ago. Our sweet bishop stood and said that it had come to his attention that several of the youth were texting, and playing games on their phones, ipods, etc. during church and class. He said that there were to be no more electronic devices brought to church and that the parents needed to support this decision.
I will not lie, I was SO sad because I have all the manuals, scriptures, music everything on my iPhone so that I do not have to carry around tons of material and I love my iPhone. Because of the experience that I had on my mission, I was able to be humble and go straight home after sacrament meeting to get my paper scriptures.
Fast forward to yesterday. It was clarified that the rule was mainly for the youth and not so much for the parents, so I get to use my phone after all for scriptures at church.
How grateful I am for the gospel to constantly teach us humility and for my testimony of obedience.
