A Nice Gesture...

I didn't expect to get a picture sent to me this morning, a picture of my son who is serving a mission. If you're unfamiliar with Mormon Missionaries (or if all you know of them you've learned from The Book of Mormon musical...), the missionaries leave home and spend a year and a half or two years away preaching the Gospel.

And they don't have televisions.

This weekend our church held it's semi-annual conference where we receive instruction from church leaders. In America we can watch it on cable. Since my son and his mission companion (they're always together...) have no television, let alone cable, they watched conference at a home of a fellow member. At 10am, MDT, my phone buzzed and a picture of my son and his companion appeared on my phone, along with a nice message saying how nice it was watching conference with them.

Tonight my wife commented on how this will be the last conference my son will be in the mission field. The conferences are held every six months, so six months from now, he'll be home. I remember several decades ago when I was a missionary and it was conference time. Of course, we didn't have televisions, either. And even if we did have TVs, there's no way we would have been able to pick up a broadcast of conference in Denmark.

As we watched conference from the comfort of our home this morning, it was just a little bit better thanks to a nice gesture from a stranger. Then again, the church member's not really a stranger. She took in  my son, didn't she?