Then, one fine day, my parents purchased a little 9" television with built in VCR! It was supposed to keep anyone from resorting to murder (mostly my parents) as we took a road trip from Illinois to Oregon via Utah. The TV was propped up on the cooler between the driver and front passenger seats and plugged into the cigarette lighter. We were traveling in style!
After the vastly successful road trip (the most I can remember is that no one in the family could eat gummy bears until about five years later -- but that's a story for another time) we had a television again!
It was small, sure, but the screen looked really big if you got really close and the important buttons were on the front so it didn't matter if the remote was lost. We got about four channels on that TV: NBC, CBS, PBS, and the local religion channel.
When the regular networks were really stinking up the air, we would watch the religion channel as a last resort to continue basking in the soft glow of consumerism at it's finest. That's when I was first introduced to church on the television.
What a novel concept!
Worship in your pajamas or underwear if you choose! Why didn't we, as LDS, get to do that on Sundays?!
As it turns out, we do. Twice a year! I just didn't know about it when I was a kid because the church had a satellite dish so we got to go there on Saturday as well as Sunday to view the General Conference messages in the chapel. My mom would sometimes let us bring library books, coloring books, and quiet toys to keep us occupied during those long meetings. And in between sessions: pot luck time! All in all, it was pretty great.
But, there's just something to be said about listening to prophets of God speaking in your own home via technology that you use every other day of the year. Inviting the gospel into my home through such mundane means seems to consecrate those vessels and serve as a reminder for what amazing things technology can accomplish. It's just sort of special.
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