9th Grade Memory

Lately I've really been reflecting on experiences from my past, and unfortunately there are some of them I would rather just forget. Don't get me wrong, there isn't anything super "bad" or delinquent, but mostly I just regret how I treated certain people, or how I shouldn't have said something I did, or how I should have said something but didn't. One of these experiences that I've been thinking about lately happened when I was in the 9th grade and my English class read the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

I don't remember especially liking the book very much, but I do remember the assignment our teacher gave us after we read it. Part on the story is that in the future all the books are burned but certain people take it upon themselves to memorize whole books so that they can preserve them, therefore "becoming" the book. The assignment that my teacher gave us was to choose a book that we thought was important enough to us to memorize, and then present to the class the book that we could "become". I stewed over this assignment for a long time, because the only book I could think of important enough to memorize was the Book of Mormon or the Bible.

But I was SO hesitant to choose one of those books because 1) my teacher wasn't a member of the LDS church (which in my Eastern Idaho High School was kind of a rarity), and 2) because I was afraid that the other members of the church in my class (which was nearly everyone, except for one boy who was Jewish and a few others who were other Christian faiths) would think I was being "self-righteous" by picking to memorize the scriptures. I ended up choosing to "become" Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingles Wilder because it was the first book that I ever read all by myself. It was the book that first opened to me the beautiful world of words and got me hooked on reading. If I remember correctly, which I do, my presentation was very poorly done and kind of pathetic.

After all the class presentations were finished our teacher got up and with a surprised smile on her face told us that we were the first class she had EVER had in all her years of teaching (which let me tell you were MANY) where NO ONE had chosen to "become" the Bible or the Book of Mormon. She didn't say anything else about it and moved on with her lesson, but that remark has stung me to my soul ever since. It has kind of haunted me that out of a class of 20+ church going Christian teenagers, not one of us had the courage or strength to bear testimony of our faith. Perhaps others had different reasons for not speaking out, but I realize now that I let fear and insecurity stop me from bearing witness of Jesus Christ and of the importance of scriptures in my life. After this experience in 9th grade I promised myself that I wouldn't ever let an opportunity to bear my testimony, whether it was to people of my same faith or not, go by without acting upon it.

Lately, I've been thinking about this and remembering how awful it felt to know that I had missed such a wonderful opportunity to testify of my faith. I realize that there are so many opportunities in my life to bear witness of Jesus Christ and of the restored gospel that I just let slip away because I am afraid or insecure. You think that almost 10 years later I'd have learned something more about how to be a witness of God "at all times and in all places"! I don't know why I felt like I needed to write a post about this memory, but I've been thinking about it for some time now. I guess I just needed to remind myself that it is important for people to speak up about what they believe and why they believe it. The world is so full of prejudices and misconceptions and the more we can learn about the beliefs of others, the more we come to love and understand them.