Hard Things

I went to a Scout Leader training on Saturday. The guest speaker from LDS-BSA relations gave a lecture on the 'Why' of scouts as the activity arm of the priesthood. He gave the statistic that in 1997 4% of missionaries were sent home early from their missions and in 2007 it went up to 7%. When Elder Perry was asked why this was he said something like, 'It is because we have not trained our boys to do hard things.'
I've been thinking a lot about that. Are we looking for the easy answer, the easy way out of living life? Are our boys being asked to do hard things? Certainly city boys have always had it easier as far as work goes, but now it is even easier to be a city boy. You don't have to walk/ride your bike to school/friends/sports... your mom carpools. You don't have to have a person to person confrontation... you can IM or text. Everything that has to be done has a YouTube video or a starter kit... you don't learn much by trial and error any more. Even reading has become easier. Our boys use the scripture readers from the church, which are great tools, but they aren't learning to read the scriptures and make them come alive from just text. And this is huge at our house, you have easy entertainment right at your fingertips... you don't have to work to 'have a good time.' You can just flip a switch (which, I realize most folks don't flip any switches anymore, but press a button), and voila, you are numbed by flashing lights. In fact yesterday I was assessing what Alex needed to do after dinner, which consisted of chores, homework, reading, and piano practice. Mind you, this was after an entire day, minus church, where he all he did was entertain himself. He said to me, 'I don't want to do any of that. I just want to play and do fun stuff.' I asked Dan, 'Did I miss the manual that said life was supposed to be fun 24/7?' Boy, my young men have a rude awakening coming to them. Ah, if only their mom didn't care so much (and have a Scout calling!) Life is about to flip directions around here. We are going to do hard things together so my boys will be able to build their character in anticipation of whatever the Lord sees fit to ask them to do. And we are going to learn to entertain ourselves. I've said before I want my boys to be bored. That is about to be brought to an all new level. (Out of love, of course :))