Posted by:
Aloysius
(
)
Date: September 22, 2017 12:31AM
My mother went to BYU during the Ernie Wilkinson days. If you ask her, cola drinks (even caffeine-free ones) are against the word of wisdom. Even though the church has never "officially" come out against them, those who seek the true light of the gospel will never partake of them. To this day, she boasts that in her entire life of 70 years she has never once tasted coca-cola.
I never did either until my first day in the mission field after leaving the MTC. I have a vivid memory of that day.
The mission van dropped me and a group of other greenies off around 11:00 a.m. in a church parking lot in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. It was the height of subtropical carribean summer--probably 90+ degrees with 100% humidity. I spent the next seven hours traipsing through a concrete jungle of slums filled with what, to me, seemed like filthy ramshackle huts made of precarious concrete block and trash with the complete stranger who would be my new companion with nothing to eat or drink.
Within ten minutes, I was completely lost in the winding streets, tunnels, short cuts, alleys, and literal holes in walls my companion took me through. As evening fell, I was disoriented, terrified, overheated, exhausted, and dehydrated. Oh, and my feet hurt.
Then, m companion took me to visit an investgator in a small, one-room house (with a sheet hanging as a curtain to separate the sitting area/kitchen from the bed). It was stifling hot inside.
As soon as we sat down the lady of the house sent her skinny little boy (he looked about 5 years old to me; he, like all the other children I had seen that day, was naked except for a pair of colorful brief-style underwear) to the tiny store down the street with 5 pesos to buy my companion and me something cold to drink. I had figured out that only the little stores (colmados) had any kind of refrigerators in this neighborhood.
He came back a few minutes later with two plastic cups and an ice cold bottle of... coca-cola.
My mind was racing and I started to panic. What should we do?! We couldn't send it back and ask for something else. I could see that it had already been opened. We couldn't refuse it. Not only would that be rude, it was apparent the the woman didn't have a lot money lying around for luxuries like cold soda. I looked at my companion. He was completely unfazed as he took a drink of the brown, bubbling liquid from his cup. "God will forgive me, I guess," I said to myself. Then I, too, took a drink.
Never, and I mean NEVER has any drink before or since tasted so amazingly good and satisfying as that cold coca-cola did on that evening 16 years ago.
Word of wisdom be damned.