"Root-te-toot, Root-te-toot, we are the boys of the institute"

[aaronshaf]

Behold, the profound benefits of continuing revelation.

http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/206891/

Packer: Turn off TV, tone down the hair
KATE MCNEIL - Daily Herald

For rent: one room in the great and spacious building. Must "tease hair incessantly" and watch TV. Slovenly dress and behavior preferred.

President Boyd K. Packer told Brigham Young University students on Tuesday that today's entertainment can catapult faithful members into the building: "Largely because of TV we are not looking over at the great and spacious building, we are living inside of it."

During his 30-minute speech, Packer exhorted students to dress modestly and look like Latter-day Saints. If not, they might as well be in that "great and spacious building" mentioned in the Book of Mormon.

Packer also sang to the students a song from his days at the institute of religion at Weber State: "Root-te-toot, Root-te-toot, we are the boys of the institute, we don't smoke and we don't chew, and we don't go with girls that do."

"You will be safe if you look like, act like and groom like a Latter-day Saint," Packer said.

Packer, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, focused his comments on the story of Lehi's dream, a passage in the Book of Mormon.

"Lehi's dream of the iron rod has in it everything a young Latter-day saint needs to understand the test of life," Packer said.

In the dream, Lehi sees people holding to an iron rod, attempting to walk to a tree of life, symbolizing the love of God. A "great and spacious building" deters those on the rod, and symbolizes a worldly lifestyle.

"You are in it, all of us are in it," he said of the dream. "Read it carefully, then read it again.

"You're better than we were," Packer admitted, adding that the audience's children would be even stronger morally. But when it comes to dress and grooming, Packer suggested today's generation is falling short.

"Sometimes (holding to the rod) is so simple a thing as how you groom yourself," he said, later mentioning "girls who incessantly tease their hair so as to look like it hasn't been combed" as an example of poor grooming.

Packer compared his post-World War II college days at Weber State with these moral wars of today.

"You too live in a time of war, a spiritual war that will never end," he said.

To combat this war, Packer told students to "never be ashamed or embarrassed about the doctrines of the gospel."

Packer encouraged students to read the scriptures and pray always.

"The Book of Mormon has always been my iron rod," he said.

Kate McNeil can be reached at 344-2549 or kmcneil@heraldextra.com.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.