You never know who's listening

I was sitting in sacrament meeting on Sunday, listening to the speaker, while Ian played at my feet.  (Why my boys can't sit on the bench for a little over and hour- when they can sit on the couch at home watching TV for hours at a time- is beyond me!)  Anyway, as I was sitting there, listening intently, a little voice from down below said, "Joseph Smith is dead?"- a little too loudly, I might add.

I don't even recall what the speaker had said that might have inspired this question from my 5 year old child, but as the words left his lips, and I looked down into his eyes, it was like he had just been told that someone he knew and loved had just died.

This year in Primary they have been studying about the Prophet Joseph Smith- everything from when he was a boy to when he became a prophet.   I guess they haven't gotten to the part where he was martyred yet, or they explained it in a way that he just didn't understand.  To him, this man he has been learning about all year is as alive and real as his dad is.  That is until he heard our speaker say something about him being dead.

Isaac, snickered and hurried to answer before I could.  "Yep.  He's dead."  

Ian's eyes grew wide, his lips turned down and he looked like he was going to cry.  "How did he die?", he asked.  

Again, Isaac chimed in- "He was shot!", he said.  And then he snickered again- mostly because he knew that it had happened a long time ago and he could tell that Ian had no idea of this at all.  

Ian, again with the look of horror on his face said, "That is NOT funny!"

I leaned over to Erik and whispered that we had failed as LDS parents, somewhere along the way, by not teaching our son the whole story of the Prophet Joseph Smith.  

I guess as we shared this story with him we forgot to talk about how his life ended.  It's too bad he had to find out that way- in sacrament meeting, but the good news is that he WAS paying attention!  Who would have thought?