Pious Technology

Dennis surprised me with a new cell phone for Christmas!  I wasn't expecting it at all and he came up with the idea all on his own.  We are fairly new cell phone owners; we never had any before moving to the Philippines.  We had only been here for two days when our friends helped us each get one.  It was a steep learning curve at first but since we only purchased the cheapest, most basic model available I managed to figure it out.  We quickly discovered that cell phones are not really a luxury here- if you don't have one you could easily get lost amongst the 20 million people in our city or waste lots and lots of time looking for something when you could send one text and be on your way.

Well, this new one has lots of bells and whistles.  I spent about an hour last night trying to figure out the new settings.  I couldn't figure out how to put the time on a.m. instead of p.m. before I went to bed.

At midnight I awoke to a loud voice next to my ear.  Disoriented, I couldn't remember where I was or what this voice could be!  Then I realized it was my new cell phone and I managed to push some random buttons to make the thing be quiet.

At 3am the voice startled me awake again.  I leaped out of bed and grabbed the phone, trying to shut it off. This time I took it into the bathroom and left it there on the counter lest I hear from it again and mangle it in my surprise.

This morning I took a good look at it trying to figure out what on earth was going on with it.  Apparently my phone is Catholic.  And likes to pray.  So at midnight I was hearing the "Angelus," and at 3am I was hearing the "3 O'Clock Prayer."  A very devoted phone, don't you think?

It's just too bad the a.m. and p.m. were so mixed up.  I might have been a little more heavenly minded had it happened during the day....