I am so grateful that God gave me social skills!

So for those of you who know me, I am an ESL minor. And for those of you who don't know me all that well...I am an ESL minor. This means that in addition to teaching history, supposedly I will also be qualified to help English Language Learners (ELL's) to learn English. Not a difficult concept, right? Anyway, in one of my ESL classes, we have to visit an ELL's family and talk to them about their education, their beliefs of education, how they view education, do they volunteer in schools, etc, etc...So we drive down to Springville, my partner and I, and we meet up with my former teacher here at BYU, who teaches ESL in Springville , and we knock on this door of one of her students that she is concerned about. BTW, I felt like I had been transported one year ago back to the mission. The mom was really taken off guard by our visit and asked, "is my son in trouble?" We told her no, but she was kind of on edge that these random people were standing on her door step. Yeah, well, I must give myself a pat on the back because what could have been a very awkward meeting turned out to be really positive! Hooray! Not only did we find out the things we needed to for class, but we also did some BRTing (Building a relationship of trust) as well as getting the correct phone number. Background: We had to do a little bit of searching for the correct phone number. Definitely a mission deja vu incident. (I don't think I spelled that right). So we were able to ask her a bit about her background as well as find out some of the concerns she has for her son. We wouldn't have been able to find out that information if we hadn't been able to put her at ease. I find that a friendly nod, consistent eye contact, and smiles really do work! Don't believe me?? Try it!

Moral of the story: it pays to be social. Here's my theory, if you can talk to anyone, you can really become friends with anyone. If you can be friends with anyone, then you get what you want from anyone. If you can get what you want from anyone, you can manipulate anyone...oh wait...forget that last part. But seriously, it pays to have social skills. The best thing about it, you can develop them! See How to Win Friends and Influence People.

One more thing...thank goodness for serving a mission! If I hadn't had that experience, I'm not sure how I would've handled the potential awkwardness. In honor of my former mission companion, Sister Powell, "chalk one up for the mission."

And in honor of missions, here's a pic of me on the mish. I pride myself on talking to basically anyone, like awesome Sik men. Ok I'm done. Seriously.