Worth it

Today at Walmart, Laralee and I were wandering and bumped into a friend. We exchanged a few pleasantries, and then she mentioned that she’d been thinking a lot about the upcoming seminary year. Seminary runs concurrently with the school year– for every day of high school, the kids attend seminary beforehand. Now that we’re a few weeks away from the start of the school year, things are gearing up for seminary as well.

Anyway, she’s been thinking about her daughter, who’s been struggling with a few things of late. She told me that she’s really been hoping her daughter will be in my class. (I don’t have any control over my class– the students are assigned more or less randomly, with some minor adjustments by the people overseeing the seminary program.) Well, the class list had just been released a few days ago, and although it’s not official yet, I knew that her daughter was on my roster. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to tell her, so I did.

She almost broke down. After giving me a huge hug, she explained that she was so grateful for this, and excited that I could teach her daughter. I was completely taken aback, since I don’t think I’m all that great a teacher, and moreover the two other seminary teachers with whom I share a building are both better teachers than me. Still, it was pretty cool for a friend to trust me with her daughter and feel like I could somehow reach her in a way that the other awesome teachers perhaps couldn’t.

Teaching seminary is an amazing privilege, and little unexpected things like this remind me that all those long hours and early mornings are absolutely worth it.