…when my kids were growing up we homeschooled them and would take them to a nearby high school for swim lessons at their pool. I was sitting out in the foyer waiting on my kids to dress and vacate the locker room and the head coach of the high school swim team saw me sitting there wearing my BYU gear and came up to me. He asked me if I went to BYU and then we chatted about the different Cougar sports teams. Because he didn’t use some of the LDS lingo/jargon you’d expect to hear in that type of conversation I guessed he wasn’t a member and asked him about his interest in BYU.

He said his kid got a scholarship to swim at BYU and because there weren’t a lot of schools offering any type of scholarship aid for swimming they committed. He said they are your basic Christian family and felt BYU’s values lined up with their own and that it would be a great fit. He then gushed about what a great school BYU was and how happy his son was there. After maybe a year or so swimming his son had an injury or something that prevented him from continuing on the swim team but that he continued to go to BYU even after that because he liked it so much. The father then continued to talk about current high school students he knew at the high school there and how great all the LDS people he met were.

Another story, I had a former boss who had purchased a chain of restaurants down in the SLC area and was going to be spending time traveling there from Alaska periodically to check on them. He was a born-again/evangelical who had some of their typical religious reservations about the LDS faith even though he and I had a great relationship and could talk about faith-based topics easily. I could tell he was a little uncomfortable thinking about going to Utah. I was very surprised to see how his impressions of LDS culture changed from reservation to enthusiasm and appreciation after his first visit. He was amazed at how clean neighborhoods and communities were and what a wholesome atmosphere it was. It definitely left a positive impression on him and changed his view of us in a good way.