Taco Bell Makes Friends :)

My friends Mom believes that she could use Taco Bell to solve world hunger. I am not quite that ambitious but I do believe that Taco Bell helps make friends! When Rebekah announced our service activity I totally expected it to be a walk in the park. Our objective was to apply the principle of "Knowing Each Heart" and to demonstrate friendship, love, and compassion to people that we have never met. I was excited to do this because I usually tend to join another person eating lunch and we'll chat until we run out of things to say....and then pretend to text our friends. Yesterday in this activity, I felt an extra amount of pressure to not only ask where they're from, what they're studying, and how they like the weather that day; but instead to really know them on a deeper level.
I stood in the line for Taco Bell talking to my sister and she was telling me about a book she's reading for a class and two guys in front of us joined in on our conversation. We were able to talk easily until ordering our burritos and then we sat at different tables. While waiting for our food, I heard someone say "so what's good here?", and as a Taco Bell fanatic I took the liberty to explain the menu, differences in prices, and the secrets of beef vs. steak. The man I helped just laughed at me and put his full faith in me and allowed me to order for him. It was really funny and then we just made small talk waiting for our food together about sports we like and food we eat! My sister Kat and I sat with someone who was by himself. I introduced myself and asked what homework he was doing. He explained that he was mapping out his weekly schedule for his Student Development class. We continued talking about his class and then I went on to explain that I also was in a Student Development with a different kind of course outline and explained a little bit about the class. We talked more about how he's liking his classes and it was really easy talking to him, he was really sweet. He had to go to his one o'clock class and then I sat with Kat finishing our lunch. One of the first guys that we stood in line with came back and said bye to us and mentioned that he was happy he got to meet us. It was simple and I know he didn't think to much into it, he was just being friendly, but it meant a lot to me for some reason. I think because I was particularly aware of people and relationships in those few hours. I feel like it was a better experience for me than it was for the people that I was getting to know. I was so impressed by the guy who just wanted to say goodbye and realized that it's those little moments that make such a difference in my day! So while I was supposed to be reaching out to people, it was the other side that made such an impression on me. It definitely was harder than I expected to "Know Each Heart", I hope that now I will be able to learn from this experience and make my small-talk conversations a little more worth while and personal...because there really does come a point when you can't talk about the weather anymore :)