Guiding light: Mentor helps Iranian immigrant map her future
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[NOTE: This article is part of an ongoing series profiling Church members who serve as mentors to associates receiving training at Deseret Industries.]
Betsy Stoddard's foray into mentoring a Deseret Industries associate commenced during a conversation with her bishop.
"He called me in and asked if I would mentor a young girl from Iran," said Sister Stoddard, a member of the Sandy Utah Mount Jordan Stake. "I looked at him and I go, 'I don't speak the language.' I had never mentored, so I just accepted the assignment."
The person Sister Stoddard mentors is Anissa, a 23-year-old native Iranian. Back home, Anissa wanted to be a pharmacist and attended university for a year in pursuit of that goal.
"Well," Sister Stoddard said, "(Anissa) had already had one year of pharmacy school in Iran when the new regime showed up at the university and basically told all the women to go home — they were not going to be educated any more. When she went home, her parents said, 'Let's send you to United States to get educated now.' "
After meeting with Anissa's supervisors at Deseret Industries, the first order of business for Sister Stoddard and her new charge was to chart a course for Anissa's academic future.
"She wanted to be a pharmacist," Sister Stoddard said. "We looked into it, and she discovered if she went to the university it's almost like becoming a doctor — it's many, many years. Then I showed her that for being a pharmacist tech, she could accomplish that in probably about a year and a half at Salt Lake Community College.
"I told her, 'Think about it, what you really want. I'm not going to discourage you from anything you want. You think about it, and then let me know.' And she came back a couple of days later and said, 'I think I'll be the pharmacy tech.' "
From the outset of their relationship, Sister Stoddard has found Anissa to be a hard worker and extremely motivated to do what it takes to obtain her education.
"Any assignment I gave her to do, I thought I'd just have to nag," Sister Stoddard said. "But no, she gets it done — she just does it! She's achieving; she's not letting her anything stop her from achieving what she wants.
"I'm just very proud of how she's achieving and learning. She is just very self-motivated. She knows what she wants, and she's achieving it."
Anissa is on course to graduate from SLCC in December with her pharmacy-technician certificate. In addition to continuing her job at Deseret Industries, she also works a second job at Wal Mart. She continues to meet with Sister Stoddard several times per month.
"I'm more like a little mother with her," Sister Stoddard said. "So when I go over and I check on her at Wal Mart, I try and let her see the positive things. There are so many negative things in this world, and if we want to sit and focus on that we'd never get out of bed. So you have to look at positive things.
"More or less, I'm just like her mother but I'm not really her mother. I know she talks to her mother over in Iran a lot. Hopefully we're all giving her the same advice."
