An Adventure Begins
It’s Monday, August 25, 2014. The room is full of smiling, eager faces, all
ready for the start of another exciting day of Greenville College New Student
Orientation. We’ve explored the campus, looked
over our schedules, made new friends, and yet we’re still ready for more.
Something important.
Something that will really matter when the day is over.
“Take a seat,” they say. “Find your COR group.” Chaos
ensues as hundreds of freshman and transfer students try to get to the right
table. Once seated, we learn that we are
headed to East St. Louis to do various service projects at the Jackie-Joyner
Kersee Center, a few other non-profit organizations, and several of the local
schools. While some were less than
thrilled at the thought of traveling to East St. Louis, an area well known for
its high crime rate, most were thrilled at the idea of being able to serve in
an area where help was truly needed and appreciated. With spirits high, we load into the buses and
embark on the first part of our adventure.
Bumps in the Road
After everyone has eaten lunch, we are split up into groups
and sent off again in buses to visit a few of the schools and plant trees to
symbolize unity and growth between our two communities. Once we arrived, however, we realized that
while we were ready and excited to plant trees and the school was ready and
excited to have us, the trees had somehow missed the memo and were not there,
ready and waiting, for us to plant them. Refusing to let that slight problem get in our way, we instead were led
on a tour of the school, learning its history and the history of its students.
Eventually, the trees come and we get them planted before
returning to the Jackie-Joyner Kersee Center. There we began mending fences, moving bleachers, spray-painting lockers,
and much more. To end the day, we
started games of basketball, volleyball, and Frisbee with some of the kids in
the community before loading into buses once more and returning home.
We encountered bumps along the way, but we came out smiling.
The Outcome of the Adventure
A week later, I still remember the tree haiku my group
wrote, how heavy the bleachers were as we carried them across the field, the
sense of accomplishment when my group successfully planted our tree, and how
good it felt to be out of the heat when we were finally done. A year from now, or even a month, though, I
won’t remember any of those things. Instead,
what I will remember is something many people might find insignificant, but that
had a huge impact on me.
I will remember the
smiles.
The smiles we received as we walked past a classroom full of
students who stopped what they were doing to wave at us. Yes, all of us in our brand new orange
t-shirts who have never truly known what it is to go without.
The proud grins of the shop class as they explain their
yearly project of building a home for someone in need. Even though they don’t have much, they are
giving everything they have when all to often those of us with considerably
more also give considerably less.
The excitement written all over the face of the
superintendent as he told us about the progress their school was making, the
impact it was having, and how thrilled he was that our group would be returning
to help with their tutoring program. A
man who invests himself in the school, the students, and the community day
after day, while we were headed home and would return only every once in a while.
A Challenge is Given
How is it that the people with so little are usually the
ones willingly giving so much, and why is it that the people with so much are
too often the ones unwilling to give even a little? If I can only accomplish one thing in my
life, my goal is to convince as many people as I can to give as much as they
can.
What ways will YOU choose to impact the world around you?
It could be something as simple as a smile.
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It's been a while since I updated my blog (9 months... yeesh) and I am now a college student! This is a blog post I wrote for my Humanities I class, telling about our service project during NSO (New Student Orientation). Hopefully, there will be more of these to come!
Photo Credit: http://www.imagesbuddy.com/images/87/2013/08/dont-forget-to-smile-sticky-note-graphic.jpg
