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Monday, September 1, 2014

A Sea of Smiles


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

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