Rose Family Scholarship/Shafer Trust Award
Roland-Story School District Foundation
High School Senior Future College Award 2018
For the last three years, I’ve had the privilege of going on a mission trip with my youth group to Dallas, Texas. Since the summer of 2015, we have visited an amazing group of educators, ministers, and everyday volunteers who work to bring refugees out of poverty and integrate them into the American lifestyle through faith. While I was there, I got to reach out to kids ages 2-17 years old that came from a variety of different countries. From Sunday night till Saturday morning, our team slept, taught, and ate in a small, three-bedroom apartment in a Burmese neighborhood. We would wake up to the children tapping on …show more content…
We also played games that helped them learn math, English as a second language, and reading. The main part of our afternoon, we spent teaching swim lessons. A large percentage of the refugees had little to no idea how to swim, making their chances of drowning very high. However, teaching them to swim and float was so much fun, and one of my favorite parts of the week! Adding onto my favorites, I was invited to play some guitar during Bible time. Some of the younger kids had a hard time sitting still, so we took them to another room and played some fun worship songs. I watched the joy on all of their faces as they danced and sang along to the music. What makes this a significant experience for me is that I get to give back to this community of people who are hope-filled and are waiting for someone to reach out to them. I very often take for granted what I have and what I am given, and some of these people are willing to travel from miles away to see us and experience the light of Christ through our works of service and …show more content…
The issue isn’t something specific, and it often isn’t the headline of a news station. The issue is respect. We are taught by our parents, our teachers, our friends, and the media that every person has a title. If I were to say “teacher”, or “construction-worker”, you would come up with an image in your mind that displays that title. Now what about if I were to say “criminal”, “terrorist”, or better yet, “freak”, what or who comes to your mind then? It makes me a bit emotional because our world is full of sin, regardless of what you do and don’t believe in. Many of us, including myself, sometimes accept this, and disregard the fact that people are bullied every day for different reasons. This issue of bullying, labeling, and ignoring others needs to end. One common misconception that we take from our childhood throughout our life is that strangers are dangerous. A stranger is someone who we don’t know, and might look like someone who could harm us. This is false, and I believe as adults, we should do a better job of inviting them into our lives since they are humans. When someone commits suicide, I hear things like, “They had so much to live for.” or “That’s so stupid. Why would they do that?” I’ve noticed that when mass-terrorism takes place, the person that initiates the act almost always kills themself in the process,
Roland-Story School District Foundation
High School Senior Future College Award 2018
For the last three years, I’ve had the privilege of going on a mission trip with my youth group to Dallas, Texas. Since the summer of 2015, we have visited an amazing group of educators, ministers, and everyday volunteers who work to bring refugees out of poverty and integrate them into the American lifestyle through faith. While I was there, I got to reach out to kids ages 2-17 years old that came from a variety of different countries. From Sunday night till Saturday morning, our team slept, taught, and ate in a small, three-bedroom apartment in a Burmese neighborhood. We would wake up to the children tapping on …show more content…
We also played games that helped them learn math, English as a second language, and reading. The main part of our afternoon, we spent teaching swim lessons. A large percentage of the refugees had little to no idea how to swim, making their chances of drowning very high. However, teaching them to swim and float was so much fun, and one of my favorite parts of the week! Adding onto my favorites, I was invited to play some guitar during Bible time. Some of the younger kids had a hard time sitting still, so we took them to another room and played some fun worship songs. I watched the joy on all of their faces as they danced and sang along to the music. What makes this a significant experience for me is that I get to give back to this community of people who are hope-filled and are waiting for someone to reach out to them. I very often take for granted what I have and what I am given, and some of these people are willing to travel from miles away to see us and experience the light of Christ through our works of service and …show more content…
The issue isn’t something specific, and it often isn’t the headline of a news station. The issue is respect. We are taught by our parents, our teachers, our friends, and the media that every person has a title. If I were to say “teacher”, or “construction-worker”, you would come up with an image in your mind that displays that title. Now what about if I were to say “criminal”, “terrorist”, or better yet, “freak”, what or who comes to your mind then? It makes me a bit emotional because our world is full of sin, regardless of what you do and don’t believe in. Many of us, including myself, sometimes accept this, and disregard the fact that people are bullied every day for different reasons. This issue of bullying, labeling, and ignoring others needs to end. One common misconception that we take from our childhood throughout our life is that strangers are dangerous. A stranger is someone who we don’t know, and might look like someone who could harm us. This is false, and I believe as adults, we should do a better job of inviting them into our lives since they are humans. When someone commits suicide, I hear things like, “They had so much to live for.” or “That’s so stupid. Why would they do that?” I’ve noticed that when mass-terrorism takes place, the person that initiates the act almost always kills themself in the process,