Prompt #1: Please share a volunteer experience and its impact on your life.

 

 

 

The Sowing of Peace: The Reaping of Hope

 

 I am a proud member of The Girl Scouts of America.  This wonderful group of young ladies has brought to life the true meaning of serving others.  Through this organization we’ve learned that putting others’ needs ahead of our own, and living a life in service to mankind, is a tremendous honor and joy.  As a troop, we’ve been honored to provide yard care to several elderly community members, assist veterans at our local Veterans Home, work with the younger scouts as they develop their skills and train to become future leaders, clean up the town after celebrations, serve food for community gatherings, visit shut-in’s, and much more.

 

I was also privileged to have been selected to be a student ambassador to Europe through the People to People program. This program exists to promote peaceful relations between countries, beginning with the youth, and to teach and provide an avenue for the student ambassadors to serve those in foreign lands. Through this amazing program I was given the honor of representing the United States, telling the Europeans of the value I place in our great country.   It was indeed a tremendous honor to be selected to participate in this amazing opportunity as an ambassador for peace and social justice, as well as an award recipient of their Ambassador Award for Exemplary Service. 

 

But the greatest community service opportunity I’ve been honored to participate in has been with the delightful, yet impoverished, children on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Northern Minnesota.  I was given the awesome privilege to create and lead a summer camp, called Camp Delwater, as my Gold Award project for Girl Scouts, and have since received this highest honor.

 

After many hours of preparation, including fund raising, finding volunteers, planning lessons, amassing craft supplies, shopping for and preparing meal plans, and training the staff, the day finally arrived to meet the campers.  It was then that I met one of the Indian children, whose name is Samantha.  Samantha was a camper.  Samantha came without any changes of clothing, without any personal items, without any smile on her face or in her heart.  Samantha had no intentions of trusting anyone at the camp, and certainly not a white girl with braces and clean hair.  She wasn’t about to let down her guard.  She had been hurt too many times.  She had tried friendship and trust, and they’d backfired.  She only showed up at the camp to eat, because Samantha was hungry.  But Samantha didn’t know she was hungry for much more than food.  She was so terribly lonely, so unbelievable scared, and so tired.

 

I met Samantha first at the check in table.  She had a scowl on her face that screamed, “Don’t mess with me”.  I remembered that look.  I remembered giving it to the neighbors when they tried to comfort me after my dad’s death.  I remember seeing it on the face of my mom as she was asked to provide the obituary information to the funeral director who had asked too many questions.  I knew Samantha’s look, and I knew I could help.

 

I never understood grief.  I never needed to.  And then I did.  I would never have known compassion for Samantha and children all over the world just like her, had I not experienced it for myself.  I wouldn’t call compassion a skill, but interpreting grief on the face of a child intent on disguising it may be a skill.  I have acquired that skill, and the compassion flows when I recognize it. 

 

I’ll never forget Samantha.  She’ll forever be the little girl who began camp as a tough and angry girl, but left as a little tender, smiling, and peaceful child.  I accepted that it was only temporary, and I even witnessed the hardening of her face as she boarded the bus that would return her to her difficult life.  But for a week I helped meet her needs of food and clothing.  I gave her a toothbrush and soap.  I watched over her while she swam so that she would be safe.  But, more importantly, I listened to her story.  I let her yell and question my motives.  I watched her melt, and then I loved her.  I sowed the seed of peace and hope in a heart very desperate to receive it.

 

I don’t know what Samantha is doing today, but I know that, for a week, she was allowed to forget the struggle and just play.  For a week, she felt peace.  I think she’ll be back.  I hope she comes back.  I know I’ll be there if she does, and I’ll be looking for her – waiting for her.  I’ll feel sad if she doesn’t come back, but I feel so very good that she came the first time.  I think she learned that even white girls with braces can be considered friends, and I learned that angry Indian girls can be loved.  Although it was just one girl amid sixty campers that week, I knew that I had made a lasting connection with her, and that my volunteer staff had each connected with one or more campers, leaving them with a newfound emotion – hope.  Bringing peace to the world is certainly a worthy goal, but it begins by bringing peace to just one person.  I’ve left a deposit in Samantha.  I expect the hope and peace I sowed that week to grow into a love that she’ll share with another, and another, and another.  The impact has great potential, even when the beginning is so small.

 

I’ve made a commitment to Samantha and to myself.  I’ll remember the words my dad taught me before he died, “View everyone you meet as a gift from God”.  I know that, through my continued participation in Girl Scouts, my continued commitment to serving with my church youth group, and my desire to earn a law degree and return as a legal advocate to the impoverished neighborhoods both on the Indian reservation and in other disadvantaged parts of our world, I will be blessed as I commit my future to being a blessing and serving others in need.