cheek09
Registered: December 2008
City/Town/Province: Sugar Land
Posts: 1
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To know the feeling of providing a service to a neighbor in need is something essential to the development of a human being. It brings out the essence of love and innocence that everyone is initially instilled with at birth. The ability to love your fellow man enough to innocently act for their benefit without the thought of personal gain is something we rarely see in today’s world, yet is something critical to maintaining our natural biological cycle that makes us all human. The ability to understand and accept one another as fellow human beings, regardless of our petty differences, is also a skill many of us need to master. Everyone is different, everyone is an individual, and everyone is granted with another gift other than that of life, which they deserve to express. These views have been expressed in America’s youth today, but still needs to be pushed and supported in order to spread. In high school, it is paramount that students get involved with their own communities and learn how to interact with their peers and elders in a positive and productive manner. Engaging with these different people will also build communication skills needed in order to be successful in a world where an entirely different culture, language, and setting can be around the corner.
In the summer of 2008, I took a community service trip to New Orleans through my church’s youth group, hoping to maybe help build a couple of houses and clean up a street or two. When I got there though, I realized I had expected many other things without even fully realizing it, such as a shower, a bed, or even a daily clean pair of clothes.
We left on a Sunday morning in a big white van meant to fit 8 people comfortably, yet I got the feeling that the van was designed to fit 8 people without their luggage. In time, we fit ourselves together like a Tetris game, and were on our way. It was a 6 hour drive and none of it was particularly fun. We arrived at a small church connected to a pre-k school with as much enthusiasm to work and help out as our camp counselors would be willing to put up with. The programs director and his family welcomed us, encouraged us with a few ice breaker games, fed us, and sent us to bed. He left us with the warning that in the morning, it was going to be a whole new ball game. Alarms and camp councilors sounded throughout our little classroom sleeping areas promptly at 6:00 in the morning to get people up for breakfast, although most just skipped it to keep sleeping. Once the morning was underway and the late bloomers had joined the rest of us, we split into our individual teams to take on our individual sites. I was the main handy man of the work site and tried my best to keep it that way. For my age, compared to the rest of the group, I was the main contributor. I was the hardest worker and the one who usually solved any labor problems with a little extra personal effort. Our group’s project consisted mostly of the yard work for the newly built homes, which is a lot harder than the work you might be thinking of. We would start our day listening to our director on the general battle strategy for the day, and then we plan amongst our sub-group and execute. We went down the street to the big tan cargo box, like you see on trains, and collected the shovels, barrels, pot-hole diggers, gloves and any other equipment we felt we might have needed. The first day we moved 100 lb. chunks of concrete, something that looked and weighed similar to an iron sewer pipe, layers upon layers of plywood, and any other construction debris the other teams might have left behind. We then walked to the next block to move yard supplies like steel pipes and fencing to the area we had just come from. The building area we were assigned covered 3 blocks in the upper 9th ward. We then began the really long process of moving sand, lots and lots of sand, evenly onto the yards. Back and forth and back and forth we went with full 60-80 lb. barrels of sand. Up and down and up and down went the shovel-full’s of sand into the barrels. It was back breaking work and everyone who had a shovel, had blisters after the first day. Many of the older members couldn’t keep up, and so they were assigned different jobs to perform. We would end the day at 3 or 4 in the afternoon, our bodies broken from the work and burned from the blazing sun, and traveled half an hour to a homeless shower facility to wash up. We then made our way back, usually sleeping the whole way, to the little classrooms we called home. It was lights out at 11:00, and then we would start the whole thing over again, for a whole week.
The personal growth that we experienced during that week is something everyone should go through in their lifetime because of the deep impact and lasting impression it leaves on ones spirits. These kinds of experiences can only be achieved when participating in these sorts of activities and I sincerely feel that if more high school students were involved then it could significantly improve the health of the Americans of future generations, in mind, body, and spirit. As a leader in my own school, I feel I owe it to my peers to express the importance of such acts of humanity, and I do so as much as possible using my actions as the example.
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