Catching the Spirit of Service

This morning brought us back to La Ciudad de la Alegria to continue our work. We were recognized and greeted by the staff as well as by many of the primary school children and residents of the senior care facility that we worked with last week. We've been mixing up the work assignments so that each student has the opportunity to serve at each of the work sites.

Today one group of students worked in the storage room sorting, counting, and folding linens. They got a tremendous amount of work done and are well on their way to having the items in the storage room organized and in ship shape.



A second group of students went to the primary school today to work with the 1st and 3rd grade girls and the 1st and 3rd grade boys on their English spelling words and pronunciation. Our students noticed a marked difference between working with the girls versus working with the boys- guess which ones were rowdier! After the formal classes were done, some of the students entered into a very spirited soccer game with some of the older boys that was enjoyed by all.



A third group of our students went to the senior care facility. We visited with the residents for a while then were asked to help sort and organize some of the donated clothes for a bazaar that will be held on Saturday for members of the community. The clothes are sold at reduced prices to those who need them, and the proceeds go to help the facility. We made some good progress, and with a few more days of work should have the job completed. After a couple of hours of work, we took a break to help with lunch, serving food, feeding residents, and then cleaning up afterwards.



Another chance for service opened up today as one of our students who is bilingual was invited to translate material on the organization's website from Spanish into English. It is a tremendous service for La Ciudad de la Alegria that will take many hours of mental effort, but it is a great opportunity for our student to get some hands on experience in the challenges of translation.



We left La Ciudad de la Alegria mid-afternoon for lunch, a siesta, a stop for ice cream on the way to La Salle University, discussion, and then burned off some steam with a friendly volleyball game. As we spent some time discussing and reflecting on the activities of the day, I was very impressed with the stick-to-it spirit that runs through each of our students. Several of them expressed their desire to see the jobs through and mentioned how great it will be to work to the end of some of these tasks. Others recognized that although the work may seem unimportant in the grand scale of things, any tasks that we can help with will free up time for staff members and help the community as a whole. I feel as though our students are catching the spirit of the service that they are doing, and I'm excited to see how this experience will affect their lives as they come home to Wichita and carry it on.