Assignment 3: Taetum Crawford

As I mentioned in my previous post; I play softball and am heavily involved in my church. those two activities are what have really caused me to travel. Through softball I have traveled all over the south eastern part of the United States. I've had the opportunity to join teams that traveled further and played more competitively, but i always turned it down. Some may think me crazy for it, and i thought I was crazy for a little bit. however, now i am sure that i made the right choice back then because it allowed me to really get connected into my church and opened up even greater opportunities.

Some of the most life changing trips i have ever been on have been with the people within my church and more specifically my youth group. i have gone on three mission trips, more than a dozen retreats, and camp seven times. through those trips i have been to an orphanage of sorts in Alabama and the South West Waterfront district of D.C. 

In Alabama, my youth group partnered with Big Oaks Ranch in Gadsden,  Alabama. Big Oaks is this hugs property where at risk boys (orphans or boys in the foster system) are taken in by various families on the ranch. The houses will have anywhere from five to ten boys in them, and every single boy works on the ranch, keeping the cattle maintained, fixing the fences, and the such. There is a pool, a baseball field and two ponds that the boys have to play in and on. in its first years it was hard to maintain it because there was so much work to do, so for the week we were down there, my youth group would put up fences by pounding T-post into the ground, move rocks from one point to another so that we could help reduce erosion on the creek beds, and paint fences, ect. The best part about being down there was getting to know some of the guys and their stories, and hearing them ask the youth leaders why the heck a bunch of middle and high schoolers would pay money to come and help them with the very work they dreaded. i got to see so many of my friends grow as people by doing all of the sometimes grueling work with a smile on their face, happy as can be to help out the younger people who could barely drive a post in an inch. 

In D.C. i witnessed those similar attitudes from the people we were helping and from my comrades. But D.C. is this place i got to see myself grow. i am not a people person. honestly the thought of talking to people terrifies me and I do everything in my power to avoid being social, but in D.C. something changed. i tried to step out of my comfort zone and decided to say hi to some people, but unlike in Kentucky where you'll get a "hi how ya doin?" back i just got empty stairs. i realized southern charm did not exist in this city and that was not okay with me. so that week I made it my mission to bring southern hospitality to the north. i plastered a smile on my face and every person i saw i would smile at and make a point to say "Hi How are you doing?" and i would almost make them acknowledge the fact that someone actually wanted to know how they were doing. the result was incredible. all but a few of the people gave me confused looks, and then they would smile (still confused) and most responded with a "Hi, im doing good, how about you?" and then we would both move on, but i would see that they now walked with a bit of a quizzled smile on their face, and that meant the world to me.

from these experiences i learned a lot, more than i can tell in a short little blog posting because there are dozens of stories i could tell, each with a lesson attached. so, if i had to choose a main thing, i guess it would be that the world is pretty cold, and kinda terrifying. but that being said, it has potential. when someone takes the time to show the world they care, even if its just through one or two people, it makes a difference. people notice when someone does something altruistic, because its so rare in today's world of a competitive you focused society. i guess this shows that i think there are more important things than being top in my class or the best at anything for that matter. instead of, in my words, wasting my time trying to be perfect and get a 100 on every assignment,  id rather use that time to reach out and make connections with the younger girls on my softball team who need a good influence, or take a someone i meet just out and about to show them that someone does care about and wants to be around them, or stay up an hour later than i would like to talk to someone who just needs someone to distract them from destructive thoughts. it doesn't necessarily enrich my academic environment, because instead of expanding my vocabulary i make a point of being able to talk in whatever way and whatever jargon is best understood by the person im speaking to.