Blog #5: Harvest Time

Two main themes come to mind when I think about my experience with World Relief. The first comes from our trying and frustrating times with our first family. I learned that with frustrations come the perfect opportunities to be patient. We gave that family almost a month's worth of chances before we finally decided to move on and find another family. I don't know what it was about working with World Relief that made me feel so patient, because normally in that kind of situation, I would not have held on and waited as long as we did. But, I knew that we were helping someone in need, so I felt the need to be patient and allow them any time that they needed.

The second main theme I noticed during our experience came from working with Margaret. She taught Emelia and me valuable lessons about faith, perseverance, acceptance, and equality. She showed us that it shouldn't matter what culture you are from or what religion you affiliate with. What matters is that we are all people who are from the same God who loves us equally. She taught me that stereotypes are low and deserve to be broken. She values every person, which is something I need to work on.

Both of these themes will help me greatly in my future interpersonal encounters. Patience doesn't just have to be shown when working with someone who doesn't speak your language. It has to be shown no matter who you're talking to or what you're doing. Everyone is different and approaches things in different ways, and it is important to be patient and accepting of different methods of approaching a situation. The lessons about faith, perseverance, acceptance, and equality are perhaps the most important ones I learned during this experience. Everyone is going to experience hardship in life at some point and it is very important to keep your faith close to your heart and not give up. We are all going to meet so many different kinds of people in life and, while they may be different from us, we must realize that we are all from the same God and therefore we all deserve to be treated with the same amount of respect. These are all incredibly valuable lessons that I will carry with me into every encounter in my life.