Honestly, it is hard to believe that month one has already come and gone. It went so, so quickly, and I just now have time to reflect on our first stop: Frutillar, Chile.
Over the past month, I spent five days a week in a seventh grade classroom. Each member of my team had chosen one grade to spend their days with. My choice was the 7th graders. Sometimes, I lead lectures or helped with assignments. Most of the time, I just sat in the classroom and listened to their teachers with them. During breaks from class, I got to play basketball with them, do arts and crafts with them, sing for them, and dance with them.
In the first week, I was asked by a teacher at the school to present about myself, and why I thought volunteering was important. She told me that the culture there saw absolutely no value in volunteering, and she wanted to start changing her students’ minds about it.
So, I had an opportunity to tell them about my life: my family, Colorado, my degree from a university, my love for hockey, soccer, and travel, etc. I was even given an entire class period to talk about my love of volunteering. I shared my experiences building houses in Mexico, getting to serve the children of the Northern Arapaho Tribe on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, and spoke a little bit about what I am doing now (The World Race). I told them that one of the best parts of volunteering was seeing more of the world while creating amazing relationships with people from all over the globe. They seemed interested and asked a few questions, but overall just listened to what I had to say.
The second week, I was given an opportunity to sit down in a giant circle with all of them and be real about life. I told them how I had wanted the approval of too many people and tried to be someone I wasn’t. I told them how, for me, that had started in 7th grade when, for the first time, someone approached me and told me they genuinely didn’t like me. I told them how in high school I tried drugs to have friends. I told them how I tried to be loved by everyone, and how it seemed to work so well at first. I told them how quickly it crumbled, and how changed and sad I actually felt. I shared with them that stopping meant losing friends, and completely changing my lifestyle and that it was very difficult. But it was worth it. I then shared with them the past few years of my life: how I got a college degree, how I got right with God, how I’m getting to live out one of my biggest passions/ dreams of traveling the world, and how I have gotten to achieve so, so many things because I chose to live my life differently.
So many of them related to my story. They opened up about how drugs had hurt their older siblings and parents. They asked questions of why I decided to stop; they wanted to learn what I had thought was more important in life. They asked why I initially thought drugs were good, and I told them about the false acceptance and love and community they bring (and how it eventually fails). Another girl on my team had shared about overcoming abuse in her own life. The students then spoke about abuse in their own lives, and I realized why God had wanted us to speak so honestly: these kids needed someone to tell them about another way to live, about pursuing bigger dreams, and be real about it. God chose her and I to relay that message. What a crazy privilege.
In my last week there, the English teacher had given them an assignment to present their lives to me in English. They were to tell me about their families, their likes and dislikes, their favorite places, and their plans for the future. Each one of them made a PowerPoint presentation and presented in front of the class. What happened next absolutely floored me.
Every presentation was creative and informative, and my favorite part quickly became the last slide. Many of the 7th graders, on their last slide, had plans for their future such as a dream job, going to university, or obtaining a big house with WiFi. But there was an incredible trend in many of them- they listed places they wanted to go.
The English teacher had approached me, beaming with excitement, immediately before the presentations and told me, “they never wanted to travel until you came here.” I held my breath. Had I really made an impact? Did God just bring me to this small town in southern Chile to spark dreams in children?
Then I got to watch their presentations. In their final slide about their futures, they shared their desires to travel to places such as Germany, Japan, the south of France, China, and even Colorado. I was brimming with excitement for them. They got it. They grasped what I had spent the month sharing. They got a taste of dreaming bigger than their circumstances, bigger than their small town, bigger than the drugs and abuse that hurt their families. This incredible group of people had gotten it.
One of the girls in the class even shared with me that she had never in her life looked forward to school until the month that she knew I would be there waiting for her.
It reminded me of my first ever blog post. It reminded me that even though at times it felt like I was just observing their classroom, it had been so important to continually be there. It reminded me why I said I was going to go on The World Race… And I quote myself, from February of this year, “because sometimes, all it takes for things to start to get better, is for someone to show up.”
What an absolute dream. What an honor it was in month one to be the one that showed up.
To my Chilean 7th graders: I love you. I miss you. Dream big. You can do this.
… And, as I said so many times, always know that you are welcome to visit me in Colorado.
