The Best Laid Plans….

16 May 2011 at 20:39

Steven Thiltgen

Missions, Roadblocks

16 Comments

This is a guest-blog from Kimberly Stillwachs.  A bit about Kimberly in her own words:

I was born in New Jersey, but I’ve spent most of my life in Florida and Georgia.  I originally got into volunteer work after a mission trip to Russia in high school. When I went to Smith College I delved into homeless outreach in Massachusetts while I spent summers volunteering at a small charity clinic in Atlanta.  My desire to go to medical school stemmed from a combination of my passion for science as well as a love for humanity I have developed through community outreach.  Where I will end up serving has yet to be determined, but my hope is that I will face challenges that will continue to motivate me to work hard at making a difference and never settle for the comfortable route.


Kimberly can be reached at kstillwachs@gmail.com.  Her current place of service is The Good Samaritan Health Center in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

The Best Laid Plans…..

The plan has always been clear: go to college, go to medical school, save the world.  It all seems simple enough, right?  Wrong.  Somehow applications, MCAT scores, GPAs, money, time, gap years, friends, family and life all crept in and made my ever-so-simple plan ever-so-complicated.  So here I have found myself in my gap year(s) hoping that diving head first into this plan will not result in my drowning and washing up on the shores of a dead-end-help-nobody job.

In my first gap year I opted to join Americorps and serve my local community through a program started by United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta called “Project Health Access.”  This program is aimed at increasing Metro Atlanta residents’ access to primary health care by helping the homeless receive benefits, implementing health education practices, and improving access to specialty care for charity clinics.  It was perfect for me: get experience in a clinic, learn about the non-profit world, avoid boring research, save Atlanta.

Once I signed on, United Way placed me in the Good Samaritan Health Center of Atlanta to recruit and coordinate volunteer healthcare providers.  Convincing healthcare professionals that they should spend just a few hours of their spare time per month serving the community they lived in didn’t seem like such a difficult task.  I mean, doesn’t everyone that goes to medical/dental school want to help people?  Doesn’t every doctor want to save the world?

In my encounters with healthcare professionals, I have discovered something that both frustrates me and gives me hope:  upon entering graduate school, most of them had every intention of helping people…and then life happened.  Someone offered them a nice comfortable job with a nice comfortable pay check to pay off loans and support their nice comfortable families.  Their dreams of saving the world had been replaced by the pressure to just do life.  Suddenly all the time they thought they would have for world-saving has been lost to work, eating, sleeping and family.  But this doesn’t have to be true! Even if they don’t have 6 months to spend serving in a small village overseas, there are people they can help right in their own neighborhoods!

All it takes is a spare afternoon cleaning the teeth of the girl that served you at the local diner; bandaging a wound of the immigrant who built that fancy deck on your house; teaching your child’s public school counterpart the importance of eating healthy to prevent diabetes; checking the heartbeat of the baby inside the woman who was asking you for money on the street the other day.  These people are not strangers, they are your neighbors.  Charity clinics are all around just waiting for you to come in and volunteer for a few hours a week/month/year.  Even if you can’t leave your own office, you can see a charity clinic’s patients in your own office! You can choose to see only 2, 3 or 4 patients a month at no cost and still make a substantial difference.

If you find yourself doubting anything that I am saying, I encourage you to visit your nearest charity clinic, and they can tell you just how easy it is to get involved in your own community.  Don’t let life get in the way of the dreams you once had to make a difference; to help people; to save the world.

“Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.”  ~Albert Einstein

 

 

 

Why Do We Go?

25 Apr 2011 at 20:38

Steven Thiltgen

Uncategorized

40 Comments

This is a guest post from Connie Cheren with Partners For Care:

 

Why do we go to other nations on mission trips?  I know why we say we go…to help the poor, to serve the people, to eliminate their suffering, to wipe out diseases. But, is that really why we go?  Or, do we go to satisfy our need to be needed; our need to do something to help the world’s poor?  Is it more about us going than about changing the world for the poor?

After years of going on trips, leading teams and receiving teams I realize how totally unprepared I was when I first started going on mission trips. I said I was going “to make a difference” in the world.

But, I knew nothing about the world I went to change. I didn’t know about the poor, about diseases that affect and infect so many in the world even though I am a nurse. I am also a social worker…but that did not give me the knowledge I needed about the world outside of our borders. Here we have a social service network and as social workers we connect people in need to those services. I was going to countries that had more people in need than not in need with very few social services.

I tried to help people using what I value as important, not understanding what they value.  This led me to try to solve problems that weren’t even problems for the people I was trying to help while ignoring the real problems.

But, I and thousands of others go everyday spending hundreds of thousands of dollars….thinking we are changing the world, helping the poor. We go unprepared and ill-equipped to really help. We go and do for others what they can do for themselves. We plant their gardens, dig their wells, build their churches and schools for them. Are we doing that to help them or to satisfy our desire to “do something” while we are on a mission trip?

I have found out I cannot help unless I know what the problem is that I am trying to solve. I still don’t have the answers…but I am asking the questions. Why are they poor while I am rich?  Why are there so many community health diseases?  Why don’t they have clean water to drink?

And, the most important question to me now is…how can I help without causing harm?  How can I help in a way that honors the poor and respects them?  What do the poor teach me about myself?

Now, why I go is so different from when I first went. I am certainly less naive than when I first went. I now know it is I who needed to be changed…and it is I who needs to learn.

A few things I try to ask myself when I see mission agencies trips:

Who is the hero?  Is it the person being served or the “servant” who is promoting their cause?

Is the work focused on the input or the output?  Do we measure things like “we send a thousand missionaries a year!” or do we focus on the measurable and beneficial results?

It’s okay to receive humble blessings and a great feeling of purpose but this should be bilateral and from the genuine gratitude and success of those you serve.

Next time someone tells you they are going on a mission trip ask them “why are you going?”

I am still asking myself that question even as I am preparing for my next trip,

 

 

 

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