Ever since I am young I have been traveling. I was born in Michigan, but when I was about three my family and I moved to California. A couple of years later we moved to Argentina because the opportunity arose and my dad was born and raised there so he was a bit homesick.
Two brothers more and five years later we moved to Florida, but a year passed and the travel bug brought us to Oklahoma where we have moved twice and finally settled down. All this traveling opened my eyes to how fun traveling really is and I have gone on many mission trips since living in Oklahoma instead of moving. One such mission trip led me to Nicaragua with our church, Victory Christian Center.
We were there to set up a free, temporary clinic to assist the needy with any medical problems. On this trip I was truly challenged mentally, physically, and spiritually. What affected me the most during this trip was not what we did for the people or how good it felt to help others, but the people themselves.
They were always smiling and seemed happy even though they had nothing compared to us. Many of the families we worked with lived out of the city dump or in small shacks. This made me so sad and yet it amazed me to see these people led fairly normal lives.
We were only in Nicaragua a week but it was one of the best weeks of my life. On the day before we left, a group of us went up to the mountains and zip lined above a coffee bean field. It was so green and gorgeous I did not want to leave. It has been three years since I have returned from Nicaragua and I have not been able to visit again, but I still remember the people and the good attitude they have.
This all has challenged me to have a better attitude in hard circumstances and it has also challenged me to be grateful for all God has blessed me with. My original plan for college was to study aerospace engineering, but the experience I have just shared and others like it have caused me to shift my views to a major in teaching and in missions. I will be attending Rose State College for my teaching degree.
Afterwards, I will be attending Southern Nazarene University for my degree in missions. I want to study teaching so I can help prepare others to succeed; something the people in Nicaragua had not been given. Missions on the other hand in so that I will know how to share what has changed my life and caused me to change into much of whom I am today.
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