by Cooper McCullough | May 24, 2010 | News Slider
No day is normal in New York City. How could that even be possible in a city where every street corner buzzes with a multiplicity of languages? When one hour you’re serving food to a homeless family at church and the next you’re observing a Picasso at the Guggenheim? When you’re sitting in the room with heroin addicts & heroin-addicts-turned-pastors? New York is a startling juxtaposition of the best and the worst in America, with its fair share of pleasure… and pain. Monday was our first day to work in PS 179 in the Bronx. As the members of our mission trip left to find their classrooms in the public elementary school for the week, our contact pulled me aside. She apologized, but said that she had decided to pair me with one of the roughest classes in the school. I was to help a second-grade classroom, room 405, with its population of kids with learning challenges and a penchant for violence. While the day started out pleasantly enough, it began to disintegrate after lunchtime. All the physical violence, financial instability, and emotional insecurity in these kids’ lives began to make itself evident. But these problems compared with the apparent attitudes of the teachers. While some really tough things happened in class today, I will sum up the whole day by describing gym at the end of the day. As soon as our ragged class had made it down to the gym, the regular teachers quickly ran upstairs, leaving the class to the substitute gym teacher and me. We began gym by racing from one side to the other, but the sub sat down after a...
by Valerie Schara | Mar 26, 2010 | Uncategorized
I honestly do not know how to describe the medical mission trip to the Coban region of Guatemala. I can tell you that this was by far the most exhausting, yet rewarding week of my life, and the number of things I have taken away from this trip are truly countless. I’ve been to Guatemala twice before on previous mission trips, but this year was entirely different for so many reasons. This year we traveled with a much smaller team, bringing only 23 members total (with just 9 of those being undergraduate students). I was so thankful for our small group this year. I have never gone on a mission trip where the group became so close, so fast. In our situation, I think we had to because we needed everyone to step up and help each other out as much as possible. The areas we reached had never before seen a doctor, dentist, or medical care of any kind. The whole concept of a group of people coming to help them was entirely new. Day 1: Arriving in Guatemala The first evening we arrived in Guatemala City. We spent the night at a missionary hostel in town. We woke up early the next morning around 5 to eat breakfast and head to the Coban region! The van ride took over 8 hours to reach our final destination. I think it’s safe to say that by the end of the ride, the winding roads had taken their toll on everyone’s stomachs. After passing through Coban (and grabbing a nutritious meal at McDonald’s), we headed up the bumpy “roads” for...
