Impacted by Service

It's been a while since I last updated my blog. I've been thinking about several things recently, so here is one of those things...

I've been thinking a lot about my future. I am planning on going to EMU this fall to major in nursing and minor in Spanish. Both of those are things that I think I'll enjoy, but I don't really know for sure, and won't know until I get there. A lifelong goal or dream of mine has been to find a job that doesn't feel like work, where I look forward to going to my job every day. I don't know how attainable that goal is, and I don't know if nursing will be that thing.

This was on my mind while we were at the Olympics, and even as we were doing our ministry. The majority of our time was spent handing out cups of hot chocolate or coffee to people. Between the rushes of people, there was plenty of time to think. If the opportunity arose, we could start conversations with the people, in the hopes that we could lead the conversation to their faith to see what they believed, and if possible, to share our beliefs with them. We also had materials to hand out. I am not big on starting conversations with people that I don't know, so that was hard for me. Whether it was because of that or because the talkative people tended to head towards others in my group, I became frustrated that I wasn't having any awesome conversations with people. I handed out some materials, but those people weren't interested in hanging around to talk.

I realized something as our week was wrapping up and we were given some time to reflect on how the week went - I finally found that thing that I love to do: serving people. The week consisted of handing out warm beverages, which not only kept your hands warm on a cold day and was something to do while waiting in line for public transportation, but it made some people's day. I loved serving people with a smile, and watching them react to this act (not only was it free, but it was also from a jetpack, which people really seemed to like).

Service is certainly not a full-time job, and unfortunately I can't spend all my time serving because of how America is today - I need to get a job and earn money. But I guess you could call it a passion of mine. I'm not sure where that will take me, or how I will use that throughout my life, but I will continue to look for opportunities.

It's funny - I was supposed to be making an impact on people that week, but I left having been impacted personally much more than I expected.