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The dirt of
disappointment
Jenny Adrian
Buhler (Kan.) MB Church
Members of the Buhler MB youth
group faced an unexpected challenge. The students woke
up excited, nervous and eager to be a part of the
Anaheim ’07 Tourformation. The group had not been
informed where they would be going, what they would be
doing, or exactly how long they would be gone.
Many of the students expected that
they would be having an inner city experience that day.
As the group rode in their charter bus to their unknown
destination, the houses they saw got larger and larger.
It was obvious that wealth was a high priority in the
community they were in.
After about an hour, the bus
pulled into a parking lot at Orange County Orange Grove.
Mr. Zeigler met the group and explained their job:
pulling weeds for the day. Although the students were
disappointed about the situation they found themselves
in, they forced smiles, picked up their shovels and
headed into the grove.
Pulling weeds was a difficult job.
The ground was hard, the roots were deep and a cloud of
dust quickly descended upon the orange grove. The
students as well as adult leaders found themselves in a
disappointing situation. They had expected to be working
alongside the urban poor yet found them selves in an
area of extreme wealth.
Everyone seemed to be glad for
lunchtime to arrive. The students ate sandwiches around
picnic tables and expressed their frustrations about
working in a place where their help appeared to be
neither needed nor appreciated. After lunch, Buhler MB
Youth Pastor Chuck Taylor led a group debrief about the
situation.
Some of the issues that the
students were struggling with were: “Who are we
helping?” and “Why doesn’t anyone seem to want us here?”
During the debrief session, sophomore Elise Wedel said,
“If I had wanted to pull weeds, I would have stayed at
home.”
After much discussion, the group’s
paradigm shifted. They realized that God had chosen them
to work in the orange grove. Even if they couldn’t see
God’s reason, for the first time they noticed the beauty
that they were bringing to the area. Suddenly, their
work didn’t seem unappreciated after all.
After lunch the group went back to
work in the grove. But instead of feeling disillusioned,
they worked with a purpose. They sang, worked as a team
and smiled through the dirt and sweat. Adult leader
Denise Heizelman said, “I definitely think that we had a
great sense that God had put us there for a reason, even
if we did not know 100 percent what that reason was.”
At the end of the trip, many of
the students said that working in the orange grove was
their favorite part. It is amazing what a simple shift
of paradigm can accomplish.
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