Seed Packing

Every Saturday evening, I help out at the Junior High ministry at my church. Usually we go to service with the kids, and afterwards, all the leaders take a small group of boys or girls and expand on the service with them. But on Saturday April 10, from 5:30pm to 7:00pm, instead of having a normal service and small group time, we participated in seed packing. In the gymnasium of the church, where the ministry is normally set up, there the over 20 table set up as seed packing stations. At each station, there were people scooping seeding in to small envelopes and sealing the envelopes. There were also people who grabbed five packs at a time with a planting instruction sheet and brought them over to the baggers. The baggers put the sets of packs into plastic bags and taped them closed. The boxers then put all the bags in to a box. During this seed packing session, everyone participating packed 23 boxes of cabbage seeds. This will grow 15 million pounds of cabbage. Imagine how many people that will feed! These seed packs are going to poverty stricken countries that the church has partnered with. These packs will be given to people so that they can create their own garden. The food these people grow in their gardens will be used to feed themselves and their families. The excess can be sold to create a form of income. By giving these people these packs of seeds, we are not just given them food, we are giving them skills to increase their quality of life.

Compassion and Justice

On Saturday March 26, I participated in a service opportunity that I had never done before. Each year at my church, everyone participates in what is called Celebration of Hope. This celebration is three weeks long. One of the aspects of Celebration of Hope is the 5 day challenge. With this challenge, for five days the members of the church eat as millions of the poorest people in the world do everyday, on less than two dollars. You are supposed to eat a small portion of oatmeal for breakfast and a cup of rice and beans for lunch and dinner. During my serve, I came to church from 9:00am until 3:00pm and helped pack canvas bags with rice, beans and oatmeal. These bags will later be given out to the church attendees, so they will have the correct amounts of the food they need to complete the 5 day challenge. Each bag contained enough food to last a family of 4 for one day, and it was hardly anything compared to what we eat everyday. All together the group I worked with packed only about 4800 bags, that was only a small dent however in the tens of  thousands that needed to be packed. It was a cool experience to be able to work behind the scenes in an effort to help the members of the church see how fortunate we all are in all the food we have. This would hopefully in turn give them the compassion to participate in the other aspects of Celebration of Hope, which are giving so that the church can help the local and global community, and helping pack 50,000 seeds packs so that people living in poverty can grow a garden in order to receive an income and food for their families. This time of year always makes me excited to see all the people at my church come together with love for people we don't even know, but we are passionate about them receiving justice.

Femininity and the Media

We see and hear all the time from commercials and other forms of advertisement how females are supposed to look. But we also hear so often that the girls in these ads are photo shopped and retouched to make that result someone that is not really a person. But when you hear two opposite things so often, what are you supposed to believe? Is it true that these girls aren't real, or that we all should actually look like them? Just like every other girl, I'm not confident in myself all the time. It's true that the kinds of advertisements that are out there that we saw in the video Killing Us Softly 4 can make a girl feel bad, but while watching the video, I realized that I have learned to tune out some messages that these companies are sending. I think part of it is that I see the same kinds of ads over and over during the years so they stop having an effect, but also I've come to accept aspects of myself. For example, I'm barely 5 foot 1 so I know its actually impossible for me to be taller and have the "perfect body" the media portrays. I've found that stressing over literally unattainable things is wasted energy. I believe that God made every person with a specific purpose and we are all made in his image. God thinks we all are beautiful and knows the number of every hair on everyone's heads. By keeping that in mind, it puts things in perspective for me that if the Creator of everything loves me for who I am, then who do I need to impress or change myself for?  However, its tough for me too keep this mindset when people tell me they don't like things about me. I remember in middle school, another girl who wasn't even my friend came up to me and told me my hair looked bad, that was seven years ago and I still remember it and it still makes me self concious. So we don't only have the media to blame, its the people who we see in public, the ones who's opinions we worry about that make us see ourselves is poorly.

TV and Children

       In class for the past few days we watched a movie about how much advertisement affects children. It video also mentioned how children used to play outside until it got dark and wouldn't want to come in for dinner. For some reason that really struck me. It makes me really sad that kids don't want to go outside and just be kids, they are more entertained with virtual activities. But I also think that although there are a lot of kids who would rather stay inside and watch TV or play video games, I am certain that there are still a lot of kids who enjoy spending their time outside. My little brother has liked video games for as long as I can remember and I'm pretty sure he has every system possible. But he also goes outside all the time to play basketball and he has also been involved in sports his whole life. He has found a balance between being active and enjoying video games. What also struck me about the video was how kids are so targeted by advertisers. If you look at the situation from the side of the company, they are just doing what they need to do to make money. Unfortunately for parents, it makes the kids feel like they need all these things they really don't need. This video has made me want to think seriously about how one day my kids will be exposed to television and how I will make sure they don't get too enveloped in it.

The Growing Man

I definitely think the metaphor of the growing man is true. In class, we learned that when we are born we have the aptitude to do things, but its not until we are grown that we have been influenced by others in ways that help of develop who we are. Some of the stories from the Human Nature article were so hard to read because of the way those children were treated. They never developed into fully functioning humans because no one was ever around to influence them, guide them, and love them in order to become that way. I think there are also differences in what the final stage of the growing man is, based on your culture. In developing countries, there are not as many resources or media messages to influence how children grow up. Also we hear all the time about children in third world countries stricken into poverty and being orphans when their parents die of sicknesses that they don't have medicine for. Although we do have issues such as poverty and orphanage in America, it is not as much of an epidemic as it is in these other countries. But we also have a lot more media exposure that kids are exposed to growing up. Kids see messages on TV telling them its okay to do all these things that were once considered bad and telling them they have to look a certain way. These things can inhibit people from developing into the fully grown man.

Feed My Starving Children

        On Monday some of my friends and I went to Feed My Starving Children in Shaumburg. I have volunteered with this organization a few times before with my church and it has always been a lot of fun. What Feed My Starving Children does is they set up tables in a big room and on these tables there are four big bins, each filled with either chicken flavor powder, dehydrated vegetables, soy, or rice. Everyone at the table works together to scoop certain amounts of each ingredient into plastic bags. The bags are then sealed and packed into boxes. The food is then shipped to countries where there are starving children in need. One of my favorite parts about volunteering here was seeing how people who didn't really know each other until they got there, all work together for the same purpose, with compassion for children they have never met.

Work

       In Tuesdays With Morrie, we see that Mitch is consumed with his work. In the beggining of the story Mitch has taken on a lot of sports journalist jobs and it has caused him to loose touch with his girlfriend and old friends. Its only when he finds out his old professor is dying that he realized the big picture of his life and mellows out after going to visit him a few times. I feel like sometimes as students, we are the same way as Mitch. We are constantly working hard to reach the next level. You have to do well in Elementary School to get placed in advanced classes in Middle School. You need to work hard in Middle School in order to get placed in advanced classes in High School. Then in High School, you feel the need to keep up with everyone else taking accelerated and AP classes so you look good on college applications. I hear kids at school talk about pulling all-nighters just to study for one test. What!? You are 17 years old, you shouldn't be depriving your body of sleep, which it vital to your health in order to study for a test on something you won't even remember a year from now. All of a sudden, there are these kids entering college as sophmores because they did so much work leading up to that point. These students work so hard to get a good education and a good job, but what ever happened to being a kid and learning just to learn and better yourself, not to compete with others? For Mitch, he realized pretty early in his life that working hard is not the most important thing, you need to appreciate your life. I worry that some of these students who start stressing so early about how to get to the top won't realize until its too late that some things are actually more important.