When in the Service of our fellow being...

It’s been a while since I’ve had some free time to update my blog this semester. As always I’m spending most of my days at the library and have a little fun on the weekends. I’ve been skiing and on my first day of skiing this season I went on a black diamond run. I don’t usually go on blacks until the end of the season so I was feeling pretty accomplished this year. I guess living in Utah has paid off. I’ve been on lots of fun dates and learned a lot about many things in life. I love looking back at a semester and see where I was at the beginning and see how far I’ve come. The two things this semester that have helped me grow and learn the most this semester have been in the Center for Service and Learning and at the Utah State Mental Hospital.

My heart is so full of gratitude and feelings of inadequacy. I just got back from the 2010 service celebration where I was announced as a member of the service council for this upcoming year. I have never been happier in my life! I have never been more grateful for an opportunity to be an instrument in the Lord’s hand and serve his children. For those who don’t know service council is like student council except for it is over the service center that has over 50 service programs, more than 140 program directors, and over 23,000 volunteers every year! The service council works with all of this and the community partners and represents The Center for Service and Learning on and off campus. Monday morning we hiked to the Y, which was my first time, to see all that our stewardship covers and all the opportunity that we have to serve everything and everyone in the area we could see. We start by training our new program directors which I am most excited for the ones that are in my ward and my roommate that don’t really know what they are doing but know that they want to serve and are willing to take the time and do so.

This semester for one of my TR classes I had to volunteer 30 hours at a population that we had not ever worked with before or thought about working with. I want to work with cancer kids so I decided that I would try working at the Utah State Mental Hospital. I participate in the rec. therapy part of the Northwest unit. I volunteer twice a week. On Wednesdays we go on a field trip to do different things like bowling or the movies. One week I was on a trip and a patient was walking with me and just came out and told me all of her fears. At first I was taken back because I was just a volunteer and it wasn’t time for group. But she needed someone to talk to. I just let her talk and realized that this is what I am going to school for and I am so so excited! I loved that because I was her friend first and we could recreate together that she felt comfortable enough for her to share her feelings with me. We had a good talk that afternoon and I think even though she came looking for help from me, I too was helped that day.
Last Friday when I was at the hospital there was one man who is very low functioning and do not interact much with anyone. He usually just paces the halls and talks to himself. While I was there we didn’t have any scheduled activities so I was just visiting with the patients and playing cards. This man stopped walking and was standing in my direction. He moves his hands kind of like he was shooting a “water gun”. I jumped out of his way of the “water” and started squirting him back. He wasn’t sure what I was doing in the beginning but finally caught on. I ran around rolling on the floor just like any kids would play and slowly a smile came across his face. We starting running around like I was and hiding around the corners. We played our game for over an hour. Then after we were tired we sat down and tried to talk. However, he doesn’t speak much English so we drew pictures. When I was about to leave the employees that were watching us stopped me and told me that they had never seen him happier than he was that day. No one had been able to get him to respond to much on anything. They said that they had learned a lot from me that day. I love what I do and I love the opportunities that I have to learn and grow.