Made a difference to that one!

I really enjoyed today.

Kelsie, Lindsey and I started the day off at 7:15am and ran the full four miles to the lighthouse and back twice. Big accomplishment people.

We had breakfast with our community groups for the first time in a couple weeks, and it was delicious. We had some grapes, yogurt and granola, and some super yummy french toast. We chatted about our highs and lows of our first day of service and it was really interesting to hear about everyone’s experiences.

We had class at 10 and had a couple of really great discussion about what service week means to each person. We read two articles called “The Mindful Traveler” and “We Should Serve Them” prior to the discussion, which made for some interesting conversations. We discussed the idea of gift-giving. In areas like Sir Lowry’s Pass, it’s really difficult to give a gift. We have the best intentions for making the lives better of those around us. But sometimes giving one house a new roof, leaves the house next door wondering why they weren’t given a new roof. There is a ripple effect in the community far greater than we would ever think to imagine. The same is true for giving a child a teddy bear. There are hundreds of kids in Sir Lowry’s Pass that we interact with everyday. If we only have fifty teddy bears to give, how are the other children going to feel who didn’t get one. They face enough neglect already. But then there’s that knot in your stomach of wanting to help them.

This takes me back to an old camp devotion:

As a man walked a desolate beach one cold, gray morning he began to see another figure, far in the distance. Slowly the two approached each other, and he could make out a local native who kept leaning down, picking something up and throwing it out into the water. Time and again he hurled things into the ocean.

As the distance between them continued to narrow, the man could see that the native was picking up starfish that had been washed upon the beach and, one at a time, was throwing them back into the water.

Puzzled, the man approached the native and asked what he was doing. “I’m throwing these starfish back into the ocean. You see, it’s low tide right now and all of these starfish have been washed up onto the shore. If I don’t throw them back into the sea, they’ll die up here from lack of oxygen.”

“But there must be thousands of starfish on this beach,” the man replied. “You can’t possibly get to all of them. There are just too many. And this same thing is probably happening on hundreds of beaches all up and down this coast. Can’t you see that you can’t possibly make a difference?”

The local native smiled, bent down and picked up another starfish, and as he threw it back into the sea he replied, “Made a difference to that one!”

Each of us is but one person: limited, burdened with our own cares and responsibilities. We may feel there is so much to be done, and we have so little to give. We’re usually short of everything, especially time and money. When we leave this shore, there will still be millions of starfish stranded on the beach. Maybe we can’t change the whole world, but there isn’t one of us who can’t help change one person’s whole world. One at a time. We can make a difference.

I tried to keep that in mind today when we were in the township. We were there from about 2 to 5. I’m a student leader for arts and crafts, so we set up supplies to make tissue paper butterflies and paper plate masks for the kids in the Crush. We managed that for about two hours as students were also helping to organize dance and sports, such as soccer and rugby. There was also a great team of people working on the mural, which is definitely still a work in progress, but looks amazing so far.

At around 4pm, we headed to Miss Hetta’s house to spend some time with this incredible woman. unfortunately she was tied up with work, so we didn’t get to see her until right before we left, but we were able to go to Miss Cheryl’s house for a little while. As the woman who started organizing the soup moms, she is so incredibly strong. Her daughter Candy and granddaughter Courtney, named after Courtney Doran, were both there, as well as her son Duncan. They are such genuinely happy people and are so open about their stories.

I am simply amazed by the people in Sir Lowry’s Pass and I can’t to see how that amazement grows over the next few days.

Sending inspiration from Cape Town.

-Shannon Dooley