It’s Thursday, the 4th day of the trip to New Orleans, Louisiana. We did some scraping of old paint and painting today. One of the experiences that I greatly enjoy and will remember is watching the home owner enjoy our work by dancing through her outside hallway of her home and helping us in painting. She seemed grateful for our work. It’s been a blessing and great experience to spend time helping a 65-year-old women with these group of friends.
After work, we gathered in the “living room” to reflect on what we had done that day. This day, we also reflected on religion and whether it influenced us in taking this trip. There were a mixture of responses of yes's and no’s. For me, nothing about religion had to do with me wanting to help someone who really needed it. But later that day, I thought that these values had been instilled in me since I was little due to religion. My mother is a very religious person and in one way or another she has been implementing these values in me. Besides that, I really wanted to keep the focus on someone else instead of myself. To be able to help someone else without me having much but myself to give and what I can do, maybe can send a message to those people that have more financially.
However, financially having more does not mean that you will be able to help someone else; this is one of the things we learned on this trip. Also, having the enthusiasm and willingness to help doesn’t mean that you will really help them. Many companies promote superficially their charity to the public without helping these poor people much. Just like giving money to a drug addict that will go spend it on more drugs. One has to be very careful how we help and do some research about the situation and figure the best way to help.
Personally, since I was a child I always thought of helping poor people and this trip helped confirm that and put it into action. There are many people out there that don’t receive the necessary help but that want to move forward in life and can’t. I have known these people and I have seen their struggle. Many of them stopped their goal and started doing something else because it was too difficult. These people live here in the USA and sometimes pass unnoticed. These are the kind of people that I want to help in the future.
Also, know that there are way worse poverty outside the USA. They need much more help as well.
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