Well everyone its 2:00 am and I am
still on the train… So after watching the towns pass by thinking about this and
that I realized that I am going to miss this. I mean there is something about
Southwest Kansas that grows on you such as the blinking pivot light of
irrigation systems, the almost endless fields of wheat, the thousands of head
of cattle and so much more. This is where I grew up and where I now call home,
but I have to remember that I need to grow from this experience and gain as
much as possible. This then had me think about how we have spent this whole
semester preparing getting to know each other and still we do not concretely
know what we are going to do for the whole summer. I thought about this as I passed the endless
fields between Garden City and Dodge City.
When I thought harder about it I
was able to realize something that wasn’t going through earlier. That whatever
we are doing now is not just preparing us to serve abroad but it is helping us
grow in the understanding of what could happen this summer. It really reminds
me of particular field that we farm. This is actually two sections cut in half
that we produce the two continuous halves at the same time. So instead of being
just one mile long this is a two mile long field. I dread this field because
for the first half of the tractor work will be done by normally one driver as
they split the field with one vertical pass. Now to do this you aim the tractor
towards the far corner and set the auto steer and let the tractor steer itself.
Now many of you may not have driven
a tractor before but I am pulling a 54’ hard topped plow. So with each pass
that is 54 feet that is tilled, but the tractor is only moving around 5.6 mph.
This means for that first vertical pass from corner to corner it seems like it
takes forever and you have accomplished nothing. Pass after pass it seems like
you are making no progress as it takes you over 30 minutes to get to one side
of the field then turn around. However, when we look at the GPS it shows that
we have covered a lot of ground during that time.
Now after that long winded story, I
feel that even though this semester has seemed that as a team we have not
accomplished very much and we have remained here in the US. I need to step back
and look and take in that what this service team has done this semester and has
gone through has prepared us for this experience. This semester has cleared any
doubt from my mind that we will be anything but amazing. I just have to
remember that sometimes we need to take a step back and looked at the facts,
look at what we have accomplished during that time.
