This Long Journey

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.