Dia Dos

Today was another barrel O' fun! I never thought picking up litter could feel so important. Today while I was passing a house on the sidewalk in my orange vest, I was talking to a man who called himself Wo-Ze (not too sure about that spelling). He told me how happy he was to see someone taking time out of their own lives to help out in his neighborhood. Until then I didn't really feel like I was making a huge difference: I was just a garbage man. Now I realize that the garbage men are making a huge difference. It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you are doing it with the good of others in your heart and mind, you can't not be a positive influence.

After we helped to clean up Peoria, one Freezie wrapper at a time, we went to a workshop about our different personalities. I learned that I have an extremely expressive personality. This means that I am outgoing, loud, more interested in the big picture vs. details, and that I enjoy having fun. I learned about the ups and downs of being expressive and also how to repress my expression when appropriate. I also realized that although it's good to be aware of all this, the more important matter is knowing other personality types and how to work together because we all need each other. I'm expressive. I worry about how I feel and make decisions based on my emotions. Not bad things, but sometimes my personality gets in the way of me thinking about others before myself. There is a personality for that. I enjoy having fun and building relationships, but sometimes that gets in the way of me getting things done. There are other personalities to help me with that. I look at the big picture, but sometimes I forget about the details. There is a personality to help me out with details. Although alone I miss a lot, together WE can accomplish much, much more.

For the evening our entire synod(all 455 of us) went to a church with a really big backyard and we all had hog dogs and hamburgers picnic style. Afterwords we played a bunch of games with differing group sizes to get to know each other, followed by a worship service and talk by our amazing speaker, Tiger McLuen. We were all sitting on a grassy hill listening to Tiger talk. It was very sermon on the mount-ish. He shared one of his near death experiences, which always seem to lighten the mood for some reason(no joke) and told us about being the right people doing the right things for the right reasons.

From today, I took that life is all about relationships and the use of relationships to make a difference around us, throughout us, and within us.

Talk to you later!
~Trevor