Volunteer reflects on relief efforts
Issue date: 3/16/07 Section: Opinion
Randy May, director of Randy's Rangers, the organization that built and ran our American Baptist East camp, said a human presence is what many of the people made prisoners of Hurricane Katrina need more than anything.
"People don't need things," May said. "They need emotions, they need love, they need hope. Just our presence here gives people hope, that someone is out there trying to dig them out when they've been trapped, physically, socially and emotionally."
At the dining hall in our camp, there's a picture of a tree made out of hundreds of dots. Randy explained that like the dots, people by themselves are nothing, but when they come together and work as one, they can make up the big picture.
Getting back to those crosses again, I found myself wondering, "How many of these people will be wearing those on Monday? Next week? Next year? Will they be a personal reminder and public symbol of our cause, or mere trinkets, just another souvenir from a trip to be cast aside and forgotten?"
I hope not.
I would like to believe this isn't the end of a trip, but for those of us who were there, the start of a lifelong journey of service and compassion.
There's an after-school special about patience and humility in there, and ones about the power of hope and compassion too, but I don't want to give you the Cliff Notes version of our time down here; if you want to understand, you'll just have to get on the bus yourself.
Jason Schultz, Class of 2007
"People don't need things," May said. "They need emotions, they need love, they need hope. Just our presence here gives people hope, that someone is out there trying to dig them out when they've been trapped, physically, socially and emotionally."
At the dining hall in our camp, there's a picture of a tree made out of hundreds of dots. Randy explained that like the dots, people by themselves are nothing, but when they come together and work as one, they can make up the big picture.
Getting back to those crosses again, I found myself wondering, "How many of these people will be wearing those on Monday? Next week? Next year? Will they be a personal reminder and public symbol of our cause, or mere trinkets, just another souvenir from a trip to be cast aside and forgotten?"
I hope not.
I would like to believe this isn't the end of a trip, but for those of us who were there, the start of a lifelong journey of service and compassion.
There's an after-school special about patience and humility in there, and ones about the power of hope and compassion too, but I don't want to give you the Cliff Notes version of our time down here; if you want to understand, you'll just have to get on the bus yourself.
Jason Schultz, Class of 2007
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