Miranda Roberts
Spring 2015
Honors Post-Enrichment Reflection
Earlier this semester, as I thought about what I would like to do for spring break, many options came to mind. I could have gone home to be with my family and relax; I could have organized a fun trip with my friends; I could have visited my out-of-state family; or I could have taken a week to give my time and energy to serve others and build stronger community with other CSU students. All of these were great options for different reasons, but as I thought about it more, I knew that I did not want to have the typical spring break experience and that I wanted to serve others. So I decided to go on a mission trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico with the CSU Navigators, which is an on-campus Christianministry.
This trip turned out to be one of the best decisions I made this year and enriched my education in multiple ways. For instance, Albuquerque has a rich heritage of cultural diversity, with strong Native American and Hispanic influences, largely displayed in the food and architecture around the city. I enjoyed interacting with the locals and learning more about the city and New Mexico as a whole through experiencing the culture.
About 50 students went on the trip, and we were split into 6 different teams to do different projects around the city. I was given the opportunity to be a team leader for the food bank team, and we spent three of our days in Albuquerque serving at the Road Runner Food Bank. As a leader, my duties included helping lead a Bible study and encouraging each of the team members throughout the week. This was a great learning experience for me, and it gave me the opportunity to understand my leadership style better. I am a quiet person and I generally like to lead by example, but this experience allowed me to step out of my comfort zone to become more of a vocal leader.
During the volunteer orientation at the food bank, we learned that the Road Runner Food Bank serves food to 70,000 people each week, and that hunger is a significant issue across the state of New Mexico. We also were told that the state is one of the lowest ranked in education. After learning this, we were all even more excited to get to work and to make a positive impact on the city. It was a privilege to be able to serve in various roles at the food bank that allowed our team to grow closer and allowed us to get to know the staff. For instance, on our first day we were packaging pinto beans and pasta and were able to get to know each other while we worked. During the other two days that we spent at the food bank, we sorted through the donated produce in order to salvage the good produce and get rid of the rotten produce. This was a great bonding experience due to the fact that the food was often not in the most appetizing condition, but we were able to make the experience fun anyway.
Another aspect of this trip that was enriching for me was the chance to interact with students at the University of New Mexico and engage in conversations about spiritual beliefs in a manner that was both respectful and inviting. It was encouraging to see how open and willing the students were to talking about faith and religion, and I was able to share my faith and beliefs with them, and dialogue with them about their beliefs. We were simply sharing our faith in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus, and inviting people to consider what that means to them, and the choice was theirs as to whether they wanted to learn more or not.
By the end of the trip, I realized that I learned a lot through service and engaging in the community, but I was also excited about the development of unity and community within the whole group. Because of this, I was able to come back to campus with a greater support system and community, and all of us are able to take the lessons that we learned in Albuquerque and apply them to our lives both in school and in the community. Although sleeping on a church floor for a week and handling rotten cilantro is not the most glamorous way to spend spring break, I would not trade this experience for any of the other options I could have taken. This experience helped reignite my passion for serving others and I hope to bring the lessons that I learned in Albuquerque back to the CSU and Fort Collins community, and into the workplace and family life in the future.