Hello, I am Allie Leng.
I am a member of the Alternate Break Service Trip team going to L’Arche,
Toronto. Our group learned today, life is about discovery, discovering yourself,
life, and others. We took one of the fundamental steps on the road to our ABST,
today, while discovering things about ourselves and the people we will spend
the next few months getting to know and understand. We formed a bond that will
help make our trip to L’Arche Toronto a successful experience. We want to
welcome you into our experience and family, as we take this journey. Our
journey consist of many amazing individuals including our fantastic student
leaders Maureen Piccirilli and Laura Masiker and our accompanier the always
wonderful Katherine Frazier, as well as a group of highly devoted young men and
women, Brandon Feikles, Megan Davis, Leigh
Tischler, Lily Peterson, and myself, who are ready to open
their eyes to the possibilities that await in Toronto and share their
experience with you and others in the community.
During
the group meeting today we participated in an activity that aided the discovery
of ourselves and others, while helping to break the ice. As we all answered
questions about our lives and beliefs, we came to realize that we all were not
as different as we believe, and the differences that do exist make us stronger
as a team. We all bring different experiences to the table and these different
experience will help us to better understand the people we will work with in L’Arche.
In addition, we contemplated how our differences affected our thoughts and
actions and how the thought and actions of the members of our group differed
from those of Gannon University and society as a whole. We came to understand
that some of the beliefs we hold may not be the same as society and because our
work will deal with the emotional support rather than physical labor, we must learn
to accept these difference. Along with our contemplation of different ideals,
we discussed the dignity of human life and how because of differences in
culture or ability, society has a tendency to ostracize those who are
different, when we need to embrace the differences and learn from them, because
they help to grow our understanding of the world, and help us find out who we
are as an individual. During our discussion on differences, we realized that we
all faced challenges because of our differences and they varied in degree,
based upon the situation and circumstances, but these challenges did not make
anyone any less of a person, these challenges just make the life of each person
different. By the end of our discussion, we seemed to have an understanding
that each individual, not only in our group but in our Gannon society and in
our Global society, had their own problems and differences, but when we use
what we know as individuals and combine it to make a whole team, we can
accomplish much more.
We
are all very enthusiastic after our meeting as a whole team to grow more and
learn together to bring the best possible experience to the people in L’Arche
and we hope to continue to grow as a group and discover more about ourselves
and the others involved!
