Too many times peo­ple who get into vol­un­teer­ing are look­ing for what they can get out of it, instead of what they can put into it. We found a cou­ple of great exam­ples of vol­un­teerism in a story from Mississippi’s Clar­ion Ledger.

The story pro­files a trio of col­lege stu­dents who went over­seas to help. Some of the duties they did over the sum­mer were just sim­ple chores, or long walks to vil­lage to village.

We will focus on two of the stu­dents for our snip­pet. Writer Galen Hol­ley intro­duces us to Ben Long, and Sally McDonnell.

“It was prob­a­bly the most chal­leng­ing and most reward­ing expe­ri­ence of my life,” said Ben Long, a sopho­more in the Sally McDon­nell Barks­dale Hon­ors Col­lege at the Uni­ver­sity of Mississippi.

What started as a lan­guage immer­sion trip for col­lege credit turned into a life-changing expe­ri­ence for the Corinth native.

Long spent a month learn­ing Span­ish with friends in Costa Rica but when his time was up he felt rest­less. Since noth­ing back home demanded his imme­di­ate atten­tion he hoped a plane to Guatemala. Despite being pretty much alone, Long threw him­self head­long into help­ing at hos­pi­tals and orphanages.

“I didn’t really have a plan,” he said, recall­ing how his shaky Span­ish and will­ing­ness to do what­ever was needed helped him nav­i­gate the native cul­ture for almost two months.

“I just trusted God was lead­ing me in the right direc­tion,” he said.
…

Maria Pres­ley of Shan­non started the sum­mer in Mozam­bique work­ing with AIDS patients. A grant from Emory Uni­ver­sity, where she’s enrolled in divin­ity school, allowed her to help des­ti­tute women and to study eth­nic and reli­gious con­flicts. After a month of work­ing with native peo­ple, Pres­ley set out alone across west­ern Africa.

“I just tried to engage in as many con­ver­sa­tions as I could and to learn as much as I could about how peo­ple talk about con­flict and how they deal with it,” she said.
…

Presley’s moti­va­tion stemmed from her belief that every­one is “called to place our­selves out­side our­selves and to push beyond what makes us comfortable.”

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