From Urban Experience to Rural Experience

As I blogged the other week, I had a plethora of different emotions as I went into leading Urban Experience.  In coming out of it, I have a totally different set of emotions.

First, I want to thank everyone who was praying for us that week and those that took time out of their week to help make the trip what it was.  In my mind, it was a great success.  I couldn’t have asked for a better group of incoming freshmen; I am so proud of the work they did with the attitudes they had.  And it was a challenging and tiring week for us.  7-9 women (with the occasional male) ended up moving 105 cubic feet of trash out of 3 houses in 12 hours spread out over 2 different days.  Despite the heat, smells, and awkward objects to get rid of, the girls kept plugging along with smiles and encouragement to each other.  Again, I’m super proud of all of them (and I hope that we can post some of their reflections in a blog post soon).

Soon after Urban Experience ended though, I was on a plane headed for a ‘rural experience.’   My mom was raised by her grandparents in a rural part of Kansas (we’re talking 10 in her graduating class). This past spring, my mom turned 50, my grandma turned 70 and my great-grandma (who raised her) turned 90.  Since it’s been a few years since we’ve been able to visit, and everyone’s had a significant birthday, my mom really wanted to visit her home and my brother and I decided to ‘tag along.’ 

Going into this long weekend, I knew that we’d be facing some interesting, somewhat difficult issues, but it still shocked me how “same, same but different” Urban Experience and ‘Rural Experience’ were.  As we cleaned out houses during Urban, we wondered how in the world people could live with so much junk and trash piled around their house, then during Rural Experience I saw how my grandma lives like that and I still wonder how someone could live like that.  But it’s so much more personal now.  And it’s so much harder.  As a result, I’ve been reflecting on the concept that “it’s easier to serve abroad then at home,” or in my case, “it’s easier to serve in Grand Rapids than at grandma’s.”  I believe that this is due to the fact that I have a more personal connection to my grandma than I do to the person in Grand Rapids whose house I cleaned out. 

At Calvin and in the Service-Learning Center, we also talk a lot about ‘seeking shalom.’  As I found this weekend during rural experience, this can also be harder closer to home than in the broader picture of a city or society.  It’s heart-wrenching to see the brokenness and stark absence of the hints of shalom in one’s own family, but it was a good reminder for me.  Brokenness and the absence of shalom happen at a very personal level that I feel is sometimes overlooked when we look at city or neighborhood issues.  We see the brokenness and what agencies are doing to try to alleviate that pain, but we don’t always realize, see, or think about how the vast absence of shalom effects people’s lives and those they come in contact with.

Now that I’m back in Grand Rapids, with no idea when I’ll be back in Kansas, I wonder:  where are there obvious absences of shalom in the city, in my neighborhood, and in the lives of those I interact with?  And I am praying for peace and shalom not only for my family, but also for the places that I don’t see shalom, where shalom is desperately needed.

Hannah Bechtold

Urban Experience

Yesterday (Thursday, July 19), 231 incoming freshmen, along with their families, arrived on Calvin’s Campus to partake in Calvin’s orientation program, PASSPORT.  I think I may be feeling some of the same things as these freshmen and their families not because I’m going to college for the first time, or because my kid is going to college for the first time (though that is a really scary thought), but because I will be leading 6 of those 231 students on a special orientation trip today through July 26.

This new orientation trip is loosely modeled after the wilderness orientation trips, but will take place in Grand Rapids’ Creston Neighborhood and has the mission to “introduce new Calvin students to the ongoing efforts of partner organizations in the Grand Rapids area to do God’s work in the word and in Grand Rapids.”  This program has been one of the main projects I have been working on at the Service-Learning Center this summer.  But I’m not the only one to work on this project.  Thankfully, other students and staff have been working on the project proposal and setting up some of the basics for the week.  I only had to pick up where they left off and carry this project through completion.

Only. It’s been a lot more work than I thought it would be.  There are so many little details and logistical points to think through.  This is the first time our office has ever done an extended orientation program and I’ve struggled with trying to remember what it’s like to be an incoming student; to not know anyone at Calvin and to be experiencing Calvin orientation.  I know the Service-Learning Center and reflection materials like the back of my hand, but orienting new students to what college life is like?  Giving them the tools they’ll need to be successful at Calvin?  I can only hope and pray that I can fulfill this part of the trip.

In the S-LC we talk a lot about experiential learning.  I even spent last semester in Thailand as part of an experiential learning study abroad.  I love it.  And I love what this experience has already taught me.  Sure the week hasn’t started, but I have spent the past 46 days meeting with agency partners, Calvin faculty and staff, brainstorming ideas for T-shirts and ordering them, going on walking tours of the neighborhood and creating a reflection/reading.  I can’t wait to see what this week has in store.

Hannah Bechtold
Urban Experience Coordinator