What? – A detailed description of what you did during your STEP experience.
During my step experience I traveled to Florianopolis, Brazil for almost 6 weeks with a team of 25 students and staff through an organization that works in the United States and internationally called Cru. At Ohio State, this organization is referred to as RealLife. As a campus with over 700 people involved in Cru, Ohio State forms partnerships with other campuses across the world, specifically in Slovenia and Brazil. The point behind forming these partnerships is to be a spiritual resource for students on these campuses. Stemming from that, the purpose of what Cru called Summer Missions are to travel to these partnership locations and experience the culture and talk to students about what they believe. Cru has developed many tools over the years to help aid these discussions including perspective cards and Solarium, the two tools we used to talk to students on the trip. Through engaging with the culture of each partnership location, we get to invest in these campuses and students. A normal week during this experience would include going to our partnership campus, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, every day for several hours and using the tools we discussed to talk to students on campus about their faith, whatever that was, and to learn more about them. Fridays we hosted an English club which we invited Brazilian students to attend as a way of practicing their language skills as well as to help teach us Portuguese. These activities are all working toward the goal of establishing a branch of Cru at the university campus. This was the service-learning portion of the trip, learning how to launch Cru on an international campus while simultaneously serving the movement to help make that happen. Nights and weekends included times of team bonding, preparation for campus times, and city excursions. One aspect of the trip I helped lead was food team. I was in charge of meal planning, grocery shopping, and food preparation for our team meals at night. Through a rotation of our team, I helped to instruct groups on what to make and how to make it. Through this variety of experiences, students gain an understanding of what it would be like to work internationally with Cru as staff, encompassing the internship style to this experience. Overall, this STEP experience had components of many STEP categories and was a positive educational experience in helping me understand how to launch branches of international organizations by working with college students.
So What? – A personal response to your STEP experience, including feelings, thoughts, judgments, and what you have learned about yourself and your assumptions from what you did and how you reacted.
When I first signed up to go to Florianopolis, Brazil for 6 weeks with Cru, I was really unsure of what I was getting myself into. How would I adjust to Brazilian culture? Was 6 weeks too long to be away from home? What if I don’t like the food? Some of these were more serious, concerning thoughts than others. Regardless, I was very interested to see what it was like living in another country and getting the chance to interact with their culture. I had out of the country before going to Brazil, three times to a rural village in West Africa called Gbentchal. I had a feeling, however, that this would be totally different. I knew we were staying in a Pousada, which is basically the Brazilian version of apartment style hotels leading to a common outdoor area. This, I thought, seemed like an upgrade from the tents and huts I was accustomed to during my international travels. I found that I adjusted pretty quickly to Brazilian culture (because they’re so friendly) and really enjoyed learning how to live in a new place. My wary feelings of uncertainty slowly melted away as the weeks wore on and I became more sure of myself in this new cultural setting. Another hard adjustment I had to make was regarding my cell phone. About a week and a half after arriving to Florianopolis, as we were getting off of the bus, I dropped my phone. As I turned around to pick it up the bus started moving. My split second decision to sacrifice a broken phone instead of a possibly broken hand left me with no easy way to communicate to my family back home. In the United States we are so used to being constantly connected that this seemed, at first, something that would make this trip unnecessarily uncomfortable for me. As I got used to life without my cell phone, the more I found I could experience what was going on around me and focus less on what other people thought of my experience. I didn’t get to take as many pictures as my teammates or post on Instagram as much, but in reflecting on my time in Brazil I think this was for the best. In order to truly experience life, sometimes, you need to forget about remembering it, capturing the moment, or telling other people about it. I believe that my cell phone getting run over by the city bus allowed me to more fully experience Brazil as it was and not necessarily how I would portray it to other people.
Now What? – Discuss how the things you experienced and learned during your STEP experience will affect your academic, personal, and life goals moving forward.
Going to Brazil and working there for 6 weeks with Cru had a big impact on how I look at international ministry. I have been going on mission trips for about 8 years but this was the longest, and in some ways most educational trip I’ve been on so far. I learned a lot about how to work with a large team of people that I don’t know very well toward a common goal. This will serve me well in my future goals of serving in international clinics. As a personal goal, I hope to one-day start and work in international medical clinics around the world. Through this experience in Brazil, I gained some practical knowledge of how to work with an international organization and begin branches of that organization in different areas of the world. Every time I go abroad on a service trip, I am working towards understanding how I can do that in the future through the lens of my academic pursuits of becoming a doctor. A huge part of my experience in Brazil was dedicated to assimilating to a new culture, living there, and investing in the people. This mirrors what will be necessary for me to do working third-world communities as a doctor. By learning how to live in other cultures and adapt to their way of living, I am understanding more and more what it will take to move to these places I aim to serve. These experience are invaluable to me. Moving forward, I know that the team building, practical skills, and cultural assimilations I’ve learned about in Brazil through this STEP experience will help to progress my personal as well as my academic goals.
