The Trip in a Quote

"Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success."

-Henry Ford

 

This quote epitomizes the purpose of the trip for me.  If it looks familiar, that is because it is the quote that is written on the picture hanging in the back corner of the fish bowl in the TLCC.  Not only does this quote describe how our group will grow together, but it also describes how we will immerse into the local community day by day.

 

At the beginning, we will come together.  For the first time on Saturday morning, everyone on the trip will be at the same place at the same time.  Similarly, when we arrive in San Juan la Laguna, we will meet the people we will spend the week with whom we have never met before.  This is the initial coming together process.  A group of people who do not know each other very well, or at all, are gathering for the common purpose of serving and learning the ways of a group of people.

 

Throughout the week, we will be forced to keep together.  We must overcome our differences and bond using our similarities.  I am not implying this will be difficult since we have such a great group and we are staying in an amazing community, but it will take work.  Each of us must make an effort to get to know our counterparts, homestays, and the locals.

 

And after all of this, we will work together.  By working together, we will have a successful trip.  Yes, it is true that we will not be changing the lives of these Guatemalans in such little time with so little that we are doing relatively speaking, but by working together, we will achieve much more than quantitative results.  We will grow together as a group and get to know our fellow travelers.  We will make a unique bond with a group of people many miles away.  And both us and the people of San Juan la Laguna will have changed for the better at the end of our trip.  By the end of the week, we all will have succeeded.

 

-Stephen Johnson