To whom much is given, much will be required

I was in Spain a lifetime ago. Since my time abroad, I have celebrated Christmas with the family in Florida, traveled to New England to go skiing, and, finally, unpacked my life into my new central campus apartment. I have been so busy jumping right back into this hectic Duke life that Spain feels like one of my ethereal dreams that I can only half-remember. What’s strange about returning back from abroad is how nothing here, in the country, in my household, with my friends, has really changed at all. The icemaker in my house still doesn’t make cubes. The handle on the front door has yet to be fixed, too. My brother is still a little too obsessed with his young high school love. Although the world around me has remained static, I feel like I have changed dramatically.However, when talking about my abroad experience to the family friends at the Christmas Eve party or even here back on campus as I pass by old friends, I sum up three months of learning, coping, struggling, enjoying, living, and discovering with a few short phrases: delicious food and plenty of wine, wonderful senora with a great apartment location, fun trips all over Spain. I haven’t been able to explain to friends or to family that I didn’t just eat ham sandwiches, drink wine, travel Europe, and take daily siestas. There exists this whole other dimension, the side of SEE! The World, that I need to remember, to reflect on, and to move forward with. And, so, here it goes.

When I last wrote, I discussed my dissatisfaction with my inability to broaden the youth group’s service involvement. Fortunately right before I left Spain, we had the perfect opportunity to get involved in the community. Each year at Christmastime churches across the globe hang gift tags on Christmas trees in the parish so that parishioners can take one, buy the gift indicated by the tag, and return the present, wrapped, to be delivered to a child. At Our Lady of Mercy, the presents collected under the Giving Tree were donated to Nazaret, a local after school program that cares for underprivileged children. While the children enjoy games, music, sports, arts and crafts, and reading, their parents can take small seminar courses in which they learn how to communicate with, connect with, and bond with their children. They learn about nutrition, education, and opportunities for their children. Nazaret hopes to be a place where families can grow together, stronger.

The youth group was only mildly involved in the process of the giving tree. We wrote out the name tags which specified the child’s age and desired toy. Most children wanted pantalones raperos—rapper’s pants, any sort of baggy jeans worn by today’s hip hop idols. However, what began as a simple collection of toys evolved into a Carnival de Navidad that the youth group and I ended up organizing, coordinating, and carrying out for the children of Nazaret. Because I was leaving Madrid before the gift distribution, we decided to hold a Christmas party for the children before my departure as a way to broaden our perspective and reach out more concretely into the community. So on a Saturday late afternoon, we held a Christmas carnival at the site of Nazaret in which the children participated in three different games, decorated large cut-out Christmas trees, sang Christmas carols, and enjoyed snacks. The children participated in a relay race in which they had to hop on one leg, run backwards, take large steps, and jump like a bunny in order to decorate a tree on the opposite side of the room. Imagine trying to explain those directions in Spanish! The children then played the winter version of “Pin the Tail on the Donkey”—“Pin the Parts on Frosty the Snowman.” For the final game, the children had to throw beanbags into a wreath cut-out. When everyone had participated in each game, we awarded everyone with goodie bags of candy and candy-canes, a very uncommon Christmas treat in Spain. To end the evening, all the children at Nazaret, the young counselors, and the youth group sang in upbeat chorus, “Cumpleanos Feliz” to honor the birthday of 9 year-old Soraya, Nazaret’s resident flamenco-extraordinaire.

Riding the Metro back to the church that night, I felt the happiest, the most content I had in all of my time in Madrid. The six youth group participants that attended the event impressed me with their flexibility, creativity, and outgoingness. The counselors at Nazaret earned my respect and appreciation for the constant love, support, discipline, and care they provide for Nazaret’s children everyday. The children themselves captured my heart with their friendliness, competitiveness, and kindness. Each week interacting with the youth group was rewarding and challenging. However, we all really needed to move beyond the church and insert ourselves in the community to give and to benefit simultaneously.

April left me a few questions for me to think about as I write my final reflection from within U.S. borders. It seems as though she wanted to know how the religious aspect fit into and played out with my service work. To begin, I had not intended on working with Our Lady of Mercy at all. I contacted the parish in order to use them as a resource for getting involved in any sort of charity work in Madrid. However, instead of offering me much help, the priest offered me the position as the youth group coordinator in the parish. At first I was skeptical about the position. Never before had I been in charge of religious instruction. Still, I felt that the chance to work with youth in such an intimate way would be a positive experience, and so accepted the offer.

Initially, I felt extremely nervous and concerned with how I would perform in the role of a source of religious information or moral instruction for the youth group students. I was indeed in charge of a youth group in a Catholic parish. But yet, I am no religious scholar. I attend mass weekly, but don’t exactly take time during the week to study or learn more about my faith. And so, the thought of working in this capacity frightened me. At the onset I felt very obligated to have a religious education component to each Sunday meeting. So, we played World Religions Jeopardy and discussed the Gospel reading for the day. However, over the course of the semester, I began to phase out that educative part of our meetings for two reasons. For one, I did not have sufficient time to really plan, prepare, and research all the intricacies of each week’s bible readings or homily topics. Secondly, and most importantly, I realized that these amazing teenagers had already taken 10 years of religious education, knew their material, and now were more interested in how faith and values can be applied in their everyday lives. So, our discussions switched from analyzing the meaning of passages to the ways we can apply the ideas of loving your neighbor, serving God, and being honest in the real life of a teenager. Our final event at Nazaret was a culmination of the ideas we discussed weekly. As concerned citizens, not just concerned Christians, we should and must give of our time and talents to our local community in whatever ways possible. We talked a lot about the idea of “To whom much is given, much will be required.” As English-speakers and children of fairly well-off families, the youth group and I recognized our potential to help better and shape the world around us. Now, back at home in the U.S. with a difficult class schedule, internship searches, job obligations, and social desires, it will be a challenge, albeit a necessary and most rewarding one, to find time to continue my commitment to my community through service.

-Kayleigh O'Keefe, December 2006