Middle School Immersion Team Serves as One Crew
Written by Elyse Oh, Student
“What do they mean by One Crew,” I asked my friends who flocked around the fluorescent computer screen. We stared at the Schoology update trying to put to words the theme for this year’s trip. Did they want us to be unified? Isn’t every service trip about unity? How can we be One Crew? How can this trip be different from the others? All these thoughts raced through my head as I played different scenarios of what this year’s trip could be.
January 13 Prep Meeting
On the first day, our team mostly worked in pairs to support each other on the low ropes course. We held their hands on the narrow log and gently handed our partners ropes that they could hold on to.
During the jungle hike, we pushed through with little to no complaints, but our exhaustion weighed down on opportunities to have a proper conversation with the rest of our teammates. And on our first day at the school, we helped the children get to know us and played volleyball and soccer together.
Yet, I couldn’t help but notice a sense of unfamiliarity, almost like there was an invisible line separating us that neither us nor the children knew how to cross. I didn’t truly feel the unity and the unconditional collaboration that we prayed for. I felt as if our team was slowly but surely still searching to be One Crew.
On the second day in the village, our team walked down a familiar path to the school, waving at the kids we saw yesterday. We were split into two groups to either go and paint the wall again or lay down the new cement for the courtyard.
I jumped right in and started to re-paint the chubby guppy fishes on the blue walls, slowly using a fine brush to outline every tiny fin. I dipped my paint brush back into the red plastic cup, but I couldn’t hear the sloshing of the paint this time around. I whipped my head around to see that the special dark gray color that I used ran out. I was devastated and tried to frantically search for a way to combine the other colors together but everything ended up becoming a ugly, mucky brown. Seeing my panicked expression, Sally. K (7) came over and grabbed a can of black and blue paint and tried to mix up a color close to the one I originally had. Slowly one by one all the people who were helping with painting the wall came over and squatted down in a circle, laughing and talking about how they could help me make the perfect match.
Unlike the first day at the school, where we were all working on our own individual paintings, this moment felt completely different. Little by little our team gathered together because they were drawn into helping achieve a shared goal. While it may seem insignificant, in this time that we were laughing about something as silly as coloring a chubby guppy, I felt a spark of true unity. It was unplanned and unserious, but that is what made it extra special.
This unity didn’t carry out just through our team, it carried out to the locals and children in the community. After we finished mixing the colors to create our colorful ocean mural, tired, our team started walking up to grab a drink of water from the refilling station. All of us screwed open our water bottles and just as we were about to fill them up, a group of little girls walked over with Yuna K. (8) and Mia T. (8) and spoke words in Indonesian that seemed like they wanted us to come with them. We eagerly followed them to an empty classroom, and we all sat down on the tiled floors of the room. The little girl next to me grabbed my hand and smiled up at me, and in a beat, the girls were all chanting to an Indonesian folk song while patting and clapping their hands. The fast rhythm of the song and handshake was electrifying and soon enough all of us in the circle were smiling and laughing as we attempted to follow the local children’s lead. As we continued the beat and the handshake, it no longer felt like we were sitting in an unfamiliar environment with children we just met. I felt like we were one wave moving rhythmically to the shore together. Unity wasn’t just something that we were trying to thrive for like when we met the children for the first time, that moment was natural and raw. We didn’t just become people who came to serve in a village in Indonesia, but we became a part of that local community.
During the boat ride back to Telunas we were all extremely emotional, but right then as everyone was crying from all the memories and connections that we made, I smiled off into the vast sea. I finally found out what ‘One Crew’ really meant.
One Crew means being servant-hearted and putting other's needs before ours, being committed to our mission and faith, being collaborative and understanding each other, having creative ideas to bring together the most different of people, leading others with encouragement and love, being truth-seeking in our reflections of memorable moments, and showing compassion to everyone regardless of their background. Most importantly, One Crew is having a shared purpose and accepting others to be one team, one community, and one memory with us.
