St. Francis Day

Last week we were given the opportunity to attend one of the two prayers services celebrating St. Francis. The first was a solemn prayer service in remembrance of his death. I did not attend this one, but from what the other students said, it seemed like it would have been very interesting and enjoyable. The service that I attended was the next day, and was a celebration of his life. I enjoyed how upbeat and joyful this celebration was. For example, during the opening song there were several students ringing bells and carrying streamers. The Cliff Singers were invited to sing for this service. We went to the front and performed a musical version of the peace prayer, which we learned was actually not written by Francis. It was a very enjoyable service, and I enjoyed sharing the gift of music for the other students.

Altruism and Service

I do believe that the service project we participated in relates directly to altruism. I went into the service day not expecting to get anything back from it. We were to asking to get paid for our work, and we did not receive any service in return. To me, the reward from it was looking at the fields at the end of the day and seeing how much cleaner they were. When I first heard what we were doing for the service day, I expected to be working down near the river removing a wall of sandbags. I was slightly disappointed when I got there and saw that we were simply removing muck from the fences of the baseball fields. After lunch, myself and about five other guys were asked to help move bleachers with two works from South Sioux City. I enjoyed this work much more. It went by very quickly and the progress of the job was obvious. We found out that the bleachers were going to be used at the remembrance ceremony for one of the U.S. Marines that was recently shot down in the middle-east. It was a great feeling to know that we were helping a man who gave literally everything he had to protect our country. In regards to the topic of "Pay it Forward", I believe that the idea of it is amazing. It would be incredible to see everyone on the planet working together to help one another out. The big problem with this is that there are far too many people that are introverted and care only about themselves. It would take years of work to convince these people to help three others out. However, with enough dedication to the cause, maybe someday this would work out.