How a Service Trip Changed My Perspective

Good Morning loves!

It’s been a year since I traveled to the Philippines for two weeks and so I am feeling very sentimental. Last summer I was blessed with the incredible opportunity to establish a bakery in a small village in the Philippines in order to empower the women of a small impoverished village called Nueva Estrella. .

Before my service trip experience, I would consider myself a much different person. I appreciated my life, but I never really understood how truly blessed I really was. I would spend most of my time shopping. No seriously, I might not enjoy shopping now, but I used to make a trip to Nordstrom at least 2-3 times a week. Today, you can catch me at a mall maybe once every 2-3 months. I realized that material things do not matter, but rather experiences and people! I find it so much more important to spend time and money on people and experiences.

Overall, this experience gave me an entire new outlook on life and forever changed my perspective. I am forever grateful for this opportunity that changed my life. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about the people I met and the lives that changed my own.

A year later and I still find myself thinking about this village and these children every single day. The village children taught me that laughter, happiness, and love have no language barrier. This experience taught me to be grateful for life no matter what and to always count your blessings.

I encourage everyone I know to take the chance and find the courage to do a trip that will push them out of their comfort zone and change their life for the better. There are so many opportunities for college students and young adults to get involved in an experience like this. If your school or an organization you belong to doesn’t offer any opportunities, check out some of these websites, or simply google “service trips.”