Friday, June 1, 2012


So 2012 is already about at it’s halfway point, so reflecting back on what has passed from the year I decided to put up my stat sheet for the past 6 months. I was struggling hard to write… not find inspiration to write because I have too much of that. What I am really searching for is time and the ability to organize my thoughts, feelings, and experiences enough to present them logically to you all so that you can follow my life. I’m struggling at even keeping up with myself though… so good luck.

Matt’s Box Score:
GP
CV

ME

TVSF
BR
BPW
BGW
JA
JO
MM
130
5(±5)
$1350
7±30
7
14
±150
53
0

            For those of you experienced in statistics I’m sure you can read that box score no problem. For the rest of you I think that I can break down each category for you so you can understand my statistics. Each day I will write for one of the statistical categories so that this blog post doesn’t end up being 15 pages long. I also want to get back into the groove of writing, so if I can write every day for the next 10 days I hope I can get back on track.

More important than understanding the quantity of the stats is to understand the quality of the stats, just as it is in basketball. Kobe Bryant had a couple 40-point games against the Thunder in the past round of the playoffs, but the Lakers lost in 6 games. On the other hand, the Heat are 6-0 so far in the playoffs when Lebron scores 30 or more points, and the Heat are 3 games away from the NBA playoffs. I think that Lebron is having a much more quality playoffs than Kobe had (or has ever had, but that’s another discussion) even though Kobe may have had better numbers in his short playoff stint. So now that you have seen my numbers, I would like to break them down so that hopefully you can understand the quality of my life in the past 6 months.


ME= Money Earned


            So this category is really about my life as a volunteer. From January to May I watched as my bank account slowly but surely made its way down the hill towards zero. I lived from September 2011 to May 2012 as a volunteer and had to live off of my savings (thank God I didn’t really have to pay for food or housing). Anyway, money never really means much to me, so what I want to focus on is the life of being a volunteer.
            I would rather be known as a servant than a volunteer. I volunteer because it gives me the opportunity to serve others. As was taught to me by Gary Chapman my love language is acts of service, so I am naturally attracted to service opportunities. I understand that my affinity for service comes from my desire to be a great leader. I want to be known not as a powerful and self-serving leader. Instead I wish to be a leader like John Wooden, Mother Theresa and the POTUS with the mostest, Barack Obama.[1] I want to be a selfless servant who leads by example more than words or fear. I want to serve others so that someday we will be able to change the world together.
            Because I am feeling a bit lazy and don’t feel like re-writing the story, I’m going to copy-paste a bit of a speech that I was going to give on service. It is just a very rough first draft of the speech that I never ended up giving, but it begins to explain why I became addicted to service:

There is one place that my parents used to take me that I will never forget and that has changed my life forever. That is Dumaguete, Philippines. Growing up, from even before I can remember my parents took a group of anywhere from 50-100 high school students to the Philippines with Habitat for Humanity. The focus was to provide the students with a service opportunity, which involved working alongside local Filipinos to build houses for families with no homes. Every year I would participate in the service project along with my family and the high school students from our school.

In the beginning I was too young to do any work, so my parents entrusted me to run around with the local village children. This was my first exposure to impoverishment, but I was so young I didn’t even notice it. All that I knew was that there were kids running around all day kick around a soccer ball, playing basketball, eating lollipops, dancing, singing, playing with chickens and lizards and crabs. I was living the life with these kids, as I was just a kid myself enjoying the same activities. As I continued to return to Dumaguete every year, I grew older and began to participate in the actual building of the houses. Even as a lowly 5th grader I was alongside many of the high school students trying to pull my weight in work. I thought it was fun, it brought me joy. It wasn’t until about my freshman year that the poverty and grave situation that the people of Dumaguete lived in became apparent to me.

As I grew I began noticing that we were eating great fresh food everyday after work while the rest of the children continued to play and run around because they didn’t have the same luxury of three feasts a day. I began to realize that the families whose homes we were staying in gave us the upstairs beds, while the family piled in, sometimes 6-9 per room on the floor on the first level of the house. Sure we had to struggle through not having electricity, having to bathe in cold water by dumping it out of a cup over our heads, and work long 12 hour days in the heat. At the end of the week though, we got to fly home though to our 3 bedroom houses, McDonalds, and a daily hot shower.

Though I was beginning to realize the inequality and the unfairness of the situation during my frequent trips to the Philippines, I can still remember the one-day that forever changed my life. It was during my sophomore year of high school while on the same Habitat trip which I had participated in already over 10 times in my life, and it came from a simple necklace.

Every year we traveled to the Philippines we would be placed in a home with a family that was part of the Habitat community of houses. These families were always former recipients of the Habitat homes. One day I was walking home with one of the boys who lived in my home from a basketball game, which we usually ended everyday with at the village court. On our way home the boy gave me a necklace, which he had made himself. I asked if he made it in school and he told me that he had gone to the market to buy the beads and string to make it, and he did it himself. It was this necklace that forever changed my life.

It was at the time when this boy gave me the necklace that I realized my place in the world. Like I said earlier, I am blessed in countless way. I have lived a life that I never had to worry about when the next time I would eat is or where I would sleep at night. This boy that gave me the necklace though never had the privileges that I have, not even 10%, yet he still went out of his way to present me with a gift. He spent his time, his money, and his hard work to give me this necklace, and I had given him nothing. Really I had taken his bed (He was staying at a friends home while we were there because he gave up his bed for us), used his shower and bathroom water (which they have to get from a well every day), and even ate his food. He had already given so much, yet he wanted to give more.

That night I remember being in bed not being able to sleep. What did I have for this kid? I felt as if nothing I could do would ever be enough to give back what he had given me. He had not just given me a necklace, but he gave me a piece of him. I never asked him to, but he became part of my life.

In the end I decided to give him the basketball that we had brought to play with the community members with. Though he thanked me infinitely, and almost even praised me for the gift, I never felt like it was enough. As I boarded the Jeepney to leave for the airport back to Seoul, I remember looking out the back and seeing the smile he had with the basketball in his right arm and his arm waving frantically goodbye. Though he could never be happier, I could not have been more confused. Why was it that I could give him a basketball, which means almost nothing to me, and it could make his whole world? Though I cannot remember the boy’s name, or even what building site we were at, what he taught me changed my life forever.

"Passion:  There are many things in life that catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart.  Pursue those."- Unknown Author

The people of Dumaguete caught my heart. Then I traveled to Africa my Junior year for a Safari, and met people who seemed to have even less than those of Dumaguete, and my heart longed for them. As I continued to travel and experience the world my heart fell into the mitt of those we would call “less fortunate.” It became my passion to serve others, young/old, rich or poor. Servant hood became a disease.

The New American Oxford Dictionary defines a servant as, “a devoted and helpful follower or supporter.” I wanted to become a servant to those around me. I recently graduated from Olivet Nazarene University near Chicago, IL. Graduating from college is entering into a transition period in life where you finish school and begin to make choices on what you will do for the rest of your life. You graduate college and enter in to the real world. When evaluating my choices I found my passion for service overwhelming my decision-making, and instead of searching for a career I chose to move to Africa as a volunteer basketball coach.

            This little bit of a speech tells the story of how service found a place in my heart. Now I got to focus back on the topic of the blog today, which is the money I earned this year so far. Since returning from Africa I have been substituting at Shanghai American School- Pudong. This has been good because it has given me an opportunity to try and get my broke self back on my feet a little bit. So that explains the 1350$ earned in my stat sheet. That really isn’t that important though because it is the experiences that you have in life that make the difference, not the money that you have.

MOE, GMFB, and all that!!!!!!!!


[1] So the last one might be a bit of a stretch, but the first two examples prove my point.