Ray's plan

The plan is to spend six months, from the beginning of February to the beginning of August, abroad doing service work. I will start in South Africa, and will go by land to Nairobi or Addis Ababa, then on to the Holy Land, then to Eastern Europe, and finally on to Rome where I will catch my flight home.

I have experience backpacking around the world. When I graduated college I spent several months sightseeing in Northern and Northeast Europe. Then, after my year in Argentina, I took two trips in South America- both from Buenos Aires to Caracas. One by way of the Andes (Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela) and the other by way of Brazil (Argentina, Brazil, French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, and Venezuela).

It was on the first backpacking trip in South America that I vowed to give up these long sightseeing trips. It wasn’t because I didn’t like it- I love traveling and the excitement of meeting new people and exploring new places! It was because as I saw all these amazing sights, I still felt this emptiness inside.

It was on the hike to Macchu Picchu that I finally realized this. We had reached Santa Teresa, our last stop before the great Incan city. I left our group to go back to the hostel, to have some time to rest. In the road, there was a young boy playing soccer by himself. I asked him if he wanted to kick the ball around with me. Soon another kid joined us, then another, and then finally it seemed as if all the kids from the town were playing- around 30 kids!

I stayed up practically the whole night, playing soccer, hide and go seek, tag, duck duck goose (they had never heard of this game), and then finally we sat in a circle and told ghost stories. Eventually, I walked each one to their houses, and they told me about their lives.

As I continued on the trip and after I came home, this was the night I remembered most. This was the night I most longed for, the night that always put a smile on my face when I thought about it, the night that made the whole trip worth it. It wasn’t the awesome sights of the great salt flats in Bolivia, Macchu Picchu, Cartagena, or even Angel Falls that left me breathless. It was that night with those kids.

On my second trip in South America, after another stay with my host family and friends in Argentina, I went through Brazil, staying for one month in Porto Nacional, doing service work. It was amazing, as again I came in contact with some incredible kids with incredibly nothing in their possessions. And it felt so good and so right to be with them.

Now I want to discover Africa and all of its wonders. I want to experience its culture and its problems, too, as I do service work in many different places. I want to continue on to the Holy Land and learn about what is going on there, and, if I can, try to help alleviate even a little suffering. And finally I want to do some service work in the Former Yugoslovia, a place that was ripped apart in a bloody war and genocide in the 90’s, and even now faces an uncertain future, especially in regards to Kosovo.

I have made all the contacts with agencies on my own. I’m not doing this with any organization or group of people- even though most of the places I will serve are related somehow to the Lutheran Church. I am using mainly my own funds, although some have generously given to help offset some of the costs. This is not a sightseeing trip, and it means that I will miss out on a lot of the tourist sights in the places I am going. But I’ve done that before, and that’s not why I’m doing this trip.

When I get home, I will go back to school- to seminary, to study theology on a track to become an ordained pastor in the ELCA. But I’m trying not to think too much about that now. I will need plenty of energy and focus for this trip! I am going South and East, with an open heart and an open mind, to people and places unfamiliar to me, to let myself be enriched by them- and to help out where I can.