Reflection Paper

As a believer in Christ grows they become more aware of the gifts that they may have been given by the Holy Spirit. It is up to us to use the gifts for the right reasons. We are to allow God to work through us to edify the body of Christ. I see a lot of so called Christians these days using what is supposed to be a spiritual gift to use for ministry of the local church using them for self-edification. They are looking to see how much praise they can get instead of how much pleasure God will get through their service. We as believers need to be able to discern between what a spiritual gift is and what virtue is. A spiritual gift is related to the ministry of Christ and a virtue is related to our character. It is very easy for someone to blur the line between two and get confused. Our spiritual gifts are not the same for everyone, where all who believe should show the fruit of the spirit. To some believers the Holy Spirit gives the gift of serving, teaching, administration, and so on. But in the end it is not what spiritual gift we have but how we use it; this is what makes the difference between edifying the body of Christ or oneself.

I have never been more vulnerable than at the end of my Junior year of highschool. I was exhausted not because of my work load, but because my best friend was in love with me and I was, for the first time, in a class that openly talked about race. The English class, taught by a black woman, was predominantly white (as was my school) and not only discussed race, but specifically discussed whiteness. For the first few months of my year, I was closed off despite believing I was participating. While the year went on, I realized I had been cruel to my (white) best friend. I had been completely unaware of the harm I was causing until, in December she told me that I didn’t actually listen when people spoke to me. I apologized in January and her forgiveness was something I had never before experienced. Over the last semester of my Junior year, while she reminded me how deeply important love is, I begun to see myself as white. On the last day of my English class, I thought of how hard I had worked the past few months to accept and express love, how I had come to believe that love was the most important thing in the world to possess, and I wondered why I had never known this before. I realized, suddenly, that whiteness can, and has, prevented me from feeling and receiving real, unconditional, and unracialized love. I began to sob. As my whiteness became visible, so did my deficit of love. I realized the comfort I, a white person, felt in isolation, narcissism and apathy enabled me to

Many people are usually shaped through the challenges and obstacles that they come across throughout their lifetime. I grew up with parents who immigrated here and knowing about their history helped me grow a lot throughout my childhood. I have grown to know about and going through struggles that my parents have gone through. I am now a hard worker and plan to use this characteristic to a good use when going to through college and pursuing my career path. I am also humble and thankful for everything that I have because my parents never had most of the things that my siblings and I have. Throughout my life, I have learned to grow through my parents and their history. Learning about my culture has also helped me grow as a person.

Ms. Gladson’s future classroom will incorporate a healthy mix of fun and organized. While thinking over the five procedures one should implement in their classroom, it was important that they recognized the organized environment of the classroom, but also allowed for positive interaction among the students. From entering the room to leaving at the end of the day, there are important steps that even seventh graders need to remember in their classroom. Educators should allow one week of training; in which they will learn the procedures, but receive a grace period if not completed correctly. Then, at the start of week two, they can expect the students to complete it on their own. Each procedure teaches a set of expectation that the instructor should hope to see from each student.

Starting this journey, I was skeptical of what I could achieve in such a short period of time. I was shocked when I began writing this and got to reflect on the progress I have made, physically and emotionally. I have realized that change does not happen overnight and it takes serious commitment. I am now able to connect the activities we do in seminar to my own progressions. I know each situation is individualized to the patient but, getting to work through the process myself gave me an inside to what it takes and the struggles that my patients might encounter. After this journey, I feel better prepared to help clients through similar processes and aid them in making an important change.

I was 21 years old when I came to the United States and needed to work in order to help my father and relatives with the rent. Three months later, I found my first full-time job making pillow cases and mattress covers at the Navy Yard in Brooklyn, and attending evening ESL classes in a public school twice a week. Additionally, on Sundays, I went to the American Language Community Center (ALCC) in Queens. Since I came from the Dominican Republic, I was on a hiatus from college. Nevertheless, I knew that learning English was the only way back to it. Despite suffering from sleep deprivation during that time, I persevered until the day I received my admission letter.

Growing up church was not a place we “had time” to attend, and God was not a part of our household. It was not until about four years ago, that I began my relationship with Christ. On July 18, 2011, I began to have nine plus seizures a day; I spent a lot of time in the hospital trying to get answers to my over-night attacks. During this time, I fell into a depression because of the lack of answers. I felt that I was just being given drugs to get me discharged. Many would send prayers, and ask me to come to church, but it was not something I wanted to do. At this point in my life, I held anger in my heart; going to church and hearing about a God I did not know didn’t make sense. My mother was my primary care taker, and dealing with my sickness was not easy. In 2013, she was invited to church by a co-worker, and she took me along with her for the “ride”. We attended citylife church, and from the moment worship began, I was in tears. While the Pastor was speaking, it was like he was speaking directly to me, and I thought to myself, “He must know about why I am so depressed.” At the end of the service, the Pastor asked for those who would like to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior to come up, and I could not get there fast enough. This is where my journey with Christ began, and I learned that it was not the Pastor who was speaking to me on this day. God already knew I would be in attendance on this day, and I needed to hear the message that was given through the Pastor. I

The act of reading, writing, and listening to literature for enjoyment has always astounded me. Humans are the most complex animals on Earth, yet literature is still a novelty to some. It might be because of what we learn in school that turns us off from literature, but I may be different. I found a love for poetry and creative writing during my freshman year in high school. It was important for me to project what I could not say outloud, and that is where I felt unified with literature. When I put pen to paper, I felt like life had stopped and I was in the moment. Life became increasingly hard as I went through school, but each time I came back to writing, I felt as if I was drifting away in myself yet still in control. It was hard for me to find a way to cope with my ever changing life. The act of writing helped me tell my story in ways that I could not express to others due to our social expectations. Storytelling is important, for it provides a nessecary outlet in order to cope with life more easily.

Do you remember what your priorities were when you were eight years old? When I was that age (1965), I was in third grade. One of my jobs was to make breakfast on weekday mornings for some of my younger brothers and sisters. At that age, my primary goal was to figure out ways to get out of work around the house, so I could go outside and play with my cousins who lived in the neighborhood.

The United States has always been known as a melting pot; a country where different ethnicities, cultures, and religions could congregate to in order to escape from conformity. A country where people could go in order to start a family and raise their children in a diverse environment. A place where everyone from different backgrounds is represented and everybody can share their ideals and experiences and feel welcomed. That is what I was told growing up, that is what teachers and mentors engraved into my brain, and it wasn’t until I was seventeen-years-old when I realized that is far from the truth. My language and perspectives are constricted due to the fact I grew up in the United States, and all it took was one trip overseas for me to discover the diversity of the world in comparison to America.

As humans of society, we all crave the respect and friendships of our colleagues. Unfortunately, choosing to walk in my Christian faith made those two components difficult to grasp.

“Because transition is a process by which people unplug into a new world, we can say that transition starts with an ending and finishes with a beginning.” In many ways the previous quote relations to my transition of transferring from Saint Peter’s University to UNC Charlotte. I had to “unplug” from many things in both my academic and personal life, as a result of, transferring to another school.

Pastors need mentors, mentees, and true peers. I have enjoyed a long-standing relationship with two pastor colleagues both in very different places in life and ministry. Yet, even from these different places, all three of us share some very basics understandings and needs as we strive to serve the church. Rev. Bev Dempsey and Rev. Nikki Brown Rice are the two selected clergy persons I chose for this connection exercise. All the best plans were intended to email and create a great long thread of emails to turn in. One thing we all have in common is that we are much better face-to-face connections than in email. Therefore, when given the chance to decide to connect through email versus personal conversations, we all agreed on personal conversations.

I am a full-time student and I reside on campus. I am in the honors program and many of the honors cohort resides in Anthony or Sherman Hall. I am including this in my paper because I want you to understand that the people who I live with I am familiar with. Our laundry room is combined with our kitchen there is a nice table with chairs, normal kitchen amenities, and of course the washer and dryer. Sunday evening, I washed a load of clothes which is normal however instead of drying them and then folding them I decided to wash them and fold them wet. I folded my clothes in the kitchen area at the table so people would come in and see that I was folding my clothes and just make normal conversation with me.

The way we view the world makes a huge impact on how we live and chose to do things. One of the most fundamental things which guide how we live and think is what e believe to be the ultimate reality. Within my cohort since we all go to a christian University and have grown up relatively with the same belief system we all agreed that God is the ultimate reality. That when everything else disappears God is who created all matter and without God there is no matter. I believe we live in a world that is two dimensional; physical and spiritual. Meaning that there is a world that we can see as well as one that is visible with the naked eye. However one of my cohorts said that she believed that God is matter, saying that all that is around us contains God since he is who created all. We contrasted in this belief because I believe that God created all matter and then allows it to move as he designed it, interacting only when disruption is needed to move things according to Gods will.