When reflecting back on the past three weeks of my time on the Hilltop of Tacoma, this past week has given me the widest breadth of experience in different agencies. My group started off the week painting the garage at Associated Ministries (AM), we spent Thursday at the Tacoma Community House (TCH), and finished off the week at the Hospitality Kitchen and Nativity House. At first I was a bit disappointed by the task of painting the garage at AM because I didn’t think that it would teach me anything about social service or about the Hilltop community. By the time we completed the garage at AM, my perspective had changed completely.
When we entered the garage at AM on Tuesday morning it was painted a deep purple color with light pink ceilings. There was construction equipment strewn across the garage, making it barely possible to navigate our way along the walls. As we began to clean up the area so that we could start painting, we came across a few mousetraps, which really pushed the comfort zone of many of our group members, including myself. When we entered this messy garage that was painted a most unattractive shade of purple, I asked myself, “Why are we doing this? This is just some old garage where they store things. Why does it matter if it’s brown instead of purple?” The man who does maintenance work for AM even questioned our task of painting, “It’s just a garage he said. I really don’t think it matters what color we paint it.” It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy painting the garage; I just didn’t see how we were serving the community of the Hilltop by doing so.
After two and a half days we completed the garage—instead of being overwhelmingly purple, the garage was now a calming shade of brown. Along with the garage changing color, my perspective on the service that we had accomplished over the course of those few days had also changed completely. I had come to realize that although painting the garage didn’t directly affect the citizens of the Hilltop who we had been serving earlier at the Food Connection and TCH, it was making a difference in the lives of the people who worked at AM. What may seem to us like a pointless change in the color of an old garage, really meant a lot to the employees of AM who work day in a day out to improve the lives of those in need on the Hilltop. It was amazing to see their reactions through out the day as they came in and looked in awe at what we had accomplished. “I can’t believe how much better it looks in here,” many of them said. “Thank you so much for doing this!”
Painting the garage at AM taught me that sometimes we have an idea of who needs to be served and how exactly we need to serve them—that idea can often be completely incorrect. I went into this month of serving at different agencies on the Hilltop thinking that I would be serving people “in need” on the Hilltop. When I thought about people in need I thought of the single mother who is struggling to feed her children and the homeless man who makes his home on the street corner. I didn’t think about serving the people who are running the agecies. This experience has taught me that we are all in need of an act of service in some way or another. I have learned that serving others doesn’t just mean helping those who are less fortunate than us. Serving others means reaching out to another person and showing them kindness, of which we may never fully know the impact that we have. Painting the garage at AM was something that the employees would never have the time to do. By reaching out and serving them in this way we were able to thank them for all the work that they do for the Hilltop community and people in need all across Pierce County.
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