In religion and teaching I have never been a fan of preaching, sitting in front of the class or congregation and talking or sitting I the class and congregation and just listening. But at the same time in my work here I wonder if I am having any impact at all, or whether that impact is something I may just never be able to witness personally. In that same vein, is preaching more effective or just shows its results more quickly, whether they are lasting or not.

This past week has absolutely flown by and I don’t exactly know where it went, I know that I feel as if I have been busy, but maybe I’m being too impatient in wanting to see some sort of result from my work. That probably comes at least partially from working at a newspaper and being able to see my work in print every week. Or even when I was working in a warehouse where I could witness the boxes I packed multiple times every day. Teaching and development is a different beast I’m still figuring out how much I like or not. Results may be more profound but I may never actually see those results.

When I joined the Peace Corps, I tried to keep the mindset that if I was able to change one person’s life for the better I could count my service a success. Along the way, my expectations seemed to have inflated. I still try to convince myself of the goal of helping just one person, while at the same time trying to involve myself in as many people’s lives as I can. Is it because I am feeling insignificant, am I applying a scattergun philosophy to my original idea because I don’t know who I may end up influencing, or is this simply how working is ending up for me? Maybe somewhere along the way I got the crazy idea from looking at super volunteers and witnessing what wonderful projects other people were accomplishing I made the fatal mistake of trying to measure my success against other peoples’. I can’t become complacent in the work I’m doing, but at the same time, how far should I push myself and when are the standards too high, or not high enough?

In maybe a partially related subject, but not entirely, a volunteer who recently completed her service, she’s been referenced before in my blog, Liz Baltaro, had her grandmother (she’s 82 and came to Ukraine) visit her in the last two weeks of her service. I had the honor of being able to meet the genuinely interesting woman. She had been to Kyiv once before when it was still communist along with being a lot of other places in world, like I said, an amazing woman. But what she did help me do was start to crystallize what I may be interested in doing after service. I’m still holding that my experiences here will help mold what my future will hold, but suggestions she had, such as the Foreign Service rung true with previous ideas I had held, and helped with some positive reinforcement. So who knows exactly where I will end up at the end of these two years and doing what, but I’m sure she will have an impact on it even if it is just from the one meeting.

In completely unrelated news, in case you hadn’t heard, I will be making a trip back to the U.S. this month into early next month. I have tickets into Portland on the 22nd and back to Ukraine on the 6th of January. The main reason being Aaron Wirick is getting married. I told him to wait until I got back, but I guess he couldn’t wait, didn’t listen or just knew I would come back anyway (smiling yet Aaron?). So I will be in California from Dec 26 to Dec 31 for the wedding and the rest of the time in Oregon. What exactly I will be doing in Oregon is still up in the air, but if you’re around, I’d love to meet up with you. I want to celebrate well on my birthday too; it’s on Dec. 31, in case you forgot. So drop me an email, comment or call me at home if you know that number, I have a mobile phone in Ukraine, but will go back to no phone in the states, strange… So until next time, take care.