by Kathryn Graham, EM Summer Staff in Southeast Maine
Kathyrn served as an EM Cross-Cultural intern in the summer of 2015, helping lead and facilitate short term mission trips in Southeast Maine while getting to know the community and encourage local ministries in their year-round work.
The New England mentality is real, friends. This was a harsh reality for me to grasp after living in the friendly Midwest—a place where smiling at someone as you walk by is a habit of courtesy. There is constant longing for an unending stream of personal gratification that gets into many brains on the East Coast. So naturally, I was surprised when I found that the people I worked with this summer in Portland, Maine, were the most generous, empathetic people I have ever met.
Other things surprised me along the way, too. On my second day on the job, I was surprised when a couple of kids left the side window open and climbed back in after hours to beat each other up. On my last day on the job, I was surprised by how completely and unconditionally I loved the same kids. My days are much more dull back at home without their giggles and hugs scattered throughout.
I recently read a book that said each city or place has a single word that can embody it. For example, New York's word is "achieve." After some thinking, I decided that Portland, Maine's word is "empower."
The community of Portland and the ministries EM partners with there make a combined effort to uplift and empower the African refugees who are going through such drastic and intense transitions. They all hope they can potentially achieve some version of the American Dream. As a chain effect, the people of Portland empowered me.
And thank goodness they did. I needed the encouragement of the people surrounding me in order to complete nine weeks of mental and physical exertion. But, I had no idea that something so exhausting could simultaneously fill me up so completely.
I kept a journal regularly during my time in Maine and I re-read my entries after I got home. Before I left for Portland I wrote about how I wanted this experience to make me know gratitude more intimately and make me live more intentionally. I also hoped for little things, like receiving affection from the kids in Portland and that I would like lobster. (No luck on the lobster.)
Now that my time there is complete, I realize I have grown tremendously in each of those areas. Leadership out on the mission field with EM is the hardest and most confrontational thing I’ve ever done, but throughout the difficulties, certain qualities residing within me were exposed and recognized. Obvious as it may sound, the more I got to know my Creator, the more familiar I became with myself.
Being an EM intern shifted my world. I learned more about reliance than I ever knew I would need to actually put into practice. I also learned that part of the responsibility of leadership lies in the willingness to give things up to God, realizing and embracing the fact that I am simply human. I was thoroughly refined equally by all situations that turned out to be absurdly strange and the moments that went better than expected.
Everyone should get to experience what I did in Portland: the process of being broken down, stretched, built up, and filled up by people and events that were put so specifically and perfectly into place.
LEARN MORE | Apply now for the EM Cross-Cultural Internship next Summer!
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