Springing Into Service

Springing Into Service
Libby Gill

There’s nothing sweeter to a parent than realizing that despite middle school angst and teenage traumas, your child — strike that, your young adult — has turned out better than you could possibly have hoped. Because he (or she) has discovered what it means to serve others.

This Spring has gotten off to an especially sweet start for me because my son Harrison, a freshman at the University of California at San Diego, is spending his Spring Break in the highlands of Guatemala helping build a school in a poverty-stricken rural area. Never a party animal, I knew my son wouldn’t spend his week hanging out playing video games, but I hardly expected him to volunteer to get four inoculations and go wield a hammer for seven days.