Describe your trip to Mississippi. How was your trip? Did you have a good time on your trip? Three impossible requests. The answers to these questions are so complex I cannot imagine answering them in one work. The end result is that I end up giving a detailed account of my trip while the person who originally asked tries to think of a way to escape my semi-exciting report. After too many of these encounters I decided that I should find one word that could sum up all the stories, memories and adventures that I had collected on my trip to Mississippi. First I thought of “exciting.” Definitely; I had never been on a mission trip before, and everything around me was new and different. How could that not be “exciting”? But “exciting” sounded too much like I had gone to a concert or a theme park; definitely not Mississippi. My next word was “different.” Mississippi was definitely very different. I had never been to a place that was so poor; I had never been to at place that needed so much help, and I had never been to a place with so many people in need. But “different” sounded much too negative for all the fun I had singing “Pharoah, Pharoah” and playing ping pong every night after work. Finally after about a week of searching for the perfect word, it came to me. Of course in the middle of the night and of course I woke up my mom to tell her of my accomplishment. The word is “golden.” Meeting a family for the first time, laying down a floor, installing a door, worship time, the food, even the Wonder bread and ham sandwiches. Yup! It was all golden. It was one week of my life that I will never forget, a week that I am eager to repeat and a week that I hope many others will have the opportunity to experience. There is no greater feeling than knowing that you have helped someone who truly needed your help. That person will never forget you, you will never forget them and that kind of relationship is a kind that you will find no where else. That kind of relationship is golden, and as so many Katrina survivors have said, “All you need are relationships; the rest is just stuff.”

-- by Madeleine O'Rear