In the summer of 2014 I experienced a lifetime event with my trip to India; so now I’m off again in 2016.

It wouldn’t be fair to try and begin any reflection on my time in India without traveling back to my sophomore year, the year the Mr. Wolf encouraged me to attend the India Immersion trip the following summer. While I was in India, I had the privilege of working with the Missionaries of Charity in their house in Varanasi, caring for the abandoned elderly and disabled of the city. In addition to our service, each and every one of us was exposed to the unjust caste culture, poverty and discrimination against the mentally and physically disabled.

Over February break of 2016, I had the incredibly honor of traveling back with Bellarmine’s India delegation. While this iteration of the trip was radically different, being taken under new leadership, and with a brand new itinerary, the underlying mission of the trip was still the same; to shake the students of Bellarmine from their complacency, to awaken a passion and a drive to become world citizens, men for and with others who stop at nothing to craft their own world.

In retrospect, my time spent in India has been the most significant and influential series of actions I have ever undertaken, not only in the lens of service, but also in my entire life. When visiting India for the first time, Mr. Downs and Mr. Wolf proposed to us that we must “Every day find at least one example of joy, beauty, and compassion and be prepared to share it with your other trip members.” Being somewhat arrogant and naïve at the time I was originally upset that we had another assignment apart from the service. I didn’t want to go on (what I brashly thought at the time) was a ridiculous scavenger hunt. When we finally reached India it didn’t take me more than a day to realize that is harder not to see joy, beauty, and compassion, it is much harder to miss it.