When Life Gives You Frozen Bananas, You Make Banana Bread

I just returned from a Spring Break Immersion Trip in which a group of 11 Creighton students, myself, and 2 other Creighton staff traveled in vans to the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Indian Reservations in South Dakota. The main purpose of the trip was to help Juniors in the high schools at these reservations begin to work on their resumes and scholarship applications and specifically the Gates Millennium Scholarship. The Gates scholarship is specifically for outstanding low-income minority students. The other purpose of the trip was to learn more about and experience the Lakota culture. I had an excellent time on the trip and feel that we were able to accomplish a lot of what we set out to do.

Like any trip, it required organization and planning. Needless to say, the planning of certain things on the trip could have been better. Some of the things we thought were set up and planned fell through, and so we had to adjust our schedule. As is the case in many situations, the things you expect to occur don’t always happen that way. The things you don’t expect are often disheartening. On our trip we had wanted to visit the buffalo herd up close and learn more about their history. What actually happened was that we only got to stand in the cold on the side of the road to see the herd from a distance. But here’s where the title of this blog comes in. Sometimes the things that don’t happen can lead to something unexpected and better than what the plan was originally. Or if something seemingly negative happens, a more positive ending may occur. It all started even before we left for South Dakota. I had bought groceries and snacks for our trip the night before and figured it would be alright to leave the food in the van overnight. For the most part I was right. It got cold enough so as not to sour the milk. But…the bananas weren’t so lucky. The poor things froze and turned black! Oops! I was embarrassed and also sad that we wouldn’t be able to eat bananas all week. I had let the group down. But wait…here is where we made something better out of a seemingly negative occurrence. Turns out we had all the ingredients needed to make banana bread! So we Googled a banana recipe and the Banana Bread Babes made an awesome addition to our dinner that night and the next!

This theme of something better coming out of a setback seemed to be what defined our trip. Some of the things we couldn’t do gave us time to bond as a group. I had a great time playing “I Have Mail For” and “Hide and Seek” by the way! I didn’t know games like that could still be fun for people over 5 years old!

It is experiences like this one that have helped me to be more of an optimist in life. As it relates to vocation as calling, I could go on about past experiences in work and play that have shaped my calling but I will wait until next time to continue. Stay tuned…