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We enjoyed an encouraging worship service at Good Shepherd Church in Sioux Center at 10:00. The Reverend Dr. Travis Else preached on the importance of the church body to Christian community. He pointed out several main purposes of the church. The church is created by God to be a caring community, not a competitive community with different church groups opposed to one another. The church is created to be a thinking community as Paul prays for the Colossians that they would be “[F]illed with all spiritual wisdom and understanding” (Colossians 1:9b). It ought not to focus on what Dr. Else termed “unhealthy spiritual speculation” where Christians focus on minor details while missing the main purpose of the Scriptures. The church is a hoping community that places its faith in God. And lastly, the church is a community of power through Christ.
The service was composed with a liturgical style of worship and had an emphasis on prayer and Scripture reading from various parts of the Scriptures. Some of us had never been to a liturgy-based service before, so it was a wonderful opportunity to broaden our horizons with other denominations. It was good to see Christians worshiping the God I know in a different way than I am used to worshiping Him.
After a lunch of roasted pork loin, nine of us went on a walk with two of the Dordt students in the program leading us several miles around the campus and partly through Sioux Center. The weather was perfect for a walk, and a nice wind out in the Dordt prairie kept the slight nostalgic aroma of the manure from the local corn fields blowing our way.
When we returned from the walk, a couple of students settled down in the lounge downstairs to play around on their acoustic guitars while several of us read or worked on assignments. Another student joined us downstairs later at the piano and the three of them impressed us with some excellent unrehearsed music.
At 3:00 we went on a thrilling scavenger hunt in the local area for about half-an-hour. We split into teams of seven and took two vans around Sioux Center, snapping pictures at the various locations we had been assigned to find. After parking at each location, we would dash out of the vehicle, snap our picture, dash back, and drive off for the next location. For the locations on the Dordt campus we parked on campus and ran to the locations we had to find there, which gave us all a good after-lunch exercise.
After working ourselves up on the scavenger hunt some of us decided to sit down for some intense rounds of Dutch Blitz until dinner.
The day was capped off with a viewing of “Spotlight”, a 2015 movie that follows several Boston Globe reporters as they work on a case. It provided a good presentation of the excitement, stress, and reward of effective journalism.
It has been a good opening weekend for us at the World Journalism Institute.
-Jonathan Harbour
Today, as I wove between tourists in summer shorts and Orange City residents dressed in wooden shoes and long skirts, carrying a notebook in one hand and a freshly-made stroopwafel in the other, I thought a lot about fear. This isn’t the musing you might expect to have at a tulip festival full of friendly Iowans. It’s probably the least threatening environment you could imagine. The streets were packed with singing, dancing, windmills and plenty of tulips. It was also packed with people, with not a facemask in sight.
My intention is not to make a political stance. We all come from different environments and have adopted different attitudes about face coverings in the context of our individual experiences with the COVID-19 virus. But since we are still in the throes of a pandemic, albeit with a vaccination at the end of the COVID tunnel, I couldn’t help wondering. I wondered if these people felt no fear, packed shoulder-to-shoulder in a time where some have even avoided at-risk family members for fear of getting them sick. I wondered if these people felt no fear, talking and breathing in each other’s faces without any sort of protection. These things never bothered us before March of 2020 and maybe I was the only one who felt unsure. When the crowded streets made me feel compelled to temporarily put on my own face mask (I’m only half-vaccinated at the time of writing this), I felt marked and judged.
I also grappled with my own fear today. For an aspiring reporter, it is surprisingly difficult for me to ask questions of people. Not because I can’t think of questions. Not because I don’t want to ask questions. Rather than coming from a lack of curiosity, my difficulty asking questions comes from a place of fear. I’m at risk of making this sound more profound than it is. At worst, I suffer from mild social anxiety. At best, I’m merely shy and it takes me a little while to “put myself out there.” Approaching strangers and asking them about themselves, inviting myself temporarily into their lives, is something that excites me, but makes me a bit queasy. I got a little bit better at it today, and I expect I will continue to grow in this area as I continue to push myself. But it wasn’t easy, and I am ending this first day at WJI feeling a mixture of satisfaction and regret. I’m satisfied with the work we did, and I feel regret as I wonder how much more I could have done and learned if I only had a more outgoing personality.
I admit it would be nice if I could snap my fingers and exchange my personality - and the quirky fears and anxieties that come with it - with one that seems better suited to on-the-street journalism. But this, aside from being impossible, is not what God would have me do. This year, I have been meditating on 2 Corinthians 12, where God tells Paul “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I know that God has given me a passion for storytelling and listening to people, and I saw reminders of that today. I also saw reminders of my anxiety, one of many thorns in my life. Like Paul, I have pleaded with God to remove it, but I also know that like Paul, God can make me strong where I am weak. So here I am, boasting in my weakness. God, make your power evident this week and for the rest of our lives. Amen.
-Gracey Kenyon
For the first day of our course in Iowa, our handlers decided to loosen our horde of student reporters upon Orange City's 80th Tulip Festival, celebrating local Dutch-American heritage. It was a way to drop us into the deep end and experience covering an event and writing an article about it within the same day.
Before we left for the festival, we had a group briefing, where the instructors handed us beats and reminded us of the elements to include in a story. We were not to write a bland “this and this happened” news story, but rather tell a narrative with a protagonist (or group of protagonists) and their obstacles.
“It’s not about the issue, it’s about the people,” Lee Pitts said.
We would explore the festival for several hours before returning to campus to write out our articles. Mr. Pitts reminded beforehand of what we would need to include to make the story engaging and immersive for readers, such as a theme, relatability and details pulled from all of our senses.
Pairs of us got the same beat, though each of us was expected to come up with an individual story. Beats included broad topics like art, policing, history, immigration and many others.
My prompt was to write an article in the style of People magazine. My mind immediately went to celebrity gossip columns, where the source references sound sketchy and the content is details about someone's private life. I recoiled.
They also do lifestyle articles, Mr. Pitts pointed out to me. Maybe I could work with that.
By the time we arrived at the festival, a little after 10 a.m., I had a hazy plan to focus on the traditional Dutch costumes. Not really People magazine fodder, but close enough, right?
It took me much of the day to gather the courage to stop enough random people and interview them, but it was so rewarding. My first sources kept mentioning a committee of local women who put together sewing patterns for historically accurate Dutch costumes and who made sure the costumes of official people in the parade were up to a certain standard.
“If only I had more than just today,” I thought. “I would definitely contact some people on this committee.”
I decided to get one more interview to round out my story. I stopped an older woman dressed from white bonneted head to silver-buckled toe in costume, and I asked if she would mind talking to me about her outfit.
Guys.
She was on the committee. She was one of the founding members, who had been sewing Dutch costumes for 60 years and had even personally traveled to the Netherlands twice for research. She was tickled to speak about it with me.
I could not have been more over the moon. Thank the Lord, it was such wonderful, kismet closing to such a beautiful whirl of an outing.
- Rachel McClamroch