We Did It.

Today, we "got-r-done." We put the finishing touches on our service project for our Introduction to Leadership class at Morningside. Our project involved working with the "Beautification Babes" in Hinton to decorate various sections of the city with Christmas lights in time for Thanksgiving. Along with Danny, Kevin, and Gage, we all put in numerous hours over a two week period. One may think that putting up Christmas lights would be easy, but we learned the hard way that doing just that is no easy task. Dealing with different kinds of lights, trees taller than we can reach, and brisk weather conditions, we all gained much respect for those who do this on a yearly basis.

Gage, Kevin, and Danny stringing lights on a bush. In the words of Bob Ross, "what a nice little bush."

 The Beautification Babes contacted residents throughout the community looking for trees in high visibility areas to have decorated with Christmas lights. They had intended on paying someone $400 to do what we did, but our willingness to volunteer was more of an incentive than our lack of experience was a deterrent. We took on a task that we knew next to nothing about, dressed warmly, and set out to accomplish. Just over two weeks later, that is exactly what we have done.

In the past two weeks, we have learned a lot about what it takes to be a leader. We gained experience in communicating with others about their needs and what it takes to meet those needs. Also, we dealt with compromise. When we had ideas on how to go about setting up the lights, we discussed them as a group to see if that was the best choice or whether something could be changed slightly to ensure a better result.

In doing this project, we learned, led, and had fun. The one thing that would have made this project better would have been a little more help from Mother Nature. Other than our first day of putting up lights, we dealt with very undesirably cold weather. However, this weather is what made our project more impressive as we spent most of our time in 30-40 degree conditions rather than the comfort of being indoors. We went out on a limb (and decorated that limb with lights) and made a difference in a community. Thanks to our hard work, Hinton will have that Christmas feel this winter without having had to pay for it. The money saved by our volunteering will go to help out the community even more. In fact, Kelly from the Beautification Babes informed us that they were going to put an article in the Sioux City Journal about our efforts, which is pretty neat.

This short little video pretty much sums up our last day of putting up Christmas lights.

The "Beautification Boys" have finished their work, but pictures of the finished product will still be coming. Until next time, have a very happy Thanksgiving!