Participants Blog

I felt my heart grow on an almost daily basis…

Hannah, who spent her summer in a small village in Ghana, reflects with gratitude on her experience.

Dear Intercordia,
I wanted to write to you now that I have arrived back in Canada. The transition back into this world has been difficult and it will be interesting to see the path it takes as I continue with it. I am so grateful for all the skills I developed during my experience in Ghana. The calmness, the lowered anxiety, a gentleness with myself, they have all helped with this period of adjustment and reintegration. And I’m sure as time passes it will all get easier.

Firstly, I just wanted to say a great big thank you. This experience truly changed my life, in ways that you already know would be impossible for me to explain. I just wanted to take a moment to remind you of the power of your program. The power it has for extraordinary growth and love. That is what this experience was for me. I felt my heart grow on an almost daily basis and even thinking of it now I feel it physically ache. The relationships I built with my family and my students, the feeling of belonging to a community, it was like nothing I could have ever imagined existing. And I feel so entirely blessed to have been a part of.

This is not to say that there weren’t challenges. Obviously there were. Some moments were so hard. But I developed such a feeling of being at peace that there was always a sense of trust that the struggle would pass. Never in my life have I laughed so much, loved so hard, and been quite so wonderfully happy.

There is nothing I could ever say or do to repay you for what you have given me. Instead I will include a quote from a book that I re-read this summer. It seems to be the closest thing to perfect that I could say.

“In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

Thank you with all my heart,
Hannah