Tiger Serve Day: God Connections
January 01, 2020
Like many Ouachita students, I am well acquainted with Tiger Serve Day and have participated in the event several times. While the purpose of the day never changes, the experience is always packed full of unexpected joys and surprises. In the past, I have always thoroughly enjoyed the stories and company of the individuals I had the opportunity to serve. However, this semester’s Tiger Serve Day was by far the greatest of them all.
I had the privilege of leading a team of my EEE sisters in a project and we were assigned to the home of an elderly couple named the Treats. We spent most of the morning sprucing up their flowerbeds and washing windows. While the type of service we were providing was not anything unique to many other Tiger Serve Day projects, the family that we were serving was something special.
A few weeks prior to Tiger Serve Day, before I had any clue I was going to be leading a team, I came across an elderly couple on campus who needed directions to an on-campus event that was about to begin. They introduced themselves as Marsha and Tom Treat and during the few minutes I spent walking them to their destination, I found that Mrs. Treat and I had something in common. She was a marketing major in college, just like me, and asked for my mailing address so we could stay in touch.
About a week later, I received a letter in the mail from Mrs. Treat thanking me for my help on campus, telling me about her experience in the marketing world and inquiring about my professional goals.
When my team and I arrived at the Treats’ home for TSD, Mrs. Treat had a spread of coffee, donuts and other goodies waiting for us. During a break in our work, we sat with her and listened to stories of her family, her career and her travels with her husband. The kindness and intentionality that she showed in the few moments we spent together on campus and during TSD impacted me significantly. The fact that she took the time to reach out to me personally, and that she served my team on a day when we were supposed to be serving her, was a delightful and unexpected surprise.
Tiger Serve Day provided me with the opportunity to further establish and foster a relationship with two wonderful people who are full of life and wisdom; two people that otherwise would have merely been “that nice couple I ran into on campus.”
By Anna Hurst, senior Marketing major
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