Picture-Taking Practice

My mom recently started letting me use her Canon 350D, and I got to make like photographer on a medical mission organized by our church.

A bunch of us from our youth group volunteered to go, and my mom, who documents most of the events of our church, told me to just take pictures. Which was no problem with me, really. I’m squeamish.

And yet I volunteer to go on a medical mission.

Haha, yeah. Anyway, I went, and took some pictures. And had an awesome time!

I had lots of fun going around and shooting away. I loved the kids. They followed me around and posed every chance they got.

I sort of ended up with more photos of what was going on everywhere except where the doctors were checking blood pressure and the dentists were pulling out teeth. (I think the fact that I couldn’t stand watching the dentists pulling out people’s teeth, much less capture those moments, had something to contribute to that, too. But I did get photos of dentists pulling teeth out and little kids crying because of the pain.)

I learned how tiring being photographer was, too. By the time we ended, my legs hurt from my moving around, my arm was sore from holding the camera up, and, I didn’t believe this was actually possible, but I couldn’t move my clicking finger at one point, probably from all my trigger-happiness.

But capturing all those moments, and just being there and helping out in general, was a lot of fun.  Or maybe “fun” isn’t the right word. But, I felt like I was able to serve God in a way, even though the photos I took weren’t used; I felt like He wanted me there, for whatever reason.  And that felt really good.

Some of my friends helped the doctors by weighing people, (I found it a bit funny how they decided to weigh the babies. The weighing scale was the kind you stepped on, and we didn’t have the one you make the baby lie down on, and what my friends decided to do was to weigh the mother carrying the baby, then weigh her without the baby, then subtract the weights. Hahaha.) and calling out for the next patients. And by just being there for whatever the doctors needed them for. Like crowd control.

My other friends helped out with the dentists, by cleaning their tools. Which, I learned just by watching them, is hard work. They had to clean out all those tongs and syringes, and other  shiny, sharp, and pointy things I don’t know what to call. Made me really glad all I had to do was take pictures.

All of us came home feeling tired, but I know we all came home real happy because of everything that happened that day, and because of all the people we met, and especially because of the God we all went there to serve.

You can look at some of the pictures I took here.