Experience #2: Speech During Morning Assembly

The Mamelodi Initiative: Final Week

Its too bad that I did not have the time to process all of this information and experiences in the moment but we really did have to give it our all the last week of program to make it work. I'm going to blog about things that I observed during our groups final hours on the trip as well as the three most formative final experiences for me.

Experience #2:  Speech During Morning Assembly

Well I am biting the bullet and making the decision to post this so here goes nothing - all over again.  I stayed up till 3:00 am writing this, and I was praying to have as big of an impact as possible. Here is what I wrote out for my speech.

Ashe!

Even a Mahua like me can learn a little Sepedi (African language) ney?

Hey guys my name is Dylan Rollins and I wanted to come and speak to you today so I could tell you about some mistakes that I have made in the past as a student, why I regret them now and how my life has changed dramatically by doing what I should have been doing all along.

So, I was born and raised in Winston-Salem, NC in the United States. I went to a very prestigious private school and at that time my school fees were about 140,000 Rand a year. I went to that school from the time that I was 4 years old to when I was 15. I knew pretty much one thing at that school, how to perform. In my school I was surrounded by the overachieving sons and daughters of politicians, CEOs, lawyers, doctors and successful entrepreneurs.  Since I went to such a good school, the classes were rigorously hard. I became used to a life where I was a Boy Scout, a three sport athlete and a successful student. But one of the things that made me very sad when I was a kid was the fact that I could not think as fast as any of the other students. No matter how much I tried I always spent twice as much time studying every single day after school and twice as much time to take every single test as all the other students. Because I grew up with students who were so determined and under so much pressure to do well in school, I thought I had to do that too. I was a very very sad person and despite how hard I worked I did not really understand WHY I should work hard and I wasn’t happy even though I did well. I only knew that doing my best was what my parents told me I should do and that it seemed like the people around me thought that doing well in school was extremely important.

So, my time at that private school ended at the end of my ninth grade year in secondary and after this my parents let me make a decision and I decided to switch into a public school.  The school that I had come from had a graduating class of 30 students, and the school that I went into had a class of 500. When I got to public school, I still did not know about the Gospel. Because I didn’t understand that God loved me, I was tired. I was tired of trying so hard just to make other people happy and live up to a standard I never felt like I could attain because I thought more slowly than my other students. I was tired of trying to be as good as everyone else around me. So as a person who did not feel motivated by God, in a new school with no friends and a learning difference that made me mad all the time, I became a lazy student.

You see, I was used to working very very hard to getting A’s and B’s but what I soon found in the public school that I had switched into was that I did not have to try hard. As a matter of fact, the classes were easy compared to the school that I had attended. It was not long before I decided that I kind of liked trying just enough to get by. I had found myself in a place where I did not have to try very hard to be considered a better than average student. To me, that was what I thought was important so I was satisfied.

Despite all the good study habits I had been taught, despite all the A’s that I had made, despite how hard I had worked I soon started a horrible and frequent habit of cheating in school. Because I had gotten so used to not trying I wasn’t prepared for when my classes got harder. I had gotten to a point where I didn’t want to work at all for the things that I felt I needed to make me stand out, the things that I thought would make me a good person. So when I encountered classes that I thought were hard, I resorted to cheating. I had gotten used to spending time with friends, my girlfriend, watching tv and practicing sports instead of studying. I lied to my parents, I lied to my teachers and worst of all I cheated myself out of learning so many things.  When I accepted Christ at the age of 17, and even though I eventually did change it took a while for me to make the switch.

I had gotten accepted to a prestigious University and because of my track record in high school I was a liar and a cheater and I didn’t deserve to be there. The only thing that could have possibly have changed my attitude was my relationship with Jesus. I had for years not allowed Jesus to come into my academic life because it was so full of sin. However, this all started to change when I went to Haiti on a mission trip.

I went there after the earthquake with my campus ministry and something that happened there would change my life forever. I thought that I had gone there to help others, but what I soon found was that I would be helped by the friendly people there far more than I could have possibly have helped them. One Sunday after church I started talking to some Haitian guys that were just about my age. The thing that they wanted to know was did I have any extra Bibles that they could have because they desperately wanted to learn how to read. You see, they wanted so desperately to get their hands on anything that would help them learn English because they knew that learning English was their hope to getting out of Haiti. To them, they felt God was calling them to be well-educated men so that they could serve God. From what I remember these guys had grown up so poor that they had almost never been able to afford to go to school in their life. Later when I was in my room crying, I left those guys every single one of the 10 or so Bibles and devotionals that I had brought to Haiti.

I cried because I realized that up to that point whether I did well in school or not, whether I had been sad or happy, whether I had been a cheater like I was in high school or not I had missed the point. I had never once really stopped to consider how blessed I was. As far as I was concerned I didn’t deserve my Bible because up to that point in my life I had never truly appreciated the opportunity to read it.

 After that trip, I ended up finding my passion in photography. Once I found my passion in photography, once I had found something that God had given me as a talent, I truly began to appreciate my education. But it was no longer just that I did not want to be a poor student, it was that my whole mind had been renewed and all of a sudden I had very big dreams for what I could do. I began seeking to do anything and everything that I could do to be the best student that I could be again. This time though, this time I wasn’t seeking to do well in school because I was seeking love and approval. I was seeking to do well in school because I knew that I was loved.

I say that I knew I was loved because I finally started recognizing the things that God had done for me. God proved he loved me by deciding to forgive an ungrateful, rich child who had never once appreciated the education that he had been given. God proved that he loved me by bringing me to Haiti to meet some guys who had never been given even 1% of the opportunity I had been given to learn so that I could finally regret all the wrong things that I had done. God proves he loves me still because he continues to reveal his plan in my life as I do my best to succeed.

So the reason I came to speak to you today, is that on a group of assessments I saw this written. 123-31=122. Now, what my gut tells me is that the only way that could have happened is if one person got the problem wrong and then their classmates all copied it. I am in front of you because this breaks my heart! It breaks my heart because I know what all my cheating has done to me. At times it has made it so hard to actually believe in myself. I achieved so many things without really working for them that I often seriously doubt myself.  But God loves me by saying I can do all things through him who strengthens me.  In case you didn’t get it, incase you think that I have gotten off unpunished for all that cheating, that incessant doubt that follows me is the price I pay for all of that cheating.

When I think that there might be students cheating in this program my heart breaks because I have come to a place where I appreciate my education because I see so vividly in my own life how worthless, ignorant and shortsighted it is to take it for granted. Whether it was cheating, or laziness or procrastination, at one time or another, I was the king of all those things. It is evidence of nothing but God’s grace that I can stand before you as a teacher.

My plea to you is this. Take every single day you have to learn as a blessing from God. Do not learn because your parents want you to. Do not do well because your friends will judge you if you do not. Do not get good grades to try and be a good person. Be passionate in your education because God is going to love you completely and entirely no matter what you do. So respond to God’s love by being the very best that you can possibly be every day for the rest of your life and don’t ever take your education for granted!

Afterward there was spontaneous applause and I smiled knowing that the 200 or so kids in the room that morning had been listening. Afterward I got to talk to a couple students who had more respect for the mahua (white guy) they had met. A week later the effect that this speech has had on me has been pretty huge. Just as important as it was for me to give that speech for others it was important for me to vocalize those thoughts. I needed to do it to help get my past behind me and move into what will be the toughest academic semester of my life.

God bless and all the best,

Dylan Rollins.