Community

When thinking about a certain community you pertain too, it is hard to just choose one. We all have a designated community assigned to us by one means or the other. My community is the Church community. Now just because I said the word Church, do not assume religion.  My church is a community of people that gather to three days a week to give praise to God. I mentioned before not to assume religion, because it is not a religion or a sect. It is a faith. The only reason the community is strong amongst believers is because of our faith in God.  There is all type of people who attend my church community. There are big families, small ones; young adults and all the way down to new born attend church.  Every service we gather together and begin with the first part of the service and that is the praise. The praise consists of complete devotion to God through songs of worship song between the whole congregations. There is a certain group of people thought that come to the alter and play an instrument to add music to the praise.  The instruments can consist of an electric guitar, piano, bass guitar, drums, and any other instrument of choice.  Then after thirty minutes to sometimes an hour of praise, we collect tithes. Tithes are welcome to help the Church grow and are an act of obedience towards God because He asked for his people to give ten percent of their income to bless the church. After this, the Pastor of the church comes to the alter and begins the sermon. The pastor preaches word from the Bible.  The preaching could last from an hour to an hour and thirty minutes.  The service is concluded after the preaching. The church service pleases the church community. We are brothers and sisters of the same faith through belief of Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection on the cross of Calvary two thousand years ago. There is no obligation among members that attend church to believe the shard faith. The majority of the congregation attends church because of their personal conviction. So the choice is in the eye of the beholder better said.  There are so many benefits from attending church. The outcome of our life invested in this shared belief is greater than our simple minds can comprehend. For example, I mentioned before the tithes. When someone tithes in church before the eyes of God, that person is later on blessed. For example, the giver can be blessed by receiving a check of money or a donation funded to him at a random time in life as a gift from God because of the persons obedience and consistency of tithing in church. Prayer in the church is another. When we pray for each other in the name of Jesus Christ as a community, great things happen. People are healed. People are liberated from debt, insanity, anxiety, and personal problems someone may be battling within the moment like addiction to drugs and alcohol. As far as dislikes, problems, and disadvantages, there aren’t any. If anything it would be that there is not enough time in the week to meet more than three times during those seven days.

Module 1

One thing I learned about myself in this module is the natural ability I have inside myself to code-switch. For some reason, it was easy to communicate inside of Year Up with my teachers and fellow classmates. I was commented to that I have the professional skills required of for the intern stage, but getting my voice out was my growth area. I acknowledge that sometimes I am a leader in my community. I sometimes indistinctly step back and share the spotlight with others. But I was disappointed that by doing so, it seemed to others that I was furthering myself from the group and not trying to participate during class. This was the getting your voice out part. Learning to talk in class at an appropriate level, tone, and pace is required in a professional setting. I am now working on developing that skill. I am amazed that I have been turning in all my homework this module. Turning in completed assignments was never a skill I had in my earlier years. I was late a couple times, but then again it is better than not coming in at all as I was accustomed in my youth. I am very proud of myself in the fact that I have come to class everyday waking up at six in the morning, getting ready and getting here on time. I still have a long way to go.

My neighborhood(s)...

A person’s neighborhood can be absolutely nothing to someone, or can mean a whole lot. I know that from my experience, my neighborhoods have had a lot of impact on me and my life as well as my families. The neighbors, the people you see every day outside your house or even the people that hangout in your area can be a huge influence to someone. The neighborhood I live in now is very quiet, no traffic what so ever. The neighbors are all simple folk (boring), and come straight from work to rest. You can come to my house at around nine at night and it will be dead quiet. If any influence is going around in my neighborhood now, is because of my family and I. I can recall a moment in time a couple of months ago when we just had moved in where my brother and I were yelling at each other from across the street to decided who was going to park where. Long story short, the police were called because disturbance of the peace and suspicion of malicious crime was going on. I know, completely unnecessary. But that is the case for my family and me in my neighborhood.

If asked whether I am who I am because or despite of my neighborhood, I would have to say it is a mixture of both. The person I used to be was a product of the neighborhoods I lived in or associated myself with. My old neighborhoods influenced me for bad. My neighbors did not want to see me doing better than them. If anything, they benefitted from my wrong doings. But despite my past, I am who I am now because of it. If it were not for my experiences in the street, I would not have the will power I do now. But then again, maybe I am wrong. Perhaps if I had lived in a better community/neighborhood as the one I live in now, I could have had a better chance of having a scholarship and being able to go to the four year college I have always dreamed of. But time has not run out. The players have changed, but it is still the same game. 

"The Poverty Business"

After reading the article titled "The Poverty Business," I can say that the article opened my eyes to a lot of things I did not know before. There are so many companies in America taking advantage of tax payers like myself. Auto loans and mortgage loans are charging so much interest on theirs loans, that by a year’s time the discrepancy has doubled.  I like to quote the phrase in the article;" Innovative and zealous firms have lured unsophisticated shoppers by the hundreds of thousands into a thicket of debt from which many never emerge." Whether we like to admit it or not, many Americans in the United States are not financially savvy. Meaning we know what we want, where we have to go to get it, but we do not know how much it's going to cost us in the long run. My question is, why are these corporations targeting the low-economy worker to achieve their income? I will explain why. They rely on the fact that low-economy citizens do pay their bills on time (late payments), thus giving them the right to increase the interest. Later becoming the reason why many people take longer paying their loans or even stop paying them. Their strategy to get their money does not sound correct, and anyone who reads this article will agree with me. Companies who profit from low-wage earners exacerbate the opportunity divide, because after they have them in debt, ten out of ten times people spend years paying off their bills. In most case, these debts leave people with bad credit scores. Bad credit scores can prevent people from getting a job in a better position. I think the job of alleviating the issue at hand belongs to the government. They allow these companies to profit from other peoples debts. I think they should create/pass a law that late payments should not result in an increase in interest. Especially when in a lot of cases the individual is trying to cooperate. Or the government should create a program for debt forgiveness for those who have been struggling to pay their debt for more than ten years. Giving them that person an opportunity to restore their credit and get a better job, buy a house, buy a car, or focus on saving money in their bank.