AN EPIPHANY     I am ashamed.  I am embarrassed.  I am angry.  I am tired.  I am critical of our instructor, figuratively stomp out of the room,  drag over to the Maintenance Building to complete my last duty, and wearily schlep my stuff on home.
     It's Friday afternoon, the end of a long week full of intensive training.  This experience, this place, this "volunteer vacation", is what I've been looking forward to for five or six months.  I apply, I interview for this job, I wait through the end of summer, the fall months, and all the way to almost-Christmas.  Yes!  The background check is clear -- I'm in!
     I pack.  I plan for everything at home.  My daughter will care for the dogs and house.  I prepare my car for the 1400-mile journey.  It takes almost four days and three different motel-stays.  No snow, no ice, no incidents -- a lucky dream for the last week of January.
     I have two full days to explore the ranch before training begins.  I walk paved and graveled roads, stroll dirt paths, and climb grassy, wooden steps.  I see pastured goats, sheep, two donkeys, several large truck gardens full of leafy greens and, toward a tree line, cattle grazing.
     I observe many buildings, most of them painted red.  The first is the Volunteer Center and Gift Shop, memory from an earlier visit with my husband, now-deceased.  I'm assisted by other volunteers and, among our housing units, am guided to a smaller house on a hill.  Inside is the room where I unpack.  This I will call home for the next three-and-a-half months.
     Other buildings dot the pine-wooded landscape.  Red wood fences surround some small pastures; there are open and closed sheds; a large show barn; a long, yellow two-story structure; greenhouse; and, in the distance, a gray strung-out machine shop or garage.  On the other side of my path, I look out toward far hills.  Not only is the view spectacular over a small pond closer in, but I spy smaller odd-looking structures peeking through the trees.  Intriguing.
     Climbing down many uneven wood steps and passing through a small forest of bamboo trees, I discover a village -- a global village in fact.  There is a house that would be familiar if it were in Guatamala, a house-on-stilts representing Thailand, a Zambia structure, and more buildings representing other countries as well as a refugee camp and slum housing.  Fascinating!  It reminds me of an effective teaching tool:  if a creative instructor wants to teach students about different countries, what better way than to build life-size models that represent the real thing.
     The more I see of this ranch, the more I appreciate it.  This is, in fact, Heifer International Learning Center at Heifer Ranch, a 1200-acre property located just outside Perryville, Arkansas.   Originally a holding area for heifers waiting to be shipped to countries recovering from WWII, it is now a Learning Center that both models and teaches a commitment to "working with communities to end hunger and poverty and care of the earth".  The "Call to Action" is plainly stated:  "'Passing on the Gift' is fundamental to Heifer International's approach to sustainable development.  As people share the offspring of their animals, their knowledge, resources, and skills with others, an expanding network of hope, dignity, and self-reliance is created that reaches around the globe."
     We, as new Heifer volunteers, are learning to carry out the purpose of Heifer International's Learning Centers:  "to provide experiential education that inspires, challenges, and engages people to end poverty and care for the earth" (my italics).  That is precisely what is being taught at lunch on the Friday of my shame and embarrassment.
     As we volunteers file in for lunch, the question on the whiteboard asks, "If there is enough food for all, why don't all have enough?"  I am oblivious to the connection between the question and what I choose from the buffet tables to eat.  In our verbal analysis after lunch,, however, I hear possible answers to the question.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think if we run out of bread for sandwiches, more will appear -- it will be restocked.  That's the way it always is.  But, in this case, it's not true.  Those at the end of the line do not receive any bread for their sandwiches; it is gone.  I choose more bread than I actually need so I am part of the problem.  This discovery hits hard; thus, my embarrassment and shame.
     It is early Saturday morning and I am writing in my journal.  The epiphany appears:  Our Friday lunch experience does exactly what it is supposed to do.  It engages me by capturing my emotional reactions of embarrassment and shame.  It inspires me to do something about it (what can I do differently?) and challenges me to discover how that change will come about.
     My admiration and respect for the teaching process and those guiding it strengthens.  I can't teach something I know nothing about:  food for most of the world doesn't magically appear when needed.  It is the experience of my own awareness (first), the need to take action (second), and discovery of exactly how that change will occur (third) that will allow my teaching success at Heifer to move forward.
     This is not the end of such emotional engagement while learning here.  I expect more to come.  We new volunteers will be dispersed among the different villages and actually sleep in the Global Village one night.  In order to eat both dinner that evening and breakfast the following morning with little/no supplies, we must negotiate and cooperate with residents in the other villages.  After my epiphany,, will I be better prepared for this experience?  Stay tuned.