Name: Kendall Hiedeman
Age: 20
Hometown: Hastings, Minnesota
School: Grinnell College
Majors: Sociology and Psychology
Site/s where you have served: Pleasant Mound
Q: Why did you want to serve full-time as a PT intern?
I spent the previous summer working at a week-long overnight camp for high school students, and I never felt like I had the time to really get to know and invest in the youth that were assigned to my cabin. Friends who had worked at PT in past summers spoke highly of their experiences as a PT intern, and I was really interested in working in a program where I could.
Q: What is the most important lesson you have learned from working with underserved children/youth?
The most important lesson I learned from working with underserved children/youth is that they need exactly what any child/youth needs – to know that people (and God!) believe in them and love them, and how to believe in and love themselves. This became really obvious to me my last week as a PT intern, when I worked at a different site for a week during Adventure Week, a special experience for 1st-4th graders at two of the PT sites. Isaac and I met on the playground at Oak Cliff. He was standing next to the monkey bars, looking really afraid. I asked him if he wanted help across, and then held his feet and guided him across while he moved his hands. I kept encouraging him the whole time and he made it all the way to the other side, even though he was terrified. When he got to the other side, he gave me the biggest smile. Every time he saw me after that throughout Adventure Week, his whole face would light up. I think that the most important thing that children/youth need is for someone to tell them that they can do it – that someone believes in them and loves them, and that God does, too.
Q: How has PT affected your faith journey?
PT taught me to more fully rely on God. While serving the children at Pleasant Mound for eight weeks, I got to know each of them individually. Sometimes this meant discovering that they were dealing with very difficult situations in their lives that I was powerless to change. Such discoveries were heartbreaking, and they really challenged my faith in God. Did I really believe that God was powerful enough to intervene in tangible ways into these childrens’ lives and heal the brokenness around them? PT challenged and, eventually, renewed my faith in God’s power, and helped me to rely more fully on God’s power to bring transformation in the places where I could not.
Q: What is your favorite part of the Project Transformation experience?
My favorite part of the Project Transformation experience was definitely working with the children. Children have so much to teach us about ourselves, how to see the world, and how to see God. My summer with PT helped me to more fully understand what Jesus meant when he said in Matthew 18:2-4 that we must be like a child in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Seeing and appreciating the world and God with no worldly limitations on God’s power or love is something that I could’ve only learned working with children, and I’m going to be trying to figure out how to live that out for the rest of my life!
Q: What have you learned from living with other young adults in such a diverse Christian community?
The power of prayer and worship in community. God really unites us together as believers when we come to Him expectantly in prayer and worship.
Q: What advice would you give to a young adult who is interested in serving as a PT intern?
Pray about it; ask God if this is really the place for you. And if you don’t hear “no” – do it! There is so much to learn from other interns, site pastors, house pastors, PT staff, and the children/youth. The PT experience is worth any sacrifices that you have to make (living 995 miles away from home for ten weeks, for instance!) in order to be there.