“Everybody can be great, because anyone can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve.You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” -MLK

I had the pleasure of visiting the American Embassy here in Madrid yesterday. I met the American Ambassador and listened to him talk inspirationally about service, thanking my fellow classmates and me for our work with t-oigo, a tutoring/mentoring program for deaf Spanish children, with either cochlear implants or hearing aids, who wish to learn English. Not only does T-oigo provide Spanish citizens with information for deaf persons, but it also inspires them to challenge themselves by learning not only how to orally communicate through their native Spanish language, but also learn a second language, English. Service has always been close to my heart, I feel like it is the duty of everyone to give back to one another to better our community and serving those you would wish to be served by if the positions were switched. During the Ambassador’s speech, he quoted Martin Luther King. “Everyone can be great, because anyone can serve.” Through service, we have the opportunity to be great, to better ourselves, to give someone else the opportunity to be great…spread love and faith and bravery and strength and justice and hope. We can do so many things through service. MLK strongly advocated service and continuously said that “life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you going to do for others?’”. As I end my semester abroad in Madrid, contemplating the service I have done through the program t-oigo (http://www.t-oigo.com/main.lasso) and in my practicas in spanish hospitals as requirements for my nursing major, I want to discover just how this service has made me great and helped others in the process. I want to move into summer, using my free time to serve others on an entirely different level, on a level of mutual respect and one filled with souls generated by pure love and I challenge everyone else to do the same.