A blessing called Gilman

You may have noticed that I mentioned the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship at the end of my last blog.  If you did, then congratulations and thank you because you made it all the way through my first post!  This is going to be a tag-line at the end of each blog post, so I thought it would be helpful to give you more of an explanation.

The Benjamin A. Gilman scholarship is named after a man named Benjamin A. Gilman, who served in Congress for 30 years.  Gilman was very involved with international affairs and believed that college students should have the ability to study abroad.  As a result of his legacy, the scholarship is funded by Congress and is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

The Gilman scholarship is tailored to meet the financial needs of those who would not be able to afford to go abroad without financial assistance.  I would call it a blessing, as I have personally benefited from the scholarship foundation.  This is a competitive scholarship, thousands of students have applied for the spring 2015 semester alone, and I am thankful to be counted among their recipients.

It has occurred to me that I have not really shared what I will be doing during this four month semester period with you aside from my social work internship.  My intention was not to leave you in the dark, but I have been preparing for the past year and forget who does, and who does not, know about my semester.  Here are the basic details:  I am going to be a student on the campus of Uganda Christian University and will be completing my senior social work internship at an organization in Uganda near the university.  I do not have my internship placement yet, but the placement options range from Compassion International to Hospice Africa Uganda.  I will have the ability to do two home stays: one will be urban and the other will be rural.  The group will also be travelling to Rwanda for two weeks to learn more about the genocide.  The rest of the information you will find out along the way as I share my stories with you.

My Ugandan stories were made more possible by the blessing that is called the Benjamin A. Gilman International scholarship.  It still continues to baffle me that I am actually a Gilman recipient.  The program costs alone (this does not include costs such as plane tickets, medications, books, etc.) were over thousands upon thousands of dollars.  I continuously wondered how I would be able to afford to go abroad, especially when I knew it would be more economically sound to stay in the States. 

At the beginning of this year, when I started the process to go abroad, I made a promise.  I promised God that I would trust Him fully, regardless of the feelings of uncertainty in my mind.  I had to (and still do) continuously remind myself of this promise, over and over, as I walked through the entire process.  It was not until one month ago that I discovered I was a Gilman recipient.  Now, as I prepare to enter Uganda, I reflect on this promise and stand firm despite my mixed emotions about spending four months outside of the country in an unfamiliar place.  God has always stayed true to His promises, now I shall be true to my word in honor of Him.

To learn more about the Gilman scholarship, please go to http://www.iie.org/en/Programs/Gilman-Scholarship-Program.  One thing you can check out is the link that leads to a list of spring 2015 awardees on the website’s homepage.  Go to this link to see all of the other places students are going to be studying abroad.  The information I shared with you in this blog is only the tip of the iceberg! 

xoxo,

Emilia

My trip was made more financially affordable thanks to the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship (http://www.iie.org/en/Programs/Gilman-Scholarship-Program)!