Reflection The main goal of this inquiry was to give the readers an insight to my community.

I wanted to show them what a discourse community was and an example of one I am a part of. One of the main things I did in this revision was tie in my interview with my paper. I did not do that in my first draft because I was unsure of how to do so without messing up the flow. I think it helped back up my fact by having another members ideas in my paper as well. I had the obstacle of tying my interview in. I solved this my asking one of my friends to help me. She was able to give me helpful insight to make it flow. I see the strength of my paper as being how personal I tried to make it. I wanted other to see the community as I did. I learned that I am a much better writing when I am writing about my personal experiences rather than my thoughts on something. While writing this paper I saw how much this group means to me. This group has been a big part of my life for the last four years. I never thought of it as being just a big impact on my life, but it has left a huge impression on the person I have become today. I found it a lot easier to find all the stuff I could about my community and then start writing. having all of the stuff in front of me helped me write a lot faster and keep my thoughts clear. I think I can go back and describe more about the group. I never really said what we do. I never talked about the actually work that we do on the mission. On my next draft I might try to tie that in. also I have one big paragraph I might try to make into two. It bothers me that it is so long compared to the other. I might also try to reinterview Lindsay and get more quotes to include. Do you believe that this is a real discourse community? Does it have enough to meet the requirements of a real discourse community?

To most people, community means a group of people who live together, but it is not limited to just that. To be a part of a discourse community you simply need to have a few things in common. These things according to John Swales The Concept of Discourse Community includes: common public goals, mechanisms of intercommunication, some type of specialized language and different levels of expertise among the member of the community. We all can be part of more than one community throughout our lives. I am personally part of a community at my church. This community is my churchs Youth On Missions World Changers Team. Youth On Missions or as we call it YOM, is a group of teenagers that haves made promises to go on mission trips. Everyone that is part of this group is usuallyhas to be in the 9th grade thoughto seniors in college. Only the leaders of the group are not in this age limit. YOM has many mission trips that they are currently active in. One of the bigger mission trips they do is a trip called World Changers. This involves the youth going to work on various projects for a week during the summer. These projects can be anything from painting to re-shingling a house. The youth work for free and stay in a local church or high school for the week. In this paper I will try to describe every aspect of this community from our teams head youth, Lindsay Brown, and my own personal experiences. The goal of YOM World Changers Team is simple, it is to spread the word of God my doing missions. We see that if you help people, without asking for anything in return, they are more willing to listen. Everyone who is a part of this community believes that sharing the word of God is the most important thing to do. To become a member of this community you must sign a contract that says you pledge to show

God through everything you do during the mission. This includes fundraising, church, daily life and the mission trip itself. We show Gods love by being kind and loving. We also have to have a basic understanding of the Bible. This requires us to attend church, mission meetings and Sunday School. If we do not meet theseis requirements a member might be ask to leave the group. It is important to meet all of the request because if we do not then we might miss an opportunity to reach someone with the word of God. Lindsay and myself agree that weI love seeing new members join. WeI really enjoy training them and helping them come closer to God. It is amazing to see other youth rejoicing in working for nothing but the grace of God. Communication is very important in this community. We have many different forms of communication in our team. We have a Facebook page call Sharon Baptist YOM. One of our leaders post reminders of fundraises, missions meetings and events that are important for us. They also post pictures from our fundraiserss and activities to try to attract newcomers. It is very easy to join this community, in fact we encourage newcomers at every chance we can. Lindsay our head youth said, I believe that is very easy for new members to join. We are all very kind and willing to help. We as a group always try to include new members in all aspects of our team. This includes times away from the group like at school, church or other places. Once in our community we communicate with newsletters as well. These newsletters come through the mail to every member on the team. They inform us upcoming meetings, fundraises and any World Changers Team updates. The team is very close and we often communicate informally through text messages to each

other and our group leaders. IAlso if anything comes up, that has not been said in any of the other types of communication, our group leader can report it at church during the business updates. Lastly our main form of communication is in our mission meetings. In these meetings we go over everything from events to our current fundraising profits. This is the opportunity for business to be taken care of. Team members have the chance to speak up and offer request or advise on how to improve our team. Team member must attend meetings but can be excused for missing on request before the meeting. Since one of the goals of our community is to reach outsiders we do not have a specific lexis. We want to make sure that everyone that we encounter fully understands us. We instead have made acronyms for common phrases we use. One for example is the name of our team YOM. We also frequently refer to World Changers and WC. Once at our WC work site we have a few other acronyms. WOW is what we say about a Wonderful Opportunity of the Week. This any usually said about any time we found an opportunity to share the word of God. We also refer to the Lead Coordinator as LC and the Project Coordinator as PC. Other than these we use common terms and scripture to reach non-members and to communicate with each other. Within our group we have many different levels of expertise. Since this is a team we have jobs that reflect the level of expertise. The highest level would be our youth leaders/teachers. These are the adults that supervise our team. Another position is head youth. This is the youth member who is dedicated and chosen to show up to every fundraiser, event and lead meetings. I was the head youth for the

past two years. My job was to keep track of attendance of the other members, come up with ideas for fundraising, lead meetings and help other members in any mission related activities. I had to give up my position on the fact that I was going to college. I would not have been able to do all of my duties from college. Before I resigned I had to train the new head youth. She had to shadow me for about a month before she was able to take full responsibilities. Then to prove to the church that she was capable, she had to plan an event and see it through with a little guidance from me alone. She said well to be honest it is often difficult to put together fundraisers alone. This is why I usually bring in other (veteran) members and youth leaders to help. There are more members of our team who hold high positions and can assist the head youth with some of their task. These o Other jobs include: Treasurer, in charge of the money raised from fundraising, and Secretary, in charge of keeping records like what goes on in meetings. These positions are given to youth members who are chosen by the head youth and the youth leaders. Positions are only reassigned to other members under two situations. These are; if current position holders are not meeting expectations of their job or they know they will not be able to because they are moving away. Expertise is also shown by the years of membership. Not all veterans hold job positions. Veterans are youth that have been active memberships for three or more years. They have the responsibility to help the newcomers out and encourage outsiders to join. Most outsiders, who are not willing to listen to our teams purpose, see us as Jesus Freaks. Another assumptions of us are that we only do missions in third world countries. Neither one of these is true, we are normal teenagers that love God

and want to help our communities. We do most of our missions in neighboring states and around our own homes. Our YOM World Changers Team is a community I am proud to be a part of. When I asked Lindsay, why do you think people should join our team, she said this: I see it as a great opportunity to meet new people. I stay in contact with people I meet on these mission trips. I also see it as a great opportunity to share the word of God while having a good time. On our mission trips, yes we do work HARD WORK, but when its break time we have a lot of fun. I always tell new members that it is an experience that is amazing and you will be begging for more. Our YOM World Changers Team is a community I am proud to be a part of.