How I learned to Interview

I constantly find it amazing how many different ways our experiences can affect even our own lives when we try to follow the path God has laid out for us and we journey out of our comfort zone to help others. Anytime I go on a missions trip, or travel in general, at the end of each day I try to find the time to write down the details of what happened throughout the day in a quick page or two; not just any highlights that were said or done that I knew were important, but even the seemingly mundane or little things that occurred during the day. Once back home, I like to read over the journal I kept for myself and reflect on what good things came out of such a trip. It is always surprising to me the little things I find in those notes that I was too busy or too distracted to notice the importance of until I got home and looked back from a distance. Certainly our goals on these trips are to spread God's love to the lives of others and provide whatever help we can to those in need, but it is also amazing how God will consistently use the people we have come to help to mold us and help us grow in his love every bit as much. I want to share a story of how a Russian orphan helped me with one of my weaknesses without either of us even realizing it at the time.

I have spent the better part of my life striving to be a writer and journalist, and through all my experience, my different strengths and flaws in the field have become pretty clear to me. In a previous post I mentioned my most glaring weakness by far as a journalist is interviewing. I've never much been one for asking questions, pushing for information, or fantastic conversationalist in general.

During my most recent trip to Russia, I met with several orphan grads at the Vladimir Ministry Center to interview about their time in the orphanage and involvement with Orphan's tree since graduating. The first person I interviewed was a graduate named Nastya. Though nothing was specifically disastrous about my interview with Nastya, it all felt very formal, thanks to my stiff demeanor and tendency to read questions like they were a script. In the end, Nastya was incredibly kind and helpful, willing to answer basically anything I asked, and has an incredible story, a bit of which Jenya shared earlier. But when I read my notes of the interview, I couldn't help but wish I had a redo. Like usual, there were too many questions I failed to follow up on and so many pieces of the story missing because I didn't take the time to ask.

By the time my interview with Nastya was finished, several other kids involved with the Ministry Center had come to meet me and hang out. We ate pizza and made small talk for a while, but every time the word “interview” popped into my mind, I got a bitter taste in my mouth and lump in my throat. Sometimes it seems like that word is poison to me.

After we ate, an orphan grad named Nadia casually challenged me to a game of table tennis on the Ministry Center's table. Table tennis sounded worlds better than any more painful interviewing, so I eagerly accepted the challenge. As we struck the ping-pong ball back and forth across the table, the mood quickly lightened, and unprompted, Nadia eagerly began to talk of her time at the Ministry Center and the various ways she has found help and comfort there.

Nadia is currently in college and explained that she sometimes struggles with her tougher classes, such as math. Beyond the classes themselves, Nadia still dealt with adjusting to living more independently in a dorm setting rather than an orphanage. However, several days a week she has the opportunity to come to the Ministry center and see a tutor to help her work through her difficult class schedule and to make use of the computers provided by the Ministry Center for her school work. I spoke of my time at the Vladimir Dacha (where I had stayed the past two days), and Nadia quickly became excited, telling of her own trips to the dacha and time spent with Andrey and Masha. Nadia was so grateful for the opportunity the dacha provides to take a break from the daily grind of her classes.

Nadia asked me a few questions about my life in Oregon, which soon had her telling me all about her own life growing up in the orphanage. She spoke of traveling to the Ukraine once for a swimming competition and told stories of pulling pranks with her friends when they were younger, all while continuously embarrassing me at ping-pong. Nadia eagerly told me of her younger brother and grandmother, who are the cornerstones of her life and help her to strive to succeed at everything she does with their encouragement. She even briefly tried to teach me a little bit of Russian. In that she failed miserably, though it certainly wasn't her fault.

Before I knew it, more than two hours had passed and someone informed us the Ministry Center was getting ready to close. I didn't even realize until later that night, as I scribbled out my journal notes for the day, that I had just conducted the most successful interview of my life. Nadia had shared more with me than any person I had interviewed before, and never once was there a hint of awkwardness or any sort of professional tension, just a game of table tennis and a couple of new friends.

Like with any interview, there were gaps--things I didn't learn that would be useful when writing Nadia's story later. But the best thing about Nadia's table tennis interview is that gaps didn't matter because I can simply ask her about them later. Nadia became one of many friends I met on that Russia trip who I am blessed to be able to still talk to on a regular basis, something a bunch of scripted questions and formal interview probably wouldn't have achieved.

These small stories of our journeys so easily become overshadowed by the big, exciting events or lost in a mountain of details we quickly forget. But it's so often in these details where God helps us grow the most. We should never ignore the importance of the small stories. Because if God is using the people in them to help mold us, then he's most likely using us to do the same in their small stories as well.

I no longer fear interviews like I used to, thanks to Nadia. Sure there will never be a time when I embrace interviewing with any sort of enthusiasm, but learned a bit more about helping the people I interview feel comfortable talking to me and in turn helping myself feel the same. My conversation with Nadia showed me that people in general aren't looking for a reporter; they're looking for a friend--and maybe a quick game of table tennis. And I am okay with that.

-Shawn