Junior Rosie Druffner grew up in Tanzania, East Africa and now travels there every year with her family on mission trips. Rosie’s mom owns a nonprofit organization and raises money for hospitals, schools, medical schools and scholarships and her dad is a doctor who teaches nurses and doctors in Tanzania.
Rosie grew up in East Africa experiencing the different cultures when she was only about nine months old. She said that this was definitely a crazy experience and has shaped her as a person.
“It really changed my perspective on life and like how i’m going to treat other people, I just felt like it was kind of my mission to be able to help these people,” Rosie said.
When asking people about the mission trips, some of her teachers and friends agree that they have affected Rosie positively as a person. Senior Grace Argiro is one of Rosies best friends, she gets to see directly how these mission trips affect Rosie.
“I think it just gives her a bigger perspective on the world,” Argiro said. She then shared what she has learned from Rosie, “Just to be really grateful for what you have and just that helping other people can have an impact”.
One of the more challenging experiences for Rosie was seeing what her parents go through to get these people living in east africa what they need.
“Everyone was just like either on the streets or like didn’t have jobs or unemployed, had horrible medical care so just seeing my parents help those kids really brought me to where I am now,” Druffner said.
Rosie said that happiness to her is living simply, she has seen and experienced a lot of things in Tanzania she said have shaped her as a person.
Rosie’s personal finance teacher Travis Birklid describes her, he says “Rosie is very outgoing, very ambitious, a very concerned student, definitely caring and she likes to you know help with this mission work.” One of her best friends Argiro also describes her as kind, generous and always thinking about other people.
Overall, Rosie going on these mission trips and volunteering on these mission trips for her whole life has left great impacts on her as her friends and family say. With all of the mission trips to Tanzania, Rosie says they have taught her to focus less on materialistic things and left her with the life motto to “live simply”.
