He Did It!

By Jaime B. Volunteer in Uruguay

We have recently organized a small camping trip for ten boys from our neighborhood, ages 8 to 11. For some of them, this is the only chance they get to go outside the area they live in during the whole year. The trip was fun, difficult, but all in all, very blessed.

Among the many good memories I have from the trip, Mark stands up. The morning of the trip, I saw a message from his mom “We got robbed last night and Mark’s bag was taken, he will not go on day trip.”

We went to his house later that morning. His mum explained the story and we tried to encourage her to let him go with whatever he had and we would provide the rest. She agreed and Mark came. Mark had a blast during the trip and defeated his fear of hiking up the hill. The night before he hiked, one of the group leaders had told me he cried because he had a nightmare about hiking. The moment before we hiked, he had stayed back and said he was not going to do it. He was crying and I could see he was very afraid. I told him that he should try and promised him if he couldn’t do it, we would go back together. After some back and forth on the deal, he agreed. When we got to the top, he joyfully exclaimed “I did it, I did it.” A couple of weeks after the trip, I visited his mom, a single mom about 26 years old with Mark and another daughter. She told me that Mark had been sad because he had gone on vacation for a couple of days with his dad, but his dad, never hugged him or kissed him. But the camping trip had been the best experience of his life.

I can only thank God for the opportunity to do this simple work. I thank God for the blessing of meeting Mark, and I thank God for allowing me to be a missionary in Uruguay.