A Sweet Little Boy!

On one of our hikes last week with the team I met a sweet little boy.

We had just finished a four hour boat ride (I use the term boat loosley...ha) and had done a short hike... but for some reason I was exhausted. We grouped off and went to hand out the gospel of Luke and tell people about the Jesus film that evening. There were around four of us in my group. We walked up and down the hilly dirt trails for about an hour and came to 3-4 houses (we were in the mountains so houses are few and far between). At the last one we asked how far to the next house. It was a good ways and so off we went to get that last house. In my head I was thinking..."God who lives up here that you want to reach so badly"...we were bushwacking through tall weeds, thorns, and mud. I was selfishly thinking I am tired, thirsty, and ready to go back.

Then, we get to the last house and the Lord teaches me a sweet lesson. As we came to the last house 3 young children were standing around the house their parents were out working but were supposed to be back soon. Then out of the corner of my eye I see another young boy. He flashes the sweetest, biggest grin. I am sure that he has never seen a gringo in his life.

As he comes around the side of the tree I see that he is crippled. One side of his body doesn't work correctly. He has on a ripped pair of shorts but nothing else so you can see his body is distorted. The boy hobbles over to us right as his parents come up to greet us. We give the parents the gospel of Luke and then we give the children cristo te amo cards that were colored from kids in the US. As we started to leave I was the last one to come around from behind the house. Everyone had gone ahead of me. As I came around the housse I saw the little boy grinning and leaning down to kiss the cristo te amo card. He just kept kissing it and grinning. Then he saw me and looked up and smiled and waved. I walked off with tears in my eyes thinking okay God....THAT is why we hiked up this hill. You want to reach tha one! I wonder what plan God has for that little boy?

I know that I will never forget the image in my mind...like a mental photograph of that boy kissing the card! I think I would walk that path a thousand times to see him leaning over that card. I bet that is how the Lord thinks about us.....