Last summer I had the amazing opportunity of going to Piedras Negros, Mexico on a mission trip for ten days. While in Mexico we spent seven days nine hours a day, helping finish a school that was being added on to a church. The original man that was building the school only had two weeks left to finish because he was supposed to start a new job in the United States. In those few days we had two bathrooms put together, ceilings up, walls finished and plastered, and electricity almost entirely throughout the school. Every day we worked there was a teenage boy named Paco from the town that would walk to the church where we were staying and would help with everything we were doing. He wasn’t being paid and didn’t have to be there yet he still came. Halfway through the week we found out that he was getting up at six in the morning and walking seven miles just so he’d be on time to work with us. Not only that but he was only sixteen living on his own, and was having to fend for himself. He had helped when the church had gone the year before but nobody knew his circumstances.

On the last day we were staying at the church we decided to have a celebration in honor of Paco. We took up an offering of money the day before so we could buy Paco a bicycle. Some of our sponsors went back across the border to a Wal-Mart where they bought him a bicycle, some clothes, and a few other essentials. When we presented these things to Paco he began to cry, and to tell us how he counts down the days until our church comes back. That out of all the people he meets we are the friendliest and the ones that make him happy. By this point there was not a dry eye in the entire room, we all knew that out of this experience there was a person that we had made an impact on, and that feeling was indescribable. Not only had we made an impact on him, but he had made one on us, and I know now that everyone that went on that trip is counting down the days until we get to finally see him again.