Summer Camp #1

Ernesto had never been to Camp Alandale before but from the moment he stepped off the bus into a cheering crowd of counselors and staff members holding cookies, Ernesto had a shining smile that was on his face for almost the entire week. As his counselor, I was lucky enough to hang out with Ernesto all week. Whether it was playing soccer, learning memory verses, or catching lizards, Ernesto was naturally gifted at whatever he put his mind to! As the week progressed, Ernesto wanted to spend every spare moment searching through the bushes and the logs for any sign of lizards; and every time he caught one, which was pretty regularly, his face would light up with his one-of-a-kind smile!

Since the lizards weren’t out during our one-on-one times in the evenings, Ernesto loved to look up at the light of the stars while we walked and talked. One night, Ernesto telling me about how he hated being alone at night. So I mentioned how God promises to never leave us. Ernesto looked at me with a skeptical look and said, “How do I know that God is with me if I can’t see him?” Then I got to tell Ernesto about how Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to live inside of us if we accept Jesus as our savior and make Him Lord of our lives. I asked him if he had ever asked Jesus to do that. Ernesto responded by telling me that he thought he was “Cathletic” (his way of saying “Catholic”) but that he wasn’t sure if that meant God was with him. I told Ernesto that he didn’t have to worry about whether or not he was saved because we could pray right where we were and that he could ask Jesus to do that right then and there. Ernesto stopped walking, looked at me with that shining smile, and said “I want to ask him right now!” So right there in the middle of a dirt path, under the light of the stars that Ernesto loved so much, he prayed like he was talking to a friend and then he knew, without a doubt, that God would never leave his side.