The trip was organized by Senor Percy and my mother, Donna. He was the Spanish teacher at my high school and had been doing missionary work in the country for years prior to our arrival. He took us to where we would be spending our nights. It was at the top of a high, grassy knoll, with acres of vast farmland as far as the eye could see. There, we quickly set up our hammocks, dropped our luggage, and hopped back in the vans to tour our work cites. A five-minute ride was all it took until we arrived. However, this was not the grassy countryside landscape where we set up camp. It was a complete culture shock. I felt like Neil Armstrong taking his first steps on the moon. The people living here were the poorest of the poor. Everyone was wearing clothes that had been left behind by past missionary groups. Little children were bathing in barrels of old, brown water alongside their house. Babies were playing with the one toy they had been lucky enough to salvage out of the mud they were crawling in. Houses were made of what looked like four tree branches as support, and then any materials that could be found were used as the walls and roof. The houses were in such bad condition that if the Big Bad Wolf from The Three Little Pigs had existed, he would have saved his breath and simply waited for a gust of wind to do the job for him. To top it off, the streets had sewage flowing down along the curb for miles, and the smell seemed to burn itself to your nostrils. .
After our tour concluded, we headed back to camp, silent as we reflected on what we had just witnessed. Back at camp, as the sun retreated over the horizon, we set up chairs in a circle for a group talk before bed. Senor Percy did all the talking. He said, "Ultimately, it's your life. Live it." Normally, in a typical high school scenario, with adolescents ranging in ages from as young as fourteen to as old as nineteen, this simple, harmless quote could be taken as a cause for joyous anarchy and celebration.