Walking Together -- Michelle Macedo

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While at camp we stayed at a place called “the fazenda” which is the portuguese word for farm. There they had a lot of fruit trees that are popular to Brasil like “jaca,” “caju,” “manga” and others. Since it was summer time we could see fruits all over the place, on the trees and on the ground. We would also see different kinds of animals, like birds (which we would hear singing everyday) roosters, and lambs.

The place where we had our activities was a 20 (or so) minutes’ walk from the fazenda. So every day we would walk together in the morning and then back again at night. At morning everyone would wake up full of energy and with smiles on their faces just thinking about what kind of different things they would do, and at night they would have tired, but still happy smiles, being lit by the lanterns we used to light our path.

On this walk we would bond, talk, and get comfortable with each other, we walked in a big, united group, dividing ourselves sometimes to smaller groups, singing and having fun, we wouldn’t even see time passing, we enjoyed the time we had doing everything we could to be closer to each other. This one particular day one of the brethren remembered the Israelites walking together on the desert for 40 years and we started thinking about God’s word and the many gifts that God gave us in life and being there, without a doubt was a gift. In that moment it would seem like we knew each other for a long time, thinking about how God brought us together and made us a family, no matter our differences we were all united in Christ.

By Friday night the campers were gone, travelling home that same afternoon when we had our last walk together. And then there were nine of us left. Six of us sat by the lake at sunset just enjoying the little time we still had together, thinking about everything we’d been through and talking to each other. By the end of everything we were all very tired, but we could not have been more happy and grateful for each other and this wonderful camp.