Eduardo, 19

Cletis had gotten to know a group of younger folk from the hostel. I seemed to keep up with the older generation. From a Canadian guy who had been hurt by his ex-wife, to an Italian who was encouraged by the work I do, wanting to invest in a children's home in Brazil work permitting, to a French couple that always cooked something interesting each evening.

But one opportunity arose for me to converse with the young Brazilian Eduardo. He had sat down for lunch at my table, while I was reading the Bible. Naturally, he asked what that was about. I explained that I like to read, and this book is particularly interesting.

Subject changed, and he asked if there was anything going on between Cletis and I. I reassured him with a laugh, that there is no "onda" there whatsoever. We are traveling together because we work together. Once again, got to explain the reason I am in Argentina at all, which stems from what God first did for me.

"Would you like to know my theory on life?" He asked. Sort of with a smirk, with a desire to press my buttons and get me angry. Little did he know..

As he explained his theory, I told him that it sounded a lot like this television show I had watched recently called Battlestar Galactica. Speechless, I explained the basics of the show, and he nodded. "Yeah! That's kind of it! I can't believe someone else has already thought of it and even made a tv show out of it!"

It made me chuckle a little bit. I remember thinking that I knew all there was to know when I was 19. Reality can bite.

But then he said to me, "You know though, I think God is trying to speak to me. I just don't know how to listen."

"Go on," I said.

He told me of a time when a random old woman had told him that he needed to be careful. His girlfriend wanted to hurt him. That evening when he was visiting her at her house, he found a knife in her dresser drawer. She was embarrassed that he found out. She was planning on attacking him.

I know it's a strange story, but there was nothing in his face to show that he was lying.

"And there was this one time," he began, retelling an account in which he had gone hiking in Brazil and had gotten lost. In desperation he yelled out, and a fox appeared. It blocked him from a certain path so he went to another. The fox followed him, blocked him, and followed him until he was back in a safe place.

"What could it all mean?" he asked.

Eduardo said that he prays all the time. He doesn't always know what to pray, but he does it all the same.

I told him that maybe the very book I was reading would serve him well. "In a way," I explained. "In a way, the Bible is the other half of the conversation. We talk to God through prayer, and He talks to us through his Word." (I intended the double entendre, but I am unsure if he followed.)

I told him I would get him a Bible if he really wanted, and we again looked at me in disbelief. "You would do that?!"

"Por su puesto!" I smiled. And he wrote his mailing address for me. Now to find a Portuguese Bible.. haha.

He always smiled when we saw each other again, and even made an effort to sit with me a couple times more to talk about the day. You could sense the difference between him and the others, versus wh