“The Butterfly Effect, a concept from chaos theory, describes how small changes in initial conditions can lead to large differences in the outcome of a complex system. Essentially, a seemingly insignificant event can have significant consequences. This idea is often illustrated by the example of a butterfly flapping its wings in one place causing a hurricane on the other side of the world.”
As I was preparing to write this article, I was thinking of how seemingly small interactions at one particular moment in time during one’s life can have a very large impact years later. This led to the introductory paragraph above defining The Butterfly Effect that philosophers use to speculate on the impact such small interactions can have. I was particularly thinking about a young girl’s baptism that our church witnessed this past Sunday. Her name is Briana, and she is ten years old. Her contact with church and Sunday school began many years ago, even before she was born.
Her cousin, Wilson Gonzalez, was a young elementary school student in the Los Angeles elementary school here in Santa Rosa. He was one of the students in our initial DESEO program when Harrison was still here working with us before going off to study at Harding University in the US. Wilson developed a disease called Parry-Romberg syndrome. It is a degenerative disease that affects tissues beneath the face leaving the person very disfigured. We were able to help him get attention from specialists in Tegucigalpa that arrested the disfigurement but not before it had done its cruel work on a good portion of his face.
Years later, Donna hired Wilson to work on the DESEO team. He began to attend church and youth group and was baptized. He has become quite the young leader in our church. Sometime after Wilson was hired, he recommended his cousin Victor for an open position. Victor was also hired and became a Christian. He began bringing his sister Briana to church. She also participated in our annual Bible Camp and is a regular in Sunday School. Recently Stacy Stacy studied the plan of salvation with her because she requested it. Stacy commented that she knew more and could answer questions better than many of our adult members.
So, it was a beautiful thing on Sunday to see Victor baptizing his little sister into Christ. Who would have guessed, those many years ago, that Harrison and our other two DESEO team members at the time would have such an effect? Of course, God knew and does know “those who are His.” Donna and I feel very honored to be a part of what God is doing here among and through these people that we live and work with. Thank you for making it possible with your prayers and generous donations.
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