Something I'll never forget- Matt shares a common love for music

Going on a mission trip was something I had wanted to do for several years but the right opportunity hadn’t come along. Several months ago, after attending a concert here at SSC, my wife and I made the decision to sponsor a child through World Vision and we requested to have a child from the Cobocol ADP that we, as a church, had chosen to sponsor. This was the beginning. When we first heard mention of this trip, I didn’t really give it a lot of thought. Our lives are so hectic and money always seems to be so limited. But later, it came up again and there was a lot of support from our family so we decided we’d ask about it. The rest is history really.

We decided Emma and I would go. As we expected, it was life changing. There are so many stories I could tell, meeting our sponsor child was incredible, but something that was especially meaningful to me, was being able to share musically with a particular young man there who I had an almost immediate connection with. On or first day at the Centre of Hope, as we were arriving and starting to set up, Heidi suggested I get out my guitar and play some music to “break the ice” so to speak. I did, and Brad and Ron joined in and sang with me. With started with a fairly modern tune. That attracted the interest of some of the older boys in the group. We then opted for something a little more traditional and I began playing “How Great Thou Art”. Before we knew it, we went from a trio to an octet as five young men joined us, singing in Creole. It was very moving and got us off to a great start.


One of those young men, whose name is Joseph, was clearly very interested in the guitar.

We carried on with our activities which included teaching a song called “Show Me Your Light” , our theme for the week. After we had done that, on our second day at the Centre, Joseph approached and asked me if I could show him how to play it. He had been plucking away at the guitar a couple of times but really seemed to want to learn more. There was a large crowd around which made it difficult to communicate, despite the fact he had a basic knowledge of english. Although there was a lot going on, we decided to go sit outside where it was quieter and I proceeded to teach him the 4 chords needed to play the song. As simple as that may sound, it really gave us a chance to bond and over our common love of music. For that brief period of time, I almost forgot that we came from completely different worlds, that he was only 15 and I’m…..older. For the remainder of that day, and the next, whenever I wasn’t playing that guitar, he was, and he practiced those 4 chords, over and over and over. I only wish that I had a guitar to leave behind. I was so thankful to know that Mark Miller had captured this in a photograph. It’s something I’ll never forget.