Article January 14, 2013 Issue

Safe in the rainforest

Sapphire Johnston

Last summer I went on a service trip to Costa Rica with my National Leadership Council class. The NLC is a multi-year leadership program, run by DiscoveryBound, for young students of Christian Science. (NLC is dedicated to fostering spiritual growth, leadership qualities, and a service approach to life.) We traveled to the village of Sarapiquí, to perform service projects that would help the children build friendships and have productive activities to get involved in, such as community sports.

One afternoon, after a morning of participating in service project work, our group went to a natural waterfall, Fortuna Falls (“fortune” in Spanish), in the middle of a dense tropical rainforest. Several days before, our group had been taught about poisonous snakes while on nature walks through the rainforest. We had been told that if you leave the snakes alone, they usually wouldn’t bother you.

I became peaceful because I knew that God was right there.