“Do you have to leave?” Henry looked up at me with his big brown eyes. 

It hurt me to see the sadness in his face. “I don’t want to, but I have to go home buddy,” I said, hugging him again. 

Over the week that I had been here, I never realized how close we would get with our assigned family. It was the end of June and I was 14. I had chosen to participate in the Appalachia Service Project through my grandparents’ church. For this project, we drove eight hours down to Kentucky and we worked on adding an addition to a home for a family in need of more space to accommodate their growing family. 

Along with working on their house, I got to bond with the family. I had especially bonded with Henry. A five year old boy who was the sweetest little kid I have ever met. During the breaks, I would spend time with him and teach him new games to play or read him books. I might not have realized it at the time, but he was also teaching me. I learned that I take a lot of things for granted in my life and that there are people out there living with much less than me and they are still living happy lives. Another thing that I quickly learned was that he loved baseball. 

“I have something for you but you can’t tell anyone, okay,” I whispered in his ear as I hugged him. As I stepped back, I pulled a baseball out of my pocket and handed it to him. His eyes lit up and he smiled the biggest smile I had ever seen on his face.

“Thank you,” he whispered back to me and seeing the joy in his face was all that I needed.

I might not remember all of the details of the trip or all of the people that I met, but I will always remember Henry and how the act of giving him something that seems so small to us, made him so happy.