Boys will be
boys. It doesn’t seem to matter whether
they grew up in the frosty northern country of Canada or the heat of
Nicaragua. Skin colour, race, and social
status will never be able to change that – boys will always be boys. In the rural community that I live in, here
in Leon, Nicaragua there are several ten to thirteen year old boys who live
near our house. Obviously, their
cultural upbringing was significantly different than mine but we are all boys!
Let me run
down my memories lane to when I was twelve or thirteen years old. I remember how my brothers and I would fill
our spare time with climbing the apple trees in search of apples, sling shot
hunting, biking, and any other kind of sport that would entertain us and fill
our spare time.
My neighbour
friends really aren’t much different.
Nearly every
day, often several times a day, one or all of them show up at our front
door. One morning next door neighbour,
thirteen year old, David came over while I was cleaning my daily gathering of
chicken eggs. After several moments of
pensive silence he asked me if I was sad.
“No”, I replied, I wasn’t sad, so I returned the question to him. His answer was different; he told me very
honestly, he was sad because he didn’t have any games or anything to do at
home. Boredom, another thing that at
some point is also in common to all growing up boys! So I pulled out a game called Tailgate Toss
(a.k.a. Corn Hole) and told him to practice while I finished up my work. We played several games, and, of course the
other neighbour boys came over to join the fun.
They must have enjoyed it, because that evening after school they came
back over to play again, and the next day one of the boys asked to borrow it!
We’ve done
lots of other things – iguana hunting or target practice with sling shots, wood
burning, card games, sports (mostly soccer!), and climbing the mamon tree in
search of its sweet fruit. Switch the
iguanas for black birds, the soccer for hockey and the mamons for apples and my
activities really weren’t much different when I was their age! You see, boys will be boys; we all really are
quite alike.
Usually
after we are done playing a game everyone is thirsty. Since we have a refrigerator and most of them
don’t, I get the pleasure of giving each of them a “cup of cold water”. There have been many times that I have
thought about that verse from Matthew 10.
I enjoy
spending time with these boys; they are a lot of fun. Plus, it’s good practice for my Spanish. But I hope that the time I spend with them
will be more than just entertainment and Spanish practice. In the next several years these boys will need
to face some serious decisions, things that their culture might tell them is ok
to do but that God’s Word tells them is sin.
I hope that my time with these boys will help to grow our friendship. I
hope I will have the pleasure to not only teach them new games but also to
teach them about God and the Christian life.
I hope that they will feel God’s love through me and that someday they
too will decide to give their lives to Christ.
Yes, boys will be boys, but I hope and pray that I can teach them how to
be more than just an average boy, but a Christian boy.
