As we enter another year, I marvel at what you all do through HELPS year after year. Maybe I can sum up the year through the life of a young eighteen-year-old boy from Joyabaj named Juan Castro.

Born with spinal bifida, he has never taken one step in his life.  Never taken steps to school, Church, a friend's house, to meet a girl, or even get an ice cream.  Never once.

He could move his legs all the way through his knees but below that, his legs hung limp and his feet and ankles were so severely infected that he would very soon have lost his life.  Enter Deanna Salyard's Bakersfield Medical Team who saved his life by amputating his legs just below his knees.  Meet Robert Dirksen, a prosthetics specialist who just went back to Guatemala this past November and gave Juan Castro his legs.

I was privileged to see him stand in his walker for the very first time and very slowly pull his leg up and back and then extend it for his very first step.  First step—the very first step of his life. They tell me that within three months he should be walking unassisted and starting his formal education thanks to HELPS donors.

So it is with each one of you in the HELPS effort.  Whether it is the farmer trying to grow enough food, the man desperate for surgery, the student wondering about school, or a woman toiling in her home as generations of women before her, you have all created "first steps".

Congratulations for what you are doing!  It makes a difference, more than you know or think. May God bless you and your family. I hope you had a great Christmas and Holiday season. I pray God will guide us all in this next year as we work beside people who are dreaming about their first step.