Every year on summer vacation I fly out to New York to see my religious Aunt Laurie, and her four kids (Samuel Nathan eleven who is years old, Elana who is thirteen years old, Aaron who is fifteen years old, and Josiah, her oldest son, who is eighteen years old).I remember when my mom told me that she had gotten tickets for me to fly out the next day. When I heard this I dashed to my room to begin packing for the trip that would change my life forever.

The plane was about to take off when I realized that this year visiting my cousins would be different than the year before l. I hadn’t seen them since the summer before last; and we had a lot of catching up to do. My only fear of going to visit my cousins was that I didn’t want them to know what was going on with me and my walk with God. So right there on the plane I promised myself that I would not let anyone in New York know about my walk with God.

The plane finally landed, my Aunt Laurie, my cousin Elana, and her friend Ana were there to greet me. The drive from the airport to my Aunt’s house is usually about a two hour drive, but it was even longer because we had to stop in Rochester to pick up Aaron and Josiah from a friends house, they had just gotten back from the Christian camp U.R.I.M.O.N. (which stands for unknown retreat in the middle of nowhere) they had attended. Finally after a very long drive we got to my Aunt’s house just in time to eat dinner and go to bed.
Going to sleep the first night was always a hard thing to do, because there is a three hour time difference in New York, for example when its six in the evening here it is nine at night there. This always made it hard to go to sleep in the evening and wake up in the morning with everyone else.
It was the second week I was in New York that I broke my promise I had made to myself on the plane.
I was sitting outside watching Aaron play basketball; we were talking about U.R.I.M.O.N. the camp he attended with his brother, Josiah.

That’s when he told me that before he went to U.R.I.M.O.N. he was drifting away from God. When he was up at camp he decided that he was going to get back on track with the Lord. That is when I told him that I recently stopped believing in God altogether. When he heard this he was shocked. At first he thought that I was telling him a lie but then I made him believe differently when I told him what I was going through.
We stayed outside and talked for a little while, it was mostly him doing the talking and asking me questions. At the end of our talk, I had decided that I wanted to start believing in God again.
Going to New York this summer has changed my life completely. I feel as if I did not go to New York and talked to my cousin Aaron, that my life would not be the same today. We all have struggles in life, thank god that there are people like Aaron that have gone through the same thing and can help you to get through the struggle.