Sketchism

About two years ago someone asked me how many friends I had. My eyes gazed up and I silently attempted to remember all the conversations I had and all the people I could consider my friends. Dumbfounded, I threw out a number that seemed absurd and yet true at the moment. I said, “...About eight hundred people, maybe even a thousand”. I added up all the people I knew from all the schools I attended, the friends I met in church, the acquaintances I had made in the different seasons and the number felt right to me. I wondered if it would be possible to fill up my sketchbook with two pages dedicated for each person that I knew. Maybe I could put a photo on the left side and a brief description on why they were my friend on the right. I have yet to create this sketchbook of friends, but I am still fond of the idea. And so I begin what I hope is a series of short biographies for the friends in my life. I begin with Higor.

I met Higor in April of 2003, the year I would graduate from high school. We didn’t speak much to each other initially, as I was surrounded by a bunch of new faces at a spring retreat I was visiting for the first time. I had been invited by a friend to check it out, and it would be my first exposure to a group of Christians who weren’t corny, dorky, or just plain discomforting. Higor and I shared the same bunk along with about 25 other high school students.

It seemed that each day of the retreat he wore the same orange University of Miami baseball cap. Perhaps he was a huge fan, I thought. I soon discovered that he was attending the retreat with his two siblings Sarah, whom I had met early in the trip, and Heredes, who led each service and activity with a guitar in his hand. Higor was a musician, too. He played the drums and I found out he was very good at it. Apparently he was studying at New World School of the Arts, a high-profile magnet school in Downtown Miami, near my own school.
Higor would soon become a very close friend to me. After that retreat, I was eager to continue my friendship with him and all the other people I had met that week, so we figured out a plan. I would attend their Thursday night youth group if he let me stay over his house so I could catch a ride to school the next morning. Higor and I were both products of the Miami Dade Public Transportation system, so we would catch the metro rail early on Friday mornings and he showed me how to get to the church via metrorail and public busses. We continued the cycle of youth group, sleepover and metrorail for the next few months until I finally graduated and owned my own car. We would no longer need to ride the metro. Instead, since I was accepted into New World College, which shared the same campus as the high school, I would drive us to school on Friday mornings from then on. It was in this span of two years that he and I became as close as brothers, talking about everything from faith to girls to music to philosophy and literature. But mostly about girls.

Higor is a talented musician with a heart for people and a passion for the Lord. He has a great sense of humor and a youthful energetic spirit. Observe him at a youth gathering and you’ll know what I’m talking about. He taught me to play the drums and showed me that you can eat late at night, every night, and still remain thin. He somehow defies science.

I was glad to see him and his family when I went to Brazil in April. I hope to see them soon again, maybe even by the end of the year. It feels like I have a brother in another continent.