It was my fourth birthday and I remember it like it was yesterday. You think it’s impossible to remember that far back? Well I remember it because that is when I received my black doctors bag filled with all the essentials… a stethoscope, a thermometer, a few pill bottles, a whole new identity. I grew up with so many aspirations. I went from wanting to be that doctor, to a lawyer, to an international real estate agent, to a entrepreneur … the list goes on and on. As a grew up and the professions changed, so did my reasons for them. It was no longer necessary to be these things because I was passionate about them but because that is what my family said would make the money and that is what my teachers said was successful. My aspiration became success and what I deemed success was making money. Is that really what success is?
Fast forward 15 years from my doctor playing days to the completion of my freshman year of university. I thought I was on my way to being successful. I had a plan laid out to finish school with a business degree and to be rich. I was on my way. I had a great job with benefits, insurance, a 401K setup… all before age 19. It seemed that it was the right thing, this is what I wanted right? Yet something was missing. I couldn’t place it, not quite yet. I was miserable. Everything that I thought I was supposed to be doing and everything I thought that was leading me to success was telling me something else.
It was on a missions trip to Peru that I found what was missing. It was love. The look of all the children and families that had absolutely nothing, they had something I didn’t. They had the love of God in them. They had joy admist their poverty. They had smiles when I had a frown. They had what I didn’t have. I knew that I had to change. Success was not what I thought it was… I was ready to leave. I was ready to find it.
There was a change in me. It was really great (for a short time). I knew that I needed God like these people. So I embarked on a journey that took me to the complete opposite of where I had been. Over the next three years, I studied God’s word, I gave up all the things that were “bad,â€� I gave my life to serving God. Somehow after a couple of years I realized I was miserable again. Success had become doing and building ministry… “was it enough?” was all I ever thought. I reached a breaking point.
One year later, 18 years after my doctor days, I traveled the world and saw many things. I saw people all over the world looking… looking for something. Many had been down the same road I had been and many were on the road I was currently on. Over the year I realized that everyone was looking for some sort of love. So the previous three years of working and building were nothing in comparison to the love that God had not only for me but for the entire world. I was free. 
It was this Saturday that everything came into place. Where this journey of success came to play. My friends and I traveled to Guadalhorce, on the outskirts of Malaga, to talk to some prostitutes and given them some flowers and baked goods. It came to me in an instant. Something so simple. To love… that’s all, it’s just that simple. I am made to love, to be love, to show love… all because He first loved us! Those girls on the streets needed to hear it, we all need to hear it… that is that we are loved. Success is knowing that you made a difference, even if its just a little. This will be forever called “Successful Saturday.â€�
