This is Steve and Dana Watkins that rolled through my life Sunday at the Hot Springs Film Festival. They drove many miles from Tennessee to be there for the screening of Phil!s Camino. This is the Steve Watkins, the journalist, of Camino/FaceBook fame. They are off to Spain to walk together this time in a few weeks. And there will be another wonderful blow by blow account on FaceBook for you. But the story now is that it was such a lovely visit to be with them for that short afternoon on Sunday.

I am so moved by all the effort people put in to be there with us at the festival. Thank you all. Then there were the three Texan brothers that had caught Phil!s Camino in the afternoon and we would be up with together gabbing “around the campfire” that night. They hadn’t planned on all that but each had a Phil!s Camino T-shirt to remember us by when it was over. I hope they read this blog and comment here once in a while in the future. A most interesting trio.

Seems funny but I go to these festivals and actually see very few films. I seem to fill my time with conversing with folks that have shown up in person. Not saying that there aren’t good things to see but I never seem to quite get there on time. Oh well.

But maybe the high point of the trip was the very last thing there in Hot Springs. The lovely Lisa, a festival volunteer for twenty five years, drove us to the airport in Little Rock about an hour away. She was on her way to work there and we were invited along. As we drove into a most magnificent sunrise, maybe the best I have ever seen, we slowly learned her story. It seems her beautiful nineteen year old son Caton is in the middle of his own major battle with his cancer. Lisa must maintain her job to keep up the insurance for having her son in the hospital for the last half a year. And amazingly a network was set up with mostly festival volunteers to have someone at Caton side all the time, never alone. A tear rolls down my cheek. Caton, I just want to confer on you the honor of being one of our Cancer Commandos. These are the strong folks that whatever the the circumstance seem to cause trouble by having that talent to inspire others. Keep in touch brother.

Well, have I crammed enough in here this morning? Maybe one more thing. There is the Quote of the Week from Terry’s Sabbath Moment blog that I just have to steal (thanks Terry):

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. Reinhold Niebuhr

Thanks Hot Springs, thanks all you that came, thanks Annie for being with me, thanks to you all out there for reading about it, love, Felipe.x