In the summer of his sixth birthday, Max Lawson became the youngest missionary to journey to Zacapa, Guatemala with Hearts in Motion, an organization dedicated to providing care and medical treatment to children in Central and South America. During this mission, Max learned something about the inequities in the world – and the need to make a positive difference to address them.
Despite his young age, Max took his missionary work very seriously. Even before going, he collected thirty backpacks full of school supplies, children’s vitamins, and baby formula to distribute among Zacapa’s needy. Max helped the adult missionary workers build a new school. He also helped set up mobile clinics where no medical facilities had previously existed. When he returned to the states, he did not forget the Guatemalan children who made shoes out of pieces cut from old tires. Max collected approximately one hundred pairs of shoes, new and used, and sent them to the mission for distribution. When he learned that his family's missionary friends planned to build a new orphanage in Gualan, Guatemala, he began collecting donations to purchase baby cribs for the new facility.
On his tenth birthday, Max volunteered for the Range of Motion Project, a group dedicated to providing affordable prosthetic limbs for economically disadvantaged children. He raised enough funds to enable two children to receive new prosthetic legs. But volunteering for causes is nothing new for Max. He has worked with a local wheelchair basketball team for years. He also gave his time to a missionary thrift store dedicated to raising money for charity. Here Max did everything from working in the store to packing medical equipment and supplies for the mission's Guatemalan relief work. To help his friends understand what it is like to visit a developing country, he shows a video of the work that was accomplished while he was there. Currently, Max is growing out his hair to donate to Pantene and plans to give ten inches to be used in a wig for cancer patients.
Max Lawson is a loving, quirky young man with an engaging smile and a mighty heart. He gives his time to make a positive difference in the community he calls home, and communities in need a world away.
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