Sometimes the smallest things can make a profound difference in your life.

Many years ago, I was running a multi-media company in the outdoors industry, and had opportunity to take my wife and two oldest children, three and five years old at the time, on a “business trip” to the upper reaches of the Amazon. We had a client there, and I “needed” to do a site visit. Heck, someone’s gotta do it!

We flew from San Antonio to Miami, and then to Manaus, Brazil. That’s an old city, established by European rubber barons (you should see the old opera house there!) deep in the interior of the nation. It sits at the confluence of the southern Solimões River and northern Rio Negro, where the main Amazon River is formed.

From Manaus, we hopped on a commuter prop-plane and flew many hours north and west to the village of Barcelos, on the banks of the Rio Negro. That flight was mind boggling. Here we were, at altitude for hours, and the entire time, far as the eye could see, was nothing but pure, uninterrupted green. My wife had lost track of our location, and commented on how vast the ocean is. I pointed out that it was not the ocean, but the rain forest. We traversed just a small portion of it, and it’s vast beyond imagination. The entire population of the planet could descend on it with chainsaws and in ten years wouldn’t make a dent, but that’s another topic…

Our plane hit a poor mongrel dog on the dirt runway at Barcelos. It’s quite primitive. The river there is 14 miles wide, 400 feet deep and very fast moving. Mind boggling.

A crew from our destination met us there, loaded our bags into speed boats, and two hours later at full speed we arrived at the Rio Negro Lodge – a self-sufficient, five-star resort carved out of the jungle, catering to anglers after the prized peacock bass. We had a great time and caught lots of fish – peacock bass, piranha, all kinds of colorful creatures. I even landed an eight-foot caiman crocodile that took my topwater lure! Heck of an adventure.

But that’s not what changed my life.

Upriver from the lodge, perhaps a quarter mile, was a grass hut village where the natives still wore loin cloths and spearfished out of dugout canoes for sustenance. One day we asked our fishing guide to stop in there so we could meet the neighbors and look around. We made friends with them, caught a glimpse of communal village life, and I ended up trading a spool of Kevlar fishing line for a hand-carved oar and a homemade toy dugout canoe.

Near the edge of the small village stood a hut just like the others. You could stand on one side and see all the way through out the other side, as the walls were made of reeds lashed together. The only thing that marked this hut as being different was the crude wood plank above the door with “Assembleias de Deus” scrawled on it (“Assemblies of God” in Portugese).

Our guide informed us this was the hut of an American missionary and his wife and children. They were upriver at the time visiting other villages, but this was their home. He was highly esteemed in the village.

I never met him, but that missionary impacted the course of my life.

At that time I was young and upwardly mobile, with a great resume, entrepreneurial accomplishments and dream job. Still, I questioned my path and purpose in life. Our culture seems to define “success” as the acquisition of money, things and pleasure.

Even the poorest American is wealthy by the standards of a huge portion of the world. A homeless American under a bridge is better off than the wealthiest member of this village – at least they have a bridge over their head and access to all forms of assistance.

Here was an American who willingly gave up his American life to serve others in a nondescript grass hut in the upper reaches of the Amazon. It fundamentally changed my way of thinking: True success comes by building character, building people, and building relationships. Everything else is ancillary, even irrelevant.

A couple months later I resigned and started a non-profit youth mentorship organization, which we ran full time for the next decade, and that is still growing nationwide. All because of a guy I never met who lived in a grass hut on the banks of the Rio Negro.

Mike Arnold is an international entrepreneur and missionary who is proud to call Blanco his home. Contact him at [email protected].