i want to go back.

i miss my kids desperately.

it was definitely a different kind a of mission trip. usually we all come back with this huge spiritual high...but this was different. i feel so empty. i rode a van to take a bunch of the kids home this time...that made it harder to leave i think. i know what kind of conditions they live in, i know why they're always dirty...why they don't know how to love each other and why they cling to us so hard and cry so genuinely when we leave. i don't understand why they have to live this way. i feel absolutely and completely selfish. if i had grown up there...i know that i would be one of the most rebellious and most angry people on the planet. God taught us some different lessons this time. i learned that He doesn't always do things the way i want, but that He always does what He says He'll do. i learned how much God has changed me since I started trusting Him. i learned that He can take something that's been shattered into a million unfixable pieces and make it into something beautiful and worthwhile--that's what He's done with me. i learned that telling little girls that you love them and they're beautiful and special will make a child that is completely without hope brighten up with this amazing smile and light all over. 
i learned how to love people with everything i have.

last night, i was really upset. my family doesn't understand...they can't even fathom what these kids go through, and how much it hurts to have to leave them. i didn't want to wake up here...and i was so worried about all of those wonderful children. i don't want anyone to hurt them anymore...and I have to trust God to take care of them b/c i can't be with them now. He showed me this:

"'Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever! Go and say to them, "Return to your tents." But as for you, stand here by Me, and I will speak to you all the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments which you shall teach them, that they may observe them in the land which I am giving them to possess.' Therefore you shall be careful to do as the Lord your God has commanded you; you shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.You shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live and that it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which you shall possess."
~deuteronomy 5:29-33

He always says just what i need to hear....