Leaving . . .

It is 12:15am and we are to be ready at 5am to leave! AHHH!!

I wanted to write so much more tonight, but I just can't. My mind is too clouded and I'm (really the whole team) still trying to process my thoughts from the trip.

Definitely a bitter sweet good-bye. We leave with very heavy hearts for the people and things that we have experienced in the past 3 weeks. We are thankful for having our hands is so many different things and ministries--it allowed us to get a pretty good picture of how things work here in Manila.

The kids though . . . man . . . they sure stole our hearts. We visited the nursery where we got to love on 10 precious children from God. We would pack them all up and take them home with us if we could. It was SO hard to leave.

The 7 older kids have also been hard to leave and in a different way. We have been struggling with how to say good-bye and what this time should look like. Since they are older (around 13-14, and all orphaned) they have to deal with so many teams constantly coming and going, and probably asking them to pour out their hearts just like we did--and they did. The girls really opened up the past could weeks as we were going over all out testimonies. Each one has been a blessing to us girls in so many ways. They have been through more than anyone of us and are so self-efficient and love the Lord. Nikki brought up a great point and encouraged us to encourage them on the impact they made on us. We hope they understood. We hope they continue to share and be open so that they may continue to bless others. And hopefully we were to them as well.

Please pray for us as we are sorting out these feelings and all God has taught us and convicted of us with while we were here. It seems as though we were on emotion overload right now. We and so thankful for God's justice and grace, it's so overwhelming--this has been a daily focus for us.

We love you and can't wait to see you!!