Third Trip January, 2010 Day 6

Fine, I will quit talking about superlatives all together. Today was absolutely heavenly. We went to Amparo De Ninas in Bogota. This is the home orphanage of the ministry. It is where everything started and where some of the board members have adopted children. It is also the home of three of the Goddaughters including mine. When we turned onto the dirt road that leads to the orphanage a flood of emotions washed over me as I remembered that I would be leaving two of my daughters here in two days. I pray for the day that I can take all of them home with me. As usual, when we arrived, the girls all came out to greet us and we stood on the sidewalk and talked for several minutes and then moved to the playground and had a very fun time of basketball, volleyball, crafts, and lots of sitting around visiting. We had invited the little boys from the Pro Nacer orphanage that we visited on Monday to join us today at Amparo De Ninas and at two o’clock they arrived and joined the fun. This continued for several hours and then the rain clouds came and we all moved to the cafeteria. Someone suggested that we sing to the kids and so David, Chris, Rebekah, Beverly, Brooke and I sang several praise and worship songs for the children and they really loved it. Then to our delight, my Goddaughter Heidy got up and sang a beautiful song for the crowd. She has a stunning voice. Then it got even better when she called some of her friends up there with her and they led all the children in several praise and worship songs in Spanish. It was truly heavenly. I was able to share with them about the love of God and to thank them for teaching us more about that love today. Then we had a hotdog dinner and ice cream and some Colombian dances. An amazing providence was revealed today that was bitter/sweet. There is a pair of beautiful twin girls about thirteen years old that live at Amparo that we have become friends with. Unbeknownst to any of us, they have twin little brothers that live at Pro Nacer. They hadn’t seen their brothers in three years and when the Pro Nacer boys arrived today they were unexpectedly reunited. It was incredibly touching to see the delight in their eyes. The bitter part was that they cried and cried when the boys had to leave tonight and go back to their orphanage. My girls and I held the twin girls while they sobbed and sobbed. It was a stark reminder of the awful plight of these sweet children. I seriously doubt that there are four cuter or sweeter children in all the world than these two set of twins and yet they can’t be together in a loving family. One of the highlights of the day for me was that I got a chance to sit down with my Goddaughters with Luis translating and really have a heart to heart talk about a lot of things. It was so sweet to be able to share with each other things that we have been thinking about and wondering about but the language barrier had kept us from discussing at length. There were tears of joy as we finished our conversation. Sweet Ginary spoke for both girls and told me that they love and adore me and my family and they are so grateful that God saw fit to bring us into their lives and that they never in their wildest dreams thought that something good like this would ever happen in their life. We had the unexplainable privilege to love on our savior all day today through these precious children and I know that our whole team would back me in saying that we are forever changed. Thank you for your prayers.