"Finding your feet on a wonderful road..."

After being home for home for almost four months, where do I even begin? I guess I would start with the faces in the photo above. The beautiful faces of children who were once forgotten but now are so dearly loved. Look at their smiles, stare into their eyes and see the joy that comes from knowing you are loved. As most of you know, from January 2012 to April 2012, I had the privilege to love on these children and see their beautiful smiles firsthand. Looking back at this blog I'm reminded once again of just how special each of them is. Just the thought of these faces still brings tears of joy to my eyes as I remember their smiles, giggles, and hugs and my heart aches to have them back in my arms again. Since returning to the States, I have struggled with sharing about my experience at Sarah's Covenant Homes in Ongole, India and what my role is now in their ministry. When I was there, it was so evident, but since I left, it became a little more unclear. As I ...

Little kids are just funny, ya know? You just never know what they're going to do. But you can always count on them bringing a smile to your face.  Here at the girls' home, we have three little girls that never fail to make me smile: Genevieve, Esther, and Zinnia These girls have such an innocence and joy about them that can't be missed. Everyday they attend preschool at a local school in the morning and then they come home at lunchtime for an afternoon abounding in whatever adventures their imaginations can come up with. They're such curious and creative little ones that never cease to amaze me in what they find to do. Some days its coloring or playing with clay or drawing on a Magnadoodle; some days its bumper cars with our laundry baskets; some days its "helping" by taking the clean laundry off the clothesline and "washing" it in a bucket of water that my air conditioner drips into or even "cleaning" the ...

The joys of Easter…church services, the promise of spring weather coming, family and friends, egg hunts, candy, and of course the joy of knowing that we have a Risen Lord… Easter is just one of those days that though we see the pain and horror of Good Friday, we can find hope in the promise of Sunday. At our home, Easter was full of wonderful blessings and exciting surprises as the girls got to experience just a glimpse of the Easters that I grew up having as a child. As per every Sunday, we walked to our small Telugu church (where we double the size of the congregation gathered in a 10 x 15 ft room) to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord as a family. After a joyous celebration with the body of Christ, we headed home to prepare for our afternoon fun- an Easter egg hunt! We had 84 bright colored plastic eggs (thanks Mom for hauling them from the States!) filled with delicious candy. We hid the eggs all around the house and let’s just say the girls were pretty excit...

No matter how old or independent you get, you never seem to be too grown up for your Mom. So leading up to my Mom's arrival in India, you can't imagine the excitement that I felt with the knowledge that we would soon be reunited. I planned out all the adventures that we would go on, anticipating the day that I would finally see her. We had so much to do, and with less than two weeks to do it all in, our time was full of adventures. After two exhausting days of air travel for her and an overnight bus ride for me, we were reunited in Hyderabad and had a quick turnaround as we set out to fly to Delhi for a few days packed with tourism. Upon our arrival, we visited one of the six ancient cities of Delhi called Qutub Minar, did some shopping at a local craft market, and even ate some delicious American food at TGI Friday's and Hard Rock Cafe...YUM. We went on a safari at Jim Corbett National Park where we saw peacocks, monkeys, beautifully colored birds, and then some t...

If there’s anything that my girls love to do, it’s dancing. Turn on some music or simply sing a song and they will surely be dancing along in no time. So one day as I was spending time with our little ones, Esther started doing this precious little dance that I couldn’t help but film… 2 Samuel 6 talks about how when David brought back the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, he danced before it because he was so excited to have it back. Following the procession, his wife, Michal, pulled him aside and scolded him for his un-kingly manner. But David replied, “I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes…” (vs. 22). I love it. David knew not to be ashamed of His Lord and King. He had so much joy welling up inside of him that he could do nothing but celebrate! There’s nothing my girls love more than to turn up their Telugu “Jesus songs” (as they call them) and dance around the room, belting out the lyrics. They have this unashamed joy withi...

  It was my first draw to India. Several years ago I read a book talking about the work that Mother Teresa was doing in India, and since that day, my heart's desire has been to go and see the amazing ways that God used this extraordinary woman to impact a city and this world. The way the story goes, whenever people asked Mother Teresa about what she was doing in Kolkata, her response would always be simple: "Come and see." So with her words echoing in the back of my mind, I decided to check a major item off my bucket list last week and set out to Kolkata to see the legendary work that was taking place there. I arrived in the city on Sunday afternoon and spent the afternoon and evening getting settled in and trying to get my bearings straight. The city is huge! Much larger than my rural city of Ongole where not too many people drive cars. Instead the streets of Kolkata are filled with cars and cabs racing back and forth, always in a hurry. Fortunately enough, I h...

Kids are just creative, ya know? You can simply give them some art supplies, free reign, and away they'll go! So when I attempted explaining Valentine's Day to my girls a couple of weeks ago and told them we were going to make valentines, you can imagine that the concept wasn't so clear. But by just giving them all the necessary items for a good valentine: construction paper, cut-out hearts, stickers, valentines sent from the States, glue, markers, and crayons, they went to work with their wonderful, creative minds and created some of the most lovely valentines I've ever seen. So I know this post is coming a bit late, but hey, better late than never, right? I just couldn't help but post them after I finally got the pictures on my computer... Do they look happy? Do they look loved? Do they look like they know they're loved? I would say so. Over the last couple of years, as God has given me more o...