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

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...

There are some parts of my job that aren't always the most fun like...waking up 12 girls super early six days a week, disciplining them, yelling about lights out...and there are some parts that are really fun like singing and praying with them, tickling them just to hear their giggles, painting toe nails and coloring...and then there's the one day we did henna... We had just come back from the park where the girls had been somewhat of a nightmare to get to leave and I had retreated upstairs feeling a bit defeated and overwhelmed when I hear coming from the bottom of the stairs, (a rather pitiful and remorseful might I add) "Sister? Sister? You come downstairs sister...please sister..." I walked to the top of the stairs to see Nora standing there holding a metal tin and uncertain about what was inside, I walked downstairs out of curiosity... Well, they got me. I was hooked when I looked and saw that there was homemade henna inside. My nannies quickly ur...

Time is a strange thing, ya know? One thing from ten years ago might seem like it happened yesterday whereas you're convinced that the thing that happened yesterday was ten years ago. So far India appears to be this way. Though I arrived here just two-and-a-half weeks ago, it seems like its been an eternity. But at the same time, I feel like I was just in China spending time with the people and children I love so much. And with its contorted sense of time (where 5 minutes could mean 5 hours or even 5 days later), India's feeling of time doesn't get any better (yes I know you'd think that it would be perfect for me, but even I'm waiting on people all the time here). So as I'm 19 days in, I find myself trying to figure out exactly what I've been doing with my time... Since my arrival, I kind of hit-the-ground-running. The plan was for me to take over running a home for the school-aged girls that SCH recently opened in November. So basically I'm oversee...

'Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, Just to take Him at His word. Just to rest upon His promise, And to know, "Thus saith the Lord!" Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him, How I've proved Him o'er and o'vr. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus, Oh for grace to trust Him more... "Oh for grace to trust Him more..." Sometimes its hard to learn to trust Jesus more, so many days I find that it takes an extra helping of grace to find that trust. As I think back over the last several months and over those to come, I realize that trusting Him is what this world requires. From the trusting of my planning to come on this adventure to the trusting of my ND kids and their medical needs to my time spent with precious friends in Shenzhen over Christmas and New Years and now even to the nightmares of traveling as I arrived in India today, God's voice resounds over and over again that I must trust in Him for there is no other way.  So often this world se...

It's interesting when you're getting ready to leave somewhere that you seem to be able to come up with a list of a million things you need to do before you go. Even if you've been in a place for years (or just three months like me) and had plenty of time to see it all, you can always come up with that one last thing that needs to be seen or explored. So as I was nearing the end of my time in Beijing/Qingyundian, my friends and I decided that it was necessary to create a bucket list with the things that we felt must be done before we left for the holidays. So after much thought and planning we determined our Beijing bucket list... Item #1: Beijing Acrobat Show So yes, I know there are Chinese acrobat shows in the States, but surprisingly enough, I've never actually been to one even in the States so why not see my first in China? This seemed like the perfect idea to me so it just had to go on the list. Over and over again before we went, Chine...