See you later

"I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy...being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart...God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ--to the glory and praise of God."

The Apostle Paul

Here I sit in Quito quietly thinking off all that has happened over the past few weeks. Most have gone to bed tired from the day's journey and from the emotions felt. Christian is playing worship songs in the background.

My mind wanders to the kids that I so desperately love. That all of us so desperately love. Tears come to my eyes as I think of their beautiful faces; when I think of their amazing faith that has carried them through things that I can only imagine. My heart breaks knowing that tomorrow will come and I will not be able to hug and kiss them all. To hold them in my arms and tell them that I love them. I know I speak for the entire team when I write these things. We have barely left these kids and already we are thinking about when we can come back and how we can tell more people about what is going on out here in this tiny little place. The lives that are being changed for the sake of Christ. This is what true religion is. To take care of these little ones that so many have discarded like trash. How? How can this happen? I do not know the answer but what I do know is that the Lord's loves each one of them more than I can know. If my heart is breaking for them what must his heart be like as he looks upon their tears?

As I am sure you can tell, it was an emotional goodbye this morning. We arrived at the orphanage at around 9:30 a.m. and had about an hour and a half to say goodbye. The kids were awesome. They put on a few little skits for us and some of the ladies even gave us a beautiful dance routine. After all of that came the time to say goodbye. I cannot begin to describe what that was like. These kids are so amazing...I can barely think of words to describe the love that we have for them. The one comfort we have is we know that they are going to be o.k. Our heavenly Father is going to look after them.

We then traveled to Monti Cristo and met up with Allan, Pearl and the kids to have lunch and say goodbye. Please be in prayer for this family as they sacrifice so much for the continued vision of Por Amor and Montanita Verde. They face so many challenges each and every day and their faithfulness to God's calling is clearly reflected in the eyes of the beautiful kids.

After our final goodbyes we headed to Quito. The gang is doing better this time because we all took altitude sickness pills in anticipation of what happened on the way here. We had a nice evening with Paul and Susan and found a great burger joint where we enjoyed something other than rice, plantains and fish!

Tomorrow we are going to head out to some hot mineral springs a few hours from here for a little R & R and then head to the markets for some shopping. It will be nice to be busy for a bit to help us work through the emotions of today.

I know I say it every post but thank you so much for taking this journey with us. Your prayers and support bring us such encouragement. Each of you had a role in making this a highly successful and life changing trip for all of those involved.

As we left Peter, the house Father, turned to me and told me that this was our home and these were our kids and that we were welcome back any time. It brings me such joy to hear these things and I know that one day my wife and I will return to Ecuador (as I know Danielle and Christian will as well).

God Bless you all,

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J (for the rest of the team)