"Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of God our father is this: to visit widows and orphans in their distress..."

The first week of August, I will be taking off on an adventure with some of my very favourite people in the world: my girls, most importantly and obviously, (and the boys too, I guess :), my leader team, and an assortment of my favourite high-school buddies. I am both delighted and scared for this trip. I have no doubt that after a week of crazy fun, and caring for the needs of a cabin full of girls, and seeing God move in awesome ways, I will be delighted and exhausted.

As soon as camp is over, I will be leaving for Guatemala with my 13 year old aunt, and my dad's step mom. We will be spending a week working in an orphanage for young children in the mountains. And as scared as I am for camp, I am terrified of this. I'm terrified of actually speaking Spanish, for real. There will be no "como se dice [insert English word]," but there will be heavy accents, and a blend of Indian words I won't know at all. There will be big jungle bugs. I will have to go through customs. For the first time, I will not be a citizen of the country I am in. I will be going with a woman who I haven't seen more than 5 times a year since I was12. Best and worst of all, there will be little kiddos, made in the image of God, who are heart broken, and lonely, and want nothing more than someone to call Papa.

I follow the blog of a Christan writer named Leslie Ludy, and this was the first part of it today:

Psalm 68:5 says that God is a Father to the fatherless, and He “sets the solitary in families.”   Isaiah 58 says that those who “bring the poor that are cast out into their house” will be blessed by God.  Adoption is very close to God’s heart.  In fact, adoption is an amazing picture of the Gospel.  When we receive Christ, we are adopted into the family of God, and receive the amazing, unmatched privilege of being His sons and daughters for eternity.  A “forever family” is the number one desire of every orphan child.  One orphan worker told me recently of a six-year-old girl in Guatemala who cries herself to sleep every night because she longs so desperately for a family.   Millions of children echo her cries.

The orphanage that we are going to has no religious affiliation. How do I go to these children, and see them, and love them, and not spend every moment telling them that they have a father who loves them, who died for them, who will never leave or forsake them? Regardless, I am excited because I know God will use this experience to show me his heart and how it breaks for his children.