I don't know what I expected to be like as I neared the end of this trip, what I expected it to look like, but I know that it was nothing like what the Lord truly had prepared for me. Perhaps I was expecting great miracles, a huge revival, something...I don't know...something BIG. Yet what it has become is a training ground. A season of stripping and perhaps heating up the fire a bit more. I should have known. I remember when I was in Busia, Uganda the vision Alison got for me. It was a large apple orchard, trees as far as the eye could see. And every one of them where covered in snow. Stripped as trees are in the winter. Yet she got to see what was in the future. The fruit these trees would bear in the spring. The vision started with a picture of an apple and ended with the vision of a whole orchard stripped of the fruit, pruned a bit more so that in the future it can produce a greater abundance of mature, healthy fruit. Even before their were constant visions of the cost, of the refining. Yet I became lost in my romantic pictures of Africa and holiness. Being a robotic Mother Theresa. It was quite sad actually. This, this however, is so much better. I was looking at the outward appearance, but He, He was looking at the heart. So often I get caught up in what the future will look like and forget the journey, the cost to that place. I forget the infinite proportion and depth of the One I love, the God I serve. I think I am swimming in the ocean when I find that I am simply standing on the shore of the depths of His waters.

      There really is nothing romantic about Africa. You come to a point where you discover the limit of your own love, your own patience, and what you once called the goodness of your character. You eventually will get tired of holding dirty kids who at one point are hanging all over you and the next moment trying to pick pocket you and pester you for money. You get tired of men's crude remarks and the dirtiness of your own body. You get tired of hearing "mzungu" yelled at you every time you walk down the road. You get tired of being sick and being tired. Your well runs dry quickly and your romantic notions of Africa are soon broken to pieces. You come to a point where it becomes necessary to see them with His eyes, were you have to be possessed with His heart to go through another day. So that they can experience that which you never could give out of yourself. So that you can experience the depths of His love as He pours it out of you. It is a bottomless well. It never runs dry.

      This trip has taught me so much of the cost of love, of the gift of that cost. It has shown me the freedom of His truth, the security of His grace, the sufficiency of His nature. It is unforgettable and all-consuming. I pray that I never forget, never cease to treasure it. He is so good, so good to us, so good to me. I was consumed with what this trip would "look" like, and His point was to change the appearance of my heart by a new and revelation of His heart to the broken and needy. Seeing myself in every child and His unconditional love and patience for me. Understanding the limitedness and selfishness of my own nature and the infiniteness and sacrificial love of His own. A grace without bounds, a love without condition, a goodness without limit. I am so grateful for that which He has brought me through and am thankful that it is not even half way through yet. A journey into the depths of His heart, His character has no end, the landscape just simply changes. His grace has been more than sufficient and I thank Him everyday that He is Himself and not me and has way more patience with the inconstancy of my moods that I ever would. Thank you my love, may we always be awed and humbled by the I AM....It seems as though I have failed to say what I want to say. My friend Tara Boreman has described so much better of were we have all found ourselves. Her blog can be found at this link: http://taraborman.myadventures.org/index.asp?filename=learning-to-die. I encourage all of you to read it!