Dangerous Orphans

It's dark and it's early and it's time to get up. Sunday morning's devotion time is a half hour earlier than every other day, which means we stumble up the steep stairs, some of the younger ones still in pyjamas, to begin the day at 5:30 a.m. It's okay, the rooster has already been helping to get us out of bed since about 4 a.m., a kindness he offers every day.

My first thoughts this day do not centre around the hour, however. This is my last day at Hot Springs and I don't want to deal with that. I lie on my mattress wondering why on earth I would do such a wretched thing to my heart. What sane person would come to spend time with these sensational children, knowing full well the time would have to come to an end and there'd be a goodbye. Why didn't I think about the goodbye?

It's been a holy experience this week. I have seen the face of God in ways I haven't ever experienced before; His gentleness and grace and wreckless abandonment to embrace. Each child is a pricelss gift. Every personality, every skill set, every temperament...each one a gift from God to this planet that I have somehow been granted the honour of being in the presence of 24/7 for the past five days.

More stories will come. More pictures are on the way. I have so much to bring back to all of you, and some very specific reports and pictures and letters and gifts for the sponsors. And I'll get to all that as soon as possible.

For now, let's just say that I'm back in Chiang Mai more wrecked than before I left, but deeply, deeply grateful for the dangerous opportunity to let these children do what they've done to my heart. Nobody told me orphans could be so dangerous.

Ruth Anne