Today was hard...

Today was hard for us both.

Everything has been going great, so it's not a bad kind of hard, it's good, but still hard.

It warmed my heart that when we arrived, Kalkidan was quietly coloring in the doodle book we bought her and was so proud to show me. She doesn't speak much English at all, but the one word sentence "mom " with her excited gestures for me to check out her art, that was enough.

Then, a little later, we broke out the face paints for the whole orphanage ( cause who travels to Africa without face paints, right?) and spent a decent chunk of time creating arm tattoos for the boys and fanciful face designs for the girls.

Kalkidan was us awe when her face was all done. Then, through gestures I showed her that she could do some design on me as well.

She took my hands and created a masterpiece! :) I just wish I knew what it meant! I think it was Amharic script... With an "M" placed purposely in the center. Her way of writing "mom". She puts "M's" wherever she can!

But the awe of the face paints didn't even come close to when we gave her a boxed set of origami supplies that were prepped for making cute little animals like penguins and such.

The box was glittery and fancy and inside there were many different colors of paper and "attachments". Kalkidan couldn't wipe the look of shock off of her face and she kept whispering "wow". Gingerly, she touched each part of the package , opening and closing the little drawers that separated out the supplies and she tried to get Kumnager's attention.

Kumnager was pretty into the origami too, though she was also quite content to just hang with dad and make good use of all his mobile devices. "Fruit Ninja" kept her absolutely captivated until we called her away to the face painting station.

And oh the hugs! The girls just want up be hugged constantly. We thought it might be hard for all of us in the hugging department since they are older and we are strangers from

America! But no..they are constantly looking for hugs!

So, you may be thinking, "Whats so hard about all of that?"

Well, quite simply, we are overflowing with love for these little girls and we will have to leave them here for about 2-3 months while their paperwork is processed.

It makes sense, I see why it needs to be this way..., but we just found ourselves crying quite a bit today to think about leaving in just a few days.

I wonder if this is how God views the time we spend with him? We are quick to rush into prayer and then back to "life". If only we knew and basked in the great love God has for us, more regularly, more richly and more fully. How much more content and at peace we would be.

So until tomorrow, we wait for and dream about another few hours with our beloved!