We are the body!

Today was a difficult but awesome day in CambodiaWe started this morning with our last day at kids club. We sang and played with the children, and as they covered our faces with kisses and threw their little arms around our necks it melted each of our hearts. There were no dry eyes as we left today, the kids waving and running after us. Each of us were touched this week by different children, and each of us will leave a little piece of our hearts there with them. As I embraced my little one, sakhum, for the last time and she gently pushed my hair back from my face and wiped my tears with her little fingers, giving me a sweet kiss on the nose and saying 'I love you' in Khmer over and over again I realized that these precious children have blessed us much more than we blessed them. We have fallen in love with these little ones, and to hear some of their stories is heart breaking. No child should suffer, but when it's Children you know and love it's particularly devastating. Today we got a taste of how God must feel when His children are being hurt. If we are broken at these children and their stories, how much more is He. So we left them today, with heavy hearts, but trusting them to the care of One much more equipped than we are and who loves them more than we ever could.(mark10: 13-16)Then we got the opportunity to go back to the rapha house for a few hours and help with sanding and staining wood to make a hockey game for the girls in the house. We got filthy and the weather was less than cool, but singing while we worked, laughing, and sharing testimonies made The time fly. It felt good to be useful and serve such a wonderful program. We got to live out our faith (Romans 12:1)Afterwards we got to go to the small house for a little bit, the place where the special needs rescued girls live, and we got to spend some time with them. I sat on the swings with a blind girl who had been rescued, and we talked for a little bit. She was also 18, and her favorite color was yellow too. She also loved Jesus and to read and sing, even though she said she wasn't very good, just like me. While we were sitting there it just really struck me, we are just two girls, two daughters of The Lord, why should we live such different lives? These people are not so different from us. They are sons and daughters of the living God, loved just as passionately as each one of us. God longs to care for these people, to wrap them in His arms. And we are His body. He wants to love them through us. Loving these people, serving them, it is not a good deed we are doing. This is not a two week long adventure to check off our list of Christian duties. We are passionately in love with Jesus, and Jesus is passionately in love with each and every nation and each and every individual. To serve the people our God loves, to love the people that He does. What a gift. This is the call of our lives, to give Jesus our bodies, souls, hearts, and stength that He may live through us, love through us. These people are not forgotten by the King of the world, and they will not be forgotten by each of us. (Matthew 25:35)Love from CambodiaMadi Plescia