My first kiss on the World Race happened when our team was in Kathmandu.
Back story: We came back from Haripur, Sarlahi, Nepal on the 20th and worked alongside with another team at the Asha Nepal house. We helped out with tutoring, setting up a website for the ministry (the original website can be found here: http://www.asha-nepal.org/pages/home/index.php), create a commercial and video (the original video can be found here: http://vimeo.com/32729886), and spending time with the ladies that lived there. It was a lot of fun spending time with our other squad members and seeing the work that God is doing through them and being able to be a part of the ministry. We spent a few days with them before our team went into Thamel, a part of the Kathmandu Valley. We spent our last week setting up our own ministry in the city. We did street ministry, talked to shop owners and building relationships with them, and visited an orphanage. This is where my heart fell in love with orphanages.
I made a deal with God as soon as I walked into OCEAN Nepal (http://www.oceannepal.org/), my heart was rejoicing. The deal is that if I get married, can't ever have children of my own, and if God calls me to live overseas, I want to start a ministry with my husband where we own an orphanage and have a home for a lot of children! I was just so in love with the children that we saw and how much they loved us back.
We walked in and the children jumped all over us, colored, took pictures of us with paper cameras, drew pictures of us, hula hooped and loved on us. It was so fun to just sit there and love on them back.
I was sitting down and watching the children, taking pictures of them interacting with the rest of our team, when a young boy came up to me. Gip walked right up to me, and stole my heart. He kissed me right on the lips. I was completely taken by surprise, but was just so completely blown away by how willing he was to love. Oh
Gip, you have stolen my heart.
Yes, this makes me think about earlier in the month when God completely captivated and romanced my heart. I had a really hard time this month with feeling loved and accepted. I had a hard time accepting and loving myself. On the drive back from Haripur to Kathmandu, I heard God say to me, "I love you." That's all. I don't know why right at that moment that I heard Him say that to me but I do know that He tells me that all the time and on the drive back was when I decided to listen. It was so beautiful and I have continued to grow in accepting how much He loves me and that I can't do anything to change that.
