Home. Now what?

Home.  What a sweet word.....what a comforting place.

Margo and I spent a few hours at our sponsored child's house on our last day in Todos Unidos.  Her home is small, with a dirt floor and hard furniture.  There is a small, old black and white TV at the center.  The kitchen is in the very back, near the garden.  They have a hollowed out log with a grate on top which is the traditional stove used in the jungle.  Chickens live in one corner of the kitchen; fresh eggs were found in another corner.

I think Ingrid probably feels the same way about her home as I do mine; it's a safe place where my family is and I feel loved.  Even though our homes are so many miles apart and so vastly different, we have the same soft, warm feelings about home.

Now that I'm home in my very soft life, what do I do with what I experienced and witnessed in Pucallpa?  How do I share the constant, oppressive heat in which these people must move every day?  How do I explain the poverty?  How can I express the love that radiated from the kids when we hugged them?  What about the FH staff....how do I share what they did for us and the way each one reminded me of how much I need to lean on Christ?

My first day home was packed with typical American busyness.  First, my daughter had dance.  Then I had eight loads of laundry that needed to be done, folded, and put away.  I had to cook for the family.  Bills needed to be paid.  Some of my grandma's final papers needed attention.  Boom! back to reality.

While putting clean sheets on beds last night, I thought about how quickly I was back in the groove of my normal life and I wondered if the Peru experience really had changed me.  Yes, it has; how could those days with the community NOT change a person?  But this is my life, my culture, my reality.  I have a family and people who count on me....I have to move forward.  But the touches of the new friends I made, the pictures burned into my mind, the voices of the children will live on in me and will change the way I approach my everyday living now that I am home.  I will continue to share Peru and FH and hope that my experiences will draw me closer to Christ and give me the voice I need to share Him.