Home is Where The Heart is.

I tried to post a couple of times from the iPhone while on mission trip this last week, but it never worked. Turns out there's a huge need for MORE BARS IN MORE PLACES SO THANKS FOR NOTHING FRACKING AT&T along I-70, as the dotted yellow line of hell leads you across Kansas toward Colorado and then into Wyoming.

The short version is: We survived. We worked hard. We played hard. We worshiped together. We slept on floors and took three minute showers, but only every other day. We mumbled our way through contemporary Christian songs that we didn't know but are apparently supposed to.

Did we grow deeper in our faith? I don't know. It's hard to tell. I'm not personally a big fan of the Helen Keller-at-the-pump faith moment, I tend to think faith is a journey of life, and when you arrive at the ultimate epiphany, it means you're dead.

But we know a lot more about each other, me and these teenagers that I call "my kids" when I talk about my job.  Because they are mine. They are all mine, the teens from my church on the mission trip, the teens from the other churches that we met and served with along the way, the Native American children living on the reservation that we played with and loved on as part of the program. The little girl in the McDonald's somewhere in Wyoming, seemingly without an adult nearby, who was trying to climb on the soda fountain counter in order to pump ketchup into her little paper cup.

My own two genetic offspring, for whom breathing hurt as I missed them.

They are all mine. I am ultimately responsible for all of them, and for their well-being. I've always known this, I think.

I'm not entirely sure how my heart can bear that load. But it appears to be growing to compensate.