A few good things

Well, to be honest...the last couple of weeks back from Rome have been a little hard. I keep telling everyone that I love being in another country and the people and culture, but the circumstances of the program are frusterating at times. I do miss my friends and family, and also miss my days of independence. But things are still going. I did something amazing today. I went to the records library in Belfast. It was there that I was able to look up and ask for Amy Carmichael's letters from India to home. I sat and held her very own hand written and a hundred year old letters. I also looked through "Amma's photos." It was all of the pictures Amy had taken of her time in India. So, tons of black and white photos of little Indian babies.

For those of you who don't know...Amy Carmichael was a missionary from Ireland to India. She lived and worked in India for over 50 years of her life. She is an amazing women of God and my spiritual hero...so this was a great day. I held the very letter she wrote on a ship on her way to Japan in March of 1893. I read her words as she described seeing "the gleaming of the long coast line of Darkest Africa." I read on in amazement at the love she had for the Lord. This is something I copied down from one of her letters:

"The light-bearers so few and far between that today millions and millions whom Jesus died to win, are left to live and die unwon. Oh that His bride might awaken to the heart desire of her Bridge groom. E're the cry rings down 'Go ye forth to meet Him.' Truely if we go on leaving 'the voiceless silence of despair' unanswered, the heathen who we might tell, untold, we shall have to 'shrek in shame before Him at His coming.'"

I don't think I could say I would write a letter like that on a ship infested with cockroaches, rolling over the crazy ocean waves on my way to Japan in 1893... Reading through letters written on thin Indian paper, seeing the heart and soul behind this woman was both encouraging and convicting.

I also put up a video of Jill and I in Rome. And here are a few pictures! Love and miss you guys! I will be home in like 26 days...wow.