Landon just asked me when I'm going to finally post another blog.

"I donno," I said.

"But what about your constituents?" he prodded.

Hm.... that would be.... you.

I've been wanting to return to some posting - sorry for the week lapse. I just always feel like the first post after a lapse in posting should be something substantial or meaningful. But honestly, I don't have anything like that right now.

Something that I've been struggling through lately are my feelings about wanting to return to Africa. Living in Kenya was difficult. What I saw in the people and the land there tore me to pieces. The people are betrayed in every way: by their government, by the missionaries, by their land, by each other, by G**....... The land is as neglected as the people. What was once a place where people could grow and thrive has become a place that is robbed and left barren. But the people, and the land, are strong and though struggling, pushing on - breathtakingly beautiful. I will never be the same, having experienced Kenya and her people.

And when i think back on my time there, I wish so desperately to return to those there that I love. To return to a simpler life - everything, though much was heartbreaking, was so clear, so sure. Priorities were not difficult to sift through, stewarship was not hard to delegate.

I miss the children. I am currently reading Melissa Fay Greene's  "There is No Me Without You", which is the prompting of all my wishing and remembering and wondering about Africa. It is a remarkable story of an Ethiopian woman who answered the call of her community to shelter and care for AIDS orphans. And her story touches me deeply - not only in a way where i am inspired and feel warm and wonderful thinking of the good that she has done in the world. But it touches me deeply - opening and festering places in my heart that I have tried to ignore and forget - I have been touched deeply by a few dozen orphans. And somehow, their ministry in my life is beyond anything else I have experienced. Though I witnessed the suffering of a nation and I wondered to myself if God was even present in such a place, I saw him in those children. every. single. day. every. single. smile. every. single. tear. They are his. He is theirs.

And I feel like some part of myself is lost being separated from these kids, being disconnected from their lives and their ministry. I miss them desperately. I want to kiss their cheeks and hold their hands and sing their songs and lift them high into the air and swing them around and love them again with my whole heart. I want to see their beautiful faces and hear their angelic voices and experience life with them again - with them the world is radiant and I am whole in it.