I arrived at the church a few minutes early and thought to myself, hold it together! It was so emotional, the idea of talking to all the congregation about the trip had so many emotions it was hard to think I would be able to hold back the tears. I was doing pretty well and I had gotten all of my defenses up in order to make it through. then about 2 minutes before we started, I saw the children. Four of the boys saw me from the edge of the stage where they hid behind the curtain. Our eyes met and they waved and smiled. Such an honest loving hello! I couldn't help it, I jumped up and ran over to them hugging and kissing them and saying hello. They had been asking the adults for days when they would see me. The young man Vireak that I gave an eagle to was wearing it and they told me he wore it every day and everywhere he went. I was so touched. Of course this all took down all my emotional barriers and it was exactly the right thing. 
The children did a wonderful performance. Pastor Sinai the founder of New Hope for Orphans did a presentation on NHO and then we watched the video I had made. It brought a lot of emotions up and I saw many folks with tears in their eyes. It was a montage of pictures from the trip that I dubbed with the song "Our God is an awesome God". Then it was time for us to speak and Dee (our pastor) gave us each 2 minutes. Wow that was tough, I could talk for an hour. So I chose to speak about the Unconditional Love of Christ. How the children taught me that once I discarded my own pre-conceptions, predjudices, hang ups, worries, etc and opened my heart, the children's love just overwhelmed me. It was such a lesson on how God loves us and for me, I was so blessed by these children and their gift to me. I talked about how we pooled resources to buy rice for the Vietnamese children on the river. I talked about our experience with those children and how we jumped in and interacted with them strictly out of love and how they responded in kind. In between services we had a table set up and we talked with folks about sponsorships. We were lucky enough to get 5 more children sponsored!!!
After the service, we all met again at the George's house. They had the whole group there for dinner. It was great. I got to talk with all the children and spend a lot of time with them. I got soooo many hugs and kisses it was just wonderful. While we were there, the ice cream man came and Andy grabbed him and held him there. We all came running and with everyone grabbing whatever cash we had we bought ice creams for all the kids. It was very very cool!
