the end or the beginning

Well, last night was my last official day of ministry here in Orlando. Wow! I'm still here until Wednesday. We did some debriefing today after church, and then we're going to FunSpot to hang out and ride some rides tonight. Tomorrow we're headed to Disney. Tuesday we're cleaning the camp and then we have our closing banquet. Then Wednesday, I'll be driving home. My mom is flying in on Wednesday to drive back with me so I don't have to make that 9 hour trip by myself. Anyway, I'm done at GKTW. As I type that, I have tears welling up in my eyes. I cried multiple times yesterday. I don't know that I'll ever be able to put into words what it meant to me to be a part of making a child's wish come true. I loved being able to just provide a smile for them or a word of encouragement during this terrible time they're facing as a family. I have grown so much this summer, but I don't know if I can really put into words what I've learned. All I can tell you is that I'm a totally different person than I was ten weeks ago. I didn't know it was possible to grow and change this much in such a short time. I've learned to rely on God in ways I haven't had to before. For example, the first week in, my cell phone fell in the toilet, and I couldn't talk to my family or friends at home nearly as much as I wanted to. I didn't know anyone here well yet, so I had to learn that God truly is enough and He really is my Father and He really is my best friend in a way that I hadn't had to experience it before. And I grew so much through that. I think it also helped me put my focus on what I was doing here in Orlando instead of thinking about how I missed my family and friends. I grew in so many other ways, and that is such a small example. I saw God work in ways that I never had before, and that really changed me and made me realize how I have been living life with God in this box of things that I truly believed I thought He could do. I may have said that I believe God could do anything, but I don't know if in my heart I really believed that before. And now I do, and it changes the way I look at everything. I just spent two hours sitting in Arby's with three other girls and we were able to talk openly and honestly about the things that we've struggled with and debate some really hard issues and fears that I don't know if I've ever really addressed to anyone at home. God has blessed me so much this summer and I've grown in both knowledge and faith. As ready as I am to come home, at the same time, I don't want to ever leave. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone, but that's really how I feel. I'm fearful that I'll come home and fall back into routine and it will be like that two steps forward, one step back. But thankfully, God sent a pastor to our Tuesday night worship service this week who addressed all those fears that we were having about going home. He acknowledge that it would be hard, because we've all had this experience and our friends haven't and they won't understand to the capacity that we want them to no matter how hard we try to make them. But he reminded us that God had brought us here and He would be with us at home and had things lined up for us to do and people to help us already. The pastor also reminded us that we would still have each other, that we now share an unbreakable bond, and I know that's true and I find so much comfort in that. He talked about how we shouldn't look at this last week of our time here in Orlando as the end of our journey but as the beginning. He reminded us that none of us wanted to tell our children that one summer we did this really awesome thing and that was it. We want to tell our children that one summer we went to Orlando and did this really awesome thing and it changed our lives and is the reason that we are who we are; that we want to be able to say that we had this life-changing experience and never looked back and kept moving forward. That's what I so desperately want. And I have been filled with such a greater hunger for the truth of God's Word and challenged to grow so much more and not let it stop here. Like I said earlier, I don't think I can put into words how I'm different or how I've grown, but I'm not the same at all, and I'm so excited about that and I hope you can see that when I get back home. I'm excited to see you all and I'm excited to see what God has in store for me when I get back to South Carolina. See you soon!