Touchy feely stuff - ManJoe loves it!

Wow, where to even begin! Every type of emotion has been flying through my mind and words can't even describe what we have seen and the stories we have heard. Some of the others have shared the details of what we have been doing since we arrived so instead I thought I would share their best day I have had whilst away (slash the best day of my life to date). On Saturday morning Pastor Fera took us out for a morning walk around the village. After having walked through a rice paddy (with the possibility of snakes-my biggest fear!), buying peanuts still in their shells and witnessing where the floods of the week before had been and the houses they had covered, Pastor Fera lead us into a bamboo house with a dirt floor and seats woven out a mixture of flax and bamboo. At this point I didn't realise the significance of this family that sat before us. Pastor Fera began to share their stories with us. Both the Mum and Dad have had extremely close to death experiences whose survival can only be explained by the favour of God, plus their house was the only one in the entire are not to flood (understanding they live only 50metres from the river). Then the youngest girl, Oktoresia's story was shared. It was a story that was extremely hard breaking and a bit too intense to share over the internet, but to say the least it broke all of our hearts and left us not really knowing how to feel. But then it clicked, that morning I had been talking to Pastor Fera about the need I felt to sponsor a child. I have always made excuses for why I can't, but the night before God had really hit me up about it. How could I come to a place like Gadingan, see what I saw, feel the emotions that I felt and not do anything about it. So right there and then Fera announced to the family and to all of us that this was the little girl that was for me. Man I can't even explain how it felt in that moment and in the days that followed. The love I felt from that family was beyond anything I have ever felt. The invited us straight away to stay for lunch, gave us their last 2 papaya's, picked all of their herbs etc from their garden for us, went out to the market and bought us even more fruit (without us knowing that that was what they had gone to do), bought us bottles of water, were the first to church and the last to leave the next day, then came around later that day. I thought that that was the last time I would see them as we were leaving the next morning, but then about 30min before we were due to leave they turned up again. All I heard was her little giggle from my room. The dad, Supri, had brought me a package of shuttlecocks (this is what he does for a job, makes them out of duck feathers). We continued to play and take a million photos and then said goodbye for the "last time". We were hopping it the van and then guess who turned up again and with perfect timing! Just before they left I had been talking about how my favourite fruit was mangoes and was told that they were all gone because they are a December fruit. From that they obviously decided that what better to do than go out and search for some mangoes to bring back to me! I was so surprised!! Man what better way to learn to give out of your little. These people have nothing yet they gave us everything they had. Before we left they told us that their devastation of the last 3 weeks through what had been happening to Oktoresia had completely gone through us visiting. Oktoresia went from being an extremely shy 3 year old to a bursting with energy, crazy, and ridiculously smiley girl within the space of 3 extremely special days. When she left on the back of the family's motorbike she yelled out in Indonesian, "come home with me." I absolutely loved Gadingan and now have a very legitimate excuse to have to go back and visit in the future!!! Thanks for all of your love and prayers back home! Bring on an amazing time at Mount Hope!!

Love Lis