An honest look at our hearts this moment...

Things are good here, they really are, but we're going to be completely honest for a minute. Almost all of our entries are upbeat, happy, excited and enthusiastic and for the most part, our time here has been nothing but all of that...but...
We have been struggling a bit for the past couple weeks. We love the people here, the children, the life, the culture...but sometimes a little hint of wanting to go home creeps inside us. Our past 2 years have been spent with our hearts, souls and selves working to serve orphans and the poor. It has been rewarding in a way I can't express, so rewarding and great that we have both seriously considered mission work as a career. But lately, we've seen the end coming and feel relieved about it. Since our first orphanage trip 4 years ago we have been consumed by this work. Life in America hasn't compared to life with God's neediest in the poorest countries. How could people spend money on a material unneeded good, when that money could feed a village for a month!? (Yesterday we talked about needing satellite tv in our apartment when we get back to the US- we kind of do though, we both love tv and have been so deprived!) Even so, we feel so confident that we were called to do this work and have known we were in the right place for all these months and years. Things are changing a bit though. Coming home and finally letting our hearts come home too sounds actually okay. We are both 24-years-old now and are ready for another chapter. We want to figure out what we are going to do with our lives. Get a job. Get married (Nap, I wasn't hinting.) Move out of our parents' homes. And almost the most exciting thing- find volunteer work and mission work at home. We are excited to get involved with helping people in our own country, our own city. Refugees or the homeless or foster kids- we are excited because we don't need to leave the service part of our lives behind when we leave Africa. That will ALWAYS be a part of us, and there is plenty to do at home too. Africa will never fully leave us. The children and people and culture will remain in our hearts forever- but home doesn't sound so bad anymore.
We still have time here and are involved in so many things that remind us that we do love life here. Coming home from Peru last year, we knew we weren't done with this work. We're going to work hard for the remaining time here and this time come home feeling finally satisfied. That's hard to admit, being here and knowing that these people can't just "come home to America" to figure it all out. Ahhh we just have mixed feelings about all of it- please pray for us.

** I can't promise you we will feel this way even tomorrow. But we wanted people to know what we have been going through the past couple weeks.