A Picture Worth a Thousand Words, a Smile Worth a Million More -Hannah

"In His hands are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is His for He made it and His hands formed the dry land."

From the valley to the hills, God's greatness is abounding everywhere we turn. As we hiked up the hills to Hatibong yesterday morning, more emotions were rolling through my head than ever before: excitement, nervousness, fear, queasiness, unease, and worst of all, regret.

But as I was sitting there thinking how easy I would be to just turn around and go right back to the hotel I remembered the reason for this trek: to bring the Word to all the children up in the hills, and the regret turned to determination. This, these children, kept me going, with a lot of support from my peers and a ten times more from the Lord.

Several hours passed by in a blur of stone after stone and zigzag paths with mud, but finally, we made it to the school. As we walked down the short path, the children sat eagerly awaiting us, excitement filling their eyes and my gut filled up with giddiness too.

Once we got to the school building, the children all ran inside and within a few minutes were all seated, quietly awaiting what we had to say. We taught our lessons, and sang some songs to the most attentive group of little ones I've, personally, seen! Then we handed out the bags we had brought up for each and every child as well as frooti juice boxes, ramen, and butter cookies. And just when I thought the grins on their faces couldn't get any bigger, they most definitely did!

Before we left, we were informed that about twenty of those hundred were already Christian, which was encouraging to hear. In addition, those believing children will be a blessing to the ones who had just heard the Word for the first or second time, so they can learn and grow together. It's so incredible the ways in which the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of His little ones, and for that we are forever grateful.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so I have a few showing the village, the school, and the awesome beauty of Nepal which we have been richly blessed with. However, even though this is a popular, and true saying, I think I have a better one:

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a smile is worth a million.

Seeing the eyes light up in the children's faces as we taught them about Jesus birth, death, resurrection and their salvation is not able to be fully captured in a 1,000 word blog post or even a 10,000 word paper.

I pray that the Holy Spirit continue to guide these children along the right path, into God's arms.

In Christ,

Hannah