To Russia With . . . Hesitation?

My daughter is on her way to Russia on a 10-day trip to work alongside Russian college students as they serve orphans there.  I'm not sure it has really sunk in to my wife and me that we are sending our 18-year-old "little girl" to the other side of the world . . . but I didn't hesitate when she first asked to go.  Will I miss her?  Absolutely.   But she should go.

Over the next 10 days, Ashton will experience a culture that she has only read about and heard about from the young adults in our church who went on a similar trip last year.  She will experience up close the orphan crisis that her dad writes about so often.  And so, with no hesitation, I delivered her to the airport this morning with several expectations:

• I want her to see firsthand that anything short of a family is not the best place for a child.  

• I want her to see firsthand how confining an orphanage -- especially one using the large institutional model that most Eastern European nation tend to use -- can be.

• I want her to see how much difference reflecting God's light in a dark place can make.

• I want her to find the children on the edges that I wrote about earlier this week in "Remembering Kickball and Picking Teams".

• I want her to express the joy and hope she has in Christ to college students and orphans who don't know Him.

• I want her life to change forever because of what she experiences over the next 10 days.  

• I want her to change the world.

And so to Russia she goes . . . with no hesitation on her part or mine.

Thanks for reading.  Would you join me in praying for Ashton and the others on the Russia trip?  Thanks!

4theVoiceless,

Al