Well our trip is over and the team should be in the air somewhere over Ecuador headed home. We have been talking about what God wants us to do with what we have learned this week. Learned about ourselves and Gods' extravagant love for children on the margins. We have seen great joy in kids living in poverty; we have seen the lack of hope on the face of Lourdes, a 25 year old mother with both legs and one arm amputated. She does not claim to be Chiristian but would like to go to church. But how do you get there when you have no wheelchair and if you did you would need to traverse a dirt hill with an extremely steep grade?

Some of us have learned that we have the gift of leadership and we have a responsibility to do it. With excellence and right where we are because there are no secular jobs. Some of us have the gift of compassion and I would argue that we must love wastefully. Wastefully? Yes. A love that is not conditioned upon the response. A love that is not contained by socail, religious or ethnic structures. A love that thanks God not only for the food on our plate but for those who grew it, transported it, cooked it, served it and made the plate it sits on. After all, with his dying breath Jesus offered salvation to a thief who had zero opportunity for spiritual growth. And that might seem wasteful but was extravagant and unconditional.

And now on to Peru.

- Rick