Dear family and friends,

What a full season this has been! Instead of dwelling on the busy events, I thought I would share a story to think about. As you might know, I (Phyllis) just finished my studies with the year-long Agape school that helps train people who minister in orphanages. At the fourth session of that school, we heard from Marek Wnuk, and I want to pass on to you one of the activities he did with us.

First he handed out little slips of paper, so that each person had ten. We had to write down our ten greatest treasures on those papers: the people, things, feelings, memories, possessions, or whatever we really love. You might want to do this, too; write them down, or at least think about what you would write.

Once we had our whole little collections of treasures ready, Marek asked us to give up two of them and to think about it as if we were actually giving up what they represented, not just handing over papers. Can we live without them? Probably. Each of us still had eight more. Then he took two more. It got a little harder to choose and to give them up. Then two more. It went on down to the last two. At that point Marek asked how many of us were choosing between spouse and kids, or what other two greatest treasures did people in the group have? He took one of those last two from each of us.

Then, with just one treasure left, we had to give that up, too. And we were left with nothing. Emptyness. Marek told us just to sit with that feeling for a little while, to imagine that we really had nothing left, and to think about how that is what many orphans feel every day.

Marek ended on a note of hope, though, and I want to go there, too. He started handing back papers to us, and he said, "This is why we serve orphans. We want to give them something to live for." Our goal is to give them value in life. And that's the bottom line. That's why we do what we do.

Love and prayers from,
Will and Phyllis Hunsucker
with Jaan, Raia, Asya, and Bogdan