Rio 2015

Reflections from Frankie

My love for Brazil is indescribable.  My love for my team is indescribable.

I left my heart in Brazil.  There is no words that can explain how this place, how these kids, and how these people touched me.  It’s impossible to even get the gist of what this past week has done to me.  All they have is unconditional love.  They gave so much love, so much affection to us.  We just show up to share our love and the love of Jesus and they just smile-hug-giggle!

It’s amazing how they listened to us, how they looked at us.  It’s amazing how God created all of us in His image – His perfect image.  Not one person in Brazil is different than me nor different than anyone in America.  We worship and glorify the same Savior.  Just because they don’t have what we have doesn’t change anything.  They have love.  They love harder than anyone I have ever met.  All they have is one another and love and that is enough for them.  I’m so humbled.  I’m so amazed.  I’m so honored.

I haven’t cried this much in a long time.  I have tears of joy and of happiness all because that is what these children and these amazing people do to me!  My tears of hurt are not hurt because I feel sorry for them.  It’s because I didn’t want to leave.  These children make me feel like unconditional love is normal, that 1,000 hugs a day is the way it should be.  And I want it to be that way.  I’m so in love with this lifestyle of love.  I don’t want to leave here yet, I’m not ready and I never thought I would say that before we left.

God has showed me so many amazing things that week, so many blessings, so many angels.  These children were gifts to my life and I hope I was the same to them and that this team was the same.  I cannot describe what it was like in Brazil.  It’s just as simple as loving!  LOVE IS THE ANSWER!

Brazil is such an amazing place.  It honestly is a mark of God’s great creations.  It really has done things to me and others that have come here.  The things are unexplainable.  It’s like you can’t go home and just tell people because it runs so deep into your heart that you cannot explain the feelings the emotions it does to you.  I feel like my definition of love has changed since I been here.  My definition of lucky has changed.  My definition of being blessed has changed.

As a team, we have grown deeper into our faith.  We have shed tears together.  We have created a bond that you can only create doing special things like what we did.  I cannot begin to explain the thanks I have to everyone who made this happen for us.  We are so blessed and we are so excited to see how this has helped us as a team on and off the court.  I think that everyone got to know someone else on a more deeper level.  I’m truly, truly thankful.

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