By Tim Gorbey

How to describe our trip to Granada? As friends, family members, supporters and acquaintances inquire about our time, I struggle to find the words. Every attempt to explain feels incomplete. Do I talk about our service: building relationships through teaching? Do I speak of teammates who blossomed in the ways that God loved them and grew them? Do I simply start with the food?

I was born into a family of lawyers. I started filing documents for my Dad at the age of six. One side of a file folder was for correspondence. The other side was for notices, reports, or notes done by the attorney. It was all to be arranged chronologically if possible. In this way, every file told an ordered and organized story. I usually try to tell stories the same way. Yet this method doesn’t work as I seek to tell our team’s story of Spain.

So what can I tell you? On our last night in Spain, the Serge team held a celebration for our volunteers. They fed us wonderful Moroccan food. They gave us letters and gifts. They led us in songs of praise for our King, the God Who had done such wonderful things in our lives. And they gave us time to share our stories. We, in turn, cried. Some during worship, some while we shared, but one by one, many of us broke down. Out of all of the things I could say about our trip, what spoke to me most is that we did not want to come home.

On Wednesday, June 25th, 2014, a team from New Life Dresher flew across the Atlantic Ocean to love on children whom they’ve never met. We taught them. We laughed with them. We played with them, and at the end of the week we cried with them. God, through this messy and hard-hearted team, showed His love to dozens and dozens of Spanish children in a way many of them had never experienced. We pray for them now with the hope that the relationships we’ve built will bear fruit going on into eternity. We remember them with smiles and tears. And we thank you, our church family, for the prayers that you have offered and the money that you had given so that we could have this privilege. I promise you this – God used it powerfully.