Outside the airplane window is just flat, brown, veiny land that stretches in every direction. The scene I saw when I last looked out the window was the colorful, worn-down street houses lined up together like sardines in a can too small to contain them, and wanna-be skyscrapers towering over them in the background. It’s been two weeks since I was last in the United States, and even though it’s my home, I can’t help but feel that my heart is somewhere else entirely different right now.

Yes, I miss my family, my dog and the fuzz therapy that goes along with her, my friends, my job, and my future, but if you’re going to be a part of God’s way of life you have to be willing to give all of that up for a greater purpose that is completely outside of yourself -- at least my previous self. My old self has been broken up into little pieces and has been left with each and every one of the forty-nine children that I now call my own. Of course nothing is official, no paperwork exists, but I have adopted all of them with my mind, body, and soul, and they’ve adopted me as well.

I can’t help but keep looking down at my wrist that has two new items attached to it: a bracelet with the mysterious saying, “Chellito 6” stitched into it, given to me by Eliseo, and a second bracelet with at least twenty-five plastic hearts of all different colors connected together, given to me by Rosita. They remind me that even if I die on this airplane and don’t live to see another sunset or sunrise at Eagle’s Nest Orphanage, or anywhere at all for that matter, my life and its purpose have both been fulfilled. I have made a positive impact on the lives of strangers who will remember me as long as their hearts continue beating and their lungs continue breathing. Eliseo, Rosita, Jose Manuel, Kevin, and I hope a few others are some of those hearts and lungs that I can’t stop thinking about. My life is complete but still has only just begun.

That goal of impacting the life of a complete stranger in a positive way that they’d never forget was a goal I made in my sophomore year of high school. I had read an article about a physically handicapped boy, not yet a teenager, who climbed to heights not a lot of people had been to raise money for charities of his choice. So I created my goal with the mindset that I had to make that impact by giving something seeable, touchable, or hearable to that mystery receiver who’s life I was going to change. It had never occurred to me that sometimes all that person might need is love. But now it has occurred to me at a time that I’ve been blown away by how deeply these children can accept and feel love. Love is not seeable, touchable, or hearable, but I gave it unconditionally and without any hesitation or restraint, and it sure did the trick.

I haven’t been hugged so hard that I felt like my body didn’t exist until the last night at the orphanage. Does that even make sense? I don’t think that can come close to describing what I felt while in those child’s arms while bidding them adios. We all shed a few tears and hugged each other more than once, and after I bucked up and finally walked out their front door without looking back, I felt like I had lost myself. I felt empty, miserable, but inspired at the same time. I had found the love of my life in those children.

I guess that my goal had been turned around on me and forty-nine previously complete strangers had impacted me in a way that I would feel with every heart beat and every breath -- an impact that I will never, ever forget. Now, not only is my goal complete (and God has only just kick-started this work in me) but also my life is complete. And I have so much more coming for those forty-nine children of mine, as well as for the seven billion brothers and sisters of mine that live all throughout the world.