Journal style confusion

I have a journal full of details from our trip. We have hundreds upon hundreds of photos. We carry these children with us home and we miss them like they are very much a part of our family. But to be honest, I am not sure how to write it all down.

I will write the stories because I have to. But I want to do them justice. I want to paint the full picture. Not just of slavery but about the parts of Ghanaian culture that we love and cherish as well. I don't want to paint the men on the lake as evil. What they are doing to children is awful but they struggle just to eat every day and to feed their families. It's lack of education, little support, and sheer desperation. Poverty in Ghana is overwhelming but compared to the poverty on these tiny little islands... the difference is amazing. It is hard for me to even come up with an analogy. It's like Manhattan and Harlem and that's the best I can do. But really it is just an idea of the disparity and not anywhere near what it is like. Poor and damn poor doesn't really do it either. See? The difference is astounding but not something that we really know in the US. Maybe there is something similar in the Appalachians but I personally have never seen anything like it inside of the United States.

And I don't even think that everyone will or should have the same passions as I have. Which is another hard part about writing it down. I am never saying to follow my passions. I am saying to find your passion and pursue it and be part of the difference in the world.  What passions has God laid on your heart? And are you following the compulsions you have toward your God place passions. I think that is the biggest thing I have learned. I never EVER would have guessed that I would go to Ghana and come home and have a platform to tell people about child slavery in Africa.

It was just a total feeling of compulsion. I read about what JD and Tia had planned and my heart felt so totally invested and in my mind, the second I read about it... I was there. I could not ignore the pull I felt. I had no worry about money (we don't have money for a trip like that), I had no worry about logistics, I had no worries about how it would happen. I just felt that it would, indeed, happen.

And now, now I sit here not having any clue how to share the experience with you. In ways it feels like such a personal and life changing experience that I need to protect. In other ways, I feel like everyone NEEDS to see it and experience it through my words. So please have patience with me as I work on writing. It has been a process that is not normal to me. I am used to writing with a solid idea in my head and quickly. This is not how this particular task has gone... at all.