Thanks everyone. It's been a whirlwind of unpacking, laundry and restocking the pantries here.

The spirit of generosity continues! Out of many stories of giving, this one amazed me. It was our last week there and we were out of almost everything by then, except the clothes that we had been wearing and would be giving away before leaving Cuba. When we put together all the bags for our family in the village for our last visit, we didn't have enough to give something to everyone who would be there. So I prayed for the "multiplication" of whatever we needed.

Then hubby met a group of older women who were avid bridge players, but there were only 7 of them and they always needed an eighth person, so hubby often filled in. This was their first time in that part of Cuba, so they asked him lots of questions about our experiences. They were quite sparked by his stories, and began to give us bags of stuff to give away to our family in the village. Everything they gave us was exactly what we needed to ensure that everyone in the village received a little something, even if it was a pair of socks or toothbrush. (Because it was so cold there this year, socks were surprisingly popular! When we gave the old grandmother a pair of socks, she immediately put them on and then gave us a huge toothless grin and big sigh of relief. It was too funny!)

Then the next day, we went to a Cuban friend's house to play dominoes. We'd been there many times before and had noticed the poverty of the older woman living next door. So we brought a few little things for her granddaughter who lives with her. You would have thought we brought her a million dollars by her reaction. So when we got back to our hotel, we desperately went through all of our bags to see what was left (not much) and put together a little package for her and took it to her the next day. She was crying as she carefully took out each item, saying "angels of God" over and over.

So later, hubby was telling these women, and well, they all went back to their rooms and came back loaded with bags of more stuff!! And money to give to her. So we went back to her house on the last morning with all of that stuff, plus what amounted to $240 of her Cuban pesos - you cannot even imagine the reaction. She couldn't believe it. She had never held that much money in her hand at one time. It was heartwrenching.

[And this particular story continues...one of the women emailed me and told me that her group is going to be collecting items for us to bring back next year...especially underwear (all sizes) and toothbrushes, two of the things we never seem to bring enough of.]

This is just one story of this amazing spirit of generosity that we saw at the resorts this year; we kept seeing it over and over again throughout our six weeks there.

And I learned that God doesn't just multiply bread and fishes...we definitely gave away more toothbrushes than we brought!!!