When I signed up for the World Race I never thought I would be put on a farm working 8-4 doing manual labor every day except weekends. After training camp, we had to do some online training and in one of the videos it explained a thing the Race uses called the Log. It has information you need about each country you go to and the ministries you will work with. So naturally, being the curious person I am, I looked up Lightforce to see what they did and if there was anything about our host George. The first thing that came up was: “It’s your basic 9-5 job, you work on a farm.”
Something you should know about me is that I love working with people especially kids and to see that the first ministry I would do on the Race was farm work crushed me. I walked into my kitchen and told my parents and they both laughed and told me to have fun! All I could do in that moment was hope and pray that God had a purpose in putting me, someone who hated gardening and has never done manual work, on a farm in Lezeh Albania.
When we got here we had a couple days to relax and check out the city. After our days off we had our devotional and got straight to work on, can you guess it? GARDENING! My team was chosen to go into the garden and weed, cut grass, trim trees, and do anything else the garden might need. We worked odd jobs the next couple of weeks, having afternoons off after working hard all morning. I was enjoying the hard work and new experiences (some better than others). After two weeks of the whole squad being together all of the teams left on the bus with us waving behind and me thinking “what the heck am I going to do on a farm for the next 2 and ½ months…”
My team and I worked hard cleaning everything from the rooms that the future campers would stay in to sweeping up the sheep poop on the playground. We also started working from 8-4 and by quitting time we would sleep until dinner. I was having such a hard time seeing how picking up poop and painting over and over was considered a ministry, but during my quiet time I asked God why he put me here? How can this be considered a ministry? This was our conversation:
Me: “God why am I here? How does this count as a ministry? I know I’m helping George with his ministry but I can’t see the outcome of all this work.”
God: “Look around you, what do you see?”
Me: “Uhhh…sheep, a garden, and Daisha and the other workers talking.”
God: “There is your answer. I brought you here to serve to be the young hands to these people who work here day and night. The things you do help to serve others through it, Georges ministry needs the profits from this farm to help fund his programs in Uganda and wherever else he needs it to go. The work you do here might seems pointless but it is giving people a chance for a new and better life, what you can do is be that servant to them and show them my love through doing the work to the best of your ability.”
After hearing that I realized that all the work we had done the past couple of weeks took off months of work for the people here. When we started to talk about this during our team time each of us said that we might not see the fruit of our labor over the next three months but we know that us serving will still make an impact. We also talked about the calmness and peace we have here at the farm. Each of my teammates including myself have some healing that God needs to do in our hearts. It would be hard to do a ministry working with people every day when your heart is broken. God gave my team and me a chance to have our hearts mended before we go into the Philippines, and after realizing that we started to see manual labor as a blessing and not a curse.
Now I love waking up in the morning, going upstairs to see Daisha to have my morning coffee with her, and starting work with the mindset that all the painting, cleaning, taking care of the animals, and everything we might do is all to honor the people who work here every day. It makes me overjoyed to see their excitement as they walk through the rooms we just painted (yes, we paint A LOT) knowing that the burden of having to do it themselves is gone. This ministry here has shown me to not stop working until its done and to go into jobs with a servant’s heart. Yes, I am still exhausted and sore from the work we do but I remember what God told me. These three months here is for inner healing and growth; however, it is also to show the people working here the love their father has for them by us helping them. I have no clue what the Philippines and South Africa hold but for right now I’m loving living on the small farm doing manual labor in Albania.
