Tuesday, September 15th
Viile Techi, Romania
Many times in ministry there are days that you wonder what you signed up for. Today, was one of those days. Our mission contact asked us if we wanted to pick apples and I was kind of excited to do it. There were about 40 of us that signed up and in my mind we would fly through the neatly rowed trees in the orchard, complete with someone there to hand us lemonade. Save the lemonade, I thought it would be an easy task.
The apple trees were in no orchard. They were in a field that was about 1 mile from our village, up a mountain. I am not trying to be dramatic like the whole “I had to walk to school up a hill, through snow, etc.” It was a hike and when we got the place of our desired ministry, it was rather underwhelming. The trees were hard to pick out through the massive weeds that surrounded them. So getting to the tree to actually pick up the apples, was a bit challenging. More of a challenge, was understanding what we were to do and organizing 40 people to do it. We watched a lady with a large stick and a long apron tell us in Romanian what to do. The only word we understood was shake (and we got that by the way she shook her body when she said it) and rapide (faster!).
The method to picking the apples was a bit unclear as well. We were handed buckets and sent on our way. Some of the boys climbed up the tree to shake it to get the apples in the actual picking field. There were basically four kinds of apples. 1. beautiful, basically calling out to you 2. mildly bruised or with worm holes, 3. majority bruised and/ or eaten through by worms, and 4. rotten.
I began the process of picking them by allowing only category #1 to make the cut. That is, until I followed the Romanian woman to see what she was putting in her long apron. And everything except category #4 made the cut. I couldn’t bring myself to include 2 and 3 and I wasn’t the only one. Perhaps, that is why we were a bit slow. And by a bit slow, I mean she was expecting 25 horse carts full and we came up with 6. However, with each bucket full that I poured into the horse carriage, I felt like I was accomplishing a lot. We were there for 4 hours (more than the average school day here!) and with each hour that passed, the apples fell like rain for us to pick.
And as they fell, I pondered Genesis 1:11 – “Then God said, Let the earth sprout vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them; and it was so.” It became quite a lovely picture of God’s creation. The apples that I held in my hand were spoke into being by my amazing Father. These apples were taking part in His amazing plan for His children. These apples were about to provide nutrients and nourishment for His people. These apples were the result of ruling and subduing, as fruit always is. God gave us a mandate to rule, subdue, and produce and it was quite a lovely process to be a part of.
Lovely but tiring and hard and even frustrating. Each hour seemed to drag on with each apple we placed in the bucket. I got stung by weeds, stepped in ants, and got hit more times than I can recall by falling apples. Fruit bearing is hard work. Jesus said in Mathew 9: 37 that “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” I can almost understand why. It isn’t glamorous and it is hard work. And at times, you don’t measure up. That happened to us. We left that day with an invitation to NOT come back the next day. We were fired from harvesting. I’m not sure how I feel about it.
And as if it couldn’t get any worse, we went to pick up trash. Normally this would be a lovely experience for me. I love helping the environment and teaching others how to care for it. Developing countries don’t really have a trash system. Well, I guess they do, it is called throw it down wherever you are and allow the elements of nature to take care of it – wind, water, and fire. We had gotten about 3 bags collected within about the length of a football field. Once again, feeling productive … only to be shot down. This time, at the hands of kids. These were some of the kids that made me want to walk away from children’s ministry all together. And they showed us the same kind of hospitality again today. They kicked the bags out of our hands only to send the trash – the juicy, gross trash – on us and all over the ground. At that moment, I wasn’t sure what to do. I knew I couldn’t correct their behavior because I couldn’t tell them that they made a poor choice and make them help me clean it up. Instead, we had to pick it up and say the only word we knew how to correct things – Nu (no). Perhaps, the example worked because by the end 2 of the kids helped us pick up some trash. I wanted to do cartwheels as I watched their hand pick up the trash and throw it away. I don’t know fruit of this ministry, perhaps there wasn’t one. But every tree has to start with a seed.
