Day 2 in Moldova:
-Breakfast at 9am
-Worship/Prayer from 9:30-10:30am
-Working on the farm from 10:30am-1:30pm.
Work on the farm pre-lunch:
-Harvesting gourds, storing them in a well filled with dirt.
-Clearing said field of vines and weeds (without work gloves)
-Harvesting tomatoes, cabbage, and peppers.
-Clearing that field as well.
-Feeding the farm animals.
-Clearing another field on a hillside up behind the farm animal houses.
-Clearing said field in a rain/freezing rain/hail storm.
-Trying not to slide down said hillside (turns out even freezing rain makes mud muddier).
-Lunch from 2-3pm
-Back to the farm from 3pm-about 5pm.
Work on the farm post-lunch:
-Sweeping up chicken poop.
Let’s talk about this one for a second. It’s cold and wet, and this farm has about 6 pigs, something like 40 “beavers” (we’ll get to those in a minute), and about 20 chickens. World Race teams who have come before built houses for each of the animals, and now we have the pleasure of farming them.
So there’s wet chicken poop everywhere, and our 18-year-old farm boss named Oleg (he’s awesome) hands me a broom that I think totals about 3 feet long? Anyway, he motions for me to start sweeping up around the chicken coop, and that’s all the direction I get.
A brother from one of the teams we’re paired with this month gets offered the opportunity to sweep out the “beaver” poop on the other side of the fence, at which point he asks,
“So, Kace, would you rather sweep up the chicken poop or the beaver poop?”
To which I respond, “WHY is that a viable question?!”
and then we had a laugh about how ridiculous this month is going to be (it was sort of one of those “I have to laugh or I’m going to cry” moments, but I honestly found it to be hilarious).
I have the rest of the afternoon recorded in my journal:
“My job was to sweep chicken poop off a jagged concrete floor with a wet broom that’s about 3 feet in length, total. Afterward, I had the esteemed pleasure of shoveling said chicken poop into a makeshift wheel barrel…and then we had some time to kill, so I learned to catch and throw chickens. We also were offered the opportunity to hold the “beavers” (which are really muskrats). Good news! The “musk” that muskrats bear is largely influenced by urine! …In short, I opted against snuggling the baby ‘beavers.’”
-Trying to warm up, reading some Bible, and praying that the sharp pain in my stomach wasn’t from the water I bought at the store in town from 5pm-7pm.
-Dinner from 7pm-8pm
-Team time from 8pm-9ishpm
-Head home to get some sleep after team time
our front yard
It sounds like we’ll generally have that schedule (meals at 9, 2, and 7; team time at 8, ministry in between), and it’s going to be cold…but today when I sat down at a table for lunch, I felt warmth start to spread back over my body as soup was placed in front of me, I felt so close to Jesus.
This month is so romantically about the intimacy between me and Jesus, and I know it, and I just want to feel it and dive into it.
I have no comforts excluding music and a bed.
Today it was cold and rainy and such beautiful fall-heading-into-winter type weather that I would have LOVED to curl up on my couch with a glass of red wine and watch college gameday with my dad…but that’s not what my Saturdays look like this fall,
and it’s because I was hungry enough last January to taste and see and smell and feel Yahweh in a new way that I filled out that crazy World Race application
so that my Saturdays this fall would be full of seeing and feeling and tasting my Creator more wholly,
and God is faithful.
So I’m being asked if I’d rather sweep the chicken poop or the beaver poop, and it’s a legitimate question, and sweeping poop is how we’re fighting human trafficking – and it’s all evidence of how in love with me God is.
(again, not a beaver.)
