I let out a gasp as the muscles in my arms protest throwing a pitchfork full of compost over the fence. I managed it anyway, watching the hay and poo land heavy on the field just opposite.
A bleat sounds from behind me and I turn around. The flock is all gathered staring at me with their yellow eyes. Their leader, a ram I’ve named Papa Eugene, is standing right beside me. He bleats again.
“I’m okay,” I tell him, catching my breath. He nibbles at my fingers, so I start scratching him behind the ears. The lambs creep closer as I give the flock the two whistle ‘all is well’ call.
I pet the sheep closest to me and stare out at the postcard perfect scenery. The farm sits atop a hill, rolling greenery flowing down from the farmland and penned in livestock. The perfect green is briefly punctuated by birch trees and pines, dotted with black and white milk cows grazing, and ending finally in the industrial smoke stacks of the distant town of Ivankiv.
This is Kolentsi, Ukraine, a village that comes directly from the pages of a fairy tale. The village itself has one road running through it and boasts a population of around two hundred. Most people here, like my ministry—a farm sustainability project/foster program/refugee housing program/summer camp— farm for a living. And most of the town is elderly, the young people having moved away from the rural life into the big cities.
The homes themselves are painted in cheery blues, greens, and reds. Each has an equally colorful gated fence out front. The village’s one road is lined with blossoming pear trees, giving the whole village an enchanted look.
“She’s the sheep whisperer!” Bliz shouts at me from across the field where she’s spreading the manure I’ve been pitching over the fence. I roll my eyes, a bit embarrassed, but also snap my thoughts away from the picturesque village to the hard work we still have to complete.
I send the sheep away, start pitching, and talk to Jesus.
Since coming here, my eyes have been tenderly opened to the beauty and goodness surrounding me everywhere I go. The moment I stepped off the plane in Hungary, He’s been pursuing me and I’m trying to respond in kind.
In this noticing, I’m learning how to pray constantly, how to make my internal monologue into an eternal dialogue. I’ve learned the best place to learn these new conversations is in the long hours I have working the farm.
I work and I pray and I think, the hours bleeding into days, a steady routine established.
A few days later, the field finally tilled, I’m dragging a hoe in the earth we lovingly fertilized. The work is hard and I’m thinking again about the great-grands who did this. And I start to hear shouting.
I lift my eyes up and I see an old woman two fields down from us waving her arms at me, shouting something in Ukrainian. I cup my hands around my mouth and shout across the fields, “I don’t speak that! Sorry, English only!”
“Huh?!” She shouts back, followed by another long train of Ukrainian.
“I don’t speak that!” I repeat, shrugging my shoulders dramatically, hoping my body language conveys my inability to understand.
“Huh?!” She shouts again. Finally she flaps her hands and starts trudging through the neighbor’s field to me. I peel my gloves off and dust off my hands, getting ready to greet her.
She steps into our field, accepting my outstretched hand, and starts speaking. Her long white hair is tied back in a blue head scarf almost the same color as her summer-sky eyes. As she speaks she points to different homes and fields, and to me and my teammates who are still working behind me.
I nod and try to follow, but this babushka doesn’t seem bothered that I don’t understand a word she’s saying. Every now and then she asks me a question to which I respond with a smile, a shrug, and a “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
Every time I speak English, she giggles like a little girl, grabs my hands, and kisses them.
After we “talked” for ten minutes, I told her, “I’m a missionary from America. You know, Jesus?” I make the crossing motion across my body like they do in the Eastern Orthodox Churches here. Her eyes light up and she repeats the motion, pointing to the sky after every cross.
She laughs the biggest laugh yet, grabs my hands and holds them to her chest. Three of her front teeth are golden, and they shine bright as she looks at me. “America.” She says, a giggle bubbling out.
Another round of Ukrainian comes out of her mouth and she leans in to kiss both my cheeks. “America,” she says again, letting go of my hands with a smile, shuffling off back towards her own field.
It was a strange encounter, one I don’t really understand quite yet. In it, I felt loved, and confused, and longing for my grandmothers who passed away when I was still very young.
My mind starts to spin in response to my heart’s questioning lurch, and I wonder with trepidation what it will be like when I am old.
Regardless, for now, I dig my plow into the earth, deciding then and there that my new mission in this village is to visit all the babushkas, and I get back to the slow and beautiful miracle of calling seed, dirt, and water into life.
