This month we are in Albania serving with an organization called LightForce (LF). This group does amazing things with children, orphans, human trafficking, planting churches, and spreading the Gospel. However, this month looks a little different than that. In the back of the campus we are staying on, LF has a farm. It is full of pigs, piglets, goats, kids, chickens, roosters, sheep, a dog, and a few cats here and there. For the past week, my team and I have been serving on the farm. Every morning we start with the pigs, and boy let me tell you. Holy crap…literally. It’s holy because we’re doing it for the Lord, and it’s also just a ton of crap. We shovel it out of the 7+ pig sties into a wheelbarrow and take it to the massive pile on the other side of the farm. We found out later that they sell the manure to local farmers who use it as fertilizer! Working with the pigs has really given me a whole new look on the story of the prodigal son. In Luke 15, Jesus tells the parable of the lost son. After the son had spent everything his father had given him, there was a great famine, and the son became so desperate for food that was hired by a farmer and he LONGED to eat the food he was feeding the pigs. Watching these pigs and what they eat, I’d like to think I’d never be so desperate that I would actually WANT to eat their food. But just like in the story, there’s no need to stoop so low because we have a Father that welcomes us home with open arms, no matter how badly we might have messed up.
Along with the pigs, we spent four days digging up about a foot and a half layer of, you guessed it, poop! I don’t think I’ve ever smelled so much methane in my life. It was enough to make me cry and our Squad Leader spew…yup. We dug up five stalls, and I mean big stalls, worth of it over the course of four days. Aside from us serving on the farm, there’s only one farm worker and one maintenance worker. It’s crazy to imagine how long it might have taken two men to do the job, if it took seven of us four days. On the last day of this week, we spent all day disinfecting the walls on the farm…and there’s a lot of walls. These tasks seem so simple, until it’s 1:00 in the afternoon and you’re ready for bed. In all honesty though, this is some of the most fun I’ve had on the Race. We’re doing some of the dirtiest work, but the whole team has such a positive attitude. We dance around and sing using out shovels and pitchforks as microphones. Sometimes the Lord’s work can look like moving a bunch of crap, but that doesn’t bring us down. I really do enjoy what we’re doing, and it’s only been a week. Stay tuned in and subscribe to my blogs to see what’s up next on the farm!
Standing knee deep in poo, Sum
