The fresh spring air, the sent of the forest, and the sound of birds chirping in he trees. This is what I woke up to every morning last month. Oh yeah, and the sound of chainsaws.
Last month I was a lumberjack in Estonia. I spent my days in the forest with an axe in my hand, being manly. Nothing like waking up and heading out to do a good days work in the forest. We would work all day moving trees and chopping off branches to prepare logs to be made into firewood.
After a long day of work we would come home to a house all to ourselves. I actually had my own room. (a big difference from our living arrangements in Africa) Our lunches and dinners were prepared for us and were in portions bigger then I had dreamed of since leaving home. I was in every man’s dream. This is not what I was expecting when I signed up for the race.
All this, and I have not really even talked about the best part. You see in this little camp I got to experience the kind of church Paul talks about in Ephesians 4:16. Let me explain, the village of hope is a Lumberjack camp but more importantly it is a rehabilitation center for men that have struggled with substance abuse.
Some of the guys that come here have come form some of the hardest pasts you could imagine. Pasts that are full of struggle and pain. Pasts with Years of drug abuse and violence. Some with years spent in prison. Yet, if you were able to see the joy on the faces of the men here, you would think they had lived healthy and happy lives. The Joy that they portray is one that can only come from the redemption that God can bring into a life.
Village of hope isn’t just a rehab center. Village of hope best definition is an example of the body of Christ. They don’t just offer freedom from addiction they offer a completely new lifestyle. A lifestyle centered on a relationship with Jesus. The men aren’t only fighting their own addiction but they all come together and fight the addictions of their other brothers in the program. The men speak life into each other, encourage each other, and when need be pick one another up when one has fallen. They are a church that stand next to each other and fights sin as a single body. If a person drops out of the program they don’t look in judgment but they pray for the brother that has left the ranks.
As a team we were able to come beside them and join them in this battle. We worked and lived alongside them. Along with working with them, we lead worship, took part in there testimony time, and were apart of there prayer meetings. At prayer meetings we would lead worship and then have a time to pray. We would all be sitting and praying until one by one the guys would go up to one another and begin praying for each other. They would share what has been going on in their lives and ask each other for prayer request. (or as they say “Prayer Wishes”) They came to each other completely vulnerable and willing to share each struggle so that they could be built up by their brothers through prayer.
Ephesians 4:15-16 says “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” The leaders at village of hope see this and breed that inside this community of men. They are a group of men that know that know they cannot beat their addictions by themselves and they would be the first to tell you that. Each one knows that it is a relationship with Christ and the community that comes from that relationship that is going to bring victory into their lives.
We are all weak. We all have sin. During my month at Village of Hope and previous months on the race I came to a deeper understanding of how we as men cannot overcome sin on our own. We aren’t meant to. Galatians says to “walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Our walk is our relationship with Christ and while Jesus is the head the body of Christ is the church.
Check out this video that my teammate Cori made of our time at Village of Hope last Month!
Estonia from Cori Ward on Vimeo.
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