Imagine it, the hot African sun beating down on your back, the red soil covering the feet and then migrating up past the knees and onto the arms, and sweat dripping down the brow until it rests in the eyes causing a nasty burning sensation. Imagine the sound of laughter and the always interesting conversation of young women. Then imagine two Swazi men laughing back and forth as the listen in on the said conversation. There is just something about agriculture.
For me month seven on the Race has been a dream. I am a born and raised farm kid with a heart lodged deeply in the soils of West Michigan; so when Xolani, our contact here in Swaziland, mentioned the sustainable agriculture project my heart jumped and my teammates shot knowing smiles in my direction. Finally for the first time since leaving home (except for a brief visit to a Thailand rice field), I got to serve the Lord by working the earth.
This month myself and four other girls were assigned to the sustainable agriculture project. What that means is that we set up gardens at AIM care points that will hopefully provide food for the children who learn there. The care points are basically preschools and many of the children who attend them are at risk; meaning, that they have been affected in some way by AIDS. Some of them are orphans being raised by their older siblings and some of them are infected themselves, but in the end they are all in need of nutritional food. So this month we planted gardens filled with strawberries, cucumbers, spinach, peppers, and beets that will hopefully fill that need.
I’m not going to lie, it was hard work and we very rarely had all of the tools that we needed for the job, but in the end it was good work. It was a joy to be able to serve the Lord in a way that I know I am good at. I am confident in my ability to set up irrigation and I am pretty talented with a hoe, not to mention planting things is probably in the DNA of my family. Swaziland is where the Lord answered my desperate prayer to serve in the soil. And I got a really good tan to boot; just serving the Kingdom in Swaziland.
hi emily thanks for the potatoes!!! I love you sooo much.
