So I’m sitting in a café in Lezhe (lay-sha), Albania twenty minutes from my ministry site. This month I’m working at a self sustaining youth camp here. The camp is self sustaining part because it receives zero funding or support from its United Kingdom parent ministry, LifeForce. The property accomplishes this goal by maintaining livestock and cultivating a flourishing garden.
For the second month of this eleven month mission trip I’m on, the entire squad, all forty-five of us, are serving and lodging in LifeForce’s compound here in Albania. We’ve been split up into four teams with each team being given a responsibility. The teams are: gardeners, goats, demolition, and pig crew. Initially I wanted to join demolition because knocking down buildings is so much fun! But then I thought, when else am I going to be able to work with pigs? So I signed up with the pig crew.
Here I’ll walk you through what my day to day tasks are. First is breakfast at 7:30am and breakfast consists of: a bit of jam, a dollop of butter, a chunk of goat cheese, a slice of wheat bread, a hard boiled egg, and most importantly coffee (if you so choose). Then George (he’s in charge of the compound) will go through a chapter of proverbs with us. Which is pretty convenient since I started reading a chapter of Proverbs and five Psalms each day. After the lesson, its off to work. First step is to shovel out the pig poop from the upper stalls. We accomplish this by the penning up the pigs in the nesting area with a wooden board someone holds while another scoops out the poo onto a wheelbarrow, using shovels. Then a third person comes in with a hose to spray out all the poo residue into a drain. Then its down to the lower level to scoop out the piglets pens. As cute as piglets are, I guarantee from experience their little piglet poo is not cute. Once both those are completed, then we clean the males pens. Here is the thing about the male pens: DO NOT ENTER OR GET TOO CLOSE! The males will attack somebody if that person gets too close or the males feel cornered. This is my least favorite task because I always wind up with the shovel somehow to scoop the poop. By the time we’ve finished cleaning all the pig pens its time for lunch. Lunch is always bean or pork soup with a slice of bread. After lunch is a thirty minute break. Then its back to work. Two people from the pig crew will help Ramazon (the pig handler) with feeding the pigs. Its frightening the noises pigs make when food is on the way. Meanwhile, the rest of the pig crew will be helping the other teams or given an entirely new task. Commonly, we’re stacking hay or working with the demolition team tearing down walls. Which is such fun!! Work always stops at 5:00pm. Its free time except dinner at 7:00pm which is one of three things: rice and bread, noodles and bread, or French fries featuring bread.
So yeah that is currently what I’m doing overseas. May not seem like much but all parts of the body work to serve the Kingdom.
