This is Africa! Month seven of my race! Here is an update on my life.
The first update is that I am well. No sickness here!
Life in Africa is magnificent, the scenery is breath taking and every day is a new adventure. Each morning we wake up not knowing what we’re doing for the day, but just to be ready for whatever God is going to bless us with. Whether that’s house visiting, gardening, sitting in meetings, playing net ball, or just dancing with kids.
What I want to talk about is gardening.. oh gardens, I never thought I would say I missed it. But I also never thought I would miss the flat lands of Nebraska.
One morning we were told that we were going to go to a meeting, and ended up looking at a patch of weeds. Our job today was gardening. I grabbed a hoe, and started tilling the ground. I was able to keep up with the lady who was with us, she kept asking me if I needed a break. I would turn and ask her if she needed one and she laughed at me and said no. Once we finished tilling the ground she looked at me and said, “This isn’t your first time gardening is it?” I happily said, “No.” I spent the rest of the time with Stephanie repairing a fence that way the evil garden destroying chickens don’t enter the newly planted garden.
I loved gardening this week, it has to be the highlight of my week so far. I enjoyed working with my hands and working in the dirt.
-Backstory!-
Growing up my mother had a vegetable garden, which I loathed. (Because I hated weeding and picking the beans. I’m positive that beans grow within minutes of me picking them which is why my mom was always able to find more beans that I missed.) I never thought of a garden as a blessing, it was just a chore that I detested doing. I disliked the sun, it was always too hot when I needed to go outside to this monster of a garden. I loathed the rain because it brought the annoying weeds back after I had just picked them. This feeling of gardens never changed. Until one year my mom and dad decided that they wanted chickens. They destroyed the vegetable garden. I loved it, no more garden, no more watering or weeding for me. I never thought I would be gardening again and enjoy it.
God is my gardener. I need my Gardener.
He’s tilling up my dirt to have good soil. He’s planting seeds that will produce fruits. He’s plucking out the weeds, so my fruits are bountiful. He’s raining His love on me so I have life, and He’s shining His light on me so I keep growing.
In all His works in my garden, He gives me the choice to share the fruits that He has produced, or keep them all to myself. However, my Gardener never wanted me to hoard my fruit to myself. He met for me to give my fruit to other people, in order for the Holy Spirit to also be their gardener.
That way I can give people the fruit He produced in my spirit. His design for me was never to hoard my fruits to myself, but to give them out to people that way they may also be garden by the Holy Spirit.
