Romania has so many gardens! I’ll be honest, before the race, I did not really like being outside, especially when it had to do with working to make something grow. I never had the heart to weed or work the ground or plant things… This week however, we have been doing a huge amount of community service, and it looks pretty different from the rest of the world’s “community service” projects.
Our men (the two of them on my team) have been doing really hard work like building and digging and hauling. Everywhere we have been, it pains the locals to put us girls to work. Many times we have to pretty much beg for them to put us to work.
Finally, we realized what it is that Romanians don’t mind letting girls do, and that of course is gardening. I have been harvesting onions, carrots, garlic, appricots, cucumbers, and apples. I have been weeding and clearing out land and hacking away at plenty of vegetation, and to be honest I have loved working outside. Besides getting a tan, I feel like the Lord uses these small things to speak to me.
I have learned that most of the gardening has been the harvest and that has been so much fun and not actually that difficult. I was not here for the hard part, the planting, the bad weather, the hoping, the breaking of hard ground.
Going home is a big deal, but I realize that I have been doind the hard part all year. I have been letting the Lord prune and change and rain and plant and ruin my little plot of land. I know that the harvest, whenever it will come, is going to be just as satisfying as the physical harvest I have done this week.
So having said all of that, I love this gardening stuff!
