Please read the previous entry “A Day In The Life: Malawi” for a hilarious comparison.
We arrived in Estonia on February 27th. We are living and working at Village of Hope in Laitse. It’s a rehabilitation and discipling program for men. These men come from hard lives filled with drugs, alcohol, prison and honestly I don’t even know what else yet. They live here on the compound for 10-12 months. This is what life is like here so far:
6:30ish: Wake up next to Danielle and get out of our memory foam queen sized mattress in our heated room. Go to the bathroom attached to our room with a beautiful clean toilet with a toilet seat (those don’t exist in Africa.) Maybe use my hair straightener if I feel like it. (yeah, I brought it. Don’t judge me.) Walk to the kitchen still in my pajamas and start some coffee in the coffee maker. Get some yogurt out of the refrigerator and granola out of the cabinet. Eat out of real plates and mugs. While I’m eating breakfast, I have a little quiet time like read my Bible, pray or journal. Sometimes I’ll listen to a Crosspoint Church podcast if I have time! Try to ignore the 6 other people (as opposed to 40) starting to get ready and eat breakfast around me so I can focus…doesn’t usually go very well.
7:45: Start bundling up. Rain boots 6 sizes too big, boot liners, 3 pairs of socks to make the boots fit, leggings, thick work pants 3 sizes too big, under armor shirt, tshirt, hoodie, thick work coat, scarf, One Student Ministries beanie (thanks Clair and Amanda!), two pairs of work gloves. Most of our clothes are borrowed from Village of Hope. They have a lot of donated clothing. All of it is men’s!
8am sharp: Someone shows up at our door with a four-wheeler pulling a trailer. We head to our shed next door and grab our tools and hardhats and get in the trailer. We drive down the road a bit to our little patch of forest we’re tearing down.
That’s right. We are lumberjacks this month!
We got a pretty good system down by day 2. The Estonians with chainsaws chop down a tree, then chop it into 5 meter lengths and cut off all the branches. The 5 meter logs get stacked for firewood. The branches won’t be used and we burn them on the site. My pyromania is coming out. Burning fir tree branches turns me into a little kid!
12: Lunch. First we start off with a passage of scripture read in Estonian, Russian and English. Everything is translated between 3 languages here. Every single meal has chopped up hot dog bits in it. Fortunately they’re big and I’m eating around them (I’m a vegetarian if you didn’t know.) I never thought I’d miss African food, but I do! We hardly ever had meat in Africa and it was always very filling. Lunch here is usually soup.
After lunch: We go home and take off our boots and flop on the couch for as long as we can…like 10 minutes.
12:50: Start bundling up again
1: Head out for more lumberjacking
5: End with prayer and head to dinner
5:30: Dinner is also some kind of hot dog meal. But…pastries. There’s always dessert and I always eat at least 2 of them.
After dinner: Come home and flop somewhere for a while. Dream of maybe doing something productive, but don’t. Take a shower. Have team time. Go to sleep.
This is what our lives are going to be here for the entire month. We’re hoping we get to do more with the men. So far we only see them at meals. Although we did get to go to a rec center with all of them and play sports. Me and Alyssa played badminton using a pink birdie with 2 Estonian men with gang tattoos. That’s a story to tell the grandkids! We also had a floor hockey tournament with all of them.
Overall it’s going to be a physically exhausting month, but they probably all will be. It’s going to be awesome hearing the testimonies of the men here. I don’t even know them and I can see Jesus working in them already. It’s incredible how God can completely transform hearts and lives. We’ve already heard stories of reconciliation between families. These men are expressing emotions they’d never expressed before. It’s so cool to see and fills me with hope. Jesus is pretty great!
