Faith in the Field

Much to the chagrin of stereotypes everywhere about mid-westerners, I can’t remember ever stepping foot on a crop farm. Farming has always bored me, and I maintained a mindset that farming was outdated, unimportant, and entirely irrelevant to my life. Sure, I’d be more likely to pick up the “Farm Fresh” produce at my convenient neighborhood grocery store, but that was as close as I’d get to actually caring about farming.

But in Africa, farming is livelihood. For a vast majority of the continent, without planting, growing, and harvesting your own food, your family will not eat. Although there are grocery stores in most major cities, the people in Lesotho still rely heavily on their small family farms.

The colonization of Lesotho brought people and missionaries dying to help a group of poor, starving Africans. The answer to their “problem” of lack of food was a simple piece of technology: the plow. An easier, faster, more efficient way to farm which would lead to more food for the people. I have no doubt that the intentions of these people long ago were pure and stemmed from a good heart. Who knows, maybe bringing the plow to Lesotho saved the country for a time being. But now, the ground is literally falling apart from erosion because the land has been plowed for so many years. Every time it rains, good soil is washed away and the scars in the land get deeper. Don’t get me wrong, the effects from the erosion create beautiful trenches to contrast the awesome mountains… but my smarter friends tell me this kind of landscape is very, very bad.

The soil is rock hard, dry, and unusable in many places. Though the country has probably moved forward in farming technology in the past hundred years, the land is moving backwards. There is a desperate need for change.

Growing Nations is seeking to bring that change. I am so excited about partnering with this organization because their vision is big, but their methods are simple. So simple, in fact, that even I can understand them (Yes, mom and dad, you should be proud)! Their approach to farming is Biblical, using a technique called Farming God’s Way. The project is focused on teaching local farmers to step away from the methods they’ve been taught, and start using a more simple, organic, conservation-minded way of farming. The results are incredible.

Here’s where the folks at home might have a heart attack… when I heard and saw the results, I found myself accidentally getting excited about farming. It’s just so cool! Anyway, farmers that adopt the Farming God’s Way method see their fields produce tenfold what they did in previous years. Even during years of drought or too much rain, the fields are still successful.

The idea is simple: look to nature and model farming after creation, which is God’s farm. Instead of using a plow, they teach people to use hoes (something you’ll find in every home) and to disturb the soil as little as possible. In a forest, you will see trees and plants flourishing, even though the soil is untouched by human hands. When we think about who controls the forests growth, it makes sense. Since God is in control of the soil, everything is in perfect balance. We’ve been tricked into thinking that we can somehow make what is already working even better… but it’s completely unnecessary. Other principles that come into play are using a cover for the soil (that can be old maize stocks, fallen leaves, pulled weeds, really any plant material) in order to lock in nutrients and moisture, and wasting as little as possible. Minimal wastage in one instance means not covering an entire field with fertilizer, but rather putting fertilizer in each individual hole. Although it might seem tedious and time consuming, it ensures that fertilizer gets to each plant and eliminates waste. By just using these 3 principles, a farm is changed. After a year or two, the soil is darker and holds more moisture, which results in crops growing even better. It is honestly incredible.

But what has caused the most excitement for me from learning about all this farming stuff is my new view of creation. Yes, I’ve always loved oceans and mountains and stars and all that jazz. They’re beautiful and big and incredible. But getting on my hands and knees and digging through the dirt has made me appreciate the small. The dirt that now covers every piece of clothing I own, the bugs crawling around the plants, the blades of grass just barely peeking out of the soil… they are beautiful and precious and intricately designed by God.

There’s a song by Gungor that I love even more now. It’s called “The Earth is Yours” (Listen to it. Right now!) and the chorus just says “Holy, holy, holy, holy Lord! The Earth is Yours and singing.” I love thinking of the Earth singing and crying out to God. I love that as a seed is planted, God knows exactly when it will crack and the very moment that it will break through the surface of the soil. I love to think that as the trees grow they are singing out to God and worshiping Him.

And of course, I can’t just think about creation crying out without thinking of whales singing (thank you to Louie Giglio for that one), or birds chirping, or the sheepbaa-ing. I can’t help but think of Romans 8:22-23 which says, “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” Creation is crying out, longing to be reunited with God! The world spins as it should because of his word.

Paul describes our nature as having the same desire, to be reunited with God and to be adopted as his sons. I feel myself crying to God more and more the closer I am to His creation. I see the mountains, and I tremble to think that there’s a God bigger than that who cares about me. I look at the stars, and I fail to comprehend how a God who’s fingers could dust such beauty across the sky would choose me to be his daughter. Then I see myself, created in the image of Christ, and all I can think is someday, I will be reunited with him. And that is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in all of Africa.

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I Once Was Lost…

I’ve been hit with an unfortunate rediscovery about myself on this trip: I’m really good at losing things.

Little things, big things… important and unimportant things; I have the uncanny ability to misplace them. On this trip it’s been a pair of sunglasses, a skirt, a sleeping bag, a comb, and most recently and most tragically (maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but hey, it’s still fresh) my camera. My newly purchased, cause of intense paranoia during travel, the one thing I absolutely could NOT let myself lose, camera. The biggest financial investment I’ve ever made completely on my own, and the only tangible form of memory I have from this trip… And I left it on the last stinkin’ van we took to get from Mozambique to South Africa. Oy vey.

In prayer, I told God it was OK that it was lost… so long as I got it back, I acknowledged that He and only He could both use this to further His Kingdom AND miraculously return my camera to me. No, I told myself, I’m not putting a stupid physical possession above God. I just want my camera. I want to show my friends and family the new families I’ve grown to love. I want to show off my favorite little girls from Mozambique. I want a sweet new profile picture for Facebook. Those aren’t bad, right? But, for reasons I still don’t understand… God has different plans.

One of the first things we were told about Africa in training is that the culture is very animistic, meaning it focuses largely on the spiritual. In Mozambique, I discovered this meant that even the few physical possessions they have aren’t really taken care of. If a page from their sole book was ripped, no one cared. Stuff just wasn’t important. You might not be completely surprised to hear that the Western world places a much higher emphasis on the physical. But I would have never said that about myself.

No, I’d tell myself, I’m a Christian. I know all about the spiritual world and warfare and that there’s a battle for my soul, but it’s all good because Jesus already won. I go to church and I pray. I feel the Holy Spirit move me when I worship. I am a spiritual being… But unless there was a physical change from my prayers, I didn’t think they were working. Unless I felt some real feeling of happiness or deep conviction or something during worship, I’d tell myself I was in a funk or just having an off day. Yes, I may have recognized a spiritual element in my life, but I in no way let it be the focus of my walk with God or my life in general.

Before I go any further, I want to say that Africa’s vast focus on the spirit is not without flaw. It has lead to ancestral worship, rituals, and a lack of regard for the physical. As important as the spiritual side of life is, the physical cannot be ignored. Although we’ve been given the Holy Spirit as a helper, we were also given Jesus Christ in the flesh, God with us, who died a very real and physical death. We’ve been given a very physical world to inhabit until the glorious day when we’re reunited with Christ. We’re physical beings in a physical world with a spiritual purpose and a spiritual destiny. And so, we live in an awkward tension and tend to lean to one side or the other.

“You however are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” (Romans 8:9-10)

Our flesh is broken. Our physical self is flawed. And some day, it’s going to fade away. Our houses will fade, our pictures will fade, even our relationships will fade. So this cumulation of stuff that we seem to be in an unending arms race to acquire is not the purpose for our lives. When we seek these things, put our value in them, and trust in them more than we trust in God, we’re missing the mark. I’m not an expert by any means, but I’d argue that this tension we live in stems from our forgetting who we really are, who we really belong to, and what our physical life is really about.

“Your sense of security must not rest in your possessions or in things going your way. I am training you to depend on Me alone, finding fulfillment in My Presence. This entails being satisfied with much or with little, accepting either as My will for the moment” -Jesus Calling, November 7

Yeah, needless to say that was a slap in the face. Who I am and who God is to me is not determined by what I have. I’ve been surrounded by people who are praising God amidst their impoverished environment, and yet somehow I still missed it. If my most fervent and frequent prayers are about some thing that will be important for the next 60 years at most, I’m missing the point. I’ve belittled God in thinking I can’t fully tell my story without my pictures. I keep saying “my story” as if I’ve had any control in anything that’s happened… and as if all that’s happened is for my own glory. I’ve been focusing on all the physical stuff I have or currently don’t have, and all the physical changes I’ve seen.

When we arrived in Africa, we were told that we were entering into a spiritual battle. Yet I clung to my comfortable, physical ways. I found security in myself, my fancy REI gear, my teammates, and if I really had to, I turned to God and asked Him to work on all those things I couldn’t see.

I don’t want you to read all of this and think, “Wow, Emily’s in Africa and she isn’t even walking with God.” Because I want you to know that my time here has made me depend on God in ways I never thought I would. I’ve felt a companionship with God that I never had before. I’ve seen the Bible come alive in ways that still blow my mind. My faith has grown so much and I am so thankful for that. But learning to view your life and your world as spiritual when you’ve been raised in a very physical culture is hard. I’ve spent the past 4 months just trying to understand the difference between the two and I still feel nowhere close to actually getting it. But from the little bits I’ve finally grasped, I think that God is now telling me, “It’s time to be radical, my daughter. It’s time to hear but not understand, so that you can put all your trust and hope in me. My plans are so much bigger and better than anything your one-tracked mind can understand, so let go of your own and seek me. You may not see it, but this is for your prosperity and my glory. You are no longer of the flesh, so stop clinging to it.”

And so, without understanding why, I am going to trust that I don’t have my camera for a reason. Right now, I’m letting go and giving it to God. I will continue praying about it, because I know God is able to work miracles and because I truly want to be able to show all of my family and friends the incredible people that I have met and the amazing places that I have seen throughout this journey. And I’ll also pray because I know I need to release all the bitterness still harbored in my heart. But whatever happens from here, God is good.

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