Day 1 at the farm is in the books. What a day! Our team has been communicating and planning across thousands of miles for a couple of months, and frankly; we really didn't know what we were walking into this morning. But at the end of the day, we had:
- Poured the foundation for our poultry building.
- Dug the foundation for the caretakers house.
- Identified the caretaker family from the Repentence vulnerable population.
- Concreted 3.5 acres of perimeter fence posts into the ground.
- Ordered 100 "ready to lay" hens.
- Identified the location of the goat enclosure.
- Had a tremendous time of fellowship with:
- Nearly 30 laborers from a couple of our member churches.
- A couple of our S2S pastors.
- We 4 Americans.
- And what has become our Zambian 7 for these 2 weeks.
And the cover photo captures the moment of prayer at the end of the day, gathered in the setting sun...weary and satisfied with a fantastic day of Shoulder 2 Shoulder labor. A prayer of thanksgiving for all the Creator had allowed us to do over those many hours.
To be clear, I didn't do any manual labor. I'm just not worth the waste of space compared to the workers we had on site today. If you have never seen 15-20 guys digging a house foundation with only hoes and shovels, then hopefully you will catch a video floating around on our S2S social media. It took less than an hour, and these guys were laughing and jawing the entire time.
Thanks to Jose and William for their exemplary leadership. Thanks to Thomas for his consistent effort. Thanks to Dr. Youngs for his studied voice of direction. Thanks to Pastor Jonathon for his thoughful flexibility as we tear up what was once a maize field adjacent to his church building, believing that our first ever S2S Animal Demonstration Farm will rise from the packed, hard soil.
Sunday will find us a few miles away celebrating with the largest church in our S2S network. If God is faithful, I will be honored to lead communion with nearly 1,500 of His faithful followers.
Here we go...
