Farm-ing

The Farm

Always one of my favorite places, I was really excited to go to the Farm again. For those of you who don’t know, the Farm is a part of the organization called Made in the Streets. MITS is a ministry dedicated to helping street children get off the streets and giving them the opportunity to go to school and get jobs while teaching them about the love of Jesus. Many of the teens ran away from abusive homes to live in Eastleigh with other street people where they learn to survive on stealing and drugs. The Farm is something like a refinery before the finished product: MITS educates them to turn away from their street survival mindset and embrace an honest hard-working Christian life. The street children who are allowed to go to the Farm must be committed to getting better, promise not to run away back to the streets, and they must be drug free, which is actually surprisingly difficult. Having visited both the bases last year (where street kids group together for support) and the Farm, I have trouble understanding why anyone would choose a street life. The Farm is beautiful, like a Garden of Eden. The teens have houses, beds to sleep on, food to eat, and a community of caring guardians and peers. The streets of Eastleigh are as opposite as can be: dirty, trash everywhere, flies in every corner, no roof or beds, and a dog-eat-dog relationship with neighboring bases. However, some of these kids have not known any other life than the one on the streets, and their addiction to drugs or the temptations of stealing for personal gain are often much too powerful to overcome easily with just a few short years at the Farm.

It was definitely strange going to the Farm before going to Eastleigh. I think that I have learned to equate Eastleigh with hopelessness, and then the Farm with the miraculous change that only Jesus can bring about. Still, I definitely appreciate the Farm because I believe that we make the most lasing connections and relationships there simply because it’s easier to relate to teenagers than it is to little children who don’t speak much English. At the same time, it is extremely difficult to relate; my biggest stressors were whether I got an A on my last biology midterm, but their problems are whether they will survive to see the next day.

Still, we find a way. It was fun to get a chance to use some of my Swahili, although I was too embarrassed and un-confident to hold much of a conversation. It was actually pretty funny because I would ask a question in Swahili and they would answer back in English, and it reminded me of the conversations my parents and I have, me on the English side of course. It was so great to have the chance to spend the night with the girls. We didn’t actually get to sleep in the same rooms as them since we stayed with the girls from Harding University, but staying the night meant that we could spend all evening with them since we usually had to leave around 4 or 5 pm to go back to the Heart Lodge before it got dark.

The night before we carefully planned everything we wanted to do with the Farm kids, though we probably only got through half. We broke up into smaller groups and played name games, Ultimate Ninja, and acrobatics (these boys can do the most amazing flips off a rubber tire), and then asked deep questions in our groups (although by then, some of the older kids had wandered off, probably because they felt too cool for us). We asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up, what their happiest day was, and what their saddest day was. The answers were amazing. The kids had big dreams: many wanted to be doctors and nurses, and one boy even wanted to be a pilot. Nearly all of their happiest moments were the time they accepted Christ as their savior. Their saddest moments left me wondering how I could possibly be sad with my privileged existence in America.

After that we intended to play group games, but we were told that lunch would be soon so we decided to put it off. We didn’t have lunch for another hour. Haha. But it gave us a chance to hang out with the kids and talk to some one-on-one, and we even got to sing some praise songs with some of the girls. It was at this point that most of us lost our cameras to kids who wanted to take pictures of their friends, and I know that most of us didn’t get them back until it was time for bed or until our batteries died out. I personally found 400+ new pictures on my own camera, all taken by one boy!

After lunch we “planted grass” for our work project. I’m not really sure how that’s going to turn out. The grass we planted seemed to be dead, and I’m not even sure the way we planted them was efficient or correct, but hopefully it grows through God’s blessing. We planted it at the Children’s House, where the children of street girls who come to the Farm are raised. They are adorable!

We played a stars and spots game, putting red stars on some while putting black dots on others. The kids who had red stars got to eat dinner first and have seconds first, while the black dots had to be last. The black dots were upset and feeling mistreated, but their reaction tied in perfectly with Erika’s object lesson. She read the story “I Am Special,” to the kids and explained that we mustn’t care only about how others label or judge us, but realize that the only opinion that matters is our Creator’s opinion, and He says in Psalm 139 that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

After that we tried to do a bonfire, but I don’t think the kids have ever roasted marshmallows, and we saw a few of them just watching the marshmallow burning on the stick. At some point in the day we were supposed to worship with them and sing songs and I was supposed to share my testimony-ish, but somehow it was 9:30 pm already and time for bed.

Our experience at the Farm definitely is an example of one of our topics for our devotionals: open and willing hearts to improvise. In Luke 5:17-26, Jesus speaks to Pharisees and teachers while a number of men attempt to bring their paralytic friend for healing. When these men see that the room is too crowded, they lower him through the roof. Talk about determination and faith! We had so many things planned, but it all came down to just letting go of our plans and letting God lead each of us. We had so much time to just hang out that each of us got to know a different person very well and just spend time talking to each other about how similar or different our lives were. I spent a lot of time with Amina, a 15-year old girl who came out of the streets of Eastleigh seven months ago. And others in our group grew close to other kids from the Farm and all-in-all I’m glad that our jammed-packed schedule didn’t make it because we got to spend valuable time getting to know the kids and sharing our passion for Jesus.