Maureen Nyambura is about to join the LEAP team, a three month short term team for people interested in going into long term mission, to be trained and equipped in farming, disciple making, and being on a cross cultural team. She shares about her experience using Farming God’s Way.
My first experience with Farming God’s Way training in Lesotho in 2019 was providential. I wasn’t very excited about it at all. I was told it was conservation agriculture and I was only motivated because my background is in environmental science. I was not particularly interested in the farming bit, because I grew up where farming was a way of life. I didn’t think I wanted to be involved in farming. But during our training doing Bible studies with farmers in Lesotho, I came to see that God is the best example of a farmer and the ways that he cares for the land. That opened my eyes to want to know, ‘How does he do it?’ As we continued learning we saw how land that is cared for with the natural resources that God has provided really produces well.
I got the opportunity after March 2019 to join a team in Korr, northern Kenya. There is a lot of desert soil there. The pastor we were working with there, Pastor David, wanted to have a kitchen garden, so we made one for him. The soil was sandy, so we had to go to the river to look for better soil which we mixed with goat manure to put down. One of our teammates was an architect so he put a structure up that would shade it and prevent direct sun. We planted kale and spinach and carrots, and we watered it, because this is desert soil. Seven days later Pastor David’s wife came one morning and said, ‘Hey Maureen, what grass is that growing in the garden?’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s carrots!’ She had never seen carrots growing before.
Though I had been doing agriculture all my life, to be able to do it in a way that was caring for the land, and seeing the land giving back, to be able to bring and share that knowledge after I had studied for such a short time, it made me so happy. By the time we left there, there were vegetables in the middle of Korr. Pastor David had spinach and kale and carrots. It was such a beautiful experience.
