An Unintended Break

We are deviating from "regular programming" to bring you a special message:

Yeah, my life was a little upside down last week - I was absent the last week for good reason. It was Operation Christmas Child time and as a Year-Round Volunteer I was very busy being all things OCC...kind of like OCD, but different...but the same...

A little history -

Our church became involved with Operation Christmas Child almost at the very beginning of the project. Operation Christmas Child is a Samaritan's Purse Project and exists to spread the Gospel through a simple shoebox gift. This year was the 25th anniversary of the project and in that time over 150 million shoeboxes have been delivered to boys and girls in 160 countries world wide. In each box the child will find school supplies, hygiene items as well as toys and sometimes clothing items.

We have learned that children in other countries are not allowed to attend school unless they have school supplies...so those pens, pencils and sheets of paper are a precious gift to a child who wants to learn.

Vancouver Church brought in 798 shoeboxes! 

What was my function? My official capacity with Operation Christmas Child is Community Relations. So - when I can I should try to make contact with community groups, businesses, clubs etc to help the program grow. More boxes = more kids reached with the gospel. I do have a full-time job, so it is hard for me to get out and make those contacts. However, now that I have been a volunteer for a year, I think I am starting to get how I can reach more groups/people to join the project!

National Collection Week started on November 12th and continued each evening through November 17th. There were two long day which were November 18th (all afternoon)  and all day on November 19th.

So, with all of the busyness of the week and needing rest - because sleep was elusive - I did very few projects on the farm. The big thing that I did was to get the pigs new paddock set up and get them from the other side of the driveway and across the lawn to where the chickens once spent a lot of quality time - like all summer. Fiona girl was good and followed me all the way into the pen. Mr. Rexy-Pants was distracted by all of the lucious grass available in between the old garage and our previous parking structure. I figuired out a long time ago that you cannot get a pig to do what you want. So after I tried to get Rexy's attention - I decided instead of getting aggravated I should just go over and incentify him by slapping his rear end a couple of times. That seemed to work and he made his way into the paddock with Fiona. Stinker. They are so happy with the grass! That makes me happy too.

This area is just the first move of many that will come in the months to come. There is a lot of grass on this side of the property that was previously occupied by the chickens. It's been about a month since the chickens have been moved and the grass actually looked pretty good in the spots furthest away from the old parking stucture. Once the pigs eat down the grass here we'll set up the second fence and get them moved on to another part of the field.

The garden is still a hot mess, but then I knew that it would be. I'm running out of time here and I'm pretty sure that the flowers will remain for a while since the rain will be returning soonly. I may have to get out and just dig up everything else even if it's mucky out there.

So I'll be working today and tomorrow and then I'm off for 4 days!! I do love me some time off from work!

While I rest up from all the activity over the past week...I will reflect on the goodness of the work that has been completed and give thanks because of it.

Farm Life...is the BEST LIFE :)