Here's what's happenin' on the farm

Hello from Harvest Farm!  We are all a little sore, sun-kissed, and quite in-love with this place.  We have had a really good week.  We have worked side by side with many of the residents here at the farm and have been blessed to hear their stories of  starting a new life in Christ.  

Tuesday, we spent the day working in the dairy, staining stairs, building bridges, and wrangling  beef cattle!  Wednesday, we worked hard in the morning and then headed to the mountains.  We toured Estes Park and did a little shopping, then took a harrowing ride up the Trail Ridge Road and enjoyed some of God’s most amazing vistas!  

Thursday was spent repairing a tractor, bailing 45 tons of hay (seriously!) and wrangling some obstinate teenage cows.  There was also baby calf feeding, and wood chip laying.  We are working hard and enjoying our evening showers!

Tomorrow, we will be playing a wild kickball game with the residents here at the farm and then we will load the vans and begin our journey home!  We will be full of stories, so be ready to listen!

You don't wanna know what they're watching! (They're watching a cow being artificially inseminated.)

Our group at Rocky Mountain National Park.

Hay!

No, you can't take the goat home!

Come on cow!

Ben feeding a newborn calf milk.

Day one in the books

Talk about an awesome day!

We can't stop talking about all the cool experiences we've already had, and it's only the first day! We have already met so many interesting people, including another volunteer group that was here for a day from Iraq.

We split up into groups, with most of us weeding the Harvest Farm organic garden, which was in real need of some TLC. Others helped prepare lunch and dinner in the kitchen, and a group of five went to the barn to clean out the cow stalls (a smelly job, to be sure!).

We also celebrated Shawna's 18th birthday, in the rain, with Dilly Bars from the Ft. Collins Dairy Queen!

The group from Iraq will not be here tomorrow, so there will be more for us to do. Here are some pictures from today's work:

Debbie with Fuzzy Wuzzy #2.

The fence that Matt (and Dan) built.

Volunteer coordinator Skip.

The kitchen crew of Lisa, Allie and Birthday Girl Shawna on a break.

Alexis had a little trouble with a stubborn cow.

The weeding crew cleared a TON of weeds.

Getting ready to get ready

We're less than a week away from our next mission trip, this time to Ft. Collins, Colo. to work at Harvest Farm, a faith-based drug and alcohol treatment program that is part of the Denver Rescue Mission. We're getting ready, to get ready to go.

I've redecorated the blog to make it look more mountain-y. Erica's preparing journals, renting vans and frantically running around getting final details ready. Ryan and Jenn are preparing the necessary supplies for the 15-hour drive to Colorado (seat sheets and barf buckets, among other supplies!).

Our last mission trip prep meeting is tomorrow, and I'm eager. Eager to get in the van (believe it or not!) and get to Colorado. Our youth group volunteered there 8 years ago and we've been trying to go back to Harvest Farm ever since. The timing just hasn't worked out. It was a very intense experience for all of us last time and I have no doubt it will be just as remarkable this time. Working side by side with guys in the program, hearing stories of how low life has taken them, and how God can bring them back up from those lows, is a memorable experience that has stuck with me.

The one constant in mission trips is change, both physically and spiritually. The physical changes are evident in the picture of our Montana group above. The spiritual changes are just as dramatic, but not always as outwardly evident. I can't wait to see how our group changes as we volunteer at Harvest Farm.