"ECHO exists for one major reason, to help those working internationally with the poor be more effective, especially in the area of agriculture."
For one week the Lord gave me a free pass to learn and enjoy
ECHO farm, a living classroom where the goal is to honor God by fighting hunger through agriculture. A fellow student described our class as
"the Gospel interwoven in the techniques and practices of agriculture."
Are you wondering how anything "tropical" could possibly be applicable to the hot, dry, desert land of West Africa? So was I! One of the first lessons I learned last week was that "Tropical Agriculture" is a reference to the areas between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Now we're talking! One of the Tropical Agriculture Development class (TAD) teachers even spent his childhood as a missionary kid in Mali before another 23 years working in our part of West Africa. I couldn't have been more pleased!
For five days we studied topics such as "Challenges Facing the Small Scale Farmer," "Land Care and Soil Restoration," "Harvesting and Using Underutilized Tropical Crops," and "Basic Botany for Gardening." After a classroom presentation, we would walk across the street to the ECHO farm and SEE or ATTEMPT the techniques about which we had just learned. We built a hot
compost pile, classified weed roots, cooked lunch over a rocket stove, and examined worm compost after dark. The ECHO farm maintains gardens focusing on areas such as tropical rain forest, monsoon, semi-arid, highlands, lowlands, and urban settings. All week in the classes and in the gardens I thought,
"I can't believe I get to be here!"
An unexpected blessing of the class was the camaraderie of brothers and sisters who love God and pursuing missions. Among the students in my class,
seven
of us will be serving full-time in Africa by next year, Lord willing. Our class ranged in age from fresh out of high school to nearing retirement with both short-term and long-term missions callings. Each individual's path to ECHO was unique, but it was clear the same God is living in all of us. Some students held degrees in agriculture, and others (like me) were simply gardeners headed to the mission field. Amazingly, we each walked away with just what we needed learn because this is such a quality program. (Check out the course description
here.)
I skipped Animal Production Systems on Thursday to have extra time in the ECHO library, which is FILLED with resources for agriculture and missions. Philip's aunt Beth attended the course with me, so she was taking notes in class while I skimmed books such as
Redemptive Agriculture, Kids Ending Hunger, For Hunger-Proof Cities, African Indigenous Vegetables in Urban Agriculture. Aunt Beth is devoting her garden this year to experimenting with the techniques we learned at ECHO!
Picking a tropical salad for Wednesday's lunch was one of my favorite activities. Our salad included moringa leaves, prickly pear cactus, cranberry hibiscus, and a dozen other tropical leaves.
One of the reoccurring themes of the TAD class was encouragement to become
learners: students of agriculture, students of culture, students of God. I felt a tension later in the week that Philip and I are not agricultural missionaries, we are not church planting missionaries, we are not medical missionaries. We have a base-line of training in each of these areas and are passionate about them, but I was doubting God's choice of sending us who are not so good at any one area. When the teacher from West Africa said to the class on Friday,
"Development workers who arrive as 'experts' usually have very little to offer," God met me in my doubts. It was as if He said, "I knew you would feel this way. Be assured, you're still on the right track." It is less about what we are going to do in West Africa and more about who we will be. Thank you ECHO for an awesome week of training and opening up new dreams for our orphans!
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Banana trees, avocado trees, papaya trees, a cinnamon tree.....
ECHO is such a fun place!
Semi-arid plot:
Class composting project:
Discovered I love Cranberry Hibiscus:
Housemates, minus one:
"The great aim of education is not knowledge but action."
-Herbert Spencer
