I have eight more days left in my internship, recipe and it feels like the past year just blew by. The main reason I haven’t posted regularly on my blog since last spring, is total physical exhaustion from construction and planting projects in my garden, and from managing volunteer work teams. The past two months were extremely busy, as I started to hand over my garden and my goats over to new interns, planted like CRAZY to make sure the fall crops were in the ground before our annual conference in November, and then attended a flurry of activities also known as Conference.

The picture above was taken at Conference at the start of November – you can see little ol’ me in the bottom right corner, sitting on the ground. I was a little overwhelmed (well, really overwhelmed) the first day because I was finally meeting people who live agricultural development – they’re the warriors who’ve each dedicated over 20 years living with different ethnic groups in Haiti and Africa, and quietly, tirelessly seek to improve people’s diet, sanitation and eating habits. No Angelina Jolie to bring attention to their work.

The best part of the week was hearing people’s stories of faith intertwined with gutsy perseverance. Bruce shared his story of how in his first year drilling wells in Haiti, he came up completely dry with every single well. Can you imagine how hair-tearingly frustrating that would if you were a well-trained, educated civil engineer with completely altruistic intentions to bring clean water to people? Those lack of results would scare off donors and crush your self-confidence. 25 years later, he can laugh at the experience and say with confidence that it’s only God who will move mountains for you when you’re in the field, to bring glory to Him, not to Bruce (Matt 17:20 “…for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, `Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.”). And he’s humble enough to say that he’s still learning huge lessons out in Haiti.