Kilimanjaro
Grassroots faith
Circle of affirmation
Clark preaching at Ipagala
Piled high for the journey
Soccer with Eliya
Singing at the Mennonite Church
Check out our new book! A Common Meal - Reflections and Recipes for Rice & Beans Month
I’m really excited to share a new project this February. Casey and our team at Lahash have been working on an amazing resource for Rice & Beans Month. It’s a 120 page devotional with scriptures, prayers, photos, stories, and recipes to help people with the journey of Rice & Beans Month. The title is A Common Meal: Reflections and Recipes for Rice & Beans Month. You can buy a copy of the book online or if you’d like I’ll mail out a version or give it to you in person.
I appreciate this video by Tim Keller – connecting the dots between Justice and Justification by Faith.
Check out this great new video by my friend Tim Nelson on our new Lahash partner – Savior’s Home. You can visit Lahash.org to sponsor one of the kids at the home.
Savior’s Home from Lahash International on Vimeo.
I am dead set against trash. It’s difficult to reorient my life after being immersed in a society and way of life that thinks nothing of using and disposing of “consumables.” On trips to East Africa I’ve noticed that often times a house will have no waste baskets or trash cans in the entire house. The average American generated 4.5 pounds of waste per day in 2008 according to the EPA.
When Erin and I first did our test week of Rice & Beans month back in December of 2008, we realized how little trash was created when eating fresh raw foods. At that time we were regularly filling up 4 entire black trash cans every month (1 per week). Since then we’ve altered our way of living and have gone down to 1 trash can per month!
During this month of eating from our garden – our waste problem has improved even more. We’ve had a couple of side projects that have produced a small amount of waste, but the trash from our homegrown meals is… totally gone! We’ve had zero waste and only about 5 or 6 items to recycle for an ENTIRE month of meals.
The picture to the left is an image of what the “waste” after a typical day of cooking looks like. It’s just heaps and heaps of great material that is headed right out the door to the compost heap. Within a couple of weeks the “waste” ends up as nutrients that we dig back into our soil.
The final picture below is of our dual track compost heaps. We compost all of our garden “waste” into these piles and mix them with chicken manure and grass clippings and even wet gDiapers from Talia that decompose quite quickly. I read a quote in a book recently that said the point of a sustainable life was to “get to the point where the garbage truck never has to call.” We are taking steps in that direction.
We’ve just completed three weeks of our Homegrown Produce month! It’s been a great journey. Our garden supply is just beginning to dwindle – our lovely hens have decided to take a little break and are laying an average of about 1 egg per day. So it’s not certain we’ll make it through the full month.
The other day Erin and I went on a little date and watched the movie The Help. It’s ultimately a movie of hope – but I felt awkward in my white skin during some of the parts as the story unfolded with pale-skinned characters treating their darker-skinned house servants with despicable unkindness. I’m grateful that so many worked to upturn the injustices of that time period. But… the honest reality is that this hideous system continues today. Our food, clothes, electronics, shoes, and pretty much everything else we “consume” as a society are produced out of sight. Too often these products are created using slavery, injustice, oppression, and violence. It was all the more thought-provoking while spending this month eating food that I knew so intimately and could honestly thank God for in entirety.
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Let us know what happens behind the curtains – and move our mouths, our families, and our communities toward the light.
