Luka had given up farming. For years, local animals had been eating his crops, and now he was done – any more farming was a waste of time and energy. He was afraid that he’d do all the work of planting, the same animals would destroy his crops and his effort would be wasted again. So he was resolved: no more farming. Then he joined the Bible translation team for his language, Gbari.
Because of his role on the team, Luka attended our first Faith & Farming workshop as an interpreter. He was to help make sure English materials and teaching would be translated into Gbari. And it changed his entire perspective.
As part of the workshop, Luka learned about Isaac’s farming successes and challenges (Gen. 26:12-22). Isaac was a very successful farmer, sowing crops and harvesting a hundred times what he had sown because the Lord blessed him. But this success aroused jealousy, and Isaac and his household had to move from place to place. Despite the huge upheavals, constant moving, and transfer of a huge group of people and animals, Isaac never gave up farming. He continued to persevere, and in the end, found freedom to live in a place without disputes. (Gen. 26:22)
Luka said, “Isaac’s enemies tried to discourage him, but Isaac encouraged himself and his servants to persevere. This is like my story.” And so Luka decided to try again, and he and his family planted a big farm in 2020.
“This is my maize farm behind the Gbari Bible Translation Centre in Lambata. For five years I refused to farm this land because of the fear that animals would destroy my crops. But after the Faith and Farming teaching, I decided to teach my wife and my children how to farm in God’s way. We are trusting God that we will get at least ten bags [of] maize from the farm.”
But that wasn’t enough for Luka, he wanted to do more.
Catfish and Beyond
At the start of the workshop, our team had introduced themselves and showed pictures of their demonstration farm. They had developed many different aspects of the demo farm, inspired by the diversity of the Garden of Eden (Gen 1:20-24), where God planted many kinds of plants, filled rivers with many kinds of fish, and created many kinds of animals.
Luka realized that farming is not only limited to tilling the ground, but also farming animals too, and so he increased his turkey production and planned to farm catfish.
Initially he was going to get costly training to learn how to raise catfish but one of our team, Katharine, was able to write a simple guide instead, complete with photographs on every aspect. It covered everything from choosing a container, caring for the fish (Prov 12:10), and how to harvest them.
The workshop inspired Luka so much that he began to teach more of these workshops in his area, most of them in his language of Gbari.
