We have had a deluge of water in the past weeks. These rains have been washing away houses and roads and making our bridge to the outside world impassable. In addition to this, two of our largest dams were close to breaching as we raced to increase spillways and find the valve that would reduce the water in the Living Water dam. It’s been crazy.
The bridge being impassable impacts so many areas of the farm, including being unable to transport more than half of our staff to work and being unable to deliver food to our church partners. Our diesel provider has also not been able come and bring us diesel. Let me unpack these quickly then tell you a crazy story of how God used the flood to help people.
It is truly unfortunate that we have not been able to deliver food to the children who really need it, but another ramification of this is having a LOT of eggs with nowhere to put them. You can’t tell a chicken (or 6,000) to stop laying eggs. Last Thursday morning, Ian got a call that we had 38,880 eggs that were 20 days old, and were at risk of going bad if we didn’t boil them or distribute them. We brainstormed ideas and settled on giving them to the workers who were able to get to work (more than half are on the other side of the bridge). Literally two minutes after we made that decision, I was contacted by a Social Welfare Officer (the one who helped our Nokuphiwa) asking for help.
She explained that the refugee camp in Mozambique was releasing the people looking for refuge or amnesty because of the civil war that is raging in Mozambique. These refugees were coming to Eswatini and there were 2,300+ people (half are children), including 122 babies, who are living in the camp with nothing. She asked if I could help with diapers and wipes. I immediately wrote back and asked if she could use 38,880 eggs? She cried, and said yes. I then asked if we could hard boil them to make them last longer. Again, tears, and yes.
The challenge remained – how to get the eggs across the bridge? Now back to the second large problem of not having diesel. Without diesel our tractors, heavy road work equipment and generators don’t work. The storm took out several power lines so we were running on generator power for several days. We were quickly running out of fuel. That was not good!
By the next morning the bridge was low enough that our egg truck could pass over it, but not cars. The plan was for the truck to cross the bridge with 20 x 25L jerry cans to go and get diesel and bring it back to the farm. Maybe the eggs could go with them!
The 38,880 eggs were boiled, plans were made, and some of our older kids went down and worked all morning loading up the truck until it couldn’t hold any more eggs. We didn’t think we could get all the eggs in so we were prepared to load up my truck and Ian’s car. Yet when we finished loading the egg truck, guess how many eggs fit? Exactly 38,880! We couldn’t have added more without crushing them (see photo below). I called the kids over to show them the truck and said, “THAT is what a miracle looks like.”
Ian and I followed the truck across the bridge (Ian’s vehicle is high enough to make it – NOT with me driving!) and met a young man from the National Disaster Relief Agency on the other side. We moved the 25L diesel cans from Ian’s car into the back of his truck (otherwise they would have broken the eggs) and our driver followed him to the the Malindza Refugee Centre.
Two hours later our eggs were being offloaded to feed 2,300+ people who were hungry, homeless and hopeless. We would never have had the “extra” eggs if the bridge hadn’t flooded. We see the hand of God all over this story, and hope you do too.
Oh, and guess what? God’s timing is perfect too. Only a few hours after we arrived safely home from the delivery, the river overflowed again making our bridge impassable. God is in every single detail. We were reminded in such a powerful way that He sees all and knows all and is working all things together for good.
Thank you again to the Egg Farmers of Canada for your love and support of our Hunger Initiative. Thank you to every one of you who have donated towards our Egg Project and Hunger Initiative. Your generosity has gone way beyond our borders now!
Janine Maxwell