A Missionary's Gourd Story

Being busy as it is, I initially thought there was no way for Erick and me to do some gardening here at the school. It takes too much time, I said. Thankfully, my hardworking husband dragged me into it. At the start of the school year, we decided to plant edible ridge gourd, along with a few other things that might grow well in the rainy season.

Erick did his research on how to grow, prune, and natural fertilizer we can use here. We spent hours hacking up the hard clay soil, tilling in local cow manure by hand, and watering it during the dry season to give the soil time to break down. Then we built a trellis with the help of our friend Saw Dih Yay, and soaked the gourd seeds to get them to germinate. After planting and transplanting the seedlings, the rainy season started in force. 

Erick  keeping up with cleaning (lots of snails!)

On the second month when we should be getting flowers and fruits, there was nothing. Only leaves and vines that were growing really long and fast! After two and a half months, lots of male flowers came, and people were saying how pretty our garden looked. It was indeed, but we prefer fruits. We were anxious to find female flowers, but for a couple more weeks there was none. We thought that maybe we treated it wrong, because our neighbors were already harvesting! Because Erick pruned back many nodes, they were convinced we made a big mistake, and we thought so too. We considered tearing out the plants and growing something else, but we decided to wait and see. 

Our house (right) and the pretty gourd trellis

Meanwhile, the rains were heavy, the snails and insects multiplied, and some of the leaves and vines starting looking diseased. But during a sunny spell after about three months, female flowers started coming out! Happy day! But wait...something didn’t look right. We soon found out that the fruit that was growing did not look the same as the picture on the seed packet! It was still a gourd, just a smooth, no-ridge gourd (edible sponge gourd)!

The type of ridge gourd we thought we planted
                                                                     Photo Credit: web

We were happy that our soil preparation worked, because even though we waited for over three months to harvest, we began harvesting a lot—and kept harvesting for over three months! (The other gourd patches in our area only harvested for a few weeks.) There were nearly 200 gourds from five plants, and would have been more if we had kept up with watering during the dry season. We were having sponge gourd in our meals almost every day, which was a blessing during the times when few vegetables were readily available to us! We cooked it in many ways—my favorite was when Erick made veggie burgers with it. We were able to share many of the gourds to our neighbors, until one of them laughingly refused when I offered him more gourds—most likely he got tired of it! Soon others were asking for seeds, and wondering how we were able to have the plants producing for a long time. It was not us but the Lord. 

Yay! Long gourds!

Somehow, missionary life is a bit like planting gourds. But it is planting in the heart, not only to the students and staff, but in our own as well. Preparing the soil can be the most toilsome. There will be things we cannot control like wrong seeds in the packet but God will work on the details. There might be rains and trials that come and delay, or insects that cause damage, but it is not our business to doubt. It is ours to be faithful to what we are called to do. We plant and water, but the Lord will make it grow. And He is the Lord of the harvest!

A male gourd flower with its pollinators :)

If you are a person with a green thumb and knowledgeable in the area of agriculture, and you have a heart for missions, could it be that the Lord is calling you to be at Sunshine Orchard? Check out our school website for more information:
http://www.sunshineorchard.org/volunteers.html