Several years ago, my son was invited to stay at Caminul Felix while he was traveling around the world. He stayed for six weeks and helped on the farm. During that time he met Marcel Filip and told him that I was a dairy farmer. I was contacted by Marcel about some help he needed with the management of the farm. Both my wife Joy and I felt lead to visit Caminul Felix. Our problem was that we did not have the finances to make such a trip. God laid it on my heart that I should raise funds for the trip by collecting scrap metal. God abundantly supplied junk for me to recycle and we had more than we needed to make the trip, and help the farm with some of it’s needs. I returned later in the year to travel to Denmark to purchase bred heifers for the farm.
Being a farmer, I am uniquely gifted to accomplish this task. I have trucks and trailers to haul the scrap metal. I have skidcat to lift heavy items such as old farm machinery or a junk car. I have room on the farm to store the junk until it can be sorted and hauled. I have many tools to disassemble items to get the greatest value for the metal. Metals like copper, brass and aluminum are valued much higher than steel and I sort those separately, to get the most for God’s kingdom. I use my evenings after work, or stop by a donors house when I make trips to town. I estimate I average about 6-8 hours a week collecting, sorting, and hauling junk for God’s work. I really enjoy recycling the junk. It takes something that people called worthless, gets it out of the environment, and turns it into something useful for God’s work.
I continued to collect and recycle junk to help Caminul Felix and other ministries. In late 2010, I felt lead by God to help build a house for orphans in Thailand. We love the model where the children have two loving parents committed to raising them as a family. I have partnered with many people in my church, who give me junk to recycle, to raise enough to build a least a 1/3 of a house in 2011. My personal call by God is “to help the least of these”. God has given me great opportunity to raise funds to help orphaned children around the world, first in Romania, also in Haiti and now in Thailand. I only have to be obedient to His calling to recycle junk to accomplish this.
