Woofing isn't only for dogs

Imagine a vacation where you work on a farm or in somebody else’s garden in a place you’ve always dreamt about going to?

That’s what Raisa Hoverun, an ESL teacher who lives in Italy has been doing in Canada for the past two summers.

Hoverun is doing what thousands of people the world over do, known as “woofing.”

Woofing is the familiar term for someone who goes to work on an organic farm through an international organization, World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, or WWOOF.

In the Humboldt area, there are at least four rural farms that are host farms on the WWOOF’s Canadian website, www.wwoof.ca.

Volunteers (“woofers”) receive room and board in exchange for the work they do.

“A lot of farms are struggling to get themselves going and this is a solution that works for both parties,” said Hoverun, who started volunteering for the first time last summer in Ontario.

This year, she came all the way to Saskatchewan, just because she liked the name.

Also, because of her Ukrainian roots – she noticed that there were many Ukranian names in the area.

Hoverun said the people in Ontario she worked for last year couldn’t understand why she wanted to go to Saskatchewan, but she says she’s learning to follow her intuitions.

She has been working at Ravenheart, an equine learning-assisted farm near Fulda run by Carol Marriott, and at Marie Saretsky’s new garden just outside Burr.

Saretsky’s garden is a fairly new addition to the WWOOF listings. She had heard about it from a friend who is a Woof host and also from one of her neighbours, Jerome Rath, who raises chickens and has been on the organization’s Canadian website for a few years.

If she hadn’t had the volunteers who came this spring to work on her garden, it wouldn’t have happened, Saretsky said. But she found that receiving woofers was more than just about the labour.

“You think it’s about the physical work,” mused Saretsky, “but it ends up being way more of a spiritual exchange. People who do this are usually on a personal journey.”

Trip overseas leads to mission work for Humboldt student

It will be a leap of faith for Rachel Lees this fall when she goes from Humboldt to Lausanne, Switzerland.

Lees will be the only Canadian attending a disciple training session with the international organization, Youth With a Mission (YWAM), for three months. Twenty-five young Christians from different countries around the world will spend five months together during the training and the two-month overseas mission.

“I’ve never travelled outside of North America,” said Lees. “I’ve never even been on a plane before. It would really be a big disappointment to me if I chickened out!”

With a father who is a pastor, Lees has been brought up as a Christian in the Alliance Church. Already at age 20 she has integrated faith into her life.

After her Grade 12 graduation from Humboldt Collegiate Institute, she went on to attend the Nipawin Bible College for two years. Part of those studies included going on a mission each year.

The first year, she went and stayed in the poorest area of Regina, working with street kids through the Healing Hearts Church.

The second year the college sent her to work with Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver, B.C., in the city’s Downtown Eastside, a drug-infested area with an equally high rate of prostitution. Both experiences have made a mark on Lees, who hopes to continue in this kind of work in the future.

“It was a real eye-opener as to how close we all are to that kind of life,” she said. “We met women who were highly educated, but who for some reason ended up on the street in prostitution.”

Lees said the trip gave her a heart she didn’t know she had, and she found out through God’s direction that she could actually do things for these people.

After bible school and the two missions, Lees turned her thoughts toward getting an education in an area where she would be able to find work and support herself. She was interested in studying graphic design, and had heard that YWAM offers university courses complementary to its Christian purpose. Her application was accepted, but she found out later that it wasn’t for the graphic design course.

Ironically, there was some confusion with the program choice, and instead of graphic art, she had been accepted for the disciple training and mission.

“I thought ‘that’s perfect’!” said Lees.

Lees is open to the idea of going to any country for the mission.

“I’m up for any place that needs us,” she said, and explained that the group will decide together, through prayer, where they will go for their mission from a list of possibilities made available by YWAM.

“It will be really cool to see what everybody is passionate about,” she added.

What happens at the end of five months?

“I’ll have to come back to Canada, because of my student visa,” Lees said. “I really don’t know what will happen after that.”

Lees knows that all kinds of opportunities for missionary work exist in Canada, in fact right here in Saskatchewan. One of the options she considers a possibility would be returning to Regina, where they have youth shelters and soup kitchens.

So much could change for a young Canadian in five months abroad.

www.ywamcanada.org