There was a moment when he wondered, “What am I doing here, trimming dead leaves off banana trees, week after week?” 

When Kyle and Danae Schmidt first arrived in Uganda in the fall of 2022, Kyle was eager to learn all he could about the people, the culture, and the work on King’s Kid farm, a sustainability initiative supporting King’s Kid school. The vision of the farm was to help feed the students and staff, lessening their dependence on foreign aid.

Kyle, however, was not a farmer.

“As a carpenter and woodworker,” Kyle said, “I didn’t know a whole lot about farming! So I figured, if I wanted to learn about farming, I should hang out with a farmer.”  Kyle began spending time with Tony, a worker at the farm. “I offered to help him pull the dead leaves off of the banana trees. I was motivated!”

At first, Kyle’s enthusiasm was carried along by the surreal experience of working on an African hillside overlooking a beautiful, lush valley, and the satisfaction of working shoulder-to-shoulder with Tony. Then the novelty wore off. “I started to wonder, am I wasting my time? This was not the work I expected to be doing in Uganda. What were we even accomplishing?”

Despite that early sense of frustration, over time Kyle began to realize that it wasn’t about the work; it was about relationship. “While we worked, we began to have more and more conversations,” he related. “I would ask Tony about things I observed in his culture, about his love for evangelism, about what we were both learning from Scripture.” 

They also talked about farming.

Both Tony and Kyle wanted to make the King’s Kid farm more productive, so that the school could become self-sustaining. “As we grew more comfortable with each other,” Kyle remembered, “I began to toss some ideas his way. Some he just threw aside, saying, ‘We’ve tried that, it doesn’t work here.’ Other ideas, he liked. We spent months this way—working, talking, having meals at each other’s homes. Then, one day, I went with him to his son’s kindergarten graduation, a two-hour drive. It took our relationship to a whole other level. We were now like family, like brothers.”

By spring of 2024, Kyle felt like a farmer. He had learned about growing maize in Uganda, and began to take on more management at the farm. Together, he and Tony began to imagine new ventures, and changing simple things, like using better seeds and improving the spacing during planting.

“Then, in July of that year, Tony and I went together to a training workshop on regenerative farming methods, called Farming God’s Way.” Kyle paused. “That was a game-changer.”

Employing these farming methods, they worked hard together to prep the fields, lay mulch and build compost piles. They talked excitedly about how, after a few years of stewarding the soil, they might increase the yield enough so that King’s Kid School could feed their students without relying on outside funding.

“We changed things up, we took a risk,” Kyle said. “And it worked!”

One day, again laboring shoulder-to-shoulder with Tony, Kyle reflected that the fruitfulness of the fields was nothing compared to the fruitfulness of their friendship. Together, they were stewarding not only the land, but one another’s lives.

“Through Tony, God was teaching me the importance of relationship over productivity,” Kyle said. “It was hard to break my Western habits, though!” 

Recently, while Tony was away with some unexpected church ministry, Kyle felt overwhelmed by all of the urgent things needing to be done at the farm to prepare for the upcoming rainy season. “The entire time,” he commented, “I just kept imagining us launching into work together, the moment he returned. Then God convicted me, again.” Instead of imagining getting up at the crack of dawn and seeing how much they could accomplish on the farm, Kyle began to imagine a more relational—and far more likely—scenario. 

“We would still wake up early, but I would have to put aside my own agenda,” Kyle said. “We would take our time, sit down to eat a leisurely breakfast together, talk, catch up on what had been going on in each other’s lives. Then, probably around 10:00 AM, we would finally head out to the fields and start work.” Despite the urgency he felt to get things done, Kyle knew that the true urgency was about the reunion itself; it was about being together. 

“I’ve learned so much from Tony,” Kyle concluded. “My whole approach to life has shifted profoundly. I still instinctively want to do things my Western way, emphasizing productivity. Yet, if I did this—and even if I were to have a lot to show for all my efforts—without relationship, the results would not endure the test of time. Prioritizing relationship means that one day, long after we are gone, there will be people here who will carry on the work that we began together, as friends.” 

GIVE

You can be part of what God is doing at the King’s Kid Farm in Uganda by giving to support their poultry project. This project will be a self-sustaining business initiative that generates income for the King’s Kid School. To learn more, go to multiply.net/kings-kid-farm