FORGIVE WHEN TEMPTED TO FIGHT (CRAIG DEALL)

We’ve all heard sermons and messages on forgiveness and turning the other cheek, but the story of Craig Deall takes these truths to a whole new level.

Picture: Young Craig Deall with children

Second generation born Zimbabwean Craig Deall, who has his family land forcefully taken from him by the Zimbabwe government, advises all Christians to pursue forgiveness in all situations even when you are badly wronged. Craig Deall who took over his father’s farm at 14 years after he died, was forced to leave the farm with his wife and children without compensation by the Zimbabwean government. This project was carried out across Zimbabwe in 2003 as part of the governments land reform project. An effort to more equitably distribute land between black subsistence farmers and white Zimbabweans of European ancestry.

In an interview with CBN News, Deall said “We could fight, we could flee, or we could forgive. Some of my friends fought for their land and ended up getting killed for it. Most of my friends decided to flee the country but we as a family chose the third option which was to forgive”.

He described this experience as traumatic for his family and himself but what kept him going, was Matthew 5:40 ‘If a man steals your coat, give him your tunic as well’. For him, it meant, if they steal his farm, he should teach them how to farm. This decision he added, provided him with an avenue to serve the least of these and to bring them the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Deall moved with his family to Hahare where he joined a group called foundations of Farming and began teaching new land owners and small scale farmers a new farming technique taught to them by the group’s founder Brian Oldreive. In the interview, he added that, the founder was taught this new way of farming by GOD.

"He went with a child-like faith into virgin bush, into virgin forest and he sat there and he asked God, 'Teach me how to farm', and the two things that he saw is that there is no inversion tillage in nature. And the next thing he saw is that there is this beautiful mulch cover that covers the forest floor, and that's actually God's mechanism for feeding the soil and protecting the soil,So he went back to his farm and he literally tried it. Just without any tillage and no burning, which is contrary to the conventional way of farming, and he immediately got outstanding results like 10-time increment in yield”

With this, Deall knew that GOD had given him this new way of farming to teach this to rural farmers, the hurt and the poor across Africa.