Our chickens give us fresh eggs every day.  Correction: we take fresh eggs from our chickens every day.  Sometimes we snatch ‘em right from under them as they rest peacefully in their nesting boxes.  You may think chickens aren’t aware or don’t care that the eggs they’re laying disappear every evening at chore time.  Well, one day, we were surprised to find a pile of about twenty chicken eggs in the middle of a cactus!  Our chickens preferred the spines of a cactus to a clean nesting box filled with fluffy flakes.  Why?  Their eggs remained where they laid them for days.  Chickens care.  So, our children work really hard to give the chickens a comfortable and happy life.  Our family decided to do something special with the eggs we collect from our chickens.  We often have more eggs than we can use in a week so we give them to our friends.  Our friends in turn give a donation which collects in a jar on our kitchen hutch.  Our children save all of this money to donate livestock through a charity organization that works to end hunger and poverty around the world by providing livestock and training to struggling communities.  All families receiving a gift of an animal through this charity agree to give an offspring of each gifted animal to another family in need.  Our chicken eggs have thus far provided goats, bees, chickens and recently, a water buffalo for a struggling community.  It’s incredible to think that the offspring of our children’s donated livestock are blessing even more.  This has been an awesome opportunity to teach our children how to bless others with the blessings they’ve received.  All that we have is after all from the generous hands of God above, and so we actually only give what has been given to us.  I think if our chickens understood what their eggs have done, they’d never think about laying their eggs in a cactus again.

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