It started as a joke.
We had an old tractor sitting around—one of those machines that technically ran, but only if you had patience, tools, and very low expectations. I’d managed to get it running again, but it needed a full overhaul and honestly wasn’t much use to us anymore.
At some point I mentioned that we should probably get rid of it.
Our maintenance guy looked at me and said,
“Well… I’ve got a friend who might want it. He could trade you some pigs.”
I laughed.
Like, an actual laugh.
Because that didn’t sound like a real sentence.
Pigs.
I assumed he was joking. He did not clarify. That should have been my first clue.
Months went by.
I forgot about the conversation completely.
Then one day, I heard a noise coming down the road that didn’t belong to any vehicle we owned—or any vehicle that should still be running.
It was a Ford Ranger. Barely.
It was moving slow. Painfully slow. And it looked like it was carrying far more than it had ever been designed to handle.
As it crept closer, the reason became obvious.
In the back of the truck were two pigs.
Large pigs.
Alive pigs.
They were contained by what I can only describe as metal bed frames welded together into a makeshift railing system. The truck was sagging so badly it looked like it might just give up and sit down in the road.
Then I noticed the driver.
He had one arm.
Just one.
And he was smiling like this was all perfectly normal.
That was the moment I realized the pig deal had not been a joke.
This was happening.
Now.
We had no pen.
No plan.
No idea what we were doing.
So naturally, we did what you do in ministry when you’re wildly unprepared: we improvised.
Someone yelled, “Get pallets!”
Someone else said, “We need gloves!”
And I stood there thinking, This is absolutely not in the job description.
Meanwhile, the one-armed man hopped out of the truck and started unloading pigs like this was his regular routine.
With one arm.
Calm. Efficient. No hesitation.
I’m still not entirely sure how to explain this part, but somehow he guided two very unhappy pigs out of the truck and into our quickly assembled pallet pen while the rest of us mostly stayed out of the way and tried not to get hurt.
The pigs were loud.
The pallets were crooked.
The pen was questionable.
But it worked.
Just like that, we owned pigs.
We thought it would be temporary.
It wasn’t.
We kept those pigs for close to a year.
And during that year, we learned something important:
They were escape artists.
No fence was final.
No repair was permanent.
No sense of security lasted very long.
They escaped more times than I can remember.
One Sunday, I was preaching.
Mid-sermon. Focused. Doing my best to sound pastoral and composed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement.
I glanced over—and there it was.
One of the pigs.
Running.
Full speed.
Across the outdoor basketball court.
I paused. Just long enough to register that yes, this was real, and no, no one else seemed surprised.
Apparently this was just normal now.
I finished the sermon knowing full well that somewhere behind me, a pig was living its best life.
At some point later, I asked the one-armed man how he managed all of this—life, pigs, trucks, everything—with just one arm.
He shrugged.
“You just figure it out,” he said.
Of course you do.
Ministry has a way of doing that.
You think you’re running a school, or a mission, or a campus. And then one day you’re building a pig pen out of pallets and interrupting sermons because livestock has escaped again.
You learn pretty quickly that usefulness doesn’t always look polished.
Provision doesn’t always arrive how you expect.
And capability doesn’t always come in neat, complete packages.
Sometimes it comes in a beat-up truck.
With one arm.
And two pigs that refuse to stay put.
I don’t remember exactly when the pigs finally left.
I do remember laughing every time I thought about them.
Because every time I did, I remembered that day—and the quiet lesson buried inside it.
God uses what shows up.
Even when it’s ridiculous.
Especially when it’s ridiculous.
Scripture
“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”
— 1 Corinthians 1:27
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