For more than 30 years, people have been finding hope at Le Mas Perdu, the “Lost Farm.” All are welcome to the farm, where they can learn how to cultivate the earth according to the laws of nature.
More than 5,000 young people have tilled the soil as they weeded out their own drug, alcohol, social, and personal problems. In the garden, they learn to accept the laws of life. Defying those laws is often at the root of their challenges, and there, limits are set by nature, not by people. The team simply teaches young people how to live within those boundaries.
Staff and guests also work and study together, as well as live by the same rules. Visitors become part of the family. Every Christmas, many of the “kids” come home to the farm. But the team enjoys every opportunity they have to see their former guests throughout the year.
Monique Garcia, the director, recalled running into one young man whom she had not seen in 15 years. When she hailed a taxi cab, the driver hopped out to greet her by name, and she was shocked to see one of her former “kids.” He told her that spending a summer at Le Mas Perdu had turned his life around, and she and the rest of the people he stayed with on the farm were his only family.
Le Mas Perdu has other visitors who spend their holidays at the farm, too. They enjoy wholesome cooking, fruit and vegetables from the garden, health lectures, and discoveries in nature and the Bible. And twice a year, the team holds a NEWSTART® program. Young and old mingle, learn, and work together, which is beneficial to both. The NEWSTART® guests enjoy having so much life around them, and the young people have a chance to reconcile their differences with “grown-ups.”
