Cultivate Conference

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Eastward Missions

Plenary

Darren Greenfield

What a Journey, No Regrets

Dear loving Father in Heaven, it's really a joy to be here tonight to see people who are excited about being with you in the Garden and learning more about you, learning more about the lifestyle, the blessings of the life you originally designed for us to have.

Father, thank you for all the work that has been done to make this conference possible, for the sacrifice of time and money.

Thank you for bringing everybody safely here.

Thank you for just providing this beautiful place.

I already feel your presence here and I'm so grateful for that, Father.

And I just pray that tonight and every meeting and throughout all our time of fellowshipping and talking and networking, Father, may you be in the midst of it all.

And Father, draw us closer to you as a result of us being here.

You know my limitations, and there are many.

I just pray that you will take over, and I thank you for that in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, I didn't know if I was gonna make it As I took my first leg of my flight 2 days ago, there was, I guess, some bad weather and I got stuck in LA.

The plane arrived right when the plane that I was supposed to be on to come here was leaving.

And, but by God's grace, made it here and arrived this morning drove up here and have been here for a couple of hours and so I'm excited to be here I know the Lord is doing something special excuse me a second get this turned on and I'm really excited to see the agricultural movement spreading around the world.

I'm excited to see all you here in Australia, some Kiwis.

Are there any more than anyone else who's a Kiwi here?

Actually, the beauty of the nature around here is so close to what I'm used to in New Zealand.

But anyway, what I wanted to say was God is doing something special, spreading this around the world.

I got an email maybe 2 weeks ago in Austria, they're organizing a conference there and it's for the German speaking countries of Switzerland, Germany and Austria and it's going to be happening at the Bogenhofen College there, the seminary.

So that's being organized and I think it's starting January 7, if I'm remembering correctly.

So God is doing something and also with Jamaica, they've had 2 conferences, more than 2 conferences actually, they have a program that's called SOStick, Save Our Schools Through Industry and commitment.

Save our schools, I missed something out, soft stick.

Anyway, it's an agricultural movement that the conference has initiated because their schools were in financial difficulty and they were reading through the Spirit of Prophecy through the book Education And they said, you know, we're not doing agriculture.

And he says that if we do it, then our schools will have a different showing.

And many of their schools now have a greenhouse.

But it's a shelter, basically a plastic roof with some shade cloth around the outside to protect their crops from the tropical storms and rains.

And they're growing peppers and a few other things there.

And it's taking off, and God is doing a special work and it's bringing in revenue to help their schools stay afloat and pay off some debt.

So I'm really excited to see that God is bringing back, slowly but surely, bringing back the way of education that he ordained for us to have.

Tonight, what I share with you tonight may have a little bit of an educational slant to it, but that's what I'm involved in at Wima, running the farm there.

I don't run the farm just for the sake of enjoying farming as much as I do.

I'm doing it because I really believe and I'm convicted that it's the very best kind of education that young people can have.

When I heard the video, the music video, first heard it when it was played in Florida, it really brought a tear to my eyes to see young people out in the garden, cheerful, you know, working.

It's hard work, it's toil, there's, you know, there's sweat involved, But to do that kind of work cheerfully because the Lord has blessed that kind of work, it does something to a person's character.

It does something for them and draws them closer to the Lord.

We can force them to do it, and it'll be a miserable experience for them, and they won't get what the Lord intends.

But doing it cheerfully, what an amazing blessing that is.

Well, I better get into this because time is ticking by.

Okay, so how many of you, let me, I want to just see, get a bit of an idea of the demographics here and what your involvement in agriculture is.

How many actual farmers that earn a living from farming do we have here?

How many of you are interested and want to get involved in agriculture as a living?

Okay, quite a few of you, praise the Lord.

How many of you garden or are active gardeners?

How many of you are actually here because you want to learn and you're excited to learn and get into it?

Well, every 1 of us are influenced by someone to either be here, to get into the garden, to follow God's plan.

Each 1 of us have a story to tell of what God's doing in our lives to bring us to this point and to sit our feet on this journey.

And I'd love to hear your stories, maybe they're just beginning but for me my story, I'm going to share a bit of it with you tonight, goes back, I guess, back to my grandfather.

And my grandfather, see if this clicker's working.

My grandfather, who's passed away a number of years ago, he's a farmer, he was a farmer all his life.

And I used to love as a kid going and visiting the farm where my grandmother and, well, my nana, and I guess I can call her nana here, you guys understand that.

I think I started going from about the age of 5 and just being out in the country.

My father's a dentist and he loves farming but we were in the city because that's where he had to be for his dental practice.

So I would go there at 5 years old and onwards and spend holidays there.

I remember he put me on the seat of the tractor and said, that's your clutch and there's the brake and that's the accelerator there and a few instructions and walked away and the tractor was off and I did and then I forgot everything he told me.

But anyway, it was exciting to be on the farm to ride the horses.

My father was into horses and I really loved it.

And I just, I think from that time onwards, I just had this love in my heart for the farm and for nature and being out there.

And I think right from that very time I couldn't think of anything else that I wanted to do in life than to farm.

But my parents did the same thing to me, told me the same thing that my father's parents told him and that was no, don't get into farming.

My parents were a little bit better than that.

They said, why don't you get a trade or do something that can give you a means of income and then get into farming and at least you'll have something to support you because farming doesn't make any money.

John Dysinger

Pamela Dysinger

Our Ebenezer

We are happy to be here with you in Australia.

And I'd like to say more in Australian, but it's really hard.

But Rod just said, you know, if you don't know what else to say, just say, Bob's your uncle.

So Bob's your uncle and God is good and we're going to share with you this morning some of the things that the Lord has been teaching us and we just want a disclaimer up front that we're not the model to follow.

We haven't learned these lessons perfectly yet.

But we're sharing things that he's taught us and on our personal journey, and obviously in the time we have, we can only share a few things.

We actually, the Lord led us to write a book, my wife really did the bulk of it.

That is available if you want to hear more of the sordid details.

So this morning we're just gonna share briefly.

God is good and he's so faithful and that's always what we want to portray.

So we pray that's what you'll hear this morning.

So this is just a bit of our journey but we really don't want to focus on our journey as much as the principles that we've learned in our journey.

But if we don't set a bit of foundation, well, the principles wouldn't make nearly as much sense either.

And in 1988, we made a grand adventure to Kenya where the Lord truly opened the doors for us to teach at Maxwell Adventist Academy, and we, which is just outside of Nairobi, Kenya.

Probably for me it was my first experience with country living.

I had never, I'd just kind of been a suburban girl.

Well, this was pretty much out in the country and a different country at that.

There we worked with the students, largely missionaries' children.

Not totally, but largely from all corners of the earth.

We've really looked for them while we've been here, but not found them.

Anyway, it was a very foundational experience for us, I guess I would say.

We thought, I guess in our minds we knew we were not going to be lifetime missionaries.

You know, some people have that calling, but even at the very beginning we told people that we felt like it was the foundation.

God was taking us overseas and we were going to get the foundation.

Well, we had no idea what a foundation we would actually get.

And in those 6 years, it was a very eye-opening experience.

And, well, you can't see them in that picture.

But our oldest daughter, Kirsten, and our oldest boy, Jonathan, were born there.

Well, once we started having children, we became much more serious about life, as I think all of us do.

And we were the youngest in the staff on the campus.

And we were just kind of, we pray never judging.

But if you don't look at what kind of fruit you want to get in your garden, How do you know what to do to get it?

You know, you kind of have to go from the fruit back to the root, right?

If you want good fruit, you better talk to Whitmore and make sure you have good soil.

So anyway, we started looking, and it was a sad reality that the fruit wasn't the kind of fruit we hoped for in our family.

You know, we really were struggling with major issues in the students, the children of missionaries' children by the pretty much 1 cause of neglect.

Neglect and you know what happens to the garden if you neglect it?

It's no different in the lives of ourselves and our children.

And so we saw a lot of neglect and we started really analyzing, okay, if we stay in this path, how different is it going to be for us?

So that was kind of the beginning of our journey.

And it was a rather, it wasn't a direct path.

God often doesn't take us on a direct path because he has a lot of lessons he wants to teach us through the winding path.

So we left Africa in 94, and we actually were not really called to farm until 1998.

So in those 2 years, excuse me, in those 4 years, John received a master's of education and he began teaching at a one-room school.

We were teaching kind of together, but We were 1 step closer, but we were really no steps closer.

So the goal when we left Africa was to reclaim some time for our family, because boarding school is 24-7.

So then we hoped to reclaim it by getting into day school with elementary children.

We'd have summers, we'd have weekends, we'd have vacations, but it wasn't, we were not even into the second year when we realized we were not meeting our goals.

And the Lord led in very miraculous ways for John to leave teaching.

I'm not sure where, she's probably still in the kitchen.

If you see the white curly headed lady in the kitchen, that is my wonderful 80-year-old mother and she's with us.

But I heard her saying to somebody since we've been in Australia, we thought they were nuts when they left teaching.

Of course, our parents had every right to think we were nuts, But what God does is always good.

And it takes us through some very low valleys at times, but the end product isn't about us, but it's about God's faithfulness and the things that he's taught us.

So As as we were at Maxwell as we were seeing the fruits of What was going on there?

We really started Searching and and the Lord we don't have time to get into the details, but the Lord really began to show us what we believe were principles that we should be living by.

And the first thing he taught us was that we need to live by principle and not by circumstances You know, I think many of you realize how easy it is to let life run you rather than you run life you know every day is just oh I got to get this done and this done But it's not Principles it's living by circumstances and so that was really the Foundation that he laid for us and then on that foundation, we're gonna share 5 principles he taught us.

He's teaching us, yeah, we're still learning.

And the first 1 is that your family is your first mission field.

You know, as Pam was saying there at Maxwell, I was on the discipline committee, and we were dealing with lots of issues from parental neglect.

These people were out saving the heathen while at the same time losing their children.

And I would say a real turning point for us came 1 day.

I was the chaplain and Bible teacher and a lot of other things, but I was also counseling in the dormitories 2 nights a week.

And so 1 night after being in the dormitory, I'm sorry, this always chokes me up.

But I came home and my wife sat me down And she said, honey, if something doesn't change, someday it's our children that are gonna be seeking counsel from a pastor.

And that really cut to my heart and I said, God help us.

And that's when we really started searching and when we started seeing that God had a plan.

So 1 of the first things that we did is we took a weekend and we really just sought the Lord.

And we found some real gems in that weekend.

Alan Fisher

Ellen White and the Avondale Agricultural Experience

We're going to talk tonight about 1 of the most significant events in the history of Adventist education and agriculture in particular.

That is Ellen White and her experience with agriculture and the founding of Avondale College.

Now to understand this we need to go back to years before that.

Ellen White wrote her first articles on education in 1872, an article, Proper Education, and in that she advocated the education of the whole person, the physical, mental, moral and religious aspects.

And she stated that education, quote, embraces more than merely having a knowledge of books and that a portion of the student's time should be spent in physical labor.

She went on to say that in connection with the schools, there should have been agricultural and manufacturing establishments.

And if you want the references for these quotes, they're all in that paper and more.

So that was 1872 and at that time we had no Adventist colleges at all.

But 2 years later, 1874, was the founding of Battle Creek College, the first Adventist college.

Now when this was being talked about, Ellen White again recommended a rural site where there could be agriculture.

And They looked at a piece of land, 160 acres, but it was considered to be too expensive.

I understand that James and Ellen White used to go out travelling around the area around Battle Creek looking for a suitable property for it.

But the 160 acres was considered to be too expensive.

And then they found another 1, the former fairgrounds on the outskirts of Battle Creek, 50 acres.

And she was happy with that and it was generally thought that that's what they'd get.

So she and her husband had to go away to California and while they were away, the good brethren who made the decisions bought 12 acres in town opposite the Battle Creek Health Institute.

Of this they promptly sold 5 for housing lots to get money to build the college.

And it's said that Ellen White wept when she heard of this.

So 7 years later there were some problems developing at Battle Creek, and she wrote another article, Our College, in which she said a more comprehensive education is needed.

It would be well could there be connected "'with our college land for cultivation "'and also workshops under the charge of men "'competent to instruct the students "'in the various departments of physical labor.

Much is lost by a neglect to unite physical with mental taxation.

And about another year later, she wrote another article, the importance of physical training.

She said every institution of learning should make provision for the study and practice of agriculture and the mechanic arts.

While a part of each day is devoted to mental improvement, let a stated portion be given to physical labor and a suitable time to devotional exercises and the study of the scriptures.

And then there comes a little further on a memorable statement, If the youth can have but a one-sided education, which is of the greatest importance?

The study of the sciences with all the disadvantages to health and morals, or a thorough training in practical duties with sound morals and good physical development, like Darren was talking to us last night.

So she says, which is of more importance, the academic study or a thorough training in practical duties?

In 1 statement, a slight variation of this, she inserts a piece that says if 1 must be neglected, let it be the study of books.

I think that's what it says if I'm just going from memory.

But she says with proper effort both may in most cases be secured.

So Battle Creek College ran into some problems that arose and after several years it closed down for a year or 2.

And during that time while it was closed they were able to start 2 more.

South Lancaster Academy that became Atlantic Union College and Healdsburg College in California.

Healdsburg had small grounds, but it was in a fruit growing area, and they did offer some classes in gardening and fruit growing.

Incidentally, I understand that, or they had to move it out later, it was said that while men slept the enemy sowed houses around the college.

So thus it can be seen that the early steps to incorporate agriculture into Seventh-day Adventist schools were faltering at best.

Anyway the time came when Ellen White was asked to come to Australia.

1 was that she was asked to come to help them start a school in Australia and I'm always amazed at the audacity of the Australians.

I think there was only about 500 Adventists or something and they started talking about starting a college.

But anyway, this was a great opportunity to carry out the divine instruction for education and especially the emphasis on manual training and agriculture because they're starting from scratch.

They could do it the right way this time.

So 1892, They set up a temporary school in Melbourne, the Australasian Bible School as it was known.

And this was before the days of safety regulations.

You can see those fellows standing up on top of there.

But 1 interesting thing about this, although it was in the city, there were 2 acres of land around it.

And Ellen White wrote to her son Edson later that at Melbourne, your uncle Stephen Belden, he was married to Ellen White's sister, I think she died by that time.

At Melbourne your uncle Stephen Belden ploughed a piece of land and worked the soil thoroughly and raised a most profitable crop of sweet corn for the school.

Everyone told him not to undertake it, but he was determined to show them what could be done.

And so that was the temporary school down there in Melbourne.

But of course they had plans to establish something more permanent and Ellen White, as we've said, was keen that it should be done the right way this time.

What was she wanting to get at in this new school as concerns agriculture?

Well the first was she wanted it to be a model school.

She wrote, the light which has been given me regarding the work of the Avondale School is that we must not pattern after the similitude of any school that has already been established.

And she wrote again, our school must be a model school for others who shall establish schools in Australia and throughout the world indeed.

And again she wrote, this was to be a sample school.

It was organised on the plan that God has given us and he prospered the work.

No breezes from Battle Creek are to be wafted in." She wrote.

And so that was the first aim we could list, that she wanted it to be a model school for other Adventist schools.

The second was she wanted to have it as a demonstration of proper education as we've mentioned, the all-round spiritual, physical and mental.

She wrote, for both children and men, labor combined with mental taxation will give the right kind of all-round education.

The cultivation of the mind will bring tact and fresh incentive to the cultivation of the soil.

And she wrote, in the school that is started here in Cooranbung, this is after they'd selected the site, We look to see real success in agricultural lines combined with a study of the sciences.

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