Michigan Camp Meeting 2018: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

A Relevant Health Message for a Global Church

Joy Kauffman

So this idea of having a relevant health message for our global church is something that I think would be important to each of you.

Hopefully, I think it was important to our founders.

And really, it's taking a look at, you know, the blessings that we have received as modern United States American Seventh-Day Adventists.

You guys know the Loma Linda or the Loma Linda Blue Zone, right?

And Time magazine here had How to Live Longer and Better.

And in here, again, we're mentioned as this hot spot of health and longevity.

So we know that our health message has had tremendous benefits.

And so as I joined the church, I wondered, is it benefiting the people that Jesus was most concerned about?

The orphans, the widows, the poorest of the poor, the hungry, the prisoners.

Are we sure that the blessings we're receiving are being well spread throughout the world?

And so I feel like Firms II is a gift that God offered to me.

Sylvia and I were back in Uganda together in February-March and she caught the buzz.

She actually had learned about it in a session like this about a little over a year ago.

We've been staying in touch because I was intrigued by her nutrition and then also being raised partially in Africa, I felt like we would make a great team.

So this is our first time being a team together.

So the relevant house message for the global church, we really focus on this idea of Jesus saying that he came that they might have life and have it abundantly.

And as we look at what does abundant life look like, we do know that there's these hot spots of longevity.

And my training in public health always causes me to go back and look at like what are the root contributing factors for both health and also disease and death or hunger, the things that plague our world.

And so How can we get more of the things that are a blessing and then minimize the things that are part of the curse?

So when we think about abundant life, I think about it in a public health way.

There's a lot of people talking about abundant life, though.

1 of them is Joel Olsteen, also in the Christian world, also talking about abundant life and it says, 8 ways to invite blessings into your world.

Give and your gifts will come back to you.

We know that there's some truth in that, but we also know that there's some lies, right?

He says, I know these principles are true because they work for me and my wife and this is his 8.5 million dollar home.

That's not the abundant life that we're talking about with Farms2.

In fact, when you look on a global scale, if you make $33, 000 a year, you're in the top 5% of the world for income.

So we're in a really different scale even than most people in the world because so many people in the world and billions are living on less than a dollar a day.

And so Farmstu is a message that we believe can benefit each and every 1 of us, but it's particularly designed for the poorest of the poor.

But what we did was we didn't start with the poorest of the poor.

We started with looking at the blue zones of what are these characteristics that led these different cultures to abundant life and how can we extract them or apply them in the context of where the poorest of the poor live.

We have Loma Linda, Sardinia, Italy, and Okinawa, Japan.

So the things in the middle are the things in red and they are showing the characteristics that are common between all 3 of these cultures.

No surprise there for us, but a lot of people might be surprised by that.

Constant activity, meaning that they're not necessarily going to the gym, but they are people that are incorporating activity into their regular life.

Now that could be going to church, that could be being part of like a women's group.

In Japan they have all these strong women's groups that meet for decades and decades throughout their lives.

But church alone, Harvard research says that going to church once a week you can add 7 years to your life.

So that 1 simple act that we as Adventists commit to worship corporately can add 7 years.

Legumes, I have a secret bean agenda and it's no longer secret, but I like to say there's power in the pulse.

Pulse is kind of the family of plants that are highly nutritional, very high in protein, and they also put nitrogen into the soil, which as we'll talk about, that's a really, really important thing, especially in Africa where soils are very depleted.

Also, they are doing strong, there's a lot of strong women, so societies where the women are not oppressed.

They're out in the sun, we were just talking about that.

They're gardening, they're eating whole grains, culturally isolated.

You know, sometimes that might sound like a negative connotation, but when we think about holiness or being sanctified or set-apart, that's what I think about, you know, someone that's not participating in all the ways of the world.

And then high soy, I want to point that out because we do use soy in farm stew.

We use non-GMO whole grain soy, but it's an incredible food.

Okay, so those are some of the common characteristics.

Of course, we know that the benefits from that dark red wine, it's actually from the grapes, not the alcohol.

So we can get the same benefit by eating dark red foods.

There's a lot we can apply though to ourselves right there.

So our traditional health message as developed by Loma Linda in the 60s, it's been wonderful and I'm not taking anything away from it, but new start, nutrition, exercise, water, sunshine, temperance, air, rest, trust in God.

If we walked up to these ladies from Eastern Africa who've just walked half a mile to go get water, and they're going to do that a couple times a day, and they do that every day of their lives, Do you think they would be really benefited by us telling them to go get sunshine, fresh air and exercise?

So that's kind of where the idea came up.

The idea came up is, you know, maybe we have a few letters we could play with.

I love New Start because of its simplicity.

I actually, my master's in public health is from Johns Hopkins.

And when I learned about New Start, I thought that 1 principle, the 8 principles held in there, the fact that I can actually remember it and apply it to my life, that's worth all of everything I learned in that degree.

So that's where the idea for Farm Stew is.

Let's make something really simple that people can learn and apply and have a big impact.

So for example also if we tell this this man you know you really need to eat a plant-based diet you know.

In Zimbabwe where he lives in order to eat 5 fruits and vegetables a day it would take him 52% of his income if he had to buy just 5 fruits and vegetables a day.

So that's obviously cost prohibitive for someone to be able to just go buy what they need to eat.

Also when we talk about water, These ladies are having to go to a contaminated water source.

It's not going to do us a lot of good if we tell them to go drink water, and yet this is the water that they're having to give to their children.

So we want to really help equip people with a message that is relevant to them.

This is a bit of a complicated chart, but bear with me.

This is looking at income, okay, so anywhere from making $1, 000 a year all the way to $128, 000 a year.

Okay, it's color coded by continent, and then we have life expectancy on the vertical axis.

Okay, so we go anywhere from 55 years up, the very top would be 80.

So, what continent, what do you observe about what's going on here in terms of life expectancy and income?

Okay, well the countries in blue are going to be the 1 with the lowest life expectancy and the lowest lowest income.

We don't need to necessarily get into the countries, but what you can see here is the trend.

Income is correlated with life expectancy as you can see.

Adventists would be way up to the ceiling basically.

North American Adventists with our 90 year life expectancy now.

And I guess what I'd like to make a note of is, you know, if most of sub-Saharan Africa, meaning below, you know, the Saharan desert, if most of sub-Saharan Africa, their life expectancy is under 60, I don't think God is amused with those types of disparities between his children.

And so what we hope to do is really focus on some of these parts of the world where people have a lot of potential.

And when you think about the total member involvement and the baptisms that are happening in some of these countries, think about what they could do with 30 more years or 50 percent more life expectancy.

Farmstew & You -  Part 1

I hesitate to share this slide, but I just want to share how I've kind of gone through a process of in recent years coming to accept my role that I feel like God has asked me to do.

Because I shared with Melanie and now I'm forgetting your name, Bart, yesterday that I didn't want to just be this random white lady that goes to Africa, gets inspired, and starts a mission program.

It's like sort of a cheesy program, cheesy idea, and it could, you know, you can have stuff like that kind of go to your head, and it can be about you.

And what I realized after a while was that God has been preparing me for this since I was a little girl.

And I just, 1 day, as I was freaking out before I was going to give a presentation, I felt like God said, you're always cutting and pasting images.

Go find all the logos of all the things you've done in your life that have trained you and equipped you for this.

So I just share this not to build myself up, but to show God's path in my life.

And 25 years ago, I went to a place called Heart.

If you're interested in doing international development work, it's a mock village out in a developing country setting where they teach basically all of farmstood skills.

And it's a fantastic Christian organization.

I would love for some of our universities to actually even host students there.

I did a video tour with people from Southern and Andrews and they were very excited about it.

But more Adventists need to, I think, have more equipping for specifically tropical agriculture, cuz it is a different environment.

I was a Mennonite for 25 years and served in the early 90s with Mennonite Central Committee as a health worker in Brazil.

It was a AID farmer to farmer program that took me to Uganda in the first place, which was a blessing.

I don't know if you're familiar with that.

And they have what I dream to have someday in the near future, which is an online training program.

And they really want to equip church members with that materials.

They have very nice materials that you can stand up and do a presentation and feel very competent quite easily.

And then just during gardening, And I did go to Hopkins.

I did work for Health and Human Services.

I feel like somehow this slide pulled together for me.

And you've already been working on me a long time.

And just remembering that we're grounding ourselves always in the Word of God in what we're doing.

So the rainbow, we were made in the garden.

We know we had the plant-based diet given to us in Genesis 129.

And we know that in the new heaven and the new earth, we're going to be eating again from the tree of life.

And that 12 types of fruits and the leaves for the healing of the nation.

We talked yesterday about folic acid and how it comes from the foliage of the leaves.

And that's 1 of the primary nutrients that's lacking in our bodies is from those green leafy vegetables.

Okay, so this sounds a bit random and I might have to make some connections here, but why do white people get sunburns?

When we go to Africa, I always joke because I got all these wrinkles and sunburn and all this.

Exactly, the different melatonin in our skin.

So that dark, beautiful African skin is designed to withstand the heat of the African sun.

It gives them 4 times the protection against cancer and early aging.

And I always joke because they have like no wrinkles, and I have plenty, especially it shows up in that video, which is hard to watch.

But so then I say, you know, when they're eating white food, highly processed white food, they're basically making their internal organs white and weak and susceptible to cancers and early aging, just like my external organ is.

Oftentimes, and sadly, it's even been nutritionists and health people that say, get rid of the microbes.

But when we're peeling them, which is what they're doing here and turning out just to eat that, what do you think they do with the peels?

But what happens when they throw them out if you're in a developing country?

They get eaten by the chickens, probably.

Exactly, the chickens, the whatever comes up and eats it.

When they're taking the outer seed coat off of the seed of rice or any other whole grain, when they take the seed coat out, What do they do with it?

And so they don't have consumer education in these countries, and we're actually lacking it ourselves.

I know because I worked for over 10 years hauling animal feed, so it's kind of interesting.

Yeah, so they take the most nutritious part.

What, how would we fare if we took off our skin?

Okay, it's the most nutritious protective part of the seed where the most minerals and the most fiber are.

And so you see just in a potato here, the potato skin contains significant nutrients.

Iron deficiency is huge in developing countries.

If you don't have iron, your blood is not properly oxygenating.

And again, we've talked about the life is in the blood.

So we need that oxygenation for just clear thinking.

We're talking about the frettal lobe and our ability to make choices.

If we don't have iron, we're just killing ourselves.

Also, the skin from 2 potatoes has double the amount of 7 nutrients and 5 times more riboflavin, 7 times calcium, and 17 times more iron than in the flesh.

So when we're peeling off, that's what I really try to tell them.

You're basically, and when you're buying highly processed grains, you're basically allowing that company to have another profit, you know, product, profitable product.

And the thing that's really tragic is they make money off of healthy chickens and goats and whatever else.

They don't make money off of healthy kids.

And we as consumers, and especially Africans, There's a lot of Africans bleaching their skin and in Zimbabwe when you buy the suds, which is the corn corn maize It says white white like they're advertising the whiter the better, you know Whereas we know that when maize came from the Americas, it was all different colors.

But for some reason, when it went to Africa, it needed to be white.

And to me, there's some internalized racism going on in there.

And if we can try to reverse that and make people feel good about being black, having black skin, eating the dark colored things, eating the indigenous African grains, I think we can make some progress there.

So we always talk about the rainbow of color.

And again, we're always doing train the trainer.

This is from University of Illinois actually showing about soy flour edamame.

Farmstew & You - Part 2

Dear Heavenly Father, we want to thank you for the opportunity we have to share in the good news of an abundant life.

We thank you that you've given us health principles that we can not only live by, but we can share with others.

And I pray that you will be with each of us as we spend this time together, that we can learn what you want us to learn, and that we can be willing to share it with our neighbors.

So this idea of farms to NU is based on Jesus and his message in John 10.10 about desiring for us all to have abundant life.

So we also know that, you know, our church, we talk about the great controversy, and in this 1 verse, the great controversy is contained because Jesus wants us to have an abundant life, but the first half of the verse is talking about another force that wants to kill, steal, and destroy, right?

And so we want to counteract his work with trying to make sure that people can live life and live it abundantly.

So we're really excited to just kind of think about what is abundant life.

What do you think about when you think about an abundant life?

What comes to your mind when you think of abundant life?

Well, I'm somebody who likes to know definitions.

At our house, we don't do much of anything without a dictionary.

So I went to look it up in the dictionary.

The first definition was marked by great plenty or amply supplied.

There's a verse that comes to my mind when I think of amply supplied.

My God shall supply all your needs according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus.

How many of our needs does he say he'll supply?

So we're wanting to share with you God's vision for an abundant life.

So, in doing so, I want to just take us through this idea of running an experiment with gut.

We talked a little bit about that yesterday.

And I actually personally ran my own Adventist experiment.

And I was born in an Adventist hospital in Denver, Colorado as a baby.

Ended up becoming a vegetarian just on my own convictions when I was about 8, and then studied nutrition in college because everybody in my family thought I was going to shrivel up and die and become stunted and malnourished myself by being a vegetarian.

That was in the very late 70s, early 80s.

And so it developed in me a passion for nutrition.

And I'd never really met an Adventist except for those ones that probably Slapman made me cry when I was born.

And so I actually learned about Adventism through the clinical research that was even present from the 1980s, showing that there was this population of people that, you know, a lot of them were vegetarians, so they were a great research subject study.

And it was back when Dean Ornish, if you're familiar with him, was already proving that you could reverse coronary heart disease with a plant-based diet.

And I was at a good old meat and potatoes school, Virginia Tech, and they thought it was a bit odd that I was writing all my papers on vegetarianism.

But nevertheless, the research was strong, and I did well in school.

And it was pre-internet, though, so I couldn't look up who are these Adventists, what do they believe.

And in my mind, it was kind of in that blurry like Mormon Jehovah's Witness crowd, and so I just didn't go there to learn more.

And ended up, long story, but about 8 years ago, ended up going into a vegetarian cooking class at my church, and I want to give you all some hope if you do health ministries.

Apparently, and it was unbeknownst to me until several years later, I was the only outsider that came that day.

And it started a whole series of events in my life where I learned the truth, I learned these messages.

A lot of them the Holy Spirit really had already revealed to me in some regard.

I mean I was very excited about the Second Coming, different things, and just walking on my own journey of faith.

But when I learned about them I was very intrigued, but I still had that pushback resistance.

And so it took a period of time where I actually moved away from...

I was keeping the Sabbath for a period of time, And then I moved away from the Sabbath.

And I really believe that God disciplined me during that time and allowed me to go through my own very dark period of some depression and anxiety and insomnia.

And really was struggling and really crying out to the Lord, like, what is going on?

I was a homeschool mom, and it was just a very, very difficult time.

And so I just felt like God told me to run my own experiment.

And that was about 4 and a half years ago, and I said, you know what?

I know what the Adventists teach on temperance and all the different things.

I said, I'm going to just go cold turkey, no coffee, no alcohol, no you know whatever, like daily Bible study, and then start really just keeping the Sabbath again and being dedicated to that.

And I can tell you in my own personal life it was just such a miracle that happened to me.

I also was blessed by getting my kids into an Adventist school well before I actually came into the church.

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Series

A Relevant Health Message for a Global Church

Farmstew & You - Part 1

Transcript

Parent Series

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Breakout Session C

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Dave Fiedler: Core of the Controversy

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Christ In You

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