Through our not-so-normal testimony, we aim to encourage you with the reality that there is no one way to experience country living. Come and har how God led us to our ‘Living Parable’.

AdAgrA 2020: A Living Parable

<p>Through our not-so-normal testimony, we aim to encourage you with the reality that there is no one way to experience country living. Come and har how God led us to our ‘Living Parable’.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Intensive: How & Why to Move to the Country

Keith Hankins

Renee Hankins

How & Why to Move to the Country Part 1

And the subheading says tell me something I don't know.

Show of hands how many of you have heard all you feel like you've heard all of the spirit of prophecy quotes on why to move to the country?

So some of you have some of you haven't and The reason why we said this is because you know after a while you sometimes can get this this what's the term?

Desensitized I guess when you hear something over and over again you're like yeah yeah okay I know that I know we're supposed to.

But we're gonna share a few that really impressed us and for those of you didn't haven't heard any hopefully these will touch your heart and plant a seed and for those who have heard them all it'll just keep you encouraged.

So the first pro to city living Convenience.

It is really easy to be able to get to work, to get to the store, to the supermarkets.

It's really close and depending on the type of entertainment, that might be a pro, it might be a con, but there's a lot of convenience in city living.

Another pro, more opportunities to socialize.

Again, these are things that our whole family gave input to.

They're just right there, whether you live in, is it suburb, the neighborhoods, or an apartment complex, or you're, you know, obviously you're going to school.

Closer, You're closer to church, you're closer to family.

We had somebody mention wanting to be close to family.

Well, it just helps when you're remaining in the city, your family is all there, your friends are all there.

You have a lot of people to be able to network with, thank you, network with and to get those business opportunities going.

It's much easier to get to people because they're in large crowds and closer together.

There was an experience that we had at an apartment that we lived at.

I wanted to, we wanted to share about, we wanted to share about the Sabbath as well as some other gospel truths.

And I went, we ran around to all of the apartments, you know, in our complex and passed out paperwork.

Now, no 1 showed up, but on the paperwork, the invitation, it talked about this habit.

And so we were able to get it into all the homes there in the complex.

We have no idea how that affected anyone, and maybe we'll be able to know, you know, when we get to the kingdom, who was affected by that information.

But that was very easy compared to being out in the country, you've got to travel far to find people to minister to.

Before we get to that, I'm just going to read this part from Spirit of Prophecy.

So the cities are filled with temptation.

We should plan our work in such a way as to keep our young people as far away as possible from this contamination, said the messenger of God.

Yes, not by God's people living in them, but by their visiting them, to warn them of what is coming upon the earth.

So it may be kind of strange in this class about country living.

We're talking about why we want to move to the country, why we're talking about the pros for city living.

And this is just so that we can start really thinking about, you know, what am I leaving behind?

We're gonna talk a little bit later about counting the cost.

And so we're just weighing this to see if it made sense to move to the country versus living in the city.

And so some of the cons for city living, number 1, it's loud, noisy, and scary for the children.

And so, you know, you hear the sirens, ambulances, people arguing outside, all kinds of just, a lot of clamor and noise.

And I remember 1 time, this is after we moved out to the country, a friend of ours came to visit.

And they told us that when they were going back home from having visited us, as they were driving back into the city, they could just feel this physical pressure of just the pressure of city living.

And so it's not a very restful atmosphere.

And then, of course, you have your negative influences.

And There's a quote that maybe we might be familiar with.

As far as possible, our institutions should be located away from the cities.

It is not God's will that his people shall settle in the cities, where there is constant turmoil and confusion.

Their children should be spared this, for the whole system is demoralized by the hurry and rush and noise.

Yeah, I remember 1 time we were at our apartment, and my mom knows the story better than I, but we were at the pool in the little apartment complex, and there was kids there, and of course, they're using profane language and just poor behavior, and my little brother and sister were there and they're witnessing this.

And so when you're living in a city where it is demoralized like we saw, it's gonna affect you, it's gonna affect your kids in a negative way.

So The next thing, of course, can you hold this?

So of course you have the traffic, you have the pollution, and then you have the hustle and bustle, it's all crowded like we talked about earlier.

I think Keith was the 1 that came up with this 1.

I mean, when you think about it, if you have a bunch of sinful people living in the city, obviously the sin is going to be, you know, the evil is going to be more magnified.

Many now will plead to remain in the cities, but the time will come, ere long, when all who wish to avoid the sights and sounds of evil will move into the country.

For wickedness and corruption will increase to such a degree that the very atmosphere of cities will seem to be polluted.

And just for those who've lived in the city or are living, have you guys witnessed this?

Have you guys witnessed this just demoralization, like you saw, of the city?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the city is wicked.

And last but not least, well, actually there's like 3 more, but there are numerous distractions and I'm going to talk a little bit more about this in my personal testimony as we go on about just all the distractions that are in the city.

It is Satan's purpose to attract men and women to the cities.

And to gain his object, he invents every kind of novelty and amusement, Every kind of excitement.

You guys see that picture of the Ferris wheel and everything?

I didn't think about this before until my brother found this quote, that whenever we're driving through the city and we see the little carnival things that they set up, the circuses with the Ferris wheels and all the rides and the lights or whatever, I didn't realize how drawn I was to that.

Satan can and will find every distraction possible to draw us closer to the city so that we won't want to move out to the country where God wants us to be.

Just a couple more before we move on to a more positive thing.

Of course, there's not a lot of nature to enjoy.

Concrete jungles everywhere, maybe a little bit of grass here and there.

And then it's more prone to flooding and other catastrophic issues.

I remember when like shortly after we moved out of the city into the country, there was terrible flooding that happened in our city.

How & Why to Move to the Country Part 2

So, there is no 1 way to get to the country.

We believe that you can, where you are right now, begin to make the moves to get to the home that you desire.

As you delight yourself in the Lord, He will give you the desires of your heart.

So that is the first and foremost thing that we want you to think about, is delighting yourself in the Lord and asking him for what it is that you desire.

Because if you're walking in his way, he will give you the desires of your heart.

Okay, so there's a running joke that earlier in the first hour, my husband mentioned that he lived in the country, he was homeschooled.

I didn't find any of this out until years into our marriage.

Because I didn't, when we first got married, I never even heard the word homeschool.

But he had the life where that, you know, the whole, you know, those bedtime, is it authors?

Uncle authors, bedtime stories, kinds of experiences, you know, go out to the to the watermelon patch and pick 1 up and drop it, oops, by accident, by accident, and then have to eat it, you know, out there in the garden kind of thing.

He's born in Boston, South Boston, Virginia, right?

And that's just the life that he had homeschooled at the age of 4 or 5 years old and just having a beautiful experience out in the country.

In the city, concrete jungle, I had a taste of country living when I went to visit my godmother in the summertime.

And my experience was like seeing a cat give birth to kittens, you know, and not really understanding what was going on, you know, as a little girl are seeing cows just walking by and you know, they're massive because I'm little seeing a sunflower for the first time in real life.

I mean that may not be a big deal to anyone else, but it was just like you only see them in cartoons, you know?

And it was huge, as big as my head if not bigger.

What is, you know, it was just an amazing experience.

So that was the taste that he gave me, even though my husband as a child got the full meal.

Like my wife was saying, yes, I was born in the country.

And it was a wonderful experience, and 1 of the things that I tell my family about is how my godmother used to prepare chickens and 1 of the things that traumatized me was actually seeing her, the Kids might want to cover their ears.

But actually catching a chicken and taking an ax and chopping his head off and watching the chicken run around like his head was just cut off.

And so when people said that joke I had a visual of what that really was like and seeing the chicken flop around and I was like wow I don't want any chicken anymore.

And so it was a very traumatizing experience but I did used to love to go out into our garden and pick cucumbers off the vine and pick tomatoes off the tomatoes plants and eat them right there as a young boy and just run around and play.

And that was part of my homeschooling experience when I was a kid.

And so I didn't even really think about it until just maybe a year ago that I was actually homeschooled, up until about the first grade.

And so when my wife said that she wanted to homeschool our kids about 10 years ago, I said, you wanted to do what?

I didn't realize, again, I didn't realize I was even homeschooled.

And I wasn't sure exactly what that was or how it was gonna work, but I had confidence because my wife was a teacher.

And she was a good teacher in the public school system.

Not that any mom needs those type of credentials to be a good homeschool teacher.

Yeah, I'll let you interject in just a bit.

But that was what I needed to even consider that because I was concerned about the kids' academics.

They were doing well in school, in public school.

Our little ones, they were going to a daycare at the time, but our older ones, they were in middle school and junior high doing very well.

And I wasn't so sure that I wanted to take them out of that regular way of life and such, but my wife, she didn't stop.

And we were making it on 2 incomes, but So I was thinking 2 things.

And 2, what's the kid's academic life going to look like afterwards?

Okay, First, I want to ask the kids, how many of you eat, just I'm rewinding, how many of you eat fruit or, well, yeah, tomatoes or fruit, things like tomatoes or cucumbers.

Have you ever had a chance to eat those straight off the vine or out of the garden?

Have you ever had the fruit and vegetables from the grocery store as well?

I just want to know what their experience is.

I think a quick question, how many of you homeschool?

When you have children or if you have children now, you don't home school, but you want to home school, or you want your grandkids.

I'm so busy home school, I I don't have time to homeschool right okay my credentials as a teacher in the public school hurt me if you if you're teacher I met a teacher already in public school, no disrespect, because I was there 6 years, just 6 years.

But the training and so on, it actually hurt me because Like just it's kind of sad, but just recently I started diving a little bit deeper into true education That that phraseology.

I mean I can say it here and I can see like oh, yeah I said it anywhere else is like what what true?

Well, so I had to deprogram myself from what I was trained in order to do it God's way with my kiddos if that makes sense.

How & Why to Move to the Country Part 3

3 essentials to making the transition are focus, determination, and faith.

On this session, we're going to talk about our transition from our first country home to the place we have now and how God just used everything around us to help us to make that transition.

Like my wife mentioned, there was another crisis that came up that propelled us forward.

We were already at the end of our lease at this current home where we were just leaving.

And we were going month to month and it came to a point where we were in there about 5 months after the time we should have been gone and the landlord said well I need you guys to be gone in a month.

I wanted to use a house for a vacation spot, for a vacation spot for my wife and I.

And so we had about 30 days to find another place.

We were already looking, barely, barely 30 days.

We were already looking for another place.

It wasn't very easy to find the place that fit our budget, still had a moderate commute.

And we were still trying to be committed to finding a home out where we were.

It was some hill country out there, whereas the rest of Houston is flat.

So we were really loving the the hill country aspect.

We had met some new people, neighbors and things.

We were really trying to stay, you know, moderately close to.

We were involved in the community at this point.

And so we started looking and it was it was really kind of tough to find the thing we were looking for and I got discouraged and actually started looking back in the suburbs of Houston again, in an area called Katy, Texas, which is on the west side, going out towards San Antonio.

And that was as far in as I was willing to go, but we started looking at subdivisions again.

And so by and by none of those things came to fruition.

Every house that we looked for we either were not approved for or it was it was too much or or whatever the situation was it just wasn't right.

And our prayer was still for the Lord to bless us with a country home, even though we had started looking back in the city again.

I just want to say that this house, living here, was, we met with enough difficulty in the country living experience, in the first time country living experience, to make us want to move back to the city.

I mean, I think that was kind of a proving ground, if you will.

Dealing with the snakes, dealing with the gangster cows, as my son mentioned, dealing with living in an old drafty house.

This is a very pretty picture of the house.

This is what we saw online, but that's not what we dealt with.

It wasn't in that condition after, by the time we were leaving or just before we moved in.

And so we wanted a place that was more comfortable.

So we had the country living experience, but we wanted to move on and live in a place that was at least a little bit bigger, so we all had enough space.

2 bathrooms instead of 1, that would have been a blessing.

So we weren't asking for much, but we began to pray and ask the Lord for what we wanted.

And it's okay to share with him the desires of your heart.

So we began to list out the desires of our heart.

And we began to claim Deuteronomy chapter 6 versus I think 10 and 11.

And so that's what we prayed for, and that's what we were asking God for.

And time came where we actually had to move.

And my wife put it to me that, oh, the last thing we did in desperation was reach out to friends.

I'm not sure if you wanted to touch on this.

So what ended up happening is that we were debating on this 1 house that we were approved for in Katy.

And as a last ditch effort, I asked my wife to talk with her friends at the community Bible study and to see if they had anybody they knew was renting a house.

And so she came back and said, well she did that reluctantly because it took a lot of humbling and swallowing of pride to even do that.

But she came back and said, nope, nobody has anything right now, but everybody is looking and they're praying for us.

Again, this is a community Bible study of non-Adventists.

Everybody was of different faiths, but yet these ladies, and it was all ladies, they came together and they were praying for us.

Next thing I know, I'm getting calls from Realtors, people saying, hey, come look at this house.

These things were not on the MLS in Belleville and the surrounding area.

And they were saying, oh, have you checked out this 1?

So I started looking at these other MLS listings that I was not aware of.

And all these people just came pouring out with all kinds of resources.

And we started looking at homes that were closer in.

And we still didn't find the right place.

You know, there's a place, and then there's the right place, right?

And we were looking for the right place for us.

And so, 1 of the ladies offered, No, she had a friend of hers who did have a house that was available.

We didn't find out until the lady offered for us to come and stay with them for a short time.

She said, we don't have anything yet, but I know the Lord will provide.

Now, they lived in an area called Somerville, Texas, which was about 40 minutes away from where we were currently living at this place, which was going to be a further drive for me to get to work.

It was going to increase my commute by another 35 minutes or so.

So instead of driving for an hour to get to work, it was going to be like an hour and 45 minutes or so for me to get to work.

And why are they wanting us to come and live with them?

She said, well, let's just go and visit with them.

So we took the whole family over to these people's house.

And first of all, it was a very nice place.

And they were initially offering for us to come and stay in their bunkhouse, right?

And so they had their home where they were living in, then they had a bunkhouse, which actually was the first house they lived in when they first moved to the property.

And so we got there And they lived on a huge spread.

This has really nothing to do with why we stayed there.

But they lived on this 400 acre property, ranch.

They were running cows, they were doing this, they were doing that, a whole lot of stuff.

And so that was impressive, but I was still wondering, why would she ask us to come here?

And so we got in, and I'm meeting them for the first time.

My wife already knew the lady from the Bible study.

But we got to meet the husband, whom I had never met before, and I had never met the lady.

And these 2 people were the most godly Christian people I had ever met in my life.

I don't know what faith they were Christians, but I didn't know exactly which faith they were of or what, you know, denomination.

And at that moment, it didn't even matter.

Series

Intensive: How & Why to Move to the Country

How & Why to Move to the Country Part 3

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

IMPACT Scandinavia 2012: Workshop A

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Spark Training: Public Evangelism

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