AdAgrA 2021: Hidden Treasure

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Journeys in Agriculture

Chad Kreuzer

Fadia Kreuzer

01 Health and Homestead

Dear Father in heaven, we just want to thank you so much for allowing us the opportunity to all be here together As was stated before it is a privilege and we thank you for it We just ask lord that you would pour out your spirit.

We ask for your holy spirit to be with us to guide us to bless abundantly lord If there's anyone here or listening that is on the verge of making a decision to go forward with country living and agriculture, Lord, I just pray that your spirit would guide and bless and lead.

We ask these things in the name of Jesus.

Well, we want to, as I said in the prayer, encourage people that are contemplating going out there and living the country life, right?

And if there's there's any beginners out there, we just want to be here to encourage you and tell you that there's blessings in store, major blessings in store.

And I'm sure you've heard from some others.

But we're going to tell you our journey of how we got there and then also about our health and homestead.

And first we're going to tell a little bit about our backgrounds and where we came from prior to getting into country living.

My family originally comes from northern Iraq.

I was born in Baghdad, but my family originally comes from way up north.

And it's just 2 worlds apart from north to south.

And my family grew up in the mountains and they lived off the land.

They sustained themselves off the land and they loved it.

They loved living up there, they enjoyed it.

But the problem was is they were a minority.

Because they don't have a good background, right?

Not just according to the Bible, according to history.

And if you go to any museum and you see artifacts about the Assyrians, it's no good, is it?

So praise God I'm standing before you today Because we know what our history would have been if it weren't for a good old Jonah, right?

You guys ever thought about that if Jonah didn't go guess who wouldn't be speaking to you tonight?

1 man's decision affected a whole nation of people and I'm here today because of Jonah.

We're all here today because 1 man decided to do the harder thing.

And we can all be in the heavenly land someday because of Jesus Christ.

But there's some times that God calls us to do the harder thing.

And I don't know what that is for you today, but bear with us here, right?

So my family had to do the harder thing and because of persecution because Assyrians today are all Christians that's that's what we are and so Assyrians were pushed out of the north and Into the cities Wow what a culture shock for them so long story short, we migrated over to the U.S.

And prior to Chicago we were in Athens, Greece.

So Chad always says, I went from 3 major world empires.

And so, I grew up in the city of Chicago and if anybody's grown up in Chicago you know what that's like.

And What's interesting though is my mom would always tell us about her life in the north of Iraq.

In the mountains and how she loved it and she would tell us these stories all the time.

And so in the back of my mind, I always felt that that's what life was all about.

Even though I was in the city and the city draws you and all that kind of stuff, I always had this longing in my heart to be out there in the country.

And then later on, we, thank God, I got to the point where, when I was in my teens, I was praying all the time, Lord, get us out of this city, get us out of this city.

And praise God, we finally moved out to a suburb, but then eventually went to Broadview Academy and lived on the campus because my mom worked for the campus.

And that was a major turnaround for my family in terms of spirituality.

Well, 1 thing was my older brother passed away and that really turned my life around.

Then we went out there and that added a whole bunch more in terms of drawing closer to Jesus when we were out in the country.

Then I got into ministry and in your ministry a lot of times where do you do the work when you're doing Bible work?

And so we're going from city to city to city and it got overwhelming.

And the message needs to go to the cities.

So even if we live in the country, the gospel still needs to go to the entire world.

So in between, we would always go camping.

In between, like let's say we went and did, because Chad also is an evangelist, and so we would do evangelism.

And in between sessions, we would just go out camping.

The next 1, or I think you have the clicker.

Different people come from different backgrounds.

And somebody else from another family member looked at this and said, how did you get your mom to live in a tent with you?

It's in her blood and She's instilled that in our hearts as well A little bit of my background.

I was raised in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan Born and raised there in the year 2000.

There was a big seminar with ASI and I was baptized at that time my life was changed and Soon after that I left the college that I was going to then and went to the Mission College and soon after that began to do full-time ministry And I was always interested though in country living.

I was raised in the city, but when I was just a little munchkin, I, my grandparents had a cottage in the country on a river, And I loved that place.

I was 1 of the, I mean, boy times have changed haven't they, right?

Robert Sullivan

Michelle Sullivan

02 Trusting God in Everything

Hello everybody, glad that you're all here to be part of this session this evening.

We're thankful for the opportunity to share this testimony of how God has been truly, amazingly good to us.

And I know that even though he's been good to us, I know that he is going to be good to you also.

So before we get into just a little bit of our story, we just wanted to start with a word of prayer.

Father in heaven we're just thankful again for this opportunity to share with your people about your goodness and about how you are more than capable of being trusted.

Father, we realize that there's so many things going on in this world, and sometimes people don't even know what to believe or who they can trust.

But from our experience and from what the Bible says, you are 100% trustable, and we are able to put our lives in your hands.

We're also thankful for this opportunity to share.

And we just ask Lord that your Holy Spirit will accompany this short testimony and bring some sort of comfort to people who are listening.

These things we ask in Jesus's precious name, Amen.

Okay so we're going to share with you our story of how we moved from the city in England to the countryside of Scotland and how we ended up farming.

So we worked in telecommunications, well I worked in telecommunications, in fact we both worked in telecommunications.

I was working within project management and you were...

I was a business director, consultancy, yeah, that's all nice stuff.

Yeah, so having myself, having grown up in a secular home, I never had the privilege of an Adventist or even Christian upbringing.

I grew up attending the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

My family on my mother's side, they're all Adventists.

So I grew up going to church from a young age, I think from sort of 2, 3, that's what I remember.

And so when we got together, I was still going to the church, but very much just sort of going as in physically going.

Yeah, but I wasn't connected in any way with Christ or anything like that.

All I knew was that on Sabbath you're to be in church and then during the week you can do whatever you want.

But on the Sabbath you would definitely see me at church and I would take part in different roles and things like that.

So I was considered, or I at least considered myself a good person, even though looking back on it I was very reckless and I wasn't good at all I didn't have anything remotely good but I just looked at other people and I compared and I thought well you know I don't do that yeah I don't do this and I don't do that.

So, you know on a scale of 1 to 10 I'm not as bad as the next person, but I was devoid of any Loving relationship with Christ as I said, I didn't know Christ.

I didn't have a prayer life I didn't read my Bible or any of these things, but I was still attending the church.

So we got together and yeah we just sort of initially muddled through.

Nobody, you know we always say this looking back, nobody sort of, and we're not saying this as an excuse, we're just saying this is just the reality, that when we were together anyway, nobody tapped us on the shoulders, pulled us aside and said, hey Robert and Michelle, God has a better way for you, here, let me share you something.

I don't remember any of those conversations and I don't remember seeing, and I'm not saying this as an excuse, I'm just using the reality of how we grew up.

I don't remember seeing any other couples that were, oh where does brother and sister so-and-so, we don't see them in the week oh yeah they live out in the country no there was none of that everybody just lived in the town in the city.

Well it's a city church and it's filled with folks that live in the city area so everyone's got their city jobs and they're you know they're just living their city life.

So we were just living our lives and just moving up the corporate ladder because that's what everybody else did.

You know there's a saying over here, I'm not sure if it's the same in America, keeping up with the Joneses.

You know you look at what your neighbors are doing, you look at what your work colleagues are doing and you aspire to be just like them or better than them.

Well you're influenced by things that you see around you.

That's right, I mean spiritually by beholding you become changed so that's what we did so that was our main motivation, that was our main goal.

As we started a family, things changed in as much as now you're looking out for providing for your family, and so that became a focal point as well.

So, you know, God was not in the picture, just work and doing the best of what you could do at work and moving up that corporate ladder, as I was saying, that was what was motivating us at that time.

I don't know, I had this very searching heart at the time, just this sort of insatiable appetite to have something more deep and spiritual in my life.

I didn't quite know what it was, but I would often go to ABC, the ABC store in Watford, And just, I mean, I would just have so much, I would just enjoy being there.

I'd just go to the bookshop, just get the kids in the car.

We'd go to the bookshop and I could spend hours in that bookshop just looking and looking.

And then 1 day I picked up a book by an author you may know the person, Sally Holmberger.

And it was called Raising Your Child by the Spirit or something along those lines.

I remember reading the book and I was just really amazed at this family.

It just opened a window into something I'd never ever seen before.

And so I really got involved with the things that they were putting out.

I bought almost nearly every resource that they had, from Empowered Living Ministries, and read nearly every, I think I must have stayed up until like 2 o'clock in the morning most nights just reading their articles and reading, I mean it's probably not the greatest thing to do, but reading their books and things and it was enlightening.

It was really enlightening and especially with some of the issues that I was having with the children because I hadn't character trained my children.

I just fell in love with the idea of this country living and you know just reading their stories and everything I was just like I want this for my family this is this is what I want.

Robert was quite a TV addict at the time weren't you?

And I remember, obviously I've been reading Empowered Living Ministries books and articles, then through this ministry in Wales, I had come into contact with...

I come into contact with Restoration International.

I had come into contact with Restoration International.

And I had read so much stuff, video and everything.

And I was really involved in this and my eyes were just open.

Through the things that I've read and then going also, I was heavy into reading a lot of Ellen White at the time as well.

Just picked up her books and just started reading and read through the Gospels and everything and I think it was just an awakening.

And my eyes were open and I remember looking 1 time in the living room at Robert sitting there slumped in the chair, you know, watching movies and I was upstairs reading Ellen White and I remember sort of saying to myself, in fact I might have even said it to you, like, you know, I'm thinking in my mind, but you were raised in the church, why are we living like this?

I don't understand, like, we need to be doing these things, we shouldn't even be here in the city, you know, we need to get out, you know, this look at our children we're losing them because of the choices that we've made and you know and so I was just I was just desperate for a change.

So the idea of making changes in any shape way or form which was going to interrupt what I would call my pleasures or what have you, I wasn't really interested in that at all.

And I didn't know, as much as I was learning a lot, there was still a lot for me to learn and so I took the opportunity to make some immediate changes and we had what we call Sky TV over here which is like a set-top box digital digital Sky television where you can stream movies and this I suppose it's like Netflix but via satellite.

They had gone to Pathfinders and Robert was teaching 1 of the classes and the children were going with him so I was going to be home alone and I took the opportunity at that time to make some changes and that change was the television had to go and so well at least the Sky TV set-top box because we had 3dn installed but nobody was watching it because they were watching what the world put out And I would just shake my head with disgrace and think the children shouldn't be watching whatever they were watching and Robert shouldn't be watching what he's watching and some decided action needed to come.

And so I went and took the Skybox and I ripped it out, removed all the cables and wires and put it in a bin bag and hid it.

And so he came back in and maybe you can explain how you felt about that.

He wasn't happy at all and to retaliate he went into the schoolroom because we were homeschooling at the time, we went into the schoolroom and took all the children's schoolbooks and dumped them in a bin bag and said well you know these are written by the world so they should go too and I just left it I was just like okay well you didn't you didn't throw them out they were just in a bag in the room so I just thought okay they were left there but I don't think you knew where the skybox was because I'd hidden that.

There was this battle going on but I think God wanted to bring us to a different relationship level and as I was saying before, you know, well as my wife was saying, that her relationship with God was starting to take off, but mine wasn't.

So even though I was interested in, oh, okay, country, that looks nice, and this, that, the other, it was more from just the, yeah, it looks nice, and that would be nice, but not from a, God has actually asked.

Yeah, conviction from God, from the heart, because I didn't have that relationship still with the Lord I was still just doing my own thing.

Yeah but a certain event had taken place which then really ramped up your experience didn't it?

Yeah so I remember that you know there were some meetings that were being held at church meetings, sorry, that were being held by the North England conference and they were actually called the School of the Prophets and what they would do is they would just have a few speakers from America to come over actually and do like a weekend session whether it be evangelism training or whether it be just a deeper Bible study on revelation or something like this.

Anyway, at that particular time when these meetings were being held, 1 of the organizers, I think it was Pastor Hush, Pastor Alan Hush, had mentioned to us, just through a conversation anyway, had mentioned to us, oh, why don't you guys come along to some of these meetings?

So we came along, we went to this particular meeting and I remember it was held in Wales, but at that particular meeting they had Pastor Ivor Myers, they had Pastor David Gates, and they had somebody else.

I remember sitting there and listening to Pastor Ivor Myers.

He was talking about Revelation and Daniel and just breaking things down and there were so many people in the congregation behind me because we were sitting in the front I don't know how it happened but we were like on the first 2 rows but there were so many people behind me every time Pastor Myers said something you know relating to maybe the beast or this that the other people were like yes Amen, I have not got a clue What these people are talking about?

Beast Sea beast They knew the intricacies.

Yeah, I had, because this was completely- Kind of out of our depth.

Ashlee Skinner

03 Cultivating the Heart and Mind

Hello, happy Sabbath at Agra All right, so today's message is 1 that is my testimony and it's a message that the Lord has given to me over the past couple of months When in prayer with Him and talking to Him about all the stresses of my life.

But before we start, let's have a word of prayer.

Dear Jesus, I just ask that you just be here in this place, Lord.

Please help if there are any evil angels or anything that is trying to keep us from hearing your message and hearing your truth.

Lord, I just ask that you fill me with your Holy Spirit and that your words come out of my mouth I just ask that also everyone here is blessed and that I'm humbled and that you are glorified in Jesus name we do pray amen So the title of our message for today is Cultivating Hearts and Minds.

All right, so as you heard earlier, I have my master's in horticulture, and before I got my master's in horticulture, I was a student at the University of Florida.

And as a student at the University of Florida, I was studying plant science and I got to learn a little bit about agronomic crops, cotton, soybean, wheat, all of these different things.

And I found it was so interesting learning all their different growth stages and learning all of the different object lessons that you can get from these crops.

So Today we're going to learn a little bit about barley, and we're going to learn it in relation to our growth in Christ.

So just to give you a little bit of barley overview, so barley is used for many commodities.

Less well known for Adventists, it's used for beer, and it germinates quickly, it's resistant to drought, and it's also self-pollinates.

All right, so there are 4 main stages to barley growth.

So there is tillering, there's stem extension, there's heading, and there is ripening.

So we're going to learn a little bit more about these stages as we progress.

So tillering is the first stage in barley growth and a tiller is a part of the plant that actually emerges from the soil.

It is independent of all the other branches And when the tiller forms, then that's when the plant is starting to go from germination to maturity.

So as we learn about tillering, I was directed to go to Ruth chapter 1 verse 8.

If you have your Bibles, let's turn there.

So the story of Ruth, I'll wait for you guys to get there, Ruth chapter 1 verse 8.

Alright, so it says here, And Naomi said unto her 2 daughters-in-law, Go, return each to her mother's house.

The Lord deal kindly with you as ye have dealt with the dead and with me.

Verse 15, it says, And she said, Behold thy sister-in-law is gone back unto her people and unto her gods.

So if you're not very familiar with the story of Ruth, Ruth suffered a great loss.

Actually her and her sister and her mother-in-law suffered a great loss.

And it was a big deal for Ruth because this was her family, this was her livelihood, and now everything was shifted and she had to move from where she was and she decided that she was going to follow her mother-in-law, Naomi.

Now, Naomi is talking to her and telling her, look, you can go back to your mother's house, you can go back to what you know, you don't have to continue with me on this journey.

Now, for what Ruth decided to do, though, is she decided to move forward and do something different.

Instead of going back to her mother's house or going back to the religion she once was in and what was familiar to her, she decided that she was going to move forward and she was going to follow God and she was going to follow his leading.

In verse 16, Ruth responds by saying, entreat me not to leave thee or to return from following after thee.

For where thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge.

Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.

The Lord do so to me and more also if ought but death part thee from me.

So before I started at the University of Florida, I was at a different college and I was studying biology.

I was a biology student and also a Spanish major, so I was double majoring and I was stressed all the time, but I was having a good time.

And as I was studying biology, I was on the track.

I was really focused on, I'm going to take all of these science classes to go to medical school.

During the time when I was in school, we had to learn about plants.

We had a whole section of the biology 1 that was on plants.

Now while all the other students in the class hated it, I like fell in love with it.

I'm originally from Tampa, Florida and I had really virtually no farming background but I fell in love with agriculture right there just by seeing how beautiful God's nature is.

Am I going to stay at the university I am at now, where they don't have an agriculture major, or am I going to go to a different university?

So I remember I decided that day that I was going to go to another university and I decided that I was going to relocate back to Florida and apply to schools there because I knew there were some agricultural schools there.

So before though starting school, I went on this little journey And I love how God allows us to go on little journeys so that he can show us what it is He wants us to do So I remember I went on this little journey with God where I ended up in Alaska So I went to Alaska to visit family there And if you're looking at me, you're probably like black people live in rural Alaska.

And it was probably the the whole lot of them were my family the few that were there.

So But when I was there in Alaska, it was an amazing experience.

If you don't know my family, some of my family is here.

But my family, they are a lively bunch, and they are more lively about the Word of God than anything else.

So I remember I went there to Alaska and we're living in rural Alaska there's really not much to do pretty much you wake up go to work come back you know you can watch something read a book you know eat that's about it There's really not much to do.

So I remember whenever I would come back from work and I would come to their place, we were listening to sermons on AudioVerse all the time.

It was like we were watching the Super Bowl.

We were just diving into all of these messages and we'll be texting each other.

And while I was listening to these messages, I was learning more and more about God's message of agriculture and how his message of the medical missionary work and all these things, how they all come together for the last days and what God wants to do for us.

So when I made that decision there in Alaska to dig deeper into why I want to go into agriculture, it was an amazing experience because I was able to talk to the Lord and tell him, Lord I commit my ways to you.

Whatever it is that you want me to do, I want to do and I want to go where you want me to go.

And I can't explain to you the rush of peace that falls on you when you are deciding to follow whatever the Lord's will is for your life.

And as a barley plant, it has to be an independent thing that you do.

For the barley plant to even grow, it has to have an independent growth from the soil, independent from all the other stems for you to make it to the next stage in your life.

So the next stage that we have is stem extension.

So this happens between 3 to 4 weeks after plant emergence.

The stem's upper internodes begin to elongate.

Series

Journeys in Agriculture

04 Unearthing Our Hidden Treasure

Transcript

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