Join Abigail Shaw, agri­cul­ture con­sul­tant and founder of Flor•ish Farms, and Keith Hankins, author, market farmer and con­sul­tant, as they speak about how agri­cul­ture has shaped their lives. Learn the impor­tance of knowing your purpose in agri­cul­ture and how it impacts your future life. You won’t want to miss this inspir­ing talk.

AdAgrA 2023: Digging Deeper

<p>Join Abigail Shaw, agri­cul­ture con­sul­tant and founder of Flor•ish Farms, and Keith Hankins, author, market farmer and con­sul­tant, as they speak about how agri­cul­ture has shaped their lives. Learn the impor­tance of knowing your purpose in agri­cul­ture and how it impacts your future life. You won’t want to miss this inspir­ing talk.</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

Youth Track: The Heavenly Entrepreneur

Gabriel McClover

What is a Heavenly Entrepreneur?

For you guys who did not come in, you're just coming in, my name is Gabriel McClover.

And my wife and I, we own a restaurant in Somerville, Georgia called the Vineyard Cafe.

So really excited to be a part of this track.

So earlier this year I was down in Florida, we were catering something and I met a young lady, her name was Abigail, and when I was talking to her, you guys are going to hear from her a little bit later, about her testimony and how the Lord was leading her into agriculture and entrepreneurship, that was the inspiration of saying, you know what, let me see if we can create something, which is this, which is called At AgriFlame.

So by God's grace, we were able to come together.

I got a couple other young people who use GuySaw on that video.

We came up with these principles, and you may not be able to see all of them, but I'm gonna read them for you.

Who has heard of personal development before?

You're gonna hear more about this as we go along.

Somebody coming alongside of us and helping us along the way.

I know this is a young people, and I hear this a lot, young people, they tend to say, adults say, young people think they what?

And I look at it as I work with young people, I say I don't know if they think they know it all, I just think they can figure it out by themselves.

So mentorship is incredibly important in terms of success.

If you look at the most wealthiest people on the planet, guys like the guy, you know, Jeff Bezos and these guys, each 1 of these guys have mentorship, they have mentors, they have coaches in their lives.

You think, wait a minute, you're worth all these billions of dollars?

They said, no, I need somebody to mentor me, to hold me accountable.

When you guys are in school, you have your teachers to hold you accountable, your principals to hold you accountable.

But as you get older, you're an adult, and you have nobody to hold you accountable.

So coaches are there and mentors are there to hold us accountable.

Who came to the morning prayer this morning?

Let me tell you, it was a powerful experience.

You know, my goal is to pack out that room, so we give some problems to the logistics people that are like, wait a minute, The whole conference is coming to the prayer room.

The importance of prayer is incredibly important.

So we as young people, we're going to talk about that more as we go along.

Teamwork, we're going to have some team building activities that is going to be happening today as we go along, which is going to be a lot of fun.

This is what we are, the Adventist Agriculture Association.

We talk about agriculture and the importance of growing our food.

Not everybody in here is going to be a market farmer.

Not everybody is going to be here and say, you know what, I'm gonna find a trade in agriculture, but everybody in here needs to understand the importance of growing our own food.

Self-dependence, now who, in 2020, what happened?

Young people have learned new vocabulary.

They understand COVID-19 and then after that they had the, what is it, the Omeron, Omnicron.

They just started making up more names for this thing, man.

COVID shut down the world, and what we saw with the food supplies, we went to grocery stores, because we, me and my family, we travel, we see grocery stores, And it was like, where's the food?

So we as young people need to get educated, and then we need to grow our own food and to teach others.

Can't just learn this stuff and sit down and twirl our thumbs.

Young people are the energy of the church.

Let me tell you, you have a bunch of young people who are on fire to do something.

My daughter, we were talking about the different challenges that I'm like, y'all got some challenges to face that we didn't have to face, right?

There's people that are on the highest points in our government.

Gets asked the question, could you tell me the difference between a boy and a girl?

And so now we're seeing in this world that there is some serious challenges that face us.

And we as God people need to be grounded so much in this word and grounded so much in truth that we may be able to stand in this time.

And so as we look at that so our lives right I'm young right I'm young right you guys are young I think I'm young I just turned 40 I'm still young I'm young man tell you man we we got some young missionaries working with us, man.

They're over there falling asleep on a chair.

So people always ask, Gabe, how do you get so much done?

Like, you do a lot, you got a lot of stuff going on.

You are Uniquely and Wonderfully Made

We're gonna be doing a workshop on personality assessments.

Sometimes we work with people that get on our nerves, and could it be you?

So this workshop done at a corporate level, they actually bring in people and pay big money for people to do a workshop very similar to this because The idea is to create effective communication between team members.

So a lot of that is understanding each other.

So what I'm going to do, I'm going to open up with some prayer.

And I'm actually going to be doing this presentation with Pastor Victor.

He's a pastor up in the Michigan Conference and we have been working on this pre, you know, talking about these concepts and ideas and we're presenting it to you young people.

So if you bow your heads with me as we pray.

Father in heaven, we are just so grateful, Lord, for this individuality that you have given us to be unique, and we understand that you have called us to do a mighty work.

So we pray, Lord, that we're able to understand who you've created us to be even more that we may be effective may be able to effectively work with our brothers and sisters.

So be with us as we start in Jesus name, amen.

Alright, so last time I presented I asked if anybody had their Bibles.

I love these first 8 or 9 verses because I call it the balanced chapter, the balanced verses.

Put your eyes on Ecclesiastes chapter 3, and we're gonna go all the way to verse 8.

And the Bible reads, to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

A time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted.

A time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to get, and a time to lose, a time to keep, and a time to cast away, a time to rend, and a time to sow, a time to keep silent, and a time to speak, a time to love, and a time to hate, a time of war, and a time of peace.

So I look at that chapter, and I'm like, wow.

What that means, there is a time in the season for everything that is done in the sun.

You go to a funeral, is that the time to be playing tag?

Is that the time to be running around and laughing?

When you're at a church service, is that the time to play tag or run around?

We understand if we're on the playground, like you know, we were just talking at lunch, we were talking about a story, it was working with some missionaries, and somebody locked the keys in the car, and we thought we were good at breaking into cars, and it didn't work out, and we end up playing freeze tag for about 3 hours until the store actually opens.

So it is a time to have fun and a time to relax.

And I love how God allows us to have these emotions, right?

Sadness and disappointment are synonyms, right?

And these are all emotions that God has given us, but for particular times and seasons, right?

Why, well, God, we're saying, why have God didn't give us a spirit of fear, but sometimes when you're walking, maybe not it's not fear, but it's a thing of alertness.

You know, there's something, when you're walking in the woods, you know, I moved from the city, you know, I lived in the city, man, so I go out into the country and I have, I got a dog.

You know, I wasn't a dog person, but I'm like, they have usefulness, you know, so let's get a dog.

So we're walking in the woods and we're just having a good old time and all of a sudden the dog stops and he starts looking over there.

And so guess what, you know, my heart starts pounding a little bit, it's a natural reaction, and I'm thinking, do I gotta run, is that a lion coming?

I'm thinking there's lions and bears, and where we at, there's only deer.

But he was really focused, and it was like, I wouldn't say it was fear, but it was a level of alertness that came up.

My heart was pounding, adrenaline started flowing like a flight was coming up.

And you know, that's a natural response that God has given us.

It was a lady, and I do a presentation talking about this, and she was, no, it was a guy, and he was working at an apartment building, and all of a sudden, this kid was playing in their car, and the car literally rolled over the kid.

So the brother said, oh, he ran over there, literally picked the car up, pulled the baby out.

And people are like, how did you do that?

But there's story after story of that happening.

And what it is is our body is literally giving up.

When those emotions happen, our body starts.

And there's a whole scientific, if I had the slide, I'll show it to you.

Amygdala and everything, adrenaline starts, cortisol starts flowing, and our heart starts beating a little bit faster, our blood vessels open up, it's like the body is trying to give us this super move to really deal with the challenge that's in front of us.

So God has given us all these emotions, but as we read in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, there's an aspect of we have these emotions, God has given us emotions, but God is asking us to control these emotions.

We need to control these emotions, right?

You know, we got some young people in here.

You know, I always say God didn't make boys and girls to be attracted to rocks and trees, right?

It's, they have, God is designed to be attracted to the opposite sex, right?

But what God wants us to do is to control those emotions, right, to take a step back, control it, get some wise counsel, pray, see if this is God's leading.

There's a lot of different things that the Lord has, and it's all about control.

God was all, and you look at Christ, this brother was over his emotions.

Has anybody ever been falsely accused of anything?

And you're like, I just walked in the door.

And so immediately what you want to do is do what?

That was not me and automatically you want to defend yourself.

Keith Hankins

Abigail Shaw

Why I Grow: How Does Agriculture Impact My Future?

And also sorry if you did not get 1 of those worksheets.

Maybe you can just look alongside, something beside you.

And it's actually, if you got the email for the handouts, it'll be there.

So if you go to your phone and go to like downloads you could like see the document there but I didn't want to get some more we didn't get enough that's okay so we're gonna start with prayer and then we'll get right into it dear heavenly father thank you for this beautiful sunshiny day and the recreation that we just got to do.

Please be with us during this time and help us to be ready to learn and to, yeah, learn something new.

So our class is entitled, Why I Grow, and How Does Agriculture Impact My Future?

How many of you guys actually participate in some sort of agriculture, gardening, growing of some sort?

All right, for those of you who don't, OK.

For those who don't, are you interested yet or not yet?

And we don't really know each other so we're just going to fumble through this.

Alright so the purpose of this class is, what is the purpose of this class?

The purpose of the class is to help you love agriculture more and to see how you can be successful in any field, whether it's agriculture or not, how you can determine your success.

And what we gained from preparing this class, at least me personally, it helped me to focus, or at least try and focus on where I'm going with agriculture and kind of like buckle down again.

So hopefully this can do that for you, especially going through this worksheet.

We're gonna try and get to that really quick so this can be interactive and you guys aren't just staring at us talking.

And what we hope you gain from this class, I just said that.

I was doing a two-week intensive gardening training.

But I've also worked on a few different farms.

And I kind of go around and like build gardens for people.

And my experience is just from, I started learning gardening after watching documentary, and then people just started saying, hey, can you come help me here?

I didn't realize that I was developing my career in agriculture without even trying.

So it's kind of a cool thing that this field is wide open for young people to really get out there and develop a business or start a farm or help people with their gardens, and you really don't have to try to get to any work.

So yeah, worked on Bountiful Blessings Farm in Tennessee for 2 years.

Developed a homestead in Western Washington.

I worked on Tobias Gardens in South Dakota.

I developed a market garden and homestead in Northern California last year.

I designed and led on a community garden project in Texas, not too far from here.

Well, kind of far, it's like 3 hours, but not too far for some of you guys who came out here.

So between working and educating and just learning myself, that's what I've been up to.

And those are just pictures from my adventures.

So I had a little different path to starting in agriculture.

I grew up, I did not like gardening at all.

But about a couple years ago, I decided to go back into it and started doing a market garden.

I started growing, and now I have a micro farm in northern Florida.

We also have a microgreen CSA, which is kind of unheard of.

I pitched the idea to a lot of you may know of Elliot Coleman, his daughter.

And she was like, I've never heard of that before, but it might be successful.

And so I tried it out, and I really love it.

I help people set up their farms and their gardens.

I worked at an institution as their farm manager and helped set up a community garden there as well.

And on the farm, we grow micro greens, low maintenance crops, such as greens, root veggies, beets, carrots, radishes, and those type of things.

We are getting involved in farmers markets.

I do a lot of individual customer sales in the community and teach a lot of lectures at different places.

So that's kind of a little bit about me slash the farm.

So I came back from California, working on the project, helping this family start a market garden I did that and I was like, okay what I want to do now and so I've got a lot of people like in my ears saying dude just do like Consulting and like this food scaping like build gardens for people kind of thing.

And hopefully, I can get the courage to just kind of jump into it and go for that.

But if you have questions about that area, ask her.

So currently, I am in a transition period too.

But my transition period is I'm kind of shifting the direction that the farm takes to more consulting and only growing seasonally now.

Due to some health issues that I have, it's very hard for me to grow year-round because I run the farm myself with a farm hand that I hired.

Cristina Felea

Your Success Depends Upon This ONE Talent

Dear Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for the opportunity that we have to gather here together as young people.

And we just ask for a special blessing upon each of us and the things that we're going to be learning.

I pray that you may be with me, that you may speak through me and that you may give us your Holy Spirit, that you may speak to our hearts in this session.

Well, my name is Christina and I currently live in Kentucky.

I'm about to transition to Arkansas to start a little homestead with my family.

And in Kentucky, I work at an outpost called Red River Outpost, and it's a missionary center.

It's been around for about 4 years and I was there first as a student and then I became a staff later on We began in 2018 and we have a little sanitarium Well, actually that is starting up this year and we started a bakery a restaurant and I was doing marketing for them along with many miscellaneous things.

But yeah, that's a little bit of what I've been doing these past few years.

You're going to hear more of my story throughout this presentation.

And You know, today I want to talk about something that has been very important to me.

And we're going to continue to build upon what Gabriel already spoke on personal development.

So we're going to talk about this 1 talent.

We tried to figure out this screen, but it wasn't working.

So we're also going to use our imagination and I'm going to read for you.

But we're going to talk about a talent that we are, that is going to basically, what is our success depending on?

And so when you think about, when you read this, your success depends upon this 1 talent.

What comes to your mind when you hear the word success?

You can just share anything that comes to your mind.

Accomplished, you reach your goals, yeah.

Yeah, you know, in this world, there's a lot of people that are wondering how can I can I make my life a success and many of us probably we have thought about that question too is that how can I make my life a success And I want to talk a little bit about my experience?

I was like I knew exactly what I was gonna do in life I was like, yeah I'm gonna be a wildlife veterinarian and I'm going to be taking care of animals and I'm gonna do all of this I'm gonna just travel the world and go to different safaris and help the you know lions and all these kind of things I had this great idea and I pursued that idea until the end of high school So I am originally from Romania and I grew up in Spain and in Spain we finished high school at 16.

So I was already ready to think about university and I'm like okay I need to get into a degree but then our family moved to the United States so that was about 8 years ago and I came to a point where I was like okay I want to be a veterinarian and I wanted to also do biology and all these kind of things and I was like but I came to a to a crossroads in my life and I had to decide is this truly what I what God is calling me to do so when oftentimes when we think about success our gaze is very narrow at least the way that the world sees it because through the scriptures we're able to widen our gaze into what that looks like for us, for our lives and practically.

So this verse right here is something that really helped me to figure out what I should be doing with my life.

It says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." So when I read this verse I was like, wait a minute, you mean that God has a something higher and better than I ever thought about?

Like I can't even conceive the whole plan that he has for my life and I'm over here thinking I've got it all figured out like I know exactly what I want to do and I'm gonna pursue it and I'm gonna do it, but you mean to tell me that God has something better Well praise the Lord that is the case, But that is when our gaze gets widened.

We're able to see even more of our life's calling.

And in a war, there are different departments and ranks and all these kinds of things.

So you have your soldiers, you have Air Force, you have mechanics, nurses, doctors, etc.

I don't know all of them, not very versed in this area.

But yeah, everybody has different roles, but what do they have?

Do you think the mechanic that is working on the jets has the same purpose and the same goal in the war?

Like he wants the whole team to win, the whole army, the whole country.

So that means that each of them, even though they have different callings, different departments that they're working on, they have to make sure they're faithful because the more faithful they are, the more chances they have at winning the war, even if it's a cook that is cooking for the soldiers.

Series

Youth Track: The Heavenly Entrepreneur

Why I Grow: How Does Agriculture Impact My Future?

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Financial Freedom Seminar

Establishing Our Plans: The Financial Planning Pyramid

1h 3m

Special Interests

The Sabbatical – Binding Burden or Bountiful Blessing?

56m

Plenary

We Walk By Faith

1h 41m

True Education

Communion with God in Nature

1h 1m

What Now?

1h 19m

Young Professionals

Goal Setting and Time Management

42m

Making a House a Home

06 Building a Financial Foundation

1h 3m

Financing Yourself

Financing Yourself- Part 1

1h 15m

Where is Elijah?

1h

Bible Study

26m

Roundtable

Successful Marketing, Planning for Profitability

1h 43m

Extracting the Hurt and Filling a Need

Building an Abundant Life God’s Way in the Life and the Practice

1h

Sound Doctrine