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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Hana Kahleova

The Mountain Experience

I finished my postdoctoral fellowship here in Loma Linda in 2016 and it's a blessing to be here and spend the Sabbath with you.

And for those of you who don't know me, Let me just share briefly my story.

I grew up in the communist former Czechoslovakia, which used to be under the rule of Russia.

Russia took over the country in 1968 and forced communism on the country and also atheism.

So in the school, you know, we were taught that intelligent people don't believe in God, that belief in God is for somebody who's old-fashioned.

And the propaganda was just drilled into us, and I didn't think much about it.

Then in 1989, you may recall that the Berlin Wall fell, and the communism fell also in our country.

Now we are free and there was a huge flux of religion of all kind.

And it was challenging to just orient yourself in this changing environment.

And there were a few times where I prayed as an atheist.

No matter what the propaganda says, you have a desire after God.

So as an atheist, I had a desire after God, and I prayed, God, if you exist, just reveal yourself to me.

And when I was 14 years old, a medical missionary came to our town and had lectures on a healthy lifestyle.

I attended all of them, and I started practicing everything right away.

And at the end of the health lectures, the local Seventh-day Adventist church offered Bible studies.

I don't know what's in the Bible, but maybe it's a part of my overall education.

Maybe I will just sign up for the Bible studies to see what's in the Bible.

And, you know, I'm glad I did because once I started reading the Gospels, I just fell in love with Jesus.

I thought, this is like the best I've ever read.

I've never read stories like this of somebody who would be so kind, so loving.

And I just want to give my heart to this God who loved me so much.

So I was baptized at the end of the Bible studies and decided to go to medical school.

And at the end of medical school, I observed the practice in the hospitals, and my heart really went out to people with diabetes.

Because when you looked at the food they were being served in the hospital, I just felt sick to my stomach.

You know, the state of art was just limiting carbohydrates.

And so once you start counting your bread and potatoes and rice, What are people mostly left up with?

They end up eating more meat and cheese, which make their diabetes even worse, make their diabetic complications come sooner, make them develop cardiovascular disease sooner.

But at that time, there was no study showing benefits of a plant-based diet in people with diabetes.

So I just decided right there that I would do such a study.

And right after medical school, I started my PhD program, and as a part of it, I did a study for people with type 2 diabetes using a plant-based diet, and we showed that it was twice as useful compared with the conventional carbohydrate counting approach.

The next step was people with diabetes are also recommended to eat many small meals during the day.

And I thought, this is just not working for them.

They need to control their blood sugar better.

And they're being told to eat many, many small meals during the day.

So we did a study comparing 6 small meals with only 2 meals a day, breakfast and lunch, in people with diabetes.

And we showed that the 2 meals a day worked much better with the same calories and the same diet.

The 2 meals a day worked much better for people with diabetes.

So I'm just praising the Lord that He opened this avenue and this door for me to tackle some of the problems that He laid on my heart.

And I know that there are many students and many people here who may be still looking for their special calling, what God has called them to do.

And I'd like to encourage you, look around and look if there's something that God is really putting on your heart, something that you cannot watch, something that you feel is wrong, needs to be fixed, and there are not enough tools.

And maybe God will give you the tools, you know, to fix, to help fix those problems.

And I'm just praising the Lord for all the opportunities.

If you'd like to learn more about the research that we've done, please come to the health seminar tomorrow.

And today I'd like to talk about meeting God on a mountain.

There's something special about mountains, right?

Wherever we are in the world, my son usually points to the highest peak that he can see and he's like, let's hike that mountain.

If you're like him, you may like hiking for some of the same reasons.

First of all, he enjoys the physical challenge.

You know, you get your sweat and it's challenging, but you just persist and you do it, you know?

And then at the end of it, there's a reward because there's the view that's just breathtaking and amazing.

And that's 1 of the most common reasons why people like hiking and like mountains.

They love the view, they love the reward.

There's also a third reason why he likes hiking, and that's the solitude.

The higher you hike, the less people, right?

And usually when you come to the top, there's hardly anybody.

So I noticed that if I want to have a deep conversation with my son, the best thing to do is do a hike with him, because then on the mountaintop, while we're eating our sandwich, we usually have the deeper conversations, deeper than usual, because there's just less distraction after some, you know, breaking a sweat and some perspiration.

Somehow the mind is calmer and is able to think clearer.

And you know, there's something special about being on a mountaintop alone and spending even time alone with God.

And We will be exploring some of the topics of mountains in the Bible.

The mountains are mentioned in the Bible 500 times.

And we'd like to start with a scripture reading.

Well, when we say mountains, what word comes to your mind first?

There's just something about mountains, right?

You climb and then there's something about seeing, you know, from a standpoint where, you know, things that you wouldn't be able to see otherwise.

And God has a special place for mountains in the Bible.

The scripture reading that I chose shows us that There is a place where God dwells.

So open the Bibles with me and let's read Psalm 24, verse 3.

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The Mountain Experience

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