How God taught me how to use food to reach my local community.

Bite Size Talks 2019	

<div>How God taught me how to use food to reach my local community.</div>

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ASI Pacific Union

Nick	 Stroot

Health Message In Action	

So, like I said, my name is Nick Strute and I'm from Wichita, Kansas.

We'll have the slides up in just a second.

I've never been to Southern California before and it's beautiful.

So I'm the chef and owner of Garden Grill.

I'm the chef and owner of Garden Grill and I'll explain about that in a minute, but I need to tell you how I got to have my own business.

So photography is kind of a hobby of mine, so I'm going to use some of my photos from Kansas to share with you, give you a taste of what it's like, and a little background with the business and everything.

Kansas is flat, but it's still very beautiful and I've enjoyed living there and I've lived there all my life.

My family and I live in a town called Bel Air.

Wichita is 1 of the bigger cities in Kansas.

My wife and I met 13 years ago and we just like hit it off.

And 1 of those reasons was we were both really interested in health.

At that time, I was not Adventist, not a vegetarian, not a vegan.

Was eating the healthy version of the standard American diet, lean chicken and rice and things like this.

We were exercising, and it was just something we can connect with.

And we talked about it all the time and motivating each other along.

And yeah, this is 1 of the pictures of Kansas.

It's Even though we don't have mountains in the ocean.

You just, you gotta be motivated, you gotta get out and look for the nice things in Kansas.

But the next slide, I believe, is The 1 after that.

400, 000 people or so, something like that.

This is my family my wife and my 2 boys So So we got really serious about health whenever we After 4 years, we we dated and we decided we were ready to get married.

And neither of us wanted to do like the big grand marriage in the church and everything.

And We did not want to do that, so we decided to get married in Jamaica.

So to get ready for that, you know, you want to be beach ready, so we, you know, revamped, you know, and just ramped up for the, to get healthy again and get in good shape and everything.

And so I started reading some books and I came across a book about the vegetarian diet.

I don't recall what name of it actually was, but when I read it, it made logical sense to me.

You know, what I knew about the body, I'd learned stuff in biology in high school and everything.

And we've of course got a little dog, her name's Roxy.

So then, so as I was learning this, I was like, I can't just ignore this information that I've learned, so I've got to test it out.

And I started making 1 vegan, no, it was actually a vegetarian meal for dinner at least once a week.

And, you know, if the meal was good, I'd write it down in my little notebook and kind of kept it to the side.

And if it wasn't, we'd try it again or try a different 1.

And just did this pretty regularly for quite a few months.

We'd still eat meat and stuff during that time.

But that was in June and by the time we came back A few months later in September, I decided to go completely vegetarian.

I ate fish for the last time and then that was it.

Then shortly after that, my wife got a gift card to a vegan restaurant owned by an Adventist in Wichita called De Sozo.

We went there and ate, and the food was amazing.

I'm going to demo 1 of the first things I had there a little later today.

They were offering cooking classes, and so I was like, well, I'd never taken a cooking class before.

I got a book called God's Answers to Your Questions.

And it had some answers that to, you know, it introduced to me something that I didn't know before.

I'd always known that the Sabbath is Saturday, and I also know that the vegetarian diet or the vegan diet is the healthiest that we should do.

And so to me it was like, well, this makes logical sense.

God wants us to eat this way, and Saturday is the Sabbath, but not a lot of other Christians are, you know, keeping it.

I was like, well, I can trust these people, this made, these made sense, and so I wanted to hear more.

I got invited to a Bible study by my friend Eric, and before I went to that Bible study, I was like, I need to check these people out.

So I got online and searched for an Adventist sermon.

I downloaded the whole Revelation seminar and put it on the MP3 player and listen to that thing straight through and yeah, it was a it made quite a difference.

Everything that I had heard the Holy Spirit Showed that it was it was correct indeed So September quit eating meat learn this in like October November by December.

I was going to 3 angels Church in Wichita, Kansas and So about a year later I had I Was during that time I was working construction, about a year later I quit the construction job and was working for some Adventists that had a, like a handyman, like a handyman ministry, and we would do handyman jobs around town and be able to witness in that.

It closed a year later and at that time the chef at DeSouza, Chef Miguel Larche, he and his wife opened the Garden Grill Cafe in Wichita And I heard about that and somebody said hey chef wants you because I was in his cooking class at DeSoto He's like hey chef wants you to to interview and I was like When I took the cooking class and I met this guy I was like man I just I'd like to work for this guy someday I was in construction at that time And I was thinking this and so this door got open and I'm you know I met him and we sat down and him and his wife interviewed me and hired me on the spot and I was like, I never I've never done restaurant before He's like no, that's okay.

Cuz that's better because I can train you the way I want to train you.

He taught me so patiently for 3 years in the kitchen.

Just me and him for 3 years straight in there.

We had a couple people in the kitchen that would help off and on, but I was his right-hand man.

And it was his business, but I was with him and and helped and everything So I worked him for him for about 3 years and during that time my wife and I had our first son Brecken after we had him we were living in like like a what do you call like 1 of those a neighborhood with not a gated community, but we had a homeowners association.

I grew up kind of like on 5 acres outside of Colwich, which is a small town nearby, and went to my grandparents' farm on the weekends and stuff.

So I was used to being outside, and I was like, you know, I prayed, I was like, Lord, I don't know how to raise a kid in this city.

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Health Message In Action

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