AdAgrA 2022: Sharing the Blessings

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Evening Plenaries

Allen Lloyd

Optimizing Your Brain Through Agriculture

I was not always a fan of agriculture as I'm standing before you here this evening.

My father was an engineer, but we did live out in the country.

It took about 30 or 40 minutes for him to drive in to the tech center and design automobiles every day.

And I knew as an engineer he made good money, and I couldn't figure out why we had to grow our own food when we could just go down to the grocery store and buy it.

And of course, as part of it, that meant that I had to work on this farm.

And so, you know, I had to learn how to weed and till and a lot of care needed.

It was probably about a half acre that we were farming.

But in the fall of the year, I started to recognize how beneficial it was when our fruits and vegetables tasted so much better than what people were able to get from the store.

And also, I knew if it tasted that good, it would probably be healthier, although the studies hadn't necessarily been done yet.

And of course, that's more of a little boy growing up.

Actually, my dad has a movie camera of me out in that garden where the first thing I did was, of course, playing in the dirt.

This was 1 year of age, and I'm, of course, taking the dirt, and then I'm actually putting it in my mouth and eating the dirt as well.

And so I grew up in a garden eating dirt, and playing in the dirt, and working in the dirt.

And now, of course, I realize how beneficial it was for me in so many ways in regards to my own cognitive development and my own personal health at this age.

I think our we were having issues with the technology, and I think the switch produced some more issues.

Let me see if I can, we might actually be totally frozen here on the screen.

If we have a technology display expert, we might be able to use them here.

1 of my pet peeves also that I've seen a lot in literature is the talk about the oldest profession.

And you know, when the world talks about the oldest profession, they're actually wrong.

And the oldest profession clearly is actually gardening.

And of course, the Bible tells us that, and of course there's evidence outside of the Bible as well.

But in Genesis chapter 2, even before women came about, of course there was man.

The Lord God took the man and put him into what?

And I looked at a number of translations, and it's kind of interesting how different the words are depending on which translation it is.

But many of the translations say he put man in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it.

Other translations say he put him in there to till it, to tend it, to work it, and to care for it, and keep it.

And so this was actually the assigned profession of mankind.

You would think with all of our advanced technology and what many consider the most advanced computer on the market, we'd be able to simply show something on a screen.

But it's not quite as simple as it appears to just be able to translate what I'm seeing on my screen and for you to see it on your screen.

By the way, while he's getting that there, I don't know, some of you might have heard today that we had the first leader of the Western world announce to his parliament that the pandemic is over.

And this newest strain is no worse than the flu.

And so we don't have to do anything like we did before COVID came about, because now it's just the flu.

And so he said, if you're sick, take precautions.

But the pandemic is over in the United Kingdom.

And so now I'm not the medical officer in charge of this event here, still follow what they're telling you to follow here, but in general, this Omicron virus appears to be in many ways God's vaccine because it's not near as deadly as those original COVID viruses were.

And it's far more contagious, meaning that even if you don't wanna wear a vaccine and you wear masks everywhere, you're still going to get it.

And you're still going to develop immunity to it.

And so this is 1 of the reasons why the pandemic is over.

So there are advantages, many advantages, of gardening in regards to personal health.

And 1 of them is we can't really be involved and engaged in gardening without physical exercise.

And there are many advantages of physical exercise.

Exercise in a garden setting virtually uses all of your muscles.

You have to squat, You have to bend, you have to stretch.

And if you're just in a sport, like even running or a track and field, you're actually not using, necessarily, all of your muscles.

And so there are significant advantages to using all of them, particularly as we age in being able to maintain that muscle mass.

We often think of aging being important for our heart and internal organs, which it is.

But also our musculoskeletal condition is very important as we age.

And if we don't maintain integrity, our mitochondria, our energy-producing cells in our body, we are going to end up with fractures, we're going to end up in hospitals and complications can obviously occur.

So great flexibility and stretching activities and of course thirdly is the type of exercise that involves working in a garden especially involves working with your hands in 3 dimensions.

When you're working with your hands in 3 dimensions, you're actually increasing the circulation of the front part of your brain.

The back part of the frontal lobe is where our hand motion is at.

Some people have asked me, particularly some of our Weimar students, can I work on my hands in 3D by doing 3D video games on a screen?

And so working on the screens are not something that is beneficial as far as your frontal lobe, even though you might be doing a lot of different hand motions.

And so we want to have that real three-dimensional activity.

Eric Sigmund says, working with one's own hands in a real world 3D environment is imperative for full what?

I don't know how much lower my IQ would be if my father hadn't insisted that we work in that garden, but I can tell you it would be lower than it is today.

And it was working with my hands in 3D that was actually helping my cognitive and intellectual development.

And of course, if you go to public schools today, even in big public schools you won't see classes on woodwork in many of them, or metalwork, or craft.

Even car mechanic classes have been dropped by many schools.

Of course, when you learn to play the violin, you're working with your hands in 3 dimensions as well.

And 1 of the advantages of learning to play an instrument such as this.

But what's replaced it is computers and screens.

And our world has become much more of a software instead of a screwdriver society.

Research is showing that increasing time spent in the virtual world of computers is displacing hands-on play, hands-on learning, displacing gardening.

And 3D learning allows young people to experience how the world works in practice, to gain an understanding of materials and processes, and to make informed judgments, even about abstract concepts.

Christina Ford

Angela Ford

Our Little Roadside Farm

As Paul said, I'm Christina, and this is my mom, Angela.

And let's just start with a quick word of prayer before we get started.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this opportunity to be here and to share how you've led in our lives.

I pray that it will be an encouragement to someone here tonight in how you're leading in their lives as well.

And I just pray that you will be with us now in Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, by way of introduction, I am going to share a little video with you of an introduction to our family.

And as my mom says, hold on to your seats a little bit because we do a lot of cheats.

Okay, take the mic and go down to the projector.

I thought it was a fine time to meet your farmers.

I'm Christina, also known as Stinky, but I'm certainly not the only farmer.

He's a nurse most days, but on his days off, he helps us with the hard stuff, like plowing and irrigation.

My mom, Angela, helps me with everything from planting seeds to making bouquets.

My older sister Vanessa is the chief cook and bottle washer.

Her husband, Sean, well, he can fix all kinds of problems.

My sister, Brianna, is an expert in graphic design and media, and brother James, he loves to drive a tractor.

We hope you'll enjoy sharing our fun this summer as we share the journey of the planting seed that will end up on your table in big, beautiful bouquets.

OK, so that's just a little bit about our family.

We are just a small representation here and we wanted you to realize that this is a lot bigger than just the 2 of us.

So let's start with our story back in 1997.

I was born in Southern California where my dad was going to school at Loma Linda University.

My parents had their hearts set on moving out of the city.

And my sisters had their hearts set on moving to a little farm.

And each day they would go into the closet and pray, dear Jesus, please help us to find a house with a little red barn and no pigs.

So fast forward to 2000, and we relocated to the Wenatchee Valley in Washington state.

And we lived temporarily in a couple different trailers and even then I remember that my parents were very intentional about planting a garden and having us kids involved in that.

Eventually they did find a house on the outskirts of a little town called Kashmir.

And there was a house that needed a lot of fixing up.

And there was a bright little red barn and A pig pen, but no pigs.

It was Friday afternoon when we found this farm, farm, homestead.

And the realtor wanted us to go to the office right away and write up a proposal.

Sabbath comes at 04:00 up there in the north.

She's like, There's so many people putting in their offers on the house.

We said, the house is what we're looking for.

Obviously, it's an answer to our kids' prayers.

But if it's meant to be, it'll still be there on Monday.

Sunday morning, bright and early, she calls us and said, let's do this now.

So we had our little miracle and the place was ours.

So right away we started a little garden there and we started filling up the little red barn with all sorts of critters.

We had a little pony and bunnies and chickens And I have to say that it really was a dream come true for us kids.

We're a second generation of homeschoolers.

Every year I went through the book Education.

Our ideas of education take too narrow and too low a range.

There is need of a broader scope, a higher aim.

True education means more than a pursuit of a certain course of study.

It means more than a preparation for the life that now is.

It has to do with the whole being and with the whole period of existence possible to man.

It is the harmonious development of the physical, the mental, the spiritual powers.

It prepares the students for the joy of service in this world and for the higher joy of wider service in the world to come.

As we tried to align the education and training of our girls as closely as we could to the plan laid out in that book And by the Bible, we understood that character training is far more important than workbook learning.

The love for God, obedience, service, practical skills, and a strong work ethic were at the top of our list for the most necessary developments.

And I believe that the best place to teach your children these things is in the garden.

Teach them how to make a garden, how to prepare the soil for seed, and the importance of keeping all the weeds pulled out.

Teach them also how important it is to keep the unsightly injurious practices out of the life.

Teach them to keep down wrong habits as they keep down the weeds in their gardens.

It'll take time to teach these lessons, but it will pay, greatly pay.

So my dad has always worked a full-time job at the hospital.

He usually had 1 or 2 days in a week dedicated to helping out with various things, the hard stuff as our video said, and encouraging our endeavors.

But the vision and most of the groundwork has always come from my mom.

She's the 1 that's actually had us out in the garden and doing stuff.

Most of you, or a lot of you know my parents, Frank and Janet Fournier.

And so we were in agriculture in most of the places I lived.

And I longed to give my children the experience of more land, better soil, and more opportunities in agriculture in a big way.

And I remember clearly God speaking to my heart 1 day, and he just asked me, what is in your hand?

And then I looked out the window, and I knew I had to learn to be content with what I had and make the most of all that God had given us.

He had given us 2 and a half acres of mountainside, and there actually were an abundance of opportunities to be discovered right there.

So 1 day I said, let's plant a whole section of tomatoes and we'll see if the kids can sell them.

We started the seedlings in the house under lights, but we soon outgrew the laundry room.

My husband built us a series of greenhouses over the years, each 1 a bit bigger than the last, and after planting our very first big tomato patch we had leftover plants.

Trying to make the most of what we had, we offered those plants for a donation towards the girls' different mission trips that they were saving for.

While We did sell tomatoes and tried out farmers markets and sold to fruit stands and all of that.

The tomato plant soon became our specialty.

First, an organic feed store owner asked us to grow all his plants.

Then, market gardeners had us start their plants because they didn't have a greenhouse.

Then other various opportunities came to share our seedlings.

I loved connecting with the community and having people come out to our place to pick out their plants.

Dwayne Lemon

Lessons from the Soil

I pray that you all are experiencing the blessings of the Lord.

We have a lot to talk about this morning and I don't want to belabor the time or the point on anything.

We're dealing with lessons from the soil and this is really really an important message as are all the messages.

So let's prepare our hearts to receive the word.

I'm going to go to my knees for a word of prayer.

If you'd like to you can certainly join me.

If you cannot kneel you can just bow your head to where you are but Let's pray together at this time.

Our Father in heaven, we are truly grateful, Lord, for another beautiful morning.

And thank you for allowing us to get even a greater glimpse of the sunshine than yesterday.

We pray that we'll receive more and still more of it as well as its healing rays.

And Lord, as we are here tabernacling together, most importantly with you and your Spirit, we just pray that you might truly bless us and open our eyes and help us behold wondrous things out of your word.

And this is our prayer that we do ask in the worthy and mighty name of Jesus.

When we deal with the subject of lessons from the soil, I was trying to find a picture many, many years ago.

And, you know, I got a house filled with 20 year olds and I'm grateful for my children and I remember way back when before they even were hitting their teens our first gardening experience we had the privilege of getting a home out in the country in Georgia and when we were there you know we're I'm a city kid through and through.

I mean, I am from New York and I am a New Yorker.

And so I remember the first time using a chainsaw and chopping wood and trying to put it in a wood stove.

I'm like, what am I doing with a wood stove?

You know, it's like, you know, it's just, you kind of have to get around all of that.

And I remember when my boys, you know, we would have these raised beds, and we had to learn how to till.

I don't know if till is a bad word at this conference.

I heard my wife came back and told me something about not tilling.

So, I was like, all right, we're gonna have to talk about that.

You know, I spent all these years learning how to till.

But you know, it's like I remember, you know, my boys and everybody, we're all there just kind of working that soil.

And it was just kind of like this first experience for us, learning lessons from the soil.

And it was kind of like, before I was even looking into it.

We've always believed in true education as a family, but this was my first time becoming acquainted with the garden, et cetera, and agriculture.

And I realized there are lots and lots of lessons you can learn from the soil.

And so today, we're just going to review 3, just 3.

But please, I assure you, there's so much more.

You'll remember that we have the blessed herald, the first, second, and the third angel's message.

All of these messages are relevant today.

Even though we're living in the time of the great emphasis of the third angel, the first and the second are most certainly still relevant.

In that first angel's message, we know that we're told, you know, I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell upon the earth, to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, fear God and give glory to him for the hour of his judgment is come.

Worship him that made heaven and the earth and the sea and the fountains of waters." Now, this is not a suggestion.

God is calling his people to fear him, to give him glory, and to worship him who made, who created.

Now, let's go to Psalm 8, the 8th division of the Psalms.

And I want us to watch something, because there's a way, you know, you can tell people to worship God.

You remember I gave us a little assignment yesterday where I talked about how, you know, we need to talk about how can we use object lessons in the inner city, because I think we get it as far as in the country, but how can we go into an inner city and work with the people?

Now, yes, we're called to be like Enoch, You know, go into the cities and always bring somebody back home.

You know, people in the country, they make me laugh sometimes.

We make painstaking effort to get out of the city into the country, and then when we're in the country we spend more time indoors than outdoors.

And the same thing goes for conferences you know it's like no way the conference has to be in a country location and then people don't have enough time because there's meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting to even get time to enjoy the country location that we made painstaking efforts to get into.

Now, brothers and sisters, all I'm simply saying is if you're going to move into the country, you should do it under God's blueprint.

You should understand what God says, and he did not give us country home so we could be selfish with it We are supposed to understand that when we get out of the city into the country and we develop our little watch these words heavens on earth Is that what your home looks like?

If it doesn't look like that, you got more work to do.

That was always what God wanted for our homes, to be a little heaven on earth.

Imagine your home in the country is a little heaven on earth.

Now, when you go into those cities, you can say, hey, I need you to come with me.

And the people in the inner cities are like, where we're going?

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Series

Evening Plenaries

Optimizing Your Brain Through Agriculture

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Optimizing Your Brain Through Agriculture

52m

Our Little Roadside Farm

46m

Lessons from the Soil

47m

Country Living a Step in Faith

1h 5m

Sound Doctrine