I was delivered via emergency C-section at an Adventist hospital 45 years ago. Although I don’t remember meeting an Adventist for the next 35 years, I know there were powerful and effective prayers in that operating room. When I was nine, my love for animals grew into an aversion to eating them. My grandmothers were horrified when I declared myself a vegetarian, imagining I would become sickly and stunted, but my decision stuck. When the time came to apply for college, I was intrigued to learn I could study nutrition. Maybe, I thought, I could learn enough to get my grandmas to relax! A mission trip to Mexico after graduation, where I saw children who were actually sickly and stunted, made me think that maybe there might be something more to my major.
In college, I explored my lingering questions about health and diet through papers I wrote on vegetarianism. Who did I end up learning about? Seventh-day Adventists! Already in the 1980s, it was clear that their diets were promoting health and preventing chronic disease, but in my mind, their faith was somehow off limits, beyond the realm of “true” Christianity.
In my junior year at Virginia Tech, the nutrition department started a master’s level concentration in International Development. I begged my advisor to let me do it as an undergrad, but the first answer was “no.” Like the persistent widow, I kept trying until I was finally told, “Fine, you can do it, but you will never get a real job.” So be it, I thought; I’ll get to do the work of Jesus.
Upon graduation, I traveled first to Romania and then to Brazil, witnessing the ravages of malnutrition firsthand in orphanages, rural villages, and urban slums. Then life clipped my wings, and I ended up in Washington, D.C., caring for my sister who was ill. It was hard to be “home,” but it ended up being a major plus. I was 15 minutes from Silver Spring, Maryland—a vegetarian mecca. As I shopped at Adventist stores, I never asked workers what motivated their faith, and they never offered.
Fast forward a decade, during which time I obtained a master’s in public health from Johns Hopkins, got married, and worked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That job ended when I became a mom and really learned about human service—the 24/7 kind. Then our family relocated to my husband’s hometown of 700 people in rural Illinois. Once we got settled, we tilled up our yard and started a garden. Usually, as I hoed the weeds and tended my vegetables, I had my baby on my back and imagined similar women all over the world.
I stepped my first toe into an Adventist church for a vegetarian cooking class a few years later. Much to my surprise, I was greeted by Cherri Olin, whom I had met before when I was new to the area, but we had lost touch. She became a dear friend, but I was still only interested in the healthy food. Little did I know at that time that new, powerful prayers on my family’s behalf began in earnest.
How I finally became baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church on December 19, 2015, is a long story that weaves in Adventist schools, lots more prayer, and, finally, Uganda. A few years ago, I started attending the church because circumstances made Adventist education the only suitable option for my daughters. I wanted to make sure their weekly devotionals and daily Bible class wouldn’t be indoctrinating them into a cult. That’s how clueless I was. But God met me there.
During the first week I attended church, the offering was 100 percent for ADRA, and the sermon focused entirely on the health message of the Bible, revealing how God’s biblical wisdom had protected the lives of his people. The preacher was Jack Blume, a 90-year-old. I’d never heard a sermon like that before! During that worship service and many more to follow, I knew God sought to assure me that I was in the right place.
When I heard about NEW START, I knew it was a treasure. So simple, yet so effective. What I had learned in college was now in mainstream news stories, like the Blue Zone of Loma Linda, California. But what God was laying on my heart was the desire to more effectively harness the power of the health message to impact the developing world, where 75 percent of the people depend on subsistence agriculture for their survival, and accessing clean drinking water is a real challenge. One Sabbath afternoon, while reading, I thought of a new acronym that might help. FARM STEW: Farming, Attitude, Rest, Meals, Sanitation, Temperance, Exercise, and Water. I hoped that FARM STEW would evoke the image of a hearty and healthful soup made of locally grown crops, like Jacob’s irresistible lentil stew with which he gained his birthright.
In 2015, I was given the opportunity to try out the idea in Uganda. My first Sabbath there, I attended a church that was co-housed with an Adventist school with over 1,200 students, 70 percent of whom were Muslim. I was smitten by them! My official assignment was to work with a farming cooperative whose 60,000 members had decided they wanted assistance learning to process the soybeans they grew. We made “meals” in hands-on vegetarian cooking classes, featuring soy and using the Bible as our primary text. The community response was tremendously positive.
I partnered with four local Adventist church members and formed a soy nutrition team. So far, this team of Ugandans has trained over 4,000 people, exposing them to the everlasting gospel as well. Their witness was the tipping point that gave me the strength to join the Adventist church, with peace that passed my understanding, even in the face of harsh critique. They sent pictures of hundreds of Ugandan Adventists praying for me!
Call to Action: Sharing the Love & Healing Power of Jesus
Since then, God has been flinging doors wide open. I dream that FARM STEW could mobilize a global Adventist workforce in highly efficient, small teams to reach out with the love and healing power of Jesus to villages, towns, and cities, starting in Uganda and Zimbabwe.
“You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
Psalm 16:11 (NIV)
Scripture noted as NIV above is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
