Participants: Steven Grabiner
Series Code: OCIR
Program Code: OCIR000001
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00:08 Africa is a continent of great contrasts,
00:11 rich in natural resources, 00:14 yet many of its people, are trapped in grinding poverty. 00:18 For centuries, the continent has captured the imagination of many 00:23 The stunning landscapes, magnificent animals, 00:27 and vibrant people, are a tremendous draw. 00:30 From the earliest colonists, to the most modern-day tourists, 00:35 the continent of Africa still attracts attention. 00:39 In the early 1800s, there was a new wave of Christian, 00:43 mission activity. Many paid the ultimate sacrifice by giving 00:48 their lives to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. 00:51 Their legacy still lives on. Join us as we explore the work 00:57 of OCI, active today in the nation of Zambia. 01:18 Zambia is a land-locked nation in the heart of southern Africa. 01:22 It's about the size of Texas, with about half the 01:26 population. A name that is inseparably linked with the 01:30 history of Zambia, is that of David Livingstone. 01:34 Born in March of 1813, Livingstone even at an early age 01:39 already possessed a strong will and great determination. 01:43 That determination, led him to respond to the call of the 01:48 famous missionary, Robert Moffat. 01:50 Moffat had written in his journal, that: 02:03 Livingstone determined to bring the name of Christ to those 02:07 unreached peoples. Not content to build on the foundations of 02:12 others, Livingstone pushed northward through what is 02:15 current-day Botswana. He continued moving north and west, 02:20 until he came to Luanda, the capital of modern-day Angola. 02:26 Retracing his steps, he eventually came across the 02:29 Zambezi River. It was there he was met by this beautiful site: 02:34 Livingstone landed on this island. 02:37 As he looked upon what is now known as Victoria Falls, 02:41 he was awestruck. 02:44 In his journal he wrote, that it is on sights as beautiful as 02:47 these, that angels in their flight must have gazed. 02:52 For the next 32 years of his life, Livingstone determined 02:57 to bring the gospel of Christ to this region. 03:00 He set up a beacon for other missionaries 03:03 to follow in his way. 03:12 Many of the early missionaries paid the ultimate sacrifice. 03:16 This graveyard in Livingstone contains the remains of 03:21 many of those early missionaries. 03:22 They were felled, not by the inhabitants, but frequently 03:27 by malaria. Today, there are still missionaries endeavoring 03:32 to communicate the gospel in this region. 03:38 Livingstone's passionate desire to permeate the continent of 03:42 Africa with the gospel of Christ, was united with an 03:45 equally strong desire to eradicate slavery. 03:48 Livingstone envisioned, that by opening up the interior of the 03:53 continent to commerce, he would hasten the down-fall of slavery. 03:57 To that end, Livingstone trekked across what is now Zambia. 04:02 His journeys brought him to the banks of the Kafuie River. 04:08 Tradition has it that he slept underneath this baobab tree. 04:12 This baobab tree is now surrounded by an OCI ministry 04:18 committed to bringing the gospel of Christ 04:21 to the continent of Africa. 04:27 In Livingstone's day, the majority of missionaries to 04:30 Africa came from Europe and the isles of Britain. Today, 04:34 the work is much more international and multicultural. 04:38 Many cultures uniting together to train Zambians in helping 04:43 them reach their fellow citizens. 04:48 In 1974, on land donated by Dr. Foster, a medical missionary, 04:53 Riverside Farm Institute was born. 04:56 The vision behind Riverside Farm was to be an evangelistic, 05:01 medical missionary training center. 05:03 The focus was to equip Zambians to carry the gospel throughout 05:09 the country. Since that time, thousands of Zambian men and 05:13 women have received a quality medical missionary evangelistic 05:18 training here at Riverside Farm. They have then gone out 05:22 and shared what they have learned with their fellow 05:24 countrymen. The influence of Riverside Farm has spread across 05:30 the nation of Zambia. 05:33 Riverside's main focus is education and training. 05:37 Of course we do many other things, but that's why we exist. 05:42 We want to train disciples for Christ. 05:45 So we do health through our Wellness Ctr through our Clinic. 05:48 We also have spiritual emphasis on the campus itself 05:54 and then our evangelism outreach programs. 05:56 We have our agricultural program which mainly gives the income 06:02 for Riverside and make it self- supportive. 06:04 Our purpose here is to educate people in a different way. 06:11 How we can come in contact with people who are non-Adventists 06:16 or people who are not religious. 06:18 So they come here to learn gardening or to learn tailoring. 06:22 And in those classes we teach the course they came here for, 06:27 like gardening, but also we share with them the 06:31 health principles, better living, and also we share 06:36 with them the Word of God. 06:38 So almost every course we baptize a number of students, 06:43 something like 2 to 5 students. 06:45 Like the current course we have baptized 5 students. 06:49 So that was a big joy to us! 06:53 We are teaching the Word of God besides just teaching someone 06:59 to read and write. 07:00 Our courses here are intended to help people be aware of eternity 07:07 and also are a service to other people while we are still 07:12 here on earth. 07:13 Here we do tailoring and our students could go to neighboring 07:18 school where they learn how to make a good outfit but here they 07:23 learn also the Word of God, and they learn also how to care for 07:27 their health. So this really satisfies us! It gives us joy! 07:34 Singing... 07:45 When I came here I wasn't one of the SDA members. 07:48 I was one of the Jehovah's Witnesses. 07:51 When studying the Bible with our teacher, after they explained 07:55 to me thru the Bible. I came to understand and was baptized. 07:59 That's how I found myself here. In 2005 I got married and I 08:07 had my wedding dress here. 08:09 With this intent we started studying the Bible. Last month 08:15 we had 1 baptized through a crusade evangelism class. 08:20 The Lord is really blessing with the class and I'm enjoying it! 08:26 The Lord said Go therefore and teach. If He said go and teach, 08:29 who am I not to teach? So whatever benefit, 08:36 I need to make other people benefit. 08:43 This program has helped me grow spiritually. 08:46 It's not just the scientific agriculture that I am doing. 08:50 There are times we have Bible doctrine. 08:53 Yes, we learn the Word of God. 08:55 Also their is a time of learning nutrition and also farm life. 09:00 When I finish my course, I'll first establish my Dad's farm 09:04 It's not already invested so I will have to 09:06 start planning what I can plant. 09:09 Traditionally, wherever you find land, you dig and plant. 09:13 There's no methodologies there. But we do it with formulas here. 09:17 Before you start learning anything, you have to pray 09:20 and you have a Bible reading. 09:21 So this has encouraged me a lot because in everything I have to 09:24 first pray to God so that He makes a way for me, 09:28 so that I proceed with whatever things I have to do. 09:36 I studied medicine and right now I'm working as a teacher, 09:42 teaching medical missionary work in various schools in the same 09:47 country. People don't really 09:48 understand true education and everything when it comes to 09:53 health and lifestyle. 09:55 The devil is really at work deceiving people and making 09:59 people believe in wrong things about health. I'm sure there's 10:01 I can say there's a need of, and I get asked, 10:04 to go and teach the people out there especially here in Zambia. 10:10 I have also the missionary spirit at heart. 10:13 That is what part of this course is all about. 10:18 I feel so blessed that I actually chose the course 10:21 that I am doing. 10:23 It's growth in my life, the way you dress, talk, what you eat. 10:31 I've learned a lot of treatments here. When somebody is sick, 10:36 I'll take advantage and help with what I have learned here. 10:41 It's different from what man would teach you. 10:44 When God teaches you, it's good for you! 10:49 I believe education is a key aspect of evangelism. 10:53 You know you can go and share with somebody the gospel. 10:58 But many people are so eager to share the gospel with others 11:03 when they find Christ that many times 11:06 they make so many mistakes and actually 11:08 push people away from Christ. 11:10 But with a little bit of training 11:13 we can help them be successful disciples and soul winners. 11:18 One person can spread the gospel to thousands. 11:21 And that's the uniqueness for me about training. 11:24 That they have that foundation. They understand the gospel 11:27 They understand their relationship with Christ. 11:29 And then they can take that message successfully and 11:32 effectively to others! 11:34 Riverside Farm Inst. also has an extended family of evangelists. 11:41 Myself, as a white person, as they call me, 11:46 if I go to preach the gospel to this culture, 11:50 I first need to understand the culture. 11:53 I need to understand the way they're thinking about things 11:55 the way they do things. 11:57 And then from that perspective try to help them with the gospel 12:01 How they love their Christian experience in a culture setting! 12:06 But we realize their own people do it much better than we can. 12:13 Let's change it a little bit. Let us get more 12:18 train more evangelists or Bible pioneers 12:21 or Bible Workers as we call them, to 12:23 go out where we can not go. 12:25 We find that our 65 Pioneers or Bible Workers that we have 12:30 at the moment, easily 12:32 anything between 5 thousand and 10 thousand people are baptized 12:37 within one year! 12:39 This mission district had only a few churches. 12:46 So I had the passion to wait for the Lord. 12:50 The branch here consists of 40 people, including children. 12:57 What makes them stay in the church? 12:59 It's the truth which is shared to them! 13:02 Because through society we were giving some literature 13:07 like the Voice of Prophecy lessons we give the people. 13:11 They study for themselves, they know the truth. 13:15 We encourage them to take the Bible lessons wherever they go. 13:20 They're going to Saka, 13:21 they always carry literature with them. 13:22 We are reaching thousands and thousands of people. 13:25 I finish, easily I can finish one to two containers 13:30 of literature in a year with the Pioneers, of course. 13:33 If our own members here are active. Many churches from Saka 13:37 they come to fetch some of the material from us and they're 13:41 giving it out and we know the people are reached. 13:45 It's the silent messenger. That's what we need. 13:47 If That's the best method. If we use the best method, 13:50 and God will bless it. And He's already doing it in many ways. 13:58 We may not be identified to say 13:59 this one does that, and this one that and that and that 14:01 But praise be to God, the way which we have done, the 14:06 people who came to Christ before our labor don't forget. 14:11 God sees you, like in Isaiah, a unit 14:17 and just like a mouth speaking to the people. 14:20 Dedicated Bible Workers like Roy are helping to start new 14:25 congregations throughout the country of Zambia. 14:27 In a moment, we'll find out what Riverside Farm is doing to 14:31 nurture and strengthen these new groups of believers. 14:36 We share this globe with about 7 billion people. 14:40 That's a lot of people. And standing here in this busy city, 14:45 it's easy to feel small and insignificant. 14:49 After all, I'm only one person, what difference can I make? 14:53 But the fact is, each of us can make a difference. 14:56 God is calling us to turn our lives and skills over to Him. 15:01 Around the world, the individual workers at 15:05 OCI Ministries are letting God use them to bring hope and 15:10 healing one person at a time. You can make a difference too! 15:15 When you connect to OCI, you connect to more than 80 15:19 ministries world-wide. If you're interested in getting involved 15:25 in the global ministry of OCI, visit our website or call us. 15:30 We would love to talk to you! 15:36 The work of Riverside's Bible Workers is bearing tremendous 15:40 fruit throughout the country of Zambia. 15:43 New, young, flourishing 15:45 congregations are springing up. This is in partial fulfillment 15:49 of David Livingstone's vision of seeing the gospel of Jesus 15:53 Christ permeate the African continent. These new 15:57 young congregations need an appropriate place to worship. 16:02 Riverside Farm, partnering with Maranatha and ASI, are doing 16:07 what they can do to fulfill this great need. 16:11 We have a program called The 1 Day Church Program. 16:15 It is to me a very encouraging program. We had previously 16:21 what we called The Growths for Africa Program, 16:23 but that stopped many years ago. 16:26 But now how do we provide these Pioneers, 16:30 these groups, with churches? One day when I was walking 16:33 into our mission development administrator's office he said 16:38 to me, listen, we have a new program. 16:41 There's a donor that wants to or is designing what they call a 1 16:45 day church structure and he wants to send 300 to Riverside. 16:50 I just went straight from his office on my knees! 16:53 And said Wow! This is an answer to prayer! 16:55 And so now, slowly but surely, every Pioneer's getting 17:00 at least 4 buildings, and we're trying to do it in 17:05 the process of 3 to 4 years. We're trying to finish up. 17:08 Most of those 300 churches will also help them and will help the 17:12 conferences and fields to have more churches as its growing. 17:18 So we are very blessed to have that 1 Day Church Program. 17:23 The work which is happening around here is so great! 17:26 The 1 Day Church going around has an impact to the communities 17:36 Every Sabbath people gather there in numbers 17:41 because they had been shared and they had the 17:44 message which they needed for this time. Praise God for that! 17:53 So Riverside has seven training centers. 17:57 They are small centers where we are training gospel workers. 18:03 We have a number of them in different provinces of Zambia 18:08 so that we can be able to reach at least 18:13 the whole of Zambia at the same time. 18:17 Here people been studying evangelism. The problem we've 18:21 had is that when we talk of evangelism here, 18:25 all people think about is the crusades. 18:28 We're trying to change the mind- set of the people to help them 18:33 understand that actually evangelism should be the 18:36 lifestyle of every Christian. 18:40 That's the main program here. There is also training in skills 18:44 like tailoring, scientific gardening, and health. 18:54 The 1 Day Program has really blessed the 7 Riverside schools. 18:59 By having these schools we are broadening our capacity to train 19:06 workers for the Lord who can minister in those different 19:10 places. And some of these places, we 19:12 don't have to house those people. 19:16 So they can minister to their family 19:18 and do this training, which is a blessing. 19:21 And each school has a powerful influence in the neighborhood. 19:30 In addition to planting new congregations and new churches, 19:35 there's another kind of planting 19:36 that takes place at Riverside Farm. 19:39 Agriculture is an important component, 19:42 both for educational purposes, and a means of support. 19:46 The banana plantation at Riverside 19:48 is well-known throughout the country. 19:52 This provides both an opportunity for students 19:55 to learn practical work, as well as ongoing 19:58 financial support for the evan- gelistic work of Riverside Farm. 20:04 Bananas have always been a great income for Riverside, since 20:08 Dr. Foster had the farm in the beginning. It's expanded over 20:13 the years and is the best income for Riverside at the moment. 20:17 A few years ago we encountered a disease within our bananas which 20:22 we are trying to fight but still a blessing to Riverside income. 20:29 Eventually we switched over to irrigation and we did our wheat 20:34 growing-a huge Riverside income. Once a year we grow wheat, 20:38 sometimes rotate with soybeans. We have a Milling Department. 20:43 We used to plant maize and mill it as a secondary product. 20:50 But recently we've been buying from local farmers, 20:54 bring it to our mill, stack it in our shed and mill it during 20:57 year so that we have a constant income. 21:00 Then there are smaller things. 21:01 We have our own vegetables we sell in our small center. 21:07 We have orchards as well. Riverside received a donation 21:14 from ASI to start a brand new project of pineapples. We have 21:20 planted 25,000 plants. Every year the suckers can be planted 21:26 and we get a little more and it becomes 21:29 another leg to stand on financially. 21:31 So God has been blessing Riverside even through 21:35 all the troubles we had with the virus in the bananas, 21:37 with hail, you know, with frost, things like that. God has always 21:42 been keeping His hand over the things here at Riverside 21:45 and we are so thankful for that. 21:47 And we can use it to bless others around us. 21:55 For many years Riverside's evangelistic and medical 21:58 missionary outreach has been 22:00 focused on the rural parts of Zambia like this. 22:04 Many Zambians labor for $4 or $5 a day. But in the cities 22:10 is a growing upper middle and middle class. Riverside had felt 22:16 the burden to minister to these affluent individuals as well. 22:20 Although hard to reach with a regular evangelistic series, 22:25 they found that using the means of health 22:28 would be an avenue to minister to them. 22:30 Their solution, a Wellness Center. 22:43 There's a lot of people with need out there, and I'm not 22:45 just speaking physically. We'd really like to know how to 22:49 reach the unreached in our cities with the gospel. 22:53 We started seeing the need in Lusaka. People that became 22:57 diabetic, cancer picking up. There were two malls in Lusaka. 23:03 These malls have all the junk food. We know, coming from 23:10 Western culture what would be the end result of that. 23:12 So all these things said to us 23:15 we needed to get serious about a Wellness Center. 23:17 And then we started using an old house, a director's house, 23:22 here against the hill. It had a thatch roof on it. 23:26 ASI helped us with some of the money and we put in some money. 23:32 Now it's standing almost 7 years. 23:34 Cancer's just taking off in this country! 23:38 AIDS is prominent in Africa. We want to have an immune boost 23:45 program for these type of people that come. Of course, high blood 23:49 pressure, diabetes, because people in Lusaka now have very 23:56 passive work in front of computers as well. They get the 24:00 same diseases as in Western culture. 24:02 We go to the different ministries in Lusaka. We have 24:06 health expos by them to awaken their appetite so they can see, 24:11 listen, I'm not as healthy as I need to be. We've gotten to some 24:14 ministries and you take blood sugar and it's way out of range! 24:19 You tell them this is a problem, do you know that you are sick? 24:21 And they're like, no it's not a problem. I urinate more than 24:25 other people but it's not a problem. Or blood pressure's 24:27 knocking and you tell them you're a walking time bomb, 24:29 O no they say it's not a problem, I just take a little 24:31 bit more pain killers because my head hurts. People don't 24:34 understand how dangerous this is. So we try to get them 24:38 here, help them physically, 24:40 so that eventually we can actually help them spiritually. 24:43 That's what we want to aim for with this whole place. 24:50 From the start of the Wellness Center we had quite 24:53 a few important people coming to it, like Dr. Kaunda. 24:58 President Banda came here just to visit. Our cooking team went 25:04 to President Mwanawasa's house to help his cooks prepare food 25:13 for him because he was diabetic. So in these areas we can reach 25:18 quite a few people. They feel this is a successful program. 25:22 And it's something that is not within Zambia 25:25 or in other places in Africa yet. 25:27 So we have the privilege of reaching that class. 25:30 I heard about Riverside Farm Institute from friends. 25:35 I found it to be a good place for relaxation. 25:39 Their apartments are so nice. Many times I've been here 25:47 with my children and we have enjoyed ourselves. 25:50 Their program, it's quite strenuous, it's quite involving. 25:55 But I don't have headache anymore. The blood pressure 25:59 is very normal and I no longer wish to take 26:02 any of those tablets that I had been taking. 26:07 When you go in the treatment rooms, the kind of equipment 26:12 you find there is marvelous. Before they start attending you, 26:17 they start with prayer, knowing and realizing 26:21 that these things are not possible without God. 26:25 Being our Creator, He knows what's best 26:29 to provide for our needs. 26:31 And therefore the members of staff before anything, 26:34 they ask for His guidance. 26:36 It's a wonderful place to be. 26:39 Many people have found Christ. 26:41 Sometimes even if it was just helping somebody to accept 26:45 Jesus. Even if we can't 26:47 do anything for them, the disease has gone too far. 26:50 Some people have been baptized and we're very happy about that. 26:54 And that's the reason why we're here, 26:57 to bring that spiritual blessing to the people. 26:59 In one of Ellen White's visions, she saw jets of light 27:03 illuminating an otherwise darkened world. 27:06 Over the years, Riverside Farm 27:09 has become one of those beacons of light. The influence 27:13 emanating from Riverside has been felt in the 27:16 surrounding countries. 27:18 New ministries have sprung up 27:20 following the pattern of Riverside. 27:23 Wherever you are in the world, you can be 27:26 part of this amazing ministry. 27:28 You can pray for the teachers and leaders at Riverside Farm. 27:32 You can pray for the Bible Workers, 27:35 and the guests that come to the Wellness Center. 27:38 You can pray that the work of Riverside 27:41 continues to grow and expand. 27:47 It is through God's grace and the support of viewers like you, 27:52 that Riverside Farm, an OCI's world-wide ministry, is able to 27:56 continue the work of spreading the gospel. 28:02 For more information visit our website, email us, 28:15 find us on Facebook, or give us a call. |
Revised 2014-12-17