Church Bible Teaching Ministry

Volume 13, Number 2, July-August 2009

Thanks to Rick & Karen,

PABC Looking for Young People

Rick Heath & Karen Bednark married and moved to PABC

Rick & Karen test: potato plant was started on the ground and tires and earth were gradually added. Will the tires be full of potatoes?

eBay room: all items ready to be sold except the computer, which is ready to use

Boxes & packing material ready to ship all the eBay stuff

Port Austin Bible Campus Update:

Looking for Young People, Agricultural Progress

by Norman Scott Edwards

We are beginning to recover from the five months I spent in Arkansas taking care of my parents’ terminal illnesses and funerals (see previous PABC update). This is the second Servants’ News in sequence and barring unforeseen circumstances, we expect to continue. This update contains three subjects:

1) New PABC member Rick Heath and his wife, Karen.

2) Looking for young people to come to PABC, especially to sell on Ebay—no experience necessary.

3) PABC’s natural agricultural production: growing, preserving, cooking and eating.

Rick and Karen

Rick Heath moved to PABC just after the Feast last year. Rick has spent years in various aspects of the construction trade. He is a woodworking expert and very skilled at getting a lot done at little cost. Rick has been organizing our shop and the many tools that have been donated by various people. He would like to at least begin corresponding with any young people who are seriously interested in learning woodworking and construction skills. (Use contact info at right or e-mail richardheath36@yahoo.com.)

Rick is quite a Bible student. He has attended a variety of home fellowships and Church of God groups over the past 30 years—since he was in his 20’s (see article, p. 17). He has read and saved nearly every Servants’ News since the original April 1995 issue. He has done a lot of independent research on his own, and has been a great addition to the diversity of understanding and Bible study here at PABC. He, like the other PABC members, also understands our Father in Heaven does not teach everyone the same thing at the same time—so that we can work at peace with other Believers who have some doctrinal differences.

Rick believes that the Eternal caused him to come to PABC so that he could be a blessing to it, and all of us here agree that that plan has certainly worked so far.

Earlier this year, Rick married Karen Bednark, a Christian woman with no Church of God background, but who has come to understand many of our teachings and practices here at PABC. Rick and Karen now live in the ground floor apartment of our main ministry building. Karen has suffered from MS and other maladies over the years, having been completely blind at one point. She is still largely confined to a wheel chair (see her wheelchair garden photo on page 20).

By the grace of God, early this year, Karen was able to leave the nursing home, where she had lived for the past five years, marry Rick and move to PABC. She has already been a great help to PABC in cooking, crafts and other areas. She has run small businesses before and has become very skilled at using the Internet to locate hard-to-find items and do research in general. One of her discoveries was a means of growing numerous potatoes from a single plant by starting a potato plant on the ground and gradually adding tires and earth to it. The idea is to produce higher yields and easy digging. Rick agreed to try it out. The plant (see photo, below) has lived all summer, and the tires, hopefully, will be full of potatoes at year-end.

As Karen continues to improve, she hopes to take even more active roles at PABC.

PABC Agriculture Photos

PABC Garden: squash, Brussels sprouts (blue-green), tomatoes

More garden from front: basil, carrots/beets, corn (in back)

Cabbage row, left, broccoli, right, light green lettuce in right background

Nice head of broccoli ready to pick

Romaine lettuce growing up

Big groups of cucumber vines

Potatoes & onions don’t show much, but look for the potato crop pictures

Karen’s wheel-chair-level garden and flowers

Looking for Young People to Move to PABC

After the Feast of Tabernacles, we will be ready for a few young people to move to PABC to help do eBay and other online selling. We received over $6000 from online sales in 2008 (before the Edwards had to leave for Arkansas), and have since reorganized our work space to make it much more efficient. You can see some of the product racks and the empty boxes at right. We also have accurate scales and other professional shipping equipment.

We would provide the young people one to two furnished rooms , with their own bathroom, and all the healthy food they want to eat. PABC pays for utilities, including phone and Internet. PABC would also provides essentials like bedding, towels, soap, toilet paper, and used clothing if needed. PABC does not pay for anything beyond these basic necessities. We would train the young people to do online sales, and then expect them to work hard to sell for PABC. We also expect them to occasionally help in the kitchen or in taking care of facilities as the need arises, learning a lot of life skills in the process. Young people could raise some spending money by starting their own online sales accounts.

At this time, we do not have the resources to accept young people unless they can be an overall economic benefit to PABC. (That might change with a few hundred per month more in regular offerings.) We need young people who are pioneers and want to help us get started with our goal for a Sabbatarian Christian community serving our young people.

As we have written before: The biggest problem facing Sabbath-keeping young people is not lack of college or a job, but it is dismissing their biblical teaching. If our doctrines and practices are worth keeping and worth teaching to others, then it is worth establishing a place to teach them to our young people, so they can learn the Bible as they learn job skills, learn life skills, and look for a spouse.

If you are or know of a young person who might be interested in spending 6 months or so at PABC, please contact Norman Edwards at nedwards@portaustin.net or call 989-738-7774. We would be glad to provide more information.

Thanks for Things to Sell

We appreciate those who have sent things of value to us to use or to sell. We will continue to accept these offerings, especially as young people come to sell them.

PABC Harvest & Food Storage

Hundreds of pounds of red and white potatoes!

About 100 containers of green beans to our freezers

Baskets of tomatoes of many types

A refrigerator full of cabbage heads

Sauerkraut in stone crock, jar is a weight

Huge chest freezer full, starting a second one

Onions & basil drying via oven pilot light

PABC’s Natural Agricultural Production

In an effort to keep our costs down and our health up, we planted a bigger garden than normal this year. Most of us at PABC believe that this is more important than health insurance—which none of us here have. The combination of almost daily exercise and food without chemicals or genetic modification has proved beneficial. We must also thank our Father as we had the typical invasion of potato bugs early this year, which can be devastating, but we prayed for them to go away and they did!

The majority of the food that we eat now comes from our garden. Furthermore, we have put many hundreds of pounds in the freezer or other storage, so we will have food through the winter provided we can keep our utility bills paid. Please enjoy the PABC garden photos that follow. May our Father bless you. &

PABC Food Preparation Photos