Costa Rica is the type of postcard perfect place that most people dream of retiring to.

In 1999, the Davidson’s moved from Edmonton, Alberta to the warmer climes of Latin America. Darrell, who is now 77, says the couple had a strong feeling that their new home would be a great place to start showing a Spanish translation of the JESUS film. Since the country’s elementary schools include religious instruction on their regular curriculum roster, the couple decided to start there, asking whether they could get the ministry of education’s permission to show the film in schools.

The answer was a resounding “yes.” Those in charge of education not only gave them the go-ahead to show the film locally, but they opened the door wide, saying the country’s 3,000 schools were more than ready to welcome them and their projectors to class.

“People here are very open to the gospel,” says Darrell, who along with Yvonne, has now developed a team of local people who travel the country coast-to-coast running the six projectors the couple has purchased. “If God burdens you for something, it’s your responsibility to make sure it gets done.”

The program immediately received support from the local Catholic hierarchy. One high-ranking priest even sent letters to 25 educational supervisors, telling them “not only to watch the film themselves, but to study it as well,” says Darrell. The Davidsons, who attend a Baptist church, were also interviewed by the Costa Rican Archbishop, who told them his testimony and exhorted them to continue their work with the country’s youth.

“We’re not young anymore, but we’re just happy to still be able to do what we do,” says Darrell. Their work has resulted in more than 125,000 children learning about the life of Christ through the simple viewing of a film in school classrooms. The team has shown the film as many as 19 times in a single school. According to the Davidsons, approximately 75,000 kids have said a prayer to accept Christ once they’ve watched the movie.

After the program became established in Costa Rica, the Davidsons became interested in expanding their reach into Nicaragua, the country’s northern neighbour. Remarkably, outside groups don’t need any special permission to bring their programs within the doors of Nicaraguan public schools, but the couple still sought the blessing of the authorities there. This year, 76,000 kids will view the film in Nicaraugua too!

“The Lord has taken a long time to teach me the great truths of His Word,” says Darrell. “We sometimes feel unworthy of the responsibility we’ve been given for these kids.”

Learn how you can go on a two week Jesus film project.

Generations of people all over the world have cooked, eyes glued to the TV, watching Graham Ker

He’s a changed man

While he’s gregarious and engaging as ever, it’s no secret that Kerr is not the same person he was during his ‘Galloping’ days. His very public battle with alcohol and his penchant for cooking shockingly decadent foods is now so far in the past it’s nearly folklore. What remains is a man with a strong dedication to his wife and family, to his faith, and to helping people make healthy choices that affect not only themselves, but the world around them.

The TV image is gone. He’s now an experienced man on a mission to tell communities across North America about something he and wife Treena – who was nominated for two Emmy awards for producing The Galloping Gourmet and is now a published poet – have dubbed “outdulgence.”

Though the tour began this fall, the Kerrs – who are in their 70s – have been practicing the outdulgence philosophy since 1980. As they describe it, outdulgence makes a measurable link between healthy lifestyle changes and our ability to impact the world around us.

“Self matters,” says Graham, “but is that where it ends? If you make a change that positively impacts your health, you are likely saving time and money. If you can somehow quantify those few cents and minutes of lifestyle change, you can then use those resources to contribute to the world. Ask ‘what breaks my heart looking around at the world…then look on that bruised world and try to make it right from your own perspective.’”

Curbing the sweet tooth to help the world

As an example, Kerr points to a common addiction: cookies. He says the average person consumes 30,000 calories of cookies per year, which translates into eleven pounds of body-fat tissue. But most people think that they couldn’t possibly be included in that group.

“The human being, when asked what he ate in a day, almost universally under reports by 50-percent,” says the chef.

To curb his own sweet tooth, he began to eat frozen grapes which are very sweet from natural sugars. “They are a frozen sorbet in their original package. They taste delicious, are always present and are good for you.” He calculates a savings of $262 per annum for an average household. Following the outdulgence philosophy, that money (and the time savings that go with it) can then be used for anything from a neighborhood project to sponsoring an orphaned child in Africa.

Kerr was inducted into the American Culinary Hall of Fame in 1999, and has a list a mile long of distinguished affiliations, published works and awards. At the height of his career, he would command an astronomical $10,000 per day consulting fee to, in his words, “help corporations make their products more addictive.” While the companies never actually used the dreaded “A” word, they did hire Kerr find out how to make people want to eat more of their products, more often. “Which is really the definition of addictive, isn’t it?” he happily points out.

Antitode to perpetual food intake

The outdulgence philosophy, designed to be an antidote to a culture of perpetual food intake, is at the opposite end of the consumption spectrum from those early days. The website to support the tour – www.outdulgence.com – even carries the slogan “converting habits that harm into resources that heal.” The Kerrs are hoping that people with success stories of any degree will write about them on the website’s blog section as a testimony to others.

In some centres, very different segments of the community – churches, hospitals (even American hospitals that compete for business) and universities – are banding together to host the Kerrs and their message about outdulgence. Graham says the couple has been trying to pull together those in the hospitality field with nutrition based professionals and the psychology departments of local colleges and universities. The topic of food needs this holistic, multitiered approach, he believes. “There are deep psychological, spiritual battles that are taking place within people.”

For those curious about what the traveling celebrity couple will be riding in as they traverse North America over the next four years, Graham says “the rig” had to meet some upfront criteria. “The Lord told us it must be safe, must be comfortable enough to live in for four years of travel across Canada and the United States and it must not cause us to stumble.” They settled on a used 38-foot, 2001 Discovery by Fleetwood. To underscore their desire to remain humble in their mission, they even had all of the gold fixtures replaced by some with a brushed nickel finish.

Kicking it off

“The Kerrs had their entire Mount Vernon, Washington church lay their hands on the RV – by polishing with clothes – praying for a successful journey for the couple. The sojourning couple say they, in turn, will dutifully pray for the church back home everytime they polish the vehicle . . . somewhere in North America.”

Graham Kerr is an internationally known culinary and television personality, award-winning author, and master of metaphorical speaking. His focus is on serving people who want to make healthy, creative, lifestyle changes and believes that the only lasting changes are the ones that we enjoy. His life goal is “to help to convert habits that harm into resources that heal.” 

Alec has seen many retired and semi-retired businesspeople reach their peers for Christ by speaking in their ‘language.’ Cultural and political boundaries seem to dissipate when like-minded people get together, so Alec is able to cross borders all over the world with men and women who want to share their secular talents and speak about their devotion to God in places like Nicaragua and Cuba.

Black out on the road

Alec’s own journey of faith was a long road. Like most of his generation, he attended Sunday School as a young child. He listened to what they had to say there, then promptly “put [salvation] in my back pocket as an insurance policy.” When he became an adult and started a family, he began to worry about what he would say when his daughter – then three – would inevitably ask him who Jesus was. Also, his aunt would challenge him to start living the life he first heard about as a child in church. Then he had a dream. “I was driving down a steep logging road with the edge on one side and the mountain on the other. I was in a ‘59 Chev convertible. A truck drove down the road and rode right over me. Everything went black . . . I hadn’t used my insurance policy.”

Eventually, Alec accepted that Christ was worth much more to him than an insurance policy payable on death. When he became a Christian, he talked about it to anyone who would listen, including many of the men on the job sites where he worked as a building contractor. Now, as part of a team from Campus Crusade for Christ, he is in the business of connecting people all over the globe.

Pack your bags

“If you’re willing to come with me and share your faith during your stay, we’re here to take you as far as you want to go,” says Alec, recognizing that everyone stretches their own comfort zone at their own speed. “I say ‘have you got a passport?’ If they do, we can be off to almost anywhere within ten days.”  He’s there to facilitate the trip and to make sure that the right doors are open when visitors get there.

Most business people who take a trip with Alec find that a one week excursion – usually leaving on a Friday and returning the following weekend – fits nicely into their schedule.

Closed country, open doors

In communism’s heydays in the Ukraine, Alec and his cohorts at Campus Crusade talked shop with 3,500 “trade union” leaders in the country. Unlike North American unions, Ukrainian trade unions were considered the third tier of government. If a citizen wanted to work, he or she had to belong to a union. Alec’s group saw a 65-percent response rate to the gospel once they began taking North American business people to to Eastern Europe to help leaders who were trying to be productive under the communist regime.

Peer to peer

“If you’ve been successful in business, other business people will want to hear you story,” he says. While business tactics and influences will be a part of the story, Alec recognizes that speaker’s faith will also play a key role in the discussion. When someone has a living faith, it effects every facet of life, including their vocation.

“People want to talk with like-minded people. If we bring a top politician in, the top politicians in that country want to come in and hear what they have to say.”

Alec feels so strongly about the idea of peers counseling peers that he wrote his masters thesis on the subject. And even though he explored the complexities of the issue in his thesis, he says putting it into practice should be about as easy as breathing for most people – you just have to be willing to go and find others who share the same interests, same expertise as you.

If you don’t have clean drinking water, your life is over.

As President of Global Aid Network, Kehler is acting as a pointman, enlisting the help of anyone who has a way to contribute to the bid to drill wells in many highly populated and impoverished third world countries.

“Sometimes I’ll be at the Tim Hortons near my home and a local tradesman will ask me what I’m doing these days. Once I tell him what we’re working towards, often I’ll hear that he’s got a way to help,” says Kehler. That help comes in many forms often related to the person’s area of expertise and sphere of influence. In one instance a machinist knew where he could buy steel for an excellent price. That steel could be used to construct drills and pumps for the wells.

Right now, 16 wells per month are being drilled in India. North American geologists and engineers fly over to the country, locate water sources, then subcontract local well drillers whenever possible. Once the wells are drilled, people in the community are trained to maintain the pumps and, eventually, will be taught how to drill more wells on their own.

The goal is to establish 150,000 wells in various countries around the world. Although these new wells represent a substantial increase in the number of people who will be drinking clean water soon, Kehler and company say that’s only a drop in a mostly dry bucket. The need for new wells is in the millions.

In order for a project like this to flourish, people with different backgrounds and talents need to be involved, says Kehler. “Besides geologists, manufacturers, machinists and those who can train people, we also need good communicators,” he says. “We need people who can deal with governments in many of these countries. And we need business people.”

The group is also looking for people to donate money for specific wells. $1,000 (US) will buy a well in India, while it takes double that for most African wells. Families, Sunday School classes, community service clubs or any other group can contribute. The Kehlers, for instance, plan to forgo Christmas presents this year, opting to put that money toward giving people clean drinking water in India.

The group is also calling on North American youth to get involved. Operation Jacob’s Well is a recently launched initiative that aims to see young people signing up to carry a one-litre jug of dirty water (strapped to each person’s wrist or belt) wherever they go during a 48-hour period. The initiative will no doubt attract attention to the cause as youth answer the questions of curious onlookers. And pledge money donated by sponsors the youth enlist – at least $5 per day from each sponsor – will go far in providing for the most immediate physical need any child or adult can experience.

Going farmless

The Feenstras have always made farming a family affair. Mike (aged 52) and Anne  homeschooled their four children – who range in age from 20 to 13 - which has afforded them the chance to make homelife and learning a seamless venture, where the borders between the world and classroom are not easily distinguishable. But after establishing successful dairy and turkey operations, the family decided to concentrate more on nourshing people’s souls, instead of their bodies, for a change.

Not out to pasture

Mike says they took about two years to finally go through with such a monumental lifestyle change. Yet things were taking shape around the time Mike hit the mid-life mark. It all started when a close friend began to challenge him to examine if he was “making [his] life count.”

“I was about 40 before someone challenged me, asked me, ‘How do you share your faith?’” he says, adding that he never really considered it part of his character, his makeup, to make his beliefs a focus of conversation. But he started to look at things differently after that.

A new yield

He tried to quantify faith-sharing in the same way he would quantify the bounty he yielded from his dairy herd. “I looked at 20-50 litres of milk and tried to translate that into how many people I could reach with the gospel.” While as farmer, he was still meeting helping people fill a very practical need, Mike felt the pull to make up for lost time and start sharing his faith full time.

The final decision involved leaving the lifestyle and routine he loved and working full time with Campus Crusade. Mike now meets with farmers and other business people and, as he puts it, simply “shares opportunities with people,” helping them use their talents and social circles to tell others about the faith that their lives are based on.

“When you’re challenged to make your life count, you have to take a look at what’s going to make a difference for eternity,” he says. “Christians often say that everything belongs to God. But when it comes time to actually sell the farm and make that actually happen…well that’s a big part of the challenge.”

Next in line

Some have questioned the Feenstra’s decision. What if one of their kids wants to farm?

“When I came to this country (from Holland in 1973) I started with nothing,” says Mike. If God wants them to farm, I’m sure he’ll make a way for them to do it.”

The kids now have a different ‘occupational’ heritage to continue. However, this job is one that can be found within any career path they decide to embark on.

“The kids now look closely at how I’m making a difference in what I do,” says Mike.

He points out that one son works as an electrician. As he’s busy wiring homes, he’s also incorporating ways to share his faith. Another son is leading a Bible study in a public high school.

Prayers for schoolkids send ‘ripple effects’ throughout communities

Not too many parents would send their kids to school without a jacket on a wintry day. And most kids are fed before they head off for their daily studies. But how many students can say that someone is praying for them, giving them an extra bit of spiritual protection and guidance as they face the academic and extra curricular challenges that come with the territory?

Ground zero in the community

If there’s one place where most cultural and social elements of a city are represented, it’s in its schools. With such a diverse mingling of groups – from recent immigrants learning the culture to single moms who teach physics – schools are ‘ground zero’ in the spiritual health of a community. And prayers extend to subjects well beyond classroom walls. “In our prayers we are always seeking God’s heart for the school. It’s not surprising to us that he leads us often to pray for families and homes of students and staff,” says Gretchen Gillis who is among the ranks of Grandmothers Who Care (a ‘mature’ arm of the prayer movement Mothers Who Care) in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Gillis is one of a legion of North American grandmothers who has been able to play an active role in the public school system, encouraging the children and teachers in her community through meeting with other like-minded grandmas and voicing concerns and praises to God. Like the others in her ranks, she has seen, first hand, how lives are changed when people simply start praying for grandchildren – their own and others. She points out that retirees don’t have to have grandchildren who attend school locally to make a positive impression on the young lives who do attend school in their neighborhood.

Unified focus

Carol Chattel is part of a group of grandmothers who first met to pray for local school kids and now play an integral role in several school programs in Caroline, Alberta. She says prayers that start in the schools reach into the entire town. “Our main prayer is unity,” says Chatel. “Unity in the family, the churches, the different boards around town, the school, the village office, the business people and the community. This is all related to our school and our children.”

Although the public system is known to prefer an arms-length approach in their interaction with faith-based groups, it’s hard to resist the help of a group of concerned grandmothers who simply want to make the community better. Chatel says lots of good will is flowing between her group and the schools in Caroline now that they have gotten to know one another.

At the beginning the group was denied a request for a list of staff members. However, once they became a fixture at school, the powers that be decided that they could have access to the names. Now the grandmas - mostly widows who range in age from 56 to 82 - make a habit of praying for each staff member by name. Chatel also notes that Christian students have found it easier to stand up for their beliefs now that they have the prayer support of the grandmothers, who have taken on a higher profile in the school in recent years.

Beyond the sidelines

The relationships that have developed through the group’s involvement with the school has meant they have taken on some added duties. Once they group became a fixture, they were asked if they would like to run the school’s ‘safety phone’ program. And they’ve also adopted a supporting role with the school’s new health worker as she attempts to promote healthy lifestyles there. Through this they’ve helped with school breakfasts and a ‘butt-out’ anti-smoking campaign.

The group in Caroline has also embarked on prayer walks around school (where they do double-duty by cleaning up garbage while they make the rounds). Around each window and exterior door, the women pray for the “protection and safety” of all who enter the building each school day.

Kids grow up fast now and there’s no shortage of subjects for pray for. (Grand)Mothers Who Care are seizing a chance to make a difference in society’s ‘training ground,’ encouraging and standing up for the next generation of leaders and those who are charged with teaching them.

Last year, residents of Wenden, Arizona got the shock of their lives…TWICE.

As the residents dealt with the shock by cleaning up the best they could, a similar type of flood steamrolled the town again a week later.

When Canadian retirees Jake and Phyllis Epp got word of the incidents, they packed up their RV and headed south to roll up their sleeves and give the town’s residents – who are mostly lower income people who have either retired to the area or live in trailers out of economic necessity – a hand getting their homes on proper footing again and cleaning up the water damage.

Servants on wheels

Jake and Phyllis get around. They are active with the Mennonite Disaster Relief Organization and are also part of Servants on Wheels Ever Ready (Sowers), a dedicated group of RV enthusiasts who, among other things, spring to action when nature causes chaos in places like Wenden. When the Epps are journeying through North America, they usually  have a trailer in tow, but since Jake (62) took an early retirement package from the telecommunications company he worked for, they’ve also traveled to Bolivia with their church’s youth group and got back in touch with their roots on a Mennonite heritage tour through Russia and the Ukraine.

The Epps enjoy being part of a diverse network of RVers who twin their love of travel with a chance to lend their time and talents to projects that make an immediate difference in people’s lives. “There’s such a need everywhere,” says Phyllis. “Right on our doorstep and far away.” In their case, that ‘doorstep’ can be in Los Angeles one week and Pennsylvania, interior British Columbia or the southern United States, a month or two later. At the time of this writing, the Epps were planning a trip that would eventually take them to Columbus, Mississippi to help rebuild some structures that were downed by a tornado last year.

Quake wake

The highlight of their ten years of travel – they’re gone from their home in Abbotsford, BC roughly three to six months a year – was helping fix houses affected by the January 1994 earthquake in Los Angeles. “People were traumatized even a year later when we went down,” says Jake. “When you’re suffering from trauma you can’t think, can’t make decisions properly.”

The Epps were working with people who had figuratively “fallen through the cracks” from social service agencies, mostly women with slight handicaps. Phyllis fondly recalls taking some of the women to hardware stores to choose paint colors for their revamped homes. It was a small, but fun way to make a difference in that situation.

Jake says the house damage and subsequent repairs can be seen as analogies for the bigger spiritual component that affected people. “When you’re putting together houses it’s interesting to watch the change take place in a person. Their whole self worth comes up,” he says. “For people who aren’t Christians their home is their castle. When it crumbles, they crumble.”

Have purpose, will travel

Because they are known in their church as travelers with a purpose, the Epps were approached by a youth leader to accompany a group of young people to Bolivia, where they built a basketball court and soccer pitch. Because they were accustomed to working and traveling with other retirees, the Epps had reservations and nearly bowed out of the trip. However, they reconsidered. “We almost canceled,” remembers Jake. “But God gave us peace about it. We needed to go with them.” In the end, the Epps, who both have a working knowledge of low German, were able to witness to groups of unsaved Bolivians of Mennonite heritage who speak the language.

“RV enthusiasts are a breed of people who generally like to help each other out wherever they go,” say the Epps. “They are a group of society that values camaraderie and adventure. Because of this, they are a force that can be mobilized to help out wherever they go.” The Epps hope this trend will continue among retirees who are still fortunate enough to be healthy and willing to hit the road.

Ailie Watt loved teaching young children how to read.

Although she taught English and Art at Trinity Western University in the 1970s, she still remained committed to ushering five-year-olds into the world of literacy at a local elementary school. For more than a decade she taught both kindergarten and university students, daily seeing both ends of the educational spectrum.

Mrs. Watt’s daughter, Janet Martens, says people who knew her mother saw her as an intelligent, capable woman. She raised three daughters on her own when her first husband died at the age of 31. “She was able to handle a fairly heavy workload and still enjoy life.”

Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease

So, when Mrs. Watt was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, it was difficult for her family and friends to watch her vital personality shrink away. The onset of Alzheimer’s is often described as a lit house where the lights are going out, one room at a time.

In the case of Mrs. Watt, the process was slow but obvious to those who knew her intimately. As a well-spoken, educated woman who had a lifelong passion to learn and educate, withdrawing from social situations and showing signs of memory loss was just the beginning.

Dementia carries with it a whole host of complicated scenarios and issues. When Janet first noticed that her mother was acting differently, she had difficulty getting her mother to take her concerns seriously. And, to make matters worse, Watt’s physician took her side. “She was so articulate, she was so able to defend herself. The doctor didn’t believe us,” says Martens.

Thus began a long journey that the families of Alzheimer patients often have to endure as they perform a balancing act trying to maintain their loved one’s dignity while being conscious of practical safety and health issues.

“At first she resisted my attempts to help her because she thought I was taking over,” Janet recalls. “She couldn’t accept the role reversal that was needed.”

As Mrs. Watt moved through the stages of the disease, she needed more and more help. And as she lost parts of what made up an identity that had been fostered over her lifetime, her family began to see her differently.

“We suffered a lot of sorrow just seeing her slip away,” says Martens.

Reaching her spirit

But there was one significant bright spot. Though the process was painful, Janet gained a deeper understanding of her mother’s spiritual identity. During the latter stage of the disease in particular, when Watt could no longer talk or move around, the most evident part of her was her soul.

“We knew that, as a Christian, the Holy Spirit still indwelled her,” says Martens. “Even though she couldn’t pray, her spirit was still being ministered to. The Lord was not going to abandon her at this stage.”

Martens says the spiritual elements of her mother’s life – hearing hymns, listening to scripture or hearing someone praying – brought out a special side of her that existed even after most of Mrs. Watt’s cognition was gone. She perked up when she was being ministered to as if, even for only a few moments, she was able to step out of the shell that the disease had closed around her. This motivated Janet to continue to nurture her mother’s spiritual side.

“Things that spoke to her spirit reached her,” she says.

So Janet Martens maintained her mother’s dignity by fostering the side of her that the disease was powerless to touch. A person who seemed vacant to the rest of the world, still had an identity that mattered – there was a bright light left on in the house.