Harvest Haven Health - HERALD ISSUE 8

I want to tell you about “the perfect diet” for weight loss, a diet in which you can eat anything you wish of all good things. It is safe and sure, perfect and proven. It is the only diet that works. It costs less, far less than any other, with lasting results. I give it to you freely. If not, I would not have it myself to give.

I am now 59 years old, and have had weight problems from a young age. I lost some weight before beginning adolescence, but started to gain again in my later teens, and by age twenty-five, I was at least thirty pounds overweight, at one hundred and ninety-three pounds. About a year later I came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and my life took a 180-degree turn. At age twenty-seven, months after believing, I went on Weight Watchers. (God is over Weight Watchers!) In a little over a year, I lost twenty-five pounds or so, bringing me back to an acceptable weight. Within two years, I had regained close to ten pounds and decided to do Weight Watchers again, this time privately. I lost twenty pounds in two more years, going down lower than I had ever gone before, one hundred and forty-seven pounds. I was very thankful to be so slim and in shape. My wife and I went to Israel around that time, and within a year, I gained back close to fifteen pounds.

Returning to Canada, one day the Lord spoke to me, telling me that by the time I saw Paul again (a brother in Christ whom my wife and I had met in Israel), I would be slim and trim. (God is over time, our plans, visits, friends, our weight and condition!) Along came a business opportunity knocking at our very door (God is over opportunities), and I got into moving and hauling wherein I became slim once again with some dieting and exercise, and came to be one hundred and fifty-three pounds of slim and trim muscle at age 34. We had learned some about eating healthily, and abstaining from junk foods. God had disciplined us to eat properly. We saw Paul within about three months of the time the Lord had spoken to me. I was indeed slim and trim. His Word was fulfilled.

I remained slim and trim for over a year. Then we ceased our business and headed out on the road in a travel trailer. On that road, shortly after, we stopped at a campground. This was in 1981. There at a concession booth, on a hot summer day, they were selling ice cream products. I was craving ice cream. We had learned not to eat the garbage sold on the market, including conventional ice cream, with all its additives and processing, and we had been eating homemade ice cream. Having none of our own, and craving ice cream, I went to the concession stand, with guilty conscience, and purchased an ice cream bar. I saw the dark spiritual forces in the faces of those near me, including the lady selling me the ice cream, and they were chuckling. As I opened the wrapper, ready to bite, I heard a voice say, “If you eat that ice cream bar, you will have your weight problem back again.” (God leaves nobody without warning.) It was a stern voice. I did not recall God ever speaking to me in that tone before. Rationalizing, I disregarded it as my imagination, or even as the voice of the devil, because of the stern tone, and ate the bar. I was guilty, knew I was guilty, and felt the guilt.

By the time nine months had passed, from summer to spring the following year, I was fighting my weight problem again. (God knew.) Added to that, I had great regret at what I had lost. As you see, my weight problem had been a constant, frustrating and losing battle, up and down like a teeter-totter. I realized that the day the Lord had spoken to me about being slim and trim, that it had been something established for the long term, provided I did not disobey Him. I had lost a precious and much enjoyed victory over an ice cream bar! How grievous that was to me! Perhaps only people with a lifelong weight problem could understand. Add to that the spiritual dimension of having disobeyed God and ignoring His clear warning, and suffering the consequences. From that time forth in 1982, I have had to suffer the general defeat of intemperance with food and resultant excess weight, along with guilt, self-consciousness, and low self-esteem (God is Judge), that is, until December 20, 2004. (God appoints all times.)

In March of that year, Paul, Mark (another brother in Christ) and I traveled to Austria to a Grander distributor convention. There, while having supper with about eight or nine other people, I told them my story of what had happened with the ice cream bar. (God provides the circumstance and opportunities.) The people listened, and wondered. Some did not agree with my interpretation of what had happened to me, but nevertheless, there it was. I felt thankful to share the sad secret with them. I weighed about one hundred and eighty-six pounds at the time, and had weighed so for years, with some fluctuation.

Then days later, a peculiar thing happened on our flight back to Canada from Austria. After our meal, the flight steward came down the aisle announcing that there was still some ice cream left from dinner, and that we could have more if we wished. Of all the flights I have ever been on, I have never witnessed this extra and repeat offer happen. I decided to decline the offer. Highly unusual to my past experience, yet a second time, the steward offered ice cream, saying, “There’s STILL some ice cream left! Who would like more?” If at all encouraged to take something in food, with which I would be tempted, it would often be that I would succumb, though I knew better, especially when it came to ice cream. However, I declined again. (God is the Father of spirits and inclinations.)

Now this was something for me. I didn’t feel like I was exercising willpower a whole lot. The stance seemed peculiarly easy to me. It felt good to refuse the ice cream. It occurred to me that God was restoring the victory over immoderation with food. I thought to myself, “Can this be? Is the Lord going to give me victory over food again, after all these years?” I was excited about the prospect. Something was happening and I was thankful and hopeful.

However, as the days progressed, I found myself in the usual helplessness and defeat. As the weeks and months progressed, I saw that the victory I thought that God might have given me was not a manifest reality. The external was contradicting a little promise or hope I had within. When I tried to motivate myself to cut back on food, I just didn’t have it. One morning, I got out of bed, went on the scale and found myself at the weight I had been at the time of my skiing accident nearly thirty-four years earlier, the highest weight ever … one hundred and ninety-three pounds. Enough was enough! I had to do something, but what? I knew I could not do it unless the Lord simply gave it to me. (God is over will power.) I said, “Lord, please! I can’t go on like this! I know You have asked me to serve You with my infirmities, but how can it possibly be right to go on this way?” Then I decided again, hope against hope, to diet.

That was on December 20, 2004.

I keep a journal. Repeatedly, I have seen the TOTAL SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD in His timings, in all affairs, personal and otherwise, small and great, past, present, and future. One day, shortly after starting the diet, in which I thankfully found success, I was perusing my journal, and noticed that the plane incident was March 20, 2004 … nine months to the day I began a successful diet. My diet has now lasted four weeks, and I have lost thirteen pounds. In the past, I have always craved, whether in diet or not. This time, I am not craving … hungry some, not a lot, but not craving. I am enjoying my food, feeling much better, with energy, enthusiasm, thankfulness, and hope. (Note: Two months later, down 20 pounds.)

Reader, what can I say? Millions have an eating problem. More and more people are overweight and obese, and though many proclaim diets that work, there really is no diet out there that works. Rare is the person who loses the required amount of weight and keeps it off for years to come. That is because God is rarely “figured into the equation.”

How did God help me, even in my time of defeat? How can I have total victory now? More interesting for you: How can YOU have that victory over food, or anything else for that matter? Concerning food, many are the health practitioners, scientists, doctors, dieticians, nutritionists, and merchandisers who will tell you thousands of things you can do or buy in order to eat properly or to achieve and maintain healthy weight levels. However, there are only two problems that God points to specifically in the Bible regarding what and how we should eat. Here are the two specifics on diet that He mentions:

1. What we should, and what we should not eat, and
2. how much we should eat.

The Bible is clear on what we should and what we should not eat. God speaks of clean and unclean foods. Even science is now discovering the follies of eating those things He commanded His people in the Old Testament not to eat. “The proof is in the pudding.” Going to the Bible, you will know what and what not to eat, in broad terms.

The second thing that God condemns, or warns against, is gluttony and drunkenness. I firmly believe that overeating is killing more people than almost anything, if not anything else today, particularly in “the West.” While we have never seen more energy and money being spent on weight loss diets and exercise, we are witnessing pandemic obesity, everywhere, regardless of race, religion, occupation, social or marital status, amount of wealth, sex, or age. It is a plague, costly and deadly.

There is a third factor involved, which, while God addresses it indirectly in the Bible, is not specified. That is the quality of the food that should be eaten. Anybody in his or her right mind, if at all possible, should be eating organic food, free of herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, antibiotics, growth hormones, artificial fertilizers, artificial sweeteners, colors and flavoring, preservatives, synthetic vitamins, irradiation, intensive processing, ripening gases, or genetically modified organisms. The food, when produced, should be watered with good water, or if the water is at all questionable, with Grander Living or revitalized water. The soil in which the food is produced should be responsibly replenished, nurtured and revitalized as well. Our organic market farm is Granderized entirely, its soil constantly replenished, and free of all those things mentioned. God has graciously given us not only good food for the soul, but also good food for our bodies. (God is over lands, waters and food production.)

Therefore, it is a matter of what one eats (the Bible specifies), how much one eats, and the quality of what one eats.

Most importantly of all, I had sinned against God. Though I had been given what to eat along with the quality, I had no power over how much I ate because I disobeyed on the quality of what I ate, though He had taught me. I fell to lust. I had an attitude problem with food. I was in bondage to food because I was not obeying God, and walking in the light He had given me.

Here then is the answer to a healthy body. Find out what God requires of you, what He blesses and does not bless, what is His will concerning all things in your life, confess your sins to Him, repent of (turn from) them, believe and obey Him, and you will be delivered from the bondage you are in concerning food, or anything else. This is not only advice for a healthy body, but also for a healthy mind and spirit. Let there be no doubt; sin has horrendous consequences, as I have amply experienced.

Even a foolproof diet will not do if you have sin in your life. You can try all the diets you can find, but not one will truly, lastingly avail if you are not in harmony with God, particularly if you call yourself a Christian, because in such a case, you take upon yourself His Name in vain if you walk in disobedience. He says He does not hold one guiltless for that. I know. Even if your dieting were to succeed, so what? “What should it profit a man, if he should gain the whole world, and lose his soul?” said Jesus.

If you are overweight or obese, God knows why, He knows what you need to do to get right with Him, He knows the time and the place, and when all that is taken care of, He will provide you with the right food, of good and proper quality, with the heart to eat moderately and wisely, and your weight problems will be history. There is no other true, effective, lasting, and satisfying way. This applies to ANY problem.

Will my victory last? Only if I obey, and only if God wills. If I have fallen to temptation before, who can say that it will not happen again? By God’s grace, I am kept and you will be kept. There is my solution. I have shared it with you. Now the truth is in your hands.

Victor Hafichuk

If you would like the full story, please click here: The Perfect Diet.

The Hsin Ten Enterprises Products (Chi News)

IF YOU DO NOT OWN A CHI MACHINE…you are missing out on health benefits you would not expect from a simple, enjoyable, even life-saving device! All of us at Harvest Haven and so many others have used and sold this machine for over four years now, and there is not a day in which we are not thankful for it. Many have received hope for health again when it was all but lost. Call us and try one on a free trial or rental basis (whichever you prefer). You have nothing to lose and much to gain. Rare is the person who cannot benefit from a daily, relaxing massage and natural oxygenation at one’s convenience and privacy. One knowledgeable and skilled physical therapist profusely thanked me for introducing him to the Chi machine, bought one, and had this to say:

“We physical therapists have tried for years to accomplish in the human body, with our bare hands, and doing a rather poor job of it, what this machine accomplishes in five minutes!” D.G.

If there is one thing better than the Chi Machine, it is having a Chi massage under the Hot House, or Far Infrared Dome. We have people who can testify that if it were not for this marvelous device, they would not be alive today. A US medical doctor, Dan Harper, said that these machines make him shine as a medical doctor, that nothing in conventional medical practice could do some of the things these machines do. (He was including the Electro Reflex Energizer, a wonderful electronic reflexology treatment device with a host of benefits). Another doctor (Poesnecker, ND, DC) predicted that one day every household would own a Far Infra Red Dome for both curative and preventative purposes, often eliminating the need for scalpel or medication. Another medical doctor, Nathan Lipton, states that he has made it his mission to get as many medical doctors using these machines as possible. FIR is harmless, yet very effective. I personally have experienced many benefits from using all these machines, and would not be without them if I could possibly help it. Don’t delay; investigate today! We can help you.

Water

The Best in Water Filtration

Attention, Lethbridge tap water users!

Did you know that the City of Lethbridge uses chloramine instead of chlorine to treat city water? This means that most drinking water filters sold in stores are ineffective for Lethbridge water as they are made to take out chlorine, not chloramine. In fact, most filter salespeople are not even aware of this difference!! However, there is no need to despair, we carry filters that effectively take out chloramine (or chlorine if you are in a different municipality), as well as other common drinking water contaminants.

After some research, we decided to carry a line of water filters from a BC company called Aquasmart. They use cutting-edge technology in their filters, which makes them not only highly effective but also long lasting and affordable. We use this brand of filter ourselves and have been very pleased with it. After reviewing the features below, we are confident you will see why.

Aquasmart uses a filter media known as Kinetic Degradation Fluxion or KDF® media. KDF® eliminates contaminants from the water by utilizing an electrochemical oxidation-reduction reaction. This simply means that toxins and heavy metals in the water are exchanged for, or neutralized with harmless zinc and copper electrons. It also sets off a reaction that kills harmful micro-organisms. For drinking water applications, the KDF® media is combined with a granulated, activated carbon element that helps control organic contaminants as well as bacteria, algae, fungi, parasites and protozoa such as Giardia.

Aquasmart offers a wide range of filter options. For drinking water, depending on the need, they offer a range of inexpensive counter top models as well as top quality yet relatively inexpensive reverse osmosis systems. They also offer a filter for your shower where unknown to most, you absorb more chlorine from the average shower through your skin and lungs, than from drinking two quarts of chlorinated tap water. For travel and hiking convenience, they carry a portable sports water bottle/filter. This can be used for filtering stream water as well as tap water. It is simple and inexpensive.

For literally just pennies a day, you can enjoy high-quality filtered water for drinking and bathing. This is safer, much less expensive and more convenient than bottled water and does not contribute to the gigantic waste problem created by plastic water bottles. Bottled water is not well regulated and can be of quite dubious quality (for more on this see www.bottledwaterblues.com). Other filters on the market are usually just activated carbon filters (eg. Brita). Such filters not only fail to remove many of the toxins commonly found in our drinking water but are quickly exhausted, thus more expensive, and must be carefully monitored for chlorine breakthrough and bacteria buildup.

For more information on these filters please contact us or you can look on Aquasmart’s website, www.aquasmart.com. We carry a full line of their products with special orders also available. Come on in and see what system best suits your needs.

Organic Food

GMOs – HOW BAD ARE THEY?
(Excerpts from Beware of the Coming Food Apocalypse – GMOs, Greg Ciola)

Seven hundred scientists from seventy-seven countries submitted a letter of concern to many governments and international forums. Here is the general tone, in the introductory portion of the letter:

“We, the undersigned scientists, call for the immediate suspension of all environmental releases of GM crops and products, both commercially and in open field trials, for at least 5 years; for patents on living processes, organisms, seeds, cell lines and genes to be revoked and banned; and for a comprehensive public enquiry into the future of agriculture and food security for all.

Patents on life-forms and living processes should be banned because they threaten food security, sanction biopiracy of indigenous knowledge and genetic resources, violate basic human rights and dignity, compromise healthcare, impede medical and scientific research and are against the welfare of animals.

GM crops offer no benefits to farmers or consumers. Instead, many problems have been identified, including yield drag, increased herbicide use, erratic performance, and poor economic returns to farmers. GM crops also intensify corporate monopoly on food, which is driving family farmers to destitution, and preventing the essential shift to sustainable agriculture that can guarantee food security and health around the world.”

It is estimated that about 70% of conventional foods are, or have, GMOs. Buying the products, we support the devastation of all that is decent and good. Though organic may initially cost more, you support those who produce the food as it should be, family farms who care and can do it properly, the environment, animal rights, and not the least, human health and welfare. Your purchasing decisions are moral ones. You worship either God or mammon. That is what it comes to if you boil it all down.

For the full 10-page letter, of which I have given only the introduction, with eye-opening details of which every responsible person ought to be aware, contact us at Harvest Haven. This is a grave matter indeed.

“We Bought the Farm”

Turkeys, the Two or Four-Legged Varieties

“Mark! Come quickly! You have to stop them!” cries Lois, Mark’s mother, as she barges into the Garden Shop, in her classic, hyper mode when something unusual and undesirable happens. “The toms are biting each other at the throats! You have to stop them before they kill each other!”

Out the door and into the barn Mark scrambles to see what he can do. He looks around and all seems peaceful. He looks up in the loft of the barn and sees “Squeaky,” a favorite tomcat, lazily rolling in the straw, peacefully sunning and licking himself, but ah! Mark notices that his neck is all wet (for whatever reason)! “I didn’t know that when cats fight, they bite each other by the throats!” he thought. “But why is he so relaxed, as though nothing ever happened? And where’s the other cat?”

Finding nothing unusual, he leaves the barn to find Lois, when she hollers from the turkey pen, “Mark, where are you?! Get over here! The toms are going to kill each other! What are you doing?!” Hmmm! Wrong kind of “toms”!

It was spring, and the turkey toms were ready for what spring brings. A decision had to be made. Should both toms be kept, and the pen be divided, with hens in each half for each tom, or should one tom be butchered, and the pen left as it is? I suggested, with tongue in cheek, that we divide the pen and give the toms their choice of hens. Ingrid was found staring up at the sky with a sobering, pensive expression. Lois asked her what she was thinking. After some moments, Ingrid asked (being urban Belgian, French, or blonde…I am not sure which, maybe all), “Can they really do that?”

Turkeys! What would the world be without them? Do they have turkeys because of Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving because of turkeys?