Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin

Part 3

We need a NEW­START, a new vi­sion, a new sense of mis­sion. The dif­fer­ence is not the cir­cum­stances but in the at­ti­tude to­ward those cir­cum­stances.

We can make sim­ple but sig­nif­i­cant lifestyle changes and live longer. "Trust in the LORD, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faith­ful­ness. De­light your­self al­so in the LORD,?and He shall give you the de­sires of your heart." Psalm 37:3-4?(New King James Ver­sion) ?

His­to­ry was cre­at­ed on Sep­tem­ber 19, as one of the most chal­leng­ing health pro­mo­tion and lifestyle projects was launched in 25 ter­ri­to­ries through­out the re­gion. At 7 am over 5,000 peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Hands Across the Caribbean New­start Walk in sev­er­al is­lands. The Caribbean Ad­ven­tist Health Min­istries chose this strate­gic event to launch In­ter­na­tion­al Health Week and to pro­mote the Caribbean Well­ness Pro­gramme.

In Part 2, I made the fol­low­ing state­ment:

"We need a New­start, a new vi­sion, a new sense of mis­sion, a new ap­proach to prob­lem solv­ing, a new ap­proach to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, a new ap­proach to con­sti­tu­tion re­form, a new ap­proach to sav­ing our youth as we guide them to serve the na­tion. We need a new at­ti­tude." Let us re­call that Hands Across the Caribbean was de­signed to strength­en the com­mu­ni­ty by af­firm­ing the in­sti­tu­tion of the fam­i­ly. Our mantra was walk the talk; pro­tect the heart with New­start! We have to re­flect on the Caribbean sce­nario, what we ac­com­plished and what we failed to ac­com­plish. There were walks, pa­rades, health ex­po­si­tions, free med­ical screen­ing, aer­o­bic dis­plays, tree plant­i­ng cel­e­bra­tions, lec­tures, video pre­sen­ta­tions, me­dia blitz pro­mo­tions, dis­tri­b­u­tion of books and mag­a­zines.

Our tar­get in terms of reach­ing in­di­vid­u­als is 100,000 and there are var­i­ous health pro­mo­tion mech­a­nisms to achieve this mis­sion. This is our vi­sion dur­ing the next three months: Me­dia and com­mu­ni­ty screen­ing pro­grammes�35,000 peo­ple. Sup­port Group Min­istries�5,000 peo­ple. New­start Dream Team projects in 200 sec­ondary schools�30,000 stu­dents. Health fairs and ex­po­si­tions�20,000 peo­ple. Book and mag­a­zine dis­tri­b­u­tion�10,000 peo­ple. We are go­ing to have our fi­nal ori­en­ta­tion ses­sion for the New­start Dream Team Min­istry on Thurs­day at the Curepe SDA church. This is the huge moun­tain we have to con­quer. We wish to drama­tise sev­er­al Rs: Rest to con­quer stress. Reg­u­lar ex­er­cise that sat­is­fies. Re­lease for peace. Reach and teach–em­pow­er at this hour. Re­li­gion–in­spire to as­pire. Re­store vic­to­ry: the suc­cess sto­ry. Re­lax–put a smile in your mile. In or­der to have a new start, you have got to take charge of your health. And there is a spe­cial book with the ti­tle that can on­ly be de­scribed as phe­nom­e­nal.

Dr Aileen Lud­ing­ton and Dr Hans Diehl, two in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed health ed­u­ca­tors have pro­duced a life-en­hanc­ing in­stru­ment on the con­quest of stress. Let us ex­am­ine their sim­ple for­mu­la: Reg­u­lar ac­tive ex­er­cise for at least 30 min­utes a day. Ex­er­cise pro­duces en­dor­phins, the feel good hor­mones that pro­tect the body against stress. Sun­shine and fresh air al­so pro­duce en­dor­phins, so out­door ex­er­cise is dou­bly ben­e­fi­cial. A sim­ple, plant-food-cen­tered di­et. The body eas­i­ly han­dles such a di­et. The re­sult is in­creased en­er­gy, ef­fi­cien­cy, and en­durance. No cig­a­rettes, al­co­hol, caf­feine, or oth­er harm­ful drugs. These sub­stances all chalk up sub­stan­tial pay lat­er debts, of­ten be­gin­ning the next day.

Ad­e­quate rest. This in­cludes a good night's sleep and reg­u­lar times for re­lax­ation and recre­ation. Lib­er­al use of wa­ter–in­side and out. Drink enough wa­ter to keep the urine pale (six to eight glass­es a day). A hot and cold show­er each morn­ing starts your day off right. Sta­ble life an­chors. A re­li­gious faith, a lov­ing home, a job that makes you feel worth­while, in­spir­ing friends, a pur­pose for liv­ing–these are all vac­cines against stress. A pos­i­tive men­tal at­ti­tude. Pic­ture a very cranky man walk­ing to work in the pour­ing rain, curs­ing all the way. What is go­ing on in­side this man? Now pic­ture three de­light­ed chil­dren play­ing in the same rain. What is go­ing on in­side these chil­dren? Who has the most stress? The dif­fer­ence is not the cir­cum­stances but in the at­ti­tude to­ward those cir­cum­stances. The sto­ry of Hank Del­mont is con­tained in the book Take Charge Of Your Health. Now there are sev­er­al imag­i­na­tion cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ries in this pub­li­ca­tion.

Some are dra­mat­ic and in­spi­ra­tional, some are ed­u­ca­tion­al and life-chang­ing but all of them have an em­pow­er­ment di­men­sion. Hank was a farmer who moved from be­ing a sim­ple work­er walk­ing in the breeze and feel­ing the elec­tric cur­rents as he moved along the plants to dri­ving farm ma­chin­ery equipped with air-con­di­tioned cabs. Even­tu­al­ly he was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing se­vere pains, heart pains. He went to the doc­tor, took an an­giogram and re­ceived the bad news that he was in a hor­ri­ble con­di­tion. In fact, his doc­tor told him that his con­di­tion was hope­less. The dam­age to the heart was so ex­ten­sive that he was told that "by­pass or oth­er sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures were out of the ques­tion." But his daugh­ter was the eter­nal op­ti­mist. She be­lieved that the tide could turn, once there were sig­nif­i­cant lifestyle changes. She rec­om­mend­ed a live-in health cen­tre in the west. He was re­luc­tant; he had al­ready re­ceived so much bad news that he did not think the ex­pense could be jus­ti­fied.

How­ev­er, one day the pain stung him and he de­cid­ed to go. He re­ceived a warm, car­ing wel­come from a physi­cian who be­lieved in God and the trans­for­ma­tion ca­pac­i­ty of con­sis­tent life-style changes. He told Hank and his wife about Eu­rope dur­ing World War II. Fo­cus on the di­a­logue be­tween Hank and his doc­tor: "Dur­ing World War II most Eu­ro­peans were forced to change their eat­ing habits from their cus­tom­ary di­et of meat, eggs and dairy prod­ucts to a more aus­tere di­et of pota­toes, grains, beans, roots, and veg­eta­bles. The sur­pris­ing re­sult? A dra­mat­ic de­crease in heart at­tacks which last­ed for sev­er­al years."

"That makes sense to me," Hank com­ment­ed. "I've been a farmer for most of my life, and a typ­i­cal break­fast for me has been three eggs with sausage and ba­con, fried pota­toes, and cof­fee. My oth­er meals weren't a whole lot bet­ter. I guess"–Hank stopped to clear his throat–"I guess I just ate my­self in­to this con­di­tion. I didn't know any bet­ter." Per­haps we can use the KISS acronym: keep it sim­ple and sat­is­fy­ing. We can­not ig­nore the facts, we can­not and must not re­main in de­nial: In con­clu­sion, let us ob­serve care­ful­ly that we can make sim­ple but sig­nif­i­cant lifestyle changes and live longer, im­prove the qual­i­ty of our life, have less stress, in­spire oth­ers, ef­fect change in the com­mu­ni­ty.