First Health Immersion Program Training

Five AMI representatives traveled to Batesburg, South Carolina to share their experience running a church-based health immersion program. The Batesburg church family, usually 60 members strong, swelled to 90 people as Adventists from seven other churches came from hours away to learn more about whole-gospel medical missionary service. The Batesburg church family have formed a solid core group who are eager to extend whole gospel medical missionary service to their community. Lay pastor and nurse practitioner, Brandon Palmer, works full time at his own practice and oversees the church. For the past two years the church has offered health screenings to the community one Sunday a month. The outreach also offers clothing and toys from a trailer on the property and provides meals for up to 40 families. Members of this low-income community of South Carolina are grateful for the services; many are underserved medically or have no health insurance at all. Despite their love-filled activity, Batesburg members sense that there is more that could be done to eternally impact their community. Pastor Kelly opened the event Friday evening and set the stage regarding what is required to run a church-based lifestyle immersion program. Doctor John Kelly followed with an explanation of gospel medical missionary work and described why combining the gospel with the medical work is crucial. Sabbath morning Dr. Kelly shared the power of hydrotherapy and Veronica Johnsen shared testimonies. At the sermon hour Pastor Kelly explained the principles of unity required in order to show the Gospel–to serve together in such a way that the world would know we are connected to Jesus. The ladies at Batesburg provided a wonderful fellowship meal and a couple recipes from the immersion program menu were included to provide a “taste” of the therapeutic diet. Following lunch, Sally Kelly shared the rationale behind her recipes and how warmly health-guests receive the food. The immersion menu and recipe book were passed around for attendees to preview. Then the AMI team shared how every church member, young and old, medical and non-medical, can be involved in this ministry. Veronica’s demonstration of a hot foot bath concluded the event Sabbath afternoon. Sunday morning the core group at Batesburg met with the AMI team for breakfast and a deeper discussion of the leadership positions and facilities needed to host a health immersion program. The discussion ended with hearty affirmation, high enthusiasm, and handshakes all around. Word came to AMI Monday evening that the Batesburg church board unanimously voted to host a Health Immersion program in their church early next year! Pastor Palmer wrote: “Thank y’all for coming and doing God’s work: lighting fires in other churches. What a calling!” Multiple meetings with our local government officials took place during the months of October and November. A request was made to the township to grant a special use permit, allowing us to erect a building that would hold more than 100 people. This permit was granted unanimously. The second request was to change the zoning of the property from “neighborhood” zoning to a “mixed use” type of zoning. This would change requirements for development of the property, making them more flexible and allowing a variety of buildings such as an event center, lifestyle center, trades building, etc. This request passed the first township meeting and narrowly passed the township and Berrien Springs official’s combined meeting with 4:3 in favor, as some were concerned that allowing yet another not-for-profit entity in Berrien Springs would decrease the potential for revenue from sales tax. We hope to receive the building permits soon for the physical structure of our Multi-purpose Building and for an agricultural storage building for our equipment. We also hope our fifteen inches of snow will melt (and it would help if we stopped getting an additional 2-3 inches every other day…). The farmer who had been renting the land has yet to harvest his soybeans. We can’t begin building until he harvests his beans! Please pray for a break in the weather. A donor to AMI is offering matching funds up to $50,000 until the end of the year. If you were to donate $50, they would match it, and the total received by AMI would be $100. Thank you to our anonymous donor for offering these matching funds! If you have donated via credit card on our website, a check in the mail, or through ACH, we already have your information. However, if you donated via Zelle or PayPal we will need you to fill out the receipt form on our website donation page to provide your mailing address. Many of you have already filled this form out–thank you. If you donated via Zelle or PayPal and have not filled out the form, please see our website: ami365.org under the tab “Donate.”