Here’s the transcript of this interview.

TRANSCRIPT

Dee:
What do you think of the students there… you were telling me, the Spirit of Prophecy wasn’t… they didn’t know it as well?

Eileen:
One thing I was really saddened about was… I did a survey just to see how well Spirit of Prophecy is in our academies. I come from public schooling so I really don’t know [about] Bible classes and things like that in academies. So I did a survey and I asked, “How many of you have Messages to Young People? How many of you have read Messages to Young People? How many of you have heard of the book? How many of you know who Ellen G. White is and the word ‘Spirit of Prophecy’?”

And I was surprised that a lot of students didn’t know, which is a sad fact. I could tell that these were very different type of youth compared to who we usually have these seminars to, because we went to them where they were at. Usually the seminars we give, the young people come to these seminars because they were invited to come to the churches. And so, I knew it was going to be a little bit different.

But I really do think with the youth that we worked with, they should have more knowledge about Spirit of Prophecy. A lot of them didn’t know whatsoever of who Sister White was. That’s why were hoping to keep in contact with students at academies. We’ve gotten their email [addresses] and we want to keep up with them and let them know that we’re here for them. And if they ever have questions, we have a blog site now, the one that you’re keeping up with. They can ask questions there online. And so, the students that we worked with were just a little different than what we were used to. But God worked miracles that weekend. We’re hoping that we can get something from them… questions about that.

Dee:
Awesome. One of the things I’ve been thinking of is… I’ve been listening to other pastors [from] other denominations and they love to talk about people from the 1700s that they like. [It’s] kinda their history. Let’s say they’re Presbyterian so they’ll talk a lot about the Puritans or Jonathan Edwards. It think we should… I think the local church and our institutions, we need to talk more about our history, Ellen White, William Miller, James White, or Uriah Smith. Not that they were perfect, but that’s part of our identity and if we lose that, will we even be Adventist anymore? You know what I mean… if we forget what they learned… that God was teaching them back then.

Eileen:
Yes. Dee, I strongly believe that since we’re here at the Adventist church… what we’re doing right now is working with the Adventist church, so this message that we’re carrying, that we hope everybody will hear here on earth, is the same messages our pioneers were [carrying]. So, who to better look to and to read about than our pioneers.

Dee:
Right. Definitely.

Eileen:
And so Spirit of Prophecy and people like Sister White, James White, Uriah Smith, Joseph Bates, William Miller, these people… the same messages we have today are the same messages they were carrying then. So, they’re the people we can really look up to and what they faced is maybe what we’re facing today. And so, they encourage us and their [lives] encourage us to move forward and that’s why I really do think these writings are very important for us, whether we believe it now or not, but it will encourage us to draw closer to God.

Dee:
You talked about the people on the trip. Can you tell us a little bit more? I know two of them were new. Amy and Rolando, it was the first time they went with us. How do you think they responded to the whole trip?

Eileen:
Well, actually we had Rolando come to our office about a week before we left. It was the first weekend here at Southwestern. We were doing registration. And that’s when we received the invitation [to go to Ozark Academy]. Somebody had heard that the spiritual VP at Ozark last year, he was a senior then and now [is] a freshman here at Southwestern, was here in school. And so, we were trying to hunt him down. Who is this guy? Then, we realized it’s our very friend Rolando Brutus.

So, we told him, “You would know the students better. You would know what we should do and not do. You could show us around and really get [us] familiarized with the students in sharing this with them.” That’s when we invited him to come up [to our office].

After this weekend actually, after that weekend at Ozark, Rolando became our public relations coordinator here at the Ellen White Research Center.

Dee:
Oh, I didn’t know that.

Eileen:
So, his involvement grew much bigger now. And then, Amy… we had one person who couldn’t travel with us on that weekend who intended to go and actually do the seminar. [But they had] personal problems. So, we were looking left and right. Who should we take? And we were thinking, There’s no need to take somebody else. But then, Amy, my sister, of course she’s my roommate… I was just sitting there thinking and praying, “God, if there is anybody to take, who is it?” And I turn around and I see my sister, and I’m thinking, of course, who else but my sister?

I asked her and she said, “Yeah. Sure, why not? I’ve been interested in working there and seeing what it’s about.” She hadn’t seen what we do, our programs. So, she was excited about coming.

So, Rolando and Amy [took] on the booth. When they got there, they set up the booth. They put out all of the material that we were gonna give out. As soon as the students came out of the program, we had about an hour to talk with them. And they [Rolando and Amy] were there with us conversing. They were really going after it. I was really surprised, because what they did there the first time, I wasn’t able to do my first time. So, I was really surprised. And they were very excited. Once we got to the seminar, we actually had them… Rolando did a testimony during one of the sessions. The students were very responsive to that.

They were very into the program. Not just simply [thinking], “I’m new and I’m just getting to see how this is,” but “I’m part of it.” I was very excited about that.

Miguel was our key leader that weekend. He was doing pretty much the whole seminar. He did a lot for us. He basically took on the whole message. I was just there to support the women [laughs] at the seminar.

And we had part of our team, not officially as an Ellen White Research Center member, Dr. Chadwick. We all drove together in one of the vans. The trip there was very nice. We had about a six, seven hour trip.

It was when the snowstorm hit that weekend, so our drive back was the worst. We had to drive for eight to nine hours because there was ice on the road. And so, we grew a lot closer. It was a very beautiful experience. Very nice with the team.

Now, these two new members are taking on more leadership positions here at the Research Center. We’re looking forward to more of their involvement and [also those] people on the list who are willing to participate and who want to be part of this, to be part of Synergy.

Dee:
Awesome. That’s neat that we can just plug someone in pretty easily, because you and Miguel have already done this. So, someone can come and they can watch us and go, “Hey, I can be part of this.” Maybe they can’t do a seminar, but they could give their testimony, talk to the kids, learn something too and maybe give a seminar later on, later on in their experience.

And last question. What did you learn in this trip? What will you take from this trip that you hadn’t known before that you can use in later ministry?

Eileen:
One thing that I did learn is Synergy, the ministry that we’re working directly [with] is The Synthesis of Evangelism and Restoration and God’s Power through the Youth… and I wanna focus on the word “restoration”. Restoration of Spirit of Prophecy and church history. Spirit of Prophecy plays a big role in church history. What I learned in this trip is that we truly have to restore church history and Spirit of Prophecy, starting first on the inside of our organization, which is starting with ourselves, our personal life. And then, comes our campuses. Our main focus is our campuses and our academies. It’s very important to restore this very thing that is inspiring me, to restore to the people that should have been inspired to say… to preach about it, to speak about it. So, that’s the main thing, that we truly want the students to be motivated as our pioneers were, as Sister White was to write these things, to truly be inspired to share it with others.

Another big thing is that… we had a meeting after this trip the following Monday. A lot of the key leaders in the Ellen White Research Center sat down and we talked about duplicating ourselves and really growing as a team. And before, it seemed impossible. Who would want to truly be part of this, full-time, every week, and take a big role? [But] we just mentioned about Rolando and Amy. [So] I truly can see that people do want to do this, whether they get paid or not, they want to do this. And that’s another thing. If we need to grow, we’re gonna grow. If God wants us to grow, then we’re gonna grow. And that weekend showed us about growing and that new members can be just as active as members that have been in this longer than [them].

Dee:
Praise God.

Well, thanks for talking with us and… this has been Dee and Eileen. We’re just talking about Ozark Academy.

When’s our next trip? We have two, right?

Eileen:
Yes, we have two this weekend on the 27th, this Sabbath. We’ll have a Spanish speaking team at the Cleburne Spanish Church, doing Sabbath School, the main worship service, and doing the afternoon program. And we’ll have an English speaking team at the Joshua Seventh-day Adventist Church. They’ll be doing Sabbath School and the main worship service and not the afternoon program. And we’ll be reporting on the Ukraine mission trip mainly.

Those are our upcoming trips. If anybody’s around the area, around Keene, we have two very close locations, so you can see how we do our programs.

Dee:
Nice. Two local [programs].

Well, thanks for doing this and… God bless. This is Dee, signing off.