Interview with Hannah Dehelt - 1913

SPEAKER A Hello. I'm Kaysie Butler, and I want to welcome you to healthy living around the world. I'm on site at a youth conference in Porto in Portugal, and my guest today is Hannah Dehelt. Welcome, Hannah, to the program. SPEAKER B Hi, thank you. SPEAKER A Now, Hannah, tell me a little bit about where you are from. SPEAKER B So yeah, my name is Hannah and I grew up in Belgium, very little country, somewhere in Europe, and I decided to go to a mission school. That's why this past nine months, it will be 910 months now, I have been living in Austria, very close to the border of Slovenia, and I have been spending the time there in a mission school called TGM. SPEAKER A So this mission school, can you explain a little bit about what you have learned at this place and what this place is like? SPEAKER B So, it's a mission school and we are with students, we are ten students. And we have a program that is very structured. It gives you a structure in your life. And we start in the morning with a morning devotion. So in this we open the Bible and we study God's word together. Someone is preparing that. And then we go over to our daily schedule wherein in the morning we will have all sorts of classes. So the school is based on three pillars. One of them will be the Bible, one of them is health related and one of them is agriculture. So in the morning we have classes and it will be Oyabite, the Bible. And we have then studies like Daniel or Revelation about sanctuary, about daily living. How do you apply Christian living in a daily life that it's real to you? But we also have health. So such as how to give a massage to someone, how can you apply hydrotherapy? What was God's plan attended in Eden? These are some of the topics that we are discussing. And yeah, we also have always working time. It's also about 4 hours where you practically learn a lot of things. You need to work in the kitchen, or you work in the garden, or you work with laundry. There's a lot of different areas where they also need help. And then we are working. And that has proved a big blessing because most of us don't like it in the beginning. Okay. We're not used to it. But you learn to love it. You learn to appreciate this time that you have to contemplate about everything that you have learned in the classes. SPEAKER A Okay, so you're getting a blend of theory and then practical in the one training experience. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER A So what else happens at the center? You're explaining how you're helping with cooking and other aspects of this place, this school, is there any other part of the work at this place? SPEAKER B Yes, because we are not only a mission school, we are also connected to a health center. And by this, this means that eight times a year we have a program and we call it a New Start program, which is based on eight health principles. And by this we have guests that come to our place and our whole schedule is completely turned around. Okay. Everyone gets an individual schedule wherein some of us will be in kitchen preparing healthy food for our guests that are really matched to what they are needing. Sometimes they have special requests, things that the doctor prescribes them that they need to eat. And then we decorate the plate really nicely. We try to put a lot of love also in the plate decorations for them. And I was surprised also how much the guests really appreciate that. While others of us are working in the garden because it's also needed and others are counselors. When the guests come, we are their counselor. We do the treatment with them, like the hydrotherapies, like the massage, things like that. SPEAKER A So you actually get to work with these guests treatments and interacting get to. SPEAKER B Work personally with them, which is a huge blessing. SPEAKER A That would be a very good experience. SPEAKER B It is, for sure. SPEAKER A Wow, you've had such a wealth of different opportunities over the last few months. SPEAKER B Yeah, I'm very grateful for that. In the first three, four months of the course, the course is a little bit more focused on the health part, so that you get used to giving these treatments. While in the second part, after we also have a mission trip in January. We go for a month to another country. And when we come back, we are the ones. We as students, they look at what are your weaknesses? What are your strengths? By this you are divided in what area you will grow more in. We get the chance to be counselors as well. SPEAKER A That's really excellent that you have all those opportunities. SPEAKER B Yeah, it's a blessing that I hadn't expected. SPEAKER A Wow. Okay, so share with me how you have come to appreciate a healthy lifestyle. SPEAKER B It started, I think, in 2015. I was 15, and my aunt and uncle, my aunt is a doctor. She wanted to go to this big health congress in Geneva, and she invited me to come along so she could attend a congress and I could go and keep my uncle company. SPEAKER A Okay. SPEAKER B One day it was raining. I decided then, why not go to one of these lectures also one day? And I went and there was doctor, and his name is Neil Natley. Actually, he's a mental health doctor. He talks a lot about our brain. But at this specific lecture that I was, he was talking also about how food and then in specific how animal products also they influence our behavior and our thinking. And for me, this was I had heard before somehow that it's good to be a vegan or to eat as a vegetarian, but I never really knew why. After this, for me, this was just I decided to become a vegetarian. After that, I didn't want to eat meat anymore. And I was very grateful because God also very quickly took that desire away from one day to the next, that he just took the desire away and was like, you don't want to eat meat? I will help you in this, strengthen you. And I haven't eaten meat ever since. That's a blessing for me. It was a little bit more difficult with vegan, okay, because I didn't know much about it, but about a year and a half ago, so about six months before I went to the admission school, I just got this strong I don't know, the strong sense that I should become a vegan. And I didn't know why. And I just decided, okay, God, I'm just going to follow you and start eating. Vegan was a struggle because I had no clue what to eat, how to cook. It's a totally different cuisine and I didn't know much about it, and I decided to do it anyway. And I was so looking forward to going also to the school because I knew it was going to be vegan and I would learn how to cook it. So when I was there, I also got the knowledge why and why it's not so good and how it's not only meat, but also how milk or diary products or more also has what effects and what it leads. And this time I got the knowledge, and I was very grateful for that, that I don't always only have the conviction that it's good and I shouldn't do it. But now I also got the knowledge of why it's not good. SPEAKER A Yeah, that's very important. I like how that you've shared that it's been a journey for you. First there's one step with you're giving the meat up, and then you've moved a little bit further, gotten used to that, and now you've decided, oh, I need to go all totally plant based, for sure. SPEAKER B It's not easy because I was for five years the only one in my close family, right. My mom and dad's, brother and sister, they kept on eating meat, not a lot, but at meat maybe once a week or something. And my mom, she had to work, so it was sometimes me that was preparing the food, and then I was making it for them. And I think this is why I'm so grateful for God, that I had no desire at all to eat it. So it has been a journey, but God has really given me strength for it. I can just be grateful for that. SPEAKER A Yeah, definitely. That's very encouraging that God has just guided you and strengthened you through all of that transition of change in your life. So have you felt benefits from going this direction? SPEAKER B Actually, I did. I used to have some female related problems and I did notice actually a lot when I stopped eating then, which was mainly dietary products, when I switched to no milk anymore, no cheese or no eggs. Then I did not have so much problems anymore. It was only until I gave up chocolate that I kind of finally got released of all my problems. For me, I can see that this is one of the things that always come directly to my mind because it made for me such a big change. Once I had to throw up or one time I couldn't make my exams because of it. It did influence my life quite somehow. SPEAKER A Yeah. This is a big issue for many people who struggle with this. So the fact that you found relief just from changing your diet is quite powerful. SPEAKER B It is. SPEAKER A That's really good. So what would you say is your favorite lifestyle, healthy lifestyle practice that you have applied in your life? SPEAKER B Oh, my favorite. I think I should say that for me it has been actually the sleep pattern that changed. When I was young, I like to stand up very early. I was an early bird and I would go down and try to be quiet, not to wake up my parents. And in the evening when I was tired, I didn't matter that there were still people around, I was tired, so I was going to go to bed and sleep. Over the years that changed. I like to be around people and to talk and in that my whole rhythm somehow changed. I went later to bed and I stood also up later. But this influenced me a lot and over the years I have had this feeling of a continual tiredness that doesn't go away. And by just changing my schedule and by taking also vitamin D, which I had a great deficiency of, this completely changed actually my life. I have a lot more energy during the day, I'm a lot more happier and I actually am awake and I enjoy somehow I enjoy sleeping a lot. So sometimes it's still a struggle waking up in the morning. But God has been blessing me a lot that I see when I'm faithful and go on time to bed in the evening. He is faithful to wake me up in the morning and give me the energy for today. And I think this is for me, it's not maybe not related to food, but for me this has been a very important thing that we have energy for during the day and just this cheerfulness and this happiness that I can feel just by having energy. I think that for me that has been the greatest blessing of changing that in my life. SPEAKER A Yes, as you've been able to experience a whole day where you have good energy that does so much to lift the spirit. SPEAKER B Yeah, for sure you're not tired. And when you're tired I also see that I'm just not so nice and I cannot be as well a testimony for God as I want to be because I'm just too tired for it while now I can. And that makes me just happy that I can also shine forth his light. SPEAKER A Yeah. So how have you found well, you've sort of touched on it there. How have you found that making these changes has impact you spiritually and your connection with God? SPEAKER B I have for a long time, I had struggled a lot with media. Really? Television? Yeah. That was mainly a big area of my life where I was a lot struggling with. And it was also something that I wasn't willing to give up because I loved it too much and I wasn't happy with it. I wanted to love God more, and I wanted to just give it up. And I can also see that how God trained my will by this, by saying no to things that I didn't want to eat, by saying, no, I'm not going to eat meat anymore. No, I'm not going to eat certain types of ice cream anymore, I'm not going to eat chocolate anymore. This really trains my will. I'm going to be temperate in what I'm eating, which sometimes it's a real struggle. And I think not only me, but if I look at my classmate, most of us can have a struggle like this or, no, I'm going to go early to bed, I'm going to stand up. It's just these are these little decisions that you make daily that are really training your willpower. And I am very grateful that I can see that television in media in general, it's still not something that's very easy for me, but I can see that it has become easier. I am more also aware of what I am doing, and I'm not so caught up in it anymore. And I'm much stronger to say, no, I don't want it by this. I can see that by making changes in my lifestyle, by going a certain direction, that God has given me victories also over other areas in my life that I can see that I needed to overcome and needed to put in his hands. So by just little changes, little decisions in my lifestyle has actually gained me or is giving me victory over a very big thing that I am struggling with very hard. SPEAKER A That's very powerful, what you've shared. SPEAKER B Yeah. SPEAKER A That connection. I hadn't seen it that way. That you wouldn't necessarily think that by having more self control in your day to day activities, what you eat when you go to bed, that that was going to help you with major I had spiritual challenge areas. That's incredible. SPEAKER B Yeah, it is, because I have been aware of this for some years, and I tried to give it up, but I couldn't. And it's only ever since this year that I'm starting so many this year has been a completely change of how I used to live and by decisions that I made that I can see that this is also the first time that I feel like I'm gaining victory. Also in this area. Before, I couldn't I had never realized it, and I had never seen it or realized that this would actually be the key to how I could overcome this. SPEAKER A Well, thank you so much for sharing that, because I think other people may be able to benefit from that perspective if they are also struggling in similar areas, they may not have thought of, maybe I can look at another aspect and this might help me overcome this bigger challenge. So that's pretty powerful. What would you say to someone who is thinking about maybe making a change in their life, starting to adopt a healthy lifestyle a bit more, what? I don't know, principles or approaches would you recommend from your experience that are helpful in terms of making changes? SPEAKER B I think well, for sure, one would be prayer. I would suggest that you pray a lot about it and ask also that he gives you strength. Secondly, I would also say just avoid things. Don't make it harder for yourself than it already is. If you need to go grocery shopping and there's certain types of food that is difficult for you, just keep that area. Don't even try. You will fail. Just little things like that. Just don't try to make it harder than it is. I think most importantly for me, it's don't give up. You will most definitely in the beginning, you will fall. I knew that was with me, that I fell. In the Bible, it's really nicely written that it says that I don't know exactly. I know the Bible verse in my language, but not in English. SPEAKER A Okay. SPEAKER B But it says that when a righteous man will fall seven times, but he will stand up again. And I think for me, this is the biggest thing. When you fall, just stand up, go to God, ask for forgiveness, and he will give you that. And I think that's one of the things that you also do it for Him, not for others. Sometimes we make decisions to please others, and it won't last. If you do it for God, for his glory, then if you have the right motives, then you can endure. Yeah, do it for the right motives, not maybe because you want to get, I don't know, lose weight or things like that, because then very often it won't last. And then you will go up and down. So that's just from what I've learned, from what helped me, I think every person is different, and every person somehow has a different approach, things that will help for him better or for her better. But this is what, for me, helped me a lot. SPEAKER A Very good. Thank you so much for sharing your experience with me today. It has been a blessing to hear all the different things that have happened in your journey, especially connection with health and your studies, your learning as well. I'm sure those who are listening to this program will also receive a real blessing from hearing your experience. So thank you so much for sharing on the program today, Hannah. SPEAKER B Oh, you're welcome. I'm very grateful that you asked me. SPEAKER A Okay. We have been recording on site, on location in Porto at a youth conference. We've been listening to Hannah Dehelt's story of her experience with healthy living. Thank you for tuning into the program. You've been listening to healthy living around the world. I am your host, Kaysie Butler. And until next time, may God richly bless you. Bye for now.