13 minute read
HEALTH
How’s your New Year’s resolution going? Have you honored your pledge to remain healthy and active this year?
If not, don’t fret. It’s never too late to take action. There are many ways to improve your overall well-being, both alone and with a group of friends.
Join a Gym
Becoming a member of a gym can have multiple benefi ts. Not only will you have access to professional equipment, group classes and often other amenities, but it can be a great place to meet friends who have similar interests or goals.
Many gyms offer senior memberships at discounted rates and house services such as professional trainers who can work with you to create a custom workout plan. Gyms also provide a safe space to enjoy indoor activities during the colder months. Be sure to do research on membership fees and whether paying per visit would be a better option for you.
Watch What You Eat
Eating healthy is one of the cornerstones of a longer life. The National Council on Aging suggests meals consisting of lean proteins, lots of fruits and vegetables, and low-fat dairies.
Programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) help people afford healthy food, with the average senior receiving $113 every month. Work with local dietitians or senior health organizations to fi nd programs that are right for you.
Drink More Water
Adults over 60 are the most likely to suffer from dehydration, which can cause an increased risk for developing kidney stones, chronic constipation and impaired cognitive function.
Drinking water regularly and measuring your water consumption will help avoid becoming dehydrated. This is also important because seniors are more likely to feel less thirsty when they are dehydrated, only furthering the problem. Also limit coffee and alcohol consumption, as both speed up dehydration.
Listen To Your Body
It’s true that no one knows your body better than you. While doctors and specialists are essential for diagnosing a problem and treatment, you can feel when something isn’t quite right and needs attention Don’t ever be afraid to visit your personal physician. Your doctor may be able to prescribe treatments that will lessen or alleviate pain that you previously thought you would have to live with.
How one man decided to ‘Live Like Jesus Today’
by Susan Thacker sthacker@gbtribune.com Photography by Hugo Gonzalez hgonzalez@gbtribune.com
n February, when temperatures dropped to single digits and lower, Ellinwood resident Bryant
Like Jesus Today Ministries Inc. (LLJTM), thought about the people without heat, including homeless people who camp under the Arkansas River bridge south of Great Bend.
Working with another local group, Lasting Life Ministries, LLJTM opened a warming shelter in the former Ace Hardware building at 4903 10th St.
“We had to do something,” Birney said. The ministries provided showers, restrooms, mattresses, bedding, food and toiletries.
It’s been 10 years since Birney stepped away from a career in insurance to start Live Like Jesus Today Ministries. But years before that, he and his wife Clifann were involved in Christian missions, taking teams to other countries and befriending people in need.
Clifann, a pastor’s daughter from the island of Trinidad in the West Indies, visited Great Bend in 2004 and spoke at the First Baptist Church, which is where she met Buzz. They were married a year later.
Buzz was ready to move into fulltime mission work right away but Clifann was less sure. “I said, ‘Let’s think about this and pray about it,’” she said. One morning he got an answer to that prayer.
Student ministry
One of the fi rst outreaches of LLJTM was to create Friendship International, a ministry to international students at Barton Community College.
“We cook for them and share the Bible,” Clifann said. Sometimes, they also provide housing.
He recalled a young man from Sri Lanka who came to Barton on a track scholarship, then found himself needing a place to stay. The Birneys took him in, but the student made it clear that he wouldn’t go to church with them because he was Buddhist.
Another student, also here on a track scholarship, was from Iran. The Birneys invited him to their home and cooked Iranian meals for him.
“He told us he couldn’t go to church with us and we said, ‘That’s okay, we’re glad you’re here.’ We just built a friendship and two months later, he was going to church with us.” The student later moved to New Orleans to continue his education but he stayed in touch and continued to study the Bible. He called the Birneys at Christmas time and said, “Mr. Buzz, I’m ready to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Would you baptize me?”
Live Like Jesus Today Ministries is a nonprofi t, 501(c)(3) organization with the following mission statement:
To spread the teachings of
Jesus Christ through words, actions and relational mission works to ignite a passion in the hearts of people and the American church to hear the voice of God – and truly reach our communities, our nation and the world for Jesus Christ.
Prison ministry
“We just see miracle after miracle,” Buzz said, explaining how he also started a prison ministry at the Larned Correctional Mental Health Facility 10 years ago.
“I started out with one hour in the max prison at Larned,” he said.
The chaplain warned him it was possible no one would show up, but Buzz’s response was, “Well, that’s not up to you and me. God said to be here. I’m going to be here.”
An announcement went out that a new Bible study would start the following Monday from 9 to 10 a.m. Buzz got the necessary clearance, was fi ngerprinted and when the day arrived the guards took him to a little room.
“I heard the call out and I sat in there, but nobody had come. Ten minutes later, the door opened, and three inmates walked in, and so we just started,” he said. The next week there were 10 and by the end of the fi rst month there were 25 inmates attending his Bible study.
“And God was just moving,” Buzz said. “About three months into it, three of them in the max prison gave their hearts to the Lord.” The guards and the warden noticed a change, he said. “Everybody said, ‘what’s going on with those guys?’ and I said, “Well, God’s going on with them, and their lives changed.’ And so the whole environment started to shift and everybody felt it, everybody sensed it.”
Food and clothing
Meanwhile, Live Like Jesus Today Ministries continued to branch out. On a Saturday in March, they took a trailer load of food and clothing, coats and bedrolls, shampoo and other items to Wichita.
“They know of over 2,000 people in Wichita that are homeless, but they say it’s double that because a lot of homeless people don’t ‘sign in’ when they want to know if you’re homeless or not,” Buzz said.
What they didn’t give away was shared with other ministries. Buzz has photos of kids in Juarez, Mexico who are wearing new T-shirts that came from LLJTM.
They regularly visit area schools, providing food so children can eat on the weekends. During the 2020 Christmas season Buzz and his daughter Kylee Graves, a family support worker at Lincoln Elementary School, organized a district-wide giving opportunity that provided students in need with Christmas gifts.
The Kingdom Campus
Months before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Birneys watched God do a miracle, Buzz said.
“We got all these ministries going and we had them all spread out everywhere, just utilizing what we could. God told us three years ago to start looking for a location where we could bring everything together and become more effective and more effi cient. We started looking in Great Bend and praying over things but everything was $300,000 (or more) and we couldn’t be even close to that.”
Toward the end of November 2019, a realtor friend suggested they check out a vacant warehouse on two acres at 700 Patton Road in Great Bend.
“As soon as we stepped out, both of us looked at each other and said, ‘this is what the Lord has been waiting for,’” Buzz said. The dickering began, but it seemed they wouldn’t be able to meet the asking price.
What happened next was a miracle, he said.
COVID-19
“God knew what was coming, because the month after that the world shut down,” he said. Volunteers began cleaning up the property that would become the Kingdom Campus, including a 4,000 square foot warehouse. About that time, he was contacted by a worldwide ministry based in Missouri.
When the trailer arrived, they borrowed a forklift and unloaded 28 pallets of food, stacking boxes to the ceiling. A team spent a week putting If Jesus wouldn’t be real,
individual boxes of food together.
“We were going to have a Saturday distribution in March and then the world just shut down,” he recalled. “We were just going to do it, because people were hungry and we were trying to feed people, trying to stay up with the demand. Somehow I forgot to call – I guess I didn’t even know I needed to call – the health department.”
News of a mass food distribution raised red fl ags and Buzz was told they couldn’t do it.
“I said, ‘What do you mean we can’t? People are hungry around here.’ And I said, ‘We can. We’ll wear your masks we’ll stay 6 feet apart; we’ll do everything you tell us to do, but we can’t not let these people have this food.’” With safety guidelines in place, they had permission to proceed with a drive-through giveaway.
Expanding the campus
Work on the Kingdom Campus continued. The front offi ce now serves as a thrift store. The warehouse is fi lled with things families might need – whether it’s furniture or food.
Outside, a large stage was built at the back of the lot. In April, Buzz was confi dent that the Kingdom Campus would be ready for a grand opening in June, on the 10th anniversary of the ministry.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said. “We’re going to put in a half-court basketball, a full-court sand volleyball, two big gazebos, and we’re putting in a prayer/ exercise/walk path all around the inside of the fence.” With a roof over the stage, electricity and artifi cial turf, they plan to show Christian movies and offer weekly “Youth Saturdays.”
“When we get our Kingdom Campus open we’re going to open up the gates. We’re going to have all kinds of games for the little kids, fl y kites, and let them run, let them laugh, because kids don’t get to do much of that today. We’re going to let these kids understand that there is a good life out there and they are precious, and they are loved. And so that’s really my heart’s desire,” he said.
“We want to let people just come and enjoy the place, where we can talk to them and love on them and build relationships and friendships with them. I’m talking the heart of the heart and the broken of the broken; we deal with inmates all the time, drug addicts, the homeless, whatever, but they’re that way because they don’t know any different in a lot of cases.”
Buzz said he has been there. Unlike Clifann, who grew up going to church, he did not attend church until the age of 15 and it wasn’t until he was 25 that he was “born again.”
Looking back at the eight days in February when LLJTM and friends opened the warming shelter, Buzz recalls how others were blessed.
“It was a lot of work and we just stepped out in faith – never done nothing like that. But then the families came in. We got to just love on them and laugh with them and pour life into them and speak truth into them. And that very Sunday after we shut it down, two of the homeless people went to church with us and one of them still goes. And he said, ‘Man, I’ve never felt this way,’ and I said, ‘Because you’re built for more, man.’ You and I are, you know, all of us are built for so much more. We’ve just got to know what we’re built for.”
