 Major sponsors for Ableton on Air include Green Mountain Support Services, empowering people with disabilities to live home in the community, Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Ableton on Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, WWW, this is the Bronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Power Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International, Anchor FM, and Spotify. Partners for Ableton on Air include the HOD of New York and New England, where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Center Vermont Habitat for Humanity, and Montpelier Sustainable Coalition, Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx, Roosevelt Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx. Ableton on Air has been seen in the following publications, Park Chester Times, WWW, this is the Bronx.com, New York Power Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, WWW.H.com, and the Montpelier Bridge. Ableton on Air is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England Chapter, and the Society of Professional Journalists. Welcome to the edition of Ableton on Air, the one and only program that focuses on the needs, concerns, and achievements of the differently abled. I've always been your host, Lauren Seiler. Sorry that Arlene could not be here today. Before we begin our wonderful show, and talking to our guest, Daniel Molin from Enough Ministries. We would like to say special thanks to our sponsors, Washington County Mental Health, Green Mountain Support Services, and many, many others, including the support and the partnership with Enough Ministries for today's program, and the Division for the Blind of Visually Imperative Vermont, the Association for the Blind of Visually Imperative of Vermont, and Higher Abilities of Vermont. Thank you, Daniel Molin from Enough Ministries of Bury for joining us on this edition of Ableton on Air, and thank you to your wonderful companion, Ransom there for joining us. So, let's start. Tell me a little bit about your challenge. You've been in the military, and let's start there. Yeah. You know, I served in the military for 32 years, retired as a colonel. I've done combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I am currently 70% disabled according to the VA. So, you know, obviously in ministry, we need to rely on the Lord to make up the rest of that and rely on His strength, and He has been so awesome in enabling me to do so much in our ministry and for the local community. So, let's talk about Enough Ministries. What is Enough Ministries? What are the missions and goals of Enough Ministries? So, Enough Ministries was planted more than eight years ago now. Enough Ministries was originally planted as a church for the homeless addicted in Hungary, in Bury, and we know that that is an unfortunately large population in Bury. And so, we have a number of sub-ministries within the organization that we assist people with. We have a food distribution ministry. We have a soup kitchen ministry and a clothing ministry. And we've also just started a, it's called Celebrate Recovery, which is an addiction recovery ministry as well. So, that's what we do. We take our name from the Bible first that says, Jesus is enough, God is enough, and He is sufficient for all of our needs and that's why we come up with Enough Ministries. And yeah, we've been, I think, a staple within our community for helping people with all sorts of, you know, kinds of issues and whatnot and just showing them God's love. When you say addiction and mental health, that's a large population in Bury, can you go through that particular thing? Why is it a large population? I know during the pandemic, mental health has been an issue. Can you talk about that for a little bit? So, I do believe that, and the statistics will bear out, that a large percent of the population that's homeless, addicted and hungry also suffer from some sort of mental health, you know, kinds of issues, social anxieties, you know, and other kinds of schizophrenia and whatnot. And that's unfortunate. Addiction, you know, is also a part of it. So, there's a mental health and physical health component that underlies a lot of that. I don't think that anybody would desire to be homeless or addicted or hungry. And so, it's something else that sort of brought them to that point. You know, perhaps they weren't able to afford, you know, some sort of healthcare procedure or whatever and that caused them to lose their housing or, you know, they have some sort of mental health challenges that make it difficult for them to work or stay in certain sort of situations or follow rules and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so, yeah, I do think that, you know, we have a large population in Barrie. I think there's a large population everywhere that is largely sort of unseen. There's a lot of, for example, prescription drug abuse that goes on everywhere. It's addiction, whether you have a job and you're a functioning addict or you're a non-functioning addict. What do you mean by a functioning addict, if you don't mind me? So you're, I guess, you know, the definition for a functioning addict would be somebody who's addicted to a drug, but also they're capable of, you know, performing a job or, you know, maintaining a family or whatever. So the fact that you're able to continue life, at least for a while, in that addicted stage isn't to say that your addiction is any less than somebody who's on the street and, you know, however they're raising money for, you know, drugs or whatever and are homeless. Now, God is an able God. Amen. Do you think, in your opinion, now you have alcoholism, drugs, opioids, is there, but now there are different types of counseling. Is there a different type of counseling or is Christian counseling or religious counseling or a person who is religious to help counsel? Is that better than seeing a regular, quote-unquote, counselor of the secular world? So I think... Am I saying that right? Yeah, I went, I have a master's degree and counseling from Johnson. You have three master's degrees. One of them is in counseling, which is really Christian counseling. But in order, you know, that was my specialty. In order to do that, you learn a lot about secular counseling as well and you need to know some of the foundations of secular counseling as well in order to, you know, receive insurance payments and become a certified counselor and whatnot. But I think if you boil it all down, there's one sort of distinct difference and that is when you go to a secular counselor, if I went to a secular counselor and I said, hey, you know, I'm looking at breaking up with my wife and, you know, I just don't find her very attractive anymore or whatever and, you know, my girlfriend, you know, is asking me to move in and move out of my house and with the girlfriend. A secular counselor would probably take a tact and say, well, what makes you most happy? You know, where is it that your heart lies and sort of encourage you to, you know, follow through in that path? Where as a Christian counselor, there's a biblical set of morals and ethics that are codified in the Bible and when somebody would come in and say, hey, I'm looking at leaving my wife to see this other woman, we would say, well, wait a minute, the Bible says that, you know, we don't do that and so the line of counseling would be even though that might make you more happy, let's work on the relationship that you're currently in and so there's, you know, sort of a different philosophy. I think, you know, Christians understand that this is a fallen world, it's not perfect. There is going to be disease and suffering and, you know, that kind of thing in this world and, you know, God has some truth for us, has an ultimate reward for us for following through in His commands and so, you know, we'd be encouraging people to follow up with those commands. Again, let's talk about, you know, because we focus on abilities of people on the show and everybody has an ability, especially to break out of addiction and other things, but how has, and we're going to go through some specific examples, Jesus Christ came down in the form of man. He became disabled, if you will, and shown the world how able he can be. How has media played a part in showing the Bible? Because, you know, the Bible is a big book and there's a lot of lessons. Go ahead. I think that... Specific examples. Yeah, I mean, there's obviously a number of different examples. I mean, you look at the popular series right now which is called The Chosen. You might have seen that but there's certainly examples that go way back, you know, in the media. Moses had a speech impediment. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different examples of how the media has, you know, portrayed the Bible. I think it tells us in the Bible that we shouldn't add one word or subtract one word from the Bible. I think that alone makes it difficult to have an accurate portrayal of, you know, what is codified as what we know is truth in the Bible. I say that because, you know, you have a certain length of time that you're trying to do a movie about whatever kind of an event. Is it biblically accurate, though? Are they... Well, this is my point that it is hard to be 100% biblically accurate because there isn't enough material there to present a fully rounded sort of picture or storyline that lends itself to the Bible. For example, you know, in the early 1950s they had the Ten Commandments, you know. Charlton Heston, you know, did that, you know, he's a great example, you know. We have a actor who is portraying Moses. One of the things that we know from Moses is that Moses was not eloquent in his speech. Charlton Heston is pretty eloquent in his speech. He's a good actor. And so it's hard to portray a totally biblically accurate, you know, kind of story. You know, sometimes things have to be left out because we only have so much time to tell the story and so we start chopping things out as the media does with any kind of story, you know, Top Gun, whatever. You know, they filmed a lot of stuff and a lot of it ended up on the cutting room floor. And so the question is, is when you film a movie like the Ten Commandments, Passion of the Christ, whatever it happens to be, some of that ends up on the cutting room floor and some of that is scripturally significant. Like the Scorching Scene in Passion of Christ. Before we show clips. Isaiah 53 is, you know, he was wounded for our transgressions and our iniquities. But when we look at the Scorching Scene, it was hard to watch. People were crying in theaters. People, you know, ripping skin, welts, all kinds of things that he endured. That was accurate, I'm assuming, because of what it says in the Bible. Well, it tells us that he went through, you know, that. We can surmise from what is written in the Bible that we can assume, you know, that the Romans, when they tortured him, used that similar devices into the similar extent. But I also believe that the Bible is, it's God-breathed, number one, and God breathed those words to the people who wrote them down and that every word in there is significant. And I also believe that every word that's not in there is significant. So in other words, in this particular context, I don't think that it was necessary for God to explain the degree and sort of gory detail that his son suffered. It was enough to know that he suffered in silence and not to know, oh, you know, his kidneys were damaged or he lost so much blood, or, you know, what the details are. And in order to make a movie, right, the Passion of Christ, all that sort of graphic detail was necessary. But I don't think it's necessary for us to believe in the personhood and in the godliness of Jesus to be in there. So there's different things, you know, I'm reminded of that series, Jesus of Nazareth. In 1977, which we'll show a clip, yeah, NBC back in 1977 did this wonderful miniseries of all of these stars that came to do this movie. That's my personal favorite. I mean, Passion of Christ, yeah, but because it told Jesus of Nazareth went through, it went through the birth, it went through the part where King Herod turned, you know, it went through everything in the Bible in a better sense of... Yeah, I mean, it is interesting. I mean, you say that and that series, I don't know exactly how long it was. It was broken up. The actual TV movie is actually six hours, but it was broken up into segments. So I mean, even in six hours to explain the whole personhood of Christ, there was stuff that was left out. Like what, for example? So Satan's temptation in the wilderness was totally left out. Another part that was totally left out that I thought was significant is the scene where Lazarus is being raised from the dead. We know that the shortest verse in the Bible is Jesus wept. It's a pretty significant verse, even though it's the shortest verse, because it shows that Jesus had compassion on people. He didn't just come down as God to sort of judge people and to pass his opinion on people or whatever, condemn people. It shows that, hey, you know, here's somebody that he cared about, who he loved, who is now dead, even though he knew he was going to raise him from the dead, he's still wept about that. I think that it is significant because it shows that Jesus cares about us. But as far as compassion, he also became angry at times, especially the part of Jesus of Nazareth when people are selling things in the temple. I mean, it's one thing to have, maybe in today's day and age, a bake sale to raise money for the church or a religious institution. But why did he get angry as well as compassion? Why did he have anger? Well, I think all this is to show that he was fully human as well as fully God. He isn't a remote, unfeeling, untouched God. He desires to be in relationship with us and whenever we're in relationship with somebody else, the things that we're going through have effect on one another. And certainly he demonstrated his strong relationship with the Lord and often referred to his father in the temple being his father's house. The command for the nation of Israel to have animal sacrifices in order to atone for their sins and basically all the animal owners and whatnot were in the temple. There were money changers there there were people from different countries and they had all set up an area that would normally be taken up by people preparing to worship was now taken up by this commercialism of well, you can be absolved of your sin just by this ox, this is a very fine ox. And I think that that is foreshadowing. He just scattered those people out of the temple. It says that he sat there and constructed a whip before he drove them all out of the temple. And so certainly he had the ability to have a sort of a righteous indignation and be like, hey, this is not appropriate in my father's house. And I think it also points to the fact, occasionally I'll hear people say, well, Jesus just wasn't known in Israel. They didn't have the media that we're talking about now to publicize the fact that Jesus was there and everything. But when you commit an act such as driving out all of the money changers and animal husbandry owners and that, yeah, I don't think probably there were any tax collectors there. There could have been. But at any rate, that act during Passover was certain to attract a lot of attention. That was the big high holy days in the temple and there would have been people from, you know, throughout that region of the world that would have seen and heard and been witness to what Christ was doing. And so, you know, he was not an unknown, historical, you know, character. Let's talk more about enough ministries. As you had told me off air, enough ministries merged with another church. Why was that? Was that because of the pandemic? No. So enough ministries had grown rapidly on Summer Street and Berry. We had originally started in a storefront, you know, location. And we were doing our soup kitchen ministry and our clothing ministry and our food ministry and also church and essentially one room. One small building. One small, yeah, one floor of one small building. And we grew large enough over time so that, you know, we sort of had standing room only. And we had people who were coming were saying, hey, you know, I was running late and I knew my kids couldn't sit with me so I decided to stay home or whatever. And we knew that we had to look for a larger facility in order to accommodate everybody. And we looked for quite a while to find appropriate rental space or to buy a space someplace. And finally, we approached the first Baptist church in Berry who has a wonderful building and asked if we could rent space from them for the church and that discussion changed fairly rapidly to a merger discussion. They were having some challenges with outreach and tithing and other kinds of things and it looked like it would be a good match. We could bring in some of the things that we were doing and they could bring in some of the stuff that they were doing and make it overall more attractive to the community. We would extend our ability to reach our community and support our community and also provide us an opportunity to be able to worship in a larger space and frankly to join together with both churches add to the size of the church and make it a stronger entity instead of two weaker entities to make one stronger entity out of the two. So between the two churches how many people are part of enough ministries? More than a hundred? So we run about 75 on any given weekend. We have in the rolls I think it's somewhere around 150 or so members but the tradition today is Gallup polls tells us that people consider themselves to be regular attenders at church if they attend twice a month. So that's quite a change from the historical if you were a regular attender you were there every Sunday or at least more Sundays than you weren't there and now our culture has gone to a point where it's like 50-50 so we don't necessarily see the same people every weekend. You're still doing online services? We still do online matter of fact we had a baptism last Sunday and the mother of this child was in Florida and she was able to watch the service online in Florida in real time we also had another feed that was going to Waco, Texas we had a mission team come up from Waco, Texas this summer and poured into this young man before he decided to accept Christ and so they wanted to be part of that baptismal service so yeah on Sunday we were connected with Texas and Florida and a bunch of people in Vermont and other places around so certainly the rise of streaming and the ease of streaming has certainly supported churches and we find people will check us out online first see what it's all about and how the service goes and what's the music like and all that kind of stuff before they step in the door so that gives them an opportunity to sort of check things out safely before they come in. So two questions getting back to people with special needs what are the misconceptions like I asked this of all my guests what are the misconceptions around people with special needs when people first meet them you know about being scared and all and you having challenges yourself yeah I mean I think that there is an anxiety amongst people who aren't used to being around others that have some kind of disability you know the reality is is that we're all going to have some kind of disability sooner or later I forget what the statistics are for hospitalization but sooner or later most everybody ends up in the hospital at one time or another for something I believe the statistic that I last read in one of my counseling journals is that 75% of all Americans will have an event in which they should, could approach someone for mental health counseling in their lifetime so you know we're reminded once again that this is not a perfect world this is a broken world and there are broken people in this world some are physically broken some are emotionally broken or spiritually broken or other kinds of things so since you say that do you think people sorry do you think people and mental health has been a big problem during the pandemic do you think yes do you think yes there could be more mental health counseling or a better way of approaching it to help more people so you know from my point of view and the people that I see I think that the push to a lot of telemedicine has both been helpful and hurtful how so helpful because it has allowed people to remain in touch with people who were getting counseling before but through whatever reasons maybe a spike in COVID whatever it happens to be transportation issues whatever that they can't come and meet but it says also it tells us in the Bible not for sake meeting in public as some are prone to do so it's also we opened up the church as soon as we could post COVID even though there were a lot of restrictions about space and temperature and questions beforehand and having to keep a ledger who was there and all those kinds of things but it was important for us to do that because there are some things that you can't do virtually you know you can't lay hands on somebody and pray for them you have a much more difficult time understanding when somebody is in sort of distress or pain it's easier to observe their body language when you're physically present with them it's easier to ask them questions about accountability with whatever you know substance abuse or alcohol or other triggering you know kinds of things when you're in fellowship one with another if you neglect that opportunity to gather together you lose out on a lot of the benefit I believe you know for some people who already have an established relationship with a counselor then to go virtually is less a fact but for people who are initially seeking you know support and assistance it's very difficult you know I know that a lot of the AA meetings and stuff went virtual and some of them are still ongoing virtual but it's you know it's hard to tell if you know somebody who's at a distance on your computer smells of alcohol you know or other kinds of substances are really struggling in that way so So would you say that for example I deal with epilepsy during the pandemic telemedicine session with a neurologist is really hard they need to see you they have to write down your medic you know help you with more stuff so yeah I kind of understand that Ransom when we were going through his service dog training was training with another dog who was an epilepsy service dog and so we're sort of familiar with that the let's see yesterday we had a professor from Norwich University come in the engineering department who suffers from epilepsy and he has a service dog as well to help him you know alert when he's going to have seizures and stuff so yeah you know service dogs are hugely helpful you can't really effectively do any of that kind of training you have to be able to experience that the trainer has to be able to help you through the issues of training I think that there are a lot of real challenges with the telemedicine concept although it's better than not having any kind of access to service for sure The last question two last questions since you have a service dog how has it been working for you and do you recommend that for other people going through the same thing you are if you want to talk about that yeah I mean I think I can only speak from my own experience and from you know people that I meet but service dogs are amazing the service dog that was getting trained with ransom for the seizure would not only alert the owner that they were about to have a seizure but also would curl up sort of underneath her neck so that when she was having a seizure she didn't bang her head on the floor and I observed a few seizures which were quite violent and the dog I assume the dog must have been very uncomfortable with this woman sort of thrashing around on top of the dog and it was amazing protected her from injury I think that service animals can be quite significant the VA has in the time that I've had my experience with the VA the VA has really started to open up a much better understanding about service dogs and their capability to help service members and a whole variety of different situations it's not uncommon when I'm at the VA to see other service dogs you know walking around the VA it's more of a expected kind of situation than an unexpected one What are the future goals of a lift ministry? Future goals I would pray that we would continue to follow the lead of the Lord and what we're doing we have a long standing vision that we think that we have received from them which is to help all the communities along the Route 2 corridor have a evangelistic church that is close to their community and so you know at some point in the future we'd love to have another church and like Danville and St. Johnsbury and continuing out that way and so we're just keeping our ear to the ground Right now we're really involved with servicing our community there's 370 something homeless people that are put up in local hotels around central Vermont we have a food ministry to bring food and support to them there's been a lot of economic impact From what I understand like for example we can mention them for a minute they are now taking old hotels taking old hotels and turning them into apartments that's another issue that's huge I think for the first time Vermont is at a a place where they're providing some services for a large portion not all certainly but a large portion of the homeless community and I would hope that in that they would use those resources to address the issues of homelessness I think homelessness is much more about not having a home for you to live in it's about those underlying issues of mental health and abuse and trauma and social anxieties and those kinds of things that keep people perpetually locked in homelessness so I do hope that they can help address those issues Last thing, let's talk about the food ministry that you guys have and go into your website What is that about? Since we started we had a small food ministry just a closet on Summer Street and when we moved to our new place we created a much larger shelter for that a shed that's beside the building and we included the opportunity to do refrigerated and frozen foods as well and as the pandemic wore on we gradually were able to increase the amount of food that we were helping support in our community Today we're doing about 500 pounds of food a day and that's in it every day 7 days a week 365 days a year we put out food for people to take and we've seen people drive up a brand new Ford pickup truck and I've sort of been like what's going on and have the guy come out and be like I really appreciate the opportunity where you know I've been laid off I can't work right now the payments on my truck and my mortgage take up all of my unemployment and you know my kids would start if I wasn't able to come down here and pick up food and stuff so it has had a significant impact on the community to be able to provide food Well I would like to thank you for joining us on this edition of Ableton On Air for more information on enough ministries and their work you can go to www.enuffministries.org that's www E-N-O-U-G-H ministries.org and for more information on Ableton On Air you can go to www.orgamedia.net Is there a number for enough ministries or is it just a website? There's a website there that we answer there's a variety of email addresses and phone numbers available there we're also on Facebook at Enough Ministries Barry on Facebook and we can be reached there as well again for more information on enough ministries www.enuffministries.org We would like to thank Pastor Daniel Mollind and Ransom for joining us on this edition of Ableton On Air We would like to thank our sponsors Washington County Mental Health Green Mountain Support Services and many others including the Association for the Blind of Vermont the Division for the Blind of Vermont the entire Abilities Vermont and also the great partnership with Enough Ministries of Barry I'm Lauren Seiler Arlene couldn't be here today see you next time on the next edition of Ableton On Air I'm Lauren Seiler Major sponsors for Ableton On Air include Green Mountain Support Services empowering people with disabilities to live home in the community Washington County Mental Health where hope and support come together Media sponsors for Ableton On Air include Park Chester Times Muslim Community Report www this is the Bronx.info Associated Press Media Editors New York Parrot Online Newspaper U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International Anchor FM and Spotify Partners for Ableton On Air include Yachad of New York and New England where everyone belongs the Orthodox Union the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity and Montpelier Sustainable Coalition Montefere Medical Center of the Bronx Rose of Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx Ableton On Air has been seen in the following publications Park Chester Times www this is the Bronx.com New York Parrot Online Newspaper Muslim Community Report www.h.com and the Montpelier Bridge Ableton On Air is part of the following organizations the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Boston, New England Chapter and the Society of Professional Journalists