Okay, good morning, everybody, and welcome to our course on Christian counseling. It's so pleasant to see all of you. And I'd also like to welcome all our students on the e-learning portal for this class. I really hope that the next couple of weeks as we discuss about Christian counseling, we all will be enriched and we will grow in greater understanding. We will be equipped with skills also as we explore this course. So just quickly, maybe one or two introductions that would be helpful for us to have some form of an interaction. So if you're comfortable, a quick switch on of your video and just your name and where you're from and maybe what you're doing. A couple of minutes and then we can move ahead. Who can we start with? Jefina, you're on mute. Yes, Master. I'm sure you already know me a little. So I'm Jefina. I'm Stamela. All right. Welcome, Jefina. Yes, anybody else? Be nice to just know your names, maybe just a quick show of your face. Anybody else? Hi, ma'am. I'm Divya. Hi, Divya. Yeah, I'm basically from Kerala. Okay. But now in US. All right. Thank you. Welcome. Hi, Sebastian. I'm from Patna. Welcome. Welcome, Sebastian. I'm from Lubega. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Hi. Hi, Ruby. I'm myself, Ruby. I'm from Orissa, Ralkilla. Okay. Welcome. Welcome, Ruby. Hi, Pastor. Hi, Pastor John Paul. I'm John Paul. I'm basically from Kerala at present in Maglam. Welcome. Welcome, Pastor. Thank you. Anybody else? Or we could get started. Yes, Lubega. You're on mute, sir. You're on mute. Okay. My name is Lubega. Colin. I'm in Kigali, Rwanda. Thank you. Welcome. Welcome. What time is it there? Right now, the time is 20. It is 27 minutes to 7. 27 minutes to 7. That's in the evening, I suppose, right? It is in the morning. Morning. Morning. Okay. All right. Okay. So welcome. Welcome, everybody. Welcome to the rest of you as well. We keep going. So I think, you know, in while we are, while we start with this class, I think one of the most important ways or methods to learn better in this is through interaction. Counseling is not something that actually is really a teaching subject. It is actually a doing subject, you know, something that you need to be involved in. So the better the learning when the participation is greater. So I'd really want to encourage all of you to stay keen to get it because I think that's how you will learn. That's how your classmates will learn. That's how I'm also going to learn as we go forward through this. All right. Give me a minute and I'll just, I'd like to just share my screen. Just give me a minute. Are you all able to see my screen? Yes. Okay. Yes. All right. Okay. So I think we'll just get started. Sorry. I'm just going to be moving through a couple of slides. Just, you know, just, just getting straight into the important things. Okay.  And I'd like you all to tell me how would you respond.  Her name is Susan. Okay. And she comes to you and she says this. Okay. She's sharing something with you.  Okay. So Susan says, I don't know what's wrong with my husband. He just doesn't allow me enough space to just be me. He always wants to pry into what I'm doing, who I'm talking to. I'm having quite enough. I have second thoughts about this marriage. Okay. So this is what Susan's told you. Quickly take around 30 seconds to quickly write down. What is it? How would you respond to Susan? So basically you're going to write down a statement that you will be. Suppose I'm Susan and I'm talking to you right now. And I've told you this. I want you to come back and write and state to me. What is it that you would? Okay. So 30 seconds quickly put this down on your paper. And I'd like to hear some responses. Okay. Don't worry. There's no right, wrong, correct, best answers. Remember, we're learning and that's what we are attempting to do. Okay. So go ahead. Yes. 30 seconds. Okay. If any of you are ready to answer, please, you know, quickly unmute and answer. Don't wait for anybody else. Just quickly unmute and respond. Okay. So we don't waste too much of time and we can optimize our time here. Yes. Go ahead, Divya. Go ahead. Yes. What would you say? Yeah. I think I will ask her a question back. Okay. Just to know, like, since I have only one side of the issue, so I just want to know, like, how much time do you talk to each other? Okay. So you will bring forth a question. You would want to know some more information. How much time do you talk to each other? Good attempt, Divya. All right. Thank you. The others? I would ask her, what does the Bible talk about this second thought about this marriage? What is the Bible perspective about her? That will help her to get engaged into talking and then we tell her, so we need to talk to him and then we go to other steps. But I would tell her that second thought is not there. We wouldn't have it. All right. So you would question the second thoughts that she has or ask her, what does the Bible say about it? Okay. Thank you. I think Rosalind has written, you would say, be patient, Susan. Don't jump to this conclusion. Okay. Good attempts. Others. Come on. I think there are some 13 of us in the group. And I'd like to hear answers. So don't worry about right, wrong. This is learning. And this is where you can just make attempts. Yeah. For me, I think I have tried to calm her down a bit. She looks very frustrated with the situation. So if I say, Susan, you look quite frustrated. I understand your situation. Okay. Let's just talk about it and maybe that helps. Okay. Okay. Wonderful. So Jeffina says, I'll just not get into any of the details. I'll just be with her, be present with her with the emotion she's going through and just help her to calm down and just help her to maybe discuss more. Wonderful. Jeffina. Thank you. Yes. What about the others? Yes. I would tell her that she cannot develop a fence around herself because as long as she is married, she has to cope with her husband and at least the husband deserves the right to know a little bit, not maybe all, but a little bit about what she's doing. So let her don't build a concrete wall around herself. It can be not good for a marriage. Okay. All right. So I know it's okay. Wonderful. I like your answers. Okay. Others? I would say thank you for choosing to open up and it is very important that we open up and I would appreciate her heart to start sharing and would like to know more details, little more details about this. So I'll patiently listen what she has to say and give her a chance to open up. So first appreciate and then listen. Okay. So you would appreciate, thank her for actually coming and opening up and talking and give her that space to talk and listen. Good. Good. Any other, any other answers? Okay. So what I'd like you to, so these are generally some of the common responses that we've heard and I think, you know, it may sum up some of the things that, sorry, it may sum up some of the things that you have also written. Right. So some of the common responses you would, you would hear like your rightly said is, sorry, are you able to see my screen? No, it's gone off, isn't it? Yeah.  Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Okay. So some of the common responses, like we said, you would definitely hear is what we would call like maybe an advice giving. Okay. That's what we would do. We would give an advice and some of them, some of the responses that we had is, you know, you shouldn't build a wall around yourself or, you know, it's not something that you need to think about a second marriage is something that you shouldn't be thinking about. So the, some of the responses that we've given are quite in the place of giving an advice. Okay. The second kind of responses that we may given is in the form of a question. Like some of you said, I would ask her more details. You know, what are your, what is your situation really like? What does your husband say? I need to know what he's going through, what's happening. So that's the second kind. Okay. So that may be questions. The third kind of responses that we may, we may see is a kind of response that we tend to moralize. Okay. So what do we mean by moralizing is that, you know, this may not be the right thing for you to do ABCD other steps that you need to go. And I think we commonly see this among us as believers where we are often moralizing somebody who's actually discussing a problem with us. So that's the third part of it, you know, moralizing. The fourth part of this being in a place of silence, you know, not knowing what to say. And I think some of us didn't have anything to say. So we're like, okay, what am I going to do right now? Maybe the best thing to do is just keep quiet. So that's also a response. You know, when you don't bring about a response, the fifth kind of response which some of you said was, you know, just hear her out. Some of you said appreciation. Some of you said, you know, you will join and acknowledge what she is going through, help her to bring about some sense of a calm and working up, right? Now, all of these are responses. But what we are looking at is to, we need to really action as well as that brings about change at some point in the life of the of the councillor who's coming to you. Okay. Now, I'm not going to make any kind of a, what do you say, a judgment on any of your responses. We will come back to this question a little later. Okay.  Has it, is it effective? Is it somewhat effective or has it been really effective? Now, how do you judge this is when, when you understand your next line from your from your counselling. Okay. So that's something I'd like you to keep a thought on. Can all of you hear me or is it just Divya who's unable to hear me? Can all of you hear me? I can hear you faster, but in between your voice went off and it came back again. Okay. All right. Okay. In case there is another issue, please stop me and let me know. I think it's, it's maybe a glitch in my, if there is a problem just somebody just yeah. Thanks. Okay. So, so I'm going to come back to this. It's better. It's better. Okay. So I'm going to come back to this in a couple of classes and we are going to be looking at the same example and we'll work through, work through that once again. Okay. So, another question that I have for you, what do you think, what do you think is counselling? What have you, what in your reading or in the way that you've dealt with people do you think is counselling? So some quick answers. What is counselling? Giving guidance. Okay. Other responses? I think counselling is not advising as you already said. But I think it's just letting them know that they are there and let's help them to understand the situation maybe, maybe they don't understand it but when we speak, maybe they can figure it out. Okay. All right. Thank you. Yes. What about the others? I think Rosen has written to listen to someone first before giving them some help. Okay. So, counselling is a lot about being able to listen. Subash says giving time and listening. Okay. Other, other thoughts? Counselling is all about hearing somebody who has a challenge and guiding her or him through counselling is all about hearing somebody who has a challenge and guiding her or him through finding a suitable answer for him or for herself. Okay. All right. Thank you. So that, that was some wonderful attempts. Okay. So before we figure out what counselling is, I want to help you to understand what counselling is not. Okay. And so the first and foremost giving advice and it is not taking answers to their problems. So, you as a counsellor who is sitting there is not taking the position of a person who is aware and knows it all. You and I know that you and I don't know everything, right. Our, our leading and guiding comes number one. I think we need to understand that from the Holy Spirit and secondly from the word of God. And what we are doing as a counsellor is to open up these avenues for a person. So that, that would mean to help them to discover these answers or discover the solutions that they may have for their problems. Okay. So counselling is not giving advice or answers to problems. Counselling is not being judgmental. What do I mean by being judgmental? And I think often we, we hear this word is not telling or not letting a person know that they are in the wrong or they are in the right. That's not what counselling is. This is not mentorship. This is counselling. So you're not in a place or counselling is not the, the ministry is not one where you're sitting as a judge and saying, hey, this is something that you're doing wrong. This is something that you may need to change your course of action into. This is not the place that we have as a counsellor. Okay. Next one. It's not you, counselling is not the counsellor attempting to sort out the problems of the client. You are not in a place where you're taking onus or responsibility for the problem of your client or your counselling. Right. The, the, the problem needs to be owned by your counselling. They need to come to a place of saying, okay, this is a problem I have. I want to sort this out myself by the assistance, by the help or the facilitation of a counsellor. All right. So it is not, it's not you as a counsellor taking on the problems of the client. Okay. Counselling is not expecting or encouraging a counsellor to behave in a way that you would have behaved if you were confronted with a similar problem in your life. Okay. Once again, counselling is not something you would do in your situation if you were faced with the same problem. Like for example, let's say in Susan's case, maybe you had a time in your marriage that you faced something similar. So it's not saying, you know, this is the way that I faced it and maybe that's the way that you go. It's not expecting or encouraging them to do the same. It is also, counselling is not also getting emotionally involved with the client.  Right. Or you are stepping ahead of their progress in order to work things for your counsellor. It is having a sense of involvement but also a sense of healthy detachment from emotionally getting involved because you and I know when we get emotionally involved, we probably, you know, run on fourth gear. You know, we are actually really speeding and going really fast. So being careful not to be emotionally involved. And also, counselling is not looking at a counsellor's problem from your own perspective or based on your own value system. Okay. Yes, your perspective or the values that you hold are very strong, but you are looking at the person's problem independent from your perspectives or the kind of values that you hold. So then what is counselling? The most important, and I think some of you had written that in the chat, the most important thing of counselling is it is a purposeful conversation that you engage in with your counselling. And it is for the sole purpose of helping them help themselves. Okay. I'll repeat that. There are two important characteristics here. Counselling is a purposeful conversation. So a purposeful conversation happens when there are good questions, when there are ways to help your counsellor they reflect on their own situation, reflect on their own contribution, reflect on their own needs. So that's what that purposeful conversation comes to be. And what you are doing is helping your counsellor to help themselves. You're bringing them or you're equipping them to a stage where they will begin to help themselves. So as you will see here, as we move ahead in class, you will see that counselling is more a relationship. It is, like we say in the psychological terms, it's called a therapeutic relationship. It's a relationship that brings about change. It's a relationship that supports. So counselling is seen as a supportive relationship, which means you as a counsellor have a big role to play in the development of the change that the person is going to see. So your role as a counsellor is very crucial, very vital in bringing the person to some place of positive change. So in that relationship, what are you doing? You're enabling your counsellor counselling to focus on a couple of things, on their feelings, on their thoughts, on their experiences and on their behaviour. Once again, you are enabling your counsellor to focus on how they are feeling in a certain situation, in how they're thinking or reasoning in a certain situation, what they're experiencing or how they behave in a certain situation. So quickly, I think you're having inner wholeness as a class this time. I want you to remember that as we function as people, there are three parts of us. That is the body, the soul, as well as the spirit. So whenever we come to a certain problem, there are all of these components that interact with our problem. That is the body. For example, let's say you have a fight with somebody, you just feel so tired and drained, you have a headache, you feel dizzy, your body is interacting with the problem. Or your soul, you feel very distressed, you're not able to think, you're not able to concentrate, you're not able to make your decision and your spiritual side of it. Your spiritual relationship with God, that gets also affected when you are having certain problems. So remember that it's not just about giving answers, but being enabling the counselling to focus on these three specific areas. Counselling is a trustful relationship. So in your relationship with your counselling, the counselling needs to feel empowered that they can move from a place of understanding of their problem to a place of resolving their problem through some kind of action. And that happens when they are in a place of complete trust, when they know that they can trust the person that they're talking to and the person is going to help them move into understanding their problem, moving it into a place of action or empowering them to move into a place of action. I'm going to stop here for one minute just to quickly... Do you all have any questions at this point before I move on? If not, you can give me a thumbs up and let's dive right in. Unfortunately, I can't see any thumbs up, so no questions. Okay, great. All right, so I hope this has given you some bit of a basic foundation to really understand where you're at. Okay, now, this hour, I'd like to quickly move through certain core elements. When you're looking at biblical counselling, what are some of the core elements that we are going to be looking at? And in the next hour, I'd like to look at certain principles, okay? If you are following through on the book, I am at page three. Yes, I'm at page three if you'd like to just follow through it, okay? So when we're looking at biblical counselling, we know that counselling is a fundamental task or an activity that is seen even in church. It needs to be church-based, right? Because people... If we all... We are all humans and we all can... We are bound to have difficulties. We're bound to have problems. And we have the word. We have scripture. We have the Holy Spirit. We have God who guides us and helps us through, okay? So counselling is an activity that must be based on... On the different offices at church also, okay? So it's going to be scripturally. It's going to be sound scripturally. What we counsel comes straight from scripture, from the teaching of the Bible, from doctrines that are in the Bible, okay? It is also that there are other components that we use in the context of biblical counselling and that's what we would ensure that it takes place. Now, counselling often is something that is also a gifting to people just as much as it's a skill that you need to learn, all right? You may be gifted at talking and helping people, understanding what goes on, but it's also something that is a skill that one needs to learn. So let's look at... There are scripture portions that's given in your notes. I'm not going to go through each of them. You can take time to go back and read it at your own pace. So the first foremost thing we understand and we keep as the biggest element of biblical counselling is that God is at the centre of counselling. And we know that God is the God of the Bible, the God that we believe in. That is foundational to every issue, to every problem, to every counselling or to every suggestion, everything that happens within the framework of counselling, we see that God is foundational to that, that he speaks is foundational to that. So we also say that every discipline, every discipline that we are drawing from, so when you are into counselling, you're going to be drawing in from some kind of medical science, you're going to be drawing in from humanities, things like sociology, psychology, psychology, anthropology, there may be certain things that you are going to be drawing from as you are in this ministry of counselling. But we keep that as a core understanding that all these disciplines are under the authority of scripture and nothing supersedes what is written in scripture. So like, for example, we're even going to be looking at psychology, there are going to be certain theories or principles or things that may not be sound scripturally. So we do check and we do bring it all under the authority of scripture, under the discipline of scripture. So even when you're using maybe certain methods or techniques, excuse me, you would be ensuring that it comes under the authority or coming under the bracket, under the umbrella of what scripture teaches. The third one is as we look... I'm able to hear you ma'am. Am I audible? Yes. Okay. So when we look at problems, when we look at problems that counsellors do come by, we look at it as the primary concern or the primary problem is sin. And we know and we understand that there is total depravity that brings about a sinful nature. And that is essential for us to understand. So the sin nature of man is important for us to understand what the problem is or what the condition is that people are presenting with. So that's something that we keep alert to. That sin is the primary concern that needs to be dealt with. The fourth one, the most important one is we know that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the only answer for every problem, for every problem of the soul, for problem of the spirit, problem of the body. That is the fundamental need of every person. And we know because of the work of Jesus on the cross we know that there is freedom from every kind of struggle and problems that one may come with. Now these are what we believe in and these are certain elements that we hold on to. The fifth is to know when a person is going through a process of change it should be at a progressive satisfaction with something that comes in time. So the ultimate goal is to help a person or help a counselor to come to a place of Christ's likeness. And that's the fundamental of the biblical of a Christian counselor. To bring the focus of an individual is to bring them in likeness and to bring them into the likeness of Christ Jesus through the change process. And so we see that the change process is progressive may not be in all cases instantaneous it may not happen when a clash of a second within maybe one session may take some take couple of sessions some take maybe years some may you know drop off in between but we understand we aim at the fact that whatever the work that we're doing it is to bring them to a place where they are more Christ like in nature. I'm going to just bring take off some of those. So even as we've spoken about this I'm going to be looking at some of the basic tenets what are some of the basic tenets that we look in when we are talking about effective biblical counseling. So the first and foremost point that I'd like to bring up here is of the Holy Spirit's ministry as the counselor and conqueror. So for us believers that's something we stand by that it is the power of the Holy Spirit that gives us who are engaging in this ministry of counseling that's where we get our help and our every knowledge every wisdom from okay and that is our you know our example the ministry of the Holy Spirit is the biggest example for us because as a believer in many cases as we journey through life we know how the Holy Spirit gives us the wisdom at the right time gives us the comfort that we need at the right time gives us a revelation of his word at the right time maybe a step into the right direction at the right time. So those are our principles as we work through this and something that we encourage even our counselors to work with to tap into is to finally look at the power of the Holy Spirit as the ultimate counselor and we as people are just his spokesperson or being used by the Holy Spirit to work through this entire process of biblical counseling the second point is that the Bible is the soul and the sufficient authority in counseling and dealing with problems of people so we go back to scripture at all points of time so the goal of biblical counseling is to give instructions from scripture or for your counseling to be able to find those instructions so that they can finally live the purposes that God has called them for their lives okay so it is based on the instructions, the directions the understanding that is given through the word of God so it's almost it's like your it's like your textbook okay it is a textbook for life so it is the book of how you develop a relationship with him as well as with others so it is designed the scripture is designed to bring about change or it's to bring about an alteration in the life of the one who's a believer who's one with God okay because we know and we understand as scripture shows us that the word of God is the inspired infallible word of God so we know that scripture does it has truth in it it is all sufficient it has all authority that there is the standards are never do not change as a result of time or season or situation that is what we hold on to so we know that scripture brings about correction brings about rebuking brings about growth brings about guidance brings about every kind of need that we have alright so scripture is one thing that we we turn to so that is the authority for in biblical counseling the third thing is prayer prayer is extremely important and part of biblical helping because what we are doing is we are asking for the wisdom of God to help us through this even following a conversation asking the Lord to help us sustain through things that have been discussed or bring about new forms of understanding as we go through that process so something that we do as part of our counseling sessions is sorry just to give a little bit of an understanding here as part of APC we do have a counseling center which is called chrysalis and in this center we have both believers as well as non-believers who come in and over the last couple of years we've had many number of non-believers who come in for help okay so a lot of them do have know nothing about scripture know nothing about the Bible they've heard about Jesus that's about it but something you know we do fill up a form and in that we very clearly state what our basis is okay and at the end of it we also do invite the counseling to pray alongside with us at the end so that's something that we engage our counselors in to pray alongside with them because you know even if nothing has really clicked in that entire session I've so many times seen that the prayer in itself moves the people to you know to feel something very very supernatural we go back saying and I felt something very different as there was a prayer that was going on so we know that prayer is very effective in just calling down the power of God even to a heart that may be closed into really hearing of who he is and what he desires them to do so prayer is extremely integral part of it so like we had spoken about the goal of counseling is finally to ensure that there are disciples people are made disciples of Christ Jesus okay and to make him to make them like him so that is what we attempt to do the process of which again the process is very very different for different people however the goal continues to be the same some may go through the process for years some we are just putting in a seed some you know they may flourish and actually build a lot more but nevertheless there is a goal that there is in Christian biblical counseling the personal qualities of the counselor is not just academic it's not just being good at your skills and at your work but it is also what we say as what we should be spiritual that is the counselor themselves being having a vibrant relationship with God at a place where they are they have a strong knowledge of who they are in Christ of being able to also be in tune with what the Holy Spirit has for them so that is extremely important again it is to be integral about committing ourselves to building our relationship with God to building our knowledge of God's Word having his wisdom and also helping to apply it in practical ways in short being spiritually mature so that we can be effective towards the kind of work that God calls us to do so there may be one or two more points that you will probably find on your notes but that is something that you can probably get to reading as well I am going to stop here we have around 5 to 8 minutes I want to address any questions that you may have with regard to what we have spoken now questions what are some Holy Spirit giftings that a biblical counselor needs to nurture now I am going to talk about in my personal experience something that I really desire and keep praying for is to have wisdom and discernment the gift of wisdom and discernment because there may be many times even as you are talking to a lot of times they may not completely want to share everything that may be going on because you are a new person they are also trying to engage with you building a rapport but I do see that when there is a word of knowledge there is a wisdom that has been bought out in a way that they light up because for them to know how did this counselor understand something or was it something that I have not spoken about or I have kept aside that often brings about the question how did you know that was exactly what I have been struggling with and I see that as the greatest opening for us to bring about who we are relying on what is the power that we are working with it is not my own ability it is not my skill it is not my psychological understanding of the problem it is none of that it is not a model that I am using but it is something much more supernatural you know the word of knowledge is something that is extremely a gifting that we can pray and earn for desire for more and more as we thank you ma'am and also I just wanted to ask if of course these would be required the gift of encouragement of mercy yes absolutely I was talking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit among the nine gifts but yes encouragement showing compassion compassion is a huge part of counseling in fact if you look at secular theories a few of them we are going to be at maybe in our next few classes you will see how some of this are so you know have so much biblical principles in it the way that one needs to empathize and how we need to have compassion how we are non-judgmental how we are loving, how we are patient all of that comes in this entire gamut of counseling yeah any other questions okay either we have understood everything or we have understood nothing it has to be either one of this I have a question yes at a what point we will know that we are in need of counseling I mean since we are Christians we come back to faith we just feel like going back to God coming back but what is the spot of counseling I have never heard of it until I came to God and I was in Tamil Nadu I never heard of people going to counseling and I think we don't encourage also we never told someone to go have some counseling we just tell them to go read the Bible but I think this counseling is very important for someone who is really struggling so at what point someone is in need of counseling okay we couldn't hear you oh sorry can you hear me now so the way that we look at counseling to that point looking at it through a negative lens so counseling is not just for those who have a problem counseling can also work for those who want to better themselves or who want to develop in something actually when you look at a counseling base yes a lot of people come in for counseling with problems but there are a whole lot of people who come into counseling because they feel I am at this point I want to get better at the next 2-3 points so it's not that they are in a bad place but they want to just improve and develop themselves much faster or much greater so that is definitely a good way to say now since you asked me when is the point that one needs to come in for counseling I don't think there is a specific answer to that but nevertheless there are points of time maybe when we sense that the way that we are dealing with a certain situation or a certain circumstance is not optimally helping us the strategies the coping that we have used to deal with something is not adequately helping us and we may need the support of someone else where we can deliberate and talk and engage in a conversation with who will facilitate like I said a conversation that will help us think and understand more so if all of us have gone through issues and problems that you churn it in your own mind or the more that you think about it in your own mind over and over again you may often find that you are going into a certain loop over and over again you are thinking about the same thing but the fact that you have someone to talk to gives you a lot more clarity so at points of time that you feel stuck at points of time you feel that your emotions are welling up so much that you are not able to adequately think of something that is helping you or a point of time that your circumstance is stuck that's when it's a good time to go in for counseling but I would say even before you reach that point it's always good to seek help because if you are going to someone who is going to help you what do you say break down your complex thoughts and feelings about whatever you are going through it helps to bring a little bit more clarity so you are taking the complex and trying to make it simpler so I think that's a good place to do it be proactive and take the support and the help even before you are down in the dumps and finding it really hard to get up you should be actually taking help even before that so that is a quick answer to that thank you alright we are going to be taking a break we will take a 10 minute break and then we come back for our second lecture so you could go grab your coffee grab a couple of biscuits and I will see you all in 10 minutes it's 10.51 right now and we will be back at 11 o'clock


Good morning. It's a beautiful day outside. Good morning. Good morning to you. A friend of mine told me that song. You know it wasn't a man. It was a chick. Oh man, it was bright and early. And I'm ready to do some madness answers before I do some reactions today. Now this one comes from a Magnesita, a 10%er. This is what she says. She says, hi Taveron. I watch your YouTube videos all the time and I really like the advice you have given to your fans. If you are okay with it, I would love it if you could give me some advice as well. Since the age of 8 years old, I've been suffering on and off with a debilitating autoimmune disease. Although it is not nearly as bad as it once was, I know it's something that I will always continue to deal with. Don't believe that. A lot of the diseases that are present in our society now are relatively new within the past 50 to 100 years. So if I were you, I'd look into natural health care, a lot of Eastern stuff. They really know what they are doing and they don't deal with the diseases that we deal with. Since I've been so preoccupied with my health through my teen years, boys and dating were always pushed to the back of my mind. Now I'm 23 years old and I'm at a loss for now, or if I should even start dating anybody. I have had multiple times when guys floored with me being so experienced I didn't realize it until my friends pointed it out. Yeah, I've been through that too. I was like, you know she's on you? Nah, I thought she's just cool. Although I know I am funny and a good hearted person, I feel like I'm going into dating, the dating game blind. I don't know what guys like or if I even look good to guys. Whenever a cute guy talks to me, I suddenly seem to turn into this awkward, nervous girl that is so different from the outgoing, talkative, straight A student that I am. Well, that's normal. So I don't even think that that's, you know, that's like when a guy approaches you and all of a sudden he's nervous. It's the same thing. So get that out of your mind as you being different as far as that goes. All right. It says, I guess that I'm seeking what I'm seeking is an unbiased opinion about how I should handle guys. Also, you can see my profile picture so you can see what I look like that was I was going to next. Thank you so much for your time, Carly. So let's see what you look like here, Carly. Carly is blonde.  Hazel eyes. Yeah, you look good. Yeah, you're straight. I ain't got no problem with you. Okay. So now, so now you know that you meet Magnus's standard of approval. As far as answering the other questions about what guys like, you know what we like. If you watch my videos, you already know what we like.   You're pleasant.     So if you're outgoing, that's fine. Be outgoing, be talkative.  I remember I had heard, I think Justin Timberlake had made had said something he was talking about how for the first six months, you're basically he said for the first six months, you don't know who you're dating. After the first six months is when the, you know, the curtains pulled back, the real you comes out and people find out that they're really dating because they're done being polite. They're done watching their pleasing cues. They're showing you their real personality. And to a certain extent, yeah, when the first couple of dates, you know, you want to put your best foot forward, but you want to also let the person know who you really are. And that's something that I struggled with for years.   Okay, like I'm a good dude and I know that. Okay.   Now, to men, it's more, it's more important because women are attracted to confidence. Guys are attracted to confidence too, but sometimes that shy awkwardness makes us like you more because we try to get you to open up. We might find it as feminine or cute, you know, that type of stuff. It's cute to us and sexy sometimes. So that's okay.  And if he can't handle that, then maybe it wasn't for you in the first place, you know. So I hope I have helped you my darling, my 10% of my magnacita. I'm sure you are going to be just fine. All right. Write me back and let me know how you're doing. One million subscribers. Woo!


The following is a production of New Mexico State University. Hello and welcome to The Vega Show. Vegas we know in New Mexico are the very thick beams that hold up our adobe houses. Well in this television show we're actually using the word Vega to stand for vegetables in great abundance. And you might ask, well what does a vegetable and a vega have in common? Well if you think about a healthy diet, a lot of vegetables will really be a strong foundation for you to be healthy in terms of what you're eating. I'm Carrie Bachman and I work with New Mexico State University. You may think of New Mexico State as being in Las Cruces, which is true, but I'm also with the cooperative extension service and we have county extension offices all throughout the state. If you're interested in finding out more about nutrition, taking some free nutrition classes, feel free to contact us at the number that you see on the screen below you. We'll show the number again at the end of the show in case you didn't catch it the first time. Anyway, what we're going to do today is visit one of the markets in the Albuquerque area. We're in about mid-August and so we're starting to see some of the fruits coming into season. And we're going to make sort of a surprising salad that I think will be very enticing and tasty for children. Children are really an important focus when we think about nutrition because the habits that they develop when they're young are what is going to take them into adulthood. And if they learn to develop a taste and a desire to eat vegetables and fruits, at an early age, they're more likely to continue on with those habits as they get older. Now, farmers markets are the big feature of our show here. There are many farmers markets throughout the state of New Mexico and in each show we visit a different market. If you would like to find out more about markets that are in your area, please call the 1-800 number that appears on your screen below and they can give you a better idea of what days and locations the markets are that are closest to you. Now, why should we shop at a farmer's market anyway? Well, it's a really nice way to get to know the growers and producers that are in your area. You'd be surprised but all over New Mexico we have people growing wonderful fruits and vegetables and they live right next door. There's no reason necessarily to go to the supermarket to buy all of your fruits and vegetables. It's a really nice idea to go visit the farmer's market, pick and choose, get to know some different vegetables, get to know the vendors and that's what we're going to do right now. We're going to go right now to the South Valley Growers Market and visit with one of the board members in just a moment. Stay with us. I'm here at the South Valley Growers Market visiting with one of the board members, Rhonda Reinert. Rhonda, as you can see, has a variety of different vegetables and plants that she's selling and she's also going to tell us just a bit about how this market operates. Thank you, Kerry. Our market is really different from other markets and a lot of other markets in the state. We run as a cooperative market and in terms of decision making and running the market. What we do is we have a board that makes the decisions and the board runs the market and we have a lot of participation among our vendors to do certain things like events and going out and doing promotion and all that. Well, tell me a little bit. I noticed this morning we have some beautiful decorations which hopefully we can show on camera and also some tasting happening and that apparently is all done by some of the vendors as well. That's right. One of the vendors, and she did it last year, she's actually a new vendor this year and she's growing different products but we wanted to do a food tasting partly because it's time and things are in season. So she and her friend Karen, Susan Musante and her friend Karen, volunteered to do this and they are in charge of it and they're doing it like they want to do it. No one tells them what to do and they are in compliance with all the rules of the state and they've checked that out and so we just allow people to make choices and do different kinds of activities. Joe is another member of, he's a vendor also but he's responsible for doing special publicity and just certain kind of events too. Wonderful. Well, you know, and it's really nice you come to a market like this and you may see a lot of products that you're not sure what they are. Oftentimes people, the vendors themselves will say, hey, would you like to try this and they'll cut open a pH or an unusual type of cucumber? And here today, as Rhonda mentioned, we are just lucky enough to have a sampling tasting table where they're putting together all kinds of produce from different vendors around the market and showing you the exciting combinations that you really can make and the healthy dishes that can come out of the farmer's market. Rhonda, tell me a little bit about the relationship that you have with the church here because that's also very, very special, I think. The Crystal Hotel Viay Presbyterian Church allows us to use this parking lot and their other parking lot right next to their church and has for free for the past at least seven years and they require nothing of us other than we be here and they don't charge anything and they provide a service by opening the church every week and the vendors can go and use the facilities in the church but we can do whatever we want here and we have given back a little bit of donations to them over the years and now we're going to try to do some landscaping and beautify the site and they'd like us to put up a real sign and so we've been very successful in small grant applications that we've made and we've gotten some money from the New Mexico Farmers Marketing Association which is a big sponsor of us in the New Mexico Department of Agriculture and we will be paying for an artist to do a sign and some landscaping and we have some other partners that will also hopefully help in that. That's wonderful. As you can see, Farmers Markets are really a part of our community. They're connected to you and your neighborhood and the people that you live with and work with. Come and visit one today. You will be surprised at the delicious foods that you find and the wonderful people that you'll meet. Thanks so much, Rhonda. I really appreciate you all for being supportive of the markets because I know New Mexico Department of Agriculture and New Mexico State University are really instrumental in making this happen. Well, thank you so much. We're glad to be of service. Back at the market, I'm visiting now with Bill and Minnie Richardson and I'm really excited to see the carrots that you have here today. Can you tell us just a bit about those? Well, they're Red Corp Chantneys and I planted them way back in, I think it was March. March or something like that? March or February or March. The weather conditions went right for planting earlier. Yeah. So I had to wait to plant them when the weather condition was right. Well, it's really nice to see carrots like this. You can tell this is a carrot that's actually been grown not for sale in a grocery store. All of those are uniform. These are all real interesting different shapes which your kids are really going to like and the flavor of a fresh carrot is almost like a different vegetable compared to something you buy in the store. I notice you've been enjoying some carrots here this morning. Tell me, how did you all get started selling at the markets, Minnie? Well, he started years ago at Five Points. Well, actually the first time we ever went was at the Civic Auditorium. My daughter and I went just to sell tomatoes. That was before they had the market set up really. And that was back in the 70s. But then he's been selling like at Five Points and Caravan and then here probably for the last about 10 years or so. Last year we went to Corralis a few times. Well, it's nice in Albuquerque. There are a lot of different farmers markets around and if you can't make it out here for say to this market on a Saturday there are markets that are during the week, in the morning, in the afternoon. Basically there's a website which you can take a look at on your screen and access that and you can find out the schedules for all the farmers markets in the state. What other products do you grow? I notice we've got some delicious garlic and onions here. What other things do you all grow? We've got tomatoes, I see them. Green beans later, they're not ready yet. So they were planted in July, so there'll be a later crop. And bell peppers? Bell peppers, yes. We had cucumbers earlier too. Well, it's wonderful to see the carrots fresh this time of year because normally I don't see them this late. Do they keep in the ground pretty well even when it's hot? Yeah, we keep them in the ground all winter if we have any left and we just pull them out when we need them. So they're pretty good. I would say they're delicious. We're looking forward to going back into the kitchen and preparing them. Thank you all so much for being here at the markets and sharing all of your wonderful produce with us here in Albuquerque area. We really appreciate it. So we're back in the studio now and Bill and Minnie provided us with such beautiful carrots. I hardly want to cut them up. They're so lovely. You can see they kind of come in all different sizes when you get them at the farmers market. It's a little bit different from shopping form at the grocery store. And that's one reason I like to tell people kids just really like going to the market. Look at this carrot here. What kid wouldn't enjoy picking that carrot out, washing it and eating it? Carrots are wonderful raw which is how we're going to prepare them today but they can also be cooked. So let's go ahead and get started. Now what we're going to do, just slide these over to the side a bit. We're going to be taking some of our carrots and we'll just chop off the root ends and leave the stem ends on because you'll see what we're going to be doing. These stems are actually going to help us out a little bit. We want to be grating our carrots today and you can use a grater like this or a box grater. One thing I like about this grater is it doesn't, it's a little bit easier to clean. And you can use the small holes if you like but the large holes leave a slightly larger grate and I think that's a nicer texture in some respects. Now this is something the kids in your household can actually help you with. Certainly they're going to have to be a little bit older. You don't want them getting cut on the grater but just let them know not to go down too far to the nub of the carrot here and they should be just fine. It's a really fun job. Now you may ask, well why didn't you cut, why didn't you peel the carrots? Well as long as you wash them carefully beforehand, actually the peel on a carrot, it's not really a peel, it's just an outer skin and that's in fact where a lot of the nutrients are. So you really are better off leaving that peel on there. You're just going to grate a number of carrots. Really this carrot salad recipe doesn't have an exact measurement of carrots per se. It's really just how many people you're cooking for and it's really up to you and your own taste. So you just want to get to about that level on the carrot. All right, we're almost done here. I know some people like to drink carrot juice and that's a nice way to eat carrots but really you're getting a lot more nutrition if you use the full carrot. You get the fiber and the crunch, fills you up a little bit more. Now the other thing that I want to grate a little bit of is some ginger. If you're not familiar with ginger, I really encourage you to try it. You can go ahead and just wash the ginger root and then just use the same grater. You can see it comes out the other side just nicely. You don't even really have to peel it unless you don't like that color but it's certainly edible. And we're just going to go ahead and toss this ginger in with our carrots. So this is the beginning of a carrot salad. You'd probably want to grate a few more carrots while you're at it. We'll just start with this today but just look how lovely these colors and textures are going to be. What we'll do now is go back to the market and see what other things we can add to our carrot salad. Well, we're back at the market. I'm visiting here with Trudy Cisneros of the Cisneros Torres Vineyards. And tell us where you're located and some of the history behind that location, Trudy. We're about 10 miles south of Belen on the old highway, Exit 190 and take the old highway. We acquired the vineyard back in 1996. And it was a dream of my dad's and I'm not sure. It was 20% operational. We're about 100% operational now. We're getting ready for some wine festivals. We're also in the picking time. They asked me to sell here since I live here in the South Valley. I also have tomatoes, eggplant, a few vegetables and stuff. But my main product is grapes. We do have wine. We're making wine right now. We're getting ready for a grape stomp probably close to October. So at a vineyard it's interesting you're growing grapes for wine but they're also grapes that you can eat and that's something people don't often realize. What are the two varieties that you have here today? We have our Champagne, our V-Dabloc which are the white and also the Chancellor Grape which is used in some of the mixes and they're also good to eat. Now these have seeds I noticed and what do you tell people about the seeds? Many of us are used to eating grapes without seeds. Well, a wine grape is going to have more seeds but they're also good for eating.  Well, and I've noticed they're nice and crunchy actually that's something that I enjoy the taste and the texture of the seeds. What happens when you're making wine is we squash the seeds and it becomes a juice. So here we have our second ingredient for our carrot salad Trudy's beautiful grapes and I've got some here as Trudy told me at the store when you take them home don't store them in a plastic bag in the refrigerator store them in either a paper bag or what I did even was wrap them in a towel very gently. It lets them air a little bit better and they'll keep much longer. I've gone ahead and picked off some of these grapes from the bunches. This is a really fun activity for your kids to do. Again, this is a great kids recipe. You may think well my kids like grape juice why do they need to actually be eating grapes? I'm gonna go ahead and toss these in with our carrots and our ginger. Well, the grapes have fiber and a lot of antioxidants and there is some research to show that when you're eating the seed along with the skin of the grape you're actually getting a lot more nutrients than if you're just drinking the grape juice. So we really encourage people to eat the whole fruits. So we've got our grapes here. Now let's go ahead and add some spices. One of my favorites if you've watched my show before you know that I really like cardamom. Cardamom comes in these green seed pods like this and basically what you wanna do is just open up a seed pod. You can also buy it already crushed but it tastes so much better. You can see inside it's got these black seeds and you wanna go ahead and take the black seeds and then we'll just put them straight into the mortar and pestle. I already have some others in here and then we'll just pound them up a little bit. This is a great ingredient in fruit dishes as well as pastries. You'll see it in Scandinavian pastries. The funny thing is you also see it in Indian dishes. So cardamom is a spice that's used in a lot of parts of the world.  It smells so nice and we're gonna use this in our fruit dressing. If you don't have a mortar and pestle you can just use a rolling pin between some sheets of wax paper. That's not as easy or as fun. Again, this is another part of the recipe that your kids will really enjoy. Okay, we've got quite a bit of crushed cardamom here. I'm not gonna use all of it in our recipe because it's really strong. But let's go ahead and put it into our dish. We're also now going to cut up an orange and the orange we're just going to use, look at that, how nice and juicy. This is a fairly seedless orange so I actually don't need to use a strainer. We're gonna use this to provide some liquid for our dressing. Now what else do we wanna put in here? Since it's a pretty sweet orange I'm gonna go ahead and use a little bit of rice wine vinegar which is a very mild vinegar. You could also use lemon juice if you wanted to. And we're gonna use a bunch of poppy seeds which are one of my favorite spices. That's a little bit of crunch. Okay, so we've got most of our ingredients.  Let's go. We're back at the market. I'm visiting with Tony Montoya and he's actually a producer of peaches and he's got some apples here as well. Tell us a bit about the peaches, Tony. The peaches are our hail havens gonna be the first one of the year. It's a freestone peach. We've kind of gotten away from the Albertas and things like that. We want peaches that have a unique flavor that are different. We have four varieties right now. We did plant some more trees which is gonna be a fifth variety. We're trying to kind of like overlap our peach varieties and that. So we can have peaches for about six weeks, seven weeks somewhere. Okay, so are we in the middle of the peach harvest right now? Is it a little earlier this year because of the heat? It's a little bit later by about two to three weeks on everything right now. So, you know, peaches aren't the only ones. But I think we're gonna have a late season unless we get a frost, you know, later on or early in October. But, you know, it's gonna be a good year for fruit. Excellent. Well, the peaches are just beautiful. As you can see, we've already got a basket of them set aside for us. What do people like to do with the peaches? Do they tell you when they combine they mainly eat them as a fresh fruit or? It's kind of like a split right now. When you pick peaches, some are going to be ripe. We try to get them to the markets as soon as possible. But with peaches, you have to get those into a cooler and keep them down at a certain temperature so that they stop the ripening the process and that. Those ripe peaches that I would just mentioned is we put them in boxes and people to try to, or that do make like your peach butters or peach pies, things like that. We sell those boxes a lot cheaper because it's gonna be kind of like a damaged peach. And we hate to throw things away, but sometimes we have to because we've got so much. But I think it's kind of split right now. A lot of people buy per canning. A lot of people buy just for eating. Do you ever dry any of the peaches? Unfortunately, I need a dehydrator and I don't want the government getting on fee. There are a few regulations for those of you who are interested in dehydrating fruit. The reason I asked I was at another market and we got some wonderful dried pears and apples, but I'd never seen dried peaches in New Mexico at a market. I would love to try anything, but I'll tell you but I would love to have certified kitchen, but I don't have it yet.  I'm gonna give that a try and see how they work.  They get better as the season goes along. Well, it's just wonderful. You go to the grocery store and you're not even sure what the variety is that you're buying and most of the time they don't have much flavor, if any. It is kind of a cardboard. They pick them so green. You come here and you're gonna get a fresh peach loaded with flavor, very juicy. You just can't beat it. So thank you so much for being at the markets. We really appreciate it. Thank you. So we're back at the studio with our final ingredient for our carrot fruit salad. I really enjoyed visiting with Tony and seeing his peaches and I have to say ahead of time it's been several days since we were there and as he warned me, his peaches were really ripe. So this is gonna be a good lesson in being able to cut peaches and you'll see there are a couple of bad spots here but for the most part these peaches are just beautifully ripe. What you can do, you don't need to peel them actually. Just basically cut out any bruised areas. The peel again provides more fiber and some texture as well as color. Just kind of cut them into any regular pieces. I like to put the peaches in last because they're a very delicate fruit. You don't want to get them bruised or have them exposed to the air too awfully long. Again, you can see I'm just cutting away some of these. Oh, a little bit bruised but actually these peaches are just beautiful. Now, you can use this, make this recipe with really a lot of different kinds of fruit. You're not always gonna find peaches and grapes at your farmer's market. Think of some other things berries would be really nice in here. Even some melon which is a good summer fruit. Just use your imagination. In fact, one of the nice things about going to the market is you're really gonna find that the things you see are quite enticing. And the nice thing is to take your children and have them select some things that they would like to try. So perhaps they'll see the peaches and say that, you know, perhaps peaches are their favorite fruit. They'll want to give those a try. They might see a fruit that they aren't familiar with and want to try that too. In a second here, we're gonna visit with a mom who takes her daughters pretty regularly, she says, to the farmer's market. And they really do enjoy getting to know the vendors and looking at the different produce and that type of thing. I've decided I'm gonna add just a little bit of honey here to this dressing to make it a little bit sweeter. I think I may have gone a little bit wild on the vinegar. And so what we'll do now, we've got our dressing all mixed up, our salad right here, just pour it over and we'll go back to the market for a final visit. We'll be right back. I'm visiting with Sandra here at the farmer's market and Sandra's been coming for a couple of years to the markets here in New Mexico. Tell us how you found out about them and what brings you here? Well, I've been a recipient of WIC and they encourage use of the farmer's market coupons. And so they issue a certain number of coupons to the recipient each season during the summer and fall. And I've been coming here about two years and we really look forward to it. There's such a variety of fruits and vegetables that we normally wouldn't think about using. And so we've really enjoyed it. Well, I noticed you all were tasting a couple of grapes earlier. Were those good? Yeah, I've still got some. They're very good. That's one thing you don't do at the grocery store, probably. That's true, you know, it's frowned upon. So it's nice to be able to taste them here. Well, it's so wonderful that you're... Thank you for talking with me and that you're coming to the market. I'm glad you're bringing your daughters. And have a great summer. Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate visiting with Sandra and encourage all of you who receive WIC benefits to visit your farmer's market. Those coupons that you get can actually only be used at the farmer's market. So it's a great opportunity to get out into the community, find out about what's growing in your area and take your kids with you. They're really going to enjoy visiting. We've got our fruit salad here. I've gone ahead and tossed it. And let me just put some into a bowl here so you can kind of see the wonderful flavor, the wonderful colors, I mean, and the textures we've got. You know, the poppy seeds are really nice because they give you some crunch. And then also when you realize that you've got crunchy seeds in there from the grapes, it's not something that's quite as jarring. Some people don't like crunchy grape seeds but they're actually really nice, I think. So you've got your fruit salad. If you'd like to, you can also add other ingredients. I've got some yellow or light colored raisins here. Any other type of dried fruit would be tasty. Use your imagination. Now I'd also like to remind you that we do have nutrition classes available throughout the state of New Mexico. If you're interested in finding out more about those or would like some of the recipes for some of the foods and dishes that you've seen prepared on this show, please call the number on your screen. And we can get you connected with those nutrition classes right in your community or send you out some recipes. Now I hope you've enjoyed this episode of The Vega Show. We've featured some of our New Mexico fruits and a surprise vegetable that normally we don't see so often in the middle of the summer. You never know what you're going to find at your farmer's market. So I encourage you to go to the market and visit frequently. Each week you're going to find different things as the growing season progresses and your kids will love exploring. They'll learn to recognize the vendors. You may even learn to recognize the vendors by name, in fact. And that's one of the joys of going to the market. It really becomes a community experience. You'll realize that those people who grow food in our communities are part of us. And when we go to the grocery store, we don't necessarily have that personal connection with them. So please do go out and visit your local farmer's market over the next couple of days. You'll find fruits, vegetables, plants, a wonderful variety of things. So if you'd also like to visit us next time, be sure to tune in to Vega Vegetables in Great Abundance. I look forward to seeing you then. The preceding was a production of New Mexico State University. The views and opinions in this program are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the NMSU Board of Regents.