Harvest Warriors :: Rebecca Brown, M.D. and Daniel Yoder

We have had literally hundreds of E-mails and letters asking us about ourselves. What do we look like, where do we live, and what do we do. We have decided to answer these questions to the best of our ability.

As most everyone knows, we minister and write books and do everything we can to reach out to others with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We normally travel and minister two weeks out of each month all year. But the two weeks we are home each month are filled with hard work because of what the Lord has commanded us to do. Let me share that with you.

In 1996, Daniel and I had lived in Arkansas for 5 years. We were frustrated and discouraged because this area is experiencing an intense spiritual drought. We talked it over, and finally decided to move. We found a large church in another state that was on fire for the Lord. We desperately wanted fellowship and wanted to be a part of such a church. So, we took all our savings, and traveled to that state. We looked around and found a beautiful piece of property not far from the church. We put our whole savings as a down payment on the land. That evening, as we were driving home, the Lord spoke very forcibly to Daniel. “What are you going to do with that land?”

“We’re going to put a home on it and live there so we can be a part of this church,” was Daniel’s answer.

“Well, I want you to know that I’m not moving there with you!” The Lord stated very emphatically. “I did not give you permission to leave Arkansas. I placed you there for a reason. I want you to move from the place you are currently living, but you are to stay in that area.” The Lord spoke so clearly, that there was no doubt at all in Daniel’s mind about it. His question was, “O.K., can we get our down payment back?”

“NO!” Was the emphatic answer. “You decided to move outside of My will. You did not ask My permission first. You have lost your money.”

We learned a very sharp lesson that day. We had assumed that because we were seeking fellowship and to be a part of an on fire church that the Lord would approve of our move. This started us on a road of learning to trust God completely with our finances. At this same time, God spoke to us and told us to change the name of our ministry. He told us to call it Harvest Warriors. He told us that He was going to change the direction of our ministry somewhat, and open new doors for us.

Over the next few months we looked around for property in our area. We couldn’t find anything that was suitable, or that we could get a loan on. We had lost all our savings, so we needed something we could finance 100%. Finally, we gave up and settled down to just live where we were. But God had something else in mind. Late in the summer of 1996, a Christian real estate agent that we knew slightly, called Daniel. He told Daniel that he had just listed a piece of property for sale that he just knew God wanted us to buy. It was a valley with mountains on three sides. The property extended to the tops of the mountains all around, and it had a creek running through the middle of the valley. He told Daniel where it was and begged him to go look at it.

Three times we tried to find the valley, but could never find it. It turned out that we could not find it because the road to it was overgrown and in such disrepair that no one could drive a vehicle down it. Somehow we just never walked far enough down the remains of the road to find the valley. We were busy, and the brother was busy, and we just didn’t connect, so we gave up on the whole thing. A month later, this man called Daniel on his cell phone. We were ministering down in Mississippi at the time. “Daniel, I told you that God wants you to have that land. We cannot wait any longer if you are to get it.”

“But we never could find it,” Daniel said.

“I’ll show you when you get back. But I want you to know that I have put $1,000 of my own money down to hold that property for you. I am absolutely certain God wants you to have it. You must bring the rest of the down payment as soon as you get home.” This brother was so certain about the valley that he put his own money down to secure the property for us! We prayed and felt sure God wanted us to have that land, but we had no money for a down payment. So we asked God to somehow bring us the money if He wanted us to buy it. We were speaking at a very small church, so had no possibility of coming up with that kind of money. On the very last day, the Pastor got up and spoke to the church. He told them that the Lord had spoken to him the night before and told him that we were supposed to buy a piece of land. He said the Lord had told him they were supposed to help us get it. We were shocked, as we had said nothing at all to the pastor about our dilemma. He took up a collection, and to this day, none of us knows where the money came from. But there was exactly the amount in the collection that we needed for the down payment! Praise God.

We came back here to Arkansas and bought the valley. The man selling the property had gone bankrupt, so we got the property for a fraction of its value. When we saw it we fell in love with it instantly. However, it was completely wild and undeveloped. The first day we walked on it the Lord spoke to us and said, “Take your time and build this place right. I will direct you each step of the way.”

Except for hiring a bulldozer and backhoe, Daniel and I have done all the work ourselves to save money. The first thing we had to do was clear the valley and build a road back in. Daniel decided to build the driveway up on the side of the mountain instead of through the valley. This greatly preserved the beauty of the land. Our next issue was water management. A few months after we had built the drive way back into the valley (almost ¾ of a mile long) the Lord arranged for it to rain 16 inches in a 24 hour period. Believe me, after that rain we knew exactly where our water problems were! We dug and placed nearly 1,000 feet of culverts throughout the valley. We never thought about it at the time we were placing the culverts, but they make wonderful kitty tunnels. The cats can get all over our land through those culverts if they have to. Shortly after we had cleared and fenced it, one morning Daniel’s eyes popped open and he turned to me and said one word: “Cows!”

“What?” I asked sleepily.

“Cows! The Lord has commanded me to put cattle in the valley. How much money do we have in our checking account?”

“We have exactly $1,100 and that’s for bills.” I stated firmly. “We need all of it for our bills this month.”

“Well, we have to spend it for calves,” Daniel replied. “Let’s go.”

So, at God’s command, we got up and went into town and talked to a man who owns a large cattle ranch. We bought 11 calves from him that day for $1,100. I knew we had to obey the Lord, but I was thinking the whole time about our bills and wondering how we were going to pay them. After we finished paying for the calves, we went down to the post office, and there in the mail was a check for exactly $1,100! It was from a person who had never given to us before, and never did again. That was the beginning of our herd of cattle.

Every building and every step taken to build this ranch has been accomplished through a direct miracle from God. But, we had to take a step in pure faith and obedience to God first, then He provided. In the fall of the next year, the Lord spoke to Daniel and told him to build our first building – a large machine shed to hold all our equipment. Without telling me about it, Daniel contracted to have the building built. We left for our speaking engagement in Rhode Island, and it was one of those trips where everything that could go wrong did! Our vehicle broke down two times on our outward-bound trip. After the second breakdown, Daniel told me, “By the way, God commanded me to build our first building. So I signed the contract just before we left to have it built, and to get the dozer work done for the foundation.” When he told me the amount of money we needed to have on our return I nearly passed out! It was several thousand dollars.

“Daniel!” I exclaimed, “This church we are going to has only 35 people! We’ll never get that kind of money! Are you SURE the Lord commanded you to do this?”

Daniel turned pale and gulped and said, “Yes, I KNOW God commanded me to do it. Well, it’s God who will have to provide us with the money, not the people.”

As it turned out, that little church had taken a step in faith and rented a tent that would hold more than 1,000 people and put it up in the parking lot of a grocery store that had gone out of business. It was the end of October, and it was freezing cold and rained constantly. There were no sides on the tent, so we all sat or stood with our feet in a couple of inches of water with the wind whipping through the tent. BUT, the Holy Spirit was there! People filled the tent and several hundred stood outside the tent every night for 6 nights in a row. The city sent fire marshals down to try to shut down the meetings, but each one ended up accepting Christ, and the meetings were never stopped. God did wonderful things in the meetings that week! I don’t know that I have ever been so cold and wet for so long, but it was worth it.

Daniel and I were afraid to count the love offerings, so we just put them the into a brief case uncounted. We had two more small speaking engagements to do after that one. Once again, we did not count the offerings. After we got home, our building was built and we owed a huge bill! In fear and trembling, we finally opened the brief case and started counting. I have never seen so many one dollar bills in my life! We counted and counted, and in the end, we had the exact amount we needed! Once again God provided. I KNOW He multiplied the money in that brief case.

The next year, the Lord spoke to us and told us that He wanted to enlarge our ranch. He told us to go to the top of one of the mountains and walk the property there and claim it for Him. We did so in faith, not knowing who owned the land. A few days later Daniel was in town picking up the mail when he ran into a man who lives near to our valley. We had been acquainted with him for some time. He said to Daniel, “Hey, I hear that you kids bought the place down the road from me.” Daniel nodded. “Yes we did.”

“Well, I have a nice piece of land that joins with yours on top of the mountain. I think you should have it. It has been in my family since before Arkansas became a state. I wouldn’t sell it to anyone else.” He named his price, and Daniel said, “Well, we would really like to buy the land, but quite frankly we don’t have the money right now.”

The man never blinked. “Oh, that’s O.K. I tell you what. I will hold it for you for one year. One year from now you bring me the down payment, and I will finance the rest for you myself.”

Daniel agreed, but we didn’t get the money. We wondered if we would lose the opportunity to buy the land. One year later, during the month we were supposed to bring him the down payment, we were doing a speaking engagement in San Antonio, Texas. On the last day of the speaking engagement a sister came up to me after the meeting. She handed me an envelope and said, “You’re going to think I am crazy, but the Lord told me you are supposed to purchase some land. This is to help you do it.” We had not said anything about purchasing land at that speaking engagement! In the envelope was exactly the amount we needed for the down payment! Once again, God had provided.

After working on the land for 5 years, the Lord gave us permission to move onto it. We did not have the finances to build a house, so we decided to move a single-wide mobile home down into the valley. What a project that was! We had to build one mile of temporary road, two temporary bridges, and take out three gates and over 500 feet of fencing to get it back in the valley! Of course all the fencing and gates had to be re-built again. It took us one whole day just to move that mobile home two miles to get it into the valley! As you can see in the picture, it is nestled back up against the mountain beside the creek. It is our hearts’ desire to live in a house, but even if we are never able to build one, we will be happy in our mobile home and we thank God every single day for the privilege of living here.

God lives in this valley! His presence and peace is so remarkable that every person who has ever come into the valley has remarked on the unusual peace here.

This is the road that goes to the entrance to our valley.

Going up the drive way, and looking out across the valley. The cattle are grazing down below.

Our home. The chicken coup is off to the far left. Daniel and I pulled every one of the rocks from the creek that make up the walk-way, steps and foundation of the mobile home. Those rocks are heavy to carry, and heavy to cement into place. I should be nice and thin as hard as we worked on all that, but it just hasn’t worked out that way somehow.

The Lord instructed us to build terraces on the side of one of the mountains, and to plant a large orchard of fruit trees there. We did so, putting in about 60 trees of all different kinds of fruit. But, in order to get fruit, you must have pollinators. That means bees. So I started a whole new project learning about bees. Daniel is very allergic to bee stings, so the bees are my project. We established the bee hives up on the top terrace of the orchard.

I harvest the honey in the fall of the year after the first cold spell. This is for two reasons. First, because the season for making honey is then over, and second, the bees are much more docile in the cold weather. They tend to huddle together in the bottom of the hive, making it much easier for me.

Here you see me removing the top compartment of the hives. These are called supers, and are the place where the bees store their honey for the winter. I can only harvest honey from one super per hive, because I must be sure to leave enough honey for the bees to live on throughout the winter.

Each super contains frames where the bees build their honey combs. The honey combs look white because each little cell of honey has a wax cap to seal it. In these pictures you can see the white wax on the honey filled cells. Each super full of honey weighs about 50 pounds.

Once the supers are off, I must open the bottom part of the hives. In picture 14, you can see that there is a metal screen over the hive. This is to keep the queen bee from coming up into the supers to lay her eggs. If the queen could travel through the supers, you would never be able to harvest any honey. The bees must be medicated each winter so they won’t be killed off by mites. I am putting the medication into the hive in these pictures. You can see some bees coming up to see what’s happening. When I am finished, I put the hive back together and take the supers away to harvest the honey.

To harvest the honey, I carefully remove one frame at a time from the supers. Then, using a special electric hot knife, I remove the wax tops off of the honey cells on both sides. You can see the knife removing the wax in picture 18, and you can see the golden honey in the cells once the wax tops are removed. I only remove one side of wax tops at a time.

I remove the wax caps off of one side of three frames. Then each frame is put into the honey extractor (picture 20) The lid is closed, and I must turn the handle. The frames are turned around and around fast so the centrifugal force pulls the honey out of the cells. The honey then goes down into the bottom of the extractor. It is heavy work!

Finally, the honey is drained out of the bottom of the extractor into jars. The last step is to put the honey through a strainer to get all the little pieces of wax out of it before putting it into the final containers for storage. It is a sticky business from start to finish! Maybe it’s all the work I put into it, but we think our own honey tastes much better than anything we can buy in the store.

The bees multiply so fast that you can double the number of your hives each year if you want. I haven’t done this yet because I get about 100 pounds of honey each year, and I don’t want the work of harvesting more at this point.

The cattle have certainly been a learning experience! We are into our fifth year of calves now. We raised each one of our cows from young calves. We did a lot of looking around and finally settled on a pedigreed beefmaster bull. The beefmaster breed of cattle are born small which prevents birthing problems, and gain wait very quickly. We named our bull Romeo in the hopes that he would live up to his name, and I am happy to report that he has. During part of each year, we have to supplement the cattle with hay. We use the big round bales. Each bale weighs about 800 pounds. The following pictures show Daniel bringing hay into the pasture for the cattle. The bales are covered with a mesh material which must be removed before the cattle can eat it. We chose to feed our hay in rings, to prevent so much waste by the cattle trampling it into the ground.

"We have to be very sensitive to the Lord in the amount of hay we need each year. We have to have enough not only for the winter, but also in case there is a drought in the summer. More than once, the Lord has told Daniel to buy extra hay in the spring. We ended up being about the only people around with enough hay to last us through the drought that summer because of this. God has provided us with a good spring fed pond that has never gone dry, even in the worst drought. Our other two ponds have sometimes gone dry in drought condition."

Romeo weighs about 2,000 pounds. He is a gentle and friendly bull, but you have to be careful around him because just one flip of his big head can send you flying.

This picture shows Daniel giving Romeo a scratch on his head, something he enjoys.

Although the calves are wild, they are also very curious. Every time we go out into the field, they gather around to see what we are doing. These are a few of our calves that were born this spring. They are 2-3 months old. In the background is a little one that is only two weeks old.

This is me (Rebecca) on our four wheeler. It is an essential tool for our ranch. I load it up with 50 pound bags of grain and take them out to the pasture to feed the cattle every third day.

Sometimes, Daniel is not available to drive our big tractor to get the hay. That’s when I drive our smaller one. The bale of hay sits on the red hay fork behind the tractor. This is the tractor we use most for mowing, planting and spraying our fields, etc.

In John chapter 10, Jesus stated that His sheep “know My voice.” We have learned that this is also true with cattle. Our cattle know us. They always respond to our voices, and always come when we call. They won’t respond to anyone else’s voice. A couple of weeks ago we had a thunder storm with high winds. A large tree was blown down on top of our fence in the upper pasture. The following day, it didn’t take long for some of our cattle to find the break in the fence. About 10 of them wandered down the mountainside and ended up grazing contentedly in our neighbor’s front lawn. Needless to say, we got a phone call pretty quickly. Our neighbor lives a mile down the road from us. He raises cattle as well. We took the four wheeler and drove down to where the cattle were. Our neighbor and his wife were out with their long staffs, waiting to help us drive the cattle back home. We told them, “Thanks, but we don’t need your help. They will just follow us.” He didn’t believe us, until we started to call them. Their heads came up, they started to moo, and they came towards us on the run. We simply drove ahead of them on the four wheeler down the road and they ran after us all the way home. Not many ranchers work with their cattle so that they know them like ours know us. But we spend time with them so we can handle them with a minimum of trouble.

Fencing is a continual problem on a ranch. Daniel and I have literally build and strung miles of barbed wire fence. It’s hard enough on the level, but going up the side of a mountain is a real challenge. However, you don’t just put up a fence and that’s the end of it. You have to be continually repairing it. Sometimes the cattle break through just because they think the grass on the other side looks better. But mostly, it breaks because of trees or tree branches falling on it in the rain and ice storms. More than once, we have had to wade in waist deep freezing cold, fast flowing creek water to clear the fences of debris to keep them from breaking, and to prevent flooding. Believe me, the cattle ALWAYS get out at the worst times possible! Many times we have been so frustrated we have threatened to take them all to market! But always, the knowledge that God commanded us to raise them holds us back.

The pasture land requires continual maintenance as well. One year we bought some hay that had thistle seed in it. The next year, the thistles took over our entire pasture in less than two months. They spread that fast! We are still having to spray the entire pasture every year to keep the thistle and weeds from growing. Twice we have lost our entire pasture to drought and have had to re-plant. We will have to re-plant again this coming spring. The work on a ranch never ends.

There is nothing better than your own home-grown beef. We butcher a beef each year for ourselves. The rest we sell to help buy hay and grain. (We don’t make any money off the cattle, we just break even.) Interestingly, the butcher who does our beef for us, thinks that our cattle are the best he has seen. He has told so many other people about our beef that we now have a waiting list of people wanting to buy our beef as soon as they are big enough to butcher. Our beef has never had a shot of anything!

We raise chickens and have our own fresh eggs. BUT, my chickens are for egg laying purposes only. They have names and come to me when I call. I could never put one of them in a pot.

During the summer, the mowing never ends. Two years ago the Lord commanded us to buy a 10 acre piece of land to build a convention center on. That is an additional ten acres of mowing to keep us busy. I will put pictures on our web site of the convention center as soon as the building starts to go up. We just have the foundation done at the time of this writing.

Life in the country is completely different than life in the city. For one thing, the nearest shopping mall is 100 miles away. The nearest grocery store is 15 miles away. Our nearest neighbor is 1 mile down the road from us. We have come to a whole new understanding of God as a result of living here. We have most certainly gained a whole new appreciation for the pioneers who developed this country.

Romans 1:19-20 says:

“ . . . what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, . . .”

When you live in the city, you only experience man’s creation. In the country, you have the opportunity to see God’s creation. The more we see and learn of God’s creation, the more we stand in awe of the greatness of our God. There is literally no end to the variety He has created. Every bird, animal and insect are individually different. Every plant is individually different. As we look at the trees and massive rocks, we gain an understanding of the steadfastness of God. Year after year, for thousands of years, the sun rises and sets, the rocks remain standing, the trees continue to grow. Man comes and goes, his life is short, but the creation continues on and on, steadfast.

When God revealed Himself to Job, He did so mostly through His creation. He asked Job:

"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Tell Me, if hou have understanding.

Who determined its measurements?

Or who stretched the line upon it?

To what were its foundations fastened?

Of who laid its cornerstone,

When the morning stars sang together,

And all the sons of God shouted for joy?” Job 38:4-7

God has always been intimately involved with His creation, and still is.

“Who provides food for the raven,

When its young ones cry to God,

And wander about for lack of food?” Job 38:41

“Do you know the time when the wild mountain goats bear young?

Or can you mark when the deer gives birth?

Can you number the months that they fulfill?

Or do you know the time when they bear young?

They bring forth their young,

They deliver their offspring.

Their young ones are healthy,

They grow strong with grain;

They depart and do not return to them.

Who set the wild donkey free?” Job 39:1-4

“Does the hawk fly by your wisdom,

And spread its wings toward the south?

Does the eagle mount up at your command,

And make its nest on high?

On the rock it dwells and resides,

On the crag of the rock and the stronghold,

From there it spies out the prey

Its eyes observe from afar,

Its young ones suck up blood;

And where the slain are, there it is.” Job 39:26-30

“O Lord, how manifold are Your works!

In wisdom You have made them all.

The earth is full of Your possessions –

This great and wide sea,

In which are innumerable teeming things,

Living things both small and great . . .

These all wait for You,

That You may give them their food in due season,

What You give them they gather in;

You open Your hand, they are filled with good.

You hide Your face, they are troubled;

You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.

You send forth Your Spirit, they are created;

And You renew the face of the earth.” Psalm 104:25-30

Jesus said: “Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” Matthew 10:29-31

Something we have learned is that ALL of creation knows its creature EXCEPT human beings.

“For you shall go out with joy,

And be led out with peace;

The mountains and the hills

Shall break forth into singing before you,

And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” Isaiah 55:12

Jesus also said that even the rocks would cry out with praises to God if we do not.

Living in the country, you become very involved with God’s creation. There is no man-made noise where we live. No sound of cars or trucks, or trains or planes. No horns honking or sirens blareing. The only man-made noise here is the noise we make ourselves. We wake up each dawn to a chorus of hundreds of birds singing praises to the Lord for a new day, and, of course, the crowing of our rooster. We go to sleep in the spring and summer to the call of the Whip-O-Will and the songs of the night insects and tree frogs. The cheerful sound of the calling of the Bob-Whites brightens up the day.

A large flock of wild turkeys live in our valley, and the deer are everywhere. Some springs, we raise orphaned fawns. Here is a picture of one of the fawns we raised called “Andy.” You can see how tiny he was compared to our cat Solomon. There he is one month latter. You can see how he has grown. Deer are such loving creatures. They make great pets. (Solomon is such a loving cat, he makes friends with whatever we bring into the house.) When the fall of the year comes, and the mating season commences, they leave us to completely return to the wild. However, some of them remember us and hang around the valley. They will stand still and not run when we call to them, even a couple of years after leaving us.

Our bird feeders keep busy the year round. However, we are most fascinated with the hummingbirds. These tiny creatures live on sugar water. Normally they drink the nectar from flowers, but they prefer sucrose which is the same a table sugar. They come to our feeders continually throughout the day. They are so friendly that occasionally they will perch on one of us for a few moments. This is a treat for us indeed! These are pictures of one of the little hummingbirds which landed on Daniel’s finger and sat there long enough for me to run and get the camera.

Our lives are very involved with animals. We love animals. I am convinced that God created our pets to teach us how to love unconditionally! We have a special love for cats. We have several that we saved from certain death who were just dumped out along the roads as tiny kittens, and several who are pure breeds. Daniel and I developed a special breed that we call “Abbypuras” They are a cross between the Abyssinian and Singapura breeds. These animals are incredibly loving and intelligent. They travel with us and walk on leashes like dogs.

This is a picture of Abraham, our Singapura. He is the father of the Abbypuras. The Singapuras are the smallest of all the breeds of cats. They only weight 3-4 pounds. But Abraham makes up in personality for what he lacks in weight. He rules all the other cats who are four times his size. The Singapuras are a relatively new breed. They developed in the wild on the fishing wharfs on the island of Singapore. Some American cat fanciers saw them and brought some of them to the U.S. and the breed was born. They are incredibly beautiful and extremely loving.

The pictures below are of Matthew, one of the Abbypuras. In the last picture, he is most unhappy because we had let the cattle out to eat some of the grass on the hillside. Matthew does not like his territory being invaded by the big beasts. However, Two Bits (the orange cat on the back of the rock) doesn’t let anything upset him. He is a true hillbilly cat. We picked him up at a humane society for $25, that’s why we call him Two Bits. He is a wonderful mouser. He single handedly keeps the mouse population under control and out of the house.

David (seen below) is a true ranch kitty. He loves to ride in the tractor, and always goes out with me to do the hay. He either rides in the tractor, or trots beside me out to the pasture. When the cows get too close, he jumps up on my shoulder for a ride.

Whenever we go for a walk, all the cats come along. Often in single file. They will walk with us as far as we want to go. In the bottom picture is Ruben, one of the Abbypuras.

Solomon and Mark stretch out on the porch for a well earned nap after a busy day chasing mice and lizards.

Another thing living in the country has taught us is our total dependency on God. In the city, I rarely paid much attention to the weather because it didn’t affect my activities. However, in the country, the weather becomes all important. We cannot control the weather, only God can. If it doesn’t rain, then the grass doesn’t grow and we don’t have food for the cattle. If it rains too much, we have to worry about flooding. In the winter, if an ice storm comes, we have to know ahead of time to prepare the cattle for it so they don’t get injured. We cannot control when and if our cows get pregnant. We cannot control whether the calves are born healthy or not, or if the cows will nurse them or not. We cannot control if our chickens lay eggs. We cannot force our fruit trees to bear fruit, or our honey bees to make honey. Everything is dependent on God.

The same thing is true in the city, of course, but we tend to lose the concept. However, whether you keep your job or not is up to you AND God. God is the one that provides your paycheck. God is the one that keeps you out of auto accidents, and God is the one who controls our health.

Living in the country has taught us to praise and thank the Lord in good times and in bad. God is in charge of it all, and we are content to have it so.