certain flowers out there and you're like that is so beautiful and nobody's even attending to them you know nobody's taking care of them but they're just doing their thing welcome to wild development studio join us as we venture into the breathtaking realm of wildlife arts and untamed adventures with captivating stories from the field and ideas to dive into to the visual arts will ignite your passion for conservation.
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Welcome to Wild Developments.
I'm your guide, Lauren, and today we're talking to Betty Simon.
She is first a daughter of God, a mother to eight -year -old twin boys,
and a wife to a wonderful man God has picked for her called Shane Simon.
She is originally from Uganda, but now she lives in the beautiful state of Oregon in the U .S.
She loves sharing God's Word, talking to people hosting and gardening she is a speaker and upcoming author and she is also starting a podcast called from orphan to inspiration it's about sharing experiences to give hope to others betty will be sharing her own experiences and she'll host other people to share theirs her mission is to inspire motivate encourage and bring hope to listeners betty says says that if an orphan from a remote village in Uganda is in the U .S..
Married, has kids, is educated, and has a community, amazing things are possible for anyone.
Betty, thank you so much for being with me today.
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
I'm so excited to be here.
And you know, it's such a small world.
We met on Mic Drop Workshop, and I met so many amazing women there like yourself.
Are you going to move forward with your public speaking career?
Here yes ma 'am and I'm so excited about it I've always wanted to be a public speaker and I'm working on it I'm taking classes I've done some few speaking engagements not paid but those are good because they are gonna push me to to learn more and when the time comes for being paid I'll be good at it yeah all those little baby steps getting you where you need to be what are you you going to be speaking on?
I'm going to, my message is about hope is to bring hope to people because I was in a hopeless situation.
My father died when I was eight and my mother died when I was nine and I was left pretty much without much care.
And I was helped by people who didn't even know me before who were not family members.
And so many things that I've gone through my life, which seemed hopeless but then after some time I gained hope and I came through them victorious so I want to share that message to people who might be in the same situation or different situations but they need hope they need to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel so that's my message my message is about hope that is a beautiful message what are some things things that have helped you stay hopeful?
First, I will say my God.
God has helped me in that area.
And then loving people.
I'm surrounded with love from people, first from my husband, from the people who raised me,
from friends, reading books, reading my Bible, and just encouraging myself to be hopeful.
And also sometimes from other people that I see who have overcome a lot,
they help me to know that there is always hope, no matter what the situation is.
Do you have a favorite Bible verse that helps you to stay hopeful?
Yes. My favorite verse is.
It's John 14,1,when Jesus was telling his disciples that they should not be worried.
They were really worried because he was about to go.
He was about to leave.
And he told them, do not be worried because I'm going to prepare a place and I'll come back and get you.
So that is my favorite verse.
It is a gospel, John 14,verse 1.
And you can read more about that past verse.
Do not be worried.
But to believe in him, to believe in the father, that's my best verse.
I love it.
And I love that in the Bible, it says, be not afraid 365times.
One for each day of the year.
Yes, that's wonderful.
Yeah.
When you're working on your speech or thinking about what to say or trying to get close to God.
Do you do any of those things, sitting or walking in nature?
Oh, yes.
I love to be in the garden.
I have a garden here at our place.
I'm surrounded with trees.
Our backyard has quite a lot of trees.
So I love to be out there.
My best place is to be outside.
I don't want to be inside.
I was born in Uganda.
So we are always out.
We are always in nature.
We are in the trees, in the forest.
You know, we go through nature to go get water and all that.
So I love being outside in nature.
And sometimes when I'm out there, that's when I get clarity on stuff.
That's when my thoughts become clear.
That's when ideas come to me.
I just love to be in nature.
I do.
I love it.
Do you have a favorite memory from growing up in Uganda?
Oh yeah there's a lot of memories but i'll say one of them is during harvest time when we were harvesting corn and peanuts and sweet potatoes or anything but mostly the corn and peanuts i remember very well we would make a fire in the garden because you would pull out this corn I don't know if you call them husks so whatever you call them we will throw them on the fire collect firewood and make the fire put grass on it and all that and then we'll get some corn and put it under that fire that is going or some cassava which is called yucca root here in America and then as we are working we are working it is cooking and it is roasting roasting is the word.
And then we would sit around that fire and get the stuff out of the fire and start taking the husks off the corn and sharing and eating it.
We've been eating also on the peanuts we are picking out.
It was just a fun moment.
I still remember that to this day.
Really, really great.
I loved it.
I loved to eat in the garden on the things which we are harvesting.
Thing yep there is just something about fire roasted corn it is delicious yes it is did you ever have a moment where you had to overcome a challenge in nature and how did you navigate through it well yes um there was quite a few but I will concentrate on one of them one day I was told to go try to find firewood so we can cook because that's how we cooked with firewood so I was out there in the trees I remember it was a bunch of coffee plantation trees and I was getting up on this plant this coffee tree to pick out some dry pieces of wood or or branches.
I would say, to put with what I was already having.
And as I reached over, I saw this huge snake looking at me,
like ready to take me down.
And I'm talking about snakes in Africa.
Snakes there, or snakes in Uganda, are not like snakes here in America.
They are not pets.
You're not going to find it and, oh, bring it in your house.
They are poisonous.
They will kill you in a minute you know if it was bite you it will kill you i don't think if it bit me i would have made it home alive i looked up there to get that my fingers are up there i'm still young my fingers up to get this dry branches and it is just looking at me like ready i threw through everything I had.
I run, I was screaming, I was scared, I was in tears, but I was grateful that I wasn't bitten by that snake.
I was really grateful.
I'm grateful too.
That's nightmare fuel, Betty.
Yeah. Up to now, I still kind of visualize that snake looking at me,
you know?
Oh yeah.
Oh, man. Yeah.
Yeah. Do you have snakes now where you live?
No, we don't.
And that's one thing I told my husband.
I said, please, wherever we are going to live, I want to make sure there are no snakes.
My husband always makes fun of me because he's he's an American.
They don't fear snakes, you know, his parents have a huge property and they have those garden snakes there.
And sometimes they uh I have seen one there and I just take off and they just laugh at me they're like it's not gonna bite you I'm like I do not care I don't care whether it's gonna bite me or not or a garden snake or not a snake is a snake to me and I'm off so where we live no we don't have snakes so thank god we don't what are some things that you like to do in nature where you're right now gardening gardening out there I do love it and then out in the woods we have a waterfall in an area we live in in Roseburg but there is a neighbor neighboring area called glide there is a waterfall up in the in the forest I will call it the forest in the woods so we we usually go go and walk up there as maybe like 30minutes walk in the woods and we just stare at it and look at it.
And I love to do that.
I also love to go to the coast and just go through the grass when you're walking from like your hotel down to the water.
You go through this grass that is kind of um waving around and touching your legs and all that uh i also love to just my boys love to be outdoors so we take them to ziplining we've taken them a few times like mostly when we are camping and all that so we are out there in the in the nature they're ziplining away in the up and stuff I mean.
I love zip lining.
It is terrifying.
And I let my zip lining instructor know that the first time I went out.
And as soon as they're like, all right, jump.
And I jumped.
He's like, I forgot to connect you.
And I was like, oh.
No, I don't do it.
But I watch my boys do it, and I'm praying down there where I am.
I'm like, oh, dear Lord, please bring them back.
It is scary because they're out there.
And if they were to fall, there is nothing you can do about it,
you know?
Yeah, you have to put a lot of trust in the people that are hooking you up to those things and lots of trust in God.
Yes, that's true.
Yeah, the most beautiful place I've gotten zip lining is in St.
Croix because you can see the ocean and all the mountains and all the green forests and it was just it was beautiful.
Oh, that's nice. That's wonderful.
Now, I have to tell you, I am really impressed that you garden because I'm taking a community garden class.
And there is so much to gardening.
And I tell everybody I have a wilted thumb.
I don't have a green thumb.
What are what are some of your favorite things to garden oh my goodness we garden it all and my husband too likes gardening and the boys love it too but we do pretty much a lot of it we do beans we do corn sweet potato uh peas we we do the peas first so we can eat on them you know and we do uh squash we do pumpkins we have we don't have a really big garden but we we we just grow it all in there we we grow so much garlic um uh sweet potatoes my sorry sorry potatoes normal potatoes my husband always makes fun of me is that you plant so many potatoes yet.
Yet the potatoes are so cheap in the store.
And I'm always telling him, it's so fun to just open my back door and go in the garden and harvest the potatoes for dinner.
You know, they still have the dirt on them and I wash them.
I love it.
We do a lot of flowers also.
We plant so much flowers.
We love flowers.
Our place is always colorful.
Colorful we plant um what what what am i forgetting sunflowers those are also flowers we do plant cabbage we plant all sorts of vegetables we just pretty much plant everything you know that's pretty yeah we do a lot of planting you know do you find that the fruits and there are the vegetables just taste better out of your garden than they do from the store i think they do you know they do they don't have a lot of pesticide on them we don't we don't even spray them but once in a while they get little like caterpillars on them so we have to kill those so that is pretty much what they do but we don't spray for them to grow big or anything i think they do test and the potatoes for sure i'll tell you the potatoes for sure they taste really good from the garden yeah I'm gonna have to try and and plant some potatoes yeah you can I'm just so horrible at gardening do you have any tips for me yes the tips is love love it you know when you're loving what you do it's gonna turn out good you love your garden love what you're gonna do that is good and also get some good soil that will be be helpful uh water them according to the instructions don't let them to be too watered or be too dry just um follow the instructions on on the type of whatever you're planting and just let nature uh help grow them you know just let them grow that's good advice there was a woman last night and she was we were planting the seeds and she was talking to him and she's like here you go baby and do you talk to your seeds and your plants no I don't but one time I was planting stuff and the little girl from the neighborhood came over kids come to my house so much it's like my boys just attract to these kids in the neighborhood so they come here a lot and one of the girl was like oh can I help you I'm like sure you can so I showed her her what to do and then I heard her whispering stuff I'm like what is she saying so I was interested in knowing so I said so and so what are you talking about she's like oh I was talking to the seeds because if you talk to them they grow better I'm like really she's like yeah they do so I I've seen somebody do it I have not but I'm yet maybe to try it maybe this.
This time I will talk to my seeds and tell them to grow big,
you know, grow good.
There you go.
And oh, it's almost March.
I know the episode's going to come out in June.
Have you started doing anything inside with your seeds?
Or do you wait until like Mother's Day to start planting?
We would have started already, but we've been remodeling our house.
So we are kind of focusing on the house at the moment.
But we are going to i think i'm thinking next week we'll start getting the the seeds going because we have a greenhouse so we'll we know that the seeds in the greenhouse and let them be in there for a while before we bring them out when the the weather is good so i think next week will which will be the beginning of march we'll do that very nice i bet you guys have a lot of bees and butterflies in your flower garden huh yeah oh yes we do we do have a lot of bees because we have sunflowers we have a pool so we plant sunflowers around the pool the order around the pool area and so the bees are there a lot we have so many of them that sometimes i'm scared they're gonna bite somebody but they don't they're doing okay yeah they're busy pollinating you're doing doing an important job yeah that's what my husband says yeah he's like we need them because they're going to pollinate and then we they do that also on the corn we see them on the corn a lot there are also the flowers some of the flowers they the bees are on them quite a bit i'm grateful to to be on this podcast this this is first of all my first podcast i've never been on one so I'm so grateful to you for giving me this opportunity thank you so much and I'm sure it is going to open doors that I will be on others I'm an African who lives here in the US and I love both things I love the nature there I love the nature here I love the people and I'm just grateful I'm grateful for everything for everything thing yeah I'm glad you uh decided to come on the show because it was a very interesting I loved hearing your experiences from Africa and all about your gardening um and I will say having run a podcast and being on other people's podcasts it's a lot harder in your seat than it is in my seat so you did a great job thank you so much oh and that was one thing I'll tell you about nature when I was growing up we would get sick not a whole lot but when we would get sick we would get medicine from nature there will be this type of herbs that they will get and mix them with water give us to drink you have a fever you drink it you have a stomachache you drink this one you have a headache you do this and those things worked you know that was all nature so sometimes when I'm giving my boys medicine like um ibuprofen or tynal I'm like I wish I had that stuff that I had when I was young to give him because now I can't just go in the garden and pick him and give him but i remember those days that they worked we didn't have the money to go buy the medicine so we just used what we had the alvera and other types of herbs so i that that to me is still mind -blowing that a leaf or a herb can cure something you know know so anyway i don't know i agree i think that we rely too much on chemicals and not enough i i think god gave us everything we need on this beautiful earth and i think that's beautiful that you guys were able to just pick something and cure a headache or a stomach ache and i think that uh well i wish that we could go back to to using more herbs and getting in contact with nature like that um again maybe someday yeah maybe someday i was gonna say that it is starting to come back because i see a lot of uh people who are going like plant best or naturopath or this and that i follow a a guy on youtube called his name is bobby price dr bobby price he talks talks about all these natural things that we can still do and get relief if we're having some issues going on so i think it's coming back hopefully it will hopefully yeah you brought up youtube you're on youtube too aren't you yes i have a youtube channel it's called god's word for us so i just make short videos um and post them on there yes i am and you said god's word for us right that's for god god's word for us yes ma 'am all right i will be sure to tag that in the show notes and then if somebody wanted to get in contact with you and hire you as a speaker how can they get a hold of you i will give them my phone number which should i give it to you now or send it to you um yeah you can give it now okay so it is 541-220-9318and i have an email address which is my name betty simon but instead of a y it will be ie so it will be b -e -t -t -i -e simon0214 at gmail .com very good and i will be sure to link those in the show notes as well.
Well, and before we go, what is one tip that you have for someone that would like to connect with nature?
Oh, it is wonderful.
It's life out there.
It's life.
I don't want to be inside.
I want to be out there.
I want to be breathing the fresh air.
I want to be seeing the birds flying all over the place, the insects,
looking at the water.
It is soothing, you know.
It's like you forget all the noise from the city.
The cars passing by and pollution and all that and you're out there just taking it all in admiring God's nature admiring how things were created sometimes when I'm like in the trees I look at a certain tree and I'm like how did that even become that tall and it is not falling down you know you would think it's gonna break and fall because it's so tall but no it's up there it's still farm and then you're putting flowers out there and you're like that is so beautiful and nobody's even attending to them you know nobody's taking care of him but they're just doing their thing i yeah get out there in nature it is so beautiful it's it's lovely you know i i just love it to to be out there and when i was young growing up we used to go collect firewood in the forest and it would be out there and you just love it just enjoy it it's good it is great advice thank you so much betty for being on the show thank you so so much for having me i'm so grateful to you for giving me this first opportunity thank you so much thank you and until next time get outside and see what develops.
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