Faith, Family, and Farming: Finding Success and Significance in God

Dr. Scott McDowell: Good morning.
So welcome to chapel.
We're going to have a fireside chat today,
so the faculty will get that. The rest of you, that seems that's a very dated reference.
But we talk about our brand promise of we walk with you a lot, and we take that brand promise very seriously.
And as your president, I have the opportunity to go out in the community and walk alongside people that are very special and people that have chosen to claim this institution and walk with us.
And really,
at the end of the day,
when we find people like that,
it's really all about you because we've got Brad and Barb Bauma with us today.
They are veterans of 49 years of marriage.
They are high school sweethearts.
Grew up in California.
in the dairy industry and fifth generation dairy farmers,
their roots go all the way back to the
Netherlands and generations back there in the Netherlands,
moved to Texas in 1983,
sometime in
El Paso in the dairy industry,
and then since 2003 been in West Texas.
So dairy farmers,
three children,
nine grandchildren, their sons Brent and Brandon are both in legacy farms with them.
And what I got
right here is Fairlife Milk. You may have heard of that.
That's these folks.
They're the Fairlife
Milk people.
And so let's welcome Brad and Barb to Lobby Christian.
All right,
so you are Christians
in business.
What does that look like for you?
And how's that difference different than just
being in business without Christ?
Brad Bouma: Born into it.
Born in a Christian household.
Christian grandparents.
Christian mentors through all of our life.
We met at a Christian high school
when we were juniors in high school.
Barb Bouma: I might add it was a small high school.
I think there were about 400,
300 students
and our class was 75 people.
So we were both in the same graduating class in 1975.
Brad Bouma: So,
yeah, we've been to 50-year reunions and all that kind of cool stuff already.
It's when you know you're getting old.
The cool thing is when you go to a reunion and look around, everybody else is old.
You're not old,
so it's all good.
But no, we're blessed.
And we were raised with the fact that, you know, it's a great passage.
It says the cattle on a thousand hills are his.
And,
you know, we're in the cattle business.
And so we've been raised with that mantra all along.
We are stewards of what the good Lord has put in front of us,
has allowed us to be part of.
And that came from grandparents,
even great-grandparents,
through a legacy.
Dr. Scott McDowell: So success,
and again,
hard work,
but success by figuring out Fairlife Milk and eventually selling that to Coca-Cola.
So we got students in the audience that want to go into business,
have an idea about being an entrepreneur.
What advice would you give about business?
Brad Bouma: You know, I had this question Friday on a Zoom I was on with the family
business class at Texas Tech that I'm involved with and about 60 students
from around the country and I said, well, the first thing you do when you sit
down and look at something is pray about it.
You know, I say that in a secular university as well as I'll say it here.
So you stop and pray,
and then you wait and watch the Lord
and where he's taking you and where you go.
Because doors will open and doors will close.
And sometimes no is the answer to prayer.
And you stop there and you retract and backtrack and go again.
We're in the middle of one of those deals right now.
I am with our son,
the youngest son.
Big deal.
We just hit some doors and we backed up,
retreaded, and some doors started opening.
But every time I forced a deal to happen,
I got them done pretty much,
but I paid for it for 10 years,
getting them straightened out.
And as I look back 50 years later,
God probably really was telling me not to do that at that time
and forced to make that deal happen.
So find deals,
pray about them,
be excited about it, be passionate about it.
You have to be passionate about what you're doing.
And then it's all about who you surround yourself with.
Look to your left, look to your right.
Who are you running with?
You know, who are the other people in your life?
Who are the mentors in your life?
Because if you're running with people that are the wrong people
and build relationships in those realms,
they will cost you through the rest of your life.
And I am blessed to have solid partners nationwide
or all over the country today.
all Christians all have great Judeo-Christian backgrounds
and we all have a very common belief
message.
Select Milk Producers, we open every meeting with a board of prayer
with a word of prayer.
Every board meeting.
That's just how we operate.
And so you are who you run with.
My granddad taught me that when I was about 14 years old.
And don't ever forget that.
So be careful who you run with.
Find good mentors.
Find good partners.
and move forward.
But,
and then,
you know,
get in God's will and stay out of his way.
You'll kind of make it work.
Dr. Scott McDowell: So very good.
So involve God early.
So generosity,
y'all are
generous people.
And, uh,
tell me a little bit about that. Cause that didn't start,
you know,
the,
maybe the temptation,
if you're sitting out there, well, yeah,
if I sold my business to Coca
Cola, I'd be generous to talk about generosity and how that started for you.
Barb Bouma: I'll just say that we
been blessed to be a blessing.
And I don't know why,
but here we are.
And so that's one of the
things I wanted to share with you.
And then it started young. When we were children,
our parents
taught us how to tithe,
taught us to tithe and how to tithe. And I can remember when we were first
married,
some of you don't know what a checkbook is and you've never written a check,
but that's how
we did it back in the day.
And I would sit at the desk. It was the 15th of the month time to pay
bills. I would sit at the desk and get out the bills. But the very first check I wrote was that
tithe to the church.
And then sometimes I could pay the rest of the bills and sometimes I couldn't.
And they would just have to wait. But tithing was our most important thing that came out of the
checkbook.
Brad Bouma: And then as you get along in life,
tithing becomes a suggestion,
not a mandate.
I mean, that becomes a minimum because there's opportunities in different places
where a tithe is a great place to start,
but that doesn't mean that's where you stop.
God
doesn't tell you that,
hey,
10% is cool.
You paid your 10%, so now you're in the club.
You got your
hard and you're good to go.
It doesn't work that way.
It's about the kingdom and what he puts in
front of you and you see those opportunities.
And I see kingdom opportunities through the same lens
as I see business opportunities.
And I'm sure Dr.
McDowell could tell us a couple stories about
that too. There's got to be a business side to everything that transpires,
but we're blessed.
Dr. Scott McDowell: Yeah,
so go ahead, Barb.
Barb Bouma: No, I do have a few props in my bag,
and someone was hoping they'd appear,
and I should have pulled this out when he was talking about the boys and the business,
but this is a pillow.
I'm a crafter,
and I made the—I don't know if you all can see it.
I apologize if you can't, but I made this pillow probably 10 years ago.
I made one for each of my siblings and all of our kids,
and if you can't read it, I cut the letters.
It was after my father passed away, so I used his old shirts and cut the letters.
It says Faith Family Farm,
and that's kind of our mantra.
And it's in that order.
Yes,
in that order.
I think I'm okay setting it here in front of the fire.
Dr. Scott McDowell: That's very dangerous, but we'll take the risk.
Barb Bouma: And then,
just to get this over with, my father immigrated from the Netherlands,
and so did my maternal grandfather.
both on boats.
Took a long time.
They were very sick,
but they made it.
Ended up in the dairy
industry in California.
And my grandfather was one of seven,
and he was about,
I think,
18 when
they immigrated.
And this is one of the songs that they took with them, even though it was in Dutch.
I don't know if you can see that either,
but these are books from my mom and dad's house after they
both passed away.
We spray painted them and did something crafty with it. It's as great as thy
faithfulness.
And that's just been a family hymn for years and years to all generations and hope
it continues.
Dr. Scott McDowell: Wonderful.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
And you can set those by the fire too. We'll
take care of them.
So God's faithfulness.
This is interesting to me.
Dairy farming.
I don't know
that there is a harder job in the world.
Dairy farming. The cows have to be milked twice a day,
365 days a year.
If you want to take time off,
somebody has to cover you.
So what,
tell me about
the dairy industry and the hard work involved in that. What do you,
tell me about the value of work,
what you've learned.
Brad Bouma: You know, it makes it a lot easier in our lives that we were both raised in it.
So she saw,
while she was working as a kid,
my grandfather,
who was the mentor at the time and
and the patriarch at the time had a mantra that said,
if the cows don't eat, you don't eat.
And he was dead serious about that.
So you can get up and feed cows,
you can go to school.
You can get breakfast.
That was just how it worked.
We had to take care of our animals first and foremost,
and then you went from there.
So for us being raised that way, it's kind of inbred in your blood.
And if you get to where somebody's talking about a 9-to-5 job,
it really gets boring.
And it just doesn't, you know,
it doesn't equate.
So,
and both of us were raised in that way,
working all night, middle of the night,
sometimes
harvest times,
different times.
And it's just part of it by both of our boys are more involved and our brothers have been
too.
And just,
it's families.
Dr. Scott McDowell: But you like it.
Obviously you love it because again, you had a pretty nice event with Coca-Cola,
but you
stayed in it.
People would think,
man, if I had a nice thing like that happen, I might walk away,
but you stayed.
Tell me about that.
Why are you still in the game?
Barb Bouma: I think we're too old to learn something new.
Brad Bouma: That's probably true.
That's our birth date up there, 57.
I can look at the signs.
We were both born in that year.
But,
you know, I've read the Bible numerous times.
I can't find retirement anywhere in the Bible.
I don't think it's a biblical principle.
God will change seasons in your lives and give you different opportunities and different things.
But I just don't believe retirement is,
I can't find it.
It doesn't exist in the Bible.
So you read the keys, you read the seasons,
and then you go where he sends you.
You know, work is a vocation.
And vocation is the Latin for calling.
So if you're called into what you're doing,
and it truly is a calling,
then it isn't work.
It's what you're supposed to be doing and how you're supposed to be doing it.
That changes over time.
I don't do today what I did 10 years ago or 20 years ago,
but I'm still going from here to the farm this afternoon.
Because if I went back home,
she'd be sick of me by the time I hung around that long.
Dr. Scott McDowell: All right. So talk about that. Y'all have been married 49 years.
And after that many years of
marriage, what advice would you have for this audience about somebody who might want to find
a good spouse and then stay married for all that time. What advice do you have about marriage?
Barb Bouma: Start by praying about your future spouse.
Maybe some of you already have,
but don't quit doing
that.
Hang in there.
You know,
we were married young. We were 19 and 20,
but our daughter got
married when she was 30.
You know, it doesn't have to happen anytime soon.
Just wait for who
God has for you.
And
have patience.
Brad Bouma: She needs lots of it.
I'm an
ADD serial
entrepreneur,
so she's a very
patient lady,
thank God.
Dr. Scott McDowell: So again, bring
God into it.
Brad Bouma: Absolutely.
No,
and marriage
is, I always say I've been married to
four different women, and she's been married to
four different men in this
50-year period.
And you love
the one you're with because that's the one you made a commitment to.
But life seasons change and
you evolve and there's kids and then there aren't kids.
And you go through these different periods
of everything.
And I'll let her expound on a period 12 years ago.
I mean, she's a walking miracle.
She's a pancreatic cancer survivor of 12 years by the grace of God.
Dr. Scott McDowell: Well, you lead right, you lead right into that.
Praise the Lord for that.
But,
but,
you know,
again,
uh,
being a Jesus follower doesn't mean you live a charmed life.
You have hardships and
you go through hard things. And as a cancer survivor going through that hardship,
what did
you learn about your walk? What did you learn about each other? What'd you learn about God through
that?
Barb Bouma: Again,
I'm a miracle and I don't have an explanation for that other than God still wanted
me here.
Um,
there are people that are,
um,
I would say much more worthy of living than I am
who have passed away from this horrible disease.
And there's a reason I'm here,
maybe,
because I'm sitting here talking to you all right now.
But there's an author, maybe you've heard of him, Tim Keller.
He passed away recently of pancreatic cancer.
And he wrote books and was all over the world.
And I think he was a Presbyterian pastor from New York.
And much to be admired.
And why am I here and he's not?
I don't know.
I don't know.
God has blessed me.
And we have nine grandkids nearby.
Maybe that's part of it.
Anyway, I want to share with you Philippians 4.6.
Brad Bouma: I didn't know she was going to preach today.
No.
Barb Bouma: It was quite a journey.
It was in 2014 and started in January and ended about November.
with diagnosis,
surgery,
treatments, and all that.
And I wouldn't wish that year on my worst enemy.
It was not fun.
But Philippians 4.6 says,
Do not be anxious about anything,
but in everything by prayer and supplication,
with thanksgiving,
let your requests be made known to God.
And that's what I did,
especially,
I know that we're on a time crunch,
and you didn't have music this morning,
so I'll just bring a couple of things to mind.
My parents and my grandparents were great at music.
They played instruments and they sang,
and all I got from that was the love of music, I think.
I don't sing well. I just kind of plunk away at the piano.
But, you know, when I'm on a walk or in the car, I listen to Christian music.
And I know a lot of you probably listen to podcasts because that's where you're at and what you do,
or you do your school assignments or whatever in your AirPods.
But I listen to Christian music,
and as I was laying on the radiation table at MD Anderson,
I just,
most of the time, for those 20 minutes or whatever,
they're targeting my pancreatic area.
They marked it,
and the machine supposedly knew just where to go.
But I still had the song in my head most of the time.
Lord, I need you.
I need you.
Every hour, I need you.
My defense,
my righteousness.
Oh,
God, how I need you.
Many of you might know that song.
But if it comes to mind,
you can think about what I went through
and how that song really got me through it.
And now having come through it,
one of my theme songs right now is the goodness of God.
I'll just read the refrain.
All my life you have been faithful.
All my life you have been so,
so good.
With every breath that I am able, I will sing of the goodness of God.
Brad Bouma: Yeah,
and that was a year that,
you know, I was blessed.
I basically was able to step aside from what we were doing.
The boys were in their late 30s and had some good folks around us,
and I had some great partners,
Christian partners, that understood completely.
You know, we lived in Houston for months.
We were all over the country for treatment,
different places.
But,
you know, also I shared in Sunday school yesterday
that, you know, I had a lot of people,
pastors included,
say, how can you be so calm during those times and things?
And I says, you know,
I gave her to God when this happened and said, you know, I don't, you know, I really like her back, Lord.
You know, I'm,
you know,
hope you're not done with her.
But if this is what,
you know, the decision in the world is, then I'm OK with that because I'm OK with you.
And making that decision made it much easier to walk the walk with her and say, hey, however this comes out,
we're going to be all right.
We're going to get there.
And so the two biggest things in life that have had the biggest impacts in my life and my walk have been my father and business partner passing away when I was 29 years old.
And shook a lot of things up.
And her pancreatic cancer journey.
It's not the successes.
It's not the selling companies to Fortune 500 companies being part of a group that did that.
It's not, you know, it's those things that were life-altering where you really found God and found the solace in Him that really affect your life.
Dr. Scott McDowell: Oh,
thank you for that very powerful stuff.
So closing out,
college student audience,
what do you know now that you wish you knew then?
Barb Bouma: You didn't ask us this question ahead.
Brad Bouma: What do I know now?
I know I would be more patient as I look at situations and things and people.
Pray through your causes and through your life.
You know, the Bible tells us, Paul tells us to pray unceasingly.
That means it's an unconscious prayer that is ongoing in your thought process
as you navigate everything you do in life.
And as you work through the sanctification process of your life,
you more and more will understand that and how that comes to play.
The other thing I can say, I said earlier,
surround yourself with great people.
Surround yourself with people who think and believe like you do,
and life will be a lot easier,
and you will be more successful.
It's about who you are and who you run with.
Have like-minded partners and people.
Dr. Scott McDowell: Barb, any final thought?
Barb Bouma: Well, I apologize.
I was looking at the notes,
and yes,
you did have that question at the end here.
I missed it.
Brad Bouma: Find somebody more patient than me 50 years ago.
Dr. Scott McDowell: You're good.
Some fun now.
Thank you so much.
This has really been good.
And for people walking through hard things,
that was very meaningful, and I deeply appreciate that.
Barb Bouma: I would like to close by reading Philippians 4 through 9.
And this is probably a familiar passage to most of you, and I already read verse 6.
But I would just like to read the whole thing and just focus on that for a minute.
Rejoice in the Lord always.
Again, I will say rejoice.
Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.
The Lord is at hand.
Do not be anxious about anything,
but in everything,
by prayer and supplication,
with thanksgiving,
let your requests be made known to God.
And the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding,
will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally, brothers,
whatever is true,
whatever is honorable,
whatever is just,
whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely,
whatever is commendable,
if there is any excellence,
if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.
what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me
practice these things and the peace of God will be with you
Brad Bouma: Amen
and you know just hit 25 so it's a hard stop
but being successful is great and being successful is a blessing
but with that success we must also be significant
and the reason we're sitting here is because we want to continue to be significant
in lives like yours through working with LCU
numerous other ministries and things that we work with in the community
and be part of that.
So significance is as important or more
important than success.
God bless.
Dr. Scott McDowell: Let's thank the
Bambas one more time.
And for a little bit of fun,
we've got some Fair Life
30 grams of protein.
We've got several hundred of these iced down outside.
First come,
first serve. Y'all have a great day.
There we go.