Embracing Faith in the Digital Realm: The Journey of @NYTxSABER a Christian Streamer on Twitch

Control-Alt-Redeem is for anyone called to ministry in the digital frontier. Gamers, streamers, and everyday believers navigating life online. Each episode equips you to live on mission and the real stories of lives being changed. Reset your expectations, reframe your mission, and redeem the space you're already in. This is where Digital Ministry gets practical, creative, grounded, and hopeful. One episode at a time.

to control alt redeem love having you come in and hang out and just learn about what others are doing in the space and uh today i have night saber with me welcome in night saber hello glad to be here the quiz king is in the house How are we doing, Fred?

Yo, what is up, brother?

Good to have you here. Those that are not watching, those that are not watching, you're missing the fact, if you're not here live, you're missing the chicken emojis, or the chicken, the chicken emojis dancing in the chat. So welcome in, Quiz King. Glad to have you in here. We'll need to get you on the podcast at some point. But what we do here is I invite in my friends who are hanging out in Twitch space, and they are, this is my language, so they may not use labels. They are, I would say, a digital missionary, which just means they're sharing the love of Christ in a dark place to people who may have no connection with the church, no connection with Jesus, don't have any Christian friends, or they may be people that have been hurt by the church or are... unable to ever make it to church and we're just trying to redeem the space and reset the culture and so nightsaber glad to have you here yeah no uh glad to be here and how did you initially get drawn into twitch and when and how did you just start start streaming on twitch

wow okay so i got involved with twitch back in i want to say 2021 okay is when i started And then this was at a very rough spot in my life. So I was doing a lot of secular streaming. I was playing Call of Duty with people. I had a group of friends that were just in the wrong crowd. And I can delve into that a little bit more later. I ended up taking a... About a two-year break from streaming. It didn't come back till 23. Okay.

You were still gaming and playing Call of Duty? Were you still hanging with the same crowd during that time that you took off?

No, that friendship had, there was a huge fallout with that group. And so that's kind of what... made me stop content creation. So basically what ended up happening was I was playing, I started streaming through a, I started streaming on my Xbox through a Chromebook. Okay. And that Chromebook reached temperatures I did not know were possible. I had to have, I had to have it set up, set up on, propped up on two blocks of styrofoam. Oh my. On the ottoman in front of my chair. And I had to have, I had a glass cutting board sitting underneath it. because it would get so hot that it actually would... I was actually getting scared that my ottoman was going to just ignite.

Oh, man. I love the ingenuity of that. I have at multiple times to set up rigs because you don't always have the right mounting system. Like my monitor to the right here... I have a little piece of board that's cut off from one of the shelves that was left over from building my case over there for my hats, propped up on two 2x4s that are on end so I can have the monitor at the right height that I want it to. And it's just sitting there. Like, I didn't screw the boards together. They're just laying there. So the whole arrange things, make it work, I totally get that.

A buddy of mine that did a D&D thing on YouTube, his recording camera was stacked on a pile of Tupperware.

Well, when I've done my kitchen streams, so I take my camera that's right here in front of me, my Elgato, and then I mount it on the microwave just pointed straight down so that you can see what I'm cooking right there. And then I go over to the spice rack and pull that out and grab one of my fish cameras and I set it on the spice rack so that it goes there. That's awesome.

Yeah.

How do you engineer things to put them together to be in the right space? It's a fun thing until you can upgrade and do things more efficient. And sometimes the more creative approach is just a lot more fun anyway.

It's always more fun. Ukulele, hello. Welcome in, friends. Good to see you. Good to see you, Ukulele. But yeah, so I ended up taking a break from that. And then it was late 22, early 23 that I found a channel called Cross the Crown. Yep, know him. I got very involved with that community because it was something I had never seen before. Right. I was like, wait, what do you mean this guy is evangelizing in Call of Duty and he's putting it on the internet? Right, exactly. and i was like okay i i've streamed but what is it like what is this like this is different there's something about this is drastically different from what i've done and i was just i i wanted to be part of this community and i just something just felt i just felt the desire to be closer and as involved as I could be.

So what did you do in that community? Were you moderating? How were you serving? Were you in the Discord?

So that's the thing is I never had any special roles in that server. I was just another one of the thousand people that were there. Okay. He had, I don't know if he still has it. Probably not because I think that server disappeared. He had a channel point redeem. or for 20,000 channel points to... get into a private district like an exclusive this oh okay okay so you had to stick around the community long enough to earn uh and basically yeah and then spend your points to to say i want to be part of the community okay basically so you you have so yeah so you there was a there was like a general discord server and then there was like uh i don't want to say vip but like there was like it was like exclusive discord server that like people who had been around the community had the option to join with that point reading well 20 000 is not a lot i mean it's significant you've got to be there for for a significant amount of time and committed and know everything so that's an interesting way to approach it and so i got super involved there he was very chris was very active in that server he was there a lot and i got there i made a bunch of friendships in that server Some that I still have to this day. And the problem that I saw my, the problem that I had, I ended up leaving that community with a handful of others. that were moderators. The problem that I saw was that like, and don't get me wrong. I still love Chris. He is amazing guy. He, he today, because if I hadn't gotten back involved in that, I probably wouldn't be here. Absolutely. And I probably would not be part of this. So I have him to thank for all of that. But I think the problem that happened was, is he got too big, too fast. and in my opinion and a few others that shared the same opinion he just handled it poorly and became very distant from the community and that tight-knit group that he had tried to create okay and i can understand because i mean it's really hard when you have however many tens of thousands of people following you on twitch and trying to talk to you and Everyone has different motives for reaching out. Some actually care. Some actually want to build a friendship. Some just want to rub shoulders with some guy who's famous on Twitch.

Well, on some level, like most of my guests have not had the level of even being partnered. There's been a few people who have been partnered who've been guests. but they're not ones who have thousands of people watching you. So we have talked about our barriers or obstacles, and some of those are trolls or things that happen in our community. Well, if you're texting the number of people that are there, you're also texting the problems and the trolls that might be in the community.

Right. And that was the problem is that I think he just didn't know how to handle it. the best to his knowledge at that point in time um i still tune into his streams every now and then just to see how he's doing and how things are going iron man thank you for the lyric appreciate it brother i got involved with him and he one day so because of the sysquirt server what i was ending up doing is i would have stream on at super super low volume on my bluetooth headphones right just so I could be there while I was at work, so I could accrue those channel points to get into that server. Because he streamed during the day when I was smack dab in the middle of work. Because he started streaming at like 8am my time. And so I was like, well, if I'm going to get into the server, I'm going to do what I can to accrue these channel points. And if that means having Twitch running on my phone at work all the time, then that's what I'm going to do. And because of him raiding Aki one of those times that I was at work... That's how I met Aki, and this was when I was super huge into Destiny.

Okay, okay.

And I was like, wait, this guy plays Destiny? Well, shoot, if I'm going to get involved in a community, it's going to be that one for sure, because that means more people to play Destiny with. Right, right. And at that point in time, it was like scraping the barrel to find people that actually played the game, because it was... in such a sad state. And then I got just involved and I met so many people and so many friendships. I mean, that's even how I found out about reach and good Lord that Aki, if I could, I could go on a five hour rant about how much I love that man.

Well, if he tunes in, he'll get to hear it. So, you know, you can say a few more things about him. Plus we'll talk, we'll come back and circle around and talk about reach later.

So, um, but so started secular streaming ended up meeting chris and getting to be part of that community for a good while and that led me to aki and aki led me to the him chris and aki both led me to the world of what is

christians streaming on twitch whether it be gaming or just chatting or um artwork yeah there's there's there's so many different so many vast categories so many vast categories and i love that we are niching into those and i'm finding people in those and that people are taking vastly different approaches so you you mentioned cross to crown whose forward approach is gaming. And that's where it is. Other people, like Ukulele for worship here, well, it's worship. So it's an entirely different form. It's also music, so it's also niche in a different way. And Ukulele was just adding a thought here. There's also just a big difference in the expectations of, I'm going to play games and be famous, and I'm going to run a community where people see me as a leader mentor. and that's yes absolutely true that is an amazing point yeah i didn't want to let that one slip by and there is nothing wrong with i'll put it this way if there's a professional athlete or an actor or an actress who's out there and they're not doing christian films but they're overtly christian they're going to have an influence of people that's going to be different than if they were just doing christian films and so the same way if you're in this space and you are gaming forward better is nothing wrong with it if you don't put your faith on your stream nothing wrong with it if you put it in your community you do it in dms you do it in other spaces nothing wrong with that so i i I've not ever had a one-on-one conversation with Cross the Crown. I watched his streams probably early on, probably about the same time you were talking about, about three, four years ago. I see him pop up in my feed every once in a while, but I don't know the last time I actually went over to his channel and hung out there. And part of it is the amount of people in the stream when you have hundreds or thousands of people watching to engage the chat and be part of that. It's a little bit different than the style that I want to watch. So that's part of the reason I don't go there.

Yeah. And I mean, for crying out loud, I think last time I checked in on him, he was at like 30,000 followers. I don't know what he's up to now. Oh, wow. Yeah. But I mean, the dude does. I mean, obviously what he does works not only for people in game, but for people watching.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And you were mentioning this about him leading you to Aki. leading you to Reach, leading you to other people. And you and I have been on Born Again Gamers podcast together multiple times. So it's led to that connection and community there to now have you over here. So there's multiple ways. I was just thinking about... How cool it would be, and I'm not going to do this, but if somebody were to put a family tree together of Twitch Christian streamers and who was the one that influenced them into the space and influenced them. to become a Christian streamer because I'd have to put Ukulele for Worship on there as well. But before that, the pioneer for me was Pastor Brock VR. Without Pastor Brock VR, I don't come to Twitch at all. And then without him going and rating Ukulele and getting introduced to other people, I don't get down the road further and decide I'm going to stream myself. There's all of that interconnectedness, and we're building the space, and we're a small minority still. Oh, I got a follow.

Ironman underscore 56 million. I did as well. Thank you so much. 65 just followed.

Ironman, thank you for the follow.

Oh, I love Ironman. He's such a good guy. He's another member of Aki's community. That's where I met him. Cool.

So anyway, where we were at, and I love to do this, just take a side, reflect on what we've been talking about and interact. But you went and you found Aki, and then you're going to be involved more in that space. Is that when you decide to start streaming again? And what was the decision, because you had taken time off, to decide to be intentionally Christian in the space?

Yeah, so I took the time off. So I was at this very dark spot in my life where I had essentially completely walked away from God and... had essentially given up. I was at a point where it was, what's the point? I had just moved to a new state, and where the state that I lived in previously, I had an established home church that I was part of. There was never any drama that was groundbreaking, that was world-ending. There was never any serious problems. There was never any... corruption that was at least visible to me. I mean, to my knowledge, there still isn't any. One and only thanks for the lyric friend. And then I come to where I live now, the state I live in now, and it took me about 12 years to find a home church that I feel comfortable in and have been able to build community with. Because every church that I tried out here, the first church that I went to... was i'm first off let me preface for those of you who don't know so i used to live on long island new york i lived in a borough of 250 000 people where i moved to the town that i lived in me and my family added almost one we increased the population by almost a full two percent when six of us moved there we moved to a town of 496 people And we were, we were the six that made it 96. So the church that we went to there with the first time was a church of Christ that was perpetually stuck in 1999 because they only used, they used an overhead projector for worship. They did not use any instruments and the church might have been maybe a whole 900 square feet in size. yeah i can picture that i've seen those kind i've i've done rural ministry i know exactly what you're talking about yeah so midwest super small town super even smaller church and i was like okay well this isn't exactly what i imagined this isn't what i'm used to yeah ukulele culture culture shock in all caps and so the next town over was it was a baptist church that was preached by the same pastor of the church of Christ that we went to.

That's interesting.

He preached at two different churches and I didn't, I was like, okay, I guess that works. I mean, a pastor is a pastor. I've never had an issue. I've never experienced an issue with that. And then we go to that church and everyone's super friendly. They're super welcoming. They're glad we made the move. Okay. And everything went well. No disrespects to the older generation. You guys are, I wish we could keep you guys around forever. The average age of that church might've been 70. I was 14. And the next oldest person was in their 40s, and the next youngest person was maybe six months old. Okay, yeah. So I'm coming from a huge youth group background going into two churches that have zero youth programs. And so we got involved with this church. We're like, okay, this is something we could probably stick with. It's a Baptist church. It's what we're used to because I came from a Baptist church. New York. And then one Sunday after like three weeks and trying to be involved, I was running sound for them because I had an actual sound system. The pastor is doing the story of Jacob and Esau. And I'm like, okay, I know this one. It's... one brother does the thing where he tricks the blind dad and they do the thing and then it progresses and then everything happens and but then the pastor goes and says uh four words that have been etched in my head for 12 12 plus years okay he said the words god's plan didn't happen Which, I don't know if you guys know who this God guy is, but that's normally not the case. And normally, as in 100% of the time, that's not the case. And that left such a sour taste in my mouth. And I knew it affected my parents, too, because we didn't go back to that church ever. And I was like, oh my gosh, is this what this is out here? And then so we did that. We went to another church that was an E free church and they ended up having. issues with the board. Yeah, Quiz. He said the words in a sermon in a full sanctuary, God's plan didn't happen. And he could not have been more serious than when he said that. We went to an E-Free church that had a problem with... Yeah. Yeah. So we walked away from that. We ended up as part of another church that was what I like to call, it was called, I call it a spite church because the sole reason that that church existed was because it split from another church. because everybody sided with the worship leader because they think the lead pastor screwed over the worship leader.

I like your title for that. One of the jokes that is in my family goes back to a Seinfeld episode where he's returning something and they ask, why are you returning it? And he says, for spite. So that becomes a joke in my family because of that. And so that's the comment, like, why are you doing this? i'm doing this for spite and i actually at one point joked around about having a a podcast called for spite so so you say that i'm just like over here laughing like crazy but you're absolutely right that there are at times when you have church split that some people join that side just to be against the other person

right and that and that was the i felt like just being there i wasn't there for very long but just being there it felt like that was the whole existence of the church was we are gathered here as a body of christ because we don't like those guys and it's like really this is how This is why this church was formed? Not to mention the pastor was last name X. Lead deacon was last name X. The lead trustee was last name X. The worship leader was last name X. It's like 70% of this church was from the same family.

well when you get to rural places i i had a friend who was a pastor at a rural church that was over a hundred years old and essentially everyone in the town was related to one of three families and yeah and i could get that if this church was old but this church was like on its second year of existence oh well that's a little different so it was this guy's entire this pastor's entire family

that was running this church and stuff just didn't seem right and it just it they you could tell that when they had guest speakers that they were very heavily favored towards this family and they would be like if they were preaching they would preach like to them and not the congregation that's weird and so i did we just i myself needed to walk away from that And then I ended up in going to a church, which was another, it was another E-free church. And I got super involved in that. I was helping with, I was part of a college and career group. I was helping, I had, I was helping leading a youth group. I had, I was helping teach a class of fifth grade boys. Then about two years into that, some, one of the guys that was part of my youth group class, one of the other leaders, started a thing where he reached out to my mom privately and said hey there are rumors that you and your husband are attending another church we need you to come in and basically renounce that church if if you're going to continue to be members here and my father was very not happy with that because one why are you messaging my wife privately about this and not coming to me about it And two, if we are attending another church, it's none of your business. And so that put another sour taste. I ended up having, I ended up walking away from that and being kind of involved, but that's where everything kind of takes. That is where stuff takes the sour turn because that was about where I walked away from God because it was okay. God, I've been to like eight different churches. I've been through so much pastoral counseling and I, why, like, what is like, are you even real? Like, is this just all a sham? Like what, why am I wasting my time? If something that made me so happy in New York, maybe has made me miserable here. Yeah. And one of the, one of the girls that I met in that college and career group, Before we left, she had gotten engaged and married, and I had made him a very good friend. I don't know what prompted it, or I think it had to have been, looking back, it just had to have been a God thing, but I was just scrolling through Instagram, my old Instagram DMs, and I saw her name. And I'm like, you know what? I'm going to message her. And I sent her, I sent her my number and I said, Hey, can you please have your husband call me? Like, I just need to talk to somebody. And she said, she responded almost instantaneously. It's almost like she was like sitting there. It's almost as if like she was sitting there waiting for it, but I know that wasn't the case. And he called me and he goes, Hey man, what's up? And I broke down and I'm like, Steve, dude, I am. I'm so done. Like, I can't, I can't anymore. I'm dealing with this and that. And like, what's the point? And he goes, okay. He's like, okay, well, let's, let's start with square one. Like, where are you going to church right now? And I'm like, I'm not, I haven't been for months and I just, I can't, I can't find anything. I can't feel that connection that I felt in New York. He goes, well, let's start on finding you a place to go to church. Cause you need to get back involved in that. And I'm like, I've tried so many places. Like, where do you go to church? And he goes, well, me and Lisa go to this church over here by where we work and where we live, which for context was over an hour away from where I lived currently at that point. And he was like, if you're willing to make that drive, I'm like, Steve, I'm in such desperation right now that if an hour drive is the only thing is the sacrifice I have to make, then I will do it. And he's like, awesome, okay, that sounds great. We won't be there this Sunday. Because we're both sick. No. Oh no. Because this was at the tail end of COVID. The quiz king just followed. And he goes, so just promise me you'll keep in touch with me throughout the week and come there next Sunday. And I'm like, I'm like, you got it. Like, we will talk as much as we physically can as much as your schedule allows. So that week goes by. It was a rough week, but nothing super eventful happened. I told mom and dad that I had talked to him and was going to check out a church that was, uh, that he had mentioned. I'm trying not to dox myself.

Yeah, yeah. You're doing a good job of not doxing yourself. So I just want to keep that up. Which also, by the way, just because somebody might be looking at, and we didn't address it to begin with, and people have different reasons, but one reason to not have your face on camera is to not dox yourself.

Yes. That is, that is a, that is a choice that I've made. I try to keep, I'm trying to be better at keeping my online life and my public life separate just because of the line of work that I'm in. So that's just for safe, mainly for safety reasons. I'll give teasers here and there.

Well, and even like, it's getting even more and more of that direction. Like simply just having my face here, even if I had a streamer name, which I do, and you didn't know my real name. It's going to get to the point where facial recognition could just find me anywhere on the internet and then spill all of my information out there and all of that. However, as a pastor, I have been on the internet for a long time. And as a pastor, I am a public figure. So it's really hard to hide in the role that I've served in for the last 25 years and say, no, I'm going to be a private person. My role has been public. So that changes things. So yeah, please continue to dox, or not dox yourself, to protect yourself and not dox yourself. And that's also a healthy thing why some might also not put their face on and have an avatar and do all of those things. For other reasons, like especially some of the females that are in streaming do things like that.

Right. That's a very important thing, in my opinion, is privacy. Like one of my dear friends, TwinMovie96, she is... amazing she's an amazing woman like one of the most godly women i have ever met and she does such a great job at balancing her public her internet life and her public irl life yeah and if only if only i had her talent to be as creative and funny and christ-like as she is well we're we're all exactly who god created us to be so we're not like everybody else so right

before we interrupt we we sidetracked in a rabbit trail there on the doxing you were talking about connecting with a with a friend and staying connected through the week before you were able to go and yes yes so i was able to stay connected with him he had given me some scripture to read and to kind of take he wanted me to take some notes on my observations of it and get back to him and to have some conversation

That Sunday comes and I'm like, okay, like I'm getting ready for church for the first time in four months, five months. Like this feels weird. Didn't have, I threw on the best clothes that I had. I drove my gas guzzler of a truck the hour and 10 minutes to this church, which took a quarter of my tank to do. And I get there and I walk in the front door and. over almost overwhelming sense of calm just kind of hit me like it was like almost so it was so overwhelming it was like almost annoying it was like why am i it's like why am i so relaxed like something doesn't something almost feel it feels so good it's something's almost wrong and they had a welcome team and they were like hello welcome to our church and is this your first time here i'm like yes steve invited me and they go we love steve And I'm like, well, that's good. I'm glad that he's known here and he's not just another face among faces. And so they were in the middle of worship. I showed up a little late because I didn't account for how much time it was actually going to take to get there. And so I walk in the sanctuary and I'm kind of just sitting in the back up against the wall and I'm trying to look for Steve. Well, I see Lisa on stage playing in worship and I know she sees me, but she can't tell me where Steve is because she's in the middle of playing a violin. And I know she sees me and she knows that I know. And there's nothing that either of us can do about it. And so this guy walks up and his name, we'll call him Chad. He comes up to me and goes, hey, can I help you find a spot? I'm like, yeah, looking for Steve. And he goes, oh, well, I saw him. I just don't know where he is. Let me go see if I can find him.

Yeah.

so this guy walks from end to end of the sanctuary like multiple times trying to find steve And then I think I was like, oh wait, is that him? And I finally spot him and I walk up and I sit next to him. I listened to the sermon. This, this pastor preaches almost identical to the pastor that I had in New York. He has the same energy. He has the same cadence.

That's interesting.

And it's like, oh my gosh, like I just found the Midwest version of my pastor. Like this has to be, this has to be, this has to be the place. and sermon was amazing it was probably the first sermon in years that i actually sat through and paid attention to And wasn't just like on my phone, just like, okay, yep. I'm here at church. I'm doing the thing. Cause let me be clear as much as I had walked away from God in those like six months after finding, trying to find a church, I struggled hard with being able to sit down and pay attention to a sermon. Not only just because I wasn't the best Christian that I could be, but I just ADHD really makes life interesting. So it's a lot of ooh, shiny and man, I've been sitting here for 30 seconds. I'm bored. Right, right. Totally, totally get that. But I felt so refreshed after that sermon. And everything's wrapping up, he dismisses us, and... I'm getting ready to go home and Steve goes, we'll stick around for a little bit and I can introduce you to some people that might have some interests that you might share. I'm like, okay. So I met a few other people. I met one of his old roommates and I'm getting ready to leave. And so I'm walking out the front door with him. Cause I'm just sticking with my friend because that's the thing that I do is I stick with the person that I know until I'm more comfortable in the area. And I walk outside and these people are setting up to take their, their 35 year church anniversary photo. So on my very first Sunday in this church, I am smack dab in the first row of their anniversary photo. They didn't ask you to just step aside while they did this?

They invited you in?

They invited me in on my very first Sunday there. And I looked at Steve and I'm like, crap, man. He goes, what? I'm like, I'm in the picture. Now I have to come here. And he goes, you know what? You're right. You do have to come here. And ever since then, uh, I've been going pretty regularly. Uh, was going every Sunday and then past few months had been some, have had some serious events go on in my life that I had stepped away from, but I've been meeting with my buddy J freak from Aki server. I'm sure some of you in here might know him. Um, and then I've been meeting with Mark from Lux digital that Anika and Sam has got me involved in. And Quisking, I'm telling you, dude, it was a first day of first days. Like, it was crazy. But as crazy as it was, I am still so, so thankful for it. But yeah, so all that leading into me going, I miss streaming. I miss creating that content. I miss that interaction with people because that's where I thrive. How can I do this as, how can I do this with the Christian approach? that other people have done. And so I talked with some friends, I talked with the pastor at my church and I was still part of the cross to crown community at that point. So I was like, I talked to one of them. He was a Bible student at a college. I think it was in Indiana. I think he said, yeah. And he was like, why don't we do a podcast?

Okay.

And I was like, that's genius. goes well if you want to do it it can be your thing and i can help you out with it for a little bit just to help you get started i'm like that's awesome um so i'm like all right what do i want to call this thing i'm like huh I'm looking through Spotify and I'm like, all right, there's okay. This is this Christian podcast name. This is this Christian's podcasting. Like, wow, these are super generic. There's 60 of them with the same name. How do I, how do I was taking the, I was taking the reach approach before I even knew reach existed. I was like, how can I make myself stand out in this? And I was like, well, the thing I want to do is I want to talk to other content creators and I want to have them share their stories. It's not very, and I'm like, that's not very typical of how people do things on podcasts. And I'm like, oh my gosh, there it is. And Grant goes, what? I'm like, it's not your typical Christian podcast. And from, so we started, this was when I was like heavy into Microsoft Paint and Canva and I was making all my, all these logos for people. And so I spent probably, this is probably a very unhealthy decision, but I spent like the next like 12 hours just going through and trying to design a logo that I thought was aesthetically pleasing to myself, but to look at.

I think you did. I mean, it was on the little flyer for the podcast here. And I'm like, oh, I really like that.

Yeah. Thank you. That means a lot. Let me see if I can...

Well, I'm going to, I have it somewhere. I have it in Canva is where I have it actually. Oh, you know what? Let me do this. So I can do it right here. Give me a second. I'll show it on screen. It's actually in the photo I'm using on screen. So let me just, there it is. There's the logo. Not your average Christian podcast. So those that are watching this and not just listening will be able to see that. Let me blow it up a little bit quicker, bigger. And I'll cover myself for a second. There you go. Not your typical Christian podcast with a little fish logo with the three crosses in the middle of it and the microphone, which I think is pretty cool. All right. Now I'll slide that back.

Yeah.

Who knew you were going to get this in the middle of a podcast, right? yeah really on the fly i mean we're on twitch so those people on twitch will know this is a normal thing that you just do in the middle of something you just go oh yeah i can do that and i will put you back To cover up the spot where the- Yeah, Quizz, Lux is really cool.

I've been really enjoying being a part of that community, and I am so, so thankful to Samus and Annika for getting me involved in that. I'm so thankful to Samus. I'm going to rant about Samus for a second. There we go. I'm so thankful to her for so much. She has opened my eyes to so many different things about not only just mental health, but physical health. and gotten me involved with so many other people that I'm so thankful and happy to call friends. And if I attribute most of my progress in my faith and in my health, I attribute most of that to her. So Yooka-Laylee, I met, I met Yooka-Laylee through her. I met Christian Ninja through her. I met Quiz King through her and through challengers.

all of those all of those that you just mentioned are connected with taco absolutely going to connect with all of those and um yeah um that's that's fascinating on that on that level because you never know who's the connecting element to to bring you into community and he mesh you in community. And I'm just going to say this, like all of those, we need to clip all that you just said and send it to Samus because I'm trying to get Samus on. And Samus is like, I don't know what I would say. And I don't think I could do a podcast and I have nothing to add. And I'm like, you have so much and I want to get her on. So I need to clip that and send it to her and say, see, see, you need to be on the podcast with me. So.

Yes, yes. I love that woman so much. She is an amazing person and an even better friend. Yeah, I, again, I could rant about her for hours. But, so we started with, so my very first guest on the podcast was Aki. Cool, cool. The very first episode, everybody who does content, I think most of the people in here are creators with Quiz and Ukulele, and I don't know who else might be lurking. But... Every content creator knows that that very first piece of content they put out is arguably their worst piece of content ever.

Right.

I put, I did the episode with Aki on stream. This was through an Xbox call, an Xbox chat. And so this was through the Chromebook to the Xbox, to my TV. So it was pulling off of my, it was pulling the screen off of my TV and I didn't have any webcam stuff set up. So it was all right. Well, I need to, I want to have something on in the background for people to watch. I had Z still have zero editing experience. So it was going to be a copy paste of the VOD to YouTube. Well, When you play Power Wash Simulator while you're talking to someone, you need to turn all of the volume down or may as well off. Because, fun fact, Power Wash Simulator is a very loud game. Maybe one of the loudest games I've ever played. And for the first, for most of that podcast, you can hardly hear our conversation. Until I scrubbed it and had a friend edit it so I could put it up on Spotify.

Okay, okay.

it actually was so bad that I had to like reedit the YouTube one too. Yeah.

Wow. That's. Yes, I wish on some level early on I had been saving all the podcasts because they were like, oh, you could save them. I didn't know at some point they were going to delete them from Twitch. So I don't have some of those early ones. But yeah, you're right. And on some level, you hope it's true that your first episode is your worst one you ever do because you want to get better from there. If that's the best one you ever do, then you don't need to do a second one.

Right. Like, if it's the best piece you ever put out, then congratulations, you have won content creation.

You have won content, and now you're done. Yes.

You've won, and you've done. You did it, and you're done. You are the one-hit wonder of content creation. So I got him involved in that, and I don't know if you maybe met him at Reach. His username is RedVille. i've known this kid for about five years and he's how and i'm how he met aki because he was modding for me on that stream okay and i had aki's socials i had his his uh his pillar as a clickable link in the chat right and since i couldn't type in those commands i had to have someone do it for me and i was like hey red Could you, if I mod you, could you help me do this and post these commands and these links during this thing that I'm doing? And he's like, absolutely. So because of me, Red met Aki and has gotten involved in this community that I've been involved, was involved in. And now Red is modding for Aki.

Very cool.

And he's almost, if not more involved in that community than I am. And it's just, it's amazing to see that someone that I met from across the crown followed me to my own stuff. Yeah. And then followed me to Aki and has now doing his own thing with Aki and doing his own streams. And it's just so cool to see. Cause I mean, I met him, I met Red when he was like 15, 14 or 15. Okay. And now he's 20.

know that's like that's just one of the really cool things that and i you know i don't know if we've fully highlighted it as well as you just did here of what is happening in and not all of it but i would say the majority of digital ministry and specifically in gaming is this kingdom over castle uh which could absolutely go the opposite direction like if i'm on youtube i don't want to promote anyone else's youtube channel because then it means you're watching them instead of me right in in the christian space right now i would say the bulk of it is We're sharing people with each other, like the people that are in Taco. Some of them are connected with Lux, as you mentioned. Some are connected with XB Church. There's other places that they're connected with, too, with Pastor G's Church. I'm blanking on the name of it, but somebody else will mention it, or North Hill Live. There's multiple spots where they can reside, but they're not like the church you were mentioning of. We understand you're attending elsewhere. You need to renounce them or renounce us, and you can't have both. it's it's like no we're part of the body and those are just expressions of it where people gather thank you ukulele let's innovate church with pastor g thank you i it was on on in my brain i could see the logo and i couldn't read it so god is is doing some amazing things and i like i didn't like i did not know we're gonna go through all this with the story this is this thing of open-ended questions like tell me what god's laying on your heart right now to share so i'm so thankful that you went through and shared that journey because there's probably someone else that needs to listen to this that has gone through similar things of I don't know where I belong. I don't feel like I belong. I'm not angry with God. I just can't find his presence in the places I've been looking. And I can't find people loving me in the way that I feel his love actually reaching me. And where can I find that?

Right. And that kind of brings me into like a segue is like what's been happening recently. Like I'm talking like even as much as last night in twins discord server, a twin movie who I was referencing earlier, we have had an act. I can, I'm actually going to check. We have had an active discord call that has been going for, we haven't had an active discord call that has been going for 755 hours and 46 minutes right now.

Okay, okay. You got to back up and talk. How did this start and how is it ongoing? I mean, I got an idea, but the audience is not going to necessarily understand this, okay? The gamers will. Anyone who's peripheral is going to go, what are you talking about? So it's in Discord. Yes. Anybody that's watching right now, you can go into Discord and have a video or voice channel and go in there for a conversation. So if you thought about that, if you understand Zoom, you can do that within Discord, set up a call. And so it's been ongoing. So why? So whereas.

Yeah. So whereas like in Zoom or Skype or anything like that with a Discord server, for those of you who might not know, a Discord server. those voice channels or calls are public to anybody who's in that server So no one needs, it's not like a private phone call, but it's where multiple people can just come and go as they please.

Well, and you can have some privacy around it if you have privacy to join the server or privacy for the channel. You have it so that if people are in the server, which like right now, the church digital, I think we might have 600. I might be wrong on that, but if we have 600 people in the server, all of them would be able to jump into that call.

Right. so twin who is a streamer she streams often later at night so one time she ended early and she was like hey guys i'm gonna go hang out in the discord and we're gonna watch a movie okay and i was like that sounds fun i was in her chat so i'm like okay cool i'll go do this this was after reach and we can get into reach later, like you said. And I was like, we were in there, we were watching the movie. Well, what ended up happening was me, myself, Twin, and a couple of the other people that were in there, including the gentleman who was streaming the movie, we had all fallen asleep watching this movie. So we woke up and the call was still going. Discord recently added an update, I want to say about a month ago, to where they add a timer.

Okay.

They've added a timer to your call so you can see how long someone's been in a call.

Right.

Or a call has been, quote unquote, active. Well, I decided to be like, hey, what's the longest we can go? What's the world record? So I Googled what is the world record for the longest active Discord call? Now I need to preface that Google led me astray because I read the wrong information. I read the information I was reading was about the first record set, not the current. The first record set was set back in 2018 and the record was 728 hours of an active call. And I said, guys, we can do this. This is like two months of a call.

It's just two months of a call. We could do that.

We can probably make this work. And I recently found out, recently as in last night, the current world record for active Discord call, 6,134 hours. So we don't know if we're going to get quite there. But this attempt had been going because we were going to try to break what was this world record. And so because we're in this call, we've been in this call so long, and it's been in just a specific group of us. It's a public VC. It's her public VC for her server. Right. So anybody can join that's in her server. Anybody can join her server that has the link. uh what defines active call active call is people actively talking in it versus where like if you're part of like assassinator staff server she has the lo-fi bot that is perpetually in a call just playing music it's not a bot it's an actual person so people are in so it's like an it's an actual person's account that are that's in there and people are talking or doing things So right now they're in there and someone's streaming something on their screen. I think it's just a 24 hour, like a 24 hour live stream or something. That that's what kind of defines like an active call is that people are coming and going and it's not just a bot sitting in there by itself. Cause if that was the case, then Sassinator stuff would be on track because that lo-fi bot has been in her, been in its specific VC for like 2000 hours. But because we've been doing this, and Twin likes to pray at the end of her streams, and since we've been together and we've been sleeping in there with each other, we go, well, why don't we just do prayer in here with everyone who's in the call? And we were all like, oh, well, that's a great idea. Like, why not? We can take prayer requests and we can make it a thing and kind of make it like a routine. And then, so we were doing that, and then, as of late, like, the past, like, three days, Twin has asked me to lead devotionals in there. Which... Again, I am beyond blessed. I am so happy to do this for her. And just to kind of stick my foot in the door as having a little bit of a place in the community and feeling that sense of purpose. And it started with me at the tail end of one of the plans on YouVersion that I was going through called Winning the War in Your Mind. And then the one we're doing now is Hope in the Dark. Or, yeah, Hope in the Dark is the one we're doing now. It's a plan by the same guy who did Winning the War in Your Mind. And I can't think of his name for the life of me, and it's bothering me, so I'm looking right now. It is by Craig Rochelle.

Okay, yeah.

Because of that, and because of how, Twin, I love you, but holy crap, you stream late. Because of how late she streams, we're often up until, like, 1, 2 in the morning. My time. Which, for three of us that are in there, they're on Eastern Standard, so that's 2 o'clock, 3 in the morning for them. Well, because of that, I was up super late last night, and I often, when I'm just bored, I will scroll... I'll scroll through the Christian tag on Twitch, and I found someone playing Destiny 2. And I'm like... Okay, I'll check them out. They only have like 10 people watching, so they're probably around my size or so, maybe a little bigger. She was about, she, her channel's about double my size, give or take. And she was playing and I noticed she didn't have specifically the Christian tag in her stream, but she had family and friendly community. But in her title in the word, uh, in, in parentheses was the word devotional. Oh, and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna ask her a question. So I said, Hey, I'm sorry if this isn't allowed, cuz I wanna be polite. You'll always be polite in someone else's chat, especially when you're brand new there. I said, sorry if this isn't allowed, but are you a Christian? I see devotional in your title. I apologize if that's not a question you want discussed in chat. And it was kind of funny. Someone had rated her after I sent that message. So that chat got pushed up as not being the most recent chat. So she missed it. And I thought she was just choosing to ignore it. I just hit the mic. I thought she was choosing to ignore it. So I said, I apologize if my previous question just made you uncomfortable or wasn't allowed in here. Won't happen again. I'm sorry. And she was like, oh, no, no. What was your question? So I scrolled back up and I copied it and I replied to it so she could see it again. And she then explained that she was a Christian. She was very open about her faith. And I don't know. It was God pressing me. I love saying I don't know what it was, but I know I always know it's God. But. I was like, wow, that's so cool. She was sharing a little bit. I just said, I was like, hey, one night when you stream, I'd love to hear your testimony. Just hear your story. Because she had mentioned that she was a devout atheist before she became a Christian. And she goes, oh, well, sure, I'll share it right after this game. And I'm like, okay. I wasn't ready for that, but okay. And I was like, well, if she's going to share her testimony... i'm not not hearing it because of ads like i'm so so might have been one of the fastest subscriptions i've ever done in my life that is cool that is cool i love that and she got to share she spent the next like 45 minutes sharing her testimony and god has done such amazing things in this woman's life But the big thing that she talked about that I noticed, because I feel myself trying to do the same, is she does not exclude anybody from her community. She does not care if you're not a Christian. She doesn't care if you're... uh what denomination you are she doesn't care if you're like catholic or lutheran or something else or really completely believe another religion her main goal which coincides with so many other people i know on this space her primary goal is just to be the positive note in somebody's day, just to be the person that somebody needs to see just to feel a little bit better about their day. And that people who that is their aspiration in their content creation. That means so much to me because I was that person at one point in time. Right. Because if it wasn't for Chris from cross to crown, I would never ever would have been involved in this space. And that's, I just, it's, it's so, it's so powerful and it is so, it means so much that she took the time out of her stream to tell her, share her testimony because some random dude jumped in her chat and asked her if she was a Christian. And when she ended it, she goes, you know, Saber, I am so thankful that you asked that question. Because even my testimony, as different and specific to me as it is, could be just enough for someone to start asking their own questions and dive a little deeper for themselves.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

And that was, and it's just, it's so, so heartwarming just to know that I could have helped contribute to bringing someone a little bit of joy in a dark day.

I think you're right that there's a lot of us that hope to do that among the other things. So whether that's our primary focus or part of what we're hoping to do is to bring some amount of joy, love, peace, whatever fruit of the spirit is our forward-leaning piece to the space to contribute so that somebody's day does turn out better. It's... Absolutely, one of the things. That's why I think I focus on the imagery of being salt and light because salt is either going to make something better or light is going to shine something on it, whichever you need. If you need your life brightened up, you need your life salted so that there's something of value and additional to it. So, yeah, that's just, I think, a big piece of where a lot of us in this space are. That's just really... cool having that connection which brings kind of full circle of hey this is a game i love hey i found aki here hey now you've been brought to someone else in that same way i can't wait to hear where that where that all ends up

Yeah, I am so just excited to see where it goes.

We've kind of talked a little bit about this. So I'm going to go here rather than, I often will talk about some of the obstacles you've overcome. You talked about a lot of the personal ones, not as streamer, but we'll come back to that in a minute. But since we're already talking in regards to this and you've kind of already been answering it is... what are some blessings that you have encountered being a streamer and you've been talking about a lot of blessings of relationship that you've encountered and meeting people and and those kinds of things let's just stay on that vein what are some individuals that you have been able to impact because we've been talking about a lot of that have had impact on you what are some other people you've been able to contribute or be a blessing in the moment for them or contribute to an ongoing relationship that has you've seen just god move in a really cool way yeah also i apologize if you can hear my dog in the background he's chewing his deer antler and every time he does i see my mic pick it up

And he's sitting directly behind me.

Well, hopefully in post-production, I'll be able to mute the background and that won't be there.

Yes, so I sincerely apologize for that. But I think one of the coolest things, and it happened recently, I was at a Christmas party for my small group, for my church. And I was talking to somebody, I was talking to my pastor about Venture AI, which I talked about on my 12-hour. And because I had just talked about it for... two hours at night.

So before you go into that, let me just preface what venture AI is. Yeah. So a friend of mine and his wife who used to work for crew have gone out to do some other ventures on their own, where he wants to use his technical skills in creating resources in discipleship. So they have created an AI discipleship coach and they showed it to us at reach conference i already knew him in advance that i might know i've known him probably for three four years and been able to watch part of his journey and where he's going so he has invited streamers to use it to play with it and to break it find out where the problems are but also do exploration with it and so you you brought it on your stream and and did a promo for it i used it on my stream last week spent two hours playing with it on stream i'm gonna do it again tomorrow so if you're here live you want to come back on my stream tomorrow i'll be doing the same thing there so it is a developing ai coach for discipleship to be able to do daily check-ins and then be able to add other things where you can ask it specific questions and it will coach you through and give you resources. We had some really cool conversations in my stream about that. So that's what it is. And if you want more info, DM one of us about it. We'll tell you more about it.

Yeah, gladly. But yeah, so I told my pastor about it because they gave me the invite code and the onboarding link. And they said, share it with anybody that you think would be interested in testing it out. And so I was like, oh, well, I'm at a Christmas party with my pastor who does a lot of tech work. I'm going to give it to him because I bet you he would be interested in messing around with it. So that sparked, oh, well, where did this come from? Oh, I got it from a guy that I met through someone at Reach because I saw a promo for it. what's reach and then i got to explain what reaches and then this other guy who's in our col who's in our group in our small group asked me what reach was and i explained to him what it was and the description i like to give for reach because as much as i love romans the website doesn't really do a great job explaining what reach does But Reach, the conference itself, the bare bones description I can give it is it is a gaming convention put on by Christians for everyone. And it helps, and there are tools to help content creators grow in their avenues. And he goes, well, that's really cool. So I take it you are a content creator then. And I said, yes, I am. Which is probably the first time that I've actually said yes to that question. Because I didn't want to go through the conversation of, no, I don't feel like one because of X, Y, and Z.

Right, right.

And I spent the next 40 minutes talking to this guy about how online mission work works. And he was astonished that he had never heard of it. Right. And he's never seen anything like it. And he's like, so what, like, he just kept asking me question after question after question.

That's so cool.

And God, and God just kept giving me answer after answer after answer. And I'm like, oh my gosh, like, this is the most that I've talked about this ever. And how, how am I coming up with these answers? And like, in the moment, that's how I was. he goes, Well, that's really cool. I think I'm going to check this out. And I'm going to show some of my friends just about this because I know a lot of them are online. And I don't think they know about any of this stuff. And I'm like, wow, I just what I just planted a seed. Yeah, that'd be the first time I think I've ever been aware of me actually doing that.

That's super cool.

And I just it I felt so I didn't, I, I, let me prove it. I didn't feel good about myself. Like I wasn't prideful, but I just felt good.

Yeah.

Like I felt in the moment I felt present. I felt strong in what I believed in. Well, and it was all just coming from having just shared all this information with this guy.

I'm going to say one thing that sounds like was really helpful in that conversation was his genuine curiosity around it. Yes. Because I know for a number of people, and I don't know if this is fully true of you, but if you share it with your pastor or someone in a level that you respect and they downplay what you are doing, you are less likely to have conversations about what you are doing. You're going to just say it's not worth it to talk about it here. Yeah, if someone asks me, I'll say, yep, I do that, and then I'll quickly get out of the conversation about that as quickly as I can, because I don't want to feel bad at the end of a conversation about what God's called me into doing, so I just avoid conversations, and I don't have to feel bad. right right or even if it's just you know people with a lot of confused looked on their face and go well that's good for you but you know that's that doesn't really feel good either so i could i could see where you were genuinely in the moment and there's also maybe there's and i think you alluded to this an edge of growing into that that god is has been doing in you in the last year

Yeah. And I really want to say that a lot of this recent growth has stemmed from the interactions that I've had at Reach Conference.

So just to clarify, from the event itself or in the Discord server up to that, or is this just the event and then following?

I will say this being in the server helps because it's where the connections can stay established. Right. But the event itself. Yeah. There was to me, there was something so special about that. that i felt so overwhelmed with the presence of christ and felt so much stuff led to just push further and take steps in my faith that i had never felt the urge or had the courage to take before and the worship night on night of day two might have been the most, I'm trying to think of the word, most monumental experience of my, like, current life, like, lifetime. Yeah.

Because... And I'll just say, not for you alone. Not for you alone.

Yeah, and not for me alone. I mean, I know I wasn't very, I was very present to how I was in the moment. I wasn't very present to how others were around me at certain spots. But during the songs... It felt like every single one of them was calling me out for my past behaviors and how, how I've done stuff in the trip and how I've been a quote unquote Christian, as opposed to a Christian. And I don't, I think the first song I was okay. But at, towards the end of that one and the beginning of the second one, I don't think my eyes were dry for like the rest of that night. And. When the guy who was leading worship, Chi Chi, when he did an altar call, I walked up to Flat Cap and just dumped some burdens on him. And we prayed. I cried.

Well, let's back that up because I've shared this on my stream. I've shared it in a few places. But I want to say that was one of the most powerful, impactful worships I've ever been at from a totally different point of view than I've ever experienced. not the worship piece in the way that what you were experiencing. I've done that before. But when you came up to me, and we've been on a podcast together, and I realized this when we got to reach, when I suddenly had one-on-one conversations with people, it's, hey, wait a minute, there's a bunch of people I've never had a one-on-one conversation with. i've only ever been in a group with them and so we'd had conversations but i don't think we ever had a one-on-one conversation and when you came up and i knew you were moved and i could see it on you and yeah you had the tears there you went to go to to to you know embrace and you just hugged me for like five minutes before you were even able to speak oh my goodness like most of the time when people come up it's quick say what it is try to get it all out and and a quick prayer and go away and you were just like full-on embrace and it was just like oh my goodness you're just you just needed the hug you needed this and if i if we don't even pray this was what was needed in this moment and it was so awesome and i don't know if you noticed after you left The next four or five people, however many people came up, they did exactly the same thing that you did. When they came up to me, we hugged for a good two, three minutes, and then they would share whatever it was, and we would spend time in prayer. It was just like this. I've never experienced that. I've never had a prayer time when people coming up who needed prayer, they needed a hug, they needed that physical interaction, they needed to presently be embraced and held in the moment that they were at. It was just so powerful. And I don't know if... You established that and everyone else said, I want a part of that and I want to do that too. I'm saying you did. That's what I'm saying. And I was like, oh my goodness, that was the best ever on my side of feeling like I was there. And I was like, I did not know how much I needed those hugs too. It was just like, so I was in tears at the end and I still get a little teared reflecting on it. Cause like at most when I would be in a normal church where I was the pastor, you come up, there's an embrace. I know you, you share what's going on. I give you a hug at the end. Those are all about 10 second hugs at max, you know, a good hug and you move on. Not a just like, I swear your hug was five minutes, man. It was so good. it was so it was just like and then when we tried to talk so you got to picture us we're like trying to just whisper an ear because we're not going to quit hugging at this point we're just going to keep hugging and have this conversation also it was easier to talk in each other's ear because the worship was still going on too yeah no that that was definitely a uh that definitely added to the catalyst of what reach did for me that was so good So I didn't mean to interrupt where your thought was going.

No, that's a good interrupt.

With that, but I knew if we got into this, I was going to share that. I'm like, I just had to because it was such a blessing on my side of being there that as the person that often is praying for others, you don't always feel that reciprocation in the moment. I mean, you know God's there and all of that, but you don't always feel that. wow i was blessed in this moment in the same way because i got to experience that and i don't know if the other pastors had similar experiences entirely i don't think i'm sure they did not get as many hugs as i did i'm going to claim that i got the most hugs of any pastors especially knowing that pastor dustin does not like hugs and he was counting how many total hugs he had and he had a limit that he was going to cap it so anyway go going back to you were talking about coming up and god just meeting you right there in the middle of worship yeah um

Ironman, thank you for that hydrate. I have not drank any of my water that I have sitting next to me.

Oh, well, I'm constantly. So, yeah, let's take a hydrate there. I do have on my regular channel a spot of tea that people can claim. I have not put it on this channel. Maybe I should put it there or put a hydrate on here. But I don't frankly need it as much as most people. I constantly am sipping. And right now I have turmeric ginger tea that I just switched over. So this one was my Earl Grey from this morning. And now I am to my turmeric ginger afternoon tea.

Side note, my friend and her husband get tea from a farmer's marketplace that decided to open up like a little online store. Uh, that you can, it's, it's weird how it works. It's like an online store that you don't, you don't pay for it until you get to the actual place because they have to make it. So what you do is on the online store, you pay 10% of the cost through Venmo.

Yeah.

And then that's like your down payment. And then you actually go to the physical store and pick up the bag when it's ready and pay the rest. In Carter Cash.

Fascinating.

It's interesting. It's a down payment on tea. But one of the teas that they got was a honey pepper tea. And it was so, so good.

If I can't have that shipped to me, I may have to have you go get that. That just sounds fascinating. I've never even thought of honey pepper. That sounds so good.

I'll have to ask her if she's still able to get it. Yeah. Gives you an excuse to come out here and come see me while you travel.

Or bring it to Reach next year, you know.

That too. No, no, I'm talking like black pepper ukulele. So it's honey and black pepper.

Yeah, like the OG pepper, not the spicy chili.

Yeah. And I don't know what it is about it, but it just works. The flavor, the vast differences in flavor just blends so well.

especially when it's a warm tea just just to throw this out there because i'm always experimenting with something new and learning so i am just in the process of fermenting honey for the first time so i got i think two weeks ago new jars for ferment or new lids for fermentation to ferment in jars so you take honey And you put garlic and onions in it, and it will leach out of the garlic and out of the onions all of the healthy things that are within those and then put it within the honey. And the reason I started doing that is because I've had this cough since REACH that it just will not go away, and I was looking for something. more home remedy than continually popping cough drops that i could try to do and that's one of the things that was recommended is fermented honey now you could just do it with garlic or onions and it's pretty good it will make the honey a lot more liquidy instead of thick but uh it's got a pretty good zest to the honey so that's pretty good that sounds really good

I'm going to have to see about trying that.

It's not super hard. However, I had to put a plate underneath the jar because the honey was still leaking out of it. It could make its way out from the jar. But... You know, I'm always trying to learn and grow in multiple areas, not just being better in the Bible, not just being better as a streamer, but anything that improves my health or other places that I can be learning. Like one person, totally random here, and we'll get back to the topic at hand. I've started following a person that talks about when you were born, what was happening gestation-wise as far as the magnetic field of the earth, the amount of daylight that's happening, and then the attributes that people born in those months have. And it's just fascinating learning those things. Of course, I think he doesn't put this out there, but I think it's northern hemisphere only because it would be the opposite if you were in the southern hemisphere. But just some of the things that... the attributes that people in those months have, which the month I'm born in, because of the daylight that's there and all of that and the magnetic field, people born in the month I was born in have a natural GPS born into them where they always know where north is. And I'm like, oh yeah, it's right there. I know where it is. You can put me out in the middle of the woods and I know where north is. I never have that problem. Like people will ask me directions or I'll have been there one time in the dark and I can find my way back to that place having only ever been there one time.

Yeah, no, I get that. I wish I had that sense of direction.

My wife does too. She's like, she's got to pull the GPS up even if she's been there multiple times to be able to make sure she's going to the right place. Yeah. Anyway, back to, we were talking about worship and reach. So I don't know if you're finished with talking about worship and the impact it's had on you.

Yeah, so I was getting to the point I was going to make with that. I am, I have always been the kind of person that has been, I'm going to listen to the type of music that I like and not really think or care about what it might mean. And I found myself after reach paying so much more attention to that and wanting to be more just mindful with what I'm listening to. I found I got the reach set list from my friend Matt who was running this was running the sound stuff at reach. And I put those into a playlist and I have been I have been listening to those songs on that playlist on repeat for probably a good good month. I don't know almost month now. Yeah. And it just, I have to try so hard not to well up every time I hear the songs because I was just, I was just such a mess at that worship night and just everything after has been such acts of God that I've been taking the steps that I've been taking forward. And it It's just, if you are watching and you did not go and you're contemplating going, even if you're not contemplating going, I so strongly encourage you to do your best to go. It is an experience that will change your life in more ways than you can count. Not to mention having the friendships that you've fostered online. be cemented in person is such an otherworldly feeling.

that it's something i wish everybody could experience it's definitely the well the the depth at which your friendships online are is multiplied when you gather together in person and then not only that but you are gathering together with multiple people that you know online and and getting together it so fantastic on on that level more than more than any other conference it it does that and it's not that other conferences aren't good and you can have friendships in that way but you're not all creators you know i think you can later saying you know as a christian creator seeing so many christian creators in one space was a game changer got at work and and i I'm not going to downplay other conferences I've been to. I've been to Exponential Conference multiple times, and I go pretty much every year. It's a church planting conference. But I'm not doing ministry side by side with most of the people there. I don't know most of the people there. Well, this year I didn't know most of the people at REACH, but... i knew most of the people who were on stage and and who were bringing their communities together or were leading the side things that were going on i know a lot of people there and i know a lot of people at ncms which i'm going to be at but ncms is not all christian content creators board gamers and there's people leading ministry in their church that i'll never know and talk to other than when we get together so it's these ongoing pieces that is so so powerful at reach and also reach has multiple things happening at the same time there are so many things going on that there is something for everyone and there are lots of things you're going to miss and i don't know how many conversations you had but i think it was i went to a lot of content on day one skipped a little bit here and there because i was in conversations day two pretend i don't say pretended but i tried to initiate to go to events that were happening and then i'd go out to the hall for a minute and then i ended up in conversation and never making it back to the third day just not even trying to make it to anything i just stood and you said where's the next conversation i'm supposed to have which is normally what i do at conferences i don't go to the main sessions i just I have conversations with people and I had, my goodness, I think one conversation I had was a three or four hour conversation. It just went on and on and people came in and left and the conversation never ended like you were talking about with your Discord chat.

Yeah, but yeah, Reach is going to be a permanently super special thing that I'm going to move heaven and earth to make sure that I can be at it.

Yeah. Well, I, well, even to, to talk through that, like the, uh, first year I was on board right away with it because I was already planning on doing an alpha in my community. And part of it was, Hey, do you want to do alpha when Roman's pitch that I'm on board? I'm already planning to do that. So this is an easy, yes, no problem. And I knew a bunch of the people that were there. So I was like, yeah, I'll be there. And so, you know, accomplished the set for streamers to be able to get their free tickets. And I went, great. I don't want my tickets covered. Yay. Because, you know, being a streamer, you don't always have all of the money to cover stuff if you don't have another job that's going to pay for all of those things. And then this year I did the 90 Day Helldiver Challenge. And by the way, the trophy is right there if anyone's looking for it. i see though which is going to get painted on stream at some point i maybe for streamiversary or affiliate anniversary in february it might get painted on stream um they uh so i i did that and earned a free ticket i also had a free ticket to give away to someone in my community and so it's like oh when the tickets went on sale i go oh i'll earn a free ticket for next year and we were chatting about that and that the deal of half price tickets i'm like oh my goodness like they're never good like there's never going to be an opportunity to do that again so i'm like oh i'll buy my ticket and then i could just give it away and then i started telling people hey maybe you should just buy tickets to give away for your streamiversary and affiliate diversity and then you know holy spirit's nudging me and going and you could do that too So I don't know when you're listening to this. This should be out on the podcast Realm World in January. So come February, I will be doing my affiliate-aversary, which is February 14, by the way. Valentine's Day is my affiliate-aversary, which is kind of a cool date.

Yeah, I love that.

So I will be affiliate somewhere in that week. you'll have a chance to win a Ticket to Reach conference. So as we're talking about it and you're saying you don't know if you can make it or not, just mark that on your calendar. Come DM me, find out what it is. I'll have ads around. But if you need to win your ticket to go, show up in my stream sometime that week and you'll have a chance to win a ticket to go to reach.

That's awesome.

So what have you been doing since Reach? Or did you want to add more about some stuff that happened at Reach?

No, I think I'm going to leave that for the people to find out on their own the stuff that happens at Reach. Yeah. Because it would be a shame to set something up and either things change or...

something else better happens it'd be interesting to see well it's it's also one of those things where people will talk about it and go well you just had to be there because you can't fully describe what it was and there is a piece of that that is absolutely true that there's some of reach you will never know and we can't explain it unless you're there and and that's and yeah that's just special to the person yeah absolutely Well, then what have you been doing in the month plus since REACH?

would say um aside from doing stuff with work um it's been i'm taking my uh i'm taking a range safety officer certification class for work which is nice um it'd be nice to have a certificate help make things at work go a little smoother yeah but the big thing that i'll say has been the primary focus has been getting to these people that i've been in this discord call with this is something that i want to talk about because it's special one of the people that's in this call or that's in that call um actually no two of them two of the people that are in that call are two of the four people that gave their life to christ at reach awesome one is she's very young she's in her she's in her early 20s and then the other gentleman is in his early 30s so two very different demographics yeah the other night i'm so proud of her for this our friend twin was doing an irl stream just chatting stream in her room and my friend that's in this call that gave her life at reach said Cause we've been through a lot. There's been, it's where we've become a family at this point, basically where we'll have spits where we take each other off to the point where we don't talk to each other for a few days to the point where, and then we'd come back like two days later, like nothing ever happened and just keep loving on each other. She goes, Hey twin, you've been a huge part of my life. I'm so thankful that I met you. Hey, yes, kills. It is about you. she goes i i like how you didn't dox her either that she let you let her dox herself yeah i'll let her do her if she wants to share that information that's on her but she goes I want to talk to you about baptism, but I also want you to be the one who baptizes me or is in the water with me when it happens.

Cool. Super cool.

I, she told me this while I, I found out about this while I was streaming. I was so excited that she asked this question and so stupidly proud of her for asking this and taking that leap. I had, I ended my stream. I was like, guys. Something's going on. I got to take care of this. This is way more important. I love you guys. I will see you guys later this week. I need to go take care of this. We're going to raid out. I will talk to you guys later. And I go talk to her and I'm like, Keels, I am so proud of you. You have made such a, you've taken such a huge step in your faith. the work that God has been doing in your life and the changes he's been making and putting on your heart. has been making me as your friend so genuinely happy to see and i was to the point where like i was starting to tear up and it wasn't it didn't even involve me like i had nothing to do with this and i just was so genuinely happy for her and that has been seeing seeing the growth and the changes everyone has been making since being in this discord call has been so so amazing to see The Lord is doing so much in each of every one of us in there. Whether it's just us being, someone being more open and being more transparent about something that you normally wouldn't share with someone. Someone choosing to read scripture that normally wouldn't want to read scripture. And the thing that he's been doing to me the biggest has been teaching me how, making me feel like I'm learning how to pray properly. And getting more personal and connecting more. And I, as much as I, I don't encourage sitting in a discord call for 700 hours. I don't, I'm going to preface. I don't encourage that, but I strongly encourage building that kind of relationship with friends that you can feel comfortable talking with them about anything.

Sorry, I'm just laughing about chat. I figured I had to interrupt because Kiel says, I don't either. Next message. But it's fun. But it's fun. But it's fun.

And that right there is why we love her.

Yes.

Because she'll be the first person to say, man, this isn't good for us, but I'm having a great time.

Send help, LOL.

Send help, Saint. Love you both, guys.

But see, there's one of the things, like, if this is your first episode, thank you. Like, you're going to be blessed. You have been if you stuck to it to this point. This is what online ministry is. If you think about when you have such dear friends and whatever point that was in your life, if it was middle school, if it was high school, if it was when you got to college, that you wanted to spend a waking moment with that group that just understood you and embraced you and accepted you. That's what you can find in digital spaces. And those people that are lost and lonely are finding it here. And those people who aren't lost and lonely are also finding it in a way that they've not found in a deep way. And it's like, you don't want to be away from that group. You want to spend all the time together. So in that regard, the... desire is healthy because you're finding healthy community to resonate with and be built up around so i like that's just cool so if you don't understand that that can happen digitally it's absolutely it's something wonderful that is happening yeah and that you i couldn't have said it any better myself like that is the best way i could put it yeah digital ministry being prepared to go high school in a good way i'm only comparing it to the group you hung out with not the rest of the the high school cliques and all of that just that group that you finally or college or middle school wherever it is and you're like these are my people i want to spend time with them not with the other people Although, I will say, back in high school, I didn't hang with one group. I still am the same way today. I am the person that knows the preps over there and hangs out with them. I'm the one that hangs out with the jocks over there. I'm the one that hangs out with the nerds over there. And I would never fully belong. anywhere but i would know and be connected with every every one of those groups because of some reason it's like that's still how i am like i love taco and i want to hang out there and i love dick's lux digital church and xp church and and the church digital and a whole bunch of others you fill in the blank i know them and i want to hang out with them and i don't have enough time in the day

Yeah, also, I did say it in chat, but welcome in Elirind.

Elirind?

They said this is their first episode.

Yeah, Elirind, welcome in.

But yeah, this is one of those things where having that online connection fosters so much. is such a useful tool not only for personal gain to have friendships and relationships, but to just spread the word of God and

even utilize it utilize it better because there's that and that i just want to point out that is a part of what a lot of us are trying to do that's part of what taco is trying to do it's part of what reach is trying to do it's part of what the church digital is trying to do is help people learn from each other and become better at what we're doing whether that's learning how to better stream if that's learning better how to do community in in their discord server if it's learning how to

think like a missionary we're all trying to add components and we're all a piece of that and and god's doing a whole bunch of things that's really cool yeah it truly is and it's been so inspiring to see that just not only in myself but in my friends and these people that i've known for so long and even the people that i've known for so little yeah like i mean shoot for carnal i've only known I've only known Kiehl's since I want to say late October. So barely, barely two months. And same with Saint, maybe about that same time. And just seeing them grow as people, as my friends, makes me so happy. Not only just for them, but I'm happy that I get to be a part of it.

100%. Well, that's one of the things that I will tell anybody this, and I really, really mean this. I am so excited that I am in this space because I think 20 years from now, we are going to be in such a different space and everyone who's here right now. And everyone who's coming in the next 24 months are laying the foundation for everything that God is going to multiply in a way that he has not done since the book of Acts. And I see that and I see the wind of the spirit moving. And I am convinced of that. I mean, there's been points in ministry where I like I hoped it was that way. I wished it was that way. No, no, no. I'm 100 percent. I look around and it's like we are in. that first days of the book of acts for what god is doing digitally that we look back in 20 years and we're going to go wow i got to witness all of that happen and i'm glad i'm not just behind the pulpit anymore and not seeing what god is up to in the world i get to see and participate in like you're talking about watching people's growth watching people come to feel i can be a missionary be used by god watching people impact other people's lives and change their lives it's such an amazing thing and i'm like man i'm so glad i stumbled into this and god opened the door and then enough people kept telling me i needed to participate it took a lot of people telling me that before i finally decided i could so yeah and i i remember back when i was younger back living in new york i kind of had a passion to go into ministry yeah

I'll be honest. I hate school. I hate it. I took one semester of actual college and was like, you know what? This is miserable. I'm getting put in classes I don't want to be in. I'm being in classes I don't want to be in and I have to pay for them? What's the point of this? I'm spending money on something I don't want.

Good for being wise enough to say no.

And it's like... Well, I'm not going to deal with that. So you know what? I'm just going to pursue my passions. My passion at that time was culinary. So I went to a two-year culinary school. It wasn't like a degree. It wasn't like an actual college, but I got certificates from them. I have certifications from them.

Wow. Okay. So just in case you didn't know, so the first episode of season two, I had Annika's Cakery. So she has a culinary degree. So episode two, I have some of the culinary degree. Like, how long can I keep this up? It's a culinary theme for season two, apparently. Okay.

Yeah, let's, I mean, Hey, let's keep that trend rolling.

Yeah.

Um, but yeah, so being able to be in this space and interact with people and just have these fun conversations with either people in chat or over calls, like with you, it's it makes me feel like I'm staying, not achieving, but standing next to that, that dream I once had of being in a ministry field. Yeah.

Well, I'm convinced that God doesn't need currently more people that are seminary trained. He needs more people that are willing to share their faith. And he's preparing them. And they're saying yes. And they're not waiting for the church to give them permission. The same way that if we go read the book of Acts... You have the deacons who were put in a position to serve food, and the next three chapters are about them doing anything but serving food. We have no stories of, and Philip made sure that everybody got their portion of bread. No, we have Philip going and talking to the Ethiopian eunuch, and we have Stephen going out and sharing. It's just story after story of those seven people going and doing something. that wasn't what their job role was but the spirit moved them to go do stuff and they didn't go hey can i go share the gospel it was just like yes go and they didn't go well thank you spirit i'm going to go check with my pastor i need to go check with the apostles and see if it's okay if i go share with the ethiopian eunuch right that's just one thing that just makes me feel so blessed about this Well, it's leaning into the fact that in the book of Acts, it says when they saw that these were untrained, uneducated men, that's what it was that amazed people about what they were up to. And I think that's going to be true in the digital space. It's not going to be me, the seminary trained person that is going to amaze people. It is the other people just filled with the spirit that are going to amaze and reach people.

right and that's and that's just the thing is like even in even if you take it out of the christianity realm there are often times where somebody with the experience is more successful than the person with the qualifications or the degree yes Because that person has a piece of paper that says that they can do this, but this person has the evidence that they can do this. And if you kind of twist it a little bit, that's kind of how we are. Like some of us are not, have not gone to seminary and we're not, we don't have a degree and we're not like titled pastors, but. we are still in the mission field and you don't need to be qualified to well you if you are a follower of jesus you are qualified like right straight up my parent for the longest time my dad had on the back of it on his computer desktop it was uh this thing that said so and so did this so and so did that so and so killed these people so and so did committed adultery with this person yeah yeah i've seen and then at the very bottom and then at the very bottom of it says God doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the called. Yes, yes, yes.

Your qualifications are down under. Oh, sorry. Qualifications are down under. Sorry, I read that wrong. Shepherds were qualified to share the good news. They'd barely met baby Jesus. Well played, ukulele. I like that.

And so just thinking about it from that aspect of you don't have to be a Christian for 35 years or 47 years to share the gospel. You can be a Christian for an hour.

Yeah, like the demoniac was.

Yeah.

Like, no, you can't come with me. You have to go tell people in town about me. Okay. does he know i was a d i was possessed by a thousand demons and he he he uh removed them and he's pretty cool like like he's he's good let's go follow him what do you know about him well this is what he did you know it's like right you don't have to know a lot you just need to have to know who exactly so yeah that's awesome And yeah, and I think that's what's happening. And I think that's what God is up to in the digital space and specifically the gaming realm right now. It's just still moving and growing. I mean, we're not even saturated. And like you said, we can now go search and find other Christians so that we can connect and network and encourage. And I think that's a beautiful thing that we are working on. But... It's not so much that every time I go and search that there actually is always a Christian streamer who's in the space. And even if there is, there's not hundreds of us at a time that are. Maybe there's a couple of times a day where that might be true, but not the bulk of the 24 hours in a day and seven days a week. There is not that many of us yet to have everyone have a Christian show up in their feed as a recommendation.

Right. And that's the hope is to just flood this space with deacons of Christ.

That's what we're doing. We're going to multiply.

And the best thing that we can do is encourage one another.

Wherever you are, whatever you're going through, whatever you're working on, whatever you're trying to improve, whatever struggle in life, yeah, we are being the body with each other, for each other, which we're all trying to do. And our connectedness, like... they're just happening in spontaneous places and there's overlap in those and like the unplanned ongoing discord call i might need to show up over there at some point i would love to have you in there but it's like yeah i just might want i might want to go experience that that sounds really cool so don't close it before the end of the year so i still make it don't worry we're not we're i i have felt very very led to be doing this doing these devotionals and

scripture readings at night super cool i'm gonna try to talk with twin some when she has free time to uh try to work out some sort of like rough schedule this way we can kind of stick to getting it done a little earlier in the night. That way more people can potentially be involved.

Yeah, yeah. So that kind of piggybacks into what I was thinking to ask next, and that is, what are you looking forward to exploring or bringing about or continuing in the next year as a streamer?

Yeah. The biggest thing I'm looking forward to is... bringing God into the majority of my streams and just being more focused on that. Where as in the past, I have been a Christian streamer that just is a streamer that is Christian and not really talking about it. But I want to be able to answer questions and bring some knowledge to the table that, and have good, have genuine conversations with someone who's actually curious and just be part of that space that is able to share the gospel on a whim yeah and a lot of that stems from why i desire so many relationships from reach because there are so many people from this that are involved with this that are just so intelligent that just picking their brains And just receiving, even if it's little bits of information from them, are so greatly beneficial.

We all have something to contribute in different areas. And we've got a lot of different things we've identified. We had eight different teaching areas on how to become a better streamer, content creator, having that forward focus, which one of them was spiritual realm. We called that magic points or something like that because we're trying to gamify all of that. We had our mind being stronger in the way we learn and do things. We've got our health in there. So it's like trying to be holistic in the fullness of it and like have an expert in all of those different areas, including financial aspect has been included too. So it's like we're trying not to neglect any aspect of life and not like we want to level up every single part of what we're doing to be doing it the best that we can. so yeah i'm not the expert in finances don't come ask me um you know me either here's my investments back here i invest in hats and fish but i haven't figured out how to sell my fish to make any money off of them so they just keep costing me money so yeah fosco how do you make me money sorry to disturb you from your sleep good sir So any other things you're looking forward to in the new year?

I'm just looking forward just to see what God does in my life. Because he's done so much in the past few weeks that I'm almost afraid for what he has planned for me for a full year. Because who knows what big changes he's bringing, what small changes he's bringing. A recent change that he brought was my parents that I've lived either in... recent proximity to or with have now retired and they moved down about 10 hours south of me so that's that's been a huge change that i've been working on coming to terms with yeah uh because i used to be so reliant on them for assistance with things my dad's very hands-on and can fix a lot of things that i just don't have the life experience Like for reference, I'm 27. My father is 63. So he has decades upon decades more of experience in life than I do. So he just knows things that I can't know unless I experienced them.

Oh yeah. yeah well and i'm i'm supposed to i i've ordered the part and i'm supposed to go over to my daughters at some point around right after christmas and repair her washing machine or yeah her washing machine because it won't empty with water it's like it's it's the pump i've replaced that before what's your model number let me get that and then order it and and then we'll fix it i'm sure that'll be it and we'll be good to go all right yeah but why do i know that Cause I've had to do it multiple times in the past. So if you've never done it, you're like, okay, what's, what's wrong with the washing machine? How do I figure that out? What, you know? So yeah, I, I'm on that other side where I get asked to go do the repairs at my mom's house because my dad had passed away a few years ago and go to my kid's house when they need help with things. What's fascinating, though, is there are people that make videos just to help people be able to do that, to walk your own self through it. I think that's really cool.

That is something that I have seen. That's really cool. And I can appreciate that as someone who could potentially benefit from something like that. But yeah, I mean, it's like, well, what do you mean I can't just call somebody and fix it? Wait, it's going to cost me how much?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's the thing.

I don't have that kind of money. How am I going to fix this? Oh, well, sounds like you got to fix it yourself. But I don't know how to. Well, time to learn.

yeah and if you know anyone that can help you know you can rely on them when they're gone you can't so you you find new people or they have their own expertise and skill set i did auto mech class when i was in high school and the reason i did that for a year is to work on my own vehicle So then later on in life, I didn't have all of the books of every vehicle and I didn't face every problem. If you told me what the problem was, I could do the fix. So I actually had a friend of mine. I delivered rugs and towels and uniforms to him for a while, but he had an auto mech place and he lived an hour away from my house. So I like... my car's broke down i can't bring it to him it's broken my driveway so i would be able to go to him and say hey this is what my car is doing and he'd pull up the whole schematic hit all the books on dvd then could pull up my vehicle show me the diagram say here's what it is get this part and i could go do the work myself but i needed that expert to guide me to be able to do the work myself. So we're doing that in digital space too, with, Hey, my expertise might be like you were talking about doing logos and working in Canva. And you get to share that and be the expert with other people and bring them along and help them figure it out. Or if I just know you're you're you do Canva, I go. I've been trying to find this. So by the way, I have been trying to find this and your logo we had earlier. I've been trying to find how to get text to wrap around and get the right parameter circle and the smallness of the font I want. And I haven't been able to figure that out. So maybe I'll have to pick your brain on that later.

Oh, I am more than happy to help you figure that out. In fact, that's a thing that I did regularly. So I can help you the second that this is over.

Yeah, there we go. There we go. Oh, that's just so cool. So, okay. Anything personal life you're looking forward to in the next year?

Personal life, personal life. Aside from just reach and seeing where my friendships go and just how they continue to build, especially my real life friendships within my small group. That has been, that's been a huge thing. Cause I'll, I'll, I will be totally transparent in the past, probably like three months or so of small group. I think I've been three times and they meet weekly. Okay. And I had friends from there reach out to me and be like, Hey, like what's going on? Like we, you say you're going to come and then you don't like, how can, how can we help you? Like, what's good? Was it good? Is there something you're going through that you need help with? Or are you struggling with something? Like they, they care so genuinely about me that it's so it's, it's heartwarming to know that they, they care this deeply because. They, they're like, they know I struggle with depression. They know I struggle with anxiety. And they just, they like to make sure that I'm not slipping.

Yeah.

Cause they just, they, they know where I've been. They know things that have happened and they don't want to see me, someone they care about slip back into that mind space. And so just, and my really, and my friendships with them have been faltering because i've been so absent and things have changed so drastically because i've been so absent because i've not not changed things have changed drastically for me because i've been absent but things are changing like they're progressing like just because i stop going to something doesn't mean that it stops existing that is that's hard to come to terms with for someone like me but i'm working on it and i'm doing a discipleship program with friend of mine and he's taking me under his wing and helping me do stuff and he's i've only met with him once but he's just such a wise man and i've he's a great friend to talk with uh and i'm just i'm super i'm just super excited to see where that goes as well

Quiz King was saying, which the Church Digital we often point out as well, we try to, instead of trying to use the language IRL in real life, we say in person. Because... You know what?

That's fair.

So I wasn't picking on you. I was just pointing out what... What he was saying is like, it is real life. Your online life is real life. You are connected with real people. You're building real relationships. They're not artificial. It's just a matter of if you are in person or if you are online. So it's online life and in-person life if you want to. So I wasn't pointing that out to say you were wrong.

It's just... No, he makes a good point with that.

Yeah. Yeah. So Wolfie was asking about what the Church Digital is, and we are constantly refining how we describe what we are, but essentially we're a digital missionary sending agency, and we help connect, equip, and care for people in the online missionary space. So wherever that is, so I happen to be the one focusing on gaming. We have others that are focused in other regions around the globe, and we have people that are connected with... those that are in the place where they're physical missionaries trying to figure out how to gather in spaces online because openly sharing your faith in some places is not safe. So we're trying to help people in those places be able to figure things out. And you were talking about you have done some nerd convention once. Very cool. We do not, we're not on the point of we're assigning you a place to go. We are trying to help people that already feel like called to a place to be equipped, to be able to serve in that place. So if you already have a spot, Wolfie, that you are thinking about, that you are wanting to go great. If you tell me where that is, I'll point you to people that might already be doing those things.

So that's cool. Yeah.

uh ukulele sometimes our online friends are people we connect with more often than our in-person friends absolutely i see ukulele for worship most mornings during the week and i see her a lot more than i see my kids let's put it that way my kids are out of the house i don't see them very often I'm trying to think the last time I saw my daughter. I don't know. Probably Thanksgiving is the last time I saw my daughter and Christmas will be the next time I see her. So I don't usually get to see my daughter once a month or my mom. That's that's kind of the way it is. My sons, I could. But, you know, it's kind of like I'd be intruding in their space or. feeling like the you have to come see us parents so we can go a couple of months but we usually see each other that often they just live 15 minutes down the road nice yeah yeah my closest family that i have nearby right now is about an hour and a half south of me that's not bad my daughter's a couple two and a half hours my mom is five So that gets in the way of us seeing each other more often. My in-laws are an hour. They're the ones I probably see the most often. We definitely don't go a month without seeing my in-laws. And it's probably twice a month at least. I'll be going there on Friday. And then they'll be coming. We'll go there Christmas Eve to go worship at our old church with them. And then I will see them a Friday after for everybody coming to my house for Christmas. So it's like, yeah, I'll see them three times in the next two weeks.

Nice.

So as we just kind of wrap up, Saber, is there anything that you would like to share with people that we haven't touched on, that we haven't talked about?

Yeah, I'm gonna pull something. I'm gonna have to talk to Twin about this because I've referenced her like six times already in this episode. I'm gonna say something that she often says about her own personal testimony. I want to strongly encourage everybody that is listening now and listening later when this goes up on other services. I strongly encourage everyone to take the necessary steps in your faith to making God your first choice versus your last resort. Because I've, myself and countless others, have been in the situation where God will bring us to our knees so we have nowhere else to look but up. And being in that situation is not fun. So that's why I strongly encourage that. So if you take anything away from this, make God your first choice and not your last resort.

Absolutely. Yeah, going there first, not last resort. Yeah, Saber, it sounds like he's watching on your side, so I'm not loud enough on your side, so I might need to turn that up just a bit. But we're almost at the end, so sorry about that, if it's been that way the whole time for everybody else.

I have you matching my mic volume on my audio settings.

All right. Then maybe there's just something else going on there. It should hopefully be good. You're hearing them both fine. Yeah. Well, the last thing I want to ask is how can we be in prayer for you, Saber?

Yeah. Prayer for me, I will say the main thing is just prayer that I keep this passion inside of me, that I'm able to keep this burning and I don't tire from it. because I don't want to. I want to continue on down the path that I'm heading and I want to enjoy every second of it with the people that I've been enjoying it with. So I guess just prayer for guidance and continued leadership.

and i know having gone to many conferences or other events church events where you kind of have that mountaintop high experience and you you kind of want to do a peter and say can we just build a booth and stay here you know you have to come down from that and it is the integration into the rhythm of life that you're trying to work through so i totally get that of trying to maintain that excitement level and passion for what god's calling you to and having that be on lasting so or ongoing and and not short term that's it's really cool insight ma'am we'll definitely be praying for that thank you i'm gonna flip your script a little bit here how can i pray for you see i there's a few people that do that on me and i know that i know that that that ends up coming okay so I haven't done writing for some time. When I was the first got in the ministry, I was blogging and got invited to do that in some spaces. I just felt God pushing me in that direction again this year. And I started working on some writing that I don't know whether it'll be published or not. That part doesn't matter. But then sent... i'd say the last two three months i've been feeling that i need to do some blogging i'm going to be doing some of that for the church digital i did get asked from nerd culture ministry summit to do some blogging or blog posts for them as well so those will be every month every other month kind of rhythm for them as well as doing for the church digital it's being faithful to communicate what people need to know and hear that's really what it is is is being faithful to do that instead of trying to be focused on, hey, it's going to be my name on this. It's really trying to make sure that I'm able to put what a person needs to hear, what God is saying you need to share. That's what my prayer is, that I am effective in giving people what they need in writing. So I'll be doing that. So my anticipation is... I've got 12 things that I've got listed for what I want to do with the Church Digital. I will be doing at least every other month. So by the end of the year, I will have, I would say, between 18 and 24, 25 articles that I will have blogged and put out there. I just, yeah, want to be giving people what they need and not just saying something that brings attention to myself or points to me being an expert in any way.

right well definitely writing is your prayer request too awesome yeah definitely be praying for that for you as well wolfie yeah wolfie maybe we'll collab on something

I'm seriously I my first blog that I have finished is a collab with someone else that I wanted. I wanted to do a collab and try that in writing. And it was it was fun. So and the way that the way that we did it is we just had a conversation. We knew the topic. We just talked about it. I used the transcript of it to turn that into a blog post. And so I don't know when it'll come out, but it's pretty fun.

And we'll look forward to hearing about it.

All right. So one of the things that I do at the end is invite the guests to recommend somebody that we go raid and we can double raid out to bless a person with two raids at the same time. So I think that's fun to do. So do you have a recommendation of somebody we can go and raid out to?

Let me see here. Yes. I'm so happy he's live. This is the pros of being live early in the morning. Wilpog live.

He just went live. All right.

He is playing Ark Raiders, it looks like. Okay. There he is.

I have not had him on the podcast yet either. So this is the fun thing. That's like, I'm never gonna run out of people to have on the podcast on some level. So it's like, I just keep doing one a week. I've got years worth of people to invite on the podcast. All right, excuse me a second. I made it to the end without having to have a cough drop and now I need to grab one, so.

That's good, praise God.

Yeah, definitely. Like I said, I'm really close to being over it. I had one before we started. I was feeling it. I went and got saber noses. I'm like, oh, I only have two cough drops sitting here. Let me go get cough drops before we get started. So I'm close to over it. I thought I was over the weekend. It snuck back the last couple of days, but it's just a cough. I feel fine. I've had nothing else for at least a month other than the cough that's ongoing. All right. I usually try to do this so we coordinate the raids close to the same time. So if you're ready to start it, we can start the raid. And I'll count it down in three, two, one. So you ready? Yep. Okay. Three, two, one. Raid is started. And it doesn't matter if we're identical, but we're pretty close there. Thank you, thank you, Nightsaber, for being on with me. Appreciate it so much. Love getting to know you even more and look forward to hanging out with you in more podcasts along the way throughout the next year. And thank you for bringing your community over. Thank you, everyone, for being here. Thank you for the new follows. And let's bless other people wherever we go.

Yeah, I'm so thankful I got this opportunity to be here and hang out with you some more.

Yeah, it's definitely been fun.