She Thought Nobody Would Watch Her Bake. She Was Wrong.

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.

All right. Welcome in, everybody. Welcome in to Control-Alt-Redeem. This is the rebranding of the podcast. So season two, we're getting underway and really trying to focus on how do we get this out in front of more people. so that we can redeem the culture redeem the space redeem people that are in digital spaces so that's a rebrand this is this is the launch of that i'm excited about the new look the new feel and we've got annika's cakery hanging out with us today so I happen to love all of the little niches that are in Twitch. So I've had musicians on to talk about, we haven't had baking yet. And so I'm excited to have you on here.

Thank you. I'm really excited to be here.

I've done, my stream knows, my other channel knows, I do cooking streams from time to time, which just kind of started as a, hey, the holidays are coming up. There's people outside the US that don't know anything about a Thanksgiving meal, what goes into it, and people that might be home with nobody around for the holiday. So I think I did my third or fourth, I gotta go back and look if it's my third or fourth. I think it might actually be my fourth uh live cooking stream yeah i think it is my fourth for thanksgiving and uh it turned out pretty good i had a good time we kind of got to a lull in the middle there like i got so much stuff done what do i do now we're waiting for this to be ready to go and then just kind of going what do i do so maybe you can you know share some of those insights when you're doing cooking and you're just waiting on something to finish baking what do you do

For the cake streams, there's not too often. I have a few of those lulls, but not a ton of them. So because I don't really do the food and drink stream so much of like cooking meals. I just do cakes. And then like sometimes I just do like baking or it's like, OK, we're going to make a bunch of cookies and brownies and like random baked goods. With those streams, there's definitely more waiting time. But I kind of. already know that that's coming so i try if i can to plan like oh we're gonna make these cookies but then there'll be a bunch of dead time all right let's also make some brownies or have this other thing going that i can like i know i can overlap it with so often my baking streams will have like two projects right going which It adds to me probably messing up and forgetting an ingredient or making a hot mess, but it at least kills some of the downtime. But with the cake strings, there's definitely downtime when I'm chilling cakes and have to sit in the fridge. But with that, thankfully, it's often like, okay, well, while it's sitting in the fridge, we're going to now make this decoration or work on this little piece. So there's lots of things, at least in the baking and cake decorating sphere, to fill those gaps.

yeah yeah what i ended up running into was doing a deep fry turkey so i wanted to show everybody when it came when it came out but it was you know i'm waiting 40 minutes and everything else that's getting cooked is in the oven What do I do while I'm just waiting to show you the turkey come out? That was kind of the issue that I ran into. But I created my own problem, I guess. So, you know, usually I would just stream up until it's going in the oven, everybody, and maybe we chat for a while, and then we would be done. So I really wanted to show the turkey when it got done. And then I deep fried a second turkey. So it was a whole bunch of stuff going on.

Yeah, I lurked back and forth on your stream, and... I caught you putting the second turkey in and then you ended pretty soon after that because I think your Wi-Fi was acting up or something. I was like, oh, dang it. I was about to start chatting because I finally had the time to chat in the chat. And then I saw the raid was about to go and I was like, dang it.

You know, those kind of things happen, and I like those ongoing long streams like that. I mean, I think it was last year I forgot to put the turkey in. I should have put it in, and it was like I put the turkey in an hour late from what we were doing stuff, and that was interesting, but it all turned out fine. There's just, I don't know why I, and maybe you can, you know, because you do more cooking streams and baking streams than I do. Why do people really like that interaction of watching someone in the kitchen making things? I don't know what there is about it, but I know I always loved hanging out with my mom in the kitchen cooking things. And I always love hanging out with my kids in the kitchen.

growing up teaching them how to cook and having conversations so maybe there's just something about that that makes it feel homey and welcoming and an open space i don't know if that's what you find or yeah food brings people together i mean even just in a if you just thinking of the sense of like all people watching on twitch i mean the food network is a thing yeah you know there's an entire tv channel just for cooking

but really on some level yeah on some level whenever i've watched that i know there's different types of shows i've more watched it to learn something so i could go do it as opposed to just watch it all the time but maybe i'm not the same audience that is just there for the entertainment of it i know that when my mom comes to visit we watch the great baking the great british baking show is usually what we pull up and and watch and you know the competition of baking stuff I hate to say it, but like the first half of the show is watching the people mess up. And then you get to the, and then you get to the grand finale. It's like going, I want to celebrate the winner. You know, it's kind of like that transitional shift of, haha, I'm better than that person or all they messed up. And then it becomes the, I could never do that. Wow. Look at how good that is. A kind of piece to it, but maybe that's just the, my mom and I, I don't know.

I think it's really relational. Like food brings people together, not in just the eating, but in the preparing it's, You know, when you're cooking, what else? When you're with people, what else are you going to do? You're going to talk, you're going to connect, you're going to, you know, invest in each other's lives. You're all the gossip of the town, you know, all those things. I think there's, there's a community building aspect to it. And it's something that we can all relate to. We all eat and most people cook to some degree or another. So there's a level of interest in food, whether you like to cook or not. There's still a fascination to it because we all eat, we all like food. And I think even more now mainstream, like you've got all of the TikTokers and the Instagrammers who do the recipes. You've got YouTube and Twitch now too. And the Food Network as well. So there's a fascination because we can all connect to this thing. Not all of us are woodworkers or work on computers or pick a hobby or a craft.

Yeah.

But we all eat food. So. I think there's that connection of we can all relate to this and then over it we can all bond in the connection when we're making it together.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense that there is a relative piece that you're not going to go a week without eating. You're going to eat. I know people might be fasting and you do long fasts and that kind of thing, but you're not going to go very long without eating. No matter what your intent is, at some point, you're going to need to eat and somebody needs to prepare it. I think on some level, too, there's a level at which... Just like over the last couple of years, I've spent more time having fun cooking than I did in a long time. And I used to work in restaurants cooking. But at some point, it just became a chore to do. And you wanted to do it as quickly as possible to get it over. And I've gotten back into the realm of I want to take my time cooking and enjoy the process of meal preparation as much as the enjoyment I see on people's faces when they eat it.

I mean, it's a craft and it's a, it's a, it's a hobby for some people. It's yeah. Being able to enjoy the process I think is, is a big part of cooking to the draw to the kitchen, to finding the excitement and the,

like the art in it because that's what cooking really is cooking is the art yes yeah it definitely is art you create things of beauty and beauty in the way they look the beauty and the way they taste how they make you feel or even in the memories the smells that can can create those memories that you're gonna um be refreshed with when you smell certain things again oh that reminds me of or oh this is so good oh this is just like those are all fun moments So I always start somewhere in the conversation asking, how did you end up on Twitch? And maybe it was just, you started as a viewer. Some people, they started, oh, I'm going to go do this. I want to be a streamer. Other people, they start and go, oh, I'm going to intentionally be a Christian streamer or it's no, I just started as a streamer then decided. So what is your, you know, exposure first to Twitch and then your journey as being a Twitch streamer? How did that all get started for you?

Well, I didn't know Twitch existed until like 2020. I think I found I started watching like Minecraft, YouTube, and I found Captain sparkles. And I really enjoyed his content. And he would talk about like, oh, you can watch, you know, these, the videos be filmed live, like on Twitch and whatever. And I was like, whatever. And then one day I finally decided like, I'll try watching it. And so I watched, I did watch some live streams and it was really exciting. And I learned about Twitch a bit. And I, at some point it kind of like things kind of crossed over my mind where I realized like, wait, I have people tell me like all the time, oh, I wish I could just come over and sit with you while you make a cake and just watch you. And I'm like, no, you don't. You don't want to come to my house and sit in my kitchen or my cake studio for like eight hours and just like... sit there and talk to me and have nothing to do except to twiddle your thumbs and like watch me frost a cake like no you don't i thought that was ridiculous and i would invite people like if you want to come over like you can and no one you know no one ever takes no one ever did right yeah and finally like my brain was like well i mean people watch all kinds of things on twitch i guess like what if they would want to watch like cake decorating and one tiny lore pieces that i don't think i've ever shared even on my stream is there are technically about three or four original streams on the cakery that were me playing Minecraft, attempting to play Minecraft streams that just did not, it was just awkward and weird. There was no camera. It was just my voice and it was just really weird. It was originally, I tried that a couple of times. But yeah, then I had that idea of like, well, what if I showed like making cakes? And I was like, no way, no one's gonna, no one's gonna. do that and then lo and behold like i've had people stick with me through eight nine hour long projects and yeah it was it was crazy it was like oh people will actually like hang out with me and it was really nice for me because i i used to work in a bakery in person before i got married and then started you know moving all over the world not being able to work in a place and not be with people while i worked and i am an extrovert and it was so nice to go from just listening to like star trek in the background to having people in chat that I could talk to again. It was like, not here in person, but it's like still, I'm not alone anymore while I'm working. I get to talk to people.

Yeah, there's a lot of people that express that same kind of thought of, I work at home, I work alone, I have no co-workers to chat with, which is one reason why co-working is becoming a popular thing too is, hey, there's someone else alongside of me throughout my day. I'm not isolated. I'm not alone. And I would say chat is there with you. They may not all be able to be on voice, but it is a real person behind the words in the stream, and the emperor is here, and we might have others that are there lurking. I don't know. There's people hanging out while we're having a conversation, and they can join in the conversation, ask questions about what you're doing and those things. so you so you played around with minecraft a little bit and went yeah that's not my thing oh i could stream because people have said i'd love to watch you bake a cake so when you started how often were you streaming and how long were your streams because you're like well i could be eight hours to do this did you start that long to begin with um it varied and it still varies my streams right now they've been averaging about four hours three to four hours

just because of the place in life I'm at with what I can do. But when I first started, I was taking cake orders. So I would do those. But my first ever stream was like four days in a row. I think it was four days, three or four days in a row. I had a project that I wanted to make. It was a design that I'd drawn myself that I was really proud of. And I was like, I want to make this because I hadn't. This is one of the things that's like, that I love that Twitch was part of this was because for me as an artist, it was a big moment for me to make that cake because it was the first really like mature professional kind of design that I'd ever come up with that I was very excited to make. And I wanted to do it extremely well. And I did it on stream and it took about four days. Um, and it turned out just like the picture, which also was this first for me and was very exciting. And I got to do it all on Twitch and meet new people. I got my first raid through that, through that set of streams, which was wild. Cause that first raid was like. I think it was like 80 people. It was very stressful and terrifying for your first raid to be like massive. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was so scary.

Right. And if you're just getting started, you don't have all the things you develop later. Oh, well, let me go to a scene for the raid coming in. Let me play a highlight video. Like you have none of that prepped.

Like, yeah, I was just panicking like the whole time.

Yeah, I could see that.

yeah so like those that was like multi like quite a few hours each day and then you know i'd have another cake that maybe only took me about five hours i had probably another cake that was several streams but the final stream to finish it and put it together was nine hours straight oh wow So I gave myself like a 15-minute break to eat some food. But otherwise, nine hours straight, there were people who stuck with me the entire nine hours, which was insane. But yeah, like it really was just, it varied. It all depended on the project that I had at the time because I was mostly taking cake orders. So it was... not a set day, not a set time. It was all right. I got to make a Hot Wheels cake today. We're going to make an edible track and all the details for six hours. Then tomorrow we're going to frost the cakes for four hours. Then the next day we're going to put it all together for another eight hours or whatever. So it very much was like it varied a lot.

Yeah. So you're taking orders. Do the people that you're taking orders from know you're streaming, making them and are they watching you? I'm just curious about that.

I don't know that I told every single person that, especially at the beginning, but by the end of my time at our last location, I was kind of like making sure like they knew like, Hey, if you want to see your cake getting made, like here's a link. And just so you know, and I don't, I think I only ever had maybe one person actually watch or like kind of like pop in. of people I didn't know that I made cakes for. But yeah, like they usually knew. And I mean, I made my sister-in-law's wedding cake last year, like a little over a year ago. And she was in my chat watching her wedding cake get made the whole time.

Yeah, that would be really kind of cool, especially something like that. If it's going to happen or if I'm asking you to make a surprise cake for someone else and I get to watch it being made before that, they don't have any idea, but I'm watching the whole thing. That would just feel like, haha, I'm in the know and you don't know kind of thing. even more so than just i paid for it and it shows up you know what i mean it would feel more like i was part of the whole surprise process a little bit deeper maybe but maybe that's just my sinister part about surprising other people i don't know yeah i mean for the like the last day of working on my sister-in-law's wedding cake i banned her but not actually banned but like i told her she wasn't allowed i was like okay you can't you can't look now like this is like the last day don't come in stream Let the final product give you the awe when you see it finally completed and put together. Yeah, I can see that. So when you started with streaming and said, I'm going to do cakes. I don't know this will work or not work. Were you thinking I'm going to be intentionally open about my faith as I do this? Or how has that developed over time for you of talking about your faith? Because Baking a cake doesn't naturally say, oh, I'm going to talk about my faith. But like we were talking about, when you're cooking, cooking naturally opens itself up to talk about life. So it could. So what was your thought process? How did that develop as you've been a streamer?

It definitely wasn't a thought process at first. It was just, let's share this. This is cool. Have fun with it and stuff. It wasn't really until I found, like, the Christian side of Twitch that I was like, oh, I could do this, and I probably should. And that's when I, and, you know, that was after finding, like, Lux Digital Church. And kind of, it was like, okay, well, what can I do on the cake stream to kind of incorporate stuff? And I played around with, like, you know, maybe praying like at the start of stream. And I did that for a while. And like the habit was kind of hard to keep up. And that channel has definitely like kind of morphed into its own kind of thing. I am not super overt with that channel. If someone specifically asked me to pray for them, I'll pray for them as I'm working. Or people, if they have like something they, you know, decide to say or something in chat. But... that channels I'll have worship music playing and it's more like, yes, I'm a Christian. I make that, you know, that's clear and that's obvious, you know, please don't swear, please don't be inappropriate, all those things. But the cake channel, especially I feel that i have kind of come to a space of wanting it to be a channel um what's the wording i'm trying to find here um like like a gateway like a very safe gateway that they can come into my channel and they know that first and foremost and it's one of the things i try to say as often as i can of like your love beyond beyond anything you know like your love beyond measure love more than you know um like you're welcome here no matter where you're at in life um and that sort of thing and i've got worship music playing a prayer for you if you need to but otherwise like just come and be somewhere comfortable and know that like you can be in a christian streamer stream without fear of being attacked or judged or like basically come and know that not every christian you need to be afraid of Right. Because we know that a lot of people on Twitch are afraid of Christians to a degree. They don't trust them. And so I want people to realize that that's not Jesus and that's not who I am. So you can come in and live your life and be loved. and know that there are Christians out there who are safe. And then I leave that into God's hands of like, all right, we'll, we'll raid into people like Jake. We'll raid into, I've never been able to raid you, but like you would also be in one of those lists of if you were live when I was live.

Right. You might catch me gaming sometime, but, but otherwise, yeah, my, my normal stream is in the morning or if I'm doing a podcast, you can, you might catch me otherwise, but yeah. there's a lot of yeah that like a lot of them out there now that there didn't used to be or they're easier to find now and we also have been creating communities around and connecting with each other so that people do know of us but yeah that's another good thing there too of the you may be a welcoming space that you're creating so that they can realize Christians can be safe, but you don't have to be the one that shares the gospel overtly with them. It might be through developing relationships with other streamers that you point them to that they resonate with, they connect with, and they come to discover or want to spend more time asking questions later.

And I feel like in our, at least in our, in an American culture, I can't speak for other cultures, but we really have to, at this point, especially with the history of the church, we have to earn the right as the church, as Christians, to speak things into people's lives, really. And so building that community of like, hey, not all Christians are like this. We can be safe. We do love you. building in that trust and that right to then speak truth and to actually share those things and have those hard conversations and so I feel like for my cake channel very much it's a ambassador of that portion of the initial building of relationship of safety of establishing that place

yeah yeah do you i'm just thinking with with that and welcome in supersonic and uh king tan tan welcome in guys just thinking about that do you end up with a lot of trolls coming into your stream as a cake because i don't know if if trolls show up to the cake channel to try to cause havoc and chaos i mean they show up everywhere else it seems like

I mean, if you count Tony Snark as a troll.

Okay, I'm not looking for friendly trolls. I mean, I'm thinking hostile people that, you know, are really there to, yeah.

Not really. I've been very blessed in that I've been spared a lot of that, which is very surprising, especially as a female on Twitch. I feel like the harassment is... a lot worse for women yeah um i mean even on my gaming channel like i've not experienced any of that i had one problem person for a while that eventually was banned and that's like pretty much it i've had you know the occasional weird person kind of come in but it i've never had any major harassment major like trolling problems which i'm really i'm really grateful for in that i think it helps at least on the cake side of being very niche it's not as um like front facing. So it's a little bit off the radar of some of those people, I think.

yeah i'm one of those weird people that looks for those niche spots and i i probably have and you probably know them i'd have to pull them up to look at their names but i probably have about four or five people that do cakes that i follow i don't get to watch them that often they're like they're not on the time there's very few of us yeah there's very few but i think i've found about four or five that are out there i think that's all there is honestly that might be all that i have found

Yeah, I genuinely, I only know, personally, I know if there's me, Kelly Cakes.

Kelly Cakes, yeah.

Oh gosh, her name is slipping my mind, but she's in Australia. And then I've seen a German woman and hers are all completely in German.

I've not seen her then. I've not seen the German one. And some of them might just be they bake occasionally or they do more baking.

But yeah, but Kelly Cakes is... Yeah, those ones are exclusive cake, cake only. Kelly Cakes. We have Julia. It's Julia. Baked by Julia. And then the German woman. Those are all exclusively cake decorators like myself. And those are the only people I have ever found that are only cake decorators.

Yeah, think about if it's cake only or baking anything. So it makes a difference. yeah it's like it's it's so niche but i i think it's so fun in in regards to that so you talked about you do have a separate channel so when and why did you decide you need a separate channel instead of just saying well i'm just going to game on this channel or what was that process for moving and doing something different

So after a while, after about a year or two, I started to have like, just like, I do want to play games. Like, it seems really fun. And I think I did at least one gaming stream on this channel. Originally, it wasn't even called Annika's Cakery. It was called, it was just like Annika Tutu. I tried doing like one or two gaming streams. And I mean, instantly, almost instantly, I lost like 20 to 30 follows. And I learned that lesson very quickly. I was like, okay, this is not what people follow me for. got it. And I was like, okay, I just want to do gaming. And then it was a while later that I was like, well, what if I just made a separate channel? And then people who want to bounce from this community over to that one and have both of them, they can. And then I kind of just get the best of both worlds and I can play games and then I can just keep them separate. I thought about and thought about and thought about for the longest time. And then one day I just sat down and was like, screw it. I'm going to do it. I'm just, I pulled out my laptop. I made the account. I spent like two hours and then man, I had an account. I had like everything all set up and I was like, we're going to do this. So yeah, it was, it was definitely to like, try to respect the community that I already had. Cause I've seen some creators do that swap, especially in a partner push. Like, oh, we swapped from arts, like crafting suddenly to playing paleo all the time. And it was such an intense shift. Like I don't watch them anymore because it really like completely changed the dynamic of the community to begin with. And I was like, well, so that's what I was about to do. I'm glad I didn't do that.

Yeah, that's interesting that you had a lot of loss of follows. I had when, you know, two years ago, I thought, I've been doing reading the Bible in the morning. That's what I do. Okay, let me try playing a game. A new game's come out. I'm going to love this game. I'm going to see if I can do it. And I picked a whole different time and streamed for like three, four hours later in the day on Monday, three, four hours on Tuesday. My community didn't show up, but I didn't get any losses of follows like, hey, we're not going to follow you anymore. They're just like, hey, we're not we're not watching you to get watch you play games. That's not what we're that's not why we're hanging out. And then I was trying to work it into a new community. It did not cause me to gain any. You know, it's like so I did that for three months and I'm like. yep that didn't work i i need to do other stuff with my time than then to try to make that happen but that's interesting that you had people that just like no i'm gonna unfollow because i don't want the other content because my thought would be there's so few people doing cake that it would be like i still want to follow you so when you do a cake i'll show up i'll just look what your title is and decide if you're doing a cake or not so that's interesting that they unfollowed

Yeah, I mean, but I've seen it with other more niche creators who they go for like trying to get bigger numbers. They try to, you know, go that success path, try to get that, you know, partner, get that check mark and all those things. And they find it like, oh, I can get some better numbers from playing like Paleo, like the best.

Right.

Because that was like the way for a while for a lot of people. And it was like, you know, less and less of the niche stream that a lot of people who watch like those niche streams. I have found that there's a good chunk of them that that's what they watch on Twitch. They're not interested in the gaming side of things. They're interested in the art streams and the IRL and those ones. And so then seeing that it sounds like a really harsh word, but it's the best I could think of that betrayal of the category of like, oh, she's going to turn into one of those. So I can see why that would happen.

Yeah, I could see that.

It felt like that.

Yeah. Well, you know, with reading the Bible, there really wasn't fully a category when I started doing that. Then somebody at one point said, why aren't you streaming under this category? I'm like, what do you mean? Well, you should be under the Holy Bible. I'm like, well, I looked Bible up and nothing showed up. I mean, I have to call it the Holy Bible. And like, I'm not streaming under that category. Nobody's walking around looking for that category. so it's like yeah like no i'm under just chatting because half of my stream is just chatting anyway i read and then i ramble on and and do whatever else so yeah so how often are you balancing between those two well how do you how do you figure that out to say well here's how often i can can bake and i know it's going to change you know as you move and do those things and and you were talking about getting schedules so how do you find a harmony for the community that's both in the communities that are both separate to say, here's when you'll find me here and here's when you'll find me over there.

It's it's helpful having my discord so I can put out like a set schedule for everybody every week. I try to be good about it. I'm not always the greatest about it, but like, hey, on this channel, we're live at this time. This is what I'm going to be doing on this channel live at this time. So we're doing and I've got three different channels I'm live on. throughout the week so it's like it helps the discord for those who want to know like what's going on everywhere um but for actually deciding like how much i am on each one there's really a physical component because i have a condition called ehlers-danlos syndrome so for me making cakes is painful it's it's an art but it's pain so i can only do so much at a time and then on top of it like this last year i've only been doing it as a hobby it's purely been for stream so then there's the financial aspect i'm not having people paying me for the cost of cakes I don't know if anybody's looked at the grocery store lately, but cake ingredients are very expensive. So yeah, at least for this last year, it's been dictated by my schedule. I've had a lot going on, but then physical component and the cost. So it's been once a week has been the cake stream where. whatever I have felt like making or doing or have the energy to do is done on that day. And then the gaming, the gaming has, it has settled out to twice a week for a while. It was three days a week, but now it's just the twice. And then I'm part of a D and D stream crew. And so that's also another day of the week.

Oh, okay. Okay. I was gonna say, I didn't know the third stream that you, so you're in a D&D crew.

I'm kind of, I'm kind of in a lot of places. There's the Cake Channel, the Gaming Channel, the Campfires and Dragons, which is associated with the Campfire Ministries. We're still kind of new and figuring ourselves out, but very excited about that. That's also got its own channel that I will start to be in that as well more. And then you can also catch my face singing on Lux Digital Church almost every week. So...

i'm kind of in about five different places now coming next year it'll be about five places yeah yeah well it's it's one thing to just show up in like lux you're not streaming that lux is streaming yeah that's pre-recorded that's that's that's that's different than a participation in something then you are running three different channels or five channels or and i'm like god i thought i'm one of the weirdos with three channels out there you know

No, it's Javi on four and come next year.

Well, I also, and I haven't, I've been on the gaming shoot. What is it? Save games podcast numerous times I'm on there, but I've never co-streamed that one. I just, I just show up and let it happen. I'm like, you, you grab me, you do all the stuff. I'll just hang out and, and enjoy that. But I'm still looking to do, to do more and expand what's already happening. And so. I don't know. There's something about podcasting that I'm like, for a long time I thought, oh, I have nothing to add to the conversation. Now I'm starting to find, what do I have to add to the conversation? And it's like, I really think some of the things like, hey, what if, and I'm just gonna say this, what if there are someone who comes across this and says, I love baking cakes, I love cooking, or I love making cookies, and they're gonna be the cookie channel, but they didn't know it was possible. um and they didn't know it was possible to you know what i also sing so maybe i'll sing christmas carols while i'm making christmas cookies and and and i'll bring people joy like what if that's what you did and instead of being home alone and isolated you know especially if you're a retiree and and you baked and that's what you love doing or your kids are now out of the house and and and You're a stay-at-home mom, and now the kids are out of the house. Or you're just a stay-at-home mom with nothing to do during the day until the kids get home. You could be going and spending time with people and streaming and bringing the love of Christ to them. I hope someone like that just wanders across this and thinks, I didn't know that spending time in the kitchen could be spending time with people who I've never met in person. And I just think that's such a wonderful thing. that we could give to people so i hope someone finds that and just gets excited and you find out about it later and because you were on here they decided that they're going to give it a try or encourage someone else they know to give it a try it's it's so fun and i'm so glad i did it like it's it's been worth all all the work yeah and and it is it is work and so let's let's just kind of shift a little bit talk about what have been obstacles two or three obstacles that you have faced in your journey of being a Twitch streamer. They could be things that happened that got in the way of you being able to effectively stream. They could be things that happened in real life that caused problems where you weren't able to stream all the time, or they could just be life change, or they could be something that happened that was some trolls or that kind of a thing, whatever it is. What are some obstacles that you've had to deal with as being a Christian Twitch streamer and being in the space and just being an inviting, welcoming space?

So there's two that immediately come to mind. The main one is a consistent problem for me, will continue to be a problem for me, and unfortunately is about to be another really big problem. And that's with my moving all the time. So I'm always shifting time zones. So it's hard to...

I hadn't thought about the time zone piece. Yeah, that makes sense.

yeah i went from being in the same time zone as australia to being eastern standard time which is quite a big jump so i went from my streams were all nighttime streams for the states because they were daytime for me i would stream in the morning and then for my gaming streams it was like i'd stream it in the morning and then I like have my lunch and then go about the rest of my day. And then switching to here, it's like, it's an actual nighttime stream and I'm up late. Oh boy. And the cake streams are no longer night streams. They're, they're afternoon streams. They're at this time. And so people having to like adjust and myself adapt, but then my community adapted like, okay, slightly different times. Can I make it and everything? And then our next time zone is going to be significantly worse. It's going to be. almost impossible for probably most of my community to come to my streams. And that's really freaking hard. I think that's, that's the biggest one is, yeah, that's been the biggest struggle. And then coming into this next year is going to be the even hardest struggle. Like I have the feeling that, you know, that average number drop is going to, you know, be way down. I'm going to have to rebuild, probably build a homeless community essentially, which sucks, but it's also like, okay, well there's people in a different time zone now that I can, i can meet and i can get to know it's just that you having to go through the being a new streamer process all over again right it really channels that are like four years old

Yeah, I had not thought through fully. I mean, I know, and this is one of the things that working globally really is a thing that time zones are more important to when you're doing things than exactly where you live on the globe. It's the time zone issue that's more important. Even a matter of East Coast versus West Coast when you're streaming, three hour time difference makes a huge difference. I have friends who start streaming when their kids go to bed at night and their Pacific time, well, when their kids are going to bed, I'm already been in bed for an hour or two. So, you know, it's like they're putting their kids to bed at eight or nine o'clock at night, but I'm East coast. So I've already been in bed since 10 PM. They start streaming and go tell my time three in the morning. It's only midnight for them. So it's like I can't – well, I'm not staying up and watching you. I ran across you. At one point you were streaming earlier or I was later or you stayed up late and got to know you. And it's like, wow, even a three-hour time zone difference can become a burden when you're going halfway around the world and flip-flopping your schedule to morning to evening and now moving another – Let's call it six, eight hours, whatever it is, the difference, and trying to do that again. You're right. There is both the loss and grief, and I want to identify this, loss and grief of community that won't be there for you and for the community. There's going to be a real loss and grief that people will go through, including you. But there's also opportunity of meeting new people and streaming to new people that never were able to catch you because you were on at the wrong time for them. Yeah, that's a real thing. I'm glad you shared that.

Yeah, it's going to be an interesting transition and change. So dreading it a little bit, but excited at the same time. That would be the consistent issue that I have been facing and will always face, I guess. But the other one was for a good chunk of time, because we lived on the island of Guam out in the Pacific, tiny little island. And we had a super typhoon while I was there. yeah so we were without power for a month no water for two weeks it was really fun we lived in a hotel for about two and a half two and a half weeks and so then i didn't get to stream for a month obviously my community knew it was happening throughout the storm you know i was texting pictures and videos and all of that but afterwards after that month was over and people's internet were getting fixed guam is just special the internet was not getting fixed for us it was seven months of our internet not getting fixed properly our internet was already pretty bad there anyway i not having the greatest quality stream was just the norm for me yeah but this was unstreamable levels of bad yeah yeah um and it took it took seven months and an fcc complaint to finally get it yeah it got all it got elevated all the way to an official fcc complaint in order to get our wi-fi fixed and for me to be able to stream again it was really bad so that was like a really rough point because I just wanted to get back to I had my gaming channel by that point too and I was like I want to game again I want to like stream cakes there was a couple cakes I made off stream which was really weird because I didn't have the internet but I had orders and so it was Yeah, it was a long seven months that was really infuriating to sit through.

Wow. I can't, I'm just trying to think through that as a, I mean, like on some level, I've traveled a whole lot in the fall here. As we're, we're going through October, November, I. at one point i don't think i was home for more than five days in a row for for a period of 45 days and it was just like okay i'm not home so i gotta squeeze a stream in here bring my stuff with with best intentions to stream while i'm out and traveling and then internet doesn't work or something else happens and you're just like sorry stream i you know doesn't work or start to get a cold you're like well i should sleep in and and try to get healthy so as i'm traveling i Can't even fathom seven months of no streaming. So then let me ask you this. Through that whole time, were you so much committed to streaming again that it didn't matter how long it took that you're like, I'm going to stream as soon as I can? Or was there part of that journey that was like, is it even worth it to go back to streaming if it's been so long? Because it'll be like starting over at zero.

I was worried about it being like starting over at zero, but I didn't expect to love streaming as much as I do. Like I love it and I want to stream for as long as I possibly can. It's really fun and I've made some amazing friends through it. And so I was just like, I was very impatient. I was ready for the internet to get fixed. There was a couple of times I tried with the internet that we did have and it just went horribly and was really upsetting. And I was worried about it kind of like completely derailing things really badly. But I was grateful that it really didn't. There were people who were just really happy that I was back. Like they, they knew it was going on again. That's where like the discord. Oh yeah.

The discord community. Yeah.

People to post in there. Yeah. Like they all knew like, Hey, it's still not fixed. Oh, maybe it's fixed now. And you know, the complaints of. the wi-fi were definitely heavy in the discord so yeah i definitely had a a handful of people who like they were patiently waiting just for things to get fixed and come back and so i'm really grateful uh to them for that so

Yeah. Did you have, uh, cause you said you had the super typhoon. Did you also have other losses besides internet with your home, with your equipment that you were streaming with that it might've gotten, you know, damaged or anything. You didn't have any other law, just, just the accessibility that was the problem. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. We had, there was no power for a month. No water for two weeks. With the power, we got to stay in a hotel for like two and a half weeks of that. Maybe it was closer to three. I don't really remember. But buildings on Guam are built for things like a super typhoon. They're solid concrete. A lot of people had a lot of flooding problems. Well, that's what I was thinking.

Flooding, you can't control, you know, what gets damaged with that.

yeah we didn't really we had like a little bit of water here and there but there we had nothing significant or major in any way which was really grateful for the one thing that we did have to be on top of which i'm so grateful for my husband has bandica because he Especially once we were in the hotel, he was back at the house every single day, like spraying down everything in the house with vinegar to keep our house from molding because we had mold starting to grow on the floors, on our dining table, on furniture. And we lost a single end table and that was it because he was there every day for a month spraying our house with vinegar to keep the mold away.

Yeah, I've done hurricane cleanup and disaster cleanup. And yeah, you've got to keep on top of those things. I thought I might have finally gotten rid of the cough that I got at REACH conference. Started to come back. Yeah. So that's my first cough drop of the day. So I'm feeling pretty good that I've made it this far. Usually the hot tea is usually pretty good on my throat and helps and good. But at some point, I'm just talking too much. So, you know, that happens.

That'll do it.

Well, let's supersonic go and spot of tea. I have that on my other channel because I always have tea. You can redeem a spot of tea. Since you asked a spot of tea, I am drinking matcha right now. So I'm enjoying a nice matcha today. So I don't usually drink that one.

I do not like stewed leaves and twigs. Thank you.

I'm good with pretty much anything that's steeped. I even go collect my own flowers and things around to brew my own tea. So I've harvested thistle and black nettle, goldenrod, lavender. I don't have any hibiscus. I drink that, but I haven't harvested that. So those are all things I've harvested.

There's this great drink, though, that's like it's made from beans and they're fermented and then dried. They grind them up into a powder and you put it with some milk. And I'm not talking about coffee. I'm talking about hot chocolate.

Yeah, I know. As soon as you said grind them up, I knew you weren't going with coffee. Yeah, there's there's plenty of take a plant and brew it. That's that's what I do. Just take a plant vegetable and turn it into a beverage. That's that's what I'm going to do.

We just need to make you some spinach tea. Got it.

You know, I, well, I haven't made everything into tea cause I also do wine. And so, you know, it's like brew it in one way or another, you know, you're brewing it a tea, brew it a coffee. And I know true tea is only from a certain plant. Everything else isn't a tea. Chamomile is not really tea. I don't care.

Interesting.

There's tea snobs out there. So I'm just, you know, speaking to them. Just like wine is only wine if it's made from grapes. Everything else is really country wine. It's not a real wine because you have to have grapes. Yeah, like there's people that get into that kind of stuff. So I don't want to upset anybody for no reason. But, you know, if I upset you, I want to be intentional about upsetting you. That's kind of my motto. so yeah i could go down that route of all the different things and and stuff but we're not here to talk about me and me cooking and brewing they'll have to show up to my next cooking stream i don't know when that'll be but we'll see well let's flip that around and go the other direction what have been some blessings that you personally have experienced as a streamer that were unexpected and then what are some things that have happened in your community that's been a blessing as being a streamer uh the people that

yeah i mean that's i feel like that's just like the biggest blessing and that is just me making great friends and getting to meet new people and have that um interaction has been like the best and like my favorite part and what keeps me coming back um i'm trying to think of like specifics it's kind of hard to pinpoint specifics i i'm just such an extrovert and love being able to talk and talk to people that like that's just the big thing really for me yeah i'm trying to think of like any specific situation but i mean i feel like just having been able to oh here's here's something so it's um it's really nice to have a community and a set of friends that i don't have to leave because i'm a military spouse we move all the time i'm always saying goodbye to my friends whether they move or i move i'm always saying goodbye to my churches i'm always having to restart make new friends re-figure it out which i'm an extrovert so it's fine like you get used to it but it still isn't fun it still hurts there's still a lot of crying and tears but with streaming it's i you know minus maybe this move i generally have the same community i have the same people i don't really have to say goodbye to them i know they're going to pop and chat at some point or they're in my discord or in another mutual discord so i think that would probably be the biggest blessing is just i have there's now a level of stability i can now have because i've not had that pretty much most of my life growing a missionary kid and then now a military spouse it's it's a lot of instability in church and in friendships so it's it's really nice to know that like the friends that i have i can have them for as long as i want and i don't have to say goodbye to them

I think that's a really valuable thing to think about there for lots of people who have that kind of life. And as a pastor, that's what my kids had. I'll just pick on my middle son because his story is funnier to share. So he was five years old when we moved states to go to seminary. He was 10 years old when we moved states to go to my first call. and then when he was 13 he said where are we moving in two years because his brain just was we move every five years to a new state so he wanted to start brainstorming about what state it was he was wrong we moved when he was 14. so he was 14 when we moved to a new state he graduated from high school and he moved to a new state so His entire life was that constant move, move, move. Now, he didn't end up graduating from there. He moved back to home to Michigan where we are now. But he preceded moving back here where he was born to go to college for four years. And so he was there for three and a half. moved into my basement during COVID, lived here for two, three years, and now he and his brother are down the road in a house that his brother owns, and he's been there for about three years. He's never lived anywhere more than five years his entire life. So what does someone like that do to hold on and to keep friends? You have social media that can help that. It's not as good as a Discord community, though. You have to be really intentional in other spaces. So while you're saying is you might lose some live. time with people watching you those who have moved over to discord and are in that discord communities with you that community can go with you every time that you move going forward and i just think that's a fascinating thing that Most people haven't come across, they haven't discovered. They might say, oh, I've got Facebook friends, but you don't actually usually spend time with them chatting. You do it asynchronously or you just watch each other's posts and that's about all it is. Or maybe you do some discord messaging, but that's not much different than text messaging. But if you're out of sight, you're out of mind is what happens I've experienced with a lot of places as I've moved is I'm no longer in the community. I gradually get thought of less and less. The communication reduces and reduces. But a place like Discord where I can stay active in the community with other people, I think that's a blessing. I hope that it really stays that way when you make this next move.

It's like a virtual town because it's kind of interesting because you can only handle so many really close friendships. With Discord, it's like being in a virtual town and you have some people you're closer with than others, people you DM a lot or people you DM a little bit or you're only in like general chats with. And not all of those people are people you're like super close with and super invested with. It's like take IRL relationships. the spectrum, but then just boil it down into into a virtual world is how it feels.

Absolutely.

Because when you switch, when you move all the time and you're saying goodbye to people, you can't really maintain those friendships long term because it's a lot it's a lot of extra work on top to maintain it online. And I have a I have a few people. I have a little book somewhere behind me. that i have like very set few people that i've met over the years that i'm like okay no no you're in this book because i'm gonna actually do the work and do the investment and keep talking to you and maintain you but that's a lot more work and that's one of those like this is one of those key friendships i keep right discord leaves that open to stay it's like oh yeah this is like my community center i still go hang out there it's still my like my church i can have my casual friendships my close friendships and it doesn't require most of the time as quite as much energy unless it's one of those closer friendships yeah

Well, even at that, it requires the other party to also put the work into it. And I find at times I put much more work into trying to maintain friendships and relationships than sometimes the other party does. Or it lowers to a level of this is all it can be to maintain. Friendship, I'm not going to hang out with you. I don't get to hang out with you. You won't come to. I try to coordinate. It doesn't work. It becomes less and less. And it's like, well, there's the minimum of where it is. And I would certainly want more, which I think is one of those things that I find so fascinating about being in Discord community. I thought this was so interesting. I don't know if you had the same experience when we were at Reach. but it was like, oh my goodness, there were a whole bunch of people here. I've never actually been in their stream, but I've been in Discord community with them. And there's a whole bunch of people in here that I've been in a Discord call with, but I've never actually had a one-on-one chat with them. It was like, I'm in community with a bunch of people. I was thinking about how at school, you might know of people and they're in your same class with you and you see them all the time, but you never actually had a conversation with them. Or they were in the same school and you knew who they were because they were class president or vice president. And I was like, wait a minute, I get to actually hang out with you for a minute? It was like super weird kind of thing. And I think that's the best way I could relate it was kind of like those kind of things. It was like, wow, I didn't realize this until I was physically present with some people to go, wait, we've never actually talked, have we?

yeah yeah that was like my i had that moment with aki of like i don't think i've ever been in like a one-on-one vc or just like not stream like conversation really with him before and it was like i got to meet him in person and chat with him for a little bit and then we had him on campfires and dragons he played one of our villains a couple of weeks ago but uh yeah it was like I know you have been your stream, like, you know who I am. You've been in my stream before, but like, we've never actually had this like moment. And that was pretty cool.

Yeah, that is kind of cool. I had a few of those too that were like that. I don't think you and I had ever had a one-on-one conversation unless it was just a chat in Discord. We hadn't jumped on a call together. It's like you're the friends of the friends that you hang out with and you see, but you never... All of a sudden it's like, all right, the two of us are together. We've never chatted. We've only ever had a third person around when we were together. But it's like, hey, wait, you are cool. Yeah, I do like... I know why everyone hangs out with you.

He's like, I remember, I remember it reached and I spotted you. I was like, it's flat cap. I have to talk to him because he's cool.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I've always thought I was cool. Like, okay, my stream knows this. I don't know if I've shared it.

Clip that, Jack. Clip that.

I don't know if I've shared it on this podcast, but when I was growing up and everybody was trying to be and copy everyone else and it's like, oh, I've got to fit in. I've got to be like everyone else. And I was like, no, no, no, you're supposed to be like me. Like, I don't want to be like you. I want to be me, and you should want to be me as well. Like, so, yeah, I know, I know, I know. I have that streak in me that every once in a while I will verbalize it. I mean, it's always there in the back of my mind, you know, which is why I have no problem and I have lots of hats that nobody else has is because I didn't want to be like you. And I'll tease my stream every once in a while when somebody comes on. and talks about, I have a hat like that, too. I'm like, well, you can't have too many of them. That's my thing. You can't have more. Supersonic. To be honest, I'm picky who and what you watch and often don't like watching shooter games. Oh, well, that makes sense, too. I just don't enjoy those, so I don't watch them that often. I don't have a problem with them. They're just not the genre that I'm going to play. But I do think that if you are intentionally... saying this is not for me it might be detrimental or not one thing something i want to expose myself to that makes sense too okay buddy can i pull hat tricks i've never played hockey i'm sorry i've never played hockey i i will i would not be doing any hat tricks so you're not going to pull a rabbit out of your hat oh i thought he meant hockey you know a hat trick is getting three goals i'm pretty sure he meant magic okay okay

Because that's where, at least that's where my mind went. I went straight to a rabbit coming out of a hat.

I went to hockey, I guess. I don't know.

That's a hockey thing? Yes. I don't know anything about hockey.

Okay. If you get three goals in a game, it's called a hat trick. So when he said pull a hat trick, my brain just went to hockey.

That's fair. That makes sense.

He could have been talking magic, but they're the wrong kinds of hats. They in themselves are all the magic that they need.

Those are fun hats. I do like that style of hat.

Yeah, I do like, like this is one of the things like I am so excited to live right now because I can get them all over the place. They're accessible. Growing up, they were hard to find. I'd hang on to a hat for 10 years before I could find another hat. So pull a badger.

I feel like I need to get that style of hat because I have like a hat redeem because I do have a collection of hats for my gaming channel, but I don't have a flat cap. Now I feel like I need to get a flat cap, and when people redeem it, be like, oh, would you like me to do my flat cap posture?

There you go. You can do an impersonation. There you go. Well, there is Village Hat Company. If you just like hats in general, Village Hat Company is fantastic. They're out in San Diego, and they're online. But if you just want flat caps, Boston Scully is a really nice company, which I've got several there, and then I've got others. Actually, I'm wearing a Boston Scully right now. So... They name their hats. So actually, let me just look and see what this one is. I don't remember the name. Oh, this is the lunchbox.

Nice.

So they have a different name for each hat, which is a little pretentious, but I'm good with that. I'm fine with that.

What I mean is they've made it their thing.

They made it their thing. Actually, we went to Boston a couple of years ago and there were flat caps all over town everywhere. And my wife's like, so do you feel different here with all these other people that have hats and they're all around? And I'm like going, no, they're just all copying me. I've been doing this for a long time. So, so we were like, this is, I love the little side things that just happen. Who knows where the conversation is going to go.

This is what happens with my, my gaming channel. I get derailed, squirreled all the time.

Well, you call them squirrels. My, my, my channel, I call them rabbit trails because we come back to the conversation where it was when we're done. So it's not just a side quest and we're gone. We'll return. So we were talking.

You're lucky if I remember what I was talking about.

But I also, it's like, this is what you do with friends. You just talk about whatever's next and you go to the next thing. The gaming channel has one rail. There we go.

And that's one of our viewers, not even a rail to keep us on track.

There you go. There you go. So we were talking about some of the difficult things and the blessing. So we were talking about blessing and a blessing you were talking about, you know, with a community. And when you move, you don't lose fully community that you've had. So it's not always start over from zero again. which I tremendously think is a blessing because I have moved a lot in my life too. And I feel like if I have another move with my wife right now, entirely opposed to a move, I'm trying to think of like, I'm nine years living in this house, which is the longest I've lived anywhere in my life. So before that was six years. So I've made it... 50% longer than any place else I've ever lived in my life. So it's kind of like I'm on a streak now. I might as well see how long I can make it stick. Yeah. But what are some other blessings that you've experienced being on Twitch, being in streamer community that maybe you weren't expecting or maybe somebody else in your community experience?

I, I think of actually the, the rail reference from Z, uh, captain rail. He has been part of my cake stream community from the absolute beginning. Pretty much that first cake I mentioned, he joined partway through that project. So he wasn't there for the first one, but he was there near the end. Um, and so he's been around for almost four years now, channel before years in February, I think. Um, and. Yeah, so he's been around for a very long time, but he was just starting his journey with some really painful nerve pain and medical issues around the time he found my stream. Okay. And he has talked about the stream being a blessing to him of like a safe and calm space as he goes through these attacks of extreme pain that he suffers with. Be able to be, yeah, that friend space, that comfortable space, that calm area as he kind of adapted to that new life and also moved cross country and all of that. That one, I hold on to that story a lot. Oh, yeah. Because that brings me, like, stories like that make it all worth it for me. And, like, I had another community member who's not interested in Christianity at all, but she... referred told her mother once that like oh annika's one of the good ones when her mom mentioned that i had christian music playing and like that i legitimately almost started crying on stream when she said that because it was that made it all worth it of man she doesn't like christians but she feels safe being in my community and getting to know me

Yeah, totally goes along with what you were saying is you're trying to create that space for people to have a positive experience where maybe a lot of their other experiences or their information is to the contrary of that.

Yeah. So it's been stories like that that have been big blessings and have made like, you know, the days that are harder worth it of like, man, okay, feeling uncomfortable when I'm trying to like... stream and i feel like i'm not doing a great job or the internet's being terrible or i don't get to stream for seven months and then someone says like oh this helped me i had someone not that long ago mentioned that my streams have helped them through their eating disorder by watching me make cakes and i had no idea because they're a lurker did they say more how how it helped Um, I think I remember it was, you know, that exposure of like positive, positive relationship with food and then the exposure to it. But they were mostly a lurker. Like I, they were not someone who chatted all the time. I think it was one of their first time chatting, like with me really that I, in my channel that they were telling me this, I was just like, I don't even know you and I've done this. What?

Well, and I, I think that that's one of like, i think that's one thing i want to emphasize that that i've really been thinking about in the last month that i don't think every streamer has thought through lurkers are fight and i and i have i already have in my my community lurk is love and some of that was just a you know like an emote and hey welcome in and hey i want you to be a part of this and and also just realizing that you need lurkers to get your numbers up so i was going from that standpoint But you're talking about and I've had two or three times similar things where people have been in the community for a long time, but have not been courageous enough or in an environment that allows them to raise their hand and type in the chat and say anything. And when they do, you realize they've been around a long time and it has been a blessing to them, even if they never say it. And that's one of the things that's hard is going, you know what? Some people might hang out and never say anything and you still could be a blessing to them. So I love that you're saying like, here's a memory I hold on to because I think that's a vital thing. When you have a day that doesn't feel like your stream went well and I don't know if I should keep doing this or nobody's showing up or I'm trying to do collabs and nobody wants to collab with me or I can't quite make it to partner, like whatever it is, the obstacle. It's those stories of things that's like, I would give up streaming if I just had that moment. I would stream for another 20 years with no one watching if I had that moment. Either extreme, to know that I participated in that is just such a super blessing. That's awesome. You've had a couple of those moments of people, meeting them right where they are in life, that's only about your presence, not necessarily about what you're streaming.

Yeah, it, it makes, it makes everything worth it. And it's, and it's so special when people tell you, and I, and I don't know, sometimes I don't know that people always realize like, whether you're telling it to a streamer or you're telling someone just in your regular life, if someone has impacted you tell them.

Yes.

Because you have no idea how you just telling them will impact them and encourage them and give them the strength to keep going and doing the things that they're doing. Because we can so often walk through life thinking I'm maybe a terrible Christian because like I'm just not doing enough or I'm not a good enough friend or, you know, fill in the blank. They just don't feel like they're hitting some mark that they have in their mind. And then all it takes is a friend or a viewer or someone to say, hey, you doing this regularly has made me feel this way. And it's helped me through this thing that for you means a lot, but you have no idea how much it could also mean for that other person. And so I really appreciate it anytime someone's told me that kind of stuff, because as much as I was able to help them, them just telling me that I did that, that builds me up and does something very special for me as well. So I think it's really important that we all do that for other people. because that's a way of giving back, you know, a way of giving back a little bit of that love that the other people showed us, so.

Yeah, absolutely. And we got a few more people jumping in, whether they've been here a while or not, I'm not sure, but bootstraps, boots coming in. And Luce is showing up too, putting the lurk is love emotes in the chat. And Supersonic, I think agreeing with you, we don't realize how much of an impact God makes through our words, actions. See the newest DM, for example, at church, we are celebrating recovery on Friday night. What is shared in a small group stays there, but what people say there, each person can often learn, reflect from, even if it's not not something you said yourself. So, yeah, like small group impact can be vital, but you can't always share that with other people. And and then when you're not there, it's sometimes hard to remember those things.

I mean, even in this conversation, I'm going to grab something from right behind me real quick.

OK.

This is reminding me, and I need to be good about this because I've been really bad at it for like a few years. Guam was a very difficult time. So I went through a bit of a rough patch in Guam, but I need to go back and like put some things in here. And I feel like I would encourage anyone who's watching, just doesn't matter if you're a streamer or not, but also streamers too, especially Christian streamers, like to do something like this. I have this like little journal book and I have written in here, like I'm careful about what I put in here, but I put down times when like, feel like god has used me or someone has said that god has used me i write down that experience in here in this book so that when i happen upon it when i'm moving for example or just if i think of it and i know i'm having a hard time and feeling like i'm a failure and i'm not doing enough i'm not doing this christian thing right i can go back to this journal because it's like well these were all things that I undeniably knew God did and ways that I was used. And I can read through them again. Like I've got like cards from people who have said that like, you know, a prayer was definitely from God that I spoke over them once or just different things. And I have them, I've only got a few pages in, but this journal has been such a helpful thing and a helpful tool that I would encourage anyone to use because. i need to put with the stories i just told you i need to put those down i haven't written them in here and that's a failure on my part so i'm going to leave this on my desk after this i'm going to sit down and do that so when there are the difficult days i don't have to rely on my poor memory because we know from the israelites that our memories are garbage well yeah and we also sometimes intentionally try to forget things so we don't want to remember so yeah So, yeah, I need to do that. And I would encourage anyone else to start writing down the things that God does so that you can be encouraged in the dark times.

Yeah. Another way to also do that is when you're writing prayer, keep a prayer journal. So you're writing your prayer request in there, and then you can remember to put the answer in. that's really important too when you're going back and and that's something you can like pass on to like your kids or grandkids kind of a thing like if you do something like that now the writing things down reflective thing that's not my personality i'm gonna just like short change it i've at most done it when i've gone on mission trips Like I go on a mission trip and I can do some reflective things throughout the trip and write it down. That's about the only time I've found it that I can fit it into. I'll do it. But I've gone from the standpoint of I tell the story often. and going to the point of i want to start making videos sharing the story so i'm going with a more public facing approach to the experiences i've had and sharing like we were just talking about like i want to make the video to share about it i'm going to be on stream i'm going to share about it then i'll clip it so they can get shared again and again with with more people about what's going on and and having those things going on so i don't forget those things mega snorlax x welcome in first time you have what your mom calls selective memory you remember everything video game related you forget everything responsibility related i feel that i love how you word i love how you worded that video game related can remember responsibility what what i'm supposed to do that yeah i i wasn't supposed to do that it's not my responsibility oh that's fun way to put it thank you for coming in and joining in uh glad you're here we're just having a nice chat about doing stuff in twitch and being a christian and moving in those spaces so Thinking again with you moving, I know you were at REACH Conference this year. And if you want to talk about REACH Conference, we can pivot and talk about that as well. Do you anticipate being able to go there next year if you're going to be not in the U.S. for a while again, that that would be something you'd be able to do? Or is it going to be, no, you're going to be away for quite a while and you're going to not be able to be in person with people?

So that was a really tough thing, which was so fun. And it was exciting. I also realized how few people I actually knew. So it was very scary at the same time. Reach was super fun and such a great time. And I was like, I want to do this again. I want to make more than just cupcakes next time. I want to make a cool, like massive cake for it. Like I told Romans, I was like, I want to make a cake next year. Pretty please. And we talked a little bit about it. And it was also like, if I can come, if I can come. because it's you know, it's the plane tickets going to be like a grand. It's going to be like $1,000. Yeah. And after after reach and then kind of like the week following, I was kind of looking at like, OK, how much can I save up per month to then lead up to being able to buy a ticket and looking at it like I can't I, I am unable to save that amount and starting to realize like, OK, I probably can't. I need to start accepting that and moving forward with it. And it was upsetting. And then I was like, well, I, for me, I don't, I don't ever try to push like subscriptions or bits or anything like that on my channels. I don't like it. I, this is just my own personal thing. I don't have judgment on the other people, but I don't feel comfortable with it personally. I have most of my community cannot afford those things. So I don't do anything to push those. So I was like, well, sometimes people sub sometimes, you know, I get a little something. So like maybe if something happens. know maybe some of that money can go towards it and then i can also be saving up my own money we can just see and so i was like i'll just make a i'll make like a little goal counter and i'll put it on the stream and as i'm saving up my own money put it up you know increase it and as like i get the occasional payout i can put that amount in there um i didn't announce the the goal i didn't talk about it i just kind of put it there um but uh speaking of trolls uh tony snark came in that first stream and this is another one of those really sweet blessings of he instigated chaos utter chaos extreme chaos um that resulted in like about 350 of that goal in a single stream which was crazy and i then looked at like what i can save up and what that 300 goes how much that covers and i was like oh Now I can do this. It was like, yeah, I mean, barring any like major issues, I should be able to afford it. And it was so nice for Tony to just be so sweet like that, to be like, no, you have to come back. I want to make sure you come back and the community coming alongside him and helping out in that. So I should be there. That's my plan. Awesome. I will, I will hopefully be making a massive, massive cake. But yeah, I intend to be there, God willing.

Okay, cool. Cool. I knew that there aren't very many people outside the U.S. that have been able to fully make it to reach conference. And if they did, it's going to be a one-time and probably not every year kind of a thing. At this point, I feel really privileged to have been there for the first one and to have been a part of it as it was, and I wasn't forming it. I just knew the people, I knew Romans, I knew Aki. I'd had lots of conversations with the two of them at different times. And then as it was getting started and it was, hey, we're going to try to do this thing alpha. And I'm like, I already planned on doing this. Like, duh, I already wanted to do this. I wanted to try it. So like, hey, so I'm like, I'm all in. Who else? Who else do you need to have a pastor saying it's good you could do this to help convince? Like, I'll absolutely endorse this and help. proclaim that and get that out there and i had no plans on being on stage and then it was just kind of like hey romans do you need anything do you need anybody and it's like do you have all these things covered it's like all right i'll take that one i'll see what i can do i'll share my thoughts on it i don't have a problem being on stage is what i say but it's like It's totally different being in a bunch of a bunch of, I'm going to call them peers for me because it is peers because we're all streamers together. I may come in with a pastor and all of that. I'm not giving out in front to give you a sermon. Like that wouldn't feel like you're my peer. I'm up there as a streamer trying to tell you I'm trying to do my best. And here are some things I've learned. And I hope I'm encouraging you in what I'm doing, and I hope you can apply some of my stuff. But I'm also learning alongside of you as we're doing it, which is some of the most fun. So there is that like anxiety level that I had of of of being there at Reeves Conference, getting up front like nobody knows that, you know, really. They're like, oh, you're a pastor. It's a church. You're up on stage. What's the difference? It's like. Oh, there's a big difference. It's not the same. But it was so much fun. I'm glad you're going to plan on trying to make a cake. Is it going to be exclusive or is it going to be everybody's going to get a piece of cake?

I want to make enough for everybody. And there's talk of getting me access to that kitchen at the church. Hopefully that is kind of dependent on me being able to use that kitchen, but my parents live in the area, so it's convenient for me. All I really need is the plane ticket and the reach ticket, which thankfully J was very sweet. And he bought a bunch of extra tickets and held one back for me. So I already paid him back for it. I was like, well, I guess I'm going.

Well, I did a similar thing. I bought tickets that I'm going to give away. I haven't given mine away. The price was so... Here's what I started out with afterwards. Well, I had a free ticket the first year. I earned a free ticket the second year. I'll get a free ticket the third year. Why wouldn't I? I know how to get free tickets. I'll get a free ticket. And I was like, we were driving back when they were announcing it, and it was like, okay, well, are you going to buy a ticket? Oh, I'm going to buy it at half price. I'm going to jump on board with that. I'm like, yeah, why wouldn't you? And then I slept on it, and it was like, wait, I should buy a ticket to give away. so i can buy a ticket and if i earn one i'll just give away a ticket because i i had a ticket for myself this year that i i didn't pay for i had a ticket that i earned to give away i had a third ticket that i earned but i didn't earn it until the day or the week of the conference you know to give so i gave away the food from that i couldn't give the ticket away but i gave away the food that was included so It's like I bought one and then I thought, okay, I got myself covered. Wait a minute. I have stream. I was telling other people, buy them to give away for your stream-aversary. Buy them to give away from your affiliate-aversary. And then I just said, well, I need to do this too. So I think I've got three tickets. So I'm going to give one away for affiliate-aversary in February and stream-aversary in August. And I'll be able to give those away. So I'm going to have fun with that. And we got a couple of people. who were in the chat talking about being there. Supersonic was there.

I remember meeting Supersonic.

Yep, he stayed at Airbnb with me. And for him, it was not the cost. It was the travel alone and travel to get there and all of the details of all of that stuff. And I helped out a lot with him. And so did Born Again Gamer. This is how sweet people at Reach Conference are. Born Again Gamer... drove from Canada across the border so that he could connect with supersonic, go to the airport and fly together to reach conference.

Oh, that's really sweet.

He could have flown from Canada. It would have been a whole lot easier and simpler for him. Instead, he chose to go that route and help someone else out. And the two of them crashed with me while we were there. Yeah, Western New York. I wasn't going to out you. I was just saying the Canadian border. You can out yourself. And then Warrior of Light, who's in here, came from Honduras. So he's from the U.S. He lives in Honduras. And, yeah, he was able to make it this year. So hopefully he can make it again next year.

Yeah, I didn't realize he came from so far. It wasn't until after that someone had said like, oh, he came from Honduras. And I was like, I had no idea.

Yeah. Yeah. He's like, this is like, this is the fun stuff of being in this community is you get to know people. It doesn't matter where they are. There's a level at which you resonate with them. You have similar experiences. And then getting to spend time in person with them. Like, I'd never been with Supersonic before. I'd never been with Warrior of Light. We'd never met before. I mean, there's plenty of people. And then there's the people like JT. I can't tell you. Take me a minute to figure out how many times I've been at the same conference that Jade has been at. Like, Jade and I do travel in all of these weird circles where we're going to conferences and we see each other. So it's probably six times, I would guess, that I've hung out with Jade. And actually, what was fun is the first one, this is when I was working and had an income. i paid for an airbnb to go to a church planting conference in orlando and so jake crashed there love thy nerd was crashing there lux digital church was crashing there and the church digital was crashing there so i was like i paid for it everybody come and hang out with me

It was a big party.

It was a big party. Yes, it was awesome. So that's the first time I met Jay. And then we've been at every reach. We've been at every NCMS. We've been back to the exponential church planning conference. So I'm losing track of how many times I've seen Jay.

with lux digital church um and that's the one i can't go to and so yeah ncms is like come april i will be crying because everybody will be there and i won't well maybe someone will gift you tickets who knows if god wants you there you know I will have moved already. So it would be tickets and a thousand dollar plane ticket.

Well, I was, I was meaning not just tickets to go, but air airline tickets as well. NCMS is different than, than reach conference. NCMS is broader, not just video game and not just Twitch. So board gaming, RPGs, anything nerdy is where they're at. And that's going to be at a castle and it's Glen Eyrie castle in Colorado. And last year it was a blast hanging out there. So this will be year three for NCMS. So.

NCMS from the outside, cause I haven't been to it yet, but haven't been to reach like NCMS kind of sounds like it's a little bit more less con more conference and reach feels more con than conference.

Yeah. Yeah, that's probably fair to say. The other thing I would say is reach has multiple things going on at exactly the same time. And you're going to miss a lot of things where at NCMS, there's not going to until you get to the evening. and you can go choose your own adventure. There's not going to be a lot of you're going to miss something that's going on. It's going to be one main conference room, and the conference is happening in there, and you get to the evening, and you can have other things that'll go on in the evenings. con like comic-con is not really a conference that kind of idea supersonic is what she's saying so going to a con or entertainment based versus like actual discussions and like serious content yeah convention versus conference there you go mega thank you for that Wow. So any other thoughts on Reach Conference? As long as we were just talking about that, that maybe something that was just a blessing or a surprise. We've talked about a few things, but something that just like, wow, this is going to help you as a streamer or you were able to help someone else as a streamer in a conversation or an encounter you had there.

know that there was anything necessarily that like was like oh this will help like my streams or anything for me it was definitely primarily a like a social blessing samus stayed with me and my parents oh cool so getting to meet meet her in person and spend basically all day though we were both there for a whole week so we got there early and then we left quite a few days after So getting to spend an entire week with her and get to know her in person, as we've been getting to know each other, just like in discord and on Twitch was just really awesome. Cause she's such a, she's such a lovely human being. So, and it was, it was, yeah, it was just really special to get to meet her in person and find that, you know, that, that exciting moment of like, yeah. This is the exact same friendship just in person. Like, it's not weird. It's not uncomfortable. It's just me and Samus. And so, yeah, yeah. The social blessings of Samus and then getting to meet some other people, like getting to chat with you was really lovely. It was all the people that I got to actually finally kind of

break that barrier of just being in someone's chat of like no no here's here's the actual me and i can finally talk to you i can finally like give you a hug and like oh yeah the finally give someone a hug is is one of the best things yeah and uh i was talking about this and i think i've shared in a few places but i i'm gonna keep sharing this the most surprising thing for me was not that oh hey uh aki said hey I want to have some prayer. I'm going to tap all the pastors. Can you stand up front and pray for people when they come up? I'm like, absolutely. Just sign me up. Tell me anything I can do, Aki. That's just what my attitude is. It's like, Aki, how do I help? Romans, how do I help? So he's like, do that. And the first person comes up, can't even talk, just needed a hug. And it wasn't just like a quick hug. I swear, we hugged for like five minutes. And it was just awesome. And it was like, wow, I don't have that happen when I'm a pastor at a church that someone comes up and they just need a hug for five minutes. And then we have a conversation and we pray. It might be come up and they're in tears and I give them a short little pat, you know, and then it's hands off. it was so much more and then it was weird on some level because then every single person that came up to me for prayer started with a hug and not just a hug it was a we're embracing and we're just hugging and i had like six people come up for prayer that i just hugged for like a minute two minutes three minutes i mean like not just an embrace i mean we're just hugging each other and i was like this is so cool i don't know the last time i went to go pray with people and they all started with a hug they might end with a hug or you share something you go oh can i give you a hug this is like the first thing they wanted from me was a hug that was what they needed more than anything else was that embrace and it was like i don't know if i'll ever have that that experience again it was just so cool and such a blessing that's amazing i love that I'm trying to think if there's something that we haven't covered. We've got lots of time, so we can go in any direction with this. That's what I love. I have very few questions. We can chat about them and go wherever the conversation goes. But it truly is just trying to reflect on what God has been up to in the space and thinking where God is moving already, which I love coming alongside of. i didn't know god was moving in the space until a friend invited me into the space and then i saw god at work all over the place and then and it's like i love connecting the people that god is up to so i love that you're over doing cakes um you know let's just talk about that like let's back up you said you had made cakes for a living for a while um yes Was that working in a bakery? Was that working like in a grocery store that had a bakery? Like, how did you get your start on baking cakes?

So I made my first cake was my 16th birthday cake. My sister got married and like I saw her wedding cake and it was all perfectly frosted and that fascinated me. And then a year later she made a fondant cake for someone. And I was like, that's cool. Tell me what you did so I can do it. So she told me like how to make, she made homemade fondant out of like marshmallows. And I was living overseas at the time. I grew up, I grew up a missionary kid. So I hunted around the city trying to find marshmallows. I found marshmallows, but I couldn't find powdered sugar anywhere. I had to borrow my best friend's mom's coffee grinder to make powdered sugar. So I made powdered sugar for her.

I just got a pause and I thought, I've never thought of making my own powdered sugar. I didn't realize if you just put it in a coffee grinder, you can make powdered sugar. Oh, it won't be as fine. It won't be as fine. But I just never even thought of if I don't have powdered sugar, how would I make it? I just go, I wouldn't. Like that would be my answer.

You got to do what you got to do when you grow up in a third world country.

That's cool. I love that. So creative, innovative, problem solving. Love that.

But yes, I made my first cake. I made it with my best friend. People will occasionally see her in my chats under the name Gareth M. I grew up with her. But yeah, I made that. And then I just made cakes as a teenager and did baking and everything. And I loved it. And then I went to school in Canada. I went to school in Toronto. at a place called bonnie gordon college of confectionery arts that no longer exists sadly but i took a two month a two month cake decorating course specifically just for cake decorating because i didn't want to do culinary school i didn't want to do i didn't want to do pastry school because like i can't i can't be around like fermenting bread because i'm allergic to yeast it makes me nauseous oh really yeah so i was like i just want to make cakes that's all i want to do just cakes so this school allowed me to do just cakes and not go into debt in the process and from there i moved to southern arizona with my sister my oldest sister was living there at the time and um I got a job at a bakery and just worked there for about two years after about like six months the main decorator left and I became head decorator plus caterer because we had a catering company with us as well and I ended up getting stolen for that so I did Kate I was the head cake decorator in charge of two other girls and then I was the main catering assistant so I was like Wearing a lot of hats. I worked there for two years and then I met my husband who's sitting over there and he stole me away and we moved to Japan and I just started making cakes on my own. And that's just been my thing as we've hopped from place to place, Japan to England, to Guam, to here and to our next place after.

So as you've moved, have you mostly done independent make cakes for yourself or have you gone outside of the home and tried to find jobs? Mostly just in self-employed?

I wouldn't be able to handle.

Yeah.

I wouldn't be able to handle it anymore. I was in physical therapy once a week, sometimes only every other week, but like... um yeah because my my condition is a joint problem so like my shoulders can dislocate easily i'm always in a lot of pain my vertebrae twist out of alignment it's it's unpleasant so i wouldn't be able to physically handle an actual job in a bakery again so it's always been like from home in england i was an actual registered business with uh with the uk very cool i actually was fully legit for like four years okay But otherwise, it's all just been kind of like, you know, on the side, people ask for a cake and they just pay me whatever I ask and make it for them.

Yeah. So how many boxes of supplies of cake pans and all of that are you going to need to pack up?

I packed it all up on stream a couple weeks ago, actually. I've got, goodness, there's like four totes, four large totes.

That seems like not very much.

They're large totes. They're like deeper than this. They're like a good two and a half feet tall, I think.

Okay.

So there's four of those. There's one of those tall, like plastic pull shelf drawer, shelf drawer things. That's pretty much all my cake pans. There's another smaller drawer set and a few other drawers and a couple of little boxes. And then I've got a bag of. I've got a bag of some specific tools that will go with me on the plane. So that basically, as soon as I am in a house. Yeah. Those are the ones that you don't, yeah.

You don't trust with anyone else, but you need them for stream and they've got to be with you. Yeah. Yeah.

I, I understand that stuff. So it's, it's a lot, like it's a whole wall in, in the kitchen just of. all of the tools.

Yeah. Yeah. My, my, I asked because when I was growing up, my mother baked cakes, so she worked in and out of the home at times. She worked at, you know, the grocery store in the cake department for a while, or she did it from home. When we, when she built a house, when I was really young, she had a double oven, so two ovens so that she could be baking more things at the same time. So she had two ovens and she had like, I don't know how many hundreds of specialty mold pans. So she had a pan to be able to make a cross. So you weren't putting the cross together. It had the little ridges on the side. So it was all, she had the Barbie dress one so that you'd have the. you know what i'm saying like yeah the barbie dress i don't know how many barbie cakes she made when i was a kid and then you have to get the doll to go in the top and all of that stuff as a kid i remember having a john deere tractor cake she made a lot of john deere tractor cakes so she had she had the mold for both sides so you'd make this half and this half and then you would put them together that's why i was like going so how many of these do you have these specialty things

I don't really have many specials. I don't know that I really have many of the specialty ones at all. I have like maybe a heart-shaped one and I have a duck one that I haven't used yet.

A duck one?

I love ducks. I am a duck girl. I got all the ducks. They're everywhere in my house. But yeah, I don't really have a lot of the specialty ones. I don't do a lot of those style. I've done a cross one before in some of those, but yeah, if I do a shaped cake, I'm often doing an elaborate carved situation. I turned this into a cake in January last year.

Very cool.

That definitely doesn't have a custom mold.

What? There's no custom mold for that one?

No, unfortunately not.

That would take some doing to make a custom mold for that. Yeah. If you're doing a candle, not so much. But if you were doing a cake, pull that out and have it stay intact. I don't think that's happening.

yeah i've i've played with those like two-part molds though like i did my family well my grandparents and i have our favorite one of their favorite memories of me making cakes their favorite cake is i tried to make when i was working in the baker's like my first year um i had a teddy bear once like two houses oh yeah yeah yeah she had that yeah the front and the back of the teddy bear i remember that yeah I'd never done that before and so I was trying to make it and I was still relatively new and like it fell apart its head fell off like I finally I managed to put the head back on and I just like piped some x's over the eyes and like it it looks so bad but like my grandparents loved it so much it's like their favorite memory is me just absolutely struggling to make the teddy bear oh that's so fun

Yeah, sometimes the struggle stories are more memorable than the success stories. They really are. Well, the other thing, my mom made so many cakes, and I don't know how many people know, and I've not watched your streams recently, the doming up, you're cutting the top off so that it's flat when you're putting all the layers together. She did lots of wedding cakes. So... we would have like all of that would be ours to eat she's cutting the top off and that would be ours to eat and i like i don't eat cake anymore i ate so much cake as a child i just don't don't eat cake it's like nope i don't eat anymore did you eat one of my cupcakes at reach this year no i didn't i i believe they were gone by the time i got in there

Yeah, there was only like a half.

Right. So I did not take one. I left it for everyone else who was really excited and wanted it. So now if there was enough for everybody, I would absolutely take one. But as a general thing, I don't usually eat cake. I do have a couple exceptions, like a German chocolate cake. I like coconut. Oh, my goodness. Coconut is like one of my favorites. So I'm going to be all over.

I love coconut.

The German chocolate cake, fantastic. Carrot cake, but I don't know. It's only cake in name, you know.

Carrot cake is so good, though.

But it's not like other cakes, so it's totally different. And I might eat a couple others that are just like, oh, I haven't had that in a while. But otherwise, if it's just straight black chocolate cake or it's just white or yellow cake, it's like, yeah, I'm good.

You need my red velvet.

I would do a red velvet. Yes. You bring a red velvet. I will try that. Casey girl.

Yeah. For mine. I didn't get any either. I guess. Cheesecake.

Oh, cheesecake. Well, that's, that's one of those things. It was like, is it cake in name? Is it tea in name? Is it wine in name? I mean, what are we talking about here?

Kind of more of a pie, but I mean, when I do it, it's like, I make it without a crust. I puree it in a food processor into a paste. And then I put that between the layers of my red velvet. So then it is cake.

There you go. Yeah, so that's kind of like my experience growing up was cakes all the time, my mom making cakes for people, the house that we had with two stoves. She did that all the time. When we moved, she then worked out of the house and worked for a grocery store chain for a while, head baker there, cake maker, and then she progressed to working other things that paid more. but then would always bake everybody's birthday cakes that she worked with at work. She would be the one making the birthday cake. They had a wedding. She'd get hired for wedding cakes. She'd do all of those various things. So it's almost one of those things where, I don't know if you have this happen, where if somebody in your family is having something, the expectation is you'll bake the cake, or somebody will be insulted if you did get asked to bake the cake. Why didn't Annika bake the cake? She should have been baking the cake over here.

Well, I don't live anywhere near my family. Right. That's a little different. Now you don't live anywhere. I get to escape that. Family members, when they get married, it's kind of like I have to make it. Yes. So, you know, like my sister-in-law, I got to make hers. My cousin, I got to make hers as well. But otherwise, it's like, yeah, I don't really get to make anything for my family. My dad has a cake he really wants me to make, but it's going to be a lot of work. And I'm like, no, you need to redeem that cake like anybody else in my stream chat.

you don't just get that cake free it's too much work well you know maybe dad would pay you for it you know he'd buy all the ingredients you know set you up with it maybe maybe maybe you do a remote stream from his house and you just stay there and you bake the cake for him at his house and he pays he pays for your ticket to come you know to reach conference and then you just stay there and try to help you out here it's it's it's this funny joke at this point because it's like a really like

It's a cake made of cake pops, and I hate them. I loathe cake pop making those. They're a pain in the neck, and he wants... Do you know of Chili Wreaths?

No.

Like, so in the Southwest, because my family's all from the Southwest, they make like Christmas wreaths, but they're made out of chilies, dried chilies.

Okay.

And so he wants a wreath, like wreath size of like a chili wreath. And he wants all of the chilies to be individually handmade cake pops. And there's a lot of chilies on that. And I'm like, sir.

No. No.

No.

Thank you. I understand why. No.

I was like, he, if he really wants that cake, he needs to be in my stream long enough to earn 50,000 channel points and get it that way. Or else he needs to pay me like a customer. Cause ain't no way I'm doing that.

Oh my goodness. Well, I guess I go down to the artisan market and one of the gals down there fee, she has cake pops that she's always has out. She has some nice ones and then she's got other shaped ones that she does every so often. I can't even imagine doing chili-shaped ones.

I mean... Yeah, no. I've had so many bad experiences with cake pops and mini cakes that I just... Nope. Will not do them.

My mom, sometimes when she sees stuff like that, like cake pops and the cupcake places, she's just kind of upset on the level of like, you know how much work that is and how much you're paying for that? I did so much more work to make cakes and didn't even get a fraction of the amount of pay per hour. to make a cake that this person is getting for making a cupcake you know it's just that kind of like but it's also like mom you live in a different era like you know people weren't buying those things then or nobody was doing it also you can't compare the price of of what you got paid to what get paid today the inflation and all of that stuff but

it's like even nowadays it's hard to make a living off of being a professional cake decorator in your home it's a little easier but when it comes to opening up a shop actually a lot of places make a lot more of their income through classes than they actually do through their cake orders because of just really cake is such a specialized skill set that the cost of not just of labor and of skill is actually far higher than really it's priced and would price out like 90% of people because the reality is it's a very high skill, a very high skill thing, but nobody wants to pay $800 for, you know, a little eight inch cake kind of thing. So that's a lot of people will make a lot more, a lot more of their income when they have a storefront, when they run like classes versus the actual orders.

I had not thought about that. Yeah. In order to price it to sell, you have to sell it below your value. So you have to sell something else to cover the overhead so that you can actually, well, I know just like in general, the food industry is not one that you're going to make a lot of money in. The margins are so small. Labor costs are so high. Your expenses fluctuate so rapidly and you have no control over most of your expenses, which gasoline can go up and impact you. Drought can happen and flour goes up. There's so much out of your control to be able to do it.

limited by manpower too because as one person you can you know some people can do more than others i obviously can do even less than others you're limited by your own manpower and then you start hiring people that also then slims down your you know your profit margins when you need to bring in a second person so yeah with cakes it's definitely unless you're just from at home doing a small business and it's not about making enough to pay your really pay your bills a cake An actual cake business is a very tricky one to make successful.

Yeah. And I think there's a lot of people that can do really well with doing cakes from home and it being more of a side hustle. I don't mean that in a bad way.

I mean, that's what I've been doing the last year.

Yeah, it's it's the my life's my life isn't dependent upon this, but it's crucial to the overall, you know, what we're doing here. If I wasn't doing this, I'd have to get income somewhere else. You know, it's just kind of like one of those things that contributes. And I think the way that a lot of things are in the world right now, the side hustle is always going to be there for many people. There's going to be very few people. that, no, I have one great source of income and I stay at that job my entire career. That's just not going to be a reality for most people. In fact, one of the things we think of, which being a digital missionary is what I call people who are doing this on stream. I don't care whether you label yourself a digital missionary or not. That's just how I talk about it. And we help people to do that, whether they're in Twitch stream or they're in other places. It's how do you go about this? How do you think about it? And one of those things that we have to think through is you need to be bivocational or co-vocational. You're not going to most people be a partnered Twitch streamer who's a missionary, who's able to reach people. Maybe you can be an intentionally really good Christian who streams gaming and be able to be a partner and make enough income. that might be a thing and that's fine i'm not disparaging that but i'm still saying that's going to be very few so how do we help other people called in the space to figure out what do i do over here and how do i have excellence with what i'm doing on stream and and where are the ways that i can learn from other people and how i love the fine people finding new niches in twitch that's that to me is fun So I'm waiting for the person that just does pies. Cause I'd watch that too. I might try to convince my mom cause she's fantastic pie maker. I would love to get my mom and I would, I would set her up so that she could stream. However, she doesn't have internet yet to be able to do it. It's necessary. So as soon as she has internet and I'm able to stream from her house, I might try convincing her to stream. She was actually at my house for Thanksgiving stream this year, sitting off camera, watching me stream, cooking in the kitchen. So maybe I could convince her to do it. I'll have to be her mod. for sure, to make it happen. But if my mom wants to stream, you know, making pies or cake or cooking in the kitchen, I could set her kitchen up and help it happen. She's just got to get internet first.

Yeah, that older generation, especially moms. in the kitchen doing the cooking those always do really really well because there's that there's that familial desire that a lot of people have like those don't have good relations with their moms or miss their moms or their dads and seeing someone of she's their similar age to my parent i miss my parent or i never had this type of parent before or my parent was terrible this person's so sweet and they're cooking and it touches a certain part of people's hearts and i find that a lot of those in the food and drink category especially that are of that generation of that older age they do really well and they really can reach a place in people's hearts that are hurting better than like me just as like a 32 year old can so that that would be really cool

Yeah, like I said, it's going to take some convincing, but I'm not going to try it until she gets internet and I can stream from her house. And maybe even I do it as collab stream with her. I get everything set up, and then I could actually control it remotely. I know how to do all of that, and I could set her up, start it and everything, and she just has to go live and talk. I know how to set it all up. I know all of that would be super fun, but it would also be, it'd also be, Hey, I could, I could hang out with my mom for a couple of hours while she baked something. That would be fun to do.

Yeah. It'd be a special memory build for you too.

Yeah. Or even, even if I ever have grandkids to have them hang, hang out with grandma that way or great grandma, that would be cool. That would definitely be cool. Wow. Hadn't thought about that. Hadn't thought about that. You know, you get to that.

You got a new idea.

Yeah, I got a new idea. Well, that's one of the things I've thought about too. And you said this a little bit earlier on some level of the, now that you're a streamer, you don't want to give it up. Like I have that mentality too. Like as long as Twitch is here, why would I leave Twitch? I know there's people that go to other platforms trying to pursue other things and finances. I'm not talking about that. I'm just saying, like, I have the capacity to do it. It's really easy now that I know what I'm doing. I'm still learning and growing all of those things, and hopefully I'm getting better. I'm figuring out the podcast thing where we're into season two. I'm excited about that. I'm always like experiment with new things like I'm going to do bicycle riding streams. That was a blast. Can't wait to do more of those. But I'm always niching into something new and trying something and all of that. It's like, why would I give that up and not do anything? Yeah. my time is still going to be available as long as Twitch is here in 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, I would never have to quit. I would still be able to continue to do that. Like, man, that'll be really interesting in another 20 years to see how long somebody's followed you for. I was going to go check how long I'd followed you for, but it didn't let me do that. When I hit followage, it didn't show, it didn't share how, how long it was.

I don't know that that's,

set up on the channel yeah yeah well not everything is is is set up that way but it was kind of like you know what you were because you were talking about you had started about four years ago and i was like four years ago that was right after i went affiliate um and i was searching around trying to find people so i was like did i find you that early on i was just curious myself if i had but i don't know i don't think so yeah i don't think so

I didn't run across any, I didn't find the Christian side of Twitch until around this ish time, like the end of my second year of streaming. I was coming up on my third year when I first found Shock the Toast, who then introduced me to Lux, who then opened up this whole side of Twitch for me.

Yeah. Yeah. Shocked the toast. Miss that guy. It's great to meet him in person at the reach conference last year. And, uh, I wish him, wish him so much love. He, yeah, he, he impacted a lot of people that ended up connecting to reach and other places. And that's another thing too, like. the seasons of somebody being on twitch like we're talking about oh man i could see myself staying on here for a long time but there's other people that come and go and that's not a bad thing if you only do it for a season if you only reach people for a season that could be what you're intended to do because the person that got me on twitch is not on twitch anymore so imagine all those stories that i have if they would have never streamed i would have never streamed i knew about twitch But I had no plans on going on Twitch at all. I just looked at my kids in like, you know, older generation, rolled the eyes back in my head and say, why would I want to watch somebody play video games instead of playing on myself? I don't understand. And I didn't go explore it. I just went, OK, the same like and I'm not disparaging the game. This is just built in bias. It has nothing to do with the game. Like, why would I play Minecraft? It's 8-bit. I grew up on 8-bit. We went to 32. We went to 64. We've got 1080, and we're going 4K. Like, why would I go 8-bit? And I don't care if it's actually 8-bit. It just looks 8-bit. Like, I don't even want to look at the game because it's old. In my mind, it's old, so I don't want it. So I know lots of people that love it, but... Like, I've never explored it because I have a bias to start with that just says there's no interest in looking at it. Why would I go further? So I always tease my kids about, you know, why would you watch people play video games? And now I'm on here. And I also teased my son about why are you listening to things at double speed? And now I listen to things on triple speed. So by the way, anybody listening to this on double speed and triple speed, you made it to this point in the podcast. Once it goes live in all of the podcast places, thank you very much. I appreciate you. And by the way, if you go and listen in double and triple speed, you can listen to more. So I totally get that part now. tony snark is in the house hey hello tony were your ears burning i i have a fellow yeah are you talking about the pixelated nonsense that is minecraft yes that's that's what i was talking about i love minecraft minecraft is fun yeah and and i understand the game and it's in its and what it does and what it's trying to do it's fantastic at i just don't want to play it The same way I'm not interested in first-person shooter because by the time it takes me to line up the sights and hold it steady, I've already been shot 10 times. And I've not even played any of the war games. That's just in regular games that happen to have once in a while where you have to target and shoot. Like when Assassin's Creed decided to put a crossbow in there, like, no, get rid of this. I don't want it. Like, I need to sneak up behind somebody and... Or jump off a building and assassinate them. No chance of, you know, stay far away. I'm going to come up close and personal with you. That's how we're going to do this.

It's kind of how I feel in Fortnite. Like, I'll play Fortnite, and I'm really not good at it. I'm really not. But it's fun.

Well, also, I don't like the first-person view. It's just so hard for me. I need to see my character on the screen. And there's that piece of it, too, that just, like, where am I looking? Without my character showing where I'm looking, I don't know which way to look is how I feel sometimes. Okay. you know yeah if i go back to let's see commodore 64 and atari 2600 you know i've been playing games for a while so i've developed a lot of bias along the way let's just say that you got a lot a lot of opinions i got a lot of opinions and i share them freely with anybody who will listen and since you're all here you're stuck listening to me and thank you by the way for making it this far in the podcast everybody Where was it my wife and I were just at? I'm trying to think where it was. We just went somewhere. I can't remember where it was. And they had a whole bunch of video games set up. And we were just like walking down the row of video games that were set up. And there was 1943. And I don't know how many people here know the video game 1943. It was out in the arcade, and then it came to NES. And you're flying a plane around, and you're shooting stuff is all it is. And I remember playing that game, and I remember getting it on NES. And it was when they first came out with some of the non-approved Nintendo controllers. And I got a non-approved Nintendo controller that was a pilot joystick that you could hold that was shaped like a handle with trigger buttons that had automatic fire. And I put that in the game and I just annihilated every, it's like, this game is easy. I just put it on auto fire, pull the trigger and it just keeps shooting. And it was amazing. It's like, oh, it was so good. As opposed to, you know, sitting there hitting it all the time in the arcade. Anyway, we walk past that game and I go, okay, we have to keep walking or I'm going to spend an hour. putting quarters in this game for nostalgia alone. And the brewery we go to has a whole bunch of pinball machines there. And I'm just like, make this off-handed comment. I'm so glad that game is not at the local brewery. I would have a hard time not going down there and blowing money every week. Anyway, and I believe that's probably 32-bit. So it's okay. It's okay. It's 32-bit.

It's an acceptable category.

It's an acceptable, yes. Oh, Tony, you still have your Commodore 64? And I wish I still had my Atari 2600, the original one. You haven't heard of a 1943? Yeah, it's a classic game. Yeah, Tony, exactly. Classic game. What? Shock the Toast is in the chat. Oh, dude. So good to see you. I hope you're doing well. Only a few of us were alive in 1943.

It was just you toast that was alive in 1943. Yeah, just you.

I'm not that old. I'm old, but I'm not that old. All right. I'm just trying to think where I lost the conversation. Now I got sidetracked.

I know. Here, I think. Okay. I think there was something in my brain. Okay. You said something about like excited about like. what like god is doing oh yeah absolutely some things yeah okay i've totally got i've got a topic on there awesome um i'm excited for this coming year like i'm obviously talking about like i'm nervous about it because of what the time zone change is going to mean and everything but i'm also quite excited because of my beginning involvement with the campfire ministries which uh bootstraps boots who was in chat uh a while ago him and malachi malachi also use her name of dr forehead um I have kind of started that with another person and have brought me in, which was really sweet that they invited me to be a part of this. Just like a fledgling ministry as we're kind of beginning to figure out what is our goal? What is our aim? What is our, like the meaning of our mission? Like, what are we trying to do when it comes to reaching other, reaching people? creating this ministry community and some of those things like that have kicked off and that's like with campfires and dragons with our dnd campaign that's going really well it's super fun and building that community and just those plans coming up of being more involved with that and seeing what that's going to look like and what the campfire will be for people and how we can be an impact on those who come into our streams and i know that we're starting uh the account's been created but how it will look is still getting figured out but the campfire ministries is a new account um that i'll be associated with so that's the fifth account that i'm assessed that i'll be live on um and doing different collaborations things on there really excited to see what what that looks like and just so pleased with um getting to know boots and malachi and starting to create this team together and it's just made me very excited for next year as much as i'm afraid of what it's going to look like for the change for my streams i feel the most right now i feel the most driven and purposeful like it feels like they're starting to be more of a path forward of like oh i see like purpose coming on like yes i do devotions on my gaming streams and i'll pray for people my cake streams and all of those things but they're more nebulous things of like i'm a christian trying to keep these incorporated but not so much like here's a path here's a plan here's a what this all looks like and so i'm quite excited for this next year of seeing um how much more purpose god's gonna bring with what i'm doing with the campfire especially with the gaming channel because that's the main channel that that's associated with um so yeah i'm really i'm really excited about what that looks like because boots bootstraps boots is a fantastic human as is oh absolutely um and all the guys that we're doing dnd with are also just fantastic and lovely that's dr level up and saint bear um and ponzi and then also boots um and just that's a great crew it's really exciting they're they're fantastic i love them i joke that i'm the token i'm the token female on the dnd team but i mean it in a loving way but yeah when you when you are you can joke about it you know yeah when you are the only female then you get to make the joke about it yeah exactly exactly yeah and you know partnerships with lux and and things like that because i'm a lux ally so associated with with lux and i know uh what being a lux ally looks like is gonna kind of be going through a transition soon um i don't even know what that looks like either but i'm excited for more you know less nebulous nebulous ideas of what's happening and a more concrete path forward in both of those areas so i'm excited to see what will happen and more ways to get involved with the people who are involved with that because i've found in these streams i'm definitely a coach the toast just like having someone i stream with like like zamper in the chat is on my stream every friday with me we're playing like pow world or star trek online or something and those streams always are really fun because he's really great with chat And we always have really great conversations. Saturdays are usually a campfire stream. I'm with someone else. And yeah, my streams when I have someone with me always do really well. We have the most connections going on in chat, the most fun because I'm just a, I like being with people. So getting more involved with those things is really exciting.

Yeah, shock, don't worry. Yeah, that's a me problem that it was so loud. I need to adjust things. I have to figure out how to adjust levels on alerts and blurp. They all just come into audio and go forward from there.

I can tell you later how to separate them out. Yeah, that'd be great. That'd be great.

Yeah. I used to have them on separate channels and I kept having problems. I was using Rode Unify.

Oh, you can just separate them out in OBS.

Okay, I'll have to figure out how to do that. Yeah. But anyway, I was having problems with when it would try to do the streaming together. It would say, no, that's not a microphone. It's nothing there. No, that's not a microphone. There's nothing there. And I could not get stuff to work. Oh, no. with the with the road unify it just did not cooperate with different browsers and all that's like i just ditched it and went back to there's desktop and there's a microphone and that's it there's no other division of stuff So that sounds really cool. I've thought about the whole D&D thing the last couple of years. I know that Lux Digital Church has a whole campaign and people, and I've thought about jumping in there. And then I realized I stopped playing D&D at third edition. And I don't really, I'm not excited about the learning curve of getting into fifth edition. That's kind of the thought. It's like... I got to sit down and learn the new system.

It's not even 5e anymore. There's a new system.

I know. It's like, no. So I actually had tried to see if I could find locally some old people like me that played third edition. And let's start a third edition campaign. But I don't want to lead it. And it did not prove successful. OBS is native now. Shock. Okay. I'll have to look at that. Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you.

I was just, Oh no, you're good.

What were you saying?

Uh, D and D is super fun. I really enjoyable. I like it.

I have had some fantastic times and it's one of those things where I've thought about this is what like one of my thoughts was is I played Warhammer Fantasy with my best friend from college. I played D&D growing up with my best friend from middle school and high school and other people's like, if I could get those people together online and we could play together on a monthly basis, it would be a blast. And I've not been able to pull that off, partially because I probably have to do all of the work. And it's like, I don't want to do all the work. I don't have time to do all of the work. So it just hasn't happened. But I would be like, I wouldn't be able, maybe I'd get them in the Discord. You know, we could get a Discord channel doing that together and be able to do it. Yeah, they wouldn't let me stream it, which is what I ideally would love to be able to do. It would be hilarious. I mean, could you – Yeah. Like, I'm just thinking about how different that stream – I'd have to have another channel for that, honestly, that would not say pastor in the name. I'm just saying. It would have to not have pastor in the name and be 18 plus because my friends – When I hang out with my best friend from high school, it's one of the few people I'll drop F-bombs on, and I do it because I think it's hilarious to drop F-bombs on him. We ride bike together. So it's usually we turn the corner and he said, here's where we're going to ride. And there's a big hill in front of us. And I'll just drop F-bombs on him because like, what are you doing to me? And so I'll just show my disdain for the route that he's chosen and give him a hard time that way. So it is all intentional. It's not that I'm not controlling my tongue. I'm intentionally letting my tongue go wherever it wants to, to give him a hard time. And I feel that's fun. So- That's how that stream would go. I'd have to have a new channel for that one, I would think. We'd just be streaming with a bunch of people that maybe we would attract a whole different audience instead of a Christian audience.

Flat cap after dark.

Flat cap after dark. There we go. There we go. Somebody might steal that channel. I better go start that just in case. Wait, the F in flat cap is... Dropping the F bomb flat.

Flat.

Flat is a four-letter word. Flat is a four-letter word. I might have to go do that. Put an F back in flat cap. There we go. I love things. Yeah, there's so many fun things that you can do and connecting with people. I'm glad you're connecting with some people in that way so that while you're trying to reestablish your – your new your stream, you have another outlet that's already not relying on you that you just to go hang out, participate in and get to be stay with that connection. That's really cool.

Yeah, it's it's it's special. Like I've been thinking lately, like I can't I can't imagine what my life would be like without Twitch and Discord at that at this point, which tells you how just like completely pervasive into like your life it can be.

Yeah.

Which is wild to me. My life before this was completely different. And now it's this. I'm like, I got into a little bit of more gaming with my husband before I found Twitch. Like, he got me into playing some games when we were in England. This was before 2020. And, you know, it was fun. I was playing Minecraft again. I hadn't played it in a while. He introduced me to Ark, Survival Evolved, the dinosaur survival game. And, you know, we were... doing a lot of video gaming and things and then i found like twitch and streaming and before it was just like i just was you know i had my own little corner of the this l table that we had he had the most space and i just had like a little monitor i know how it creeps it was like my computer yeah we were talking about that my husband's over here with like he's got an ipad he's got his mouse and keyboard and he's got his like he's got a really nice screen and some speaker stuff but it's like very barren over there like he's a gamer But very barren. And I'm over here with massive screen, additional monitor, two laptops right here, all these little decorations. I got Pikachu in the background for strange decoration. And it's like, this was not me four years ago. This would never have been me four years ago. I feel like a different person. And it's really interesting. It's like I... i thought about changing my name to annika legally i don't think i will just because it would make my parents really sad because i love my parents and i don't want to do that to them but it's funny it feels like annika is a more fully rounded version of who i who i am like a part of me that never got to really come out the like really nerdy more weird not so neurotypical person that was maybe embarrassed or shamed is now more out here and loved and welcomed. And I feel more fully me as Annika than I do as like my real name most of the time. And it's wild. I can't imagine what this year would have been like without Twitch.

Yeah, that's really cool. I will say, you know, we were talking earlier and it's about, yeah, I've always known who I am and did not want to compromise who I was and wasn't trying to be like other people. However, when you are the pastor of a church. there is a level at which I can't always show all of me to everybody. And I have to hesitate and delay and think through things before responding that just causes you to sometimes come across as less than genuine. and it's not that i'm trying to do that whereas i do not have any issues with that on stream whatsoever it's like i go off on tangents i like i can't do that in the middle of a sermon like somebody can't make a comment and then i just say wow it's a great question let's spend the next 20 minutes answering that question before I get back to what I wanted to share with you. Like they're all going the Cowboys game. And this, I lived in Texas for a while. The Cowboys game is at one and we better be out of here by 1159 so that we can beat the Baptist over to Luby's. I mean, that was, and Luby's for those that don't know is a buffet restaurant, a cafeteria style that you can go. I was like, you had to beat them to get your lunch. So you got home to watch the Cowboys at one o'clock. uh you know it's like yay i don't understand why that was so great like there's this thing called tivo and you can skip commercials and by the time you get to the fourth quarter you're caught up it's great you don't have to sit there and watch commercials so tony i do love my parents but i don't know that i love them that much and also it's not my mom she could care less she's on my side it's my dad yeah well You know, it's one of those things where it's like you come up with a name, a streamer name. And I was actually just talking with someone who's trying to reevaluate their streamer name. And I've had a couple of opportunities, too, with people who came on intentionally when they started saying, hey, I'm going to be this big shot. I'm going to be all that. I'm doing this all for selfish reasons. And then later said, I started with the wrong motivation. I need to change my name because that's not who I am anymore. And I've got to help one person move in that direction to mentor them and walk alongside of them as they came up with their own name. And someone else came to me and said, I want you to name me. You made such an impact. You need to come up with my new name. Oh, my goodness. That was a tremendous amount of pressure to do that. And, and like, I hope, I hope I pick well. And I, I spent, I want to say three months thinking about and praying about and having conversations and came up with a name that they love, which is such a blessing. And then I just had a friend today that was like, I'm struggling. And I did spend a lot of time coming up with this name, but now this name may be getting in the way of me doing ministry. So how, how do I go through that? I'm like, I don't know. Yeah. Flat cap dapper apprentice. There we go. it's it's the the relationship that you get to have on such a deep level with some people even even to the point like you and i are both like shock is here this is exciting i'm so glad to see you shock the toast haven't seen you Since Reach last year, I'm just like overjoyed seeing you in the chat. What a great thing. And Tony got to, I don't think we had a conversation at Reach. I know we were around each other a couple of times, but I don't know if we had a conversation. And then other people here, it's like, it's just an ongoing relationship building. that you pick up where you left off and there's no necessary judgment of being gone that i feel at times or have felt at times or watched other people's reaction to when when they're a a parent and their kids have been sick or they're a parent of a traveling sports team kid and you've missed church for a month and you show up and say oh hey it's great to see you and what they hear is where have you been even if you don't mean it that way and they respond in a horrible horrible reaction to that and i and i don't see that that level of of judgment of anybody that shows up it's just genuine excitement about i'm so glad you're here this is this is wonderful to see you i've missed you it's it's awesome to know that you're around and i hope you're doing well which feels different than in person

Yeah, I think that the space gives a level of understanding because we all understand that we have our real lives. As much as sometimes maybe we wouldn't want it to, our real lives do have to take precedence and we have to get stuff done or things happen, whether good or bad. And people disappear for a while for whatever reason. And then, you know, there's also the culture of sometimes people ghost, sometimes people leave. And it's almost like we're accustomed to that. Like there's a level of expectation. So when someone comes back, it's not how dare you leave. It's like, yeah, people leave. Like this thing, that kind of thing happens. We're just glad you came back. Like, it's just, it's more like returning isn't the norm. Like leaving is the norm. So it's normal.

turning isn't so then it's the excitement that's a great thought i had not realized that that perspective i love that that makes a lot of sense that makes a lot of sense and there's also i've had like i think the first time i experienced that kind of i didn't feel shamed for coming back or you know or for missing was because of time change it was australia went two hours away from us because we went forward they went back or whatever it was in the fall yeah fall back and they went forward all of a sudden i'm the the streams i watch are two hours different i'm not watching them anymore and then the times change happened back in the spring and i showed up back and everybody's just so excited to see me i was like I felt really loved and missed and no, no shame about where have you been and why haven't you been here? Just like, and I was like, I think that was the first time that I fully identified the level of community that happens in Twitch. And it was before I started streaming that I saw that. And it was like, it was just really, really cool. Yeah. Plus, a lot of us are in different times like that.

I have like my very first ever Twitch friend is Australian. Okay. And this big, small world. And he does food and drink streams and D&D streams. And I was in the same time zone as him, like exact same time zone. So we'd be in each other's chats. It was fantastic. We were Twitch besties. We both started streaming within a couple months of each other. We were always neck and neck with followers. We got affiliate around the same time. We had so much fun being like, oh, Annika's about to hit 500. Y'all go help her. And then when he was almost at 500, it's like, oh, y'all go help Michi. So he'll get 500. And we were like each other's little cheerleaders. And then I moved here. and i i can't watch his streams anymore because of the time zone and it's really sad and there's been a few rare occasions where he streams at a time where i'm like oh i can actually pop in for a few minutes and like say hi and it's always just excitement it's like she's back annika's here yay even if it's really five minutes oh exactly yeah even if it's five minutes the the pop-in is so much fun i have

yeah i i love the pop-in so i i i don't get to watch streams late at night very often because i go to bed at 10 at night um and that's just a thing that my wife and i decided when we first got married we always go to bed together we we don't go to bed separate so when she's not home i can stay up I don't have to go to bed when she goes to bed. And I usually can't sleep if she's not here. So I stay up intentionally later. So like last week, she was gone for work. So I was just popping around. Actually, it was this week. Earlier this week, she was gone. And I'm just popping around watching people that I just saying hi, jump over to somebody like watch for 10, 15 minutes, jump over to somebody else and say hi and hang out. I was just making the rounds like, hello, everybody. How are you? It's after bedtime and I'm here. uh and then if it got into a conversation i'd hang out for a while and if not i moved on to the next one and it just depended on what was going on was like it was like i got to go visit a whole bunch of people i just got to go visiting and hang out it was it was pretty cool maybe like the olden days of popping by someone's door and just oh yeah for like a quick coffee Yeah. Like when I, when I used to live in an apartment and you just pop by and say hi to the neighbor next door, or when you lived in a dorm, I never lived in a dorm. I, I always was apartments, but that whole, like I would watch that when I'd go to friends in the dorm, like you're just walking down the hallway and you pop by and say hi to the person that's in there. Even if you're just walking past the, just the pop in quick and how you do and hope you're doing well is actually a fun thing to keep building relationship with that gets overlooked. I think. well we've been going for a while any last thoughts or things that we have not brought up that you'd like to to share i don't know hey i can't think of anything i mean unless chat has something i can't think of anything Well, I just don't want to leave anything unsaid that you were thinking about saying that you could be sharing. So I have had a blast. I just love sitting and chatting with people, if you can't tell. And it's fun. Chat, you've been awesome. Love all of you hanging out with us for this time. It's been a blessing. We will be in prayer for you and your move and the all of the you're going to have to start over again. You're going to have to figure out your schedule. I was just thinking maybe when you move, you'll be able to hang out and your friend from Australia because the time will be more conducive to hanging out there. So there'll be a there'll be a reconnection that'll be able to happen because of the move. But one thing I do like to do with whoever is in the stream is ask them if they have someone we can go and raid. Someone that you know that we can go and bless. So do you have anybody that if you want to take a look real quick and see if they're around that we can go and raid? That way often for both streaming and we're collabing, we get a double raid to them, but we won't have that today.

So many people.

Yeah, sometimes there are lots and sometimes there are not many. So...

guess it would be a question of like what who do you normally like to rate out to after these kind of after the podcast i usually let the the guest pick somebody and often introduce me into somebody i don't know hmm okay and let's let's go for okay so gusty j i'll put their name in okay put the name in the chat i do not know gusty j I found them through positive and negative CPU. Oh, okay. They're super fun. High energy person. But their, their stream is always really enjoyable.

Okay. Gusty J is doing Donkey Kong Bonanza.

Yeah, he does a lot of retro gaming.

Okay, cool. Well, we'll go out and bless Gusty J. See, dude, I'm trying to remember if I have. Yeah, I do have raid commands. I was just thinking, do I have raid? Yeah, I do. I don't think I always remember to do those on this channel when we raid out. So there's raid commands if you want to raid out. Yeah, this podcast will be out in the first of the year in all the new places. So Control-Alt-Redeem, redeeming the space and redeeming the culture. That's what we're seeking to do and help people to do. So what a privilege it was to have you on here, Annika Skakery. Go check her out. What's your gaming channel? Is what, Annika's Gaming?

Annika Gaming. Annika.

Okay.

Campfires and Dragons and the Campfire Ministries.

All right. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Let me start the raid and we'll throw the credits.