Sidewalk Conversations
"Let the one who thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall..." (1 Corinthians 10:12)
Standing strong and remaining true to your calling is no easy task. No one sets out to crash and burn. In fact, it's actually the opposite, most people want to stand strong, remain effective, and be true to their values all the way through to the end. But, it is really hard to do.
In these interviews, Piet Van Waarde (a 40 year veteran of pastoral ministry) has heart-to-heart conversations with ordinary people about what it takes to stay faithful and effective in the things that matter most.
Sidewalk Conversations
An End of Season Update with Piet
Piet shares personal and professional updates as Season 3 comes to a close, including recent cancer treatment developments and exciting new projects on the horizon.
• Recent visit to Mayo Clinic revealed a "suspicious spot" on Piet's bladder requiring follow-up in August
• All other cancer tests came back clear, showing last year's surgery was likely effective
• Launching 90-day health and fitness challenge with Otto Hernandez comparing vegan vs. meat-based approaches
• Follow the challenge on Facebook group "Keep on Healing with Piet Van Waarde" with daily themed updates
• YouTube content now organized into five channels: Sidewalk Conversations, Pocket Prayers, The Cancer Pastor, and Piet's POV
• Studio renovation planned for July, so join us for a pre-recorded series call the "Genius of the And" with Shaina Zavala that is releasing during the upgrade
• Successfully completed first 16-week "Building Resilience Against Cancer" course with applications open for the next cohort
Support for these initiatives available through the Van Waarde Foundation via Patreon
Hey friends, we are coming up on the end of season three and it has been such a great time and thank you for joining us, and so I thought it would take some time at the end of the season to share a couple of thoughts about things that are going on in my life, things that are going to be seeing happen here at Sidewalk Conversations, and so this will kind of give you a little recap on where we've been and what we're thinking about for the future. So let me just begin with a personal update. Some of you who've maybe followed some of the work that I've been doing and the things that I've been experiencing on other channels know that I recently just got back from Mayo Clinic. I've been dealing with cancer now going on five years, and a year ago I had a pretty major surgery where they took out my kidney, my ureter, where they took out my kidney, my ureter, my prostate and lymph nodes, and during that surgery they tried to capture all the cancer that was in my body. And for the first several visits now this year so that was in May of 2024, the first few visits this year in 2025 have been really encouraging and I've been essentially cancer-free, but in this last visit that I did just a few months ago actually just a month ago now, it feels like a few months, but just a month ago I came back and they discovered that there was a spot on my bladder that they called the suspicious spot or pimple, and they are a little concerned about it. And because of things that had already been going on with my bladder, they didn't want to do a biopsy until they had a little bit more evidence because it would create some more challenges for the bladder. And so in three months, in the first part of August, I'm going to be going back to Mayo and I am asking for people to pray with me that that little inconvenient news would be nothing more than hey, it was just a scar or a pimple and there's nothing to be concerned about. So I would definitely appreciate prayer on that front. I do also want to rejoice, however, because there were so many other good pieces of information I don't want to lose sight of that. So all the other tests and scans came back clean. So my urinalysis, my blood tests, my PSA, the PET scan that they did all of that were clear and gave me a lot of reason for hope that the work that they did last May was indeed effective, and the kinds of protocols that I've been participating in since then have served me well. So thank the Lord for that and thank you for joining me in prayer during this last season. So that's the personal update.
Piet Van Waarde:Now, when I got back from Mayo, I decided, okay, I'm going to need something over these next three months to keep my heart and mind occupied on something that's both fun and positive, and so I want to tell you about a little 90-day health and fitness challenge that I'm doing with my good buddy, otto Hernandez, and so essentially, what we've decided to do is that we are going to go head to head, using different approaches to deal with health and fitness. So over the years, both Otto and I have had a little running conversation, maybe even debate, about what's the most effective health and weight management approach. So Otto is essentially on the vegan side of the equation, so he's 80% vegan, he allows help meat every now and again, and I'm on the other side of the equation. I'm very meat heavy and am low on carbs, and so we thought, well, this would be fun. Why don't we take the 90 days between when you got back from Mayo and when you're going back to Mayo and use it as an opportunity to do a little test to see which approach is best. And we'll throw a little competition in there. We'll make fun of each other a little bit, and so that's what we are doing.
Piet Van Waarde:So we started on June 1st this 90-day challenge and if you want to follow that little competition, we are kind of posting the results of various things on a Facebook page called Keep on Healing with Pete Van Ward. You can easily join that group and then you can get a daily update on the things that we're doing. So we have a measurement Monday. So we took pre-diet measurements of our waist, our chest and all the various things. So we have that review every Monday. Then we have Tally Tuesday, where we're looking at our body fat composition, weigh-in. Wednesday, of course, when we'll be doing our weigh-in. Tiny man Thursday, where we'll be talking about our diet, exercise and our diet plan and showing different pictures of the meals that we're doing. And then Friday is Fun Fact Friday, where we'll be sharing our exercise routines, and so every day we'll have something we're posting and we're really excited about it.
Piet Van Waarde:In fact, if you'd like to be a part of the work that we're doing on the side. We've created a little GoFundMe page, and so we're calling this the Purpose Driven Health and Fitness Challenge Pete and Otto Against Cancer, and so you can vote for the various approaches. Like, if you're more on the vegetarian side yourself, you might say, hey, I'm voting for Otto, and you can do that through a contribution. Or if you're like, no, I'm a meat guy too, I'm all about keto, you can do a vote for me, and then we'll just kind of use all those resources to help fund the work that we do with other cancer patients. And so if you want to be a part of that, you can check it all out on Facebook, on my own homepage, pete Van Ward, or on the group page, and I'll put those notes down on the bottom. Keep on healing with Pete, all right.
Piet Van Waarde:I also wanted to let you know another thing that we have another project that we're working on that I'm super excited about. Some of you may be aware that I have a variety of initiatives that I've been working on, particularly in the area of video. So I have a podcast, I do pocket prayers, we do something called the Cancer Pastor, which is a day in the life of various scenes and various parts of the process of dealing with cancer, various environments and then, finally, something that I just recently added called Pete's POV, where we talk about faith and relationships and cultural issues, and all of that now is found on my YouTube page. So we have five different channels to represent all those various points of focus, and my wonderful brand strategist, doreen Jenmark, has done a great job in organizing that page and making it look very professional, and I want to invite you, if you haven't already had a chance to check that out, to go ahead and look at it. If you would like, you can subscribe. We are posting content pretty much every day in one of those channels and so you can keep up with all the things that we are producing, and then you can have an opportunity. If you feel like there's something there that's valuable to share with others, you can use that as a chance to share some content that you hope will be an encouragement to them, because that's a whole lot of the reason why we are producing this content we want to be a blessing and encouragement to people who are dealing A with cancer or just need help with prayer or are interested in a variety of perspectives on cultural, relational and ministry-type challenges. So love for you to check that out, subscribe, share and like. That'd be awesome.
Piet Van Waarde:Also wanted to let you know about the studio that we are getting ready to transition. So we have been in this setup for a number of years now and I have a great team of people and they've been saying hey, pete, what do you think about doing a little update? How about kind of bringing it up into the next century? No, no, I'm not saying that They've been great, but they said you know, maybe a little refresh would be good. And so I've talked to some donors who have been willing to help me create a new stage setup or a new studio setup, and you'll get a chance to see the picture that we've kind of using as our sample and this is going to be what it looks like when we're done. So we're going to take the month of July to reset the studio. So we are bringing in some new furnishings, we're bringing in some new lighting and some sound absorption panels and the whole thing. So we're going to kind of raise it up a notch and hopefully provide an even better and more compelling environment for the conversations that I know many of you found so meaningful. Now, fret not, because even though we will be down in July with this setup, we have pre-recorded a set of interviews that I am so excited about presenting to you.
Piet Van Waarde:My good friend, shana, is a person that I work with at Shoreline. She was the creative pastor there at the same time I was on staff. She's just a fun, articulate, thoughtful person, and she came up with this idea of how do we navigate the black and white either, or kind of mindset that is so prevalent in the world today, and so we have come up with a series of four sessions where we talk about the genius of the and it doesn't have to be either, or it can be and and we talk about all kinds of things. We talk about this in the health and fitness space. We talk about it even in the space of dealing with racial challenges. We talk about it in ministry, and so I'm hoping that you might tune in for Sidewalk Conversations in July, and in the time slot where we normally post these interviews, you will now find that interview four different sessions around that same topic, and I've already seen the previews of that, and it is super interesting, if I don't say most of myself, and I think you will really enjoy it as well. So tune in July for Shana and Pete on the genius of the, and I also want to talk a little bit about the cancer resilience course that I just finished up.
Piet Van Waarde:This past spring, so we had the inaugural run of a 16-week course called Building Resilience Against Cancer, and it's a course that provides a video segment that you receive every Monday. It's a seven to 10 minute video segment on a varied set of themes related to what you do when you have cancer and how do you deal with it, how do you talk to your family, how do you pray, how do you fight with your doctor, all those things and if you know somebody who might be interested in participating in the next round. We are now receiving applications for that course, and so I want to encourage you. If you have some interest in that, you can message me personally, and I will put my email in the notes. Or if you want to contact me through a messenger on Facebook or Instagram, you can certainly do that as well. Any one of those platforms will get you to me, and I would be glad to help you get more information about what that entails. I can just tell you that the 16 weeks we just completed.
Piet Van Waarde:Every single person said this was life transforming. It was what they needed at the exact time they needed it. Now, a lot of times, cancer patients particularly those with like a warrior mindset feel like they have what they need, with family and friends to support them in the journey, and certainly that's really important. But there's nothing like being in community with fellow warriors, people who get it, people who you don't have to explain it to or apologize to. They'll let you be sad, frustrated, mad or rejoice when you have good news or when you're struggling with what to eat or how to use a protocol. A lot of great information in that group and I heartily encourage you. If you have any interest at all, please check it out. I think you will really be blessed and helped by it.
Piet Van Waarde:Finally, I want to invite you to consider supporting the foundation that makes all of these resources available. The van ward foundation has been set up to provide the resources needed to continue doing the work that we do. So you can imagine, with all the resources that we've been creating, there's a great team behind the camera that is doing a lot of the work to make this look good, sound good and then to distribute it in all the places it needs to be. I could not do that, but thankfully God has been very gracious to provide me a team that helps put the content together, and that team is funded through the Van Ward Foundation. It also works with all the various projects that we have going on, whether it's the studio refit or any of the other projects that we do in the community, the pastoral care that I provide individually to families.
Piet Van Waarde:All of that is made possible by the Van Ward Foundation, and so if you've been at all helped by any of these resources, or you just want to say hey, I'd like to make sure that these resources get to the right people, then you can support the foundation, perhaps best through the Patreon website. So you can look me up on patreoncom, slash Pete Van Ward, and that will take you to the page where you can make monthly contributions and also one-time donations. So thank you for considering that. All right, that's a wrap on season three. We have a couple of more interviews before we break for the summer, but thanks for joining us. I'm so grateful that you're here. God bless you and look forward to seeing you again.
