Special Rocks: The Grotto of the Redemption Story

This week at Sunnyside, Troy tells the story of some very special rocks in West Bend, Iowa - The Grotto of the Redemption and shares come insight on some rocks of his own at Sunnyside. Plus, he finally published his first newsletter to subscribers with exclusive videos detailing and touring his "Henhalla" hen house and the Akaushi Wagyu herd, plus a throwback video on how (and why) one can make Challah. If you're a newsletter subscriber - enjoy! If you're not yet - well, what are you waiting for? 

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SPEAKER_02 0:17

Hello, friends and neighbors, and welcome to Sunnyside. Well, it's a new week and we've got some things happening at the end of the week that I'm pretty excited about. Uh this weekend I will be uh officiating uh my uh officiating a wedding. It'll be the second wedding that I have officiated, and uh looking forward to it once again, uh family friends, uh, and just looking forward to um being, I guess, a part of the ceremony, being invited to be a part of the ceremony, and um just having the opportunity to uh I guess officiate and then oversee the the union of um our friends Riley and Shay uh as they step into matrimonial bliss and looking forward to that. So that's something that um I've I've done once before. I've I've had a pretty good success story here going on with my uh with my wedding officiating, which in Iowa Um you do not need to be a uh ordained minister. Uh you can take a you can, I mean, I think Conan O'Brien did it. So 15 years ago or whenever it was, I did officiate another wedding uh for my uh brother-in-law and uh my sister-in-law. And so uh that wedding has stuck and been pretty happy with that situation. So track record, pretty good. Not doing it very often, uh, but look forward to uh being a part of it. And so uh yeah, that's what's happening this weekend. So I'm preparing um my deal for that. And uh when I said Conan O'Brien did a thing on YouTube, I did that too 15 years ago. And I was like, I think you have to be ordained, which is uh really ridiculous. Um now that I've grown up in my faith and different things, I was like, I don't know if that's so you can just make up things and and and it's not even necessary in Iowa to say it's just uh to be an official or an officiant of a wedding, you just have to sign as the uh oficiant. That's that's all that's required in the state of Iowa. So uh I guess that uh was an unnecessary uh step that I took. And um, I'm glad that um I'm not claiming to be any type of uh pastor or preacher. That's that's not my thing. I'm just a layman, man. Um, but what a uh what a week it's been. Now, the good news is is that um for those of you who have subscribed to the newsletter, it has come out. It has come out today. Yes, it's two weeks late. I realize that. I know that. This is the story of my life. The story of my life is I can't write a newsletter on time or finish a building project on time. So, you know, I'm not a contractor, but I do a lot of building. And, you know, so if you were to hire me, which I'm not advocating and or soliciting at all, uh, it would take so long uh for me to get done with that stuff. Same thing with these video projects and other stuff, but it is out. There are two videos that are up. We'll post more. And if you're a part of the newsletter, you'll get to see um those videos because they are unlisted. And if you've got the link, you'll be able to see it. The only way to get the link, of course, is to be a part of the newsletter. And so this uh this week we'll talk about uh we'll introduce you to the cattle that we have and uh kind of the operations that we've got going, some future plans. And then, of course, we're also gonna talk about henhalla. So that video is um uh in the links as well. So if you're a member of the news, the Sunday Snight Farms newsletter, you'll get a chance to see uh in person what's going on. Now, eventually, I suppose we will release these videos in different formats or maybe shorter formats, uh, but it'll be several months down the road so that uh, you know, you can build that YouTube following. I guess that's an important part of business these days. But uh, I want to share it with my avid listeners and subscribers to the newsletter first. And of course, subscribers to the newsletter is probably also interested in, you know, how they can buy some of that beef and uh some of the other things that we've got going on, maybe just out of general curiosity or interest. And so thank you if you've already joined and uh the newsletter is out, may be hitting you as soon as uh this uh comes out, actually. So so there you go. But this past weekend uh we ended baseball for uh Sun number four. Uh high school baseball for us in uh this part of the uh state is over as they uh were defeated on Saturday night, and um the Indians lost to the Indians, I guess is what the two mascots were uh over in Pocahontas, and Pokey won and Four City lost. And that is the end of baseball. And so now we roll right into football. On Friday night, uh was uh part of the uh Waldorf Gridiron Club uh third annual golf tournament, in which I did not golf, but I had the opportunity to go around and uh sell uh different raffle tickets and that type of thing and be a host and had a lot of fun. And actually, you know what? I kind of prefer that because I am a terrible golfer. I have a golf cart, so I was able to ride around and uh talk to people, but uh didn't have to do the hard work of golfing and getting frustrated on a regular basis. But on our way over uh to the um uh to the to the game on Saturday, um Heidi, my wife wanted to stop by a little town in along the way called West Bend, Iowa. And West Bend is not the home of the uh famous line of cooking products that Zig Ziggler made famous, but rather it is home to a very unique and inspiring um monument to faith uh and redemption. It is the grotto of redemption in West Bend, Iowa. It is the largest man-made grotto in the world, and it truly is uh inspiring. A breathtaking hundred-year-old spiritual masterpiece crafted from literally millions of dollars worth of precious stones, crystals, and fossils. And what a place! Now, this is not the first time that I've been to West Bend. Um, I'd been there as a kid with my parents. I'd been there uh once before, uh not a few several years ago. My wife and I passed through uh on another trip out uh to western Iowa and uh stopped and visited it. I uh did send some uh truck drivers out there uh when COVID happened and I was running the 1133rd Transportation Company for the National Guard. Uh, we had to, we we were not able to go out of state um for our annual training, the two weeks in the summer that you always hear about with the National Guard. And so, because they were truck drivers, we uh decided that uh the young truck drivers should learn uh the entire process of uh planning a convoy, planning the route, uh doing the briefs, um, figuring the expenses, all the loads, the everything. And so um they spent time doing that, then they briefed the leadership and uh then they executed their plan. And I got the opportunity to ride out with them. And so this was done by lower-level enlisted uh people that were maybe, you know, just a year or two or three into the National Guard and had never had that route planning or convoy planning experience, but ultimately that's what truck drivers do, and so it was a good training exercise. And so um one of the places that we uh that they chose to go to uh was the uh Grotto of Redemption in West Bend, Iowa. So I've seen it in a number of times, um, but every time that I go, it is just it's awe-inspiring, and there's just there's no other way to to uh to put it. And it walks you through uh the scenes of um Jesus' life uh from um birth to resurrection, and it is just and I don't I mean it's just this amazing it's this amazing uh carefully placed pile of rock that you can walk through, and there are steps to go up, and there are uh pathways to go uh along and to see the different vignettes and scenes as told from the Bible. And it is just amazing. If you have not been to the Grotto of Redemption in West Bend, Iowa, I certainly encourage you to add that to your bucket list of uh travel plans, and uh they are open all the time, year round. Uh obviously, you know, I've the colder weather makes it a little more challenging. I think one of the times that my wife and I stopped by was uh during the football season, later in the football season, as we were headed west, and so that um uh gave us uh a little different experience. This time we were there with uh uh my mother-in-law, Heidi's mom, as we went out to the baseball game, and it was like 90 degrees, and so uh uh much different. They have a beautiful pond that serves a purpose. It's beautiful, hey, it's practical, it has a purpose, and it also is pretty. And that uh pond helps with their um making sure that it's uh uh drained properly. And so, in a hundred years plus, this huge pile of rocks that was built, it's built next to a beautiful Catholic church, and um it has not settled at all. Uh so uh miracle on top of miracle and good planning, good engineering, and really the labor of love of uh one uh or just a handful of men who have made this uh thing part of our our cultural history. And uh, if you're in Iowa, it's an easy day trip to go see the Grotto of Redemption. If you're uh in the Midwest, it might take a little bit longer. There's not much for uh uh accommodations in West Bend. They are prepared for you there at the church. They've got the gift shop, they've got the museum, uh, they've got guided tours, and uh those take about 45 minutes, and they're the people that do that just love it. They've got the pond that's right next to it that has uh you know got swans and uh and also signs that uh remind people that swans uh can bite, uh which probably Martin Luther found out at some point, I suppose. And uh it's just it's just an amazing place to be. And I want to tell you about it. That's gonna be our subject matter today as we talk about things that uh we like to do, the uh life, liberty, and the pursuits which make us happy. And man, I can't think of a more honorable pursuit than uh the lifelong uh expedition, the work, and the love that went into the building of the Grotto of Redemption in West Bend, Iowa. And so, without further ado, let's talk about that. You know the story of Iowa, and you know the endless horizons of corn, the rich black soil, and the steady, quiet rhythm of the American heartland. It is a landscape of horizontal perfection, where the earth meets the sky in a straight, predictable line. But if you drive up into Cassooth County, up where the wind blows hard off the northern plains, you will encounter nothing that defies or something, I should say, that defies the very nature of our prairie. You'll see a mountain of stone rising out of the cornfields, a fortress of jasper, quartz, amethyst, and petrified wood. It is the grotto of the redemption. And now let's talk about the grotto. To understand the mountain, we must first understand the man. The year was 1897, a young German immigrant named Paul Matthias Doberstein. Doberstein? Doberstein? I think it's Doberstein. And he was a seminarian in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was a young man of deep faith, intense intellect, but also frail health. Severe pneumonia took hold of his lungs. In the dark, feverish nights of the late nineteenth century, medical science didn't have very many answers. As the young seminarian lay gasping for air, staring into the abyss of an early grave, he made a solemn covenant. He turned his eyes heavenward and promised the Virgin Mary that if she would intercede for his health, if he were permitted to live and become a priest, he would build a monument to her honor. He promised a shrine that would tell the greatest story ever told, rendered in the very bones of the earth. He survived. The fever broke, the lungs cleared, and Father Paul Doberstein never forgot his receipt. In eighteen ninety-eight he was ordained his assignment? A tiny wind scraped parish in the remote settlement of West Bend, Iowa. And when he arrived, he found a modest wooden church and a vast, empty lot of flat prairie. To anyone else it was just a vacant patch of Iowa dirt. But to Father Doberstein, it was the canvas for a lifelong obsession. There's a good chance I'm gonna say his name six different ways as I tell this story. For over a decade, Father Doberstein did not lay a single stone. No, the local parishioners watched their eccentric young priest with a mix of curiosity and skepticism. He wasn't building, he was gathering. He became a collector of geological wonders. Every spare moment, every meager dollar was dedicated to accumulating those materials. He traveled by train to the black hills of South Dakota, descending into dark caverns and scaling rocky peaks. He traveled to the mountains of Colorado, the deserts of the southwest, and the rivers of the American continent. He did not want ordinary river rock. He sought the exceptional. He filled rail cars with massive boulders of rose quartz. He gathered glistening stalactites and stalegmites from subterranean caves. He acquired deep purple amethyst geodes, iridescent copper ores, ancient petrified logs, and chunks of ocean coral. By nineteen twelve, the vacant lot next to Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church was no longer empty. It looked like a geological scrapyard. Dozens of rail cars had emptied their heavy exotic contents onto the Iowa soil. The locals just shook their heads. They whispered. They wondered what the good father intended to do with this mountain of jagged rock. Then, in the spring of nineteen twelve, without blueprints, without architectural drawings, and using only a common trowel and a concrete mixer, Father Doberstein mixed his first batch of mortar. He pressed a fragment of glittering quartz into the wet cement. The work had begun. It would not stop for the next ninety years. Father Doberstein did not build like other men. He did not draft plans on paper. He claimed the designs were locked inside his head, whispered to him by the architecture of creation itself. He worked in the freezing cold of Iowa winters and the suffocating humidity of Midwestern summers. He had a singular uncanny talent. He could look at a jagged, twenty pound chunk of raw amethyst or jasper and instantly know exactly where it belonged in a wall forty feet high. He mixed a special formula of concrete designed to withstand the brutal freeze and thaw cycles of the northern plains. He would place the structural rocks, pour the heavy mud, and then, while the concrete was still wet, he would meticulously encrust the surface with precious stones. He didn't just place them randomly either. He grouped them by color, texture, and brilliance to create depth, shadow and emotion. The grotto was designed as a physical manifestation of the spiritual journey. It was to be a narrative in stone, leading the pilgrim through the fall of man and the ultimate redemption offered through Christ. As the years rolled on, the structures grew. The grotto of the Garden of Eden, the grotto of the Ten Commandments, the Grotto of Gethsemane. Each section was a separate chapter in a massive, sprawling book made of rock. The sheer physical labor was staggering. Father Doberstein worked fourteen hour days. He lifted thousands of tons of stone by hand using primitive pulleys, wooden scaffolding, and sheer unadulterated willpower. His hands grew calloused, his back grew bent, but his vision remained crystalline. A work of this magnitude cannot be sustained by one man alone, though Father Doberstein certainly tried. In the nineteen twenties, a young parishioner named Matt Sarenzinsky began helping the priest. Matt was a quiet, hardworking soul who possessed a deep respect for the father's vision. For decades, Matt served as the muscle, the steady companion, and the co-creator of this stone miracle, hauling rock and mixing concrete side by side with the aging priest. Then came the year nineteen forty seven. Father Doberstein was growing old. His eyes, which had spent half a century discerning the beauty of crystals, were beginning to dim. His hands, though still steady with a trowel, were losing their strength. The parish knew the work was far from complete. Enter Father Louis Greving. Father Greving was assigned to Westbend as an assistant pastor. He did not ask to be a geologist. He did not train to be a stonemason. But when he looked out the rectory window and saw the aging pioneer still wrestling with boulders of quartz, he realized his destiny had changed. Father Grevine became the apprentice. He learned the secret mix of the concrete. He learned how to see the stones through Doberstein's eyes. Under the elder priest's tutelage, Grevine transitioned from a caretaker of souls to a shaper of rock. When Father Doberstein passed away in 1954, at the age of eighty-one, he left behind a monument that was already world famous, but still unfinished. The mantle fell entirely upon Father Greving and Matt Sarandinsky. They did not falter. They continued to build, to expand, and to polish the vision for another fifty years, ensuring that the promise made in a Milwaukee hospital room in 1897 was fully redeemed. So today, when you walk through the grotto of the redemption, you are walking through a three-dimensional geological encyclopedia. Experts estimate that the grotto contained samples of over 250 different varieties of rocks, minerals, and fossils from nearly every corner of the globe. There are Brazilian agates sliced thin to let the sunlight pass through like stained glass. There are massive green copper ores from Arizona. There are rare shells from the South Seas and fossilized sea life from ancient evaporated oceans. The financial value of the materials alone runs into the millions of dollars. The artistic and historical value is simply immeasurable. But to view the grotto merely as a rock collection is to miss the entire point. Father Doberstein used the beauty of the earth to reflect the beauty of the divine. When you stand before the crucifixion grotto, the climax of the entire complex, you are looking at a structure that rises thirty feet into the air. It is encrusted with the finest crystals, sparkling in the Iowa sun like a constellation of stars brought down to earth. Within its recesses are life-size statues carved from pure white Carrera marble, imported directly from Italy. The contrast is deliberate. The raw, jagged, colorful chaos of the world's rocks surrounds the pristine, smooth, suffering purity of the marble figures. It is an assault on the senses designed to provoke an awakening in the soul. It is a place where corporate executives from New York, farmers from Nebraska, and tourists from Tokyo stand side by side in absolute silence. They come to see a curiosity, and they leave having experienced a sanctuary. There is a final quiet irony to the story of Father Paul at Steinstein and his magnificent grotto. For fifty-six years, this humble immigrant priest built a shrine that attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world. He created a landmark celebrated in magazines, newspapers, and travel logs. He became a legend in the world of folk art and religious architecture. Yet throughout his entire life, Father Doberstein never owned a car. He never sought fame. He never took a penny of profit from the millions of tourists who came to marvel at his work. He lived in a simple room, wore patched cassocks, and ate the plain food provided by his parishioners. They may not have thought it was that plain. He gave his health, his youth, his sight, and his strength to fulfill a promise made when he was just a dying young man, gasping for breath. He proved that with enough faith a man can move mountains. And if he has enough patience, he can rebuild those mountains into a testament of love right in the middle of an Iowa cornfield. And that is how a young man's prayer became a prairie wonder. Father Paul oversigned kept his word into the heavens. And in doing so, he left the earth just a little more sunny than he found it. Now if I was Paul Harvey, I would say now you know the rest of the story. But I'm not Paul Harvey, he was a great one, a legend, and that is a great and wonderful story. Um I think it was inspired on our part, this last journey to West Bend because uh of our Sunnyside Hollow project that we've got going on. Uh we bought some gravel pits that are little ponds, which our dog loves to swim in, and in which our dog likes to swim. Um that sounds better. And um we don't have seashells because it's not a sea. Uh and and Heidi loves to go shelling. Uh if we go on vacation uh uh on a on a shore somewhere, she loves to find then uh the just the shells. She's really good at it. Uh she's gotten into that. It's a little hobby of hers. She kind of knows what the different shells are, and and uh you would think then that we would have lots of shells like most women put them on the back of a toilet for some reason. We do not. That's not where they they go. She's got them um and uh different cool travel display stuff that she does. She's really talented at all of those decorating things. Um, but um we don't have shells at our pond, um, but it is our little shore close by. And um we do have rocks because it's a it's an it's an it's an old gravel quarry. And there's something interesting about the Midwest that uh whether it's the glaciers or however it got here, there are so many uh patches of of gravel. Uh, and you see them along the roadsides in the interstates, these these little lakes, these little ponds that are along the interstates. That's places where gravel existed, and they used that as a base for the interstate system. And now people, sometimes now people are building on them, and and they are like nice, nice little ponds. Uh, we've got a couple of them uh that are uh nearby, and uh that's our Sunnyside Hollow project that we're working on uh to develop as pasture around it for our cattle um and uh just fun for our family and also for our friends as well. So um we're looking forward to sharing some of those videos with you if you're a member of our newsletter to hit that one more time. The Sunnyside Hollow uh process will continue to be a star of uh future videos. But um we we're she's now gotten into um picking picking rocks along our this you know this little beach that we've created, uh, which is gravel. And um it's kind of a you know, it's not a it's not a pretty sand, it's kind of a typical uh sugar sand from from Iowa, uh kind of brown with the uh colors of you know who knows what. Um but lots of different types of rocks, and she's gotten into this geological um, you know, hobby of of picking stones and identifying them and then now tumbling them and uh polishing them. And uh we're looking forward now in our it takes a month to do this, and these tumblers are just tiny little cans. Um you put one, you know, a small, like maybe a quart, maybe a quart, maybe it's a just a I don't know. I guess a couple pints would be a quart. Maybe it's a pint and uh of of stones in this can that's designed to just roll on this roller unit continuously, uh, and each week for a period of four weeks, uh you you just let it do its thing. You put in the media, uh, which is what they call the the grit that uh that kind of cleans the rocks and and wears them down, and uh there's the heavy grit at the first week, and then you come down and then the second week, and so for an entire week you don't you don't do anything. Uh you don't really know what's going on. You add some water, you know, and and the media with the rocks, and then you just tighten the lid and let the thing spin uh and roll for you know an entire week, and then you check it, and then you change the media and add more water, wash things off, see what your stones look like, do it again with a different type of media, and then the repeat, wash, and rinse and repeat uh for the third week, and in the fourth week, um they polish. And that is what is happening right now. And so she's polishing stones that she has found uh in lieu of seashells by our not seashore uh at Sunnyside Hollow. And we're excited to find out what they look like. So I'm sure, I'm quite certain, that that is why she was so interested and adamant that we needed to stop by on our way to Pocahontas, leave a little bit early, and see the grotto of redemp of the redemption at West Bend in West Bend, Iowa. And so uh she did not take any stones from the grotto. That would not be uh legal or right in any way, uh, but she was fascinated by the collection of all these different types of rocks, the agates and the quartz, and uh boy, you name it just the uh different. It's it's quite amazing. And then, like I said, all of this uh petrified wood. And so she has found some petrified wood um in her little um search as she looks and collects these little rocks and looks forward to um polishing them up and seeing what they ultimately turn into, uh finding geodes, finding the the agates. We have those. She's not interested in granite. You know, she's like, oh, granite, and she throws it back down. And then um, but of course, there's lots of quartz, uh there's different things with mica in it. There's just an amazing stuff, uh amazing amount of rocks out there, and you never really pay attention to what's in a rock, or or or what they even what they even might mean, or how they even got there. That is an amazing and huge, huge question mark. How did they even get there? Why are they now so small? Of course, if you're out in the fields, as most of us uh that grew up on the farm, you have picked plenty of rocks up out of the ground, and they just seem like a real pain in the butt. And of course, there are different things that you find in this part of the country where the plains Indians were, and you'll find different stones that have got uh the little holes in them that were created over many, many fire starting situations. We've got a lot of this thing called chert. Um, and chert is what uh is the stone that the natives would use to make their uh axe heads, their arrowheads. Uh, it was easy to chip, and so when you look at an arrowhead, that is called chert in most cases. And so uh we've just got a ton of chert, and she's gonna see if you can, she's gonna experiment if if she what that looks like if you polish that up uh in the next cycle. Now, uh the thing I've noticed is that my wife, who is uh since she was a little girl, has always been impatient with these processes. Uh, she would uh open presents that were under the Christmas tree and re-wrap them perfectly just so she could know what was in them uh and nobody would notice that she had rewrapped them and probably wrapped them better. That's why she's such a good gift wrapper uh to this day. And uh I don't think she does that. Well, now she knows what's in every gift because she does most of the gift buying. Um, but this process that takes a month is really testing her patience. Um and um and what's what's so um interesting about it is that I'm glad that she's into um looking for rocks, looking for their special characteristics. I once found we have got a lot of stones around our in our landscaping, and they're all field rock, and then um, you know, some river rock, obviously, all that stuff. But uh what is the significance of of rocks? I'm not sure we've got one giant boulder on the back end of our landscaping around of our around our barn that I had written uh in Greek uh Peter on it, because Peter in Greek would mean um the rock, uh upon you know which my kingdom is built, right? So uh that I wrote it in marker, and it lasted for about four years, and I've noticed it has washed off. So my intention is to uh chisel that in there. I'd like to put that little carving on that rock that it kind of you can't see it from it's on the the opposite side of the road. That's a great big boulder, and I'm gonna I'm gonna chisel it in there. I got a little air chisel. I'm no Doberstein, Doberstein. Doberstein reminds me of the the old Mel Brooks movie, uh Young Frankenstein. Frankenstein. Um so I apologize to all of the uh the parishioners and the the fans of uh the Grotov re the redemption. If I failed to say that German name correctly, I I should have had it figured out uh maybe before I did this podcast, but I didn't. So what can you do? It's like the Bible in a year when I read that some pronunciations were good and some pronunciations maybe not so good, and uh, but the story is still the same. And and so whether it's chiseling, I'm no uh Doberstein, Doberstein, but I uh will chisel Peter in Greek into they probably probably would prefer Latin. Um, but um I'll chisel it in Greek because it looks cool. You don't know what it necessarily means because you don't read Greek. Um like I don't read Greek, I just know how to you know write Peter on there. Uh that to me uh is another one of those little follies that we have going on. The opportunity to leave a mark on something that means something uh in this world long after you're gone. And boy, what better way to do that than when you say write it in stone, that is that is the message, isn't it? And stones and rocks and all of these things that have created the grotto of the redemption in West Bend, um, really do that. You really do stand in and you just stand in awe uh and the age of these stones and how did they get there? Well, we know they were hauled in by rail cars in some cases, um, and searched about or sent and delivered and gifted um to the to the church to continue and to complete this project. And the love that it takes to keep this project going is phenomenal, and the volunteers that that make it all work for that small uh community is amazing. And the church is not some uh it wasn't like in 1897, you know, it wasn't like a uh a wooden church in the in the prairie. Uh it's now a beautiful uh cathedral uh in uh in that style uh with uh some uh outbuildings as well, all all all beautiful, very, very beautiful, and I'm sure uh inside from what I understand. I didn't go inside, uh, but uh they have um a all of like the most valuable stones are are in there in another grotto that is inside of the church itself. And so all of that is open to the public to view, uh to take a look at and to ponder um the truth of the story, the greatest story ever told, uh uh in stone and in um just the bewilderment of the amount of labor and love and decades, nearly a century uh of labor to complete. Uh it took more than one lifetime uh in this case to accomplish, just to tell a story, to make good on a promise. Um, and um and what what a what a tribute. That's truly what it's for. That's that's an that's making a mark and leaving a mark more than just you know trying to chisel something into a into a boulder and pondering where all these little rocks came from and what their story is and how they got here, just like you and me. Uh what a wonderful, wonderful experience. Uh if you haven't been to the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, uh go check it out uh and and and make it a day. Um maybe give yourself uh you know a couple hours uh to really maybe two or three hours, maybe if you want. Uh like I said, the guided tour, which I recommend, is like 45 minutes, uh and you get all the insights, the stories, and the correct pronunciation of all the people involved, for sure. A wonderful story and a wonderful uh day and a wonderful week as we look forward to going into uh the weekend uh and being an efficient at a wedding and starting uh a whole news story uh that hopefully uh is uh just as strong as the stones that I've just been talking about. And that is it for today, my friends. It's a shorter podcast. Sometimes we go an hour 20. This time we go about 40 minutes. I hope you have a great week. If you're a newsletter subscriber, enjoy that newsletter, finally, and the videos that come with it. And of course, you'll get updates when we make new videos and post them, which we intend to do so you can stay up to date on everything that we've got going on here and see it for yourself on the sunny side of life. Until then, my friends, have a great week. Stay busy, keep your hands calloused, praise God, and of course, be the sunny side of someone else's life.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

When the shadows fall and doubts begin to creep, remember together with strong every week. Lift your neighbor up with kindness every day. Let your actions speak the words you want to say.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

The Sunny Side of Life is a weekly production about our life on the family farmstead here in Iowa, the liberties we prize, and the pursuits which make us happy. None of this is possible, of course, without Christ in our lives. For the Lord God is our style and our field. He gives us grace and glory.