Episode 49 | Luke Sanders — Faith, Fatherhood and Purpose

In this episode of the Rain Brings Growth Podcast, I sit down with Luke Sanders, also known as @skywalker.life, to talk about faith, fatherhood and becoming the man your family needs.

Luke shares his story growing up in a small town in Northern California, being raised in a large faith driven family, and transitioning into a Mennonite lifestyle that shaped his values, discipline and perspective.

We dive into the difference between religion and relationship with God, the importance of focusing on Jesus over denominations, and how men can lead their families with strength, purpose and integrity.

Luke also shares his experience moving to Uruguay for mission work, navigating culture shock, adversity and growth while building a life centered around faith and service.

If you are a dad looking to get stronger mentally, physically and spiritually, this episode is for you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Yeah, thanks, Luke. Thanks for coming on, man. It's been good knowing you. It's uh coming up on a year that I've known you. We met at the tattoo shop and then uh just been growing and doing some other stuff since then.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

So literally.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Yeah, it's been yeah. Yeah, started going to the gym with you a little bit and you're going to 3D now. So if you ever look at all my podcasts, like half the people are from 3D. It's pretty cool correlity in there, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Nice, nice. Yeah, they're a good group of dudes in there.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Yeah. Yeah, dude. So uh let's just hop into it. Where are you from and you know, where where'd you grow up?

SPEAKER_00 1:00

So I would have been uh born in southern Cal. Um Fallbrook, I don't remember being down there. My folks moved up to northern Cal when I was like maybe two. Okay. So yeah, small town, Ukaya area, kind of by on the coast, northern Cal. Redwoods. Oh definitely pot area. My dad uh was a CHP at the time. So yeah, he had a lot of uh activities. Yeah, so your dad was a cop then, uh highway patrol? Yep. California Highway Patrol, yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

How long did he do that for? Uh he did that for 18 years. Oh shoot. Right on. Yeah. What was that like being uh a cop's son?

SPEAKER_00 1:37

So well, from the coast when I was four, my folks would move to Alturas, which is the other, well, you know, for we went from the Western California back to Eastern California when we made that move. So up in the northeast corner of California, Oregon, uh uh Nevada border. So about as far northeast you can go, California. So which is really cool out of the out of the area, um middle of nowhere type of thing. So pretty awesome. That's when I would remember my dad really being a cop, more or less. Um, he didn't come home with too many stories. Um the ones he did usually involved rattlesnakes. Really? Yeah. I don't think of like Northern California's rattlesnake country. Yeah, it's uh yeah, there's there's a good amount of rattlesnakes. I I think he felt those were probably safe stories as compared to some of his other ones. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

How was uh highway patrol life from he like ever uh you know, get in any close calls or like um anything like that? I figure can't talk. California would have some pretty interesting stuff on the highways.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Yeah, and that's a big reason why he moved to northern Cal is to get away, get his family out of that kind of stuff. Um especially in Alturas. There wasn't a whole lot of you know all these high-speed chases and stuff going on. It's pretty low-key, a cowboy town type of area, but definitely they had their share of drunks and crackheads as well. Um, it's still a California, so yeah. Um, even though it was redneck, yeah, definitely couldn't remove ourselves from California completely.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Yeah. Um, what was that small town life like?

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Um, kind of one of those things where everybody knows everybody just about, you know, it's uh growing up there, you know the ranchers and their families and stuff. And if you didn't know them, then there's usually a connection, like, oh yeah, you know, and or if you saw someone around town, it's like, hey, who's that? Oh, so-and-so got a new girlfriend from out of town or something, you know. Um population there is about 2,800. But uh, but yeah, it was great. Um, we lived outside of town, and so when dad would come home when he was a cop, we'd wait in the driveway for him, and um, he'd pick us up in his car and turn on his lights and come in the driveway. So it was yeah, we'd get rides in his police car once he came home, kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Did you have uh siblings growing up?

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Yeah, yeah, so um two older sisters and about uh five younger siblings. Oh dang. So was that eight? Uh there was a well, might be off. Six younger siblings, because there's a total of nine of us. Oh, she's yeah. Dang. So yeah, me and my sisters did a lot. Um, tree forts, you know, running around looking for arrowheads. There's a four-year gap between me and my younger brother. So me and my two older sisters kind of hung out a lot.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Okay. Yeah. What was that like having so many siblings growing up?

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Um It was a riot. It was good. I mean, it was good. Yeah, I mean you just um, yeah, lived with it and had a lot of fun times, had a lot of sibling times too.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Yeah?

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Like getting into trouble with your siblings or what?

SPEAKER_00 4:48

You guys getting into um I more got in trouble with my sisters. Oh, okay. Um, my two older sisters, because the younger ones, by the time they got old enough to get in trouble, us older ones were kind of helping mediate the situation more or less.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

So Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Yeah. What was some of the crazy stuff you and your sisters got into? Oh boy. Um, well, we were homeschooled, so it's not like that we did a bunch of stuff in town, kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

But um uh yeah. Well, our house was kind of like home alone, I guess you could put it that way. There was always booby traps everywhere. Oh, okay. So usually involved when we'd get in trouble, it was usually because somebody got injured. You know, something fell down on their head, or got something thrown in their face, or you know, had a toothpick propped under the foot or something, you know. Yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yeah, I know uh you were you're you're pr you know, now you're very big into faith and everything. How was it growing up? Did you guys were you guys all into faith then too?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Yes, very much so. Um my folks were raised Catholic and um they were married in an um evangelical type of church, and so they kind of merged from Catholicism into um non-denominational, and when we lived in Alturis, it was more Baptist, is where my folks would have gone.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Okay. So yeah, I'm still trying to get all figured out with like what the differences are between like I mean, because like Catholics still believe in Jesus, but then I'm not sure where the differences are. I don't I don't know, like so what is the differences between I honestly don't know a whole lot of what you know the Catholic belief system is.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Um I I know we'd go to church with my grandpa different times, and it seemed like they were always standing up and sitting down or kneeling, and I was always freaked out I'd do something wrong and they'd kick me out or something, but yeah, I never knew when to stand up or what was going on. Yeah. But but it was all good and never got kicked out.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

So yeah, I don't understand uh a lot of the differences between between like the different denominations, even in just like the Christian area, because like you think you got Baptists or Protestants and all that. I I'm just too new to even know what the difference is between all those right now.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Well, and and honestly, I I think that's uh a good thing to not be super aware of all the differences because we should, in my mind, we should be focusing on spreading the gospel and pointing people to Jesus and and not looking so much at the differences because it's super easy to hyperfocus on that. Yeah. Um, and when you do that, then you start using those structures as a form of measurement, as in like, oh, they do this, so that means they're like less holy, or we do this over here, so we're better, you know. Yeah, and we're not supposed to compare ourselves among ourselves, you know, Paul says. So um I think it's easy to get sidetracked on what our mission is here on earth when we start looking at all the different denominations.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Yeah, I heard uh one of the pastors I like to listen to, Joby Martin, he said one of the greatest, one of the greatest accomplishments that the devil ever had was having denominations and separation in between everybody.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Yeah, that that's an interesting thought. I haven't spent a whole lot of time kind of looking into that thought to see if I agree with that, but off the cuff, it sounds very a very straightforward way to put it. Yeah, I mean, I don't have a problem with folks living the way they if they feel they need to live a certain way. Like, hey, this is how somebody needs to live. That's between them and God. Yeah, so I mean I get that, but when that's used as, like I said, a measurement of righteousness, yeah, as in because I could do it this way, yeah, I am now up here and you're down here, type of thing. Right. That's where that's where Satan has fun. I'll put it that way.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Yeah. So growing up, you were um pretty heavily involved in with with the church and stuff. Were you guys uh like doing, I don't know, what do you guys do?

SPEAKER_00 8:56

So I mean we um didn't do a like a whole lot of the different church activities, like camps and stuff, like they do different youth camps and stuff. Um, we weren't really involved in that, me and my siblings. Um, but that's where we went to church was the the Baptist church there, one of the Baptist churches there in Alturis. And then um probably when I was nine or ten, my folks were looking into the Mennonites. And when the Mennonite church, when the Mennonite group started a church in Alturis, when I was 12, that's when they would have joined the Mennonite church.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

And what is that exactly? I mean, I've heard the term Mennonites before, but I don't really understand. Like, is that just another um like religious denomination, or how is that it is uh you're familiar with the Amish, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

So hundreds of years ago, the Amish would have pulled out from the Mennonites.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

So the Mennonites were uh the OGs and Yeah, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

And um the Mennonites and Amish specifically would have come over to America for religious freedom because they were getting killed for where'd they come from? Um, Switzerland, uh Germany, uh the UK, England. Okay, Europe area. Yep. Okay, yep. And uh and so that's when they would have come on over um to America to escape persecution. So um that's kind of some of the history. I'm not a whole lot into Mennonite history, I know a bit of it. Um, but they would more a more correct term might be Anabaptist, is because they would have pulled out from the Catholics at the time, basically because they would have believed infant baptism didn't really count um and the Catholics participate in infant baptism. Right. And so the Anabaptists at the time would have said, hey, when you give your heart to Jesus, that's when you should be baptized. Um and so they started baptizing um people who wanted to live for Jesus and get kind of you know renewed in their faith kind of a thing. And the Catholics didn't like that at the time, and so they were starting to you know drown them or burn them at the stake, cut off their heads type of thing.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Oh really? Oh yeah. I didn't know all this part. Is that um I mean I I've heard of like the the witches being burned at the stake. Is that like the whole same time era and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Or no, that would have been later. Um this this would have uh the the whole Salem witch hunt thing is kind of yeah, yeah, that would have been um later. It it would have kind of overlapped a bit, but that would have been more from the Puritans rather than the Catholics.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Okay, yeah. Yeah, I don't know my history then. I guess I gotta read read up on that a little bit. So the the Amish separated from the Mennonites, and then what's the difference between those two groups?

SPEAKER_00 11:42

So currently a big difference between the two is Amish would um not have like electricity connected to the grid, for example, or like a generator. Um they aren't allowed to have vehicles or like technology. Um, but they can have tractors as long as the tractors don't have rubber tires. So you know, don't ask me why. It's just some of these little interesting tidbits.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

What do you make a tire out of then?

SPEAKER_00 12:11

It's a steel. Oh, okay. Yep. So they can yeah, I don't know. I don't know if that's because you know, so they don't drive it on the road and use it as a vehicle, keep it in the field kind of thing. I don't know. It's just and maybe that's changed. That's just and uh there's different branches of Amish too. Yeah. So there's the white, I thought is it the white buggy Amish and the black and the orange or they're only all gangs. Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting. I've never, but I'm not I wasn't born or raised into this type of denomination, so yeah, I don't I don't really know a whole lot about the Amish specifically. It's more but the big differences are a lot um technology, electricity. Yeah, yeah, that's a big thing. So what's what's the commonalities then? Um nonconformity to the world would be a big thing. So like being stress dressing very plain. Um another one is uh women would have their um head veiling, keep their hair covered. And um that would come from First Corinthians from Paul um saying that women should keep their hair covered, kind of a thing, so and keep um for God and for their husband kind of a thing as a form of modesty.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Is that also the the clothing part of it too? Is that in in the Bible too then? Is that what they're going off of?

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Just just uh just being modest and yeah, just trying to live a modest and um respectful life kind of a thing. So that's and then you know there's different branches of Mennonite too. Some dress, some are very similar to the Amish, where they might not even have cell phones. Um and some Mennonites are incredibly progressive. I I don't know any of them myself, but I know there's like Mennonite General Conference where they um might even have um gay couples in their church. So it's it's a very wide spectrum. So um gotcha. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

So you you were your parents got into that when you were like into 12 years old and they say that's when they would have joined the Mennonite Church, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

And this would have been a lot more of a conservative group. So what made them want to make that switch? Um a lot of it had to do with just trying to protect their children from just how the whole public way is going right now, you know, just getting them into a healthy environment to, you know, raise their kids and um was it pretty bad back then? Because that was like what 20 years ago then?

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Or 20 plus years ago?

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Hey, I was just a kid, yeah. I was just living life and having fun, right? So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Yeah, because you're in a small town in in Northern California, like yeah, so and it's like you know, I don't I don't know specifically all the reasons why mom and dad would have joined. Um another big thing with the Mennonites is um non-resistance, so they will they don't participate in like um anything military, or my dad retired from the police because that was a requirement for him to join the Mennonite church.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Oh, really? Okay. So is it it's kind of like a selection process to get in? Oh, what do you mean? Like it was a requirement. So like there was uh there was things you had to do to be able to get into the church then.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Well, just just to they so there's like a standards, they have different standards, and as long as you're you know following those standards kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. How was that transition for you guys as kids then? Going from that the normal or not normal way of life, but just what you guys knew is normal to changing up. How was that as like a teenager then?

SPEAKER_00 15:52

It was confusing. Um a number of the things that I would have thought was okay at the time, I found out they viewed as wrong kind of a thing. So um, I mean, obviously I'm not a Mennonite now. So, I mean, I I'm okay with them believing that, but I didn't necessarily agree with different things that they would have said was right or wrong.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Just like your dad being a cop or something?

SPEAKER_00 16:20

That would be one of them. Um another thing was um like the strict dress code, for example. I mean, I was okay if they wanted to dress like that, um, but I didn't think it was wrong to, you know, dress otherwise as well, as long as we were honoring God kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Right. Yeah. So were you uh rebellious on that then? Or did you just go along with it with the city?

SPEAKER_00 16:42

I just went along with it. Yeah. Um, I was very much of a or I tried to be very much of a peacemaker kind of a guy. I mean, I don't I try not to look for confrontation. Although if it needs to happen, then I try to face it type of thing.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Yeah. So how was that then? Um, was it like you guys moved to another community, or were you guys still in the same spot? You just was a church was different. The only thing that was different was a church then.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Yep, yep. Yeah, it was just right there in that community. Um and it was a very small church, and they started their own school, and so from sixth grade to ninth grade, I would have been in the Mennonite school.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

How was that? Um, interesting. Yeah, well, so um, well, I'd the one thing being homeschooled is I always wished I would have had more peers, friends, kind of a thing, because it gets kind of lonely. You know, you don't I mean you have your siblings, but you still you want friends your age, kind of a thing, to guys to have mud fights with or yeah, you know, do stuff with. So um then going into the Mennonite school, um, I had two other students in my grade the first year. And the second and third year, the school size decreased pretty much after that to where it was just me, my siblings, and one other student.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Oh really? Yeah, so it's like homeschooling.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

It was just like homeschool with a private tutor, basically, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Yeah, yeah. So that's only but that only went till ninth grade then, and then you had to go to a regular high school?

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Uh no, that's when I graduated.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

Oh, you graduated in ninth grade? Yeah. Dang. Okay. So your your manhood then started at like what 15, 16? Because then you go and get like a real job and stuff then, or what?

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Um, so I would have worked summers uh on a Hayden crew for a local farmer.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

Um before that, like when I was maybe probably 13, 14 is maybe when I would have started. And then when I was 15 and graduated school, that summer then I would have been on the hay and crew all year until it shut down. The tilling part shut down, maybe around it just depends on the rain. But like let's say October. And from there, during the winter, then when I was 16, I worked for a uh a guy who had a furniture shop, helping build furniture.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Yeah, did that for the winter until um haying season kicked in again.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

So do you still get a high school diploma then, or is it like is something separately that since you're homeschool or a different menon? Is it is the Mennonite school recognized for a high school diploma?

SPEAKER_00 19:11

I did get it is an official school. Um, so I did get a high school diploma. Um, but I also got um steady to get my California proficiency certificate outside of that because I was like, you know, just in case, I just wanted to make sure I had all my ducks in a row as far as certificates go if somebody required that. But nobody's ever asked me for it yet. So yeah. Okay. But I do have that uh California proficiency certificate in my back pocket if I need it. So what do most kids do after they graduate then at 15? Um, they work for either their dad or work for one of the fellas in the church. You know, it might be a mechanic, uh, maybe a lawn care company or like me, custom farming. Okay. There's a lot more of that where more Mennonites are back east. A lot of dairies and farms and stuff. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

Because you never really leave that community then? Is that like the Amish thing too? Because I know like they have once you're pretty much in that community, you stay there. Well, the Amish they have rumspringer, right? So you can leave for an amount of time. I don't know what the exact rules are on that, but then you come either you stay with the the common world or you come back to your community, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:18

So I'm not too familiar with that. Um, Mennonites generally don't do that, so I'm not too familiar with what that consists of. Gotcha. Um, but um, I mean, but you can I mean I worked for a year in Kentucky when I was 19, 20. That's where I would have met my wife to be. So Oh, okay. Yeah. What got you to go out there then? Um, there's a Mennonite publishing house, Rodden Staff. It's somewhat famous for its homeschool literature. And they wondered if I could work back there for them. It's it's semi-volunteer. I mean, they do give you a wage, but it's pretty low. Yeah. And they have bo room and board. So yeah, I worked back there for a year in Kentucky. It was uh really enjoyed it. Okay. Yeah. And you met you said you met your wife then? Yeah. All right. How'd you meet her? Um, she worked there as well. Yeah, I worked up in graphics design and she worked down in uh bindery, it would have been called, where they actually make the books. Oh I was like designing the books and and she was with the crew down there making them.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

When you were growing up, what did you want to be then? What did you want to do for a living?

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Boy. Um that's a good question. I honestly don't know. You know, I was just living my life. I didn't, yeah. I didn't really think about it. Just just going through? Yeah, just just trying to just trying to get through life.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

All right. Yeah, I mean most people like they just have like some kind of a well, I guess because your dad was a cop, so I thought maybe like you would have had maybe any uh kind of a wanting to do the cop thing or we're no, I guess because you're in when you're a Mennonite, then you're that's just out of it.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Yeah, yeah. See, I my options I felt were kind of Limited, um, because you know, a lot of a lot of the things the Mennonites would have done at the time would have been like family businesses kind of a thing. So I I wasn't quite sure what would have been allowed, so that's kind of why maybe I felt a little bit in limbo. Gotcha. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Okay, cool. So you got that opportunity then to go out to you said Kentucky? Yeah. Right? Okay. And then uh you met your wife. What was it like when you met your wife?

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Um, well, she seemed like a nice girl. Um, first time we would have met would have been in an elevator when we were going to sing at a nursing home. We'd the youth group from the church there would go sing at the uh hospital and at the nursing home on like maybe Sunday evenings or something.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

And yeah, so about the first two weeks after is when I would have yeah, been in a youth group and yeah. Because she would have been teaching school at the time. She taught she was a teacher, she taught school in the winters, you know, during school season. In the summer, she'd work at the place where I worked. Gotcha. So do you guys go and what was it, singing hymns or something?

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Yep. Yep. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 23:08

Brought a few hymn books and and Mennonites are very much into four-part harmony. So it's all a cappella, no instruments in church.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Oh, really? Mm-hmm. Nothing. Okay. So it's uh how does that work? You guys just straight sing or is somebody like doing I don't I don't know how this works. Yeah, no, no, no, no, go for it. Um, so like you'd say a cappella, so I'm just thinking of like the movie Pitch Perfect of like they have some people that are like doing like noises and sound like music, and then you have people that are singing.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Okay, so no, definitely no beatboxing. Okay. Uh um, so in the Mennonite church, the seating is segregated for the most part. So the women sit on one side, men on the other. And uh let's say the service starts, church service. So you have a song leader that go up, and maybe a modern term would be a worship leader, and he'd blow the pitch and start leading time. And the men would sing uh tenor, which is higher, and bass, which is lower, and the women would sing uh soprano, which is higher, and alto, which is the lower part on the woman's side, and just harmonize with the different notes in the songbook.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Yeah, I know you when we when you get to talking, like you know all the songs and everything, like you and Jim. Uh you know? A lot of hymns, yes. Yeah, I don't even. I'm like, what are they talking about?

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Yeah, a lot of a lot of the uh a lot of the old famous hymns. I I I love I love love a lot of those hymns, just uh just really deep. I had I had a guy recently explain it to me that these old hymns were written in a way that you could know the gospel just by singing the hymn because a lot of people back then didn't know how to read, but they could memorize like a poem, for example. So the a lot of these old hymns, by the time you were done with the hymn, you got a pretty good picture of the gospel. So that was an interesting, and I I I was using I was thinking about that. I was like, you know, that's true. Um, you know, old Rugged Cross, Amazing Grace, um, nothing but the blood of Jesus, you know, a lot of those good old faithfuls.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Yeah, yeah, that's cool, dude. So um at what point did you start to do your own thing in life?

SPEAKER_00 25:12

You mean like um like like as far as work goes or pull out for the Mennonites?

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Yeah, like because you you were did the 19 to 20, you were in Kentucky, and then when you came back, what'd you do after that?

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Um, so I went back to the um farman. Um my brother-in-law would have been uh needing some help during the summer, and I'd kind of told him I'd help him out. Okay. And so yeah, after my stint was up there for a year, I told Rodden Staff, um, the place where I worked, that I'd work for him for a year, and then after that I need to help my brother during the summer, brother-in-law. So um, yeah, so what'd you guys farm just hay? Um, alfalfa, tritical, um wheat, a lot of grass, meadow grass, orchard grass, yeah. Um, and then during the once haying season was done, then we do a lot of tilling in the winter, you know, plowing, discing, all that kind of fun stuff.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Did you guys ever do any hunting or anything? Were you guys at hunter groups? Yeah, was that when did you get introduced to hunting?

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Um, probably when I was 12 is when we started putting in for a deer tag for drawing because we're the county we lived in, the the uh hunting zones were very popular. So there was never enough tags, so it was you had to draw. It was it was hard to get one back then, but of course, as word got out and more people were in California, it fine it get to be about five, six years before you get a tag in our area.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

So geez. Well, you guys had everybody putting in. Well, I guess you didn't couldn't have all the kids putting in because you have to be a certain age to put in for a butt yeah imagine having nine kids and then two parents, like you guys are going through a lot of a lot of meat.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

So yeah, I'd see yeah, mom never put in. Um, but dad, my uh my two older sisters and myself. And then, you know, by the time my younger siblings were putting in, I was kind of you know, maybe at Rodden's, you know, back in Kentucky, Rodden Staff.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Yeah, was that um Mule Deer? Yep. Up there, yeah. I don't know if you guys had black tail. I know they have some black tail on the coast, but I think that's more Oregon and Washington.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

Yeah, yeah, there's I I know the coast California there around the the Ferndale, Eureka area, they have blacktail if I recall correctly, but no, our our area was all mule deal. Mule deal. I can't even say it. Yeah, mule deer.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

I know there's a small subspecies subspecies of elk in California, the Thule elk, but I think it's like only a certain like a small area, and it's like really hard to draw a tag.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

Yeah, I I never did try putting in for elk. I did antelope, um, but it takes a long time to get an antelope tag.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Is it a lottery system there or like Idaho, or is it like a point system? I go to sleep. Oh yeah. I hate point systems.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

It's it's definitely a uh a point system.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Yeah, points suck.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Supposedly it takes a good 15 years to get an antelope tag, and you have to put in every year.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

Gosh.

SPEAKER_00 28:11

And so when my wife and I moved down to South America when I was in my mid-20s, um, obviously I had that stint where I wasn't putting in, so I lost all my antelope points. Oh, you lose them if you don't put in every year? I think you have to put in I think you have to put in every year, like you don't have to like put in a full deer tag, but at least put in and to get a point. Okay. Like you can put in and request a point, but not for a deer tag, you know, like just build your points and all of a sudden, bam, you get a you know, put in for a tag. But I I it might be a year, it might be two years, but it was long enough that I lost my points. I was building for antelope.

SPEAKER_01 28:51

So I didn't know they just went away. Yeah. I've been putting in for Utah for quite a few years, so I have some points for Utah, but that's just because my dad lives there. That's crazy, man. Um, what was you just touched on that really quickly, but you guys went to South America? Is that later on? Because you're like 20 at this point then.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

How long were you and your wife dating before you guys got married? So my wife and I dated about just about a year, and then we broke up for about a year, and then we got back together. That's I mean, that's how you know it's got it's meant to be if you come back, right? Yeah, right on. So, um, yeah, that would have been an 08 when we got married.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Did she go back to did you guys you guys dated the whole time you were in Nebraska? And then you went back and is that when you guys broke up?

SPEAKER_00 29:36

Um, Kentucky. Or sorry, Kentucky. Yeah, so she'd have lived in Kentucky the whole time, and it would have been long distance communication, you know, just uh a lot of red uh letter writing. Yeah. And phone calls, and that was before the days of smartphone. So I'm not even sure if she had a cell phone at the time. But I would have had one of those small Nokia brick phones, you know, that can stand a bomb. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Would have had one of those. Um still text, could text from those, it just was the T9 texting, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, so yeah, we did a lot of uh writing letters. We'd every so often we'd fly back and forth and have a you know, have a date.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Yeah. And then you guys ended up getting back together, and then what made you guys want to go down to South America?

SPEAKER_00 30:24

So um, we were both interested in doing some sort of mission work. Um, wasn't sure what might line up for that. And our church was interested in uh maybe getting something going. And when they found out that we were super interested, like we were proactively looking, like maybe going to Costa Rica, maybe going to Colombia, and they're like, hey, let's get something going if they're so interested. So um our the church we were part of there in Alturas started a church in Uruguay. Okay, and um a friend of ours moved down to get things started, and he got a rental lined up for us, and I'd never been there before, and we moved down there, never being there before. So just going in blind, yeah. Just sold a bunch of big yard sale. Um, I bought a storage shed and we boxed stuff up in the storage shed, put numbers on them so we could say, Hey, um, I if I need something out of Tote 13, can you get that and bring it on down when you fly down, visit us or whatever? So um, yeah, packed up our bags and moved down to uh Uruguay with whatever we could pack in our bags.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

How long were you guys planning on staying for? Indefinitely. Oh, really? Yeah, you're just gonna live down there and going in blind. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

Do they speak English over there? Um, so English is a mandatory class in school, but it's kind of like a mandatory class in Spanish here. I mean, how much of that do you learn? Yeah, actually. How much do you retain? Exactly. So um there were a number of people that knew a decent amount of English. Um, and Uruguay is definitely very, you could say Caucasian. Um, the food down there would be more Italian, like very, very few hot sauces. When we were there, the only hot sauce was like imported Tabasco. So I was missing my Mexican foods, you know, tacos, burritos, quesadillas, um, just all sorts of that kind of stuff I'd have been raised on because my folks were raised in Southern Cal. So that was just a staple for us.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

So that was a that was an interesting uh new way of life.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

What was your wife thinking about the whole thing about moving down there? Was she all down for it too?

SPEAKER_00 32:33

Oh, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, very much so.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

And you guys are married at this point, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:37

Yes, okay, and how old were you? Oh boy. Um, we moved and moved down there in 2011. So I would have been maybe 25. 15 years ago. Yeah, yeah. So I don't know. Mid-20s, yeah. Yeah, younger mid-20s, something like that. That's a big move. Yeah, it was a long flight. And then I lost it. You missed everything that's on your back. Oh, really? You guys lost your you lost the passports? Well, I I put them in, I I put him in one of our bags, our carry-on bags. I was like, let's keep them safe here because I don't want to lose the passports.

SPEAKER_02 33:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Well, then the that flight was so full, they wanted our bags to be checked in. But when we got to the gate, and I didn't realize that one of the ones they took to check in was when they had our passports in it. And so that flight, it would have been from like Los Angeles down to Montevideo, Uruguay. But the connect the layover was in Panama. So we get to Panama and I'm trying to find my passports. I can't find, I'm freaking out. I'm like, God, I don't know what we're gonna do. We don't have no money, we just sold ourselves, we don't even have a place to live anymore. And just, you know, praying and whatnot, what are we gonna do? And I was like, hey, the only thing I can think of is maybe it's in one of those bags that they checked in that we were gonna use as a carry-on. And so, because if if we couldn't find our passports, then we would have been escorted to the embassy, and who knows what somehow or another we would have got shipped back to the US with all this baggage that was now going to Uruguay. But uh yeah, they were able to bring in that check bag, and thank God the passports were in there. I told my wife, I said, who knows? They might not have been in there, maybe an angel just stuck them in there quick. I said, I don't know where those passports were, I don't care, but we got them. That's all that counts. Jeez, so it was super stressful. Um, but we got down there and uh moved into the house that was uh picked out for us. It was an interesting house.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

What was that like?

SPEAKER_00 34:53

The house? Yeah. Well, so a lot of the the Uruguay houses are built out of concrete, so they're pretty moist because concrete will like wick up moisture from the ground. So this house had a lot of mold on the inside. Um had pretty big ant infestation in the bathroom. It would black ants would just come tumbling out of the wall from behind the toilet kind of thing. Um but it that kept us dry. Um the door, thankfully, didn't get attacked, or the door would have folded in. It was somewhat dilapidated, the house. Um, but we were able to make it work for three months until we found a better one.

SPEAKER_01 35:38

So Yeah. So what was that culture shock like for you going to a whole new country you never been to, don't know the people, the places, anything like that? What was that like?

SPEAKER_00 35:46

I really enjoyed it. Yeah. It was um because I had spent a few weeks in Columbia before that. So I kind of, you know, your way is different, but you can apply a lot of the same aspects on how to work with people, you know, and just being respectful and not being, you know, a know it all, whatever, you know, asking for help. And um I ended up buying things I didn't mean to. Um, because when you say something, you know, they ask you something, you're like, see, you know, that's a good response. Well, then they'd throw something, they'd ask you something, they'd throw something in it. It's like, oh no, no, no, no. Um, yeah, I really enjoyed it. Um there are a lot of lot of things to learn down there, made a lot of friends.

unknown 36:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:27

You said you went to Columbia for a few weeks, was that for a mission trip too?

SPEAKER_00 36:30

Or was yeah. Yeah, that was before um my wife and I was married, is when I'd gone down there for a few weeks to begin with. Um as a we were checking to see a bunch of us young men went down there to see if we could help an orphanage. Oh, okay. Yeah, kind of a see, hey, is this something that we could get involved in and help out? How was that? Yeah, that was also interesting. It turned out the orphanage was a scam and didn't exist. But in the meantime, um, we enjoyed it and got to meet a lot of uh cool people. Um, love Columbia. Um, if I if I could have chosen, I would have probably preferred moving to Colombia before Uruguay. Um, we would have flown into Bogota and then gone to a small town of Tabio. We would have spent a lot of time in Tabio. Um, super cool.

unknown 37:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:16

So so what happened with the orphanage? You guys had just been told about some orphanage that you're gonna go and help out?

SPEAKER_00 37:21

Yes, yeah. Um, and there was a the guy, the guy that was heading this that we had gone down with, um, super nice guy. We would have known him for years before that, that had kind of gotten this lined up. And so we went down there to kind of scope out this orphanage with one of the locals. And supposedly there was a lot of kids that were homeless from all the guerrilla warfare. And so we spent about 10 days looking for these kids and could never find them. I mean, the ones we found had homes, um, you know, birthday parties and and they seemed happy and stuff, and and and finally the the guy that was heading this that we went up down there with, he said, you know what, this is this is just a scam. He's just leading us on at this point, um, which was too bad because we were ready to jump in and do you're young guys wanting to do something, you know. When yeah, you guys were planning on building like a structure or like a maybe not necessarily build something, but maybe get involved in um helping man the place or build something. I mean, we just didn't know, you know, what could we do to help these kids that didn't exist? Yeah. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

When you guys went to Uruguay, what was your intentions for that then?

SPEAKER_00 38:31

Um, just to just to outreach um to the people there and tell them about Jesus. Um, there isn't a whole lot of um you know Christian faith down there. So, I mean there's different groups, but you know, just just try to be a blessing and point people to Jesus. It's all about. Um, so yeah, that's why we would have gone down there to begin with. And yeah, I had a it was a very informative time.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

Out of all the places, what made you guys land on Uruguay?

SPEAKER_00 39:02

I guess kind of like throwing a dart at the board. One of the guys was like, hey, let's try Uruguay, and everybody else was like, sure. Oh, so it wasn't just you and your wife, it was like a whole community of people that went down? It was it would have been four families. Oh, okay. A buddy of mine would have moved down first, and we would have moved down second, and then two other families moved down a few months later.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

Oh, okay. I was just thinking it was just you and your wife only.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

No, that would have been a little freaky. Um, I wouldn't have known Spanish good enough to do that. Yeah, but the two other families that moved down would have known Spanish really good.

SPEAKER_01 39:31

Okay. So you guys just went out and and just like did kind of like the tents, like, you know, or or how does that look?

SPEAKER_00 39:38

What do you guys do then? Um, so we would have um we wouldn't have had a church at the time of church building, so we would have had like services in each other's homes and just kind of had potlucks at each other's places every Sunday, and we just would invite neighbors and friends. And um, if a local would come, then the service would be in Spanish. We always sing Spanish songs. It's super easy to sing Spanish songs. A lot easier a lot easier than talking it, yeah. Why is it I don't know. I the I guess the rhythm is just easy to pick up. The the words just kind of flow. Are you pretty good at speaking Spanish then? No, not anymore. I I could about understand anything they they'd tell me. I couldn't talk it back as good, but yeah, by the time we moved back, I could understand about anything they'd throw at me.

SPEAKER_01 40:21

So they speak Spanish, but mainly Italian food?

SPEAKER_00 40:25

Yeah, um, it would have been more Castilian Spanish, so a little different than Mexican Spanish, which is another reason why I kind of let mine slip, is because different terms and some of the pronunciation itself is different. So I mean, yeah, you can you can understand it and stuff, but I mean I try speaking Uruguayan Spanish to some Mexican buddies, they look at me like, what are you saying? Sorry. So I once we moved back to the US, I I just didn't really talk it a whole lot.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

Yeah. Did you did you have a job while you were down there? Like, did you have to pick up a job then or what? I worked for a graphics design company out of Canada. Oh, so you're working remote then? Yep. Okay. So how long how long did you end up totally staying there then? Two years. Oh, shees. Okay. Dang.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

Yeah. It was just you and your wife, you didn't have any kids at that point, right? Um, we would have had one kid, our oldest when we moved down, and our second kid, our first daughter, would have been uh born down there. Oh, really? Yep. So how does that work then for them? So when she's 18, she gets to choose where she wants her citizenship, if I recall correctly, US or Uruguay. Oh. But right now she has dual.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

Okay. That's interesting. What was that like compared the hospitals there compared to uh here in America?

SPEAKER_00 41:43

A very good experience. Uh yeah, it was it was it was great. So there's from what the locals were telling me, there's the government hospital, which is the free hospital. Um, because Uruguay is is kind of definitely more socialistic than America. So they would have had their government hospital, and then they would have had their, I guess it would have been like a private hospital, which is a lot nicer. Everybody told us don't go to the government hospital. So we went to the private one, which was definitely, you know, out of pocket. Um, but it was very nice. Um, and a lot of the medical terms are the same as what we are used to, so it was super easy to pick up on different things they were saying about the pregnancy.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:25

Was it a lot of the same things like here in America, like doing your checkups and all that, or was it just yeah, labs um check-ins, and as the day got closer, then my wife would have her check-ins more often.

SPEAKER_02 42:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:38

Yeah, and then once um she was actually in labor, then we would have gone to the actual hospital because there the check-ins were like at a different place, you know, it wasn't actually at the hospital.

SPEAKER_01 42:47

Gotcha. So you had two kids down there?

SPEAKER_00 42:49

Um, one was born down there, but yeah, we our first one was born up here and we would have moved down there with him.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Gotcha. Dang. So how was that having a like pretty much a newborn then with you guys move making that move? Was that was that a tough one? Like the long flights and stuff?

SPEAKER_00 43:06

Not not necessarily. I mean, just nothing stood out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:11

Um kind of all blurs together.

SPEAKER_00 43:13

Yeah, you know, the only things that that really you really remember are the either the really bad experiences or the really good experiences. I mean, this has been like how long ago, you know, 2013 is when we would have moved back, so that's like what 13, 12, 13 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

Um, so I don't have any super bad experiences of those flights that would stick in my mind during that situation. Other times, yes. What was it that ultimately made you guys want to move back to the States? Um, couple things. Um, so there was uh definitely some conflict in the group that moved down there. And I was like, you know what, I it's hard enough trying to make a living. It's expensive to live down there. Um really? Oh yeah. Uh the rent, uh groceries, the fuel. Um Vehicles are taxed, or over the time I was told they're taxed 100%. So all vehicles are imported. So it's very vehicles are not very affordable down there. Um, so we had a motorbike, which was stolen on Christmas Eve. Uh, the motorbike was our taxi, basically, it was our family van. So I'd drive, our oldest would sit in front of me, my wife would carry the baby behind me, and that's how we got around town to church and everything. So if there was a potluck, I'd take the fam to church and go back home and get the roaster and you know, drive to uh church with the roaster under the other arm type of thing. Um and then when that was stolen Christmas Eve, um then my wife would go in the taxi and I'd go on a bicycle. So to you know, to work and whatnot. And then eventually I um some of my my uh in-laws helped pay for a new motorbike eventually, so we had a end up getting a second motorbike, which was very nice.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

Yeah, um was that your first time riding like motorbikes or by uh motorcycles or anything like that?

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Um we would have had a few growing up. I had to try jumping the pond with and stuff, but really, yeah, yeah. Tried, yeah, and didn't make the pond. No, yeah. Yeah, sunk it? Oh, the pond wasn't very deep. Oh, that's good.

SPEAKER_01 45:26

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:27

Yeah. So I mean I didn't go under completely, but it was interesting. Yeah. So yeah, most of my experience driving a motorbike, especially on public roads, would have been in Uruguay.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

Yep. Had to get had to get uh, and it's it's not like up here, you know, you can take a Spanish driver's test. No, down there you have to take it in Spanish. You can't, there's no English test down there. So I had to learn Spanish enough to pass the driving test. Um, and I did, yeah, first time, so it was good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:02

Is that the pretty much main way of transportation? Motor. A lot of people have bet motorbikes down there.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

Yep. Motorbikes and bicycles. Okay, and it's I mean, up here it's not all that common. It's a certain element of people that have motorbikes more or less, but down there, oh yeah, you'd see people all dressed up in suits and ties or high flutin' ladies going down the road on their little motorbike, you know, go to work.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Yeah. That's cool, man.

unknown 46:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:27

So ultimately, you guys came back to the States. Where'd you guys move to in the States?

SPEAKER_00 46:30

Back uh back to Al Tourist where we came from. Yeah, okay. Yes. Yeah, and and there again, you know, the reason why we moved back is there was some church conflict. I felt like, you know, it's it's God wanted us down there. God wants us back in Al Tourist now. Um, so there was some church conflict as well as my full-time job went to part-time, and I I couldn't live off of that. Um, it was like I said, it was expensive down there, and I didn't know enough Spanish to get a job, a local job. And at the end of the day, I'm like, why did we move down here? We moved down here to tell people about Jesus, and I'm working my butt off, just simply trying to make a living, and I can't be out there telling people about Jesus. I don't really know the language very well, good enough to do that, you know, on a personal level. I mean, small talk, yeah. But talking to people about the Lord, you kind of I like to have a relationship with someone, you know, one-on-one with them. And and I didn't know Spanish good enough to do that. So I was like, you know what? I I don't know why I'm here anymore. I mean, I came down here to tell people about Jesus, and I'm not doing that. I'm I'm you know, in a stressful situation at church, and I now only have part-time work, which I can't live off of. And I was like, I told my wife, I said, you know what, I think God's wanting us to move back. And uh, so we did. Was she ready to move too? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:49

Dang. So what do you guys how long do you guys stay in uh El Tursan?

SPEAKER_00 47:54

Um, so we stayed in, well, we moved back in 2013 and then uh stayed there for about 10 years until we moved to uh Oregon in 2023.

SPEAKER_01 48:04

Oh, so it's just recent you guys moved in? Yep. Okay. And then what'd you do once you got back then? Did you get your a different like the same graphic design kind of job then?

SPEAKER_00 48:13

Or um no, because at that point in time, I was tired of working behind a computer. Um I I had done that for years. Um we'd worked at I'd worked at Rodden Staff there in Kentucky, and then from Rodden Staff to when um my wife and I got married, I worked for a nonprofit organization doing graphics designing for them. And I was just sick of being behind the computer all the time. So when we moved back, um I I I told my employer at the time, I was like, hey, you know, we're moving. Um, I can't live off of part-time, and he understood. Yeah, I mean, super, he was a super cool guy to work for. Um, and then uh when we moved back to Alturas, I worked on the hay and crew for my brother-in-law again. But I have really bad hay fever, and I'm like, you know, there's more pleasant ways to die. Um so and he tried making sure I got more dirt work, like plowing and tilling than actual on the swather. Um, I mean, I loved swathing, it was great, but it's just you have to go out and maintain the equipment, you know, and get underneath it to replace blades and stuff, and and that just yeah. Um really got I've tried different injections to help with that, and it's just yeah, so all good. I I just I got a hold of a fuel company in the area that my dad had worked for years before that, and said, Um, hey, do you need a truck driver? And they're like, sure, yeah, get your CDL and give us a call when you get it. So I got my hazmat CDL and called them up and they hired me. Right on. That's uh what you had to get your class A plus hazmat endorsement or something like that. Yeah, my uh class A. I mean, it could have been a class B because this is a bobtail, it's not like you know, triple axle, it's only two axle.

SPEAKER_01 49:55

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 49:56

Um, but I'm like, if I'm going to all this work, I'm gonna get the whole shebang. So yeah, I got my class A and uh got my doubles and triples um air brake endorsement. Um I since I was driving a tanker truck, I had to get my tanker endorsement. And uh yeah, got all those and they hired me as a bobtail driver for delivering heating fuel diesel gas to the area.

SPEAKER_01 50:24

Okay. Yeah. Nice. Then are you guys back in like the same you said you were back in Al Tourist. Is that just like a small community? So you're kind of back in the same house that you were in before, or did you just keep moving around in that area when you guys moved back?

SPEAKER_00 50:39

Um, we oh my folks had kind of lined up a rental, which was it was a single wife for us to move back into, which was great. You know, we just had two kids, so it worked great. It wasn't a place the winters up there can be really harsh, and it wasn't a place I wanted to winter in. So we moved back there in like June, I think. Um, and it was a super hot house. Um, like we'd be gone for the day, and we'd get back home and the candles would be melted. It was so hot inside.

SPEAKER_01 51:10

Oh, dang.

SPEAKER_00 51:11

So it was I was like, if it's this hot in the summer, I can't imagine what it's gonna be like in the winter. So I was proactively looking for a different place, and and and uh God opened up the doors to this a perfect place for us, 600 a month. It was a three-bed, two-bath. Um, and we could afford it, and we lived there for about seven years. So it was it was a great place to yeah, raise a family and kind of out in the country a little bit, not too far from town. So I only had like a five-minute drive to work.

SPEAKER_01 51:37

Nice, yeah. Right on, dude. So how was it uh, you know, being a dad at this point? I mean, you were a dad for already, but like how how was it being a dad?

SPEAKER_00 51:50

Um, I mean, great, I think. I mean, definitely a learning curve. I mean, it's it's crazy, they just throw it at you. Yeah, I mean, instructions around every kid is so different. I mean, because we got eight kids, and you you you get the first one figured out on how to raise them, and the second one's completely different. And so it's like, okay, so there's these two two different extremes, and then the third one comes. It's like, what is going on? Um, which is awesome because I love variety, um, which is why I love probably the farming and and the getting on the bobtail, and why being stuck behind a computer doesn't work all that great for me? Because I I just yeah, I I love multitasking and and variety, so all these kids being so different, it's like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:41

Keep me hopping.

SPEAKER_01 52:42

Were you always wanting to have a big family? Or you were you like always set on having a big family?

SPEAKER_00 52:47

Were you like a certain numberly mind? Yeah, no, I mean, at we're just kind of like, hey, see what God gives us. Um, I wasn't necessarily planning on having a big family, but if it happened, then great. Um, I mean, we've had enough trouble with having a baby that I wasn't sure how many we could have.

SPEAKER_01 53:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:08

So, yeah. So I feel definitely incredibly blessed that we've had the eight we do.

SPEAKER_01 53:13

Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. I know you told me you have eight kids. I'm like, man, I think I have my hands full of just four.

SPEAKER_00 53:19

So Well, the thing is about having a bunch of kids is the older ones can really help out with the younger. So it's not like having eight, four, and five-year-olds or six-year-olds. It's it's you know, our oldest is 16, and then the the one girl's 13, the next one's, you know, 11, and and those two girls are helping with you know, making food and cleaning the house. And and my oldest is um, he's working full-time for a construction crew, so he's helping bring in some income to help. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:46

Yeah, that's cool, man. So uh when you guys when did you guys actually end up coming in? You said 2023? You moved out to Ontario?

SPEAKER_00 53:54

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 53:55

What made you guys want to move out here?

SPEAKER_00 53:57

Um, looking for more um opportunity um for you know, Alterst is really cool, but as far as work opportunity, it's it's kind of limited, just small town, you know. Yeah, it's an hour and a half to close the stoplight, which would have been in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

SPEAKER_01 54:11

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 54:11

So that's where they have the w the waterfall, right? The big waterfall in Klamath Falls. So um actually I have no idea where the falls is in Klamath. I've never seen it. That's that's they have a fall though, right? Like I I think there's a trickle. Oh it's kind of a standing joke. I I don't know where the falls is. I've asked people, and yeah, I yeah, I've never actually seen them. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So what you said just wanted more opportunity then? Yeah, more opportunity to work um and and stuff for the kids to do. And I mean, I'd love to get something going to work with my boys. And you know, there's more opportunity in larger, you know, communities kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_01 54:51

You said your oldest is 16 then. Are they graduated then? Yes. Oh, right on. Nice. So they're uh what would you like to do with your kids? Like what do you guys want to do as a like a company then is that we want to do?

SPEAKER_00 55:03

Oh, just something to, you know, it's just something to do with the boys to teach them, you know, work ethics and and uh yeah, uh boy. You know, finances and so they aren't sitting around on their phone all the time, you know, kind of a thing, you know. Um so yeah, I we my wife and I did a bakery for a few years. That was a lot of hard work, and we ended up selling selling it to the lady who worked for us just because it was taking so much out of us. It was like, I gotta quit my job or do the bakery. Or I gotta quit my job or quit the bakery. So we ended up selling the bakery.

SPEAKER_01 55:42

Yeah. So what made you guys want to start that just as a family thing then?

SPEAKER_00 55:46

Yeah, yeah, see if we can get something going. Um, it went good um from day one. Yeah. Learned a lot of stuff. Um some some cool principles would be like, you know, it cookies are very labor intensive. And so most of the cost of a cookie is the labor. So, like, if you're gonna sell a plate of cookies, for example, make it, and it's you know, expensive, make it worth somebody's money, is make the cookies big because the ingredients aren't the major cost, it's labor. Same amount of labor goes into a big cookie as a small cookie. So that was one of the ways, you know. Hey, we had to sell a plate of cookies for you know, like six bucks. Let's make them big cookies. Yeah. Um, so people felt like they're getting their money's worth. So yeah, we made all the cookies we made were monster cookies. Right on what kind of cookies? Uh we cowboy cookies, which was oatmeal and raisin, um, chocolate chip, we did um molasses cookies. Um I that was kind of my wife's thing. So I I don't know remember all the cookies, but yeah. Cowboy cookies were a pretty big hit.

SPEAKER_01 56:56

Yeah, that's cool, dude. Yeah. How'd your kids like doing being a part of that?

SPEAKER_00 57:01

Um, they were young enough, they weren't really a part of it. Oh, no, okay. Yeah. Um that that would have been our oldest would have maybe been seven or eight.

SPEAKER_01 57:12

Oh, okay. So it was a while.

SPEAKER_00 57:13

It's been a little while, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:14

Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. I I have a buddy that he has a sourdough company inside of his house too, and uh, he's got a couple homeschool kids, and they kind of just made it their own thing during COVID, and then it's just grown, and it's been cool, he said, because then he could teach his kids about how to run a company and how like you know, margins and everything else like that works, and just responsibilities, and they're the ones that are doing the sales that like go into go into like farmers markets, and they're the ones actually having to learn to talk to people and that's cool.

SPEAKER_00 57:43

Yeah, yeah, is that Quentin?

SPEAKER_01 57:46

Okay, is is Bam from the Wild Chaos Podcast? Okay, yeah, and uh so it's pretty cool. Like, I'm thinking about like, oh, how can I, you know, introduce that to my kids because I think that's a great skill for our kids to be on.

SPEAKER_00 58:00

Yeah. Anything hands-on like that. I mean, I I like to think of let's say our infrastructure happens, something happens to it, you know, and we need to rely more on ourselves than we do now, be it growing a garden or hunting, you know, or or just knowing how to make a meal out of the basics or knowing how to make bread, you know?

SPEAKER_01 58:18

Yeah, yeah, that's really cool. I've I've been buying everything, man. I'd love to learn how to do that stuff, but I think it's a patience thing too. I just don't have the patience yet.

SPEAKER_00 58:28

Yeah, well, maybe you can ask him for some starter.

SPEAKER_01 58:30

I don't know if he'd share any of it, but yeah, I've never even honestly I can't say I've ever just bought a sourdough loaf. I don't know. I've had it maybe like once or twice here at the at the you know, they ask you like what kind of bread you want with your breakfast or something, and I'll like throw in a sourdough every once in a while just to switch it up. But I usually pick sourdough, yeah. But I don't even, yeah, I apparently it's a freaking process, and the starter is like people's family heirlooms or something, like they hold on to that like it's like it's their life.

SPEAKER_00 58:58

Yeah, some definitely some people do. I mean, I know there's different folks in the Mennonite community that's have starter for years, and they'll hand it out. It's like, hey, can I get some starter from you? Oh, sure, you know, and they give you some starters. What is it?

SPEAKER_01 59:12

I don't even know what it is. I just keep hearing starters. It's just like uh like a fermenting thing that's and it's alive.

SPEAKER_00 59:17

I mean, it can you can you can kill it if you're not careful, like you have to feed it, and so it's continually growing, and so you have to either throw it away or give it away. Because it's it's always it's it's continually, you know, as you feed it, it grows like anything, you know. So yeah, and it I I know some people have killed theirs accidentally by you know not feeding it enough or feeding it too much. So I mean, because it's it's like uh you know, yeast, for example. Yeah, I have no clue anything about this, so I'm really just like learning.

SPEAKER_01 59:48

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 59:48

It's it's cool stuff, and it's oh, it's it's awesome. I mean, store bought sourdough, it it reminds me of the real sourdough. It doesn't have the root the the the exact taste, but there's nothing like some fresh sourdough bread. Yeah, the store-bought sourdough is like a hint of what it actually is. I'll put it that way.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:08

Yeah, actually, I think I I have tried store-bought, but yeah, I have no clue. I'll have to try it. I know he he always has like all these crazy different um, like sometimes they'll do like pepperoni and cheese, and he'll do like a white raspberry and or like white chocolate and raspberry, or like and then just like original stuff. But so good. Yeah, I've never even tried it, so I'd have to give that a go.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:31

Yeah, yeah, it's it's cool. We did the sourdough bread, we did jalapeno cheddar, that was a big hit. We did uh rye swirl because we would provide bread to the different restaurants in the area. Oh, cool. Um, and one of the ones they requested was like a rye swirl, so it'd like have white and rye swirled in it. Yeah, which was it was cool. I I'm not a rye fan, so I never but it we had a hard time because the swirls would separate, and so we had to do it just right so the swirls wouldn't separate. So that was interesting. Even though they're baked together, they'd still, after the you know, the cut, they still wanted to separate. Um, and then just regular uh we did a white bread, a 50-50, and then a whole wheat. And uh so yeah, it was it was good. Our biggest selling points was cinnamon rolls and coffee cake.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:18

Yeah, I think I've had your wife's cinnamon rolls. I think you brought them a couple times. They're really good.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:23

Yeah, that's where we made the most money. Um, because it had the least amount of cost. I mean, we sold a lot of cookies, but there wasn't much, yeah. Umurdough cookies.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:33

No. I've seen those. Uh the guy that makes the sourdough bread, he started making sourdough cookies too, and I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't know there was like I thought it was just a bread thing. I've heard people do like sourdough pancakes too.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:42

So yeah, yeah, no, it's uh it was mainly. I mean, we did cakes sometimes too. If somebody requires we'd take special orders, but it was mainly cookies and cinnamon rolls and bread, um, coffee cake and maybe some pies sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:59

Right on. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, so you did it for three years though. I mean, that's a that's a good stint.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:03

Yeah, it it was, I mean, it was definitely a learning experience. I I enjoyed it. Very labor intensive. Um, my wife doesn't want to get into it again until our girls are older, where they can help.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:15

Oh, so gonna bring it back though? Possibly, right on, possibly.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:18

Maybe give something for the girls to do, you know, sell at farmers markets and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:21

And yeah, yeah. It's a good life skill. Yeah, just being able to, like I said, run a business, yeah, learn how to talk to people, sales.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:28

My 13-year-old makes great bread. It is so good. It's I was like, I was like, this bread's good. And my wife's like, yeah, well, Emily made it. I was like, what? Like, there's no way I could do something like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:41

It was it was really good bread. That's cool. I want to try like homemade bread because you know, you look at the loaves of bread you get in the store and they can go two, three weeks without even growing mold on them. You're like, this can't be good for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:53

Oh, yeah, dude. I could if I'm if I'm not like watching my carbs, I could eat a whole loaf of fresh bread. I mean, just dig and just dig out that meat, you know, slather on the butter. Yeah. I've done it before.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:06

Yeah, dude, bread is my is my weakness. Like, I can just eat bread, you know, like those loaves from Costco, or not Costco, but Walmart, like the French bread loaves. Dude, that's good. That's good.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:16

I like bread. I like the good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:19

Yeah. So yeah, like you said, the you have eight kids, but like what's been what's been like some challenges that you've had to overcome having that many kids and uh just like learning each one of their personalities, and like how is how have you overcame like you know, just those different challenges?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:36

Well, as far as child training, it's simply remembering every child has their own method. You you can't copy and paste. Um, some some children need to be how you say, kind of dealt with more in a firm way. And and others just simply looking at them will break about break their heart. You know, if you look at them with a kind of look, you know, it's just they just wilt and it's like, sorry, I didn't even say anything. Yeah, like my my year and a half old, if she's doing like if she's hollering or something, I look at her and I kind of frown. And she just starts wailing and goes running to her mom and hides her face in her mom's dress. And I'm like, I I didn't do anything, I just looked at her.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:18

Um, but but some of the others, you know, it's kind of like, you know, there there needs to you know be consequences for you know, just being uh a kid, basically, you know, fights or yeah, or doing things that are irresponsible that they know better, you know. And it's it's just a a big thing for me too is remembering not to react out of anger. Because it's super easy to get frustrated at kids, um, depending on it is easy for me, I'll just put it that way. And just, you know, when they act up or act like a kid, um to you know, if I'm feeling angry at finding my box of expensive tools left out in the rain and all rusty, for example. Yeah, uh that kind of thing tends to make me a little upset.

unknown 1:05:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:06

Um just being sure I I don't act out of anger, yell at them, kind of a thing, that that when I when I deal with the situation, it's in a level headed level-headed way that they can um you know respond to in a way that that is beneficial, kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:26

So yeah, yeah, I think that's important too, of just like remembering that you were a kid and you made a lot of these same mistakes, you're you know, that they're just kids. Oh no, I didn't make mistakes like this. No, no, just kidding.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:40

None of them tried to jump upon you. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. You don't know. I had a few different mistakes, I'll put it that way. No, I do remember my dad that the tool thing must be a thing with kids, with boys specifically. So I remember my dad, that was something my dad dealt with. And when my youngest brother got married, he mentioned something about now, dad doesn't need to go look. For his tools anymore. Um, so it and and at the end of the day too, I think, you know, like, you know what, I'm glad my boys are trying to do stuff with tools. It's not like they're spending all day on a phone. They're being proactive and getting out there and trying to do this stuff. It's just teaching them how to do it in a way that's responsible, you know. Um that that the stuff costs money, and if you get it out, you gotta put it away, you know, and and and if if you ruin it, then what? You know, um so that that stuff isn't free. You know, that if it's if it's busted or it's ruined, then I have to go buy a new one. Or if it's lost, you know. Yeah and money doesn't grow on trees.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:40

Yeah. Yeah, dude, that's it's it's crazy just being a parent, like trying to trying to teach your kids things in the right way and and teaching them in a way that like they can understand. Because sometimes we might think that they can understand it, but it's not making sense or a word, you know, we gotta you gotta bring it down and put it on kids' gloves and you know, try and figure out a way that's gonna make it comprehendable to them.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:05

And yeah. And a big part of that too is I mean, because we're gonna mess up is apologizing. I mean, because kids are super responsive to, you know, um like the dad or mom apologizing. I mean, because we're gonna mess up, you know, maybe we yell at them or speak out of a way that isn't out of love, you know. And and simply apologize saying, hey, I I'm sorry I I responded like this. I shouldn't have. I mean, yeah, you you shouldn't have done this, but I didn't respond how I should have been. I'm sorry. Yeah. You know, and asking for their because that they that sticks with them. I mean, they they see us mess up a lot more than what we think. And not trying to gloss over it and think, oh, hey, you know, they didn't notice. It's like, no, they noticed. Um, admit it, go to them and and tell them you're sorry. And um that wasn't right how you know you as a parent responded, kind of a thing. That's that's been something I've really tried to be good at is quick to apologize when I mess up, you know. Um I want to let my kids know that that that isn't how I should have responded. So hopefully that'll help them when they're a parent, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:09

Yeah, setting that good example for them. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's important. We were just talking about that too of you know, your kids, they're so there's there's they're like a sponge, man. They're always watching you, they're always Oh yeah, they are, you know. And it's not what you say, it's what you do that they pick up on. Because you could tell them, like, don't do this, but it's then you go around the corner and you do that thing, then they're like, Oh, dad did it, now it's okay, you know. It's like uh, you know, like in the fitness realm, like if you tell your kids like to eat healthy and stuff, but then you're not eating healthy yourself, then then of course they're gonna look at that and be like, well, it's good enough for him, you know. I'm and I a lot of times your kids idolize you, so then you're like, Oh, well, now I can do it because dad did it. Yeah, so you we gotta set those examples for them. And and like that's the fitness side of it, but I think it's just any anything else, you know. I've been I've been appreciative of my kids, like with they they call me on stuff, you know, like I make a mistake and and I want them to know that I respect them for having having like the courage to come and tell me like dad you hurt our feelings when you reacted like this. Like because I don't want them to always or to just to think that just is because I'm an adult, they can't come and tell me or you know, I I want to have a better relationship with my kids that if they feel offended or anything like there's times to be there's times to be a dad and like they're gonna have hurt feelings, it's fine. But when there's times that I know I did what I was wrong and they know I did what I was wrong, and then they come and tell me like like I'm proud of you for letting me know that because that took that took courage. And I don't want you to, you know, get a job later on in life and just never say anything because you know, even if they're wrong, you're not gonna say anything because they're your boss.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:49

Yeah, yeah. And and and that's the thing too, is I'm like, you know what, if I I'm trying to build this relationship with them now so that down the road when they need to talk to me about maybe something they're going through, they feel like they can talk to me without me. Like maybe they messed up as as a as a young adult, for example. They did something they knew they shouldn't have. And I want them to have the freedom to come to me and talk to me about it, knowing that I'm not gonna overreact, that that I'm gonna love them love, uh-huh, that I'm gonna love them regardless, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:17

They may not like what they did, but you love them and you want to help them out in the best way possible.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:21

Exactly, exactly. So anyway, and it's building that relationship starting now to work toward that kind of a thing. Because yeah, I I want them to have that comfort when they're older, and that's that's through years of trust, you know, it's not something that comes overnight.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:36

Yeah. What's your favorite thing that you get to do with your kids as a family?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:41

Just like as an activity.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:43

Um, so when we lived in Alturas, uh, me and the kids loved fishing. That's what we did. We spent a lot of time doing that in the summer. Um, because I used to hunt a lot, but you can't really go hunting with kids very easily. Yeah. Um, you know, especially when they're young too. Yeah, you know, in a duck blind when it's like zero degrees. Yeah. Um getting them to be quiet and stayed. Right. Right. Or out in the middle of the river in waiters, you know, it's not something anyway. So um that and I wanted to do stuff that included them. So yeah, um, fishing was something that they enjoyed, and just they're not necessarily looking for a trophy. Um, just something that bites, and you can pull it in, you know, even if you throw it back in. I mean, a trophy's good, but yeah, anything that bites you're cool with. Right. So we did a lot of fishing when I lived in Al Tourist, you know, a lot of bass. I knew a lot of the bass areas, crappie. Um I grew up on trout, so I'm kind of trouted out right now. Um, but I definitely knew a number of places to catch trout. So we do that too. And then moving up here, I have not had a lot of success with catching fish. I I haven't found a good spot to go fishing. We've tried and spent hours, you know, just not catching anything. So the fishing has kind of fizzled out for now until I found until I find a decent place to actually catch fish.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:00

Yeah. Have you guys ever tried to go out to Brownley?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:04

No. No, we we live pretty close to Snake River. So it's just like a five-minute drive. Yeah. But no good if you're not catching anything.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:14

Yeah, Snake River's just full of a lot of like catfish and stuff. Which I'm fine with. I mean, just catch something.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:19

Yeah. Catfish. Um uh some sort of uh a squaw fish. I don't know if a squay, I don't know if squawfish there or not, but yeah. Um bass is awesome. Um, crappie, even trout, you know, something. But yeah, it's it's kind of hard for us to catch anything out of the snake. So I'm kind of looking around, um seeing where we could go. That's not too far to take the kids, you know, maybe run down there in the evening or even spend a day. I'm cool with it. It's Saturday, you know, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:48

Yeah. So when did you start getting into fitness?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:52

Um question before we get into that. Can we have a break?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:58

Go ahead. You just keep them running. All right.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:01

Yeah, I'm building up pressure.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:04

That's how it goes, dude.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:07

Yeah, I uh just told you my house is like a prison, so you try and you come over as a guest, you leave as a you leave as a prisoner.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:17

Well, that's what you did for work, so you just got so used to it. You're like, I gotta do my house like this. I like this.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:23

Well, sometimes I think I think God put me in a prison for a reason. Like he's like, I'm preparing you for your son that's coming, you know. I don't know. Is that good? Yeah, it's good. Okay. Should be good. You know, I I kind of do think that though, like that he put me in uh the prison because I was gonna have Wyatt. It's like your own little prisoner. Well, just like security purposes-wise, or you know, like he's gonna be a runner or something, like so you're gonna have like I'm I'm calm under like pressure situations, like if he gets out the door or something, I can go and get him, or you know, I'm not freaking out. The one time he got out and almost got hit by a car, I definitely was freaking out, or you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:06

I could get that.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:07

I didn't I actually I kept pretty cool calm during the moment, but after I picked him up and was like holding him after what happened, it like then it hit me. It's like the flight or flight, or the fight or flight, like I went after him, but then as soon as the adrenaline wore off, I was like, holy shit, I could have just lost my kid like within yeah, half a second.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:29

Dude, no, I yeah, that's that's freaky. Uh and then it's like, do you have that like period of looking to blame someone or something? Like now now that the initial thing's over, and it's like, whose fault was this? Or why did this happen?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:45

Well, I mean, he could open the door. He opened the door on his own. And we didn't know he was a runner at that point, so we didn't have like all the child locks. He was only two.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:56

So it wasn't like it wasn't like he was, you know, four or five, or you know, I wasn't expecting we never had to deal with that with our previous two daughters. So it was our first son, only son, but so I was like, well, I guess he's a runner. You know, I put that video up on on my Instagram and it hit like 13 million views, and people were all like the comments were like, Well, if you know your kid's a runner, we're like, we didn't know he was a runner.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:20

I I think I saw it was that a ring came or something? Yeah, okay. I think I saw it, yeah. Yeah, see him go out and then I see different of you go, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:30

I should put like the music on like for the circus, like, you know, like that's what it felt like. It was like a freaking circus.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:37

But no, we don't we don't have any problem with that necessarily, but I do have like the childproof things on our doorknobs because our daughter is an escape artist, our youngest. Yeah, she's a year and a half old, she loves being outside. And we live right by a dirt road that is a public road. Yeah, um, for the most part, our our neighbors and every everybody's super cool. We have one of those little like green, neon green men out there holding a little flag saying slow.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:03

And so that's good, but um the like UPS, FedEx, Amazon, they're the ones that can come blazing through so fast, you know. And I know I know they're just trying to get their route done. I know they're not, I know they'd hate to to hit a kid. I know we'd be you know absolutely devastated. And I know they would be too, but it's just like I know you're not thinking about it, but there's a reason this little green dude's out there. I mean, we got little kids out here on this very rural road. We don't get a lot of traffic, so we're not used to seeing cars on there.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:40

And all of a sudden, have somebody go blazing past. I mean, the one guy went past, I flagged the one Amazon driver down. He went zipping on past, I saw him come back, so I went out there. And I was like, hey, you know, we got, you know, could you drive slower? You know, we got kids here, and and and as we try to keep them off the road, but we live there's bushes right here, and we have a year and a half old that could just step out. And he was super apologetic, super cool about it. And he was like, I was just going with what the phone said, which is what 55 probably on this dirt road that has potholes right by our house. Oh dang. Yeah, so I'm like, yeah, if you just think about it, that'd be great.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:20

Um, I mean, I I wasn't like all mad at him, yelling at him and stuff. I I kind of felt like it. Um, but I was like, you know, he's just doing his job. I mean, I've been a delivery guy, so I know what it's like. You're trying to get your stuff done in a day. You have a route you have to get done. Yeah. And uh sometimes you just kind of get some tunnel vision and forget the bigger picture that hey, real people live here, and if a kid or a dog or something would step out, you know, you don't want to it'd ruin, you know, at the very least, hitting the dog would ruin your day, much less hitting a person, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:55

Yeah, have you guys ever had any close calls with any of your kids like getting injured or something in the maybe not like in the road or anything, but you guys ever had any like uh just bad injuries or anything?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:07

A few broken bones, nothing more than that. That's good. Our last last fall, our our uh five-year-old broke his leg doing a flip on the trampoline, just landing on it wrong. Oh, geez. He's gonna be an evil Knevel. Yeah. He he's very coordinated, yeah um, daredevil kind of a guy. So he learned how to ride his bicycle no training wheels when he was three. So he was just three o'clock just peddling all over the place. And I'm like, that's cool. I mean, I was screaming my head off when I learned how to ride a bike when I was five or six. So yeah, he didn't get that coordination from me.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:44

He's gonna be jumping puddles, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:46

Oh no, he they're they're setting up jumps and stuff and in the in the dirt road there and with railroad ties, dragging those out. I'm like, you're gonna get it out of the road, bro.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:56

So um he broke his leg a few winters ago. My daughter um, we were doing sledding and she was going super fast on a runner sled and hit this ice berm that launched her in the air, and she landed in the snowpacked parking lot. Broke her collarbone.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:18

Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:19

Those hurt. Yeah, uh, so it's anyway. There's that broken bone. I I think that's about it though, as far as the kids go.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:28

Yeah. Well, it doesn't seem like you're doing too bad then. If you got eight kids, only a couple bones broken. Okay. Yeah. That's a good ratio. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:37

Hey, just that's I'm like, okay, now this has happened. Yeah, I'm like, okay, this broken bone last fall, now we're good for a few years. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:46

Yeah, you hit your quota. Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna ask you too. Um, you said that you had gone away from like the Mennonite church. What when was that, and what made you wanted to to make that switch?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:58

Um, so I'd you know, for years I'd kind of been a part of the Mennonites, not because necessarily I would agreed with the convictions they held to, but um, because that was what my wife was a part of, was born and raised in, and um and I was kind of going along with it to, you know, kind of keep the peace kind of a thing. And, you know, after a while it just I just felt I needed to pull away from that. Um I felt like I was viewing like man's standards more than God's, and it it definitely can tend to be that way, um, in some churches more than others, they where they really, really harp on certain standards. And um, for example, well, and and I'm just you know throwing this out as in like the the church setting I would have grown up in, um some of the the nitty-gritty Mennonite things that maybe um what they would call community people might not know about, for example, um some of the standards that the the women's dresses, for example, um that they're a certain length from the ground, can't be a certain height or much, you know, lower, for example, um, depending on the the church group. Um the flower size on the dress, you know, some churches it's can't be the flower can't be any bigger than the dime. Some have it the size of a quarter, and some don't have a flower size standard for the woman's dress. Um as far as guys go, um some churches it's okay to wear light-colored pants to church, and other churches it's not. Um, you know, just some stuff like that. That every church kind of has its own thing. Um it's easy to when you're going back and forth between those different things, it's easy to go, okay, I'm doing this, so like conservative versus liberal. There's more conservative churches versus liberal. And it's easy if you're more conservative, to go to think, hey, I'm living a holier life than them, kind of a thing. Yeah. And vice versa. The liberals can look and go, hey, you know, I have they're living in bondage because they feel they have to follow all these things, kind of thing. And it can be very um how how how would you say it? It it just tends to it can it can really tie you up in a way that you you're more focused on these outside traditions rather than what God wants you to do, which is how I found myself tending to. Um that I was more worried about what people would think than what God would think. And it's easy to to have sin in your life when you do that. I mean, our standard needs to be God, needs to be the Bible, number one. And however God leads you from there, whether it's a Mennonite or an Amish or a Baptist or however, you know, let God lead that direction kind of a thing. And um, yeah, and and it for me to, and and maybe this was also because I wasn't, you know, necessarily raised all the way in a Mennonite church, uh, it was hard for me to understand in a lot of the different things that they held as very important. Um, so maybe I'd do something and and and yet not be checking all the boxes somewhere else, and it just didn't seem like I could really do everything they expected me to, you know, always kind of missing it somewhere. Yeah. And so I was like, you know what, that you guys do you, I'll do me, kind of a thing. Um let's just both focus on pleasing God.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:49

So and how long ago was that? So I probably pulled out from the Mennonites um officially a little over a year ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:00

Um it kind of got to a point as well where I didn't I didn't agree with different maybe practices. I mean like I like I didn't like talk against them, but it did it did um have a it did flavor the way I thought though, I'll put it that way. So like if if we'd be having a meeting or something, we're discussing something, and I would give my opinion, um, I I was tending to notice that it wasn't what others were comfortable with. And I was like, you know what, they in a way it also wasn't being fair to them. Because this is a tradition, this is a lifestyle they're content with that they feel God wants them to do it. And if I'm kind of bringing in, you know, my thoughts and opinions that aren't part of their tradition because I don't agree with them, then in a way it wasn't being fair to them either. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:53

Um, and putting them in a hard position. And I was like, you know what, let's just make it easy. I'll just you know remove my my membership.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:00

So gotcha. Yeah. Yeah, man. It's been good knowing you. Like, I've learned a lot from you, and you have a lot of knowledge in the Bible, and and I think you've been able to help a lot of people out, just from what I've seen, just from like the different brothers and stuff, and um, so I think it's you're you're way knowledgeable, like it's all about and that's the thing, is is yeah, I love knowing the Bible, but am I putting it to use?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:26

Um, I mean it's yeah, a dude can have the Bible memorized, but if he hasn't isn't actually living how God wants him to, then it's useless to him, you know. Yeah, so I mean, yeah, I I I I love the fact that I that I do know have a lot of Bible knowledge in some proportion at least, but it's worthless to me if I'm not putting it to use, you know. Um so so that's and then when I hear guys say, Oh, you know a lot about the Bible, I'm like, Thank you, but that really in God's eyes, that's not really what's important, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:00

Education without application doesn't really mean anything. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's a that's a big thing just in anything, is it you know, I I have all these books in here and and I can read them all I want, but if I don't do anything in them, what does it matter? Yeah, you're just you're just pleasing yourself by saying I'm reading these and I know everything, but it's like if you're not putting them in application, then you're wasting your time.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:22

Yeah, and I I like to, you know, if I if I can use what God has kind of shown to me, you know, that my Bible knowledge to help other dudes, you know, that to me that's my goal. Um, yeah, obviously help me in my personal battles, but but if I can use it to point other guys to Jesus and help them through you know hard stuff they're dealing with, to me that's that's what it's all about, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:48

Yeah, yeah, and I like that I mean you're starting your your new journey now with like the fitness content and stuff, and you're weaving in, you know, also things about the Bible into it and just another strength thing, like mentally strength or meant mentally strong and spiritually strong and all these things. So I think that's really important. I've always said, or I haven't always said, but recently after I lost my weight, and then I you know gave up drinking and got in shape, and then the following year I got into going to church, like man, my life's just changed so much just doing those two things of just faith and fitness. Yeah. I mean the fitness side was a lot of it, but then the faith side just really like brings everything together, you know? Yeah. Um, but I always tell a lot of people, like, if you don't know where to start with your life, like those are the two areas, like get your body together, get your mind together.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:40

It's crazy how faith and fitness just go hand in hand. I mean, there's so many, so many comparisons that are just just in in line with each other. Um, you know, and I would just I just mentioned this on one of my recent posts how you know trials don't make a dude's character stronger. Stronger. They don't. It's not the trials. It's how we push against those trials. Just like the weight. I mean, getting a pair of dumbbells, they don't do you no good sitting on the floor. You got to use those, that weight, as uh to make yourself stronger. And same with the trials or or other stuff that gets thrown at you. Um, how you push against those is what makes your character stronger. So, you know, all this stuff, folks like, oh yeah, you know, these trials make you stronger. It's like, no, they don't. They don't make you stronger. Uh not if you not unless you deal with them in a way that makes you stronger. Make choices, whether it's a death in the family, which I we've been through that. Uh wife and I had our daughter, our our first daughter died. Um, you know, stuff like that, super rough stuff, or maybe it's financial trying to make, you know, ends meet, you know, just all sorts of stuff. You know, don't let those things make you a bitter person. Let them make you a better person. And that's our difficult time in Uruguay. That's something I would continually say to myself. Um, because it was super rough down there with some of the some of the guys that I thought had my back, kind of a thing. Um, that turned out didn't. Um and and we were by ourselves down there. I mean, away from family and friends. Just I relied on these, you know, four other dudes. Um, so just just trying to focus on you know these different situations, making us uh better people and not bitter. And how fitness is is just like that. Um those those weights can actually harm you if you don't use them correctly. Um you can you know tear a muscle. Um you know, your form could be wrong, for example. I mean, you need to use that weight correctly for it to actually make you your body better, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:49

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's so true. I mean, it's just the you can either take like a bad thing that happens to you and use it as a victim, or you can use it as a victor, like this is something that God's put me through to make me better, or you can use it as like poor me. And like both of those are gonna be the same situation. It's just which way are you gonna take it out of it? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:10

Yeah, that that's that's really how it is, and and same with diet, you know, you are what you eat, and same with spiritually. What are you feeding your brain all the time? You know, is it is it kind of mindless scrolling, um, which is is super easy to do. Yeah. Um scrolling. Yeah, yeah. And it's it's or or are you, you know, actively spending time in the word of God and prayer type of thing? What are you feeding your mind? Same thing. What are you feeding your body? I mean, your body needs to eat. You know, your mind needs to eat. So you're gonna be feeding it something. What are you feeding it?

SPEAKER_01 1:30:45

Yeah. What's your daily routine look like right now?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:48

It's chaos, honestly. It's uh um, you know, just trying to with with eight kids, it's hard to have a routine. I'll put it that way. Um, our one-year-old likes to wake up. We have those, like we have those noise makers in each room that you know it kind of does white noise to help drown out when people are getting out.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:11

But there's usually at least two or three kids get up at night to use a restroom and and ask for help, kind of a thing. Our daughter, our one-year-old, can get out of her crib now by herself. And when she does, she turns off her noisemaker, whether it's three in the morning and turns on the light. And so the night can get a little bit interrupted. So my goal is to get up at five. But depending on the night, I'm like, you know what, I I gotta get some sleep or I'm gonna I'm gonna be shot.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:38

Um, so depending on the night, I might not get up till six, six thirty. Um, but I I I like to first off, you know, spend time in the word of God if it if and and prayer. If time's cut off, then I at least get in prayer. You know, the word of God, um, super important. Um, but I also feel you can use that like um listen to it in audio, like if you're on the road or something. So it doesn't necessarily have to be sit down and read, although that's good. Um, but the word of God was audible. Most people only had access to, like, let's say in the Old Testament, Moses talking the word of God. They didn't have access to the scrolls, they couldn't read. Um, same with in the uh New Testament. Jesus, you know, they would they would hear the scriptures taught in the synagogues. People didn't have access. So the spoken word of God is just as valuable. Um, you can get a lot out of it. Rather, and and you know, just sitting down and reading the Bible and meditating on it, that's awesome. But if you're if you're out of time, running short on time, you're on the road, you know, listen to the I have an audio Bible, you know. Definitely that's another way to to keep feeding your mind good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:48

Yeah, for sure. What's your uh workout split looking like right now?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:54

Um, so I have a coach right now. I'm not quite sure. I I think it's push-pull legs, but he has me on day on, day off. So every other day.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:06

Um so we're trying to mix it up a little bit right now. I'm not quite sure where he's gonna go with it, but right now it is a push-pull legs.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:14

Yeah. Yeah, Charlie's uh Charlie's got you going, man. I know you were telling me about your diet, you're you're bulking up.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:22

I'm trying, it's so hard to you're bulking up, but you're losing fat. So that's that's it, which is what we want. But it's I I never was a big eater, so eating a lot of food is hard for me. Um I usually when I reach my limit, I'm done. If I eat more than that, I get sick. So I never was a big eater. So now that I have to intake, you know, 4,000, 4,500 calories a day, it's I I ended up buying some of that that mass gainer, which has a lot of calories in it, a lot of carb and protein. So I've been chopping off with that to help me reach that my calorie count. So that's been good. That that's really helped. I can drink stuff, I can drink stuff great. Um, you know, sometimes if I if I need to have my rice, I'll just blend it in water and drink the sludge. And yeah, it's gross, but I can I can drink it okay. Um, that's why I blend raw eggs. I can drink that okay. I I can I can drink nine eggs fine. Now sitting down and eating nine eggs, I can't do that. I can drink nine eggs just fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:29

The yolk and all.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah. As long as the yolks are popped. I've tried it before without popping the yolks. It gets stuck in my throat, that's not too good. Oh, geez. Yeah, it was kind of gross. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:40

I remember I had to eat a raw egg one time as a uh punishment when I was a kid because I was swearing a lot and my dad was like going through different, you know, soap or he was just trying to find something that's stuck, and I remember trying an egg and I was like, this is disgusting. I can I can do the egg whites right now, but I can't think about doing a yolk. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:59

A lot faster too. You know, that's the thing, is is I don't have a lot of time in the morning, especially if the rough nice been rough.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:06

And it's just, you know, just blending a bunch of eggs rather than frying them or making them with a bunch of, you know, I mean, don't get me wrong, I I I love you know, peppers and my eggs and and having an actual breakfast like that's great. Yeah. But when you're short on time, you know, having nine eggs in five minutes is that's hard to beat.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:24

So, what made you want to get started at posting fitness content?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:29

Um, so I'd been kind of actively sharing different advice with buddies and whatnot. Um, and eventually I, you know, I was like, you know what, maybe I should actually look at seeing if if I can maybe reach a broader audience, help other guys out, um, and you know, start an online, you know, coaching business. You know, of course, start small. Um, because it's that's how businesses are. Just kind of, I mean, yeah, it'd be nice to have a couple dozen clients at once, but that's not how the world works usually. Um, you know, just start small and just see how it grows, you know. Um, I have a full-time job, so it's not like I can take on a ton of clients right now anyway. But uh, but yeah, just just from uh doing what I've been doing so far and and uh you know putting those workouts in the app for you know the clients that I've got is yeah, it's been cool. Um, you know, getting those check-in videos sent and you know, they're looking for, hey, am I doing this right? Which is exactly where I was at. I was like, you know, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't want to be wasting my time, I don't want to hurt myself. I got into this when I was like 37, 38, something like that. And I'm like, you know what, I I'm past my prime time to build muscle, so I don't want to waste a bunch of time. I I want to get going on this. So that's why I hired my coach about maybe two months into working out solidly. I was like, you know, I just need some help. I need somebody to tell me if I'm doing this right, or if if I'm hitting the muscles right. I mean, because I I don't like leg day, so I'm gonna skip leg day as much as possible, for example. It was on my own. But hiring a coach helped me see, you know, all these different muscle groups what I need to hit and how often. And, you know, I don't need to hit these certain ones too much. I I better not, or I'm gonna be getting tennis elbow, for example. I really liked working arms, but before I got my coach, I gave myself tennis elbow because I liked working arms so much. Yeah. And uh messed up my elbow.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:27

What advice do you have for someone on why they should get a coach if they're just starting out?

SPEAKER_00 1:37:32

Um, so it to give them structure. That that'd be a big thing. Um, so they're not spending as much of time trying to figure out what their workout should be. Um, so their coach can line out, okay, this is what you need to do today. And and it takes away the guessing factor. Um the coach can make sure you're hitting the muscle groups that you need to be hitting. And if you've got injuries to work around those, um, and as you build your physique, your coach can critique where you're at and go, okay, let's go ahead and maybe, for example, do less arm work and work on your lats, you know. Um, so it's it's structured a big thing. And ideally, I mean, for me as a coach, I want to see my clients eventually get to where they can build their own routine by themselves. That's where I would love to see them to go. I mean, if they still want to hire me, that's great, but I want them to be knowledgeable enough in what they're doing that they could branch out on their own.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:30

Yeah. And who's your ideal client? Like who's the who's who do you serve specifically?

SPEAKER_00 1:38:37

So I am kind of my main goal is to work with dudes who are kind of in the same kind of lifestyle I'm at right now. You know, busy dads, they got kids. Um, and most of us dudes this age need to lose weight. Um, so that's it's easy to lose weight. Um, it's harder to build muscle, faster to lose weight, like fat, than it is to build muscle. So um that's a that's a great client that I'm looking for right there. But I also have you know, younger dudes reach out to me who um don't need to lose weight, they need to gain weight. And I'm like, hey, let's get you going right now. Let's get you building muscle. That's just great. So that's one young fella I'm working with right now. Um he he's in he's in great shape to build muscle. Um, he was thinking he needed to lose weight. And you know, I was looking at his physique and where he's at, his weight and height, and I was like, bro, you you go need to go right in to build muscle right now, dude. You don't need to lose weight. And he's uh actually gonna be working for the CHP down the road, um, going to the academy. So he's he's working toward that. And so that's that's our uh that's what we're working with right now is trying to get him um to where he can succeed in the academy and as a uh California Highway Patrol.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:53

Yeah, it's cool, dude. How's it been getting into the you know, talking into the camera realm? Has it been an adjustment? I know it was for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:01

Yeah, it's it's definitely weird. Um just learning to be myself. Yeah. And you know, it's not so it was scripted, like robotic kind of a thing. Yeah. So it's just being yourself, being authentic, getting it. Yeah, yeah, that and you know, that can be kind of hard. Um, so I I find what I like to do is record myself doing stuff rather than talking so much. Um, I do talk as well, but it's fun just to record me doing different things and say, hey, you know, this is you know, putting maybe some motivational something as an overlay on that video. That's that's kind of a big big thing I'm doing now. But I I do still talk. It's not it feels weird because I I'm totally cool talking to dudes, a group of dudes to you know, needing to do a speech or something that I'm cool with. But for some reason, this big lens in my face or even the phone, I'm like, it just makes me feel weird. Yeah, but I'll get over it eventually. But it's it's an interesting uh adjustment.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:00

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, dude, I I've been doing this about uh probably closer to two years, I guess. Yeah. And it never really goes away. I mean, you get you just get used to it. Yeah. Once you realize, like uh, like I think the power of intention behind it is like I want there's some people out there that can't afford my services, and I still want to be able to give them value so that they can still get results without having to pay if they can't afford it, and that's fine because I've been there too, and not being able to afford stuff. Exactly. Yep. If you want, you know, it's like you go to YouTube and you can't afford a mechanic to fix your car, but you'll go to a YouTube video and he'll show you how to do it yourself, you know. Same principle. It's kind of like just your community service, kind of like you just start looking at it like that. Like dude is helping out, you don't know, you might be helping out a dude all the way in Florida that just is down on his luck, and he just happens to, you know, be scrolling, and all of a sudden he sees your video about God and working out and changes his life, and you don't even know him, you know. So I think about those things of like you don't you don't know that's a beautiful thing about the internet, you don't know who you're gonna be able to impact.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:06

Yeah, yeah, no, and that's that's a good point. Um, yeah, because I'd of quite a few times the whole reason why I opened up YouTube to research this is because I couldn't afford the mechanic to work on my car. You know, it's a the the part, for example, is a cheap$20 part, but it costs a thousand bucks to install it. Just because of where it's located. Yeah, that happened on my truck a couple years ago. Um I super left me in the dirt, middle of nowhere. Wagon Tire, Oregon. I don't know if you know where that's at. Okay, yeah, middle of nowhere, no cell coverage.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:39

Gosh.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:40

Yeah, it it my truck busted a radiator part and lost all my radiator fluid. And um anyway, long story short, it ended up getting home, but it was just a small part, but they had to take the cab off to replace it. And that was gonna cost a thousand bucks, which I did not have. And this old faithful truck has 400 something thousand miles on it, and I'm like, no, I can we can this is still going, still good. So yeah, between uh I bought a$60 little palm nailer from Harbor Freight and duct tape a bit on there, and was able to, you know, hacksawed a different part off the the fitting and was able to that part in my truck and hose clamps and stuff, and for about 70 bucks, and thanks to YouTube, I saved uh you know about 900 something dollars. So yeah, I totally get the YouTube thing, but yeah, just just having info out there for dudes who can't afford it, you know. That's that's what caught me started on my first coach. Yeah. Because he helped me out a lot well on his podcast and whatnot. And um then I ended up signing on with him.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:50

Yeah. What do you think is the most important part for someone that wants to lose weight?

SPEAKER_00 1:43:57

Um so it just the I'd say the most important part is knowledge. Why what causes weight to begin with? Because until you actually know what's going on, it it's it's like shooting in the dark. So I I want I want my clients to know what causes them, which is very simple. What causes them to have fat or to gain weight or lose weight, which is basically are they living in a calorie deficit or not, you know? So it's like, okay, are you overweight? Yeah, all right. So how we go about losing weight is we need to put you in a uh caloric deficit. So basically your body needs to burn more calories than what you're eating. And um from there, then we once they kind of get that knowledge, oh yeah, you know, that makes sense. It's it's not just randomly showing up on them. There's a method to this, and it's super simple. Um, and then from there we go, okay, you know, let's uh let's look at your eating habits, what's going on, and and what's your step movement? I'm not talking about jogging, I'm just saying, hey, how much do you actually move during the day, you know? And what do we need to work on more? You know, because if they aren't moving much, then hey, let's get you moving some more if we can. Um, my one client, he has uh knee surgery he's recovering from, so he can't do much as far as cardio goes.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:19

Um, so there's other ways to approach it. Uh, another dude I've been working with uh had back surgery, and he can do very little in the gym. Um, so I've been really working on his diet and he's been steadily losing weight.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:33

Yeah. That's cool, man. I'm glad that you get to help out people in their spiritual walks, now their fitness walks. That's cool. Yeah. It's uh it's a rewarding, you know, being able to help people change their lives. And the bigger part of that for me is also if you help a dad change your life, they can set the example for their kid and change that whole generation. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. So it's not just one person you're helping, it's the whole line. Yeah, you know, and then that person could also be a motivating factor for other people in his family that see him, and now it's possible, and now they can start changing. It's yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:10

And the thing, cool thing too, is you know, we talk about child training and how every child is different and being flexible with that. And that is fitness, is the exact same thing. Everybody is a little different, and you you need to customize the approach for, I mean, yeah, the basics are the same, but you need to customize the approach for each person. Um, you can't cookie cut, or they could use an app. If you're gonna cookie cut, they can get something offline. I mean, why would they hire a coach? I'm hiring a coach to fit their situation and make it work, is how I see it. Um so yeah, again, the basics are the same, but meeting someone at their level and making it work for them is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:52

Yeah. Where's a good spot for people to go and check your page out?

SPEAKER_00 1:46:58

Um, so on Instagram, it's uh skywalker.life. So my name's Luke. So that's kind of I've had those use the force and I'm your father stuff thrown at me for about as long as I can remember.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:14

Especially when I was a CSR, um uh customer service representative. Pick up the phone, you know, and I'd say the company's name, you know, this is Luke. Voice would come across the phone, I'm your father. I'm like, dude, please stop it. So no, I had numerous customers call me Skywalker and just stuck. Yeah, so you just like that, yeah. I mean, it just kind of goes with it. I mean, hey Skywalker, I'm like, yeah. I mean, I've been called worse, so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:42

That's cool, man. I'll definitely make sure to put a tag down and then uh you know, have people go check it out. It's been cool to know you and and uh just I've learned a bunch from you, and it's been cool working out with you and yeah, likewise, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:56

No, it's it's been great. Um, just gleaning info from you on fitness stuff and where you're at in your journey and how you got there's been super encouraging.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:04

Yeah, man. It's just uh, you know, sometimes you just gotta share, share your story with people and let them know that's where you came from too. It's like we all put our pants on one leg at a time, like I'm not really any different than you. It's you know, especially especially if you could share with them, like I used to be overweight too, dude. Like I I get it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:22

Oh yeah, oh yeah. That's me being an overweight truck driver is kind of what caught me into fitness more. Yeah, just I need to get this done, type of thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:33

So yeah, you should share more of that because there's a lot of truck drivers out there you could connect with.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:37

Yeah, well, I mean, that's just it is I was just gaining weight, I wasn't really thinking about it. I mean, I knew I was, you know, pant size or whatever, you know, and there's telltale signs when you gain weight, I'll put it that way.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:49

Yeah, you start getting out of breath, playing with the kids, or even just trying to tie your shoes or anything.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:53

Yeah, it's yeah, and and so when I had my you know, my checkup, you know, you have a two-year checkup. If you're healthy, it's two years. If if you're suspicious, then they do it every year.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:02

So I had my two-year checkup, and the doctor's like, well, no, you're kind of in the overweight bracket now. And I was like, Oh, really? He's like, Yeah. He's like, but you know, it's not necessarily all fat, you know, there's no muscle in there too, but just but you are in the overweight bracket. And I was like, All right, well, I guess I'll I've I've dabbled in fitness before then, but never really got serious. So at that point, I was like, all right, I I gotta, I gotta get this going. So at that point is when I got serious and and got a few pieces of equipment, um, yard sale and whatnot for to put my garage because I didn't have access to a gym. So yeah, yard sale or Craigslist, that's that's where I started. Yeah, I've seen pictures of your gym, it looks pretty sweet. Now I've built on it, yeah. So I've I've got a few newer pieces, you know, off of Amazon or whatnot, but that's uh yeah, I only started going to the gym in the last maybe four months. Yeah. Um, you know, working with equipment and machines that are are very muscle specific, especially with I have problems with my one knee. So using some. Some of that special leg equipment is is really cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:02

Yeah. Cool, dude. Well, thanks for coming on and uh hopefully this this message gets out to a bunch of people and you can make some good impact, dude.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:12

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:14

Yeah.