FOMO 10/40

FOMO 10/40 Podcast | Episode 7 | The Children's Book

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 16:09
SPEAKER_00

Hi, welcome to the FOMO 1040 podcast, where we have a passion to connect families, inspire our community to a greater sense of purpose, and to make an impact on the world. I'm Andrew Hershey, your host. And today I'm excited to talk a little about uh an achievement of my own, but also just uh a dream fulfilled. And in the Bible, it talks about a dream fulfilled is a tree of life. And so this just brings my heart a lot of joy. Uh, this is also the first time I am doing a video. I'm showing my face, allowing you to experience from the inside uh of FOMO 1040 in our back office and just um allowing us to uh to reveal a little bit more about who we are um on the outside or on the inside. And so I'm here um to present to you something that has been worked on by a lot of people over the course of years and has finally come. And this is the podcast I would like to entitle, uh title it as The Children's Book. And the children's book is right here in my hands, and it called it's called Andrew Finds a Way. And I just have to give a tremendous shout out to Krista Smith and Lily Smith, her daughter, uh, for all of their hard work in making this project become a reality. And today I would like to just take the time to read this book to you because I believe it expresses the heart of the last six years of business, of ice cream, of service, and what I just envisioned this to become. Um, and so I will take this time to just read this uh to you and um would love for you to pick up your copy, share it with a friend. Um, I've committed to donate a dollar every dollar, uh, a dollar for every purchased book to Lily's college fund. And Lily started designing boards for me when she was about 11 or 12 years old, menu boards, and her hand-drawn menu boards are actually on this um ice cream cover uh of this book. And so, to just a shout out to Lily to encourage her and her dreams, her passions for writing, her passions for uh illustrating, we just want to be able to help her achieve her dreams. So, would you do that by purchasing a copy of this book? But I'm gonna dive into the book and let you experience the joy of Andrew Finds a Way. So it starts out like this. I'm gonna show you the pictures here. And it says, There once was a young man, his name was Andrew. He loved to help people and show them their value. Here's the next page. Maybe I'll read it and then share. He decided to travel to learn and to grow so he could help people truly know that they are loved and special, and there's joy every day, and that serving others is truly the way. And he realized he had a new purpose in life. This is just the traveling back in Egypt, uh, back in 2017, my first trip to Egypt. Andrew got an idea and it started small, but with the help from others, it grew big and tall. Here's the first dream, the first idea of the ice cream shop. This is the first dream, the first idea of the ice cream shop right here. The globe cone. How can ice cream reach the world? Okay, he built an ice cream shop with his friend, Mr. Mike, simply to help others feel joyful and light. Here are some of the fun pictures. It says uh Mike's trusty saw, a building mishap, and finally done. Here's the first kind of artwork and picture of our FOMO 1040 trailer. Others came also to help Andrew serve. They scooped and scooped and learned and learned. I love this picture. So many different hands, so many different backgrounds serving ice cream. It makes me just really happy to think about that. After a while, Andrew went back to see his old friends and help them learn that there is no better way to have joy every day than serving others and making a way. So here is a scoop of ice cream being brought back to uh the old man at the beginning. That's really exciting. There's no better way to show people love and that they're special each day. This is the community of friends that have been developed through the ice cream shop. And it just ends with a question: what will you do today to show people value? This is the question I have for you. This is the question I have for those you're leading. Um, what will we do today to show people value? And I think uh this book represents a journey for me to from the beginning of being in a prayer room in the land of Egypt and really getting the first idea of what having a small business would be like, having an idea of ice cream, having it be used for a global purpose, and to see people impacted all over the world through the pros from the proceeds of ice cream, through maybe even the sale of this book, um, just how we can help bring light to the darkness and hope to the hopeless. I think value is a huge thing our society um in our world speaks against. It tries to devalue us, it tries to stomp on us and make us think that we are worth nothing, whether that's the mistakes we've made or um just the experiences that we've had. A lot of times we get lied to about our worth because of a circumstance. And so I would I just want to encourage those who are listening and care that you're valued, that your life is worth so much, so much to God and uh so much to the King of Kings that he would be willing to die for you on a cross and uh so much so that um you have a unique contribution to the world. And without you in it, somebody's gonna be missing out. Somebody's gonna be missing out on the gift that you have to give them. And for me, it looks like the joy and the the simplicity of ice cream or coffee and the connection, um, the lifting up. I like to say ice cream is a beautiful thing because it's a time that you or something you eat when you celebrate. So if you get done with a baseball game, you're like, hey guys, let's go get ice cream and you get to celebrate. But for a lot of people, it's also a coping mechanism. This really hurt. This was hard. I got my six-year-old shots today, and I promised I would get my kids ice cream because the shots were really painful, and it just kind of helps with the pain. So it's amazing how a little joy, a little hope, a little connection can mean a lot in our life. And I think through ice cream and through purchasing ice cream and not only getting to receive that hope, but also being able to give that hope to others brings so much encouragement and life. So, one more shout out. Please go on Amazon, buy a copy of this book. It's called Andrew Finds a Way. Um, this will help support the missions work around the world. This will also help support Lily in her college education and just a way to see a dream fulfilled. And my prayer right now, over the course of time, we would see 100,000 copies sold, and we could give Lily a full ride scholarship to uh her university and graduate studies or whatever God would choose to show her. So would you be one that purchases uh the Andrew Finds a Way book? Awesome. I also have one other thing I wanted to share with you uh since I'm on video, and this is just comes out of a heart of service. And it was three years ago. I was in the process of discerning if we needed to go full time with the ice cream shop or if we needed to stay seasonal. And up until this point, I was really determined to use wise stewardship and only serve ice cream when it worked. And that really was hot, warm days. And so North Dakota, we really have about 80 warm days from May 20th, you know, through the beginning of August. And it it's a little bit sparse when it comes to warm days. So I only set up this business as a seasonal business. But when I was discerning this, I had somebody from Prison Fellowship. His name's Eddie, and a shout out to Eddie McLaughlin. Thank you so much for your ministry and your service, who is passionate about bringing hope to prisoners in our prison uh world. And he's been into many different prison prisons, and his story is incredible. But he asked me if there was any way we could cater ice cream into the prison. And this story is incredible because the the sh the warden um was, you know, the the it had to be passed by the warden. The warden said, Absolutely not. No way. There's no way we can bring a trailer in here and serve ice cream. Well, after a week and after some discussion, the next meeting time, they presented the idea again and said, What if we just brought an ice cream trailer in? Instead of a whole food truck, what if we just brought an ice cream trailer and we'd serve everyone ice cream? And the warden was in favor of it. And so this was just a moving in the hearts, heart of him and into to be able to bring hope to these prisoners. So we got cleared. We had the ability to get our ice cream trailer into the North Dakota State Penitentiary, and we were able to serve ice cream to the well-behaved prisoners. This was starting the start of relationships that were being formed. And still on the inside, I would call them somewhat friends that uh they are praying for me and they're praying for our shop and they're praying for our work and what we do around the world. Um, but this was the start of that. And so uh we served in the rain um for about two hours, and we served about 200 to 300 men and got them a scoop of ice cream and the joys on their face, even in the rain, the pouring rain, um, was just delight. The second year I went in, I was given a gift by a man, and I just want to shout out to David. David, thank you so much for this gift. And I wanted to share this gift with the world, and I wanted to share it with you who are listening because I think it's super precious to me. Um, David, who's in prison currently, I won't say his last name just for his identity protection purposes, but David um has blessed me with a handmade journal that he took the time to make. And here is here it is. So it is a leather back journal, and he took the time to etch the the FOMO 1040 logo into the journal, and he he had to have help from somebody get the logo and the colors right, so somebody helped print it off and then he etched it. And David uh caught the mission and the vision of FOMO 1040 because I can see it on the back. He created this region, which is called the 1040 window. And if you really look at this, it is the top half of half of Africa here, and then the Middle East in Central Asia. And in the 1040 window, we see statistics that are just awful. Highest amounts of violence, highest amounts of control, highest amounts of persecution for those who believe in Jesus, lowest amounts of freedom and education, I think of poverty just rampant throughout the 1040 window, just abuse. Um, and it makes sense when you take the light and the love of Jesus out of a place, you get chaos and you get disorder and you get um crime and ultimately brokenness. And the heart bet behind FOMO 1040 is to bring hope and light to the darkest areas of the world. We we say focused on missions overseas 1040, identifying the darkest areas of the world and bringing light and hope into this. So this came from prison, a place that Mr. David could not go, but he's given it to me. And by having it in my hand, I'm able to share it with you, which ultimately has the opportunity to impact many people around the world. David, thank you for this. I hope you get to listen to this podcast. I just want to let you know I'm praying for you, I'm cheering you on, and I believe that God has a big, big purpose still with your life. So have hope, have hope. And remember that God is He sees all things and He has a tremendous amount of grace and love. So I want to share these two things with you today. I believe that when we have people in our life that bring hope and encouragement and love, we need to celebrate them so much. We need to cheer them on. We need to just have an excitement around life. And I'm just, I just want to encourage you to encourage others today. I want you to to experience that value is given through a lot of love and through encouragement and just understanding somebody deeply and being able to impact them in such a way. So um, this is the first time I'm really going to open this up, but if you guys have questions or want to hear something on the podcast, um, I would love to address it, whether that's a business uh framework or business principle, whether it's a value or integrity issue, um, how we maybe handle different situations here, how we got our start to where we're going, all those things. I would love for you to communicate with us. Please uh fill out a form that is in the link below. Um, I'll also put the link to the book in the description below, and you guys can just jump on, let me know what how I can best serve you in this podcast. And I'm looking forward to the journey with you. I'm I'm hoping that this would inspire somebody and that it would uh make an impact in the world. So again, I'm Andrew, your host. Thank you for listening to the FOMO 1040 podcast.