Podcasts about 10you

THE WEEK OF TRINITY XI - SUNDAYLESSON: LUKE 18:9‒14“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.” Luke 18:10You have already heard that before any man can do what is good and pleasing in God's sight he must already be a pious man, that is, he must be accounted as justified and righteous before God by faith in Christ. At all times it remains universally true that a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and, contrariwise, that a bad tree cannot produce good fruit. If a man is to do what is good, he must be good beforehand. So also here. The tax collector beats his breast, and this act may be regarded as a mark of the faith he already had in his heart.This took place and was recorded so that we should really open our eyes and not judge people merely by outward appearances. We must try to discover what was in the heart of these two men and not simply form a judgement according to works. If the heart is godly, all is godly. If this tax collector is judged by works, you soon come to a false conclusion. It appears that in him there is nothing but sin. Likewise, when I judge the hypocritical Pharisee here according to works, I also finish up with a wrong conclusion. He stands in the holy place, makes a fine prayer, praises and thanks God with impressive works, fasts, gives tithes, and harms no one. Everything about this man glitters. His standards find universal approval.It is not easy to reject the testimony of such an honorable, virtuous life. Who would venture to assert that fasting is not good, that praising God and rendering to every man his due is something evil? When I look at a priest, monk, or nun, I regard them as godly. Who can gainsay me? But if I am to determine that this man is evil and that man godly, I must look into their hearts. This I cannot do.SL 11:1486 (2‒4)PRAYER: We know that it is quite useless, heavenly Father, to play the role of a hypocrite, because You can always look into our hearts and judge us accordingly. Purify our hearts from all base motives, that the services we render You may truly please You and benefit our neighbor, for Christ's sake. Amen.Editor's note: No American Edition (AE) equivalent for today's sermon excerpt exists at the time of this publication. For an alternate English translation of this sermon, see Lenker, Church Postil—Gospels, 4:336-347.

What does having a call on your life look like? The simple answer to this question is to follow our discussion with Chivas Davis. Chivas is an entrepreneur and art is his business and ministry A young child in the midst of wisdomHe attended Victoria Manner Church of Christ with his parentsHe and his family attended Dania Church of ChristHe grew up in the body without distractions because there were no children his ageHe was baptized at the age of 6 in the bodyHe shared how Christ said to suffer the little children to come to meThe challenges faced as a youth and a young adult Chivas was bold enough to correct older people by using the word of God He shared how it was important to live according to the word and looking up to older Christians for encouragementHe was an outcast because the other youth were not all in Chivas made it a point to avoid all the issues the other youth were dealing withBeing called out means walking the journey aloneUsing the word of God to help us walk this journey when we don't have others to help us study The journey was lonely because he had two sets of friends (school and church)He shared that he would rather live life at the latter end of Job's lifeGod was not in her first marriage because she strayed awayWith her second she was back in the body and she knew what to do where her spirituality was concernedThe way to salvation:Hear: Romans 10:17Believe: Hebrews 11:6Repent: Acts 17:30-31Confess: Matthew 10:32Be Baptized: Mark 16:15-16Be faithful unto death: Revelation 2:10You can reach Chivas Davis:IG: @chivasthegoat      @paintwithfaith      @thewholearmorcomicbook.comWebsite: www.thewholearmorcomicbook.com; www.paintwithfaith.comJ3Days Apparel This apparel company seeks to lift up Christ for He is the Savior and the Redeemer! (John 12:32). A Call to SalvationSupport the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/CalledbyGod)

Podcast: Unsolicited Response Podcast (LS 30 · TOP 10% what is this?)Episode: ServiceNow's New OT Management ProductPub date: 2021-06-10You know IT / OT integration is getting serious when the popular IT apps and services add OT extensions. The latest is ServiceNow's new OT Management Product. James Destro of ServiceNow joins Dale Peterson on the Unsolicited Response show to talk about two main things. 1) How does OT Management get the OT asset inventory information? (and what is the single source of truth for OT asset inventory) 2) Once the OT asset inventory is in ServiceNow what types of workflows are envisioned that would be a big benefit to the asset owner. Links: Operational Technology Management 1-pager: https://www.servicenow.com/content/dam/servicenow-assets/public/en-us/doc-type/resource-center/solution-brief/uc-operational-technology-management-manufacturing.pdf Detailed documentation of the Operational Technology Classes: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/quebec-servicenow-platform/page/product/configuration-management/concept/cmdb-ci-class-models-operation-technology.html Asset Inventory Integrations: https://store.servicenow.com/sn_appstore_store.do#!/store/integrations?freeTrial=service_graph_certified&offeredby=servicenow%253Bpartners Signup For Dale's Friday News & Notes at https://friday.dale-peterson.com/signupThe podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dale Peterson: ICS Security Catalyst and S4 Conference Chair, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

THE WEEK OF MISERICORDIA DOMINI - FRIDAYLESSON: PSALM 23He who descended is he who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. Ephesians 4:10You have heard how our Lord Jesus Christ, after His suffering and death, was translated and entered an immortal existence. We must not understand this to mean that Christ is now sitting idly up in heaven and that He is nothing but an object of continual joy to Himself alone. He has taken over the full kingship of His kingdom and is exercising full rule over His kingdom. He is the King of whom all the prophets and the whole of Scripture has so much to tell us. St. Paul says that he now fills all things. And so, we must ever regard Christ as being continually present in His kingdom and exercising the government of His kingdom.We must not hold the view that He is sitting up in heaven in a state of idleness, but that from heaven above He now rules and fills all things, as St. Paul reminds us. He is especially concerned with His kingdom, which exists wherever the Christian faith exists. Therefore, His kingdom is present in our midst here on earth. In regard to this kingdom, matters have been so ordained that it should improve and become purer from day to day. This kingdom is not ruled by any forms of outward authority and might but by the oral preaching of the Word of God and, more especially, by the preaching of the Gospel.SL 11:780 (6)PRAYER: Your presence in our midst, Lord Jesus, is a source of great consolation and joy to us at all times. Continue to bless us, especially in the proclamation of Your Word of salvation. Let it always have free course in our midst, for Your mercy's sake. Amen. Editor's note: No American Edition (AE) equivalent for today's sermon excerpt exists at the time of this publication. For an alternate English translation of this sermon, see Lenker, Church Postil—Gospels, 3:17-31.

THE WEEK OF EASTER - SATURDAYLESSON: MATTHEW 27:1-14In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the expiation for our sins. 1 John 4:10You must learn to look right through the sufferings of Christ and see His friendly heart, how it is filled with love for you, and how it moved Him to assume the heavy load which your conscience and sins laid on Him. In this way, your heart will be warmed towards Him, and your confidence and faith will be strengthened. Thereupon you should mount even higher through Christ's heart to God's heart and see that Christ would never have manifested His love for you if God in His eternal love had not willed it. Christ rendered obedience to God's love in His love for you.In this way, you will discover the fatherly heart of God in its wonderful goodness, and, as Christ Himself declares, you will be drawn to the Father through Him. Then you will also understand Christ's saying that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).To come to a true knowledge of God, we must not try to find Him simply in His power of wisdom, which can be bewildering, but we must grasp Him in His goodness and love. In this respect, faith and confidence have something to cling to, and man becomes truly born anew in God.SL 11:581 (14)AE 76:431PRAYER: Make it ever more clear and certain for us, heavenly Father, that in all that Christ our Savior bore and suffered for us sinners, love was operating and that in this manifestation of love You have clearly revealed our inner and true nature to us, for Christ's sake. Amen.

Ant, Matt and Clare introduce the first of many 'beer cities', shining a spotlight on London. With each new season of the podcast, the hosts will focus one episode on a city that has made a name for itself in the beer world. Correspondent Dean Barrett speaks the founders of South Bermondsey's finest low-alcohol brand Small Beer, James Grundy and Felix James. Dean Barrett's second interview features Michael George-Hemus and Frank Maguire, the Managing Director and Head of Market for Truman's Beer in East London.It's CAMRA's 50th anniversary today - 16th March 2021! Re-visit the episode and dive into the history of the Campaign: https://shows.acast.com/pubspintspeople/episodes/10You can pre-order your copy of Laura Hadland's biography '50 Years of CAMRA' from the CAMRA shop - published on 16th March.Don't forget to support the show at https://supporter.acast.com/pubs-pints-peopleOr join CAMRA if you're not already a member for just £26.50 a year at https://join.camra.org.uk/ - gain access to great audio and visual content on our Learn & Discover platform.If you'd like to get involved, simply contact podcast@camra.org.uk or follow us on Twitter @PubsPintsPeople See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. In him we have placed our hope that he will yet again deliver us.” -2 Corinthians 1:10You will never outgrow your need for the Gospel. It is your path to continual deliverance. Read Joni Eareckson Tada's Daily Devotional.For more inspiration, subscribe to Hope Through Hardship and the Joni and Friends Ministry Podcast.Follow Joni and Friends on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.Give to Support Joni's Ministry!Thank you for helping others find this podcast by leaving a 5-star review! Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Founded in 1979 by Joni Eareckson Tada who was left a quadriplegic in a diving accident at 17 years old, the ministry has served thousands of people living with disability worldwide for more than 40 years. Learn more at www.joniandfriends.org.

Can you give me the book? 这个用法在老外听来可是十分不礼貌的。"Can"在这里是指一种能力，这句话等于是在问你有没有把书递给我的能力，除非身体有缺陷，相信四肢健全的人都能做到这件事。所以应该这样说才对：Could you please give me the book? 可以给我那本书吗？2、What's your problem?大家可要当心了，这句话一定不要用错。不然可能会被打"What's your problem?" 表达的意思并不是“你的问题是什么？” 而是“你有毛病啊？”很不礼貌哦！所以，和老外聊天的时候一定注意啦！要这样说才对：Do you have any other questions? 你还有什么问题吗？3Give you.在中文中，我们把东西给别人时会说“喏，给你”或者“拿去吧！” 但是在英文中可不能直接翻译成"Give you"，这真是地道的Chinglish啦。英文中把东西给别人的正确说法应该是：Here you are. 给你。4 I'm boring.很多使用这句话的人想表达的意思都是，我觉得好无聊。但是，I'm boring实际上表达的意思是“我这个人很无趣”哦。大家都不愿意变成无趣的人吧，所以这个表达注意不要用错咯！觉得无聊应该这样说才对：I'm bored. 我觉得好无聊。5I will remember you forever.我会永远记住你…只有感情真的很深很深才会用到这句话。不然，用"forever"有点太夸张了，毕竟沒有人能活到"forever"。中肯一点可信度会更高哦~如果朋友之间分别应该这样说才对：I'll always remember you. 我会一直记着你的。6What is your meaning?这句话的意思可不是询问别人“你的意思是……？”而是在问别人“你的人生有什么意义？” 似乎对方的存在没有必要，所以，这句话用错可就挺得罪人啦。正确说法应该是：What do you mean? 你的意思是……？I have no time.想表达“我没时间啦”！很多人脱口而出就是"I have no time!"这可是大大的不对哦！要知道在老外看来，I have no time是没多少活着的时间了……所以，用的时候得当心了。想要表达时间紧迫可以这样说：I'm running out of time. 我没时间啦！8I'll call your phone.这句话又是典型的Chinglish。我会打你电话，中文看来完全没毛病。但是，英文可不能直接就这么翻译过去了。"I'll call your phone." 的意思是我要给你的电话打电话。怎么听怎么奇怪所以简单一点，这样说就OK：I will call you. 我会打给你。9Please turn on the light.这句话本身是没有错的，但是"Please"在这里虽然是请别人开灯，但其实有一丢丢给别人下命令的意味哦！更礼貌的表达应该用：Could you...,Would you...,May I...所以这里应该是：Could you please turn on the light? 你可以把灯打开吗？10You go first.我大中国可是礼仪之邦，“您先走”这句话大家肯定也会经常用到。"You go first" 虽然表达上没什么问题，但是也有一点点命令的含义在里面哦！想要做个小绅士，小淑女，更礼貌一点的说法应该是：After you. 您先请。这些容易犯错的英语表达你有遇到过吗？下次再听到别人这么说，你就可以指出他们的错误啦！你们还知道什么因为英语闹出的笑话，也可以留言分享给大家哦！今天的知识是不是很容易就学会了呢？别忘了在评论区提交作业哦。今日作业这些短语和句子你都理解对了吗？最后留给同学们一个小作业：Be quick, we are running out of time.这句话是什么意思呢？同学们可以在右下角留言区写下你的答案哦, 老师会亲自点评~

Join Ant, Matt and Clare this week as they learn about the innovative moves brewers and pub-owners have been taking to combat the Covid-19 crisis. Correspondent Harry Davies sits down with Ian Smith from Fyne Ales to chat about their take-home cask ale scheme, and Dean Barrett talks community with Rob Scahill, landlord of the Orange Tree pub in Baldock.Visit @CAMRA_Official to see all the reasons why #PubsMatter to the UK, and find out more about the cross-industry campaign to save pubs at https://whypubsmatter.org.uk/It's CAMRA's 50th anniversary on 16th March! Re-visit the episode and dive into the history of the Campaign: https://shows.acast.com/pubspintspeople/episodes/10You can pre-order your copy of Laura Hadland's biography '50 Years of CAMRA' from the CAMRA shop - published on 16th March.Don't forget to support the show at https://supporter.acast.com/pubs-pints-peopleOr join CAMRA if you're not already a member for just £26.50 a year at https://join.camra.org.uk/ - gain access to great audio and visual content on our Learn & Discover platform.If you'd like to get involved, simply contact podcast@camra.org.uk or follow us on Twitter @PubsPintsPeople See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Service VideoSermon Audio Only 1 Peter 1:22-2:10You have purified your souls by obeying the truth in order to show sincere mutual love. So love one another earnestly from a pure heart. You have been born anew, not from perishable but from imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. Forall flesh is like grassand all its glory like the flower of the grass;the grass withers and the flower falls off,but the word of the Lord endures forever.And this is the word that was proclaimed to you.So get rid of all evil and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. And yearn like newborn infants for pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up to salvation, if you have experienced the Lord’s kindness.A Living Stone, a Chosen PeopleSo as you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but chosen and precious in God’s sight, you yourselves, as living stones, are built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood and to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it says in scripture, “Look, I lay in Zion a stone, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and whoever believes in him will never be put to shame.” So you who believe see his value, but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and a stumbling-stone and a rock to trip over. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may proclaim the virtues of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. You once were not a people, but now you are God’s people. You were shown no mercy, but now you have received mercy.

“But by the grace of God I am what I am. And His grace which was bestowed upon me was not found vain but I laboured more abundantly than they all yet not I but the grace of God which was with me.”-1 Corinthians 15:10You can never get anywhere spiritually until you are yourself in Christ. Now mark that very carefully, it is not that you cannot get anywhere until you are yourself, but yourself in Christ. Many people have the idea that self and Christ are opposed and the two never meet, but until you find yourself in Christ and you are yourself in Christ, you will never get anywhere in Christian life, Christian character, or Christian service. *Help this podcast grow by subscribing and sharing and leaving a review*

In 2013 a new word was added to the Oxford English dictionary. It was the word selfie. Most of us have posted them all over social media. This word is so familiar and entrenched in our day to day life that we have trouble remembering what life was like before social media. Think about what a selfie really is: a picture, perfectly crafted to present the very best image of ourselves. We control the lighting and our expression. We can delete the image if the smile is wrong, hold the camera a little higher to make our eyes appear larger or add a filter to cover our imperfections. These pictures are way more than a self-portrait. They are a declaration of how we want others to see us and the ultimate publicity campaign for ourselves. When posted on social media, selfies translate into “likes” and “comments” and provide instant confirmation that we are accepted.I recently read about Dr. Levi Harrison, a San Francisco based physician is warning people about taking too many selfies. He is diagnosing patients with what he calls, “selfie-wrist”, a form of carpal tunnel syndrome. It's a tingling, sharp pain which comes from flexing your wrist inward or by holding your phone too long.A 2018 study discovered that in the past six years there have been 259 deaths associated with taking a selfie. In front of a train, on a cliff, near a wild animal, even in front of a tornado.We live in a selfie culture. It's estimated that 1,000 selfies are posted on Instagram every second.  One definition said, “A selfie is an unrealistic depiction of ourself, a planned representation of what we want to look like. It's a polished image. There's nothing wrong with taking a selfie, and I'm not here today to tell us all to stop posting them I have something much more important to talk about. I believe our obsession with selfies can be linked to a spiritual problem. The struggle for our identity. It is the tension of who we are and who we want to be.Our world is facing an identity crisis. The deep cry of this generation is “Who am I?”  This longing and this confusion over identity fuels the need to be noticed which produces many of the selfies posted today.For the Christian, identity shouldn't be an issue. The Bible makes it very clear. We have been created in the image of God. Jesus paid for my sins on the cross, verifying my worth to God. The Bible says I have been called, chosen, accepted, forgiven, and redeemed. I am a child of God and my name is written in Heaven.“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)So, why do we struggle so much with identity? We struggle because:Identity gives us a sense of securityWe crave the approval and affirmation of other people…so we pretendWe are afraid of rejection so we attempt to meet social expectationsWe allow others to define us.So, if you are a follower of Christ, let me tell you what God's Word says about your true identity.You are a child of God - John 1:12You are a new creation in Christ - 2 Corinthians 5:17You are God's workmanship - Ephesians 2:10You are a friend of God - John 15:15You are a citizen of Heaven - Philippians 3:20You are a member of Christ's body - 1 Corinthians 12:27You are more than a conqueror - Romans 8:32Today's Challenge: Let's reject the labels our culture attempts to put on us. Let's rest in the security of knowing who we are in Christ. Let's find contentment in the love of God and believe he has accepted us as his children.

brandon handley00:08All right. Very cool. 00:10Very cool. Well, they'll start it off in 54321 Hey there, spiritual dope. I'm on today with Cody rain Cody rain is like he's a master of all kinds of marketing. He's got the mantas programs got this podcast visceral human 00:27He has a course creators Academy that's powered by the mantas program you're looking to get into video 00:33Code is your guy, he's got the Hitchhiker's Guide to video. He's got so much other he's got so much going on. I personally kind of wonder like how you keep it all together. But you know, it's obvious to me that you've got a system of implementation. 00:46And you just kind of rock it out because you do have your systems in place, but man, thanks for joining us today. How you doing, Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program00:52Hey, thank you so much brother is such a pleasure to be here. Yeah. Man systems in life so many things that we, I love that you talk about systems because we are a system. 01:04We are a series of processes that are constantly executing. We're taking a new devil data developing it, we are processing that data, making decisions utilizing our power of choice and for me. 01:17My brain has been really scattered my whole life, because we'll just say ADHD and all these other random things. And so for me, systems and all that stuff is very, very, I don't want to say it's necessary, but it is important. 01:31And so for me, kind of having that structure is, you know, the one way you do one thing is what you do everything so 01:39I structure my life. 01:40And that reflects in my business man. So with that, yeah, I got a lot going down constantly emotion constantly thinking about the things that a lot of people tend to ignore. 01:50And I appreciate you for having me, man. Today is the best day of my life and I'm so excited. I get to share it with you. brandon handley01:55Now, man. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. I always tell people I've waited my entire life for this moment right 02:01Right. 02:01I mean, because here we are. I mean we everything's everything's built up to this moment. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program02:04Yeah. brandon handley02:05As far as we know, right up until now. 02:07So, so, you know, I think you started off with something pretty well there and and i think it would tie into this piece, but I'm gonna go ahead and ask this piece anyways because it may may hit you differently, right. So, 02:19We, we agree, like the kind of universe speaks through us. Right. And that like when somebody listens to this podcast. It's gonna 02:26They're gonna hear something that you and I didn't even hear right in between our dial. I think like that these guys, this is what they're talking about. Oh my god. So to that person through you today. What, what message do they need to hear me to the universe. 02:42The universe, Dorian, Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program02:43Hey, yo. Gotcha. Man, if I was to speak to anybody. My message to 02:48Everyone at all times. It is, isn't it, it is oneness to what happens when I'm sorry what's most important is what's happening right this very second right this second. 03:03In a perfect kind of will say execution of that or example is I woke up today. 03:08And pleasure to be here right woke up. It's amazing. And for whatever reason, had a song stuck in my head. I don't remember my dreams or anything, per se, but I do remember waking up with a feeling 03:19But then I also remember kind of surrendering to the thoughts and then I put on some music wasn't sure what was going to play and that first song just 03:26Just hit man, it means so well you know when music hits you, that you don't feel any pain. 03:33And so it hit me really hard and I had to kind of surrender to the moment and allow myself to remove judgment to remove you know will say the permissions. I might be asking for to express myself. 03:48And I just stood in the middle of the room in his eyes closed and just listen to this song and try to express myself, honestly. 03:57And I'm just in a moment. Man, am I thinking about what's going on for the rest of day. I'm not worried about what happened to me. I'm not worried about the projects and backlogs and clients and business. None of that stuff. 04:09I'm seriously just being one with the moments just looking at it, breathing filling my heart rate feeling this my skin. The breeze from the fan above me. 04:20And I'm just in the moment and I went to the mirror. I looked at myself and for whatever reason, I looked at myself a little bit longer than normal. It's one thing to recognize yourself. 04:31To experience your reflection. But for me, I felt like I was looking into a whole nother world but connecting at the same time. And I realized that Cody, you're not wasting time. You're seriously experiencing the illusion of it. 04:48And so it was that moment the today this morning that I was so in the moments in the expression. I was actually practicing dynamic freedom. 05:02My ability to do anything and being honest and real with who I am today right is second. And I'm thinking about these things. And I realized 05:13Cody, those, those thoughts are in your head, because that's what you actually want to do. Those are the things that you're interested in. 05:18Go outside man do these things. There's no restrictions practices, man. Get in the moment be more in the moment. And that's why once again today is the best day of my life, brother. brandon handley05:31I love that I actually, I interviewed a you know a transformational coach last night. She's been been at the work for quite some time. And one of the first pieces that she has somebody do 05:44You know she she she coaches, people who are on the business side and how and this podcast is related to this, right. Like, how, how do we integrate our spiritual self all of who we are into 05:56Our business mechanical self right like this robot and, you know, checking off the boxes piece. And one of the things that she hasn't do is just what you said there, which is to do the mirror work. 06:07Right. Look at the mirror and say I am here with myself. I am here with myself. Right. So, I love, I love that you're doing that and, you know, to, to others that are listening and I totally. I think that that's something you should give yourself a shot to right I would Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program06:21Like to express this on that notes. 06:24Sure know about mirror work. 06:26I've never done it. And so I will say this man when we feel like we're doing work. 06:33Like me we're work even having that word work and brandon handley06:37Sure, sure. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program06:37Already has that connotation, or like it's gonna be 06:40It's gonna be difficult. I don't like work right. 06:42Like doing. And so for me today. It's once again. It wasn't like I was out to study myself. I was just in a place 06:51Over the last few months, man. I've been developing and constantly evolving to be more and more and more of the person that I really am and more of the person that I actually want to be 07:03And so today, it was a natural thing that happened. It wasn't like, Hey, I'm working on myself do this. What do you notice it just, I just felt like an energy line. It just kind of pulled me there. I actually caught my own reflection and I was like, I'm going to give you a moment of my time. brandon handley07:22Now hundred percent brandon handley00:16He has a course creators Academy that's powered by the mantas program you're looking to get into video 00:22Code is your guy, he's got the Hitchhiker's Guide to video. He's got so much other he's got so much going on. I personally kind of wonder like how you keep it all together. But you know, it's obvious to me that you've got a system of implementation. 00:35And you just kind of rock it out because you do have your systems in place, but man, thanks for joining us today. How you doing, Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program00:41Hey, thank you so much brother is such a pleasure to be here. Yeah. Man systems in life so many things that we, I love that you talk about systems because we are a system. 00:53We are a series of processes that are constantly executing. We're taking a new devil data developing it, we are processing that data, making decisions utilizing our power of choice and for me. 01:06My brain has been really scattered my whole life, because we'll just say ADHD and all these other random things. And so for me, systems and all that stuff is very, very, I don't want to say it's necessary, but it is important. 01:20And so for me, kind of having that structure is, you know, the one way you do one thing is what you do everything so 01:28I structure my life. 01:29And that reflects in my business man. So with that, yeah, I got a lot going down constantly emotion constantly thinking about the things that a lot of people tend to ignore. brandon handley01:44Now, man. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. I always tell people I've waited my entire life for this moment right 01:50Right. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program01:53Yeah. brandon handley01:54As far as we know, right up until now. 01:56So, so, you know, I think you started off with something pretty well there and and i think it would tie into this piece, but I'm gonna go ahead and ask this piece anyways because it may may hit you differently, right. So, 02:08We, we agree, like the kind of universe speaks through us. Right. And that like when somebody listens to this podcast. It's gonna 02:15They're gonna hear something that you and I didn't even hear right in between our dial. I think like that these guys, this is what they're talking about. Oh my god. So to that person through you today. What, what message do they need to hear me to the universe. 02:31The universe, Dorian, Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program02:32Hey, yo. Gotcha. Man, if I was to speak to anybody. My message to 02:37Everyone at all times. It is, isn't it, it is oneness to what happens when I'm sorry what's most important is what's happening right this very second right this second. 02:52In a perfect kind of will say execution of that or example is I woke up today. 02:57And pleasure to be here right woke up. It's amazing. And for whatever reason, had a song stuck in my head. I don't remember my dreams or anything, per se, but I do remember waking up with a feeling 03:15Just hit man, it means so well you know when music hits you, that you don't feel any pain. 03:22And so it hit me really hard and I had to kind of surrender to the moment and allow myself to remove judgment to remove you know will say the permissions. I might be asking for to express myself. 03:37And I just stood in the middle of the room in his eyes closed and just listen to this song and try to express myself, honestly. 03:46And I'm just in a moment. Man, am I thinking about what's going on for the rest of day. I'm not worried about what happened to me. I'm not worried about the projects and backlogs and clients and business. None of that stuff. 03:58I'm seriously just being one with the moments just looking at it, breathing filling my heart rate feeling this my skin. The breeze from the fan above me. 04:37And so it was that moment the today this morning that I was so in the moments in the expression. I was actually practicing dynamic freedom. 04:51My ability to do anything and being honest and real with who I am today right is second. And I'm thinking about these things. And I realized 05:07Go outside man do these things. There's no restrictions practices, man. Get in the moment be more in the moment. And that's why once again today is the best day of my life, brother. brandon handley05:20I love that I actually, I interviewed a you know a transformational coach last night. She's been been at the work for quite some time. And one of the first pieces that she has somebody do 05:33You know she she she coaches, people who are on the business side and how and this podcast is related to this, right. Like, how, how do we integrate our spiritual self all of who we are into 05:45Our business mechanical self right like this robot and, you know, checking off the boxes piece. And one of the things that she hasn't do is just what you said there, which is to do the mirror work. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program06:10Like to express this on that notes. 06:13Sure know about mirror work. 06:15I've never done it. And so I will say this man when we feel like we're doing work. 06:22Like me we're work even having that word work and brandon handley06:26Sure, sure. 06:29It's gonna be difficult. I don't like work right. 06:31Like doing. And so for me today. It's once again. It wasn't like I was out to study myself. I was just in a place 06:52And so today, it was a natural thing that happened. It wasn't like, Hey, I'm working on myself do this. What do you notice it just, I just felt like an energy line. It just kind of pulled me there. I actually caught my own reflection and I was like, I'm going to give you a moment of my time. brandon handley07:11Now hundred percent Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program07:11Really interesting to think about brandon handley07:14Now, I love, I love it. I mean, you also you also hit on to you know to experiencing the illusion of time right where you were, you were talking about. 07:31You're looking at yourself as a human. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program07:33Being right brandon handley07:35Right, right, right. 07:37And I also love to, you know, you talked about, you know, the permission for greatness. It makes me think of that Banksy one right. The thing you know and it goes, you know, stop asking for, you know, stop asking for permission to be great. 07:46You know, for greatness and yeah Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program07:49It's amazing how that works. 07:50I realized today. And today, maybe is it, is it a coincidence. Is it meant to be that I have this this experience today before we had a chance to speak. I don't know, man, that's the exciting part about being 08:05Right, I'm excited for those moments. I'm really excited to explore them. More importantly, I'm excited for the experience 08:12Because I'm in a constant state of curiosity. I'm a constant state of growth and I know this, I repeat it to myself, and I know it. I feel I am it's it's a staple in my being. 08:23Is to be in a place of evolution. And then when you surrender. A lot of times people go surrender means you got to give up. No. 08:31You have to allow these emotions to set in. I remember feeling it. Tears welled up. I looked at my smile. And I was like, how I'm smiling right now. 08:39Hold. I'm just being I'm just one. I just feel good. I'm accepting these things and yeah just removing those permissions when you go, man. You're the one granting permission but you're also restricting access at the same time. 08:55Yeah, it's conflicting so today I was on that part where I recognized my restriction and I just let that let that down for a little bit so I can just be brandon handley09:04I love it, I love it. You talked about like a, you know, awareness and becoming more of who you are right. Let's talk about that. What does that mean, you know, becoming more aware of the person of who I am. So who do you know, who do you feel like you are Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program09:19You are your truths. brandon handley09:21You are what you say. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program09:22You are brandon handley09:23Okay, so, I mean, 09:25Right, right. 09:25I mean, so I mean what, what does that mean to you, right. Like I always, I think that when we were talking. I'm not sure if I hit, hit on this or not when you have me on. And thanks for having me on. It was a 09:34Great One 09:35Um, you rise to your level of thinking 09:38Right, right. 09:39So who do you think you are right. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program09:42Right. That makes sense. Well, when you think of who you think you are, it puts people in a place of contrast of going, who, who do I want to be my comparing myself to 09:52There is nobody that's going to do a better job at being you than you and if someone can be a better version of you. Then you've got some real work. 10:01Some people are there. 10:02Right. But who am I right, I am what I say I am I'm happy. 10:07Yeah, that's as simple as I could possibly put it, who I am is also what I am is where I am, as well. 10:15When are you 10:16I'm happening in. Yeah. brandon handley10:17Sorry. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program10:18I'm in a place of happy, you know, brandon handley10:19Right. That's a state of being right like a state. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I love it. And you have a great question on your podcast and almost, you know, I think that I'm gonna steal it today for you. 10:30The, you know, and you said you hadn't had the state of awareness yet, right, like, and when did you first fully become aware 10:36Right. Do you feel like you're becoming more aware and, you know, what does that, you know, 10:40What's that mean to you was me to become aware Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program10:43That level of awareness. I've noticed that I'll say over the past two months, right, because I've been surrounded by the most amazing people. 10:53Were all practicing boundaries and communication and connection and actual spiritual enlightenment on a day to day what I've noticed about self awareness is you think you got it and then you level up. 11:05Think you understand it and then you actually understand it and then you feel it, you experience it. 11:12It's a whole different level self awareness for me is coming down to, and I'm going to repeat this absolute truth. 11:21It's not this is what I'm going to say because it's going to sound good, or I don't want to hurt your feelings or I don't want to say this, I'm it's removing those restrictions and being like, Man, I don't like that it's being able to go. That's for me, that isn't for me. 11:35That's a yes for me that's a note to know your level of self awareness stems from not looking at your reflection and going this is two separate entities and I'm connecting and I'm self aware, because I can make choices. 11:49It's literally connecting to as much of your personal truths as possible. It doesn't matter what the truth is because you believe it. 12:00When you're honest with yourself and you're going, I like that. But that's not my thing. I love that because it does this for me. I really enjoy this. 12:11When you can connect with those things because of the truth because of what you've told yourself how you feel about them. 12:18You are more real with everything and everyone. And more importantly, more real with yourself. 12:25And you only do the things that can contribute to your progress through life, your happiness, man. Your success and abundance. It's amazing. So self awareness is first off, recognizing that you're in a place of growth and you don't know everything. brandon handley12:40Right, right, right. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program12:42It's knowing what you like what you don't like even not knowing what you like and don't like is still something that, you know, 12:49So when you're in that place of uncertainty, then you're aware of this, it's looking at these things going. I'm unsure. I'm confused or 12:59I am really centered and focused on this and feels good to me. I'm going to use this belief to guide my behavior in a positive way. So being self aware man is is really just, I'll say complete self awareness is not having to think about this stuff ever you just do brandon handley13:18That yeah well I absolutely i mean but i mean i think that you know some of this stuff is a 13:25You gotta peel back to, you know, societal layers, right, that have kind of been been you know enforced on you right, you're like, Wait a second. All the stuff that I've been taught up into this moment. 13:37It was serving those people 13:39You know, but not necessarily me. It was serving this function, but not my function of growth right type of thing. 13:46So now, and I love it. Right. So let's talk about like how are you applying some of this to your business man like I mean how the other question is like how could you not, but like, you know, 13:57How do you not, but like, how does, how does this, like, you know, like I talked about earlier, you talked about like the robotic guy that you know shows up and just 14:05Eight. And, you know, nine to five or whatever, you know, how is your life different because of this call it a spiritual practice right of your life practice and weaving those together. Talk about that so Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program14:17What I do is build this cerebral super suit for entrepreneurs to connect more deeply with their core audience. 14:24The reality with that is you got to step into the shoes of your clients of your customers of the people you serve. 14:32I don't care if it's the homeless guy. I don't care if it's this. I don't care what solution you're providing or what you're doing in life. 14:38When it comes down to really expanding your business. It doesn't come down to the tech, that's the easy stuff. It doesn't come down to your sequences and your landing pages, all that stuff that's easy connecting with the people that you serve. 14:56comes from a place of oneness. 14:59Of understanding of self. So along the spiritual enlightenment along this journey of personal growth. You're actually opening yourself to understand and feel and have more compassion. 15:12For the people that you're most likely to benefit. More importantly, how they're going to benefit from you. 15:19So for me, I look at oneness and connection that is missing. Now I look at where I'm at. I'm paying attention to how I feel what I'm thinking. 15:29I'm going to state of curiosity. So I'm wondering why that's all that's coming in. I'm going to state of health. So I'm changing the foods have it seen how it affects my body. I'm getting rid of things that don't serve my journey. 15:41And do not serve my focus 15:43And don't really deserve my intention. So when I personally develop as a human being and become more of a human doing 15:53I am putting myself to in a place to thoroughly connect to everyone that I'll be serving which helps me 16:01Develop better wording in my copy when I'm writing an email. It helps me reach out to better people. It helps me attract better clients. 16:07It helps me build better websites helps me build stronger teams, it puts you in a place of connection to who they are in their core. So, the stronger, more 16:21Will stay connected you are to yourself, the more likely you're going to be able to connect to the people that are going to benefit from your product and service. brandon handley16:28Now, I love it, I love it. So, I mean, what I'm hearing in there. Those like you know you determine kind of 16:34How you love yourself and and what serving you. Right, letting go. The things that don't deserve your attention. I love that line, you know, you're going in with your journey and you know be being able to write better copy do better marketing. You're in my mind. 16:51You're tuning yourself. You know, like a crystal tuning. Right. You know, like a radio dial. 16:57To your clients to the people who you can serve. You're like, this is, this is what I'm transmit this is what I'm good at this is what I love to do this is if I was working with you. Oh my god, I would serve you so hard. 17:08Right. 17:09Space, right, like I'm and like you know you're going to be blown away by what I give you, because 17:14You're you you tuned in. Not only did you tuned in. But you to deal with, like, an amplifier on your side you turned it up, you're like, 17:20What's up, Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program17:21Yeah, it's amazing. And lately. My clients have been going. They've been they've been reaching out to me personally. 17:27Outside of like business hours, which is the best feeling ever because now we are connected, we are comfortable 17:33We are really considering each other. We're thinking about each other outside of business hours and it's more of a real relationship and a friendship went up. 17:42And what I have noticed is especially over the last couple months is when you are in a place of curiosity and genuine growth and you recognize that you're there. 17:52You listen more you really, you don't have to speak as much, actually there's a reason why we have one mouth and two ears. 18:00were meant to listen and when we listen to people when you deliver what you actually want to say or how you can contribute 18:09Every word that you say has more impact and more value. Now when it comes to connecting with your clients, how it relates to people in a digital space. 18:18I'm telling you this man, the more self aware you are the more connected you are with the universe and how you relate to it. More importantly, how it is relating to you. 18:29When you write your copy. When you say these words when you create that video when you do those things. You're literally creating with purpose and positive intent. 18:40There are times when I will release something, and I'll type it out and I'll put it up into the digital space. 18:47And it will be the same exact words no difference. Everyone's interpreting it differently from their own level of perception, their mind state. 18:56The people that I love working with are the ones that feel the intent behind the message and pick up on the energy when I wrote it and they feel it speaks to them. And those are the people that I attract. This is why I have such a great time doing what I do. brandon handley19:12Now, I love it, I love it. So it's so funny, you brought up purpose and intent because you know I was gonna ask you about that right how to, you know, 19:17We do deliver that message and just like you said, the people that there's there's going to be the one set of people that you know just give you a thumbs up or like or be like, you know, Hey, that was cool. 19:27And then there's going to be the other set of people that are gonna be like wow that was, that was awesome. That was powerful. Right. 19:32And they get, they get kind of where you're coming from on that and it's a totally 19:37That the two different groups, but that doesn't. And what I think I like about that too is that, you know, 19:43The group that doesn't get it today doesn't mean they won't get it tomorrow or see it like you know a little bit later down the road, and they're going to go back to your content and they're gonna be like, I didn't, I didn't even realize you were into all this shit. 19:55Right. Yeah. Yeah. And because because you can. It's funny. 19:59I do that without so my own my own my own stuff. Right. Like, why go and I'll look at other people's content, who I follow it earlier, but I wasn't at my Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program20:09This mind state. Yeah. 20:10You go into through a different lens. brandon handley20:12And I've got a new job or I have a whole brand new lens right whole whole new lens on like, Where have you been, 20:20I never even saw 20:22And so it's really interesting that the content that you put out 20:27People 20:28Come back and take a look later and it'll 20:30It'll be fresh to them. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program20:31I 100% and I was just talking about this yesterday. And the reality is to put the content out. We have to realize there's entire generations of people that are moving through going to go to catch up to us. 20:42We could be saying the perfect thing right now to people that don't even exist yet. 20:47Like 20:48What we put out there is really important. And you think of your overall vibe, man. So as people become more connected and understand 20:55Their power of influence and how we are influenced and just the decisions that they make. 21:00Man, they meet someone may go, Man, I want to create a podcast called spiritual dope. I wonder if that's even a thing could click there's 21:09There is, oh my god, they're talking about all the things I didn't even know it was an idea was connected. I felt it. I mean, I took an action and this is everything I'm looking for and you spark an entire movement, based on your idea man. brandon handley21:23Simple thought simple action. Right. It's just, it's just a matter of taking that action. What's funny. I mean, it's funny you say that though I did prosperity practice before spiritual dope and 21:34Somebody else I spun up prosperity practice like afterwards, after the fact. Like I reached out to her. I was like, I was like, wow, you're doing like the exact same thing I'm doing. I was just like, 21:43So it's really interesting. I'm not sure if you've ever seen like some of those videos or, you know, I forget, like, you know, let's talk about Tesla or being connected to the Akashic Record right or Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program21:52Yeah. brandon handley21:53Hello, say like two thoughts happen at the same time, like 21:56Different receivers. Right, so you'll receive thought somebody else or received thought only one person X on it though, or maybe both people act on it the same time. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program22:04Right. brandon handley22:05And it's not until like later that they converge and and you know you see it show up. So Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program22:10That when I remember saying 22:12interprets that differently. I really never there's no such thing as original I always say this every thoughts already been funk. Like, what are the chances of you thinking of a sentence or something or whatever. 22:22As someone else hasn't already done that you're picking up on something somewhere actually look at that as alignment. 22:29If you're having this thought and it's moving you. That means you may actually be being pushed her poles. 22:34Pulled in that direction. 22:35Hundred percent old yeah brandon handley22:36Yeah. So when we talked, right. We talked about the, the, the idea of everything's already been created. It's just a job. What's your awareness of it right and it's funny that because you talked about the losing time right the future now and the past are all here right now. 22:52Right, so 22:53You've got the, you know, we'll call it the multiverse, right. We've got your, your quantum entanglement kind of guy. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program22:58So, yeah. brandon handley22:59You know you can sit there and you can think for a second, you're like, All right, well, if I make this direction, kind of like a Sherlock Holmes type you know movie right like if I go this direction. This is what will happen right 23:07Right. Or in my case, it's like, you know, the, the, the Green Hornet with like Seth right and he's like sitting there thinking, and he looks like he's gone. Fast as mine is really going five minutes. Anyways, the deal is like Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program23:16I get it. brandon handley23:17You got like all these slices of possible universes, each one of those each thought that you just had they all just happened. 23:24Yeah. He's one of those things happen. 23:26Right, and it's happening right now. So, I mean, 23:28Whichever one you kind of lock into and tune into that's the one is pointing forward. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program23:33Right, the one that you're going to resent so 23:34I'll give everybody a practice right now. I've been doing this. 23:37I've whiteboards all over the house Ivan. What do you walk into every door. There's a small whiteboard and it's it's whiteboard wallpaper. So I put it on the things that I 23:46Hang out around most often. And so what I've been doing is recognizing words. Okay. There's a reason why words stand out to you. So Brendan, I see writing stuff down rather just like this, man. I got notepads and notepads 24:02All this is not just client notes. These are thoughts. 24:04These are things that are standing out to me if I here at once and it gets my attention. It means pay attention if it gets my attention twice. It means focus on that it's get detailed with it. So you'll see random words written all around the house. It'd be like proximity 24:22Right, right. I was Moses. 24:24And then it's just random things and then later I'll go back and connect the dots. Our oneness is 24:30We're, we're basically it's inevitable that we're going to grow based on our environment or as Moses and our proximity to people who are at a higher state of consciousness. 24:38That creates this infinite loop which connects that we're just just doodling manages everything is just total 24:47Brainstorming so if you if it gets your attention once pay attention if it gets your attention twice focus on that. There's a reason why you are being pulled towards that. 24:58Get, get close to whatever that where it is, whatever that thing is if that person if they mentioned somebody towards two people on two separate days mentioned the same person get interested 25:09Yeah, that means that person or that thing is leaving an impact. And it's worth your time. brandon handley25:14Sure. I mean, the person's calling out to you right 25:16If they got what they've got like something something they've got is really, it's meaningful for you so 25:21You know, follow up on that, I love that. Thanks for sharing that. So, one more time. So if it's, you know, if you, if you see it like once you get your interest rate. 25:30See it twice, you know, focusing on that, like, you know, 25:33And then the third time, like, I mean you you're hooked right like you shouldn't be. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program25:36You, you are the third time. brandon handley25:39Right on. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program25:39If it gets your attention. Twice I say this because if we continue to go Wait I need three times right to is the coincidence three is a staple 25:50Rather, if a guy your attention to times. Why are you paying attention. Why is is getting your attention, two times. First off, you could have been thinking everything you could have been doing anything. 26:00It literally stopped you in thought and got your attention. It's there for a reason, our subconscious is very active at that 26:09Moment. And so there's the zoo, there's something you want to get from it. There's something you want to define might be something you just want to explore for understanding but somewhere along the way your mind picked up on something and it needs clarity. There's an open loop somewhere. 26:25Yeah, gotta close this. brandon handley26:27For sure, for sure. And I love that you know programmatic reference right if you've got an open loop. It just keeps going and going and going and going and going until, like, you know, there's some type of closure. Right. 26:38Or control see right Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program26:39You know, just, yeah. Stop, stop at brandon handley26:42The so um you brought up something really cool that I really enjoy too is like the idea of the subconscious always being on the lookout for what you're on the lookout for you. 26:52Programmatically said you set a filter, right, these things are popping up because you set a filter for that. Right. You said you said all right. 27:00Hey, yo, I'm really interested in something like you know give what is something that you're interested in, you know, proximity osmosis where you know and and so now you've got your, your mind and subconscious filter on that. Like for me right now I've got divine and divinity. Right. 27:17That's my thing. 27:18Right. I've got a divine framework set up as my next course right so 27:22Anytime somebody says divine. I'm like, Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program27:24Yeah, it's brandon handley27:25Over there. Amen. Amen. I'm like, What are you saying Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program27:27What do you got the coolest part that so you you look at your mind if we open with this as system. 27:33A series of processes hundred 27:34Percent computers and quantum tech and all that stuff. The quantum computing, man. It's just algorithms. It's going into this than that. If that doesn't this 27:43You're just computing data. 27:45So when you program your mind, based on your intent. This is why I always say define what happiness looks like smells like tastes like feels like 27:56Get like get just seriously go to Amazon buy a bunch of notepads for like six books in just elaborate on what happiness and success looks like to you. Yeah. 28:07Do it right, right, right, right. You're only going to spend like a half hour doing this thing. It's nothing in the illusion of time. brandon handley28:14Well, I caught the the 28:16Real quick, real quick. So I mean, would you would you make them write it down or type it out. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program28:21Does it matter personally 28:23I'm into writing 28:25Okay, now 28:26Now, and I. The reason why is because of the time it takes for me to write it out. If I still commit to that thought. By the end of the sentence, and I still feel good about it. 28:36And it's an actual thought 28:38If in mid sentence. I'm like, this isn't my thing, then it's just a thought. It's just something that popped in here. Probably for contrast 28:45And so when I write it down. I'll say this, there hasn't been a single person that I know that is working on themselves. That isn't writing stuff down 28:54Hasn't been writing a book isn't journaling isn't doing any of this man this is pages I just naturally picked it up. I don't necessarily enjoy writing 29:04But I realized that for me to be honest and express myself. I need to write these things down and go back and label them right 29:13These are all these are all staples in my, in my future, man. brandon handley29:16Now, I love it. I call it 29:18I call it looking at last. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program29:19Thought the programming brother, when we do this when we write all that stuff down or type it out. 29:26Now we get clarity. We're programming our subconscious to look for that. So when we are in a podcast and say, I got a big window right here. And if I was looking for a motorcycle motorcycles make me feel happy. 29:40Anything that's going to get my attention that may resemble a motorcycle. I'm gonna, it's going to get my attention. Oh, is it. No, it's not. It's like somebody you're waiting to arrive. Is that damn is at them. 29:51Right. Your subconscious is going to constantly go out and look for 29:55All the things that satisfy your happiness make you feel successful make you feel to find find divinity, all of those things, man. So programming is really important, but only if it's healthy. brandon handley30:07Well, I mean, I think that, uh, you know, healthy, healthy is also subjective right initially. And I think that even if you begin to 30:18Just even understand the dynamic of what you're talking about like the programming right set yourself up, you make that choice consciously to be programming yourself. Yeah, right. Because up until up until that point. I mean, I'd love to hear when you realize that 30:34You needed to program yourself. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program30:37Yeah, well I was, you know, my story. Man, I'm a liver failure survivor. 30:43Like I was on my deathbed, and I know what it's like for your body to start dying and have to sign away your life surrender to the universe. 30:51I don't know what's happening on it was going on, but all of the decisions every single thought that I've had to that point has led me to my deathbed. Yeah. 31:00And I'm still defending that for some reason, like why am I defending being here. I'm justifying my death. Oh, I lived a good life. I'm doing. Are you serious, I haven't even tried yet I'm 32 at this point on my deathbed, and I'm trying to justify that I lived a long good life. 31:18And I was just meant. That's ridiculous, man. So when I get in. When I start recovering I'm realizing all these thoughts and it wasn't until I started debating my environment. 31:29I'm not in that scene. Am I surrounded by those people am I doing those things am I interested in that stuff. I don't think those thoughts. Why am I still the same person. 31:38Hmm. Why am I still the same guy before I died. This is a whole new me 31:46Right. 31:46But is it really a whole new me, this is, this is just me. 31:51With a new opportunity. So who do I want to be. And then as I call this self auditing. 31:57Then you start to realize where your brain starts to go, you start thinking about happiness and success and these these other things that you want to accomplish. 32:03And then you start recognizing now that's not gonna work. Whoa. I just told me know what the 32:11And I believe that what happened. I just shut myself down. I can do anything. And I said no to me. Why is that a thing. Okay, I can do it. 32:24I am doing it. It's happening go okay and then that thought comes in again. No, no, we're doing this. It's happening. Got it. Go, then it starts to be less and less. And then I'm starting to realize that I have just created a healthy thought pattern. 32:40When it comes to can or cannot there. Is it just is man, you just, are you doing it. 32:45Are you focusing on your happiness. Yes, well then I'm gonna keep doing those things are you building your business. Yeah, I'm gonna keep doing that thing. 32:52I am giving myself permission, I get really good at doing that and anybody can develop healthy habits healthy thought patterns, they can easily reprogram themselves. 33:02From an actual neurological standpoint, we need at least 63 to 64 repetitions of anything to be considered good or for it to be written into our being all those veins in our brain. 33:16Those lumps and things 33:18The valleys. Those are based on repetition. Right. So developing healthy habits. It comes with practice. And once we put ourselves there, man. Then you get really good at practicing. It's not what you're practicing. You just get good at creating good habits. 33:34And then this is kind of all easy peasy. From there it's difficult with there's a lot there's less less difficulty involved right brandon handley33:43I think that it's a you know it's it's the idea that, you know, somebody as they grow older, right, they, they try something once 33:51And it didn't work out. I'll give a couple more shots. But you're saying it's like 64 tries and keep at it and you know it's not like it's you need that repetition. I also you're calling from 34:02Your computer land right I look at that number 64 and I think about like 64 bits, right, like 34:07Yeah yeah so 34:08So that's a, that's interesting. So, you know, you're on your deathbed, and and you you crawl up out of that and you start to recognize 34:18You know, you've got to make these these pattern changes and you've got to develop these healthy life patterns, you know, the challenge that I think that we see is somebody that isn't dying. 34:31That isn't you know isn't dying and has a safe life. Yeah. 34:35Right, I mean you know that they haven't they haven't drunk themselves death, but maybe they have several beers at night and maybe you so 34:44How do we get someone to recognize that they've got patterns that aren't serving them even though they've got quote unquote good are safe life and they can have more Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program34:53Is that familiar do. That's the question is this, is this what you do. Is this your thing. That's where you do these are that that okay 35:02Have you done anything else. Have you tried anything else you realize that you're back in the bar, you have this. How many times have you had this drink. You know what it is. 35:11If you keep doing the same things, you get the same exact results results. Why do you think I became an alcoholic is because I needed more and more and more to feel normal. I've never had this until like yesterday. This is amazing. I'm a 35:27New person holding pineapple. 35:30I had to switch it out, like, what is it synergy raw kombucha 35:35Love this. Right. 35:37Did a hippie. Give it to me. Yes, but does it matter. No, my point with it is that if we keep doing the same things and living in a place of familiarity. 35:46We're never going to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Therefore, we're never going to grow. 35:51Is this as good as it gets. Is this as good as you want it to be. Is this what you really want. Man Seriously, look at this point, you're just writing. Just ask yourself this question, is this what I really want 36:06Is this how I really want to feel if I can relive this my state of being for the end of my existence. Is that good enough for me. Can I achieve more goodness. Is this how you really want it to be nine times out of 10 it's know 36:24Even in a healthy place. 36:27If I asked myself, This Is this really how good you want it to be, or is this really where you want to be. It's really where I want to be right now, but it's only getting better. So know if I get complacent here I get no more results. 36:42I have to continue growing right so we got to look at that complacency and go, you know what, man. Is this as good as it gets. Is this as good as you want it to be right now. 36:51Chances are the same. And then we start taking action. And I know this because just the power of influence from three people, we were able to get an alcoholic to leave the bar. The other day on a podcast and he went home to go play with his dogs. 37:07Hmm. He made the decision to leave the bar, man. 37:11stopped drinking poison not permanently. 37:14But the power of influence is there, he made that decision. It's amazing what happens when you realize that it can be better. brandon handley37:21Yeah, no 100% you know I know when I quit drinking 37:27It has influenced many people right and you know we talked about being pulled you know I was pulled, man. I wasn't, I didn't quit drinking because I didn't like I love drinking Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program37:38Drinking. No, I haven't done it since. brandon handley37:41I have a blast. I you know do stupid shit all day long. 37:46And and but you know it fell away man fell away is something I didn't need anymore. And I found that I could do stupid shit without having to drink. 37:57And I could be there more for people. Right. And so, but but that influence is just like 38:02It's not something we're not doing any force on anybody is because I just feel great. 38:07I get to I get to drive whenever I want. 38:09I get to do and go places, whenever I want. 38:11Because I haven't had a drink. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program38:14It was one of the most interesting compliments. I've received recently is you don't need anything in your system to have a good time. You don't have to smoke. You don't have to drink enough to do anything you're just having a blast all the time right now my 38:31That whoa, you're right. 38:33Well, I know this. 38:34But now you're saying it. So you got my attention. 38:38Whoa, that's cool. And then they're going, I don't, I don't really need to do these things. It's just not really. I mean, I get 38:45You know, it's not necessary. 38:47It's not a staple of my existence anymore. Let's just say that. Yeah. 38:51Wow, man, that's, that's amazing. And people talk about high on life. I get what they're saying. brandon handley38:57Is visual rather than just Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program39:00The Scripture that brandon handley39:01That's it. That's it. That's man. That's exactly what we're here. And what we're doing right 39:07You know, talking about that. And again, you know, being able to live from that space and be successful in business right and leading leading with that right not like that's not your cover. That's not your life, you're not like I go home and I meditate, I go home and I pray. No, I read 39:25When I was with with spirit. Right. 39:27So, I love, I love, I love that you're doing that, and I love you know I see what you're creating 39:33A see the momentum. You've got new built 39:36You know what, what are some other things that you would hit on in this space that you would share with anybody. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program39:42In regards to tech or personal or just just brandon handley39:44In terms of like, you know, you know, 39:46Leading from spirituality. Was it. That's right. Yeah, I heard you say to you came from, like, a hippie. You know, you kind of came from that background to right and that was real similar to me to write hippie mom. 39:58And just 39:59For me, it ends up coming easily because that's how I was raised, I fought it 40:04For a long time, yes. Talk about that. Right. So talk about knowing that it exists, and then being like them being like, Oh, shit. It works. Yeah, I know that resistance. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program40:15Is useless. Honestly, I just posted about this. And yeah, my parents, you know, different what 6070s 40:22Yeah, you know, so they were raised, like that. My parents are definitely hippies, but not like your, your typical hippie not like will say modern day hippies, or what I i actually been thinking about and you're welcome to take this and join me. Not all hippies climb trees like 40:37I want to start a movement. brandon handley40:39Well, that's a special again. That's what spiritual dopes about there is a greatness. And if you go to my website right now says you don't have to wear like beach. You don't have to wear that. 40:47Dress. You don't have to wear sandals. You don't have to 40:50You don't have to put on this uniform to feel this way. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program40:52100%. So we'll talk about that. Absolutely. There's a brandon handley40:55Reverse it what I'm saying. And you see Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program40:57Like we're on the same wavelength. 40:58Yeah, man. And so, so here's the trip is my, my brother, my older brother, he's like a hippie is of all manly man, but he's climbing trees, he's cutting trees down building homes log cabins, he makes his own tea and coffee and everything is from the earth and He is like 100% hippie. 41:15Spiritual Empath all of that stuff. It's really amazing. 41:19Now for me, I always thought that because I'm a tech guy right at artists. I'm an artist in general. 41:25You know I connect with people in different ways, but I've been through an extreme amount of trauma before liver failure. So my trauma. 41:34I've had to process these things differently. And my viewing angle my perspective on will say the hippie approach is it's a little too flu fee for lack of better words this little to brandon handley41:46motherly soft Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program41:48It's not it do, like, just take your shoes off and just seeing one drink like okay brandon handley41:53I want to kick a door. Yeah. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program41:55You can't force this hippie just like religion or anything. brandon handley41:58Right, right, right. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program41:59You have to be open to it. Oh, so on my journey. 42:04As it became more receptive more open, more compassionate towards other people, and more importantly, developed more compassionate towards myself, which I learned from my mentor asara sundry 42:16With that, I started to let down those walls and I started to break those permissions started signing off on my own. brandon handley42:24Certain he Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program42:25Recognizes my permission slip and 42:27Walk down that hall of success and happiness. 42:30And in doing so, I started to realize that people have been telling me this forever. 42:35And I've been to so 42:36Not have it. brandon handley42:38I mean, that's what we talked about earlier, though, too, right, like in writing your content right you're yourself. You're telling people, some things and 42:45They're just not. They're not in that spaceship, they're not they're not there right and it's not until it's not until you kind of come into your own awareness of being and you can look back and be like, Oh my gosh, people been telling me this my entire life. Yeah, right. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program42:59100% brandon handley42:59Now, I love it man. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program43:01It's amazing the way it works. And I'll tell you this, brother. You remember. Oh, sorry about posting with purpose. brandon handley43:06But 43:07I intent, but Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program43:08How do you think I ended up in Texas, dude. 43:10There you go right person, pick up on the intent and the power and energy behind the same message and they open the opportunity like you. We want you to come here. 43:21Right, that's how I ended up in Texas in a series of events had to happen perfectly in alignment. 43:28And I ended up here in the most incredible place I've ever been in my entire life more growth, more happiness more communication more connection. 43:36More forward progress than any other time in my entire life. And I'm beyond humbled all because I posted with purpose man right person felt it. And then we all took action make magic happen. It's really, really cool. brandon handley43:52That's cool, man. So, I mean, you know, again, this is kind of like a follow your bliss type moment right Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program43:57Yeah. brandon handley43:57I love it. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program43:59Though well brandon handley44:00I mean you got you got to do it for yourself. Right. Like each person. Everybody's got everybody's got to find that for themselves, you know, you talk about your truth right you could 44:07You could say, Hey, you know, for me, you know, at this moment, this bliss is my truth right if I'm feeling, you know, and again, I'll talk about that word, you know, vanity, I'm feeling 44:17Or creative source like through me and, you know, or like we talked about resonance and we look at, like, you know, somebody just plucking my divine source string. 44:26Everything has resonated and that was bliss and so I'm following that like somebody, you know, talking to me and just dragging me out and like me, like, yes, this is, oh my gosh, this is uncommon. I'm on my way you 44:37Know how this is going to end. Oh yeah, they are they aware of the path. Now look, you're always on your path right it's like you've got a you're always on your path you're never all fit. It's just, you've got to make that decision. 44:48To to recognize that you're walking. It's at your part of it that you're being it right Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program44:53You know, want to man. 44:54Like, think of it. Think of it like this in like I if I go to the doctors right now and they they put a needle in my arm. Yeah, that's gonna be my only, you know, uncomfortable. I'm not worried about the needle, man. I'm worried about the results. 45:06They want to see how unhealthy. I really am. 45:09Don't want to like surrender to that. 45:11Right. Some people really aren't. They're not good at walking through the doors, man. brandon handley45:15Yeah. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program45:15You're not good at that. That's their out of practice. 45:18And sometimes we got to kick those doors down, they gotta be receptive on the other end. You've got to kick those doors down for yourself. 45:24Man, once you open that door now. 45:27Then you can see the path. brandon handley45:29Yeah. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program45:29And know that you're on it. 45:31And then you can frolic down that bitch as much as you want. You know I'm saying, like, what are 45:34You going to do brandon handley45:36All that. Well, I mean, look, you can't make a wrong decision. You know a lot of people 45:40You know that they've got their systems in place that work for them. And if you get off of their system, they're going to come up and say, Well, well, well, you got it. You're, you're off your system and you're off your path, but 45:50That's not true. You're off of what their path would be you're off and out of their system and so have faith in yourself, man. I love what you're doing, I love, I love that. That's what you know you've developed like kind of this core 46:02Being again and you're, you know, you're, you're leading with that and you're in that space. That's awesome. Where should I send people to go meet up with you and find out more about you. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program46:12Absolutely. So my primary focus right now is the mantis program so mantis is every single thing that I've ever learned tops mastered 46:25All in one place in regards to not just evolving as a human being but evolving into the strongest and most accurate business mindset that you could ever possibly hope to get yourself into 46:38It's the reason why I can operate at a peak state of performance for forever and cost deliver content get things done while having a family doing all that stuff. 46:48So I want to show people exactly how they can implement 46:52These specific concepts into their life. But more importantly, there's so many people who don't take the necessary steps because they go all but there's technology, there's this and I don't understand that. 47:03I cover it all, every single aspect. So you don't have to be able to business or even bill yourself without fear man like you don't have to do that. You don't have to restrict yourself. And it's basically what I now that I say I give people the permission to evolve as a human. 47:19And then, yeah, so that's the mantis program. So the mantis program com 47:24And then of course graders Academy man the CCA it's an extension of the mantas program. This is for people who want to build an online program. 47:33I have numerous clients 2020 is packed with people who are going. I know what a lot of information. The online learning industry is a $34 billion industry. 47:44If you know something, and you want to get it out there and develop a program for people to get their hands on. 47:51And I hope people evolve through that process developed a program and then also handle all the tech and all that stuff with with just with ease. 48:00Then yeah, then I'm gonna communication artist. So I help people communicate more deeply with their, their core audience, not just as a servant leader, but as a professional graphic designer 20 years in Photoshop. 48:12And yeah and then for everybody who already has a message or is looking to dominate the second most powerful website on the planet YouTube 48:21I have the Hitchhiker's Guide to video marketing and that's showing you, not just how to get video views up into the millions 48:27But I'm actually showing you how to build a complete online digital business or any product or service that you're working on. Or like to get your hands on. That's the secret behind the sauce. brandon handley48:40Yeah, man, that was Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program48:41What 48:42What is there, man. So you can also find me on Facebook or is Cody rain and then you could also go to Cody rain calm. If you guys want to learn more about me or jump on my calendar, we can have a chat about you and your business. brandon handley48:53Awesome, man. Thanks for joining into Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program48:56Thank you, man, I appreciate you.

With COVID-19 restrictions and tightened lender criteria, some people are reporting that it may be more tricky to secure a home loan. But is that true, or is it just our perception?In this episode we look at :Whether COVID-19 restrictions have made it harder to secure a home loanWhether banks are being stricter when they assess home loan applicationsHow long it's taking banks to assess and process loan applicationsWhat types of home loans and mortgages are harder to get approvedHow to make it easier for the bank to assess and process your home loan applicationFollow the Dream Home MovementFacebookInstagramWebFollow Carl and Jo VioletaFacebookInstagramWebGuest bioCarl’s an award-winning Mortgage Broker and the Founder of Violeta Finance.Carl believes that every family should have a fair opportunity to achieve their homeownership and finance dreams. He can help you buy your next home or save money by refinancing. Carl specialises in helping first time investors buy their first investment property and securing finance for small business owners.When he’s not helping people find the right loan for their circumstances, Carl loves hanging out with his wife and two kids, watching his beloved Chicago Bulls play, and heading out to the golf course.Transcript*This transcript is automated, so may not be 100% accurate*00:00:00 - 00:00:05In this special bonus episode of the Dream Home Movement, we look at00:00:05 - 00:00:11whether or not it's harder to get a home loan now. With COVID-19 restrictions00:00:11 - 00:00:18and tightened lending criteria, some people are reporting that it may be more00:00:18 - 00:00:23tricky to get a home loan. But is that true, or is it just our perception?00:00:23 - 00:00:28To answer that question. I've invited a special guest and experienced Mortgage00:00:28 - 00:00:33Broker Carl Violeta, he also happens to be my husband onto the show.00:00:33 - 00:00:38Welcome to the Dream Home Movement. This is your weekly dose of home00:00:38 - 00:00:43and property inspiration, bringing you clever tips and advice from the very00:00:43 - 00:00:49best experts. And real life like Renno stories with your host, Jo Violeta.00:00:49 - 00:00:54Thank you for tuning in to this special bonus episode of the Dream Home00:00:54 - 00:00:58Movement. Now if we haven't met before. Hello, My name's Jo Violeta, and I00:00:58 - 00:01:04co-own a successful award winning mortgage brokerage with my husband carl.00:01:04 - 00:01:09It is Violeta Finance, and this episode is brought to you by Violeta00:01:09 - 00:01:14Finance. If you need help securing a home loan, refinancing your Mortgage or00:01:14 - 00:01:21organising a loan for your investment property. We would love to help00:01:21 - 00:01:27you. Now just to let you know who we are still in the midst of the COVID-1900:01:27 - 00:01:32restrictions here in Melbourne and that means that we are working from00:01:32 - 00:01:37home in very close quarters. So if you hear any background noises on this00:01:37 - 00:01:43episode, maybe kids doing crafts or playing or some typing or something like00:01:43 - 00:01:49that, it is because we are all working from home and also because of the COVID-1900:01:49 - 00:01:53restrictions. I don't have access to the usual recording equipment that I00:01:53 - 00:01:58would use for the podcast. I can't go to the radio station. I can't get into the00:01:58 - 00:02:05office to access my hi-tech equipment. So Carl and I huddled over a desk and a00:02:05 - 00:02:11microphone at home together, trying to record this episode for you.00:02:11 - 00:02:15Welcome to the show, Carl. It's lovely to have you back on. I haven't had you00:02:15 - 00:02:20on the show for a while. It has been a little while, and thanks for having me.00:02:20 - 00:02:26So today we are answering the question. Is it harder to get a home loan right00:02:26 - 00:02:32now? So let's first of all, look at it from the perspective of COVID-19. So00:02:32 - 00:02:37we're recording this episode on September 30th. We live in Melbourne in00:02:37 - 00:02:45Australia, so we are right in the still in the midst of COVID-19 restrictions.00:02:45 - 00:02:50Have covert COVID-19 restrictions made it harder for people to secure a home loan?00:02:50 - 00:02:58If a client has been affected by COVID, yes, it has been challenging to get00:02:58 - 00:03:05loans approved for them. But for other clients that the only effect of COVID00:03:05 - 00:03:13has been of a personal nature and not a financial nature then no that hasn't00:03:13 - 00:03:18really been any stoppage of the flow of finance for those types of customers.00:03:18 - 00:03:26Customers were working in the retail setting in sort of hospitality in the airline00:03:26 - 00:03:31industry then. Yet those those types of employment and those types of00:03:31 - 00:03:36customers would find it a bit challenging to try and secure finance. What about00:03:36 - 00:03:42the way lenders are assessing applications, especially expenses? What I've00:03:42 - 00:03:48heard is that lenders are going through applications with a fine-tooth comb now00:03:48 - 00:03:55Have you found that to be the case? It depends on the bank that you00:03:55 - 00:04:02suggest to the clients. There are banks that will go through bank statements to00:04:02 - 00:04:11verify living expenses as well as salary credits. But not all banks do do that,00:04:11 - 00:04:16eh? So, yeah, it really just depends on which path you take the customer in00:04:16 - 00:04:22relation to bank statements being forensically investigated. And is it just00:04:22 - 00:04:25the bank statements that they're going through and scrutinising are they00:04:25 - 00:04:32scrutinising other documents, other evidence or information asking for a lot of00:04:32 - 00:04:38additional documents, proof, evidence, that sort of thing? For sure, you know00:04:38 - 00:04:46, with COVID it has definitely added a layer of requirements for all banks, I00:04:46 - 00:04:52would say, particularly when a borrower self employed, they're now wanting00:04:52 - 00:04:58to see extra documentations. They just want to make sure that you know the00:04:58 - 00:05:05borrower's income is online or inline, I should say, than what their00:05:05 - 00:05:11income tax is suggesting it to be and that they haven't really had too00:05:11 - 00:05:16much of an impact with with COVID, particularly here in Melbourne, where00:05:16 - 00:05:20we've been the hardest hit. Yes. Oh, so to answer your question, yes, there00:05:20 - 00:05:25are a lot more documentations that need to be provided, particularly for self00:05:25 - 00:05:30employed customers. Okay, so banks are still lending money. If your income00:05:30 - 00:05:36hasn't been affected by COVID-19 restrictions, you still should be able to00:05:36 - 00:05:40borrow money. It shouldn't be any harder to borrow money, but the process00:05:40 - 00:05:47might be more involved, I suppose. It's just a little bit different to what many00:05:47 - 00:05:52customers might be accustomed to when they applied for finance pre-COVID.00:05:52 - 00:05:58And yeah, just if you know, if you're in a position to borrow money and00:05:58 - 00:06:03you know that you can borrow money, then you really got nothing to fear before00:06:03 - 00:06:08you place an application and if you're going through a broker then a broker's00:06:08 - 00:06:14going to tell you whether they can get the loan approved or not anyway. So all00:06:14 - 00:06:20I would say to customers is that you know, don't don't sort of fear the process,00:06:20 - 00:06:25provided that you know, your employment has been stable, your business00:06:25 - 00:06:31hasn't been affected and that, you know, you've got sort of strong, strong00:06:31 - 00:06:39finances going into the application. Okay, good. What about timelines? So is it00:06:39 - 00:06:43taking longer to get home loans approved? Should people allow a little bit00:06:43 - 00:06:49more of a time buffer when they're looking to apply for a home loan? I have00:06:49 - 00:06:54heard that some banks assessment and processing times are a bit longer than00:06:54 - 00:06:59usual. What's been your experience with that? Yeah, many customers are00:06:59 - 00:07:06looking to refinance at the moment and, many banks are offering cashback00:07:06 - 00:07:14offers. So banks that are offering cashbacks their lead times in processing00:07:14 - 00:07:21loans is not as desirable as other banks that are not offering cashback offers at00:07:21 - 00:07:26the moment. So again you know a good broker is going to be able to be00:07:26 - 00:07:32across that with lead times. If you know if your finances pressing, then00:07:32 - 00:07:37definitely avoid certain banks because you're not going to get the loan processed00:07:37 - 00:07:43in a timely manner. But if you're after, you know, the cash as part of00:07:43 - 00:07:47the refinance, let's say then, if you're happy to wait, then you know the00:07:47 - 00:07:52processing time is what it is. If you're purchasing a property, then definitely00:07:52 - 00:07:57steer clear of those lenders that are offering cashbacks at the moment,00:07:57 - 00:08:01particularly when your finances subject to... When your purchase, I should00:08:01 - 00:08:07say, subject to finance clause, there's nothing worse where a customer has00:08:07 - 00:08:12been placed with the lender, not knowing that the lead times are not going to00:08:12 - 00:08:17be able to meet their obligations on the contract when they're buying a house.00:08:17 - 00:08:23Okay, so a few things. I wanna clarify their cap by cashback that banks00:08:23 - 00:08:27offering, like a cashback offer. If you get a home loan with them or you00:08:27 - 00:08:33refinance with them, they'll say, we'll give you, like, $2000 or something00:08:33 - 00:08:43like that. So a cashback promotion relates to customers who are new to the00:08:43 - 00:08:53bank and that are refinancing. Okay. The cashback amount does vary it00:08:53 - 00:08:58varies depending on their loan size, and it also varies on the type of00:08:58 - 00:09:06bank that you're using. Okay, All right. And also again, apologies00:09:06 - 00:09:11for the background noises. We are working from home, and we've got little.00:09:11 - 00:09:16Marcus is trying extremely hard to be quiet. He's doing a wonderful job, isn't00:09:16 - 00:09:24it? He's a good boy. Just another thing that I wanted to clarify. So when00:09:24 - 00:09:28you're talking about putting in an offer when you put in an offer for a00:09:28 - 00:09:33property, if you haven't got a pre-approval on your finance yet, you can put in a00:09:33 - 00:09:38finance, clause, can't you? Yes, you can. And so you might say it's two00:09:38 - 00:09:42weeks or three weeks. We usually recommend three weeks, but If you have00:09:42 - 00:09:46been placed in the lender who's got really long processing times, that could00:09:46 - 00:09:51jeopardise your offer. So that's yet correct. Yes, you need to be aware of that.00:09:51 - 00:09:57What are there certain types of mortgages and home loans that are harder to00:09:57 - 00:10:01get approved? And not just speaking about COVID times, but just in general.00:10:01 - 00:10:04Are there certain types of mortgages and home loans that had just more00:10:04 - 00:10:09involved? You know, more workers involved or more paperwork is involved00:10:09 - 00:10:13there, there it more complex or tricky. A home loan application becomes00:10:13 - 00:10:21harder when you're asking for for their lending policy to be flexible00:10:21 - 00:10:26we call that in the industry when you're asking for an exception, that can00:10:26 - 00:10:33complicate lending assessment. And there could be a good chance that the00:10:33 - 00:10:38assessor, whoever's picked up the file, may not grant you those00:10:38 - 00:10:44exceptions. Complicated lending can make the process a little bit more00:10:44 - 00:10:50complex when, um, a borrower's a trust for an example. There's a lot more00:10:50 - 00:10:55paperwork that's involved with that kind of loans. There's a lot of00:10:55 - 00:11:00documentations that needs to be collected from the client to give to the bank.00:11:00 - 00:11:09Particularly it can complicate the assessment when the details of the00:11:09 - 00:11:13borrowing entity, in this case, being a trust like this example that I'm00:11:13 - 00:11:17using, you know, it's a lot of having to go back to the accountant getting that00:11:17 - 00:11:21issue fixed up. Then coming back to the client to get the documents signed00:11:21 - 00:11:27and giving it to the lender. So you know, it's just added layers. To simplify and00:11:27 - 00:11:32summarise loans can get difficult when you're asking for an exception from a00:11:32 - 00:11:38lender. What is an exception from a lender? So, for example, let's say that a00:11:38 - 00:11:42self employed customer is wanting to borrow money, and they've only been00:11:42 - 00:11:48self-employed for 12 months. But the lending criteria for the bank is that00:11:48 - 00:11:52you know the business needs to be established for two years. You know, that's00:11:52 - 00:11:58that's an exception, you know because it's outside policy. Another example00:11:58 - 00:12:05would bay if our customer's needing to use like overtime. And the00:12:05 - 00:12:11know, broker's place, the client with the lender that has a stringent policy00:12:11 - 00:12:14around. They're not accepting overtime at the moment because of COVID-1900:12:14 - 00:12:19for an example. You know that's asking for trouble. You know, you don't00:12:19 - 00:12:23want to muck around with those types of requests, best to just find00:12:23 - 00:12:27a lender. That's going to be able to work with the incomes that's being00:12:27 - 00:12:33presented rather than trying to jam jamming the deal with the lender00:12:33 - 00:12:37that it might be offering the best price. Or, you know, Quiet wants to deal00:12:37 - 00:12:42with would deal with that particular lender. I like that. Avoid trying to jam the00:12:42 - 00:12:48deal we make that it will have been turned into a tweet. Don't jam the deal.00:12:48 - 00:12:52Last questions. I know you've got to get back to work, and we've probably00:12:52 - 00:12:57only got another good two minutes out of Marcus being about to sit quietly00:12:57 - 00:13:03and watch his record a podcast. How can we make it easier for banks to assess00:13:03 - 00:13:08and process our loans? What can we do to make the assessor's jobs easier?00:13:08 - 00:13:14Provide the requested documentations as requested by the lender, particularly00:13:14 - 00:13:21with home loan refinancing. I find that customers can sometimes not00:13:21 - 00:13:26provide the correct documentation where they're taking a screenshot of their00:13:26 - 00:13:29home loan statement, but it doesn't have their names on it. You know, stuff00:13:29 - 00:13:35like that on. Many customers don't have access to computers or do everything00:13:35 - 00:13:39by phone and stuff like that. So well, especially now we've COVID-19 I mean,00:13:39 - 00:13:43how are we supposed to get out and get access00:13:43 - 00:13:50to a computer and a printer and a scanner and that sort of stuff. So provide00:13:50 - 00:13:56the right documentation to the broker. The broker should be very well versed00:13:56 - 00:14:03in what's required from from the lender. Make sure that whatever the00:14:03 - 00:14:07brokers asking, you you kind of give the right information back that way.00:14:07 - 00:14:10You know, you're not having to go back and forth back and forth all the time.00:14:10 - 00:14:20Sometimes it's unavoidable. But that would be one of my tips for trying to get a00:14:20 - 00:14:25loan application sort of done right the first time. That's a great tip. And I00:14:25 - 00:14:31would add to that, Do make sure that you use and you work with an00:14:31 - 00:14:36experienced mortgage broker because they know the lender policy inside and00:14:36 - 00:14:41out. And they will know how to package and present your home loan00:14:41 - 00:14:47application in the best possible way for that lender. And finally, don't jam the00:14:47 - 00:14:51deal. Thanks so much for coming onto the show that was really00:14:51 - 00:14:58informative. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And if you like this and if00:14:58 - 00:15:05you like this, give my mummy a five star review. I hope you do. Thanks00:15:05 - 00:15:09for joining us on the Dream Home movement. Be sure to come over and say hi00:15:09 - 00:15:14on Facebook and Instagram. I hope that your dream home projects are going00:15:14 - 00:15:17well, and I look forward to chatting with you again next week.

Transcription:Terry Shaw 0:03There are many times that I would want to go back and deal with the issues that I'm comfortable with when what I really needed to be doing is making sure that I was working on communications and organization and thoughtful planning for the future of our organization. There was a time period where I just told the team, I'm out of the firefight. I'm taking four people and we're going to spend two weeks doing exactly what I said. So that's what we did.Gary Bisbee 0:30That was Terry Shaw, President and CEO AdventHealth, discussing the necessity for a CEO to focus on the right things, rather than those with which they might be most comfortable. I'm Gary Bisbee, and this is Fireside Chat. Terry outlined AdventHealth's 2030 aspirations document and spoke about how the experience with COVID accelerates the consumer plan from five to two and a half years and how they decided to harden their telehealth services into a business. Let's listen to Terry respond to a question about whether it will become a new core competency of health systems to flex up and down in the face of a crisis.Terry Shaw 1:07For this crisis specifically, that means you have to have an inventory of not only people but equipment and supplies that you can move across your system. As you turn PC us into IC us and med surge into PC us as COVID ramps up. What I never want to have done in the future is a complete shutdown. We need to be able to flex up and down with the outbreak that happened across the country in the markets that we're in and not disturb the other markets that we're in. While we're providing normal routine care to everybody.Gary Bisbee 1:43Our conversation includes Terry's view of how consolidation among provider health systems will play out over the next three years. What steps CMS should take to make care more efficient and consumer focus, how he expects AdventHealth to lose from $400 to $600 million in 2020, what were his first thoughts when he realized that the covert crisis is going to envelop AdventHealth, and what personal and professional learnings he took away from the crisis. I'm delighted to welcome Terry Shaw to the microphone. Well, good afternoon, Terry, and welcome.Terry Shaw 2:18Hey, good afternoon. Thank you, Gary.Gary Bisbee 2:20Pleased to have you back to this microphone. You were the first guest in our very first episode, and you're the first guest who will succumb to our interviews again. So well done.Terry Shaw 2:30Well, thank you. I've enjoyed listening to your podcast with other members. It's been a great learning for me. So thank you.Gary Bisbee 2:37Well, terrific. Thank you. In your first episode, we lead with the observation that you made that CEOs make the same three mistakes. Do you remember what you said?Terry Shaw 2:46I do. CEOs generally don't address HR issues quickly enough. Sometimes we allow the inertia of an organization to push back on our plan and we give up and sometimes we find ourselves focusing on what we're comfortable with as opposed to what we really ought to be doing. I think it kind of sums those three things up.Gary Bisbee 3:07Yeah, that was perfect. And the follow-up question, of course, did the COVID crisis cause you to lean into these three challenges even more than you had been?Terry Shaw 3:15Absolutely. Without a doubt. Times of stress amplify both weaknesses and strengths. And when you're in the middle of a three-month crisis, you have to, as a CEO, lean into that. I don't want to go into any details. But yes, from an HR perspective, I had to modify some things in the middle of the crisis because things just weren't getting done. There was a lot of inertia if you can imagine in 50 markets on how things ought to work. And we actually pulled a CEO from one of our facilities to run the command center, so that we were getting the voice of everybody into the process. And at that juncture, we pushed back on the inertia pretty hard and ran this as a company. And there are many times that I would want to go back and deal with the issues that I'm comfortable with when what I really needed to be doing is making sure that I was working on communications and organization and thoughtful planning for the future of our organization. There was a time period where I just told the team, I'm out of the firefight. I'm taking four people and we're going to spend two weeks doing exactly what I said. So that's what we did.Gary Bisbee 4:29We'll cover COVID more in a moment. But why don't we review AdventHealth? Could you do that for us now?Terry Shaw 4:35Sure. In brief, AdventHealth had a great year last year with $12 billion in revenue. We have two-thirds of our operations in Florida. We're in eight other states. We have multiple partnerships with large progressive organizations for which were most thankful. The first two months of 2020 had been exceptionally normal, middle of March was exceptionally normal, and then like everybody else, all hell broke loose. So we're coming out of that, and we're trying to go back into normal, we've all got to manage COVID like it's a product line, and not let the engine stop the next time around. We have a spike.Gary Bisbee 5:10You put together your 2030 aspirations document, which was very substantial. Could you describe that for us, Terry?Terry Shaw 5:17We spent a year working on our 2030 aspirations and taking a good hard look at our organization. We had the thought of the consumer, the thought of our board members, the thinking from our physicians. And then last but not least, I had 10 industry experts come in and give us their thoughts on what AdventHealth may be missing in our thinking. And Gary, we were just about to roll that out for our company when COVID hit and what that's done is allowed me to go back and take a look at that and actually nudge some things along differently than we originally thought. I'll give you an example. Virtual care is something we've played with but not hardened and turned into a business. Risk care capability is something we're playing with. And when you think about those three coming together, in order to have AdventHealth be anywhere we want to put it. We're calling it AdventHealth everywhere. Those three business lines are items we're bringing up and getting very serious about here in the next 18 to 24 months. We've accelerated our consumer work we've had a rich two and a half years of leaning into consumerism, but our five-year consumer plan and our 2030 aspirations have been shortened to three years and we're working on multiple four-month sprints and a command center like focus to get done much quicker than we thought we were going to get done what we needed to do. Last but not least in this process. I gotta tell you the way we think about distribution and supply chain is been turned on, it's ears and we don't have a lot of final things on that, But I can tell you a year from now, Advent Health will think a lot differently about where they play in the supply chain and distribution process for needed product to take care of its employees, our team members, and our communities.Gary Bisbee 7:15On that point, the supply chain point, I think we all agree it needs to be more reliable. There's also the thought that certain of these PPE really should be produced domestically, or at least much have been produced domestically. How do you think about that, Terry?Terry Shaw 7:31We don't let other countries build our fighter jets, nor do we let them build our battleships. I think in healthcare, we're going to have to go to a methodology of thinking about what are the things that we really need to have for our country for the 330 million people that live here? And are we really going to let other people manufacture and control that process? Or a we kind of come to the conclusion as a country that just like we do for other things, that's just something we're going to do in the states to protect the people that we have to protect.Gary Bisbee 8:07Makes good sense. I know that you and other health systems have taken steps to make that happen right away. So well done there. On the virtual care issue. I'm sure that telemedicine telehealth kinds of visits exploded at Advent health like they did in most of the other health systems. Can you describe that a bit for us, Terry?Terry Shaw 8:29Telehealth was about 2% of our business before COVID. And through COVID, for our physician practices, it went to over 70% of our business, and we had to harden our business quickly. And it's only been there in the past as a benefit to our employees. And as an offering, we can put in an article for a doctor to reach the patient. And as we've watched the business grow and as we've watched our capabilities in the business grow With it, we're clear we can turn that into an actual business and make it available to our Docs. But then also run a business so that we can actually reach people anywhere.Gary Bisbee 9:11To follow up on the hospital at home thought. That seems to be one of those thoughts that hey, it's easy to think about that. But when you actually do it sounds like it's very complicated a number of ways. Am I right on that? Or am I missing that point?Terry Shaw 9:27No, it is. And when you think about it as a standalone issue, it doesn't make a lot of sense. But if you're gonna turn virtual care into a business, and you're gonna have physicians and nurses, let's say they're distributed or in a bunker, and you add to that specific risk-based clinics that need outside office hour care that you could also run out of that bunker. And then you add to that, the ability to do hospital care at home for a certain set of diagnoses all sudden all of them the synergies across them make enormous sense. It is a way to get into markets that you're not in today and do it from a capital-light perspective.Gary Bisbee 10:10Okay, in our discussion six months ago, talking now about your executive team, you indicated you're going to add four executives, Chief Digital Officer, Chief Consumer Officer, Chief Brand Officer, Chief Risk Officer. Have you been able to do that? Or did COVID get in the way of hiring those people?Terry Shaw 10:28Believe it or not, we did that all before COVID hit and we were very thankful to have each one of those during this time period especially. We stood up a 1-800 virus HQ call center process very quickly. We've reached people all over the globe. It's amazing digitally how people can find you. Our Chief Digital Officer in this space has been invaluable. And then our Chief Brand Officer and Chief Risk Officer were obviously involved in this. Our Chief Risk Officer is just getting going to be honest with you about what our plans are. But we have it's called Project silver, and how we're going to bring up risk-based clinics across our current network and other networks that I believe will drive the same operating income that the rest of our organization drive to our enterprise at this juncture.Gary Bisbee 11:24I know you're looking into building a unique Medicare Advantage product, is that in the purview of the Chief Risk Officer?Terry Shaw 11:32It is. Yep, sure is.Gary Bisbee 11:34Moving on to COVID. One thing that's been interesting to me is that we've seen acceleration and discovery such as vaccines and medicines. And I'm wondering if that will flow through to accelerating on the delivery cycles. Do you have any thoughts, Terry about that?Terry Shaw 11:51It's interesting. I was on a G100 call and the CEO of Johnson and Johnson was talking and he was talking about the vaccines that are being worked on. Whether it's going to be one vaccine or a series of vaccines, he paused and he goes to list to really talk through this, making the vaccine viable is one thing, producing the vaccines another distributing a vaccine to 7 billion people. And either one doses or two doses is yet a third. And I believe there's going to be an amazing amount of energy that is going to have to be deployed not only in America but across the globe to get the vaccine to people once it's available. And I think it is a huge distribution problem. Yeah, for sure.Gary Bisbee 12:35Thinking about health system decision making. I think all of you executives of health systems really stepped up in the last several months through COVID. Do you think that that's a trend? Will decision making increase or the pace of decision making increase on the part of the health system executives now?Terry Shaw 12:56I sure hope so. We actually sat down and did a post mortem on why it was. So many things were able to develop so quickly during the last three months, and a couple of takeaways. One, we didn't put things on agendas to get to in two months or two weeks, we had rapid touchpoints every day. Number two, we put a person in a swim lane. And as opposed to helping them swim, we let them swim. And those two things coming together, has really taught me a lot about our own company, about how to use design thinking and command center structures to push things forward in a way that may take you an enormous amount of time to do that you ought to be able to get done quickly. Thus, for us trying to take our five-year consumer journey down into two and a half to three years. How do you compress, organize, distribute, and make things happen in a way that you didn't think we're possible before you went through this?Gary Bisbee 13:58Yeah, that's a great example. Just moving to capacity, it seems like there's an agreement that health systems are going to need to develop the competency to quickly scale up and quickly scaled down in a case of something like this COVID crisis. How do you think about that, Terry?Terry Shaw 14:16I agree. So for this crisis specifically, that means you have to have an inventory of not only people, but equipment and supplies that you can move across your system. As you turn, PC use and ICU and med surge into PC use as COVID ramps up. What I never want to have done in the future is a complete shut down. We need to be able to flex up and down with the outbreaks that happen across the country in the markets that we're in and not disturb the other markets that we're in while we're providing normal routine care to everybody. So this concept of having healthcare shut down. We've just got to not do that.Gary Bisbee 14:58Yeah, that didn't work. But building a capacity question comes to consolidation. And the question there is, do you think that the COVID crisis will cause further consolidation among health systems?Terry Shaw 15:12I think it's very possible when I look at the last crisis, which was really a financial crisis in '08-'09. If you look at 2011 and 2012, coming out of that there was an enormous amount of m&a activity that took place. My guess is, is when the dust settles in the middle of '21 into '22 and '23. There will be another round of consolidation in the healthcare structure in the country seems likely for sure.Gary Bisbee 15:42You've been very articulate about new provider models involving physicians, as I recall, you maybe even had five different levels. How's that going? Is the COVID crisis changed? Your thinking there at all?Terry Shaw 15:54No only thing that COVID crisis has done for me is make me realize that the path we were On to have consumers be able to access physicians the way they want to access them. It's even more important now than it's ever been before. And if anything, it's just accelerated our thinking of providing those opportunities and choices for people, and then figuring out a way to help them access data so they're not left on their own to understand how to get it to it. We're complicated enough as it is, we need to make it simple and then have people understand how to get access to it.Gary Bisbee 16:30Thinking about facility planning, social distancing, ambulatory care, waiting rooms and so on. Seems like there's gonna have to be a rethinking of your facilities. How are you thinking about that?Terry Shaw 16:42What a great question. So everything that we generally do has had to change. We've got nice big round stickers on the floor that say stand here and then there's one six feet in front of it. Masks are going on everybody that walked in the door, we've had to change small waiting areas to no waiting areas. From a digital footprint, we tap people through a text that say, okay, you can come in now. For your appointment, please wait in your car. We're going through an enormous change in how people wait visit and access services so that they feel safe and so that we're providing the right kind of care for them, while at the same time making sure that the underlying diseases in your community to still have a chance to be cared for what was crazy. In the last three months, we've had an enormous number of people in this country, not get the appropriate heart care, etc. Because they were afraid to get the care. We just can't let that happen. Again, we have got to create a digital and a waiting room environment for people to plan their lives so that we can still care for them, which means we as providers have got to do a better job organizing our own care processes around thatGary Bisbee 17:59Right. Thinking about reimbursement. The government's role as a payer. You're, of course, former CFO and Adventist and so you've got a good command of this. But there are signals that CMS will pay for televisits, which would be a good thing. What other changes in payment? would you suggest for Medicare and Medicaid coming out of the COVID crisis?Terry Shaw 18:21There's been several waivers that have come through and the whole care delivery process so telehealth is one, the waiver of licensures another. So coming out of this in one person's opinion, we did take a big picture, look at health care, telehealth needs to work, and get paid for it. Number one. Number two, licensure has got to start moving across state lines, not only for doctors but for nurses etc. Number three, we've got to land the plan on where we're going to start. It's gotten a lot of noise, but still no action. And number four, I think risk-based models are gone. To have to continue to be implemented thought through and brought up in the industry. Or we're never going to move to a situation where we've got the majority of governmental payers in an environment where you're incentivized to take care of them no matter what's going on.Gary Bisbee 19:19I mean, those are all really good points. I worry that sometimes our health system executives aren't active enough in Washington or the state capitals, in urging our educators to learn more about this. How do you think about that?Terry Shaw 19:35I don't disagree with you. Although I will tell you the healthcare industry is such you know how it is, um, you have how many members that the CEO council 5075 and what I've learned is, is you can spend quite a bit of your own shoe leather or you can move into spaces and be a part of something bigger than yourself and it works really well. The Health Leadership Council In Washington that Mary Greeley runs, is a multi Industry Council, the HMA, your organization has done some really good work pulling things together. The American Hospital Association lately especially has done some really good things that I appreciate. And I think we all need to be a little more active and thoughtful. And we all need to lend a little bit of political support to helping some larger organizations have the right voice. So they're representing a broader swath, as opposed to just representing a small organization like admin health.Gary Bisbee 20:41Yeah, here here. That's well said. Moving to something that's not such a pretty picture is the economics of all of our health systems. How did the COVID-19 crisis affect Advent Health's finances for '20?Terry Shaw 20:54So, January and February were great. We were ahead of budget and April, May, and June we're 400 million behind budget. So I'll just put that in perspective. Our January to June budget for Ebidta is 800 million. And we're going to be about 400 million behind through the end of June. Now look, I know it's not the end of June right now, but I'm looking at our volumes, we're back up running 95% of where we were before COVID. And every week that goes by it continues to go up. Logically, when you take a step back from this, from a hospital perspective, unless we've cured some underlying disease, we got to go back to the census we had plus COVID. So on an $800 million budget for the first six months of the year, we're going to make 400 million will be 400 million off-budget. we're forecasting right now what July through December looks like it's another $800 million budget. So on a $1.6 billion budget is not gonna surprise me Gary, if we're not Four to 600 million off of that budget by the end of the year.Gary Bisbee 22:03So as that kind of effect tap backs, not only this year, but next year.Terry Shaw 22:07It does. So we spent 75 cents of every dollar on capital. So in this budget by 500 million, there's 75% of that we're not going to spend on capital.Gary Bisbee 22:19$400 million. It's gonna be tough to make that up, at least. What are you thinking about? '21? There's really no way to know, we don't know if COVID is coming back or not. But right now, how do you think about that?Terry Shaw 22:32I personally don't believe COVID will be cured in '21. I think testing will get better from both in terms of how the test is done, and the quantities of tests that we have available to us in the market. I think our supply chain will get better. I think the ventilator supply will go up. I think people will learn to flex. And I think by 21 there will be outbreaks in cities and areas that people have to deal with. From a healthcare perspective, but healthcare will stay open. And we'll be back to treating what we use to treat plus COVID. And so I'm at this juncture other than this, we're running 17% unemployment. And unless that gets fixed, there's no way the industry is going to have the same payer mix in 21, then we have today. So as we think through that calculus, I don't think we'll produce a much as much profit in 21, as we're used to producing but I think the payer mix issue, not a demand issue.Gary Bisbee 23:32I agree with that as well. One other thought, then let's turn to leadership in a crisis, but it seems evident to public health as part of the national security now in a way that we didn't think about it that way before. What steps should we be taking as a nation, Terry to deal with that issue?Terry Shaw 23:52You know, Gary, it's just different than it used to be. When I was a kid. Public health was very active. I remember school you start the year and then line up and some lady dressed in a white uniform would get the whole class a shot. It's like I hated those days. But anyway, today we're the healthcare system that we've got is the public health care system. And if we're going to keep it that way, the facts are I'm fine with that. But I'd go back to my earlier conversation, we need to be less dependent on countries outside of the United States. We need to move back to domestic manufacturing of the critical things that we think we need to protect the American people, even if that means they're going to cost a little bit more to produce. And somebody smarter than me can sit down and figure out what that is and how we're going to approach it. But you can't let one province in China be disrupted and not allow yourself to take care of your people without going to brokers for supplies. It's just a crazy world and we need to solve it.Gary Bisbee 24:58Yeah, we've got to be smarter. There's no question about that. That actually is a nice lead into leadership when you first became aware of the COVID crisis. What was your first thought?Terry Shaw 25:11I hate to say this, but I went back to being the chief financial officer. And in February, I call Paul after watching the news one night and said, borrow a billion two. He goes, like, he goes, what are we doing that for? And I said, trust me, if COVID comes in, it's a mess. We're not going to be able to borrow money this summer, borrow it now. So we borrowed money. The second decision we made was to ramp up our sourcing for personal protective equipment and ventilators in a way that I didn't dream was possible, and it got done. And then the last thing we will likely have done is we've studied best practices in China and in Italy and in New York. So that when our COVID case was started building here, in our ICUs. We had the best thinking that we knew to find at that juncture to help people live through the process. So those are the three tracks I'd tell you, we went on as a company.Gary Bisbee 26:12What are the most important characteristics of a leader during a crisis of this magnitude? Terry, just generally speaking?Terry Shaw 26:19It's a good question and put it in this order, staying calm. If you're calm, everybody else will be calm to being determined. The ability to communicate I'd say is on that list, putting the right people in the right swim lanes and then letting them lead. And then I tell you this concept of daily input and processing for fast decision making whatever that is in your company, figuring that out on the front end and then following it.Gary Bisbee 26:49Did the COVID experience change you as a leader at all or as a family member, community member?Terry Shaw 27:01It did. I gotta tell you, I think everybody's grown a lot in the last three months, me included. We did things that I didn't know we could do. And we were responsible for things that I was clear, we wouldn't know exactly how it's gonna work out. It tested everybody and I got to learn a lot about myself and my team. some good, some not so good. And we all have learnings from this that we need to apply to not only our personal lives, but our professional lives that I think will benefit us on a go-forward basis. Personally, let me go back to personally, we're also busy so my kids are in medical school in California. My wife used to be going somewhere and every week, and we've lived this cool life and now all of a sudden, I'm at home all the time. And so, I don't know what it's done for everybody else, but it's made my wife and I go back to really figuring out why we got together in the first place, enjoying our time together and you is been a really interesting three months of discovery on a personal side.Gary Bisbee 27:56Thanks for sharing that with us. By the way. This has been another terrific interview. Let me ask one final question if I could, Terry, and that is there's general agreement that we're moving toward a new normal. you've outlined Advent health plans in that regard. What changes and financing and delivery Would you like to see as part of the new normal going forward?Terry Shaw 28:28I'd like AdventHealth to be a lot less dependent on it surgical department and its emergency department for its economic welfare. So people ask me, does that mean you're not going to buy or build new hospitals? And the answer's no, I didn't say that at all. We plan on growing as an organization in that regard, that having so much revenue, that is profitable run through those two mechanisms is something that over the next several years, we've got to move away from and we'll be doing that,Gary Bisbee 28:57Terry, this has been a great conversation with you I appreciate your willingness to tee it up again here many Thanks.Terry Shaw 29:03No problem Gary.Gary Bisbee 29:05This episode of Fireside Chat is produced by Strafire. Please subscribe to Fireside Chat on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening right now. Be sure to rate and review fireside chat so we can continue to explore key issues with innovative and dynamic healthcare leaders. In addition to subscribing and rating, we have found that podcasts are known through word of mouth. We appreciate your spreading the word to friends or those who might be interested. Fireside Chat is brought to you from our nation's capital in Washington DC, where we explore the intersection of healthcare politics, financing and delivery. For additional perspectives on health policy and leadership. Read my weekly blog Bisbee's Brief. For questions and suggestions about Fireside Chat, contact me through our website, firesidechatpodcast.com, or gary@hmacademy.com. Thanks for listening.

RPG Storytime continues its series on Outbreak Undead with episode 10. The survivors are spread out along Magnolia Park. The scream of the siren has caused the walking dead from all across town to converge on them. Now they have to escape their clutches and get back to the power station.This is a narrative of a campaign from Outbreak Undead, the role playing game about the zombie apocalypse.If you'd like to see a visualization of this episode, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnuAl2p-vbE&list=PLE27g8yycE_GB_AAXAoH3Rr0od6S-IPjC&index=10You can learn more about Outbreak Undead here: https://www.huntersentertainment.com/outbreakundeadYou can visit our website here: https://bandwagongames.com/

Georgia REALTORS® REALcast is proud to bring you audio versions of the featured articles from each issue of Georgia REALTOR® Magazine. From the Spring 2020 issue, we are featuring two articles, and the second is Michael Blackburn's most recent submission: “What Agents Should Know About iBuyers.”You can find the print version of Michael's article in the Spring 2020 issue of Georgia REALTOR® Magazine, here: https://www.qgdigitalpublishing.com/publication/?m=&l=1&i=647737&p=10You can find the Spring 2020 issue of Georgia REALTOR Magazine, as well as links to past issues, here: https://garealtor.com/members/member-resources/georgia-realtor-magazine/Michael Blackburn is the Qualifying Broker for OpenDoor's Georgia Brokerage and a member of the Board of Directors of the Northeast Atlanta Metro Association of REALTORS®.For a directory of all GAREALcast episodes and their accompanying Show Notes, please visit: www.GArealcast.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to the conversation! In this episode, Janine and I share about the short family vacation we just returned from and why it was (IS) so necessary. We also unpack the challenges we had to overcome, the outcomes, how we made it work financially, and some of our favorite family vacation activities! Why Vacation? We just took our four teenagers to San Francisco for a four day weekend. Three girls and a boy. All of them are very different. They are aged 19, 17, 15 (the boy), and 13.  Why vacation? Because vacation is a perfect opportunity to reset foundational connection.  Connection is the basis for all relationship. Vacation is about taking time together out of the ordinary. It is creating shared experiences and new memories. I may prefer a stay-at-home vacation, but  I would end up working on the yard or house maintenance. Going away protects connection because it literally removes us all from our normal physical distractions.  What were our outcomes?  We spent four days in San Francisco - a four-five hour drive from home. We chose to stay in an Air BnB about an hours drive from the city center.  What came out of it? A ton of laughter and fun. Hours of face-time without screen time. A reset of our family connection that will be a baseline for deeper connection to happen. A reset of normal for our evening connection around games. A reminder for ourselves how much we enjoy one another. What did we have to work around to build connection like this? Teenage schedules (work, babysitting, wrestling practice, tired at end of day...)My workload getting a new book launched. Do I have the time to go away? Will this be relaxing and refreshing for me....?One of our kids had a cold coming on just as we were leaving. She was going through a box of tissues in a couple days. We took the risk to go and grabbed some over the counter medication to help with our prayer. She came right in 24hrs. The rooster! We were in the middle of a city but were woken 2am, 4am and 6am each day by the neighbors bird. Not fun!Stress of big city driving that brings out the worst in people and takes a bunch of unnecessary energy to manage!First ever Failed Ice cream experience Different expectations of our highly independent family members of what to do on vacation. Janine had some intentional conversations with each of us about this up front. For me this was remembering that although the city wasn't an ideal vacation location for me personally, that if I could adjust my expectations, the payoff would be worth it. And it was. How did we make it work on a budget? We have a history of learning to trust God in this regard.  More recently I'm learning to trust Him more and treat the giving to my family like the giving I so easily do to a missionary or non-profit organization. What does God think about this investment in family vacation? We reduced the cost by staying in an air bnb rather than a hotel and cooking for ourselves rather than eating out. We also made a packed lunch each morning to take with us. That way we could allocate more money towards activities. And God... The second day away I got a call from a friend who wanted to do some end of year giving. Their support of our book project takes financial pressure off us going on vacation.  Some of the fun activities...Urban Adventure Quest - a little bit of 'amazing race' a little city exploration, a lot of fun. In cities all over the USA. $50Subpar mini golf - we always have a fun (competitive) game on vacation.California Science AcademyParkwide Bike Rental - HIGHLIGHT renting a four person bike (that the six of us could fit on)Taco Cat card game - Hilarious family fun. $10You’ve Got Crabs card game. A LOUD family fun game. $16Nertz card game - for the price of a few decks of cards.Chickapig board game. $25Trekking the national parks board game. $50  Post your favorite activities or fun games in the comments. Brought to you by Gulf Coast Recreation, your playground expert.  

Thank you for listening to Casper Church's weekly teaching podcast. This week we starting our fall teaching series "Thessalonians." In our first week, we looked at 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10You are invited to our worship gathering Sundays at 11:00 am.2000 Casper St.Casper, WYThanks for listeningCheck out our webpageCasperchurch.com

Today I interview Jon. He got inspired to go vegan after his wife started introducing him to the lifestyle with information that soon made him realize that going vegan was the right and only choice for his health, the environment and most importantly the animals. We have a good chat about his journey and how he stays vegan in today's world giving us some tips and tricks on how you can do the same. Jon also has a Youtube channel with a variety of great videos, go check it out by clicking the link below.https://www.youtube.com/user/jonsconsciouslife/featured?pbjreload=10You can also find the podcast on Itunes, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher and www.buzzsprout.com/232074Don't forget to leave a review/comment as it helps us grow and spread the message. Thanks!Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=32707418&fan_landing=true)

今天老师和大家分享10句赞美对方的英语表达，瞬间提高你的情商！1You look great today.你今天看上去很棒。（每天都可以用）2You did a good job.你干得非常好。（国际最通用的表扬）3 We're so proud of you.我们十分为你骄傲。（最高级的表扬）4 You're looking sharp!你看上去真精神/真棒/真漂亮！（与众不同的表扬）5Nice going! ＝ You did a good job.干得好。（极其地道的表扬）6You have a good sense of humor.你真幽默。（美国人极其喜欢的表扬）7You're so smart.你非常聪明。8I envy you very much.我非常羡慕你。9You have a good taste.你很有品位。10You look like a million dollars. You look outstanding. You look like a movie star.你看上去帅呆了。

In the inaugural episode of Beneath the Subsurface, we delve into the exciting realm of AI and Machine Learning as a blossoming new part of the energy industry. Arvind Sharma and Robert Gibson discuss and debate the impacts of disruptive technology, the importance of robust data libraries when building AI solutions, and the future of our industry with AI and ML solutions. With your host for the episode, Erica Conedera, we explore the factors that pushed our slow moving industry to this tipping point in technology and where it could be leading us.  TABLE OF CONTENTS:0:00 - Intro1:03 - Factors that brought AI to O&G5:32 - Job creation with AI12:05 - Career paths and team compositions in the industry15:30 - Industry pain point solutions with AI and ML21:32 - Clouds, open source and democratization24:24 - Kaggle and crowdsourcing Salt Net30:51 - Kaggle challenges with Well Data33:58 - Catching up with silicon valley36:49 - Approaching solutions with AI44:18 - Disciplining data and metadata to get to the "good stuff"EPISODE TRANSCRIPTErica Conedera:00:00Hello and welcome to Beneath the Subsurface a podcast that investigates the intersection of geoscience and technology. And in our first episode, we'll be diving into the dynamic field of AI and machine learning as it relates to the oil and gas industry. We'll be discussing the impact of disruptive technology, the importance of robust data libraries when building AI solutions, and exciting possibilities for the future oil and gas. From the TGS software development team. My name is Erica Conedera. And with me today are Arvind Sharma, our VP of data and analytics, and Rob Gibson, our director of strategy, sales, data and analytics. Thank you gentlemen for being with us today for our first episode.Rob Gibson:00:48Glad to be here.Arvind Sharma:00:49Thank you Erica.Erica:00:51So let's start our discussion today by talking about the factors that brought the industry to AI and machine learning. Why now? Why not sooner? Why not later?Rob:01:03Well I'll start. Um, so thank you for the introduction, my name's Rob Gibson. I've been with TGS for almost 20 years now. And in that time, the thing that I have kind of seen over the 20 years in this company, , and probably another eight or nine in the industry, is that we've always been a little slow to adopt technology. And I come from the IT side of the world, software engineering, database design - so from my perspective, it's always been a little bit slow to bring in new technology.Rob:01:34And the things where I've seen the biggest change has been fundamental shifts in the industry, whether it's a crash in oil price, or, or some other kind of big disruptor in the industry as a whole, like the economy, not just our industry but the entire economy. But in middle of 2014 with the current downturn, that's really where I finally started to see the big shift toward AI, toward machine learning, towards IOT in particular.Rob:02:00But it seems like it took a big, big change in the industry where we lost hundreds of thousands of people across the industry and we really still needed a lot of work to get done. So technology has been able to kind of fill in the void. So, even as the downturn happened, we kind of started to level off at the bottom of the downturn and that's when companies started to see that we really needed to inject some more technology to get those decisions made. So generally speaking, I would say that this industry has been a little slow to move to adopt technology even though the industry has got a lot of money to invest in those kinds of things.Arvind:02:34Um, so thank you Erica for that question. And, I'm going to slightly disagree, more broadly, I agree with rob that um, oil and gas industry is historically a little slow in adopting technology, but, the reason I think is a slightly different, I think a oil and gas work in very difficult area where we need to have very robust proven up technologies to work. And in general, we wait a little bit for the technology to prove itself before adopting into, um, more difficult areas. So if we look at a little bit historical view, um, we have been on the leading edge of technology for a very long time. Um, some of the early semiconductors were built by your physical, um, companies. Um, then, as we moved to, PC revolution, we started actually PC, um, we started to actually pick up PCs into office very quickly, not as good as the silicon graphics people, but, soon afterwards, and then when the technology evolution started happening more in the silicon valley, then we started to regress a little bit. We continued on the part of what we were doing, whereas there was a divergence somewhere between mid nineties where silicon valley started to actually develop a little bit faster and we started to lag behind. And I think as Rob said, that, 2014 was a good time because at that time there was a need for us to adopt technology to increase our efficiency and, fill the gap that was created due to capital constraint. And as well as fleeing of, some of the knowledge base, employees - from our sector.Rob:04:39That's a good point on the technology side because you said that we kind of diverged away from where silicon valley really took off in the mid nineties. I entered into the industry in '94. So for me, my entire career has been that diverging process and just now it feels really good. Like we're finally catching up, not only catching up, but we've got customers, we've got employees who are sitting inside of the top tech companies in the world sitting at Google's facilities, even though they're an oil and gas company, sitting and working with Amazon, with Oracle, with IBM, with all these top names. And yet they're doing it in collaboration with the industry. Where in the past, it was almost like the two things were somewhat separated and now they are on a converging path. They've got the technology, we've got the data, at least in our space. And those two things coming together is kind of the critical mass we need to see some success.Erica:05:32So on that note, what kind of jobs do you think are going to be created in the future as the industries continue to convergence?Rob:05:40You know, that's a, that's a great prognostication. I mean, it's kind of interesting when you look back at like airbnb and Uber and those kinds of things. Nobody saw those coming and nobody knew what that was going to look like five years into their business, not to mention 10 or 15. I think that's what we're looking at in the oil and gas industry as well. We still have to find oil and gas. We still have to explore. We still have to be technologists, whether it's IT technology or G&G technology, we still have to operate in those spaces. But the roles may be very different. I'm hoping that a lot more of the busy legwork is a lot easier for us to work with and it has been historically, but we're still going to have to do those core G&G jobs. I just don't know what they're going to look like five years from now.Arvind:06:29I mean the way I see it is that it will be high-gradation to, like it will be more fulfilling jobs. The future jobs hopefully will be more fulfilling. So because a good portion of the grunt work, the work that everyone hated to do, but they had to do it to get to the final work, like final interesting work. Hopefully all those things will this machine learning and AI and broader digitization will help alleviate that part. And even whether you are technologist, whether you are a geologist, whether you're a geophysicist or whether you're a decision-maker. Like in all of those, um, you will start moving from the low value work to high value work. The technologist who was looking into log curve, they will actually start evaluating the log curve rather than just digitizing it. And that's, in my view, it's a more fulfilling job job compared to just doing the mundane work. And I, so that's the part first part is that what kind of job it, my hope is that it will be more fulfilling.Arvind:07:43Now the second is how many and what type of job, um, as Rob said that, the speed at which this is moving, we, it will be very difficult for us to do the prediction. Is that like if we sit here and say that they are, these are the type of job that will be created in five years, we'll be doing a disservice. We can actually make some guided prediction in which there will be need for geologist or geophysicist or petrophysicist and other people to do in what form will they be a pure geophysicist or a geophysicist who is a has a lot more broader expertise, a computer science and geophysicist working together. Those are the kinds of roles that will be needed in future because for a very long time we have operated in silos because it's not just technology is changing is the way we work is also changing is that we have operated in silos that we develop something, throw it over the fence. They, they catch it most of the time and then actually move into the next silo, and so on and so forth. Is that what-Rob:08:58You hope they do anyway.Arvind:08:59Yeah. I hope that they do anyway, but so that's the sequential process now. Some of them will be done by machines. Some of them will be done by human. And then you have to actually create a workflow which is like fulfilling as well as efficient for the capital investor.Erica:09:19Perhaps less siloed off?Arvind:09:21Less siloed off. So there will be team of teams and the team will actually move very frequently. So it will be almost like a self organization is that these are the four people needed to solve this problem. Let's take those four people and work on that problem. And then when that problem is solved or productionized, then they actually go solve the different problems.Arvind:09:43And so it will rather than back in the days or even today, hi- fully hierarchy of system, it will still be there, will be CEO (Laughter) and but there will be more, um, team of different group and different expertise, um, very quickly building and dismantling and those, that's the agile methodology that will be needed to take this technology and use it for, like basically doing things better.Erica:10:18So to kind of hone in on where you're saying, your background is in both geophysics and um, software engineering, correct?Arvind:10:26Okay. So sorry, I didn't actually talk about myself. (Laughter) So, um, I joined the TGS a little more than a year back, um, started as a chief geophysicist and then moved into this role. But before that, most of my career has been with BP and before that for a software company. So I have worked as a software engineer for some time and then got my PhD in geophysics and then worked for a little more than 10 years in BP all the way from writing imaging.Arvind:11:01So basically fundamental imaging, algorithm writing to drilling wells. So, in my short career I have seen a lot of things and what I do see is that, there has, there is a lot of silos in BP as well as in TGS. And BP is also working on it - breaking. I have a lot of friends there who are saying is that there is a significant effort in technology and modernization is happening in changing the culture rather than- it's not just about changing PC from going from a laptop to iPad. That's a- that's a tool. But the fundamental change will happen in the thought process. And if we want to actually use machine learning and these kinds of digital technology then it needs to be very integrated and the silo mentality is not going to work. You have to look at the problem as a holistic to solve it.Erica:12:02Yeah.Arvind:12:02So, so that's the background. So that's my background.Erica:12:05Yeah. So I asked because I wondered if you think that your career path is going to be the future of the industry, do you think that there are going to be more people with a dual background in both computer science and geophysics?Arvind:12:19So that's a very polite way to say that. My, I am actually looking at that my career is the right career. So, no and yes and no both. I do think that people will become more generalist and they will have deep expertise. And it's counter intuitive - is that generalist and deep expertise is not the same. Like we are used to someone who has a very deep expertise and that are not generalists about other topicsErica:12:57Narrow and deep.Arvind:12:57So very narrow expertise. But very deep and they have shallow expertise, very broad. Those are back in the days I think we are moving towards a deep expertise in several different narrow fields. So you need like, so to truly get good collaboration and innovation, you have to have deep expertise in several different fields to integrate them together.Erica:13:27So Rob, it looks like you're chomping at the bit here. (laughter)Arvind:13:30Deep and broad. So like what we need is deep and broad.Rob:13:34Yeah. When, when Arvind was talking about, kind of the career and, and some of the other topics, two things came to mind on the technology side of things. If you look back at AT&T, they had a choice and they did investigation and some pretty deep research on whether or not they needed to move into mobile cell phone technology. And they made the choice. They did a big expensive study and spent hundreds of millions of dollars or tens of millions of dollars to identify that they needed to be prepared for an industry of say, a million cell phone users by a certain year. And that number was, I don't know, 150 times wrong. It was way, way higher than that. And you could use the same thing with Kodak. They invented the digital camera and then lost the digital camera battle. And struggled in the industry. We want to make sure that we're looking broad enough to understand what's coming down the pipe and can adapt and change to that. Not just from the individual roles in the company, but the company direction as a whole.Arvind:14:34To give a concrete example is that , I have a background in geology or physics and computer science or Rob has background in geoscience and computer science and the data analytics team. It likes our TGS data analytics team. They have, we have people who have the um, physics backgrounds. They have PhD in physics and then they have worked in geophysics and then working on well logs. Then, the other one, Sathiya - he is a geophysicist who now is working on more of a deep learning problem. And a Sribarath is the team leader. He is a geophysicist. Who is it more of a computer scientist who is working on these two problems. So, our team composition itself, the TGS data analytics team composition itself is built in a multidisciplinary fashion.Erica15:30Yeah. So I'm glad that you brought up are our current team here cause I kind of wanted to pivot to the problems that we're using AI to solve for right now. You know, like what, what are the pain points in the industry and how are we using AI for that?Arvind:15:46So, so the pain point in the industry, are I'll talk about one, is it one which is very close to my heart. I was a, so in BP I did a lot of salt interpretation. So anything which requires a lot of human intervention is a big choke point because our data set is getting bigger, larger and larger with a lot more volumes to it are a lot more information to it and we have limited human resources and we want to actually take those human resources and mobilize them to do more high value work rather than doing a lot more um, grunt work. Salt model building is an example. And where we, we actually, our data analytics team started working there. So I'll, I'll work, I'll talk about that later. But that's an example where a lot of judgment call is made early, which don't require a lot of human judgment call early interpretation. Is the true place where automation and digital transformation can actually help.Erica:17:04Rob, what's your take on this?Rob:17:06Well, the Nice thing about what we're doing with salt picking is we're really helping us and our clients reduce the time it takes to get to the indecision. On my side of,of the house, my background with TGS has largely on the well data side of things. So it's not so much about reducing the amount of time of processing the data as it is getting a higher value data set in the hands of our clients. So historically, especially in the onshore U.S., there's a significant lack of data that's reported to the regulatory agencies. So we source that data as do a lot of other people. We source data from our, our, our customers, our partners operators. We process that data, but the most important thing that we can do with that is take that huge volume of data, the largest commercially available in the industry and add more to it so that the operators are able to get to that decision making process. So like Arvind said, if we can avoid the grunt work and get them to the point where they're actually making business decisions, that's what we're doing with our analytics ready LAS Dataset. We're in-filling the gaps in the curves because they either weren't run or weren't reported. We're predicting what the missing curves would look like, based on an immense volume of data. So it's not so much about getting the product created faster, although that is another goal that we've got. Of course, we're a commercial company. We're trying to get products to our customers and make money like anybody does. But the ultimate goal with our current analytics ready LAS product is to get the most complete dataset available so that the operators can make better decisions in the subsurface; drill less wells, drill more productive wells, drill wells faster. All of those things go into why we chose to go down that that path.Arvind:18:50So, looking at a higher level. The question that you asked was like what are the choke points and how we had actually using digital transformation in machine learning and AI to help that. Um, I think we published something like our CEO talked about that in the um, few months, a month back, Norwegian Energy day. There was a nice plot that, shows that most of the time we are acquiring data for a purpose. Like we are acquiring data to solve a geologic problem so that we can actually make a decision whether to drill somewhere, or not drill somewhere whether to buy acreage or not buy acreage by our clients. So when you take that data, you have to convert that into information, that information need to convert it into knowledge. And that knowledge is what enables our clients to make better, faster and cheaper decisions.Arvind:19:51And that cycle converting from data to knowledge to decision and enabling their decision is actually is the big choke point. If you want me to say one, this is that your point is that how to actually take data and convert to knowledge fastest way and cheapest way. And that's where most of our effort is. So salt, model building is an example where we right now it takes us somewhere between the nine months to a few years when we acquire data to provide the clients with the final image that they can do interpretation and make decision. This is too long of a time. In this day and age it needs to be compressed and a good portion of that compression can happen, by better compute. But some of them cannot happen without doing a deep learning where humans are involved in like for example, salt models building where like you can actually throw as much computer it as possible. But since the cycle time requires human to drill that model, it will be the limiting cases that, so there we want to actually enable the interpreters to take our salt net, which is our algorithm and accelerate the early part of it so that they have more time to do high quality work and build and build that model faster, reduce that cycle time so that our clients can make better, faster and cheaper decisions.Rob:21:32It's been interesting to watch the transition too with our industry and the technology at the same time we've moved to the cloud, right? All of our data's now sitting at a cloud provider and if you would have looked at the oil industry five years ago, there's a very security minded mindset around the industry that says, I need to keep that data because it's a very, very critical and I want to make sure the only, I've got access to it. So there was a lot of fear about putting data in the cloud several years ago. Now you look at the cloud providers and they're spending literally billions of dollars on things like security and bandwidth and access, things that didn't exist five, 10 years ago. So that transition to be able to go to the cloud, where all, where, all of our data sits today. More and more of our clients are going there as well. And the nice thing about that is you can ramp up your needs, on compute capacity, on disk capacity, on combining data sets across partners, vendors, other operators, and collaborate and work on that data set together to come up with solutions that you couldn't possibly have done before. So it's, it's fun actually to watch that transition happen.Arvind:22:43It is going a little tangent to the question that you asked her, but, because there's a very important point about the cloud services the the biggest cloud platform is Kubernetes by Google and that's actually open source. So Google developed that and made it open source available for anyone who wants to build a cloud infrastructure. They can have it. That's the, the most to use open source, platform that, available today. So that's changing the way people work. Like red hat or Linux, Unix, Sun, Sun, microsystem or Microsoft or apple. They are very, like, even in technology sector, they are very controlling of what they are providing to their consumers. They control that environment. Whereas now things are changing in which the open source systems like, which is publicly available is becoming one of the most dominant form of a software platform. Um, if you look at android for machine learning, it's tensorflow, Pi Torch. Those are open systems software that is a democratizing the technology so that anyone and everyone can, is able to take that next step and the solve complex problem because the base is available for them. They don't have to build the base. They can actually focus on solving the high value complex problem.Erica:24:24Speaking of both Google and open source and democratizing, problem solving. So TGS recently had a Kaggle challenge, correct, can you speak a little bit about that?Arvind:24:35So, yeah, that actually, so when I joined TGS, I had, one data scientist that we, we were working with, like we were still building the data science team and we started working on the salt net problem. We had an early, um, success. We were able to do some of those things and then we realized that there is like ocean of data scientists who are across the world. We don't have actually access to that Google actually open source and they have, they're working on their problem, they're working on Apple's problem, they're working on very interesting problems. So why they're not working on it at two different reason. One is that they don't have access to it in a second, the problem is not interesting enough for them. So Kaggle was our effort to make it accessible to everyone and make it interesting so that people will work on it.Arvind:25:30So just for the, um, description of Kaggle, Kaggle is the world's largest, data science crowdsourcing platforms. So crowdsourcing is a, um, where you put the problem and it's a platform or website where the, um, the problem description is given and data science scientists to work on their like on their spare time, nights and weekend or that's their hobby or that's their job. And they solved that problem. They submit to submit on that platform and they get instantaneous result that, how a good their solution was. So that's the Kaggle is the one of the largest world's largest platform for that recently acquired by Google. So we actually approached Kaggle that- can we actually put the one of the complex problem that we have on this website or this platform and they worked with us. And so we partnered together to host the oil and gas first serious problem for the automatically building salt model. And we actually, so to Rob's point, um, the hardest problem was getting the data rights that are convincing our management that it's okay to release a certain portion of data. We had to work really hard to create an interesting problem and that once we released that data, um, this competition was very successful in the sense that if they were around 80 plus thousand different solutions, just think of the scope of itRob:27:06From almost 3000 different teamsArvind:27:093,800. So close to 4,000 people. Oh yeah. 3000 team and comprise of almost 4,000 data scientists across the world work on this problem for three months and gave us more than 80,000 different solutions. We would have never got anything like this working day and night with whole TGS working on this problem.Rob:27:32I, I found it interesting because I like did a search on Google for our, TGS salt net.Arvind:27:39Yeah.Rob:27:40And if you look at the results just on Youtube, you'll find probably 20 different videos of PhD students, data scientists getting their master's degree who are using that problem that we posted out there as part of their thesis or as part of their Grad student work to show that, that the data science process that they went through as part of their education. And now that's out there for everybody to use.Erica:28:02So this is a major disruptor isn't it, to the industry because we have basically non geologists, non geophysicists solving problems for-Rob:28:12Yeah it's, it's definitely, we, there was a lot of teams, right? So there was some that had geoscience backgrounds, some that didn't, but most of them, they just come from a data science background, right? So they could have stats or math or computer science or anything. And when they applied this, it was interesting to see the collaboration on the Kaggle user interface where the teams were out there saying, hey, I tried this. What did you guys try? And the whole idea of crowdsourcing and, and the idea that we're kind of in somewhat of a unique position where we can do that. We can, we own the data. We don't license it from somebody else. Um, it's the data that we own that we can put out there. So we've got a huge volume that we can leverage and put it into a community like that where we can actually see some of those results come in.Erica:28:57So to kind of put you on the spot-Arvind:28:59Can I- one thing to say after that to is not just about data owning the data because there are several different companies who own data, even oil and gas company, they have their own data library. I honestly think that, it says volume about TGS, that TGS was willing to take a bet on this kind of futuristic idea and like go on a limb. But, and this is, I'm just giving credit to the senior management here, that they were, they're allowed us to actually go with this. That was one of the bigger hurdle than just to owning data, that management buy-inRob:29:39Second only to data preparation for the challenge itself.Arvind:29:42Second only to the data preparation, it took us a lot of time to build-Rob:29:45YeahArvind:29:45an interesting problem. It's not just about like you have to create an interesting problem to-Erica:29:51to attract the right talent.Arvind:29:52So the winner was a group from a Belarus and the Japan. They have never met. They have never seen each other other than the Facebook.Erica:30:02Wow.Arvind:30:03And did they actually met on this Kaggle platform? They were working on this problem. They found out that there they are approaching with the two different ways and they actually teamed up so that they can combine this to create a better solution. Combining both of their effort and that that's actually happens to be the winning combination. But a traditional method won't allow us to tap into this kind of resources or brain power. That to someone from Belarus and Japan working together whom we don't know solving our problem and that is going to be a disruptor and we have to be ready to capitalize on it rather than be afraid of it.Erica:30:51Right. And that's why I wanted to go to rob, not to put you on the spot here, but as someone coming from the well data side, do you see any potential future Kaggle challenges using well data?Rob:31:05Yeah, the, that could absolutely be in our future. I think at this point we're really trying to frame the problems that we're trying to solve for our customers. And if we decide that one of those problems deserves, some time in the public, like on Kaggle, then we can absolutely go that direction. Not a problem whatsoever. At the moment though, our real focus is trying to figure out where can we provide the most value to the clients and we're kind of letting them steer us in a, you know, a way we have got our own geology department internally so we know what we need to do with our internal well data in order to high grade it to the next level product. However, we're really taking direction from our clients to make sure that we're moving in that direction. So yeah, I could see us having a problem like that, especially if it's starting to get into a Dataset that, , needs to be merged with another data set that maybe, we need support from, somewhere else in the industry. We're in a different industry.Arvind:31:59Just a few minutes on that is,the next problem I think that Kaggle need from oil and gas is a more on the solution side. So the knowledge to- like information to knowledge site in which you are all taking very different type of data set. For example, success failure database for the basin. And building a, prospect level decision that requires a, as Rob said, that collaboration, that the TGS collaborating with one of the E&P company or someone else, like those two or three companies and now bringing their data together because at the end of the day, this integration is what everyone is looking for. Can we actually create an interesting integration problem and put it on the Kaggle competition. So, any listener, if they're in, they have a good problem, they can actually contact Rob, or me. That, because we are always looking for good partners to solve complex problems. We can't solve all the problem by ourselves, neither other people. It does require teams to build the right kind of Dataset, interesting problems in to, to get into the board.Erica:33:22Okay. So we've talked about how we got here to this point in the industry with AI machine learning and we've talked about what we're doing today with the, um, let's move on to the future where we think AI will take, um, the industry. So to follow up on something that Arvind had said earlier, so you had said that we sort of fell behind silicon valley at some point. How, how far behind do you think we are right now in terms of years if you can make that estimation?Arvind:33:58Oh, that's a tough question but I'll try to answer it in a roundabout way. Is it that when I say that we lag behind, we lag behind in the compute side of it, like the AI side of it and some of the visualization and web-based technology when it comes to high performance computing, we were still leading up to very- probably in some of the spaces we are still leading. So storage and high performance compute which is both, oil and gas defense and Silicon Valley. All three are working. Um, we are not that far behind actually we might be at the cutting edge of it. And that was one of the reason that we didn't actually focus on the AI side because we were solving the problem in more high compute way and we are using bigger and bigger machine solving, more complex problems more physics based complex physics based solutions.Arvind:35:04So when it comes to solving physics based solution, we are still, at the front of the pack. But when it comes to solving a heuristic auto machine learning or AI based solution, we are behind, we are behind in robotics and things like that and we are catching up. So when you think of a mid midstream and downstream where there's a lot of the internet of things, IOT instruments, so things are getting is like instrumentized and there are a lot of instruments which are connected to each other and real time monitoring, predictive maintenance. Those are happening and happening at a very rapid rate. And that will actually, we'll, we'll catch up in a few years in, in midstream and downstream side or mostly instrumentation side where we are truly lagging is subsurface because it's not the problem that Ian, and like, silicon valley was trying to solve.Arvind:36:05A subsurface problem are complex. They are very different type of problem; that someplace you have very dense data, someplace We have very sparse data. How to actually integrate that and humans are very good at integrating different scale of information in a cohesive way, whereas that problem is not the problem that silicon like, technology sector was trying to solve. And so we are trying to actually take the solutions that they are building to solve different problem and integrating it or adapting that to solve our problem. So that's where like I see like, so I think it's a non answer but that's what the best I have. (Laughter)Erica:36:49It was a very good answer. So how does this change the way that we're building our products then our approach to getting our products out there?Rob:36:58Well, one of the, one of the things I'll start with is we're actually seeing our clients adopt analytics teams, analytics approaches, machine learning. there's a lot of, there's a lot of growth in that part of the industry. and they've gotten past the point where they don't believe that a predictive solution is the right solution. You know, with our ARLAS product, we're creating an analytics ready LAS dataset where we're predicting what the curves would look like, where there's currently gaps in the curve coverage. The initial problem the customers had was, do they believe that the data's accurate? We're starting to get past those kinds of problems. We're starting to get to the point where they believe in the solutions and now they're trying to make sure that they've got the right solutions to fit within their workflows in their organization. So I think the fact that they've actually invested in building up their own analytics teams where they've injected software engineering, geology and geophysics, a data science and kind of group them all together and carved them off, or they can focus on maybe solving 20% of the problems that they actually, attempt. That's kind of where the industry has gotten to, which means we now have an opportunity to help them get to those levels.Arvind:38:10You see that a change in conferences, and, meetings and symposiums that, like for example SEG Society of exploration geophysicists and, that, conference three years back there was one session about machine learning and last year, machine learning has the largest number of sessions in that conference. So you're looking at a rapid adaptation of a machine learning as a core technology in oil and gas and at least in subsurface, but most of them is at the very early phases, people are trying to solve the easier problem, the problem they can solve rather than the problem that need to be solved. So that's where there's a differentiation happening that everyone wants to work on machine learning and most of the people are actually taking solution to your problem rather than taking problem finding solution for a problem which is relevant. So,Rob:39:21I think that's pretty fair because,you've got to get some sort of belief internally and if you can prove that you've got kind of a before and after, here's what I did to make this decision or the wells that are drilled in the production I've got and here's what I predicted was going to happen. And you can start to see those two things align. Then you start to get belief in something. If you just use something that's predictive only and you've got nothing to compare it to, it may be the right solution. But do you have the belief that your company is going to run with it? So that's why I think we're starting to see them solve problems that we know can be solved initially rather than the big problem of say, if I shoot seismic here, I can predict how much oil I'm going to produce. That's a big problem and it's at different resolutions and scales than we believe we can solve and, and be definitive about it today. but I think that, I think I agree with you that they're, they're really focused on, on proving that this technology, that analytics that AI/ML is going to work for the problems that they know about.Arvind:40:24Agreed only up to a point is that, the reason and why I think it ML/AI solutions are different is because, in physics, one of our basic assumption is that, if we solve a toy problem, you can scale the same way is the same solution will apply on a bigger problem. That's not the case for machine learning solutions. The solution that is applicable for a toy problem is not going to scale. You need to actually retrain the data and the solution becomes different as the scale of the problem increases. So although it's, interesting to see that a lot of a small problem are very easy problem people are taking to- people are solving a lot of easy problem using machine learning. To show that machine learning works, that's good. But to truly take advantage of machine learning, you have to actually solve, try to solve one of the complex problem because you already have a solution for those easy problems.Arvind:41:40Why do we need machine learning? So for example, ARLAS is a good example. Our analytic ready LAS in which we are predicting well logs from the available, well logs. Now if I have only one well, or a few wells then I actually want my petrophysicist to go through the physics based modeling and solve that problem. I don't need AI to solve that problem. I have actually solutions which works there. If the solution that I need is that how to solve this problem on a scale of Permian basin or a scale of U.S. So like what we have done for ARLAS that the first basin we started was Permian is where we took all the data that we have as a training data or actually a good portion of that data as a training data set. We build that model, which is actually based in scale model that can actually ingest all the like 320,000 wells we have. So we used thousands and thousands of well as a training build a very robust model to actually solve that problem and now that solution is available for the whole basin. That's the kind of solutions that are problem that AI is good at solving and has actually best potential not for solving few wells. Learning about AI by solving a few wells is great, but as a product or as a true application of AI, we need to actually look at tackling the big problems.Rob:43:11Yeah, I agree. There's been a lot of, shall we say analytics companies that come out with a claim of being able to perform some sort of machine learning basis and they've got a great interface and everything looks really good. And the story behind it is that it's been taught on five wells or 10 wells in our learning set was in the tens of thousands of wells, which is why I believe in the data set that we've built.Arvind:43:40At a very high level, machine learning is like teaching a kid, like someone has come out of graduate school and they want to actually learn something and you are showing them this is how we actually do. The more things they see, the better they will get, the more experience they will have and the better their capability or work will be. So it requires the, the whole concept of machine learning or AI is that you want to actually train with massive amount of very high quality data set and that actually solves more complex problems.Erica:44:18How do you discipline data?Arvind:44:22So you are saying that did- have you talked to our lead data scientist and he calls him to himself a data janitor, that most of the time he spent is cleaning of the data and organizing the data so that he can actually do the high quality like the machine learning AI work. So if he spends his time like out of a hundred hours, 60 or 70 hours- so he's actually organizing, categorizing data set so that he can do the fun stuff in the last 30 40 hours. I mean that's actually, that's better than a good, most of the places where people spend 90 hours doing the curation and 10 hours doing the fun stuff. And that was one of the reasons why we had to build the data lake because one of the thing is that we need all the data to be readily available in a kind of semi usable format that I don't need to spend time learning about the 2003 data is different than 2015 data versus 2018 data.Arvind:45:34I need to actually consume it as one big dataset. So last whole year we spend actually considerable, considerable amount of time and effort in building our data lake in which we actually took all of our commercial legacy, data set and moved it on cloud. The two things that we did is one we standardized the data set so that lead data scientists don't have to spend on doing janitorial of data janitorial work and a second is creating metadata. So what Metadata is that aggregate information.Arvind:46:06For example, Arvind Sharma what is the Meta data about Arvind Sharma um, that he is five feet 10, I don't have a lot of hair. (Laughter) He drives some car and he, he has gone to- he has a PhD like so some aggregate information like out of her, like rather than cell by cell information about Arvind, what is the minimum, set of aggregate information that you can use to define Arvind. So that's the metadata about any data set. So what we did when we are moving this a massive amount of data set into our data lake for each of these data set, we extracted this aggregate information that where it was recorded, when it was recorded, what are the basic things done to this data set? What is the maximum amplitude in this volume? What is the minimum amplitude in this volume? What does the average amplitude in this? So those things we actually use it because a lot of analytics is that some of the higher level analytics will be about integrating the information about data set, like Facebook uses information about people to make some of the decision. We are not that creepy as that Facebook, but (laughter) it's, it's like taking the information about the data set and actually learning creating knowledge about the basin.Rob:47:37It's interesting when you were talking about the data janitorial work and how we've kind to standardize our data set on the, on the cloud because it kind of brings it full circle back to something you said early on. And that was that we want our customers to be able to get to that decision making point sooner without having to do all that data, janitorial work. I've been going to data management conferences for 25 years and I hear the same thing every year for 25 years. I spend "fill in the blank" percentage of my time, 60 70, 80% of my time looking for data and the remainder are actually working with it. That's what an analytics ready data set it's going to allow us and our customers to be able to do is not have to do all that janitorial work, but actually get to the point where I can actually start interpreting what that data means to me to make decisions.Erica:48:30So looking towards the future of the industry, do you think we're going to continue to ramp up in terms of speed and getting to the good stuff, the fun part? Do you think that's going to continue to logarithmically increase?Rob:48:44Probably faster than we can ever imagine. I think the, I think the change that we saw with companies moving to the cloud companies going toward, service based solutions, companies moving toward high volume, normalized consistent datasets, all of these things have been moving at light-light speed compared to what they were, the, the past 25 years. Up until today, every day about probably about every three weeks. We basically, have got some new technology that's been released that we can start adopting and putting into our workflows that wasn't there three weeks, three weeks prior, open source. It comes back to that topic as well. More and more of these tech firms are putting the data out as open source means we could leverage it and get to solutions faster. So to answer the question, absolutely faster than we can possibly imagine.Erica:49:28Well, awesome. I cannot wait to get to this future, with both of you.Erica:49:41Well, thank you so much for talking with us today. Being part of our first episode of Beneath the Subsurface, it was an absolute pleasure. If our listeners want to learn more about what TGS is doing with AI, you can visit TGS.com You can visit our new TGS.ai platform and, we'll have some additional show notes on our website, to go along with this episode.Arvind:50:06Thank you Erica.Rob:50:07Yeah, thanks a lot. I appreciate it.Conclusions and plugs:Check out the newly launched tgs.ai to dig deeper in to the data with subsurface intelligence. Gain detailed subsurface knowledge through robust analytics with our integrated data and machine learning solutions at tgs.ai Discover Geoscience AI solutions, Cloud Computing, Data Management, and our Data Library. Learn more about TGS at tgs.com

Today I want to share a message with you that I spoke at our church, One Church, about having uncommon relationships! This message is not just for married couples but also those hoping to have a healthy relationship and marriage one day! There are 5 stages of a relationship that we go through:-Attraction-Emotion-Difficulty -Stability-CommitmentI want to dive into what each of these look like in order for us to have a healthy relationship and focus on finding your encouragement and strength in God! Scripture Mentioned:Colossians 2:6-7, 9-10You can subscribe to my YouTube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW-QxE-upg6RvW_Q29kv4KAHappily Even After is available NOW on Kindle and paperback: https://t.co/FeggSbsyCCSubscribe to my emails: http://eepurl.com/bRFyhXGo like my Facebook Page so we can stay connected throughout your week: https://www.facebook.com/crystalspark...Help me spread the word! If this podcast spoke to your heart; do me a favor and share it on Facebook or Twitter!

Episode 039 Hike Italy : The Italian Lakes District   Hike and Kayak the most beautiful lakes in the world*   Located in the Italian alps, the Italian Lakes District has spectacular pristine lakes surrounded by the majestic alps!  No wonder so many celebrities like George Clooney, Madonna and Sir Richard Branson have purchased homes here.   On today’s Active Travel Adventures podcast, we interview Christine Jenkins, who went on Active Adventure’s ‘Dolce Vita’ fully guided ten day adventure travel holiday.  Christine explains that each day, she thought if she had to go home that day, her expectations were exceeded, and still every day got better still!   She hiked stunning trails overlooking the lakes, and kayaked on Lake Como and Lake Orto (the latter being her favorite since it is less crowded).   Of course, in Italy, all the food and ample wine was divine - and plentiful!   Here is the Dolce Vita itinerary: Day 1:  Arrive Milan Malpensa, visit Sacromonte Varallo Day 2: Hike to Rifugio Crespi Day 3 — Hiking the Walser hamlets of Valsesia Day 4 — Hike down to Pella, boat to Orta San Giulio Day 5 — Sea kayak Lake Orta Day 6 — Hike the Mottarone mountain range Day 7 — Hiking Val Grande National Park Day 8 — Journey to Lake Como, hike to Vezio Castle Day 9 — Sea kayaking Lake Como Day 10 — Back to Milan Malpensa   Links mentioned on today’s show: Ep 28   Annapurna Nepal with Stan Ep 35   Mont Blanc hike through Italy, Switzerland and France Active Adventures fully guided 10 day hike and kayak of the Italian Lake district Podcast web page www.ActiveTravelAdventures.com Host of the Active Travel Adventures podcast   Twitter@Kit_Parks Facebook Group:  Active Travel Adventures Instagram:  parks.kit   Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00   Intro 02:13   How Christine got in to adventure travel 02:30   How switched from regular travel to adventure travel 03:30   Making new friends on adventure travel holidays 03:55   Why chose the Italian Lakes vacation 04:58   What makes Active Adventures different 05:32   How difficult was this adventure 06:11   Adventure travel as team building 06:24   Where were fellow travelers from 06:47   How did she train 07:33   Is elevation an issue 07:59   Landscape 08:47   UNESCO Valsesia   09:48   Favorite memories 10:20   Refugios 11:45   Hike into Alagna 12:06   Alagna 13:06  Breakfasts 13:47   Italy does food right 14:49   Dinners 15:48   Typical daily activities 17:36   Describe the lakes 19:21   Describe the landscape 20:35   Visit to the glacier 20:57   When did Christine go 21:42   Using hiking sticks 22:06  Surprise lake swim 23:16  Christine describes her group 24:32   The trip exceeds all expectations 25:53   Mont Blanc and Annapurna (Nepal) 26:58   Celebrities at Lake Como 28:28  Played hooky 29:38   Using a local guide 30:02   Paragliding 31:57   Naked boaters at dinner 33:30  Christine’s guides 35:15   Fresh foccacia 35:49   Accommodations 37:25   What she wished she’d known 38:19   Traveling solo 39:23   Advice to anyone considering the Italian Lakes 40:20   How Christine chooses where to travel 42:15   ATA and affiliate partners 43:13   How to get the FREE Travel Planners 43:29   A shout out to Pat 43:37   Reach out to Kit   Time Stamped Show Transcript   Christine: 00:00I said to my roommate, my neighbor, I said, you know, if I have to go home tomorrow, I'm still ecstatic. I've had the best time ever. So each day was like a bonus day... it just can't get any better, and it kept getting better. That's all I can say.   Kit: 00:21'Dolce vida' the good life, the sweet life. Today we're going to explore the sweet life in Italy. We're going to the Italian Lakes district, an area of Italy you may not be familiar with. Welcome to the Active Travel Adventures podcast. I'm your host Kit Parks, and if you're listening to this podcast, you're not interested in an ordinary life. You want a bigger life, one filled with excitement, adventure, interesting people and challenges. You want to explore the world and different cultures. You want to stretch yourself. You get your jollies off a conquering a difficult feat, and you love how adventure travel can propel your life forward. At the Active Travel Adventures podcast, website, and community, our number one mission is to provide you with the information and tools that you need to take on these adventures. Each show explores an exciting new destination to see if it's something you're interested in and you'll be learning what to expect from someone like you who's actually done it.   Kit: 01:11If the destination piques your interest, then head over to the website where you can see photos, get more detailed itinerary information, and other important information on the website. Also, you can download the free printer friendly travel planner. The planner has all the important links and recommendations you need to actually plan your adventure, or you can wait for the beginning of the month when I send out a monthly and note, I say 'monthly' newsletter that includes all the new travel planners along with other tips and deals. I'll never sell your email or spam you, I promise.   Kit: 01:41 So today we're going to be going to the stunningly beautiful Italian lakes district. Our guest today explains how she enjoyed the good life in the Lakes District of Italy. So let's get started. If you could start by just introducing yourself and perhaps telling us your age.   Christine: 02:01My name is Christine Jenkins and I am 66 years old.   Kit: 02:05 And how did you first get into adventure travel?   Christine: 02:08I probably started a good 15 years ago. I've always wanted to travel. I've always wanted to see the world. I think I got that from my mom who never had that opportunity, so she always was encouraging. And I also love the outdoors and I just connected my two loves.   Kit: 02:28 How did you make the leap say, okay, I want to do that kind of travel versus the tour bus or go to the cities and all that? And so what, what was the thought process or how did you finally say, okay, this is what I'm going to do? And then what did you do?   Christine: 02:40Well, I actually, I have done the bus tours. I did two with my mom and then one day I, and this was before the Internet was really popular, I knew there was a hiking trip in Nova Scotia, Canada and I decided to sign up for that and flew Halifax in Nova Scotia. And my husband was a little worried about me going by myself, so that was my first test and I loved it ever since. I love the outdoors. I love the sounds when you're by yourself. I love getting off the beaten track. Usually you're with a group of likeminded people. I've met some fabulous people on all my hikes.   Kit: 03:22 That's one thing I, that's a recurring theme in this show is that you meet people... That usually each trip I make one or two lifelong friends from that trip.   Christine: 03:32I still keep in touch with two people. In fact, one couple lives in North Carolina. Actually, no, it was my second trip. It was to Newfoundland and there's a couple, both doctors, and they're in Raleigh, North Carolina. And I still keep in touch with them.   Kit: 03:47 And today we're going to be talking about the Italian lakes. So, of all the different trips that you've taken, what made you say that's where I'm going next?   Christine: 03:55It's actually a kind of a funny story. I knew, you know, I was looking around to see where I wanted to go next. I happen to be on Facebook and one of my Facebook friends kept saying, you know, he liked Active Adventures, so I thought, -- and he's kind of an outdoors guy... he teaches physical education... he's a kind of a historian... So I decided, I'm going to checkout this Active Adventures.   Christine: 04:21So I checked it out and I saw the different hikes, but the one that really drew me was Italian Lakes District, I think partly because of the length of time it was 11 days, which was really nice. We could fly in from Toronto to Milan. So it was a direct flight. It was easy to get to, but I think the kicker was we got to kayak for two days, which broke up the hiking. And I love kayaking and it was perfect. I asked my neighbor, "Do you want to come?" She said, "Sign me up," and away we went.   Kit: 04:50Perfect. Yeah, that's, that is one thing I like about Active is it's usually not just hiking. They usually mix in some cycling or paddling or something like that, so multisport, but predominantly hiking.   Christine: 05:01That's right. Predominantly hiking and if you didn't want to hike in a day, that's fine too. We had a lady who had a a meniscus issue and she had a torn meniscus. She had come in from Iceland. She was a photo journalist and so they accommodated her and so she got to do what she wanted to do during the day. So they were very accommodating, very flexible   Kit: 05:24 And how difficult is this, because you know, there's different degrees of difficulty for some of these adventures. On a scale of one to five, where would you place this particular adventure?   Christine: 05:33I would probably put it, I'd say between three and four. I mean I've certainly done more challenging hikes, but there were a few days it was challenging, like our very first full hiking day, you know, because where I live we don't have mountains to climb, so yeah, it was, I thought it was challenging, but it wasn't beyond... none of us had to say, "I can't do this. I give up." We all did it. We all pulled together and we had a great time.   Kit: 06:02 It's almost like a team building experience as well.   Christine: 06:05It was. It was and a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. And trust me, when you got to hike through some of these beautiful alpine valleys, it was worth it!   Kit: 06:16 And that's one thing that we really didn't tell folks exactly where the Italian lakes are... And this is in northern Italy. So you're in the Alps?   Christine: 06:24You are in the Alps. When you land in Milan, you can actually... It doesn't take long for you to leave Milan and you can see the Alps in the background. And a couple of places where we were, Switzerland was across the lake, so that's how far north we were.   Kit: 06:39 Wow. Wow. So what kind of training did you do to prepare for this?   Christine: 06:44I kayak because I live near a lake, so I did a lot of kayaking. I try to walk, I have two dogs. I walk them everyday, so that's seven kilometers. And I did small day hikes in my area. I've always had good cardiovascular health and so I didn't really find it a problem. I just keep active in the winter. I snow shoe and I cross country ski so I always had my heart rate up and I think that's the key. And pacing yourself, you know. Pacing yourself, if you pace yourself too, you don't have to feel like you have to be at the head of the line all the time. If you do, not to say slow, but a, a steady pace, it works out.   Kit: 07:25 Was elevation an issue for you or for any of the other hikers?   Christine: 07:30No, not here. I've had it in Peru, but no. I did not experience it and I don't believe any of my other fellow hikers experienced it, or, they didn't mention it at all.   Kit: 07:42 Okay. So most of the higher mountains are surrounding you, is that right? I'm trying to get a visual. Tell us a little bit about the landscape so we can kind of get a picture what it looks like.   Christine: 07:50Well, at the beginning, like I said, in our first full hike, you know, we went up through the alpine meadows. There was snow up higher in the mountains. You went through these little lush valleys. It's just like a picture postcard you would think of as a for Switzerland, but you were still in Italy. And you come to a little hamlet in the middle of nowhere and the people were lovely.   Christine: 08:14We'd have our lunch at a refugio somewhere. We'd have local meats and cheeses and you're just looking at the mountains and the waterfalls, and all you can hear when you're hiking is a bit of a breeze. The cow bells, because all the cows have bells around their necks and it was... there was no other manmade sound. So it was, it was beautiful, priceless.   Kit: 08:38 Very cool. Now in that first valley you go to as a UNESCO World Heritage site and I'm going to say this wrong, I say everything wrong, Valsesia, something like that.   Christine: 08:48Valsesia. Yes. I believe that's how it's pronounced.   Kit: 08:51 Can you tell us a little bit about that?   Christine: 08:53It was nice because as far as landscape, it was stunning. I'll probably use that word a lot in my descriptions, but everything was stunning... spectacular. At the main center was Varallo, and it was beside a river. And we hiked up to a UNESCO world heritage site and there's a monastery there. And you can come out over edge and looked down over the town of Valsesia.   Christine: 09:17Yeah, and yeah, it was incredible. Incredible. Some of the oldest religious structures in Italy are located there in. It's on the side of the valley.   Kit: 09:27 I see here in my notes that the Franciscan friars built that in 1491. For those of us here in the States we are like, "Whoa, that's old. Right?"   Christine: 09:36That's the year before Columbus sailed the ocean blue.   Kit: 09:41 Well seeing that sounds like a great way to start your adventure. Any other favorite memories from that day?   Christine: 09:45You know, it's funny, one of the memories I have is looking at the ledge over the town below and we could see this thunderstorm, this huge thunderstorm coming down a valley across the way. So that was really kind of neat to see and you could see it approaching us. And the thunder in the mountains, you know, they bounce: the echoes of the thunder bounces off the mountains. So it's sounds a lot louder than it was probably was.   Kit: 10:08 . You mentioned refugios. For those that may not be familiar with that term, can you explain that please?   Christine: 10:17It's a small hamlet or a refuge, I guess would be the English way. We went to a couple of them for a couple of hikes and one in particular we had to hike up to this place where we were going to have our lunch, and it was uphill and it was a, it was a challenging hike and it was by this really wildly raging river. Anyway, we get to this refugio. It's like a little hamlet there.   Kit: 10:43 Okay. I need some more clarification there. I think of refugio is kind of like a mountain hut.   Christine: 10:48There was, there were several huts, so you could actually, I think stay there, but I don't think they're privately owned and they had this restaurant. And there's no road in and the food was outstanding, like it was just, you know, you couldn't believe like you could have fresh cheeses and meats from the local valley.   Christine: 11:13There was fresh rabbit, there was fresh fish. Nothing was deep fried. Like in North America, we would not hike or walk our way to a restaurant like that. If we did, people would complain, but everything would be deep fried. Everything here is fresh and you could sit out in the patio and look at the mountains and the rivers and it was beautiful. Just beautiful.   Kit: 11:36 And so after your lunch, then what did you do?   Christine: 11:39Well, we had a bonus because we get to go downhill the whole way and we hiked all the way back into Alagna and that's where we stayed for three nights in Alagna. And actually one of our guide's, Andrea, he was from Alagna. So he was able to give us the inside scoop on Alagna.   Kit: 11:58 So tell us a little bit about Alagna.   Christine: 12:00Alagna, it looks like a little Swiss town, but you've got to keep reminding yourself that you're in Italy. There's all little cafes, shops... Where we stayed - at the hotel Monterosa - it was right beside the church and the church rings the bells every hour and a half hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But it was a beautiful little hotel where we stayed. The town was old. Alagnal is sort of off the beaten track for North Americans to go over, especially in the winter. But English wasn't... It wasn't difficult to get by when you were talking to a shopkeeper or in a little cafe, you were understood or you figured it out. But there were all little side streets. There was a beautiful little river going outside of town, which we could hear from our hotel. And yeah, it was a lovely time. We were there for three nights. Fabulous breakfast in the morning. Yeah, it was great.   Kit: 12:57 And so what, what kind of foods do they have for breakfast? And from my notes, it looks like that whole area was populated by German people that moved there in like fifth century AD or something.   Christine: 13:08Yeah, the Valser people. Yes. Well the hotel we stayed at for the three days are actually owned by some, a couple from Sweden and think that's been a couple of generations in their family. But in breakfast we had fresh fruit, Granola, homemade breads, homemade jams, coffee, tea, yogurt. Really good yogurt. You didn't starve. That's all I can tell you. It was probably the best Granola I've ever had in my life.   Kit: 13:37 Probably freshly made and everything. And they do food right!   Christine: 13:40It's all fresh. I can tell you that whole trip I did not have... We did not have one bad meal anywhere. It was hard to come home.   Kit: 13:50 We could sure learn how to do food better from the way they do things we do. We do. And they eat seasonally to. They wouldn't think of having strawberries in the middle of winter. They eat what is locally produced and available then.   Christine: 14:01They do eat seasonal and the other thing they do is they eat as local as possible, so you may get... If we had a prepared lunch, like maybe our guide, we had two guides, Andrea and Jo, and they might prepare, pick up some stuff, at little stores or grocery stores and they put out this fabulous picnic lunch with cheeses that were from that valley. That was the only place you could get it or salamis... That type thing. Breads, fresh fruit and yeah, it was. It was incredible. The wine, of course we had wine at lunch.   Kit: 14:37 Nice. Nice. And what about dinner?   Christine: 14:39Well actually I was going to say that was one of the things that was outstanding for this trip was the food. All our meals were covered and nothing was skimped on. We ate the best you could possibly have. We had wine with lunch. Usually we had wine with dinner, but what was interesting is after we'd finished our hike for the day or our kayak, we go back to our rooms, change, meet for dinner. We'd always have an aperitivo, which is like... it was a tray brought out and the had meats and cheeses and crackers and add wine. Then I'd think, "Oh, that's our dinner." No, it's not dinner, and then we'd still go to a restaurant. And so I'm really glad that we were hiking because I'm sure I'dve come home about 10 pounds more than I normally am.   Kit: 15:27And you're in Italy so you know everything's going to be good.   Christine: 15:31Oh yeah. Everything was beyond my expectations. Everything was fresh, nothing was processed. It was awesome.   Kit: 15:39 Very cool. So now you're using this as your base camp. So what kinds of things did you do each day?   Christine: 15:44If we didn't do hiking, we did the kayaking on the lakes: Lake Orta and Lake Como. We didn't kayak on Maggiore. There was one day we decided as a group -- and we had a small group that was just five hikers-- so that was kind of nice, and we decided one day we didn't want to hike and were in Stresa, which is on Lake Maggiore. So we went and walked into town. Some went to the islands and we did a little bit of shopping. So we just, like I say, the guidess were very flexible, and like I said, we decided we didn't want to hike that day.   Christine: 16:19On the days we went kayaking, we'd be out by the water's edge at nine in the morning and then there was a gentleman by the name of Juliana who came up from Genoa, Italy. He brought the kayaks first time, most all the people had kayaked before, so that was good. But he gave us safety instructions. We got fitted with life jackets and we were usually by 9:30, we were out on the lakes. We stop about maybe 10, 30, 11 at a little village and stop for an espresso and then we get back in our kayak, kayak a bit more and then stop it another village and maybe have lunch or stop at a beach. And our guides would put lunch out. In between that we go swimming in the lakes. And then in the afternoon we might stop about 2:30 or 3:00 in another little village and have gelato. It was very civilized. It was, yeah. It was very civilized.   Christine: 17:19And swimming: The lakes were clear and it was... It was hard to believe you weren't at the ocean. The colors of the lakes were beautiful.   Kit: 17:28 So tell us about the lakes itself. What is it? The fact that the lakes are surrounded by mountains or the lakes are particularly pretty in and of themselves? I'm trying to get a feel for what it looks like.   Christine: 17:39Well, the lakes are, they are like jewels. And there was this one day we did hike to the top of one of the mountains , and we could see Orta and Maggiore on both sides. So we had a really good view. Orta is the smallest, then Maggiore, then Como. The lakes were like a blue color, like a aqua blue color. Very clear. Especially in Como. The sides had these old Italian homes that have probably been in families for generations.   Christine: 18:10You know, there's the Piazza's nearby, and I think George and Amal Clooney live on Como, (but we didn't see them). But very steep sides to a lot of the lakes, but there are some beaches. Two of the lakes are Lake Como and Lake Orta are what they call 'crypto depression' and that's the one word I took away... my takeaway from that trip. Crypto depression means the bottom of the lake is actually below sea level and there are a few other ones in the world. Actually the Finger Lakes up in New York state. And actuallyOrta is not a crypto depression. Maggiore and Como are crypto depression, so they're below sea level and the lakes are usually long and narrow and their shores are very steep.   Christine: 19:06I think it was in Maggiore that they believe Mussolini hid his gold and it might be lying at the bottom of the lake. He had a hideout on Maggiore, on one of the islands on Maggiore. So that's the legend. That's a local legend   Kit: 19:12 OK, so when you're doing the hiking, are you in pastures, forests, or what are you hiking through?   Christine: 19:17We're doing it all. There were pastures, forests... There was one day we went through a whole, for about an hour and a half, all it was was chestnut trees. And it was quite a challenging hike. It was steep and it was very hot, but it was so, it was so pretty and so quiet. And we came out to pasture area, and then we had to go under some fences. So yes we had a real variety of landscapes for. hiking.   Christine: 19:57There was another day when we went up in a gondola and then we went up on a series of three gondolas, too. We actually got up to where the glaciers were, and that was an interesting day. It was cold and there was a lot of ice hikers, they had the crampons on their boots and they were doing some ice hiking. But we had to take three sets of gondolas to go higher and higher and higher. And if you have a fear of heights, you may not want to take it. I found that kind of a challenge, but you know, it was very barren landscape, which is a rock and ice and we'd be going along and you'd think that the gondola was going to hit the side of a rock face and then suddenly it will go up and then you were in your station where you get off and walk to the next one and keep going higher up. That was quite incredible.   Kit: 20:33 Did you get to walk on the glacier or just look at it?   Christine: 20:37Yes. We got to walk on the snow. Yes, we did. That is so cool. It was down below. It was probably in the upper eighties, low nineties up (there). It was a bit of a reprieve.   Kit: 20:49 And so what month did you go?   Christine 20:50 July   Kit: 20:52 July. Okay. So you're in the heat of summer.   Christine: 20:53Oh yes. Yes. But apparently it was very warm there in June. They had a trip in June, so I understand it was warm then, but you know what? It wasn't a really oppressive heat. It wasn't really humid. It wasn't really dry, but it was manageable. If you're dressed appropriately, I would strongly recommend a sun hat, especially to cover the back of your neck and your face, I would. That's the one thing. And the other thing I would suggest to people is to take hiking poles. Some people didn't. I think that they're really is helpful for, steadying yourself and, and pulling yourself up on steep parts or giving you some stability.  And when we're on the way down the mountain.   Kit: 21:33 Well I like poles too, for going downhill because they take a lot of pressure off my knee. Yes. And also I'm clumsy. I cannot tell you how many falls they've stopped by having that extra appendage to me or crossing a river or creek. They give you that little extra stability. I don't think I've ever fallen in a creek. I don't want to jinx myself though.   Christine: 21:50No, I haven't either, but one never knows.   Kit: 21:54 Of course. Now I will. Now that I've put that out in the universe. Any other special memories from that area?   Christine: 22:00Well, one of the days I have that sticks out in my mind was on Lake Orta and we went over to San Giulio Island and it's... There's a monastery there and abbey and you could... It's very easy to walk around this little island and there's several spots where you looked down like the old cobblestone streets.   Christine: 22:20Very narrow. In fact, I don't even think there was vehicles on it. I don't even recall any vehicles anyway that you could go swimming. So our group (Jo left us, she had to do some things), so our group, we went down the small passageway to the lake and four of us didn't have bathing suits on, but they were in our pack sack, so we lost all modesty. Just went into just a little dip in the wall, threw caution to the wind, stripped down, put on our bathing suits, dove in the lake, and we thought, well, if there's cameras out there, there's cameras out there. So be it. But the water felt so beautiful against your hot skin. It was...it was beautiful. It was just the most incredible feeling. You can feel yourself cool down and we were laughing like crazy, yet we felt like kids.   Kit: 23:07 That was fun. In your group, you said there's a small group of five: men, women or a combination?   Christine: 23:12All women. My neighbor came, and then there was a lady from San Diego and a lady from Manhattan, and a lady from Rochester.   Kit: 23:21 And what would you say the age group range was?   Christine: 23:24I would say the age group would have been maybe 52... The lady from San Diego was in her fifties, early fifties and to about in the upper seventies. And these ladies -- all of them are really in great shape -- they did their age group proud. They had nothing to be ashamed of . We had the lady from Rochester who was in her seventies and she was fabulous. She was in fabulous shape.   Kit: 23:55 Wow. Those are my role models. In fact, I interviewed a guy by the name of Stan on the Annapurna episode, which I'll put a link to in the show notes. He's in his seventies and has already planned an adventure for two years out. Unbelievable! Cool. That's how I want to age.   Christine: 24:07Wow. That's good for him. Well, I'm planning to go to Mont Blanc next year. I've already booked my trip.   Kit: 24:16 Alright, so any other, any other thoughts about that area before we go to the Val Grande National Park?   Christine: 24:22All I can say... I'll just reiterate just the whole atmosphere. You know, it's funny, I was thinking about it last night: thinking about what I was going to say each day of that trip, the whole trip and combination each day. I, I remember saying to my roommate, my neighbor, I said, "You know, if I have to go home tomorrow, I'm still ecstatic. I've had the best time ever. So each day was like a bonus day, a bonus day. It just... it can't get any better, and it kept getting better. That's all I can say. This has been no doubt, the best hiking trip I've ever had, and I've been to a lot of places. There was nothing I have to say bad about it. Nothing.   Kit: 25:10Wow. And that sure says a lot.   Christine: 25:12Yes. And I'd actually consider going back again in two years... Do it again.   Kit: 25:17 Yeah. It hadn't really even been on my radar, but then I started doing some research, and I thought, that looks really nice. I think that's now on the radar.   Christine: 25:23Well, it hadn't been on my radar either. I mean I have looked at other places. I've looked at Scotland, I've been to Scotland before. I thought about Iceland and I do know Active Adventures does Iceland now, but I was supposed to go to Mont Blanc with another company two years ago, but I badly broke my arm so that put a caboosh on that. So anyway. But anyways...   Kit: 25:46 In fact, the Mont Blanc episode is probably one of my most popular ones.You'll want to take a look at that? That's episode number 35, and I forgot to mention that Stanley, the guy that I said in the seventies that did Annapurna in Nepal, his was episode number 28. Anytime you want to look at an old episode, just go to ActiveTravelAdventures.comslash the episode number, so it'd be slashed 28 or 35, or if you forget, just go to the Directory Page, and then you can either use the search bar or just scroll down and see what rocks your boat.   Kit: 26:15On the website. You can either directly download and/or listen to the podcasts.Plus, you'll also find more details on the trip itself, including itineraries, tons of photos, often videos, and there's just a lot of information there. If you need either even further details, you can download -for free- the travel planners that have clickable links that can get you directly to the information or places that you need in order to plan your trip. And those come automatically with the monthly -- and note that I say monthly-- newsletter. I do not spam you or sell your name. Or you can download them as you need them from the website. Let's go back to the interview.   Kit: 26:50I know from the pictures that you sent, and from my research that the Italian Lakes area is absolutely gorgeous. But to put that in prospective, residents have included George and Amal Clooney, Richard Branson, Madonna.. These are folks who can buy and live anywhere: where money is no object. Yet, this is where they choose. That demonstrates how beautiful it is there.   Christine: 27:13There are some beautiful mansions and you can tell they've been in families for a long, long time and they're old architecture but so beautifully maintained and what was really neat is the boat pulls into a garage at the side of the cliff. It's like a boat garage, you know, and these beautiful old wooden boats. Oh yeah. Fabulous. Fabulous. Obviously this is a ritzy area, very private, very exclusive, especially at Como and. But you'll also see a lot more North Americans there too. Like eEnglish is extremely common, and British and British accents or North American accent. So on my flight over to Milan, there were people... That's where they were going to Bellagio on Lake Como,   Kit: 28:04 A Huffington Post article once ranked the Italian Lakes district as the most beautiful lakes in the world.   Christine: 28:10Oh, I can understand that! Orto is not as busy a lake. It's the smaller of the lakes. I preferred that lake just because it was less busy.   Kit: 28:21 So let's switch gears and now you're going to the Val Grande National Park. an you tell us a little bit about that?   Christine: 28:24Yeah, that was the one day... We actually that day we did not do that. That was the day we decided not to hike. That was the hookey day. So a couple of us walked into Stresa, which is a small village, beautiful little boardwalk from where we were staying, all the way into Stresa. And some of these beautiful old hotels along the lake side, you know, something you would see from the 1920's-30's. I'm sure they're wildly expensive and then there's three islands on the lake and you could take the boats to them. And we all met on this one island for lunch.   Kit: 29:02 But it sounds like that was a well worth it Hookey Day.   Christine: 29:04It was well worth the hooky day. So no, and everything was fine. We enjoyed our day so I can't comment on Val Grande National Park except to say apparently there's a lot of hiking trails in there. And they suggest you have a guide or a proper map because there are people who have gotten lost and they have never been found there. So that kind of struck the fear of God into us.   Kit: 29:30 So I think to a lot of times when you're hiking in some of these particularly remote areas that it's good to have a guide with you.   Christine: 29:37I think it is too. I mean you learn so much too. Especially somebody local, right?   Kit: 29:41 Yeah. The flora and fauna as well. You might see an animal. You have no idea what it is or a pretty flower and it's just something you take a picture of where they can tell you, oh, that's a little, little whatever it is.   Christine: 29:52Yeah, exactly. Exactly.   Kit: 29:54 When people ask you, "Oh, how was your trip?" What's the story that comes to mind?   Christine: 29:57Well, I did something on the trip that was accommodated for me and for the lady from San Diego. We were able to do it. It's not so much funny, but it was fun. We were able to do it, I think, because we had a small group and we went paragliding.   Kit: 30:17That sounds fun.   Christine: 30:19Yes. So, and that was in Alagna. So two of us went paraglidingone morning. When we went with a pilot -and we went separately- and we had to take a gondola up to the site is about at 8,800 feet. And we were up for about 20 minutes and then you could come in. And we landed over in Alagna and I remember the pilot saying to me, "Do you want to touch the steeple of the churches as we go by?" I said that I'd pass on that one.   Kit: 30:47Oh brother, I don't know if I'd have the nerve to do that!   Christine: 30:52So that's wasn't in the plans. And and I don't think if they had a big group that they could do that, but they accommodated, us. And we were able to do it because we could do it early in the morning and the weather was right, the window was right, that type of thing.   Christine: 31:07So the other things we did that was a lot of fun is we went down, it's called LP Land and it's on Mottarone Mountain and it's up at the top. You start at about 1,490 meters and it's a go cart, and you go down the mountain in a go kart by yourself (or with somebody else) and it zigzags down and you can reach some pretty high speeds. That was, you know, you get a beautiful view of the lake, although you're trying to not scream as you're going down, so not die and hope hang onto your water bottle or if you know. But um, that was fun.   Kit: 31:47 Any funny story come to mind?   Christine: 31:49Oh, okay. I do have a funny one. Actually. We were on Lake Orto. We were out for evening dinner. One night we were at arestaurant right on the lake. Beautiful meal as usual, and w see this boat going by. And there's three naked men in it, and they're raising their glasses of wine to all the patrons of the restaurant. So everybody's kind of stunned and we thought, well, we'll wait for them to come back. We'll have our cameras ready. But they never came back. But we all had a good laugh over that one. That was. Yeah, that was funny. That was funny.   Kit: 32:21 And Europeans have a different mentality about nudity than North Americans.   Christine: 32:25You know what? And that's the other thing too, is I really like. You're absolutely right. I saw a lot of ladies who would be in their fifties, sixties, seventies, and they were wearing bikinis. And I thought, "Good for you!" In fact, I almost thought about buying one for myself, but Jo our one guide, she said that their attitudes over here are so different. And yeah, I thought: it is what it is, and they were out there in their bikinis.   Kit: 32:54I'm surprised they had tops on, but maybe that's just the south of France.   Christine: 32:58I saw all with tops if they were standing up or sitting up. But their men folk were attentive to them. They were draped in gold jewelry and all that.   Kit: 33:08That's so interesting. Yeah. And France, most of the women didn't have tops and it didn't make a difference what shape your body was in skimpy bathing suits.   Christine: 33:17I know, I know. And we have a lot to learn in North America.   Kit: 33:23 Any other things you want to tell us about your Italian lakes adventure?   Christine: 33:27 I want to tell you that we had two guides and I really want to mention our guides, Andrea, who is from Alagna, Italy and Jo.Jo was originally from Wales but lives in Auckland, New Zealand now. Those guys were outstanding. They were knowledgeable. They were patient, they were flexible. Andrea, he was a really good van driver. He navigated all these little narrow roads. Sometimes we go through these little villages where the road was barely wider than the mirrors of vehicle and yeah, he, you know, we always felt safe with him. Jo was funny. We gave her a nickname. We called her '10 minute Jo' and the reason was, if we'd be hiking a particularly challenging day,she'd go, "Well there's a refugio up ahead." "Well, how far is that, Jo?" "Oh, it's about 10 minutes," and then a while later we'd be thinking. Well, it's been 10 minutes. She'd then say, "Oh, it's another 10 minutes." Everything was 10 minutes with her, so we ended up calling her '10 minute Jo'.   Kit: 34:29That reminds me when I was doing a two week section hike of the Appalachian trail with my girlfriends, Gerry and Jane. And I had the elevation map and so I would always know exactly how many more hills we had to climb, but as we're getting tired at the end of the day... Everybody's pooped., ready to find a camp site and all that. I'd be like, "Come on, you can do it. This is the last hill, I promise! This, the last hill!" And we'd get up over that hill, and of course there'd be another hill. I was like, "Oh no,really, THISis the last hill." So I'm not sure what they called me behind my back, but I doubt there were as kind in calling me "10 minute Kit". Sometimes to make it to the end, you've just got to fib.   Christine: 35:03Yeah, I know.   Kit: 35:07 Anything else about your guides or transit?   Christine: 35:09 Well, one of the other little things I have to tell you about is Giuliano, who was the gentleman... He would drive up from Genoa twice with all the kayaks. And the second time he came up he brought us some foccacia from a local bakery. He left at 5:00 AM in the morning from Genoa to get up to the Lakes ,and he had this fresh foccacia. And it was actually still a bit warm when we had it at our break. That was memorable, and it was so good.   Kit: 35:36Oh, how sweet and thoughtful.   Christine: 35:39Yeah. Very thoughtful.   Kit: 35:42 And I forgot to ask you accommodations. Are you in guest houses or are your camping? I know you said you were at one place for three days. Tell us a little bit about where you stayed.   Christine: 35:49We stayed in hotels. The first three nights and we were in Alagna. It was a beautiful old hotel run by a couple from Sweden and I love the wooden shutters because they could open up, you know. And clean, clean rooms. In Stresa, all the rooms were clean and had air conditioning. Yeah, there was nothing too. ..There was absolutely no complaints about the accommodation. It was close to everything. If we wanted to walk somewhere, the one place we stayed at, and I can't think of the name of the town, but they would mostly have balconies or a little doors that open up, although we didn't because it was quite warm. Yeah, it was. The combination was excellent. Excellent.   Kit: 36:30 I'm surprised you had air conditioning. That's great.   Christine: 36:32I know, I know. The one thing, over in Europe, if anybody's ever traveled there, the elevators are very small, so if you know, maybe two people get on with one suitcase each. No more than that. So that's the one adjustment. The other adjustment is a lot of times in Europe they don't use face cloths, so you might, if you, if you are big on using a face cloth, you might want to bring your own face cloth, that type of thing. But other than that it's um, you don't want for anything. I mean, if you need a toothpaste, it's easy to get. If you need wine, it's easy to get. So it's not like you're in a third world country. But little tips like that.   Kit: 37:16 Is there anything you wish you'd known beforehand that you could share with us?   Christine: 37:23No. The only thing I know in the guide -our gear guide- they suggested bringing is a hat and gloves and long underwear. We definitely did not need to pack that. It was too hot. So that took up room and maybe they have a standard gear list they give to everybody, but if I was going in June or July to the Italian Lakes District, definitely don't worry about that. You wouldn't have to worry about that.   Christine: 37:51But I would strongly. I've mentioned earlier, I would strongly suggest poles.   Kit: 37:55Yep. That's a given for me.   Christine: 37:56I know some people don't like them, but I. Yeah, that's a given for me too as well.   Kit: 38:00Yeah. I don't hike without them anymore. I don't care where I'm going and also keeps my rhythm.   Christine: 38:04Oh, it does! Yeah, it does. And it really does. And it gives you a bit of an upper body upper body workout to.   Kit: 38:11 One final thing. You say you travel solo. Usually you will pair up with a group or something like that. I just finished an episode, in fact, I just finished editing it this morning on solo travel. Do you have any thoughts on solo travel?   Christine: 38:23It's how I usually travel. I happened to ask my neighbor. We have traveled once before together and she's a great traveler. We had gone to Point Reyes national seashore in California. We went for a week with a group.   Christine: 38:37I prefer... I like solo traveling because I can, in the evening if I want to go to bed earlier, if I want to read till 1:00 in the morning, I'm not disturbing anybody. You meet some great people traveling solo. I used to be really nervous about traveling solo. Not anymore. There's a lot of women out there that travel solo now. A lot more than one would think. And, and if you find there's other solo travelers, you just kind of end up connecting and looking out for each other. And that's the other thing too, as a group, you spend that much time together. You do become a big family and you do look out for one another.   Kit: 39:16 Two final questions for you. Number one: Somebody says to you, "I'm thinking about going hiking in the Italian lakes." What do you tell them?   Christine: 39:25I say, I'll give you the name of Active Adventures. You will have the best time ever. I promise. I promise you. In fact, I'll go with you.   Kit: 39:34 My last question for you. Where's next?   Christine: 39:38Next year in Switzerland, Italy where you fly into Geneva. So I'm going to do that with Active Adventures. That's my next one. And then in 20,20 I always say I want to go back to the Italian Lakes, but there's so many places to go in this world. I've been to New Zealand but I've never hiked in New Zealand. So I mean there's always that option. There's so many places, so little time, you know, and you want to do those things when you're healthy.   Kit: 40:07And I mean this is not an ad for Active Adventures, but we're both fans. Do you now, when you're picking out which trips are you looking at their website and say where do I go next from there? Or how do you pick your next trip?   Christine: 40:20Well, like I said I had wanted to go to Mont Blanc two years ago and was I had already booked it and I was actually going with my neighbor, the one who went on this one, but I had broken my arm. She went on ahead so it was always in the back of my mind and I was going to go with another company, but I saw through Active Adventures they did Mont Blamc but they also do a kayaking day, which I thought I liked that it kind of changes things up a bit, so that's why I'm going with Active. I've put my deposit down and I'm ready to roll next June.   Kit: 40:51Cool. And so is that how you choose your trips?Is by looking to see where they go now that now that you're a fan or do you follow what I'm saying? How do you choose your next trip? Are you looking at their website to see where they go and choosing from there or do you pull from different areas are or how do you pick your next destination?   Christine: 41:09Oh, so if I was going post 2019, I would see if they have any changes in what places they want or new additions. If there was a particular place I want to go, let's say I wanted to go to Croatia or I wanted to hike in Portugal. I may look online and see about other hiking companies or if it's doable, so I kind of explore. I kind of explore a bit, but to see what others have to say. And like you say, the only reason I found out about Active Adventures was through a friend on Facebook who his Active Adventures kept coming up. So I said, you know, yJo Blow likes Active Adventures. I thought I'm going to have to look into this because I know this guy and he wouldn't just say that. So that's how I got onto it.   Kit: 41:56Well thanks Christine for your time. It's been great and we sure loved learning about the Italian Lakes with you. We'll have to have you back on when you do your next adventure.   Christine: 42:03Alright, for sure.   Kit: 42:05 I love how adventure travel doesn't always mean that you're getting in the mud and all that kind of stuff. Sometimes you can even go to luxurious locations like the Italian Lakes District and live the good life.   Kit: 42:15Regular listeners will know that I don't accept any advertising at all for this program so that I can keep it commercial free. However, I do have affiliate partnershipswith companies that I have selected that I truly believe in, that I recommend to you and with these affiliates at absolutely zero cost to you. Sometimes I'll either get a discount or I might make a commission or sometimes I'll get some bonus travel and such like that. And I want to mention that Active Adventures, even though their name sounds very similar to Active Travel Adventures, we are two totally separate companies, but Active Adventures is one that I highly recommend because my friends and I are true believers that It's just a great company.   Kit: 42:51The people just really spend their time trying to give you a trip of a lifetime, so if like Christine, you want to explore the Italian Lakes District with a guided tour company, I would recommend Active and if you do so, please be sure to let them know that I sent you either by using any of my links or just by letting them know when you book. Using any of my links is a great FREE way for you to show your support of this program.   Kit: 43:13 To get the FREE Travel Planners, be sure to sign up for the newsletter. You can do so by going to the ActiveTreavelAdventures.com website and then clicking on the newsletter tab, or you can just write me a Kit [@t] active travel adventures.com and ask me to put you on. I'll be happy to.   Kit: 43:29 A special shout out to Pat.Pat did just that, and then it wasn't long before we were on the phone chatting. And before you knew it, we're going to be roommates on a great trip to Egypt this fall. I can't wait!   Kit: 43:37 Reach out to me.I'd love to hear from you and I'd like to make this a two way conversation. Until next time, I'll be back in two weeks with another great adventure. This time we're going to go a little bit further north. We're heading up to Norway, which I can't wait to share that with you. Until then. This is Kit Parks, Adventure On.   *According to the Huffington Post      

From Let's Make a Date, to the return of Sound Effects, one performer in particular dominated in this week's episode of Whose Line is it Anyway? Find out who it is by joining me as I cover off the episode on this week's podcast! And remember to follow me on Twitter @postmasterradio and feel free to tweet to me your favorite moments from the episode!Catch up on last week's episode via the previous Whose Line podcast, which you can check out here: https://www.spreaker.com/user/10204202/whose-line-is-it-anyway-season-14-episod_10You can also follow me on Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/user/10204202

Todays story can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/7d5in3/a_group_of_perverts_are_targeting_kids_on_youtube/?context=10You can find more of Felix Blackwell's writing at https://www.facebook.com/FelixblackwellbooksYour Narrator is Ryan SchrempIntro and outro music are Coffin by ModemAmbient background music by ThrillshowX on YouTubeThanks to @travistats for the story recommendation! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/creepypodsta/support

1 THESSALONIANS 2:1–12: 1 FOR YOU YOURSELVES KNOW, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain. 2 But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. 3 For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, 4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. 5 For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness. 6 Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. 7 But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. 8 So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us. 9 For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. 10You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. 11For you know how, like a father with his children, 12we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. AFTER RECOUNTING the trials that had occurred as they passed through Macedonia on the way to Thessalonica, Paul speaks of their mission to preach the gospel to Thessalonica as if nothing could stop it. At the same time, a familial tone rings aloud in this passage. The boldness of proclamation was tempered with a mother’s gentleness, and their teaching was motivated and enhanced like a father’s caring words to children. Here lies a portrait of an apostle, a “sent one,” and by inference, the character of the Thessalonian church in Paul’s imagination.

1 THESSALONIANS 2:1–12: 1 FOR YOU YOURSELVES KNOW, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain. 2 But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. 3 For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, 4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. 5 For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness. 6 Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. 7 But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. 8 So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us. 9 For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. 10You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. 11For you know how, like a father with his children, 12we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. AFTER RECOUNTING the trials that had occurred as they passed through Macedonia on the way to Thessalonica, Paul speaks of their mission to preach the gospel to Thessalonica as if nothing could stop it. At the same time, a familial tone rings aloud in this passage. The boldness of proclamation was tempered with a mother’s gentleness, and their teaching was motivated and enhanced like a father’s caring words to children. Here lies a portrait of an apostle, a “sent one,” and by inference, the character of the Thessalonian church in Paul’s imagination.

There is a lot of mystery surrounding Podcasting stats and how to make it to the top of the charts. Show notes are at http://ileanesmith.com/10You can show your support for this podcast! Tweet the show: https://ileane.link/tweettheanchorshow Connect with me everywhere: Twitter twitter.com/ileane Instagram instagram.com/ileane Facebook https://fb.com/msileanespeaks Email me ileane.link/contact Leave me a voicemail ileane.link/voicemail Thanks for listening! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ileane/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ileane/support

SWELL. WHAT I ALWAYS WANTED – 4:55Too Many Days Without Thinking, Beggars Banquet, 1997 BE MY WEAPON. BAD BAD BAD – 5:00March/2009, Talitres, 2009 THE WALKMEN. ON THE WATER – 3:10You & Me, Talitres, 2008 THE CALLSTORE. COME ON THEN – 4:20Save No One, Talitres, 2014 THE NATIONAL. FIREPROOF – 2:50Trouble Will Find Me, 4AD, […] Cet article Errance #13 : De Swell à Gene Clark est apparu en premier sur Eldorado.

Speaker or Performer: John Mathis Scripture Passage(s): Ezekiel 11:14-25 Date of Delivery: December 29, 2013 I. IntroductionChristmas has come and gone again, and the Lord continues to begracious to each one of us. In the hustle and bustle of buying gifts andvisiting family and friends, I pray you all had time to quietly reflect on theunspeakable gift given to us by God in His one and only Son. Today’smessage is not a “Christmas sermon” per se; I will not be examining anyof the texts related to our Lord’s birth nor his early earthly life. What I dowant to do this morning, Lord willing, is expound from this text thecovenant mercy and faithfulness of God toward us- His blood-boughtpeople. I want to show you also from this text God’s righteousness indealing justly with rebels who scorn His covenant and mock His grace. So I hope to show you today both the preserving love of God and Hisjustice. May God help me in this enterprise.II. Background- First, I want to take a few moments to give you somebackground and context for this text.A. When Where?The events our text take place in a vision of Jerusalem, not manyyears after the first deportation of Israelites to Babylon- around theyear 592 B.C.. As God had promised through His prophets, theChaldeans, led by King Nebuchadnezzar, laid siege to Israel’s cities,taking thousands captive and killing many more. This vast judgmentcame upon Israel because of its rank idolatry and because of itsrefusal to abide by the Law of God. It is in this period that God sendssome of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament: Jeremiah,Daniel, Habakkuk, Zephaniah , and the writer of this morning’s text,the prophet Ezekiel.B. Who was Ezekiel?Ezekiel, son of Buzi, was born about 622 B.C., into the priestlyline of Aaron’s son Ithamar. He grew up during the reign of thereformer King Josiah, one of the rare godly kings in the long line ofwicked rulers of Judah. In fact, just about a year before Ezekiel’sbirth, Hilkiah the priest had found the lost book of God’s Law- theLaw that caused Josiah to tear his clothes in righteous fear andthat caused him to publicly renew Israel’s covenant with God. This brought about a brief era of national repentance, especially inJerusalem, but it was not to last. When Ezekiel was about fourteen,King Josiah was killed in battle, and the king of Egypt installed Jehoiakim as king over Judah and Jerusalem, and in his elevenyear reign he “did evil in the site of LORD” and returned the peopleto their former abominations.When Ezekiel is twenty-four and a priest in Jerusalem, KingJehoiakim dies, and his evil son Jehoiachin becomes king inJudah. This is a time of great wickedness in Judah generally, andin Jerusalem in particular. The Word of God tells us that even thepriests and higher officials defiled the Temple with idols and otherdetestable things. The next year, King Nebuchadnezzar returnedand took 10,000 more captives, including Ezekiel and his wife,back to Babylon. It is in Babylon that God gives Ezekiel visions of Jerusalem’s utter destruction and restoration, and that brings usback to our text. I want to concentrate now on three major truthsfrom this passage.II. First, even in the midst of exile, God is the “Sanctuary” of His covenantpeople (vv.14-16):A. Look back at the beginning of chapter 11, to the beginning of thisvision given to Ezekiel:1 Moreover, theSpirit lifted me up and brought me to the east gateof theLord’shouse which faced eastward. And behold,thereweretwenty-five men at the entrance of the gate, and among themI saw Jaazaniah son of Azzur andPelatiah son of Benaiah,leaders of the people.2He said to me, “Son of man, these are themen who devise iniquity andgive evil advice in this city,3who say,‘The timeis not near to build houses.Thiscityis the pot and weare the flesh.’4Therefore,prophesy against them, son of man,prophesy!”On the eve of destruction, these foolish rulers had convincedthemselves and the people that they were safe in the midst of God’sjudgment of Jerusalem. In their arrogance, they pictured themselves aspieces of flesh floating safely inside the brass walls of a caldron, and inthis protective pot they would continue their idol worship, their law-breaking, and their mockery of God’s prophetic Word.The parallel to our own time is not hard to find. Even within what callsitself the “church,” we see all too regularly those who have convincedthemselves they are safe with their idolatrous beliefs, their calling whatis evil good and what is good evil, and their scorn for God’s Word. Just as the inhabitants of Jerusalem were encouraged in their wickednessby false prophets and blind guides, so too are millions of people whocall themselves Christians. And just as those doomed citizens ofJerusalem, they have made for themselves gods to their own liking-gods who wink at their peccadillos and close their eyes to theirsinfulness. But God is not mocked. Look at verse five:5Then the Spirit of theLordfell upon me, and He said to me, “Say,‘Thus says theLord, “So you think, house of Israel, forIknowyour thoughts.6You havemultiplied your slain in this city,filling its streets withthem.”7Therefore, thus says the LordGod,“Yourslain whom you have laid in the midst ofthe city are the fleshand thiscityis the pot; butI willbring you out of it.8You havefeared a sword; so I willbring a sword upon you,” theLordGoddeclares.9“And I will bring you out of the midst of thecity and deliver you into the hands ofstrangers andexecutejudgments against you.10You willfall by the sword. I will judge youto theborder of Israel; so you shall know that I amtheLord.11Thiscitywillnot be a pot for you, nor will you be flesh inthe midst of it,butI will judge you to the border of Israel.12Thusyou will know that I am theLord; for you have not walked in Mystatutes nor have youexecuted My ordinances, but have actedaccording to the ordinances of the nations around you.”’”At this point you may be asking yourself, “I thought he was going toshow us how God is a sanctuary to his people in exile?” I’m getting to it- bear with me. Look at verse 13:13Now it came about as I prophesied, thatPelatiah son of Benaiahdied. Then I fell on my face and cried out with a loud voice andsaid, “Alas, LordGod! Will You bring the remnant of Israel to acomplete end?”So while Ezekiel is prophesying about the soon judgment of Jerusalem,one of its leaders, Pelatiah, dies. This is the same Pelatiah that Godindicted earlier in the chapter as a deviser of iniquity and an evil adviser. Ezekiel is obviously distressed by his death, falling to the ground andcrying out to God. But why? Why would the death of this wicked leadercause Ezekiel to ask God if He was going to destroy even the remnantof Israel? We get a hint in the next verse; look at verse 14:14Then the word of theLordcame to me, saying,15“Son of man,your brothers, yourrelatives,your fellow exiles and the wholehouse of Israel, all of them,are thoseto whom the inhabitants ofJerusalem have said, ‘Go far from theLord; this land has beengivenus as a possession.’So those in Jerusalem not only had convinced themselves that theywere safe within their pot- within the walls of the city, but also theydeceived themselves into believing that the reason so many were takeninto exile was to show that God had given the land to those whoremained! At some point, Ezekiel- the same Ezekiel who had seen thevisions of God’s glory and who was sent to comfort his fellow exiles and warn those in Jerusalem- even he was deceived by this lie. If evenPetaliah, a leader of Jerusalem, died under God’s judgment, what hopewas there for the remnant? If God had not spared one who ruled in thecity where God’s temple stood, would He spare the Israelites exiled in Babylon?Is this not the way we often think? We see churches, particularly in thiscountry in doctrinal freefall. Heresies long ago condemned are taughtopenly from pulpits with the greatest of pride. We see churches allaround us capitulating to the world’s redefinition of marriage, and on,and on, and on. Are we not tempted to doubt that God is still about the business of preserving His exiles and bringing glory to His name? So how does God reply to this doubt? (read v.16)Thus says the LordGod, “Though I had removed them far away among the nations and though I had scattered them among thecountries, yet I was asanctuary for them a little while in thecountries where they had gone.”The answer to Ezekiel’s impassioned question is “No”! God will notmake a “complete end” of His remnant. On the contrary; God removedthem from Jerusalem to SAVE them from the impending calamities. Thewicked people of Jerusalem had it backwards; they were left in the cityto be destroyed- not to inherit the land. Once the land was cleansed oftheir abominations, the REMNANT would be brought back to possess the land and the city.And even more than this, God says that He was the remnant’sSANCTUARY during its captivity. When we read the word“sanctuary” we often think of safe place- a place where we can escapeharm- a REFUGE. This what God was to His people in their exile. Jerusalem had the Temple, with all its grandeur, but it was doomed tosoon destruction. The exiles had something infinitely better- the actualpresence of God among them. His glory would soon leave the Temple,but He did not leave His remnant; He was their SANCTUARY.Brothers and sisters, we are but a small flock. We are having services ina store front, and we are thinking of moving to a house. As we see themega-churches and the grand cathedrals, we may be tempted towonder why it is not so for us. We may even wonder if this church will survive, or if we will slowly dwindle and eventually disband. Let this textremind us not to judge by outward appearance. As long as God is ourrefuge, our SANCTUARY, it does not matter where we meet. Godknows how to preserve His remnant in exile, and He does it by beingtheir sanctuary.III. The second truth I want you to see in this text is that God will gather His exiled covenant people. Verse 17:Therefore say, ‘Thus says the LordGod, “I willgather you from thepeoples and assemble you out of the countries among which youhave been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.”First, notice Who is at work here. God says He will gather and assembleHis remnant out of the peoples. God had scattered them among thenations, and He would unscatter them. The same God that haddelivered His people out of Egypt with a mighty hand would deliver Hisexiles out of captivity in Babylon.Also notice that this promise was unconditional. God does not here sayif the exiles do such and such, I will gather them. No; it is by His grace that He will gather them. God is under no compulsion to gather them;they had done nothing to deserve God’s favor. So why then does Hegather them? Though we are not told explicitly here, God makes itabundantly clear later in this book. Listen as I read from chapter 36,starting in verse 22:22“Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the LordGod, “It isnot for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but forMy holy name, which you have profaned among the nations whereyou went.23I willvindicate the holiness of My great name which hasbeen profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in theirmidst. Then thenations will know that I am theLord,” declares theLordGod, “when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight.24ForI willtake you from the nations, gather you from all the lands andbring you into your own land.God does not gather His people because of their deeds; He gathersthem IN SPITE of their deeds. They- and yes, WE- have profaned Hisholy name among the nations, but yet in His grace He gathers us. Hedoes this to bring glory to Himself.One glorious day, God will gather ALL the His people scattered abroad. With the voice of the arch angel and the trump of God, the mighty Lordwill call forth all those He has redeemed by the sacrifice of His Son. Hewill start with dead in Christ, and then He will gather those who are aliveand remain. No good work of ours will compel Him to do this; He will do itof His own free grace, and He will do it to bring glory to His holy name.As if this not enough, God pours grace upon grace. Not only does Hegather the exiles from their captivity, but He also GIVES them the land ofIsrael. Again, they had done nothing to deserve this. They werecovenant breakers just like those haughty souls left in Jerusalem. Theyhad done the very things that God had warned them would cause themto lose possession of Israel. Yet God, in His loving kindness for Hisexiles, gives them back what they deserved to lose. This leads us to thefinal truth I want you to see in this text: God will restore His exiledcovenant people.IV. God will restore His exiled covenant peopleLook back at verses 18 through 20:18When they come there, they willremove all itsdetestable thingsand all its abominations from it.19And I willgive them one heart, andput a new spirit withinthem. And I will take theheart of stone out oftheir flesh and give them aheart of flesh,20that they maywalk in Mystatutes and keep My ordinances and do them. Then they will beMypeople, and I shall be their God.What kind of restoration will this be? It will not be a return to the sinsthat led to the exile in the first place. When His remnant returns to theland, they will put away the idols and the graven images. No more willthey offer their children as sacrifices to false gods. No more will theyworship them in the high places. God will use His returned exiles tocleanse the land of these abominations. They will have “no other godsbefore Him.” Again their confession will be, “Hear, O Israel! Yahweh isour God! Yahweh is One!”God foretells how He will accomplish this feat- how He will transformthese covenant-breaking, idolatrous Israelites into faithful servants whowill keep His Law and cleanse the land. The language is all too familiarto us- at least it should be. He will give them a heart transplant. God willremove the dead, stony heart that is at enmity with Him and His Law,and He will replace it with a living heart- one that loves God and HisLaw. He will change their very nature. He will not force them to obeyHis Law against their will, but He will change their disposition so thatthey willingly obey. They will be “willing in the day of His power.”God gives them the ability, through this heart transplant, to do His will. By giving them new, living hearts, God frees them from their slavery tosin. Notice again that it is God ALONE at work here. None of the exileswill change the disposition of his own heart. This must be accomplishedby God Himself. He will change their nature, and THEN they will walk inHis statutes and keep His ordinances. He will not save them because ofgood works, but He will save them TO DO good works.8 Forby grace you have been savedthrough faith; andthat not ofyourselves,it isthe gift of God;9not as a result of works, so thatnoone may boast.10For we are His workmanship,created inChristJesus forgood works, which Godprepared beforehand so that wewouldwalk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10 NASB)At the end of this promise, God declares “THEN they will be my people,and I will be their God.” But wait a minute; weren’t they already Hispeople? I mean, these were Israelites- the physical fruit of God’scovenant with Abraham. How were they not His people?For they are not all Israel who aredescended from Israel;nor arethey all childrenbecause they are Abraham’s descendants…. (Romans 9:6-7 NASB)Outwardly, these exiles were Jews- they were the beneficiaries of God’scovenant promises. But inwardly, they were still rebels, kicking againstthe goads and at war with the God who preserved them. But this willchange when God circumcises their hearts. THEN, and only then, willthey truly be His people, both outwardly and in the inner parts. THENthey will be truly restored.As wondrous as this restoration is, God has something even moreglorious prepared for us in the New Covenant. Just as the exiles, we toohave been given a new heart to serve God. God has raised us to newlife in Christ, but we still have the old nature. Though we are “bornagain” by God’s Spirit, our flesh still wars against the new spirit. But Godwill grant us restoration. When Christ returns in glory, we will betransformed into His image. The fallen image we inherited from Adamwill be done away with forever. The work God began in our hearts, Hewill finish when He totally conforms us to the likeness of His dear Son.THAT is complete restoration, and it is ours by grace, through faith inChrist Jesus.V. ConclusionAs I close, I want to leave you with a warning and a challenge. First thewarning. Look at verse 21:21But as for those whose hearts go after theirdetestable things andabominations, I willbring their conduct down on their heads,” declaresthe LordGod.The promise of restoration is not for those who continue in their sin. For them, the only promise God gives is judgment.26For if we go onsinning willfully after receivingthe knowledge ofthe truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,27but aterrifying expectation ofjudgment andthe fury of a fire which willconsume the adversaries.28Anyone who has set aside the Law ofMoses dies without mercy onthe testimony of two or threewitnesses.29How much severer punishment do you think he willdeservewho has trampled under foot the Son of God, and hasregarded as uncleanthe blood of the covenantby which he wassanctified, and hasinsulted the Spirit of grace?30For we know Himwho said, “Vengeance is Mine, Iwill repay.” And again, “The Lordwill judge His people.”31It is aterrifying thing to fall into the handsof theliving God. (Hebrews 10:26-31 NASB)Finally, I would challenge you, if God has spoken to you through thistext, do what Ezekiel did! Proclaim it to your fellow exiles! (vv.24-25)24And theSpirit lifted me up and brought me in a vision by theSpirit of God to the exilesin Chaldea. So the vision that I hadseenleft me.25Then Itold the exiles all the things thattheLordhad shown me.

2 Corinthians 12:8-10You reached down and saved me by Pat Rodney,You are my anchor by Stuart Townsendhttp://www.equippingthechurch.co.uk/