Podcasts about MCF

Good Things from Lemonada Media is a podcast about the good people in the world who are rolling up their sleeves and working hard to make things better. Each week, we'll be talking about this country's most complex and confounding issues in an effort to affect systemic change, with a rotating cast of incredible guests and Lemonada hosts. From the dire condition of the American foster care system to the decline of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, protecting democracy, and more, we’re focusing on solutions – with the people putting them into action In this episode, as the federal government has been making unprecedented funding cuts, many communities are facing more uncertainty and less support. In response, the Marguerite Casey Foundation is making a bold move: they’re distributing $130 million this year to organizations working for racial and economic justice. In this episode, Carmen Rojas, the foundation’s president and CEO, gets into the reasons behind the move, which organizations will benefit and how this funding aims to fill critical gaps. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

L'invitée : Ariane Mak, MCF à l'université Paris cité Le livre : En guerre et en grèves, enquêtes dans les cités minières britanniques (1939-1945), Paris, éditions de l'EHESS, 2025. La discussion :· Présentation du livre, des grèves de 1942-1944, et de leur historiographie (1:00)· Le mythe de la « People's war » et d'une Grande-Bretagne unie durant la guerre (6:50)· Des grèves interdites en temps de guerre… en théorie (9:00)· Les enquêtes du « Mass observation », matériau d'une extrême richesse pour l'enquête (14:10)· Extraits 1 et 2 : Tom Harrison, cofondateur du « Mass observation » au micro de la BBC en 1939· Le recours à l'enquête orale auprès d'anciens mineurs (25:30)· Extrait 3 : Les malentendus linguistiques rencontrés par Geoff Rose, apprenti mineur· L'enjeu salarial et l'économie morale des grèves (32:00)· Extrait 4 : George Brinley Evans traité de « bloody bolshie » par son patron en 1942 (2015)· Légitimer les grèves (40:50)· Les « Bevin boys », jeunes hommes découvrant le métier de mineur à la fin de la guerre (44:00)· Extrait 5 : Denys Owen, un « Bevin boy », affecté à la mine en 1944 ; extrait 6 : Harry Parkes présentant l'attitude des mineurs envers eux et la difficulté d'acquérir le "pit sense".· La guerre, occasion de saisir le quotidien des classes populaires, et la place de l'humour en particulier (51:15)· Les rapports de genre, enjeu omniprésent dans le monde de la mine (55:00) Le conseil de lecture : Melanie Tebbutt, Women's Talk?: A Social History of 'Gossip' in Working-Class Neighbourhoods, 1880-1960 (1995) Un podcast créé, animé et produit par André Loez et distribué par Binge Audio. Contact pub : project@binge.audioDistribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

「コンビニ業界初、ローソンが使用済みユニフォームをガス化リサイクル開始」　ローソン、レゾナック、エムシーファッション（MCF）の3社は6月30日、全国のローソン店舗で発生した使用済みユニフォームを高温で分子レベルまで分解し、炭酸ガスなどに変換して冷凍・冷蔵ケースの冷媒などに活用する「ケミカルリサイクル」を開始したと発表した。The post コンビニ業界初、ローソンが使用済みユニフォームをガス化リサイクル開始 first appeared on サステナビリティ・ESG金融・投資メディア - HEDGE GUIDE.

North Carolina has one of the biggest rural populations in the country, but for a long time, the needs of rural North Carolinians were largely ignored – until Down Home North Carolina came along in 2017. Since then, the grassroots nonprofit has changed the conversation to center the needs of rural people. Host Maya Rupert talks to Down Home Co-Directors Dreama Caldwell and Todd Zimmer about what it takes to build multiracial political power among the working class, and why it’s the only way to get their needs met and bring about lasting change. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Click to see larger versin The Power of the Holy Spirit is For You, Today. What is the Holy Spirit? Is it a ghost? A weird feeling? Or something more? In this week's powerful message, our guest speaker, Cornelius, gets real about the Holy Spirit. He shares his own incredible story – from a life-changing encounter as a young man that left him seeing stars, to seeing God move in miraculous ways in one of the toughest places on earth. This isn't about abstract theology; this is about a real power that is available to every single one of us, right here, right now, in Jordanthorpe. Cornelius breaks it down for us, looking at three key moments: In Jesus' Life: The Holy Spirit wasn't just a nice extra for Jesus; He was essential. He was the power that Jesus operated in to heal the sick, free those trapped in their struggles, and kickstart His whole mission. Jesus showed us the blueprint for a life filled with God's power. In the Early Church: After Jesus left, He didn't leave his followers on their own. He sent the Holy Spirit, and everything changed. Normal, everyday people like Peter were suddenly filled with a new boldness. They spoke out, they saw people healed, and they started a movement that spread across the world. Cornelius reminds us that this power wasn't just for a special few, but as the Bible says, for "you, your children, and for all who are far off" – that includes us! In Our Lives Today: This is where it gets personal. Cornelius shares openly about his own struggles, including a time of deep depression in his ministry when nothing seemed to be working. He discovered that a half-hearted approach wasn't enough. Through prayer and fasting, he experienced a "suddenly" moment where God's presence changed everything, turning failure into incredible fruitfulness. The message is simple but profound: The same Spirit that empowered Jesus and the first disciples is not just a story in a book. He is here for you. He gives us gifts – not to make us look super-spiritual, but to make a real difference in the lives of people around us. He gives us power to overcome the challenges we face and to bring God's life and hope into our community. If you've ever felt like there must be more to faith, or if you're facing a situation that feels impossible, this message is for you. Get ready to be encouraged and challenged to ask for the power of the Holy Spirit in your own life. Bible References from the Sermon: Acts 1:8 Luke 4:1-14 Luke 4:18-19 (quoting Isaiah 61) Matthew 16:15 Acts 2:39 Acts 10 (The story of Cornelius) Acts 10:38 1 Corinthians 12 (The Gifts of the Spirit) John 10:10 Transcription Hallelujah, I'm excited, and you don't know what I'm excited about, well I'm excited because there's lots going on in MCF. This week we were in Baitmore with Ross and Steve in the park which was amazing, yesterday we were here with Lily's Cloth Bank, it was amazing. You know, MCF is doing so much stuff in the community, reaching people, right there, amen. Today I'm going to speak about an amazing topic, when Nick sent me a text, can you speak on, can you put the first one on, what is that? The Holy Spirit, it's not the Holy Spirit, it was only like a dove, the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus, like a dove. But there are many pictures of the dove, I've got a few pictures for today just to help emphasize the message, as well I put some verses in there to help you understand, because this morning I'm going to talk about the Holy Spirit, it's powerful, the Holy Spirit is emotional to me, because I've got a history with the Holy Spirit, and therefore I want to bring this morning the Holy Spirit to you, and I want to pray that the Holy Spirit will work in you, and come to you, and therefore open up your hearts and let God do a work. First of all, what are the most important events in a person's life, there are a few you think may be like, you know, getting married, or whatever, you know, getting your first car, no no no, I'm going much deeper, for any person, most important thing is to be born, amen, you're here on earth because God created you, he loves you, he wants you, you are wanted, and that's how you came on this earth, amen, number one. Number two, Jesus coming into your life, when you receive Jesus, something happens, when you start to believe what he has done, something comes in you, because God loved this world so much that he gave his only son, for you, if you believe, you will not be condemned but receive eternal life. So the second most important part for your life is that you receive Jesus. Now the third part, the third most important event is, next verse, the first I'm going to talk about today, the verse I received, Acts 1 verse 8, you will receive power from on high when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. Now it's very controversial because there are many different denominations and churches who talk about it or don't talk about it, but my experience, most important part, was first to receive Jesus, secondly to receive the Holy Spirit in my life, that's what I'm going to talk about this morning, I want to make it as easy as possible for you to understand, we're going to go into the word, can you do the next one, go into the word and I want to look at the Holy Spirit in three parts, in three periods, I'm going to look at Jesus, how the Holy Spirit worked in Jesus and then secondly, the apostles, when Jesus left this earth, we want to look at the apostles, what he did and then we want to look at 2025, today, is the Holy Spirit still operating today, is he still working today, so that is where we are going. So when I started writing my notes, I came quickly up to ten pages because there's so much to talk about the Holy Spirit, but don't worry, I'm very good at summarizing so I'll bring it back to, watch the time, watch the time, we're going to start, the Holy Spirit, I'm talking about most important events in your life, but the biggest event in history, of course, was when Jesus came to earth, when Jesus stepped into time, from heaven into time and he started his ministry, I mean, for the world, people say like, you know, the most important event in history might be the empire or this king or that king or that battle, but we all know, really, the most important event in history is when Jesus stepped into this earth, massively important, because it changed everything, amen? So when Jesus came, he was baptized and the Holy Spirit came upon him, like a dove, not as a dove, like a dove, and then he went into the desert, and he went, it says, in Luke 4, he went in the desert, full of the Holy Spirit, I'm talking about the Holy Spirit today, so you're going to hear that word a lot, full of the Holy Spirit, he went into the desert, and there something happened in the desert, because then, verse 14, he comes out of the desert in the power of the Holy Spirit, so something in that time of the desert, something happened, he went in fasting and praying, and there he met the devil, he came into a time, something, he went into a battle, and by the word of God, he conquered the temptations the devil brought to him, he came through, and it gave him power and authority in that desert, and after that, he started his ministry. Now therefore I say, when you go through difficulties, don't worry too much, don't worry too much, make sure you come through it well, with the word of God, you will come through with the word of God, with the promises God has for you, you will come through, and you will gain power and authority by overcoming those battles, Jesus came out of it in power and authority, and then he started his ministry, and he went to Nazareth, and there he went into the synagogue, and next slide, he brought up his first sermon, and he said, no no no, previous one, the spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor, to send me to proclaim freedom to the prisoners, boy do we need that, freedom to the prisoners, and recover the sight of the blinds, release the oppressed to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor has arrived, the kingdom of God has come, that's what Jesus preached, the kingdom of God has come, this is what he preached, that was his vision, Jesus laid out his vision before the people, they didn't like it because they pushed them out of the church all the way to a cliff, trying to throw them off the cliff, it was not appreciated what he brought, but this was the vision he brought, the spirit of the Lord is upon me, the power and authority of the spirit of God is upon me to break the powers of the enemy, Jesus had come, hallelujah, he made himself known, Jesus had come, and that's how he started, and many places it said Jesus, he healed all, he started to cast out demons, and we can read the gospels, he was manifesting the spirit of God, he was manifesting himself and showing that the kingdom of God had come, and then even halfway, John, the disciples of John, the Baptist, John the Baptist was in prison, they come to him and they say, are you the one we expect, are you the Messiah we are to expect, or then Jesus says, look around you, the sick are healed, the people are being set free, the dead are raised, he said, the kingdom of God has come, I am, and so he continued a little further on and then he comes to a point and then he talks to his disciples, the disciples say to him, yes, some say you are Elijah, some say you are John the Baptist, because by that time John the Baptist was already killed, and then Jesus says to them, next one, but who do you say I am? Very important, very important, because Jesus was doing all that stuff, he was showing the kingdom of God to people, and now, after two and a half years, the disciples being with him, he says, who do you say I am? Did you get it? Do you understand who I am? It's a question to us as well, who do you say he is? Then Peter stands up and Peter, he says, you are the Christ, the Son of God, very powerful, Peter now understood, and it was like Jesus saying, thank God they understand, because by then, the last half year, he knew, Jesus now had achieved what he had to achieve, the disciples understood, he is the Messiah, the Son of God, who came to this earth to bring the kingdom of God, and now he knew he could go on to Jerusalem, to the second part of his ministry, which was his suffering, the dying on the cross, the resurrection, that was the second part of Jesus' ministry, and so it went, he went to Jerusalem, and there he was going into his suffering, and he died, and then he rose from the dead, and there is that period, comes that period, he rose from the dead, and there he showed himself to 500 witnesses, but that period, the disciples were not quite sure what they were doing, and there was a time even they went off to go fishing again, because they were not quite sure what was going to happen, and then Jesus called them, and he said, I'm going to my father now, now listen well, I'm going to my father now, he said, but you wait, wait, because something is happening, you wait, next verse, he said, you will receive power, this is the verse, where it's all about, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, till the ends of the earth, so the disciples who were with Jesus, who recognized Jesus as the Messiah, they got it, now, he said to them, I'm going now, it's now going to be in your hands, and therefore wait, the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and then he says, second part, I'm going to give you a job, I'm going to give you a purpose, a plan and a purpose, you are going to be my witnesses, here in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, till the ends of the earth, you are going to do the work now, everything I did, Jesus said, everything I did, now you are going to do it, and that's what happened on the day of Pentecost, you know, many churches that have Pentecost, don't know quite how to get about Pentecost, don't quite understand what it works, what it is about, but I'm showing you today, the Holy Spirit is there for you, hallelujah, next one, so the Holy Spirit came, I've got another picture, I found another picture, there are lots of beautiful pictures on the Holy Spirit, I love them, this picture is so clearly shown, like a dove, like a dove, it's not the Holy Spirit, like a dove, he comes, he came, suddenly, suddenly, now listen to that word suddenly, because that comes across quite a few times, because the Holy Spirit is not to be controlled, the Holy Spirit just comes as he comes, the Holy Spirit suddenly came when those disciples were together, they were praying and waiting, and suddenly the Holy Spirit came, and they started to speak into new tongues, they started to prophesy, there, 120 of them were in that upper room, together, something happened, suddenly, and the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit was upon them, and the people outside, because there was a feast in Jerusalem, they were outside, and they were talking like, are those people drunk, they're speaking in tongues, what are they doing, they asked them, Peter came out, and Peter started to preach and explain what was going on there in the upper room, next verse, Peter speaks on what will happen, he speaks the gospel, he teaches them the gospel, he says what happened, that Jesus had come, that Jesus now had left, and that the Holy Spirit had come, and he said, we received the Holy Spirit as he promised, and he said, this gift of the Holy Spirit is for you, and your children, and for all of those who are far off, Peter preaching, you know, Peter saying, it is for all of you who believe in Jesus, who have repented, and now the Holy Spirit is there for you to receive, for you, your children, and for all those who are far off, is that clear, amen, nothing difficult about it, the Holy Spirit came for all who are far off, amen. And so, the Acts, the book of Acts, we move to the second part, the book of Acts speaks on all those actions of the disciples, it's not really of the disciples, it's of the Holy Spirit, and the book of Acts is really the book, the Acts of the Holy Spirit, we can read how Peter went out with John, and there was a man sitting who was begging, and they said, silver or gold, we haven't got, but what we've got, we give, stand up in the name of Jesus, they started to heal, they started to cast out demons, and it even says Peter walked through the temple, and people were sitting on the sides, and his shadow would fall on the people, and people would be healed, so the power and authority of the Holy Spirit was upon them, and so this whole book shows us how Peter and later on Paul, how they moved into the Holy Spirit, actually, first I want to go to a man named Cornelius, because everything was still among the Jewish people, and then there was a change coming, because God intended it for all men, like he said, the ones who are far off received the Holy Spirit as well, and so Peter was called to a man called Cornelius, Cornelius was a Roman soldier, a Roman centurion, the Romans were enemies of the Jews, so they were not very liked, very loved by the Jewish people, so Peter was inefficient, was called to go to this man, this centurion, Cornelius, Cornelius was a God-fearing man, and it says, he had a vision of an angel, and the angel said, your prayers and your giving has come as a memorial before God, wow, that's amazing, can you imagine that is said about you, your prayers, your giving has come before God as a memorial, wow, hallelujah, your prayers, your giving, MCF, has come before God as a memorial, and one for six comes to pass, hallelujah, amazing, so Peter was called to go to Cornelius, this Gentile, this Roman, to go and preach the gospel, to explain what was going on, so Peter went, you can read the story in Acts 10, he went and went to speak and preach, next one, and he says, he said two verses which are very important in there, because he says, Jesus, God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, and when you read that verse, suddenly my mind goes, I was in the northern hospital on Wednesday, and you're in that waiting room, and there is so much going on, and there's so much suffering, and you really feel like, God, break out, Holy Spirit, that song, I hope we're going to sing it later, break out, because that's really needed here, there's such a need for Jesus to come and touch people, for the Holy Spirit to move, and that is, that verse, Jesus came with the anointing to break the power of the enemy, when we go out into Jordanthorpe and Baitmore, we see, like this week, the power of the enemy is all over, but Jesus came and we received the Holy Spirit to break that power of the enemy, amen? Second verse, and as Peter, as he was speaking, the Holy Spirit came upon all who heard the message, amazing, the Holy Spirit was just, he was speaking, and suddenly the power, the Holy Spirit was moving, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, hallelujah, that's what we need, amen. So, that is the book of Acts, how the Spirit of God came in power and was moving, and the Gospel was going out, and the Gospel was being spread, and from there, it went to Europe, it went to Asia, it went to Africa, the Gospel spread, and that's why we are here today, because, next one, 2025, I'm going into a different section now, different period, 2025, today, is the Holy Spirit working now? How is the Holy Spirit working? You know, when I was a youngster, I went to church, and I was serious, and one day, one Sunday, I went to church, and in the morning, and that verse, which was the first verse of Acts, we bring up Acts 1, verse 8, the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you, it bothered me. I didn't understand it. I struggled with it, because I didn't see it in the church. Where is that power of the Holy Spirit? I haven't got it. I said, what is it? If God is God, if this is the Gospel, the good news, I don't want to be stuck there in, I'm saved, hallelujah, I'm saved, I'm moving on with my own life. No! If this is true, that there is a power of the Holy Spirit working, I want it. I need it! I was so bothered by it. That afternoon, I went home, I had my lunch, I was sitting on the sofa, I was pondering on that verse, going over it again and again, when suddenly, the presence of the Holy Spirit came into the room, came upon me heavily, and it brought me down on my knees, falling on the floor. It was heavy, and the fire burned in me, and I saw stars, and after about half an hour, really, I saw stars, really, in my head, and after about half an hour, I was like, my head was spinning, what's going on, what's going on? I received the Holy Spirit. I had only one desire, and that was to serve God. My whole idea of career, of money, of whatever, was gone. I just wanted to serve God. I wanted Jesus to work on my life. And that same, after that same period, I immediately worked in ministries, I was open to whatever God brought to me, and there was a ministry working with refugees, I went with them, we went into those centers, we did Bible studies with all the groups, and, you know, I had received the Holy Spirit, and I was just going about, as I felt led by the Holy Spirit, and there we prayed for each one. Every day, every week, we prayed for everyone. And then there was one man, he was called Stephen, and he came from Sierra Leone, and he was so, his heart was so damaged because of where he went through, that he had to go to a special medical unit. I prayed for him, we prayed for him, I prayed for all of them before they left, and that was it. I went home, and then a week later, I was called, Stephen called me, and Stephen said, you need to come, because Stephen was going to a special medical unit, because his heart was so damaged, he needed treatment. Stephen called me, he said, you need to come to the unit, you need to come to the unit. He said, the director wants to speak to you. When I came to the place, he had organized all those people from the medical unit to sit around, because he wanted me to pray for them, because Stephen was healed. And the director wanted to know, he had the medical report before and after, and he wanted to know, what have you done? I hadn't done anything. I was just a young guy who was, you know, praying and doing just little things like that. But the Spirit of God was moving. The Spirit of God was already operating and using, and I prayed for all those people. And just let it go when the Spirit of God comes upon you. You just move. As he wants you to pray for people, what Jill, who was it, just spoke about when that comes upon you, that idea that you need to pray for someone, call someone, do it, indeed. Let the Spirit of God work in you. So that is sort of how my life went. And then on the top of our ministry in the Hague, we lived in the Hague, I got married to the most beautiful woman, my Sarah. And Sarah had a similar experience as I did, so we were together 37 years ago or something. And then we, on the top of our ministry, God called us to Mozambique. And there in Mozambique, everything was hunky-dory, everything was fine, and we had a wonderful life, and that was it. No, not really. Not really. Because after about eight years in Mozambique, I became very depressed because we had very little fruit. There was nothing. We just had problem after problem after problem after problem, and I could not see a way forward. And I felt like, God, if this is for us to be here and to have so little fruit, what are we doing? Was it really from you? Was this really you, God? So I had my doubts, and then God spoke. And he said, your whisper of prayer is not going to change anything. And I said, I thought, like, what is he talking about? Now, I had built a prayer house because I was passionate about prayer. I built a prayer house. We went into the prayer house. We prayed in the prayer house. But God showed me my prayers were not good enough. He said, your whisper of prayer because quickly go in and out. I'm so busy. I'm so busy. I haven't got time to pray a lot. I haven't got prayer. Just my quickly pray. Guys, you pray, I'm going quickly. So God rebuked me and said, your whisper of prayer, I'm not going to do anything. In fact, he said, that story of the disciples trying to cast out a demon, and they couldn't. And Jesus said, now that type only comes out by prayer and fasting. And so I had fasted before, but sort of a day or two days, whatever, a little, little. I felt like, okay, okay, God, okay, I'm going to give it one year. I'm going to put fertilizer around that tree. You know that story? I'm going to put fertilizer around that tree to see if it brings some fruit. I'm going to see if it's going to do something. I'm going to fast and pray. God, okay, I'm going to give myself to fasting and prayer. And I gave my car away, and I started to get into the prayer house every day, moved into the prayer house. I started with a 21-day fast. And I was there, and I read the Word, and I prayed in tongues, and my tongues developed very fast. And after 21 days, did something happen? No, nothing happened. And then I continued. After three months, did something happen? No, nothing happened. So I was still quite discouraged, because I was doing it. But I said, I'm going to give it one year. So I'm not going to give up. I'm quite disciplined and routine, and I feel like I'm going to do it till the end. I'm going to do it till the end. I will finish by the end. And then more problems came. Bigger problems came. And then God said, those three guys who caused those problems, invite them into the prayer house and let them fast and pray, 21 days. So I did another 21-day fast. And so as those guys came with me in the prayer house, about the 13th day of that time of prayer and fasting, suddenly, and therefore I say that suddenly with the Holy Spirit you need to have that suddenly, suddenly the presence of God came into the prayer house, and it changed everything. Because then those boys, they didn't, they confessed everything they could confess. They gave themselves to the Lord. I saw the angels fighting with swords. Everything changed. It was like the presence took over our ministry, and from there on, instead of this negative depression, everything, like I always say it like, it is like you're pushing up a truck up the hill, up the hill. Now it's very difficult to push up a truck up a hill. But now the truck was going down, and I was running up behind it, because everything happened at once. So much were going for the good. God was just moving. And by the end of that year, we had so many people wanting to fast and pray, and we had the prayer house. Every night was full, people praying and fasting. And then I felt like I should start a Bible school. And I did. I started a Bible school with five students. And you know what? Our Bible school, last year we had a thousand graduates. Every year we have over 1,500 applicants. The Bible school, and I'm not even there. And it just goes, because the Spirit of God goes and does and moves whatever he wants to do. And that's how it went. So that is the story of how the Spirit moved. And then suddenly, we're here in Sheffield. We're here in Sheffield. Jerusalem, Jordanthorpe. Jerusalem, Jordanthorpe. Here we are in Jordanthorpe. When we came two years ago, I had no idea what are we doing here, what are we doing here, what are we doing here. You know, I love the church, but that's good, that's nice, but that doesn't do much to me. I love the church, Jordanthorpe. I believe God has something for Jordanthorpe. I believe God wants to move in Jordanthorpe. He wants to do something in Jordanthorpe. He wants to bless Jordanthorpe. The Spirit of God wants to move in Jordanthorpe. And that's why the Holy Spirit, I believe, wants to empower us. And, can we bring up the next one? Have I forgot a few slides? Yeah. I want us to move in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. You know, Paul brought all those gifts, what Jesus did, what the disciples did, he brought it together into nine gifts. And those nine gifts are what Jesus used, what the disciples used to bring the kingdom of God. And I said to Nick, I said, the gifts of the Spirit we really should bring into the home groups. And we should discuss it and exchange experiences, because people have questions. But it is very, very much for all of us. Because there are two things I want to say about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They are for everyone. No one to be left out. They are for everyone. You don't need to be a super saint to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit. No. The only thing you need is the Holy Spirit. You need the foundation as the Holy Spirit. And the rest, like I said, I didn't even know that healing just occurred. And I did. And in Mozambique I've seen all those gifts operating. God just uses those gifts and they will just come forth when the Holy Spirit is upon you, when the Holy Spirit is in you. And therefore we need really another morning of teaching to go through all those gifts, which I'm happy to do. But I think it's a good thing to really use them in your home groups. Bring those into your home groups. Because all of them are there for us. They're powerful. The tongues, I put them into threes. Threes. The gifts of declaration, or the gifts of proclamation, which is really proclaiming the heavenlies into the earth. What we did to prophesy, that little clip we saw for the giving, that is proclamation. That is the speaking out of the prophecies. Heavenly words. Speaking out into the earth. And we do this over Jordan Thoth. Heavenly words. Speaking out. Over the earth. That is what we do. We bring down heaven. When we speak, prophesy. When we speak in tongues. The heavenly language. It starts with speaking in tongues. Now I can give you lots of testimonies of what that has done to me. And we're going to leave that for another day. But that is sort of the word of knowledge we've just heard. The word of wisdom. Discernment. Discerning spirit. You really need it here. Here out. These days, the days we live in, everything goes. Everything is possible. But in God's economy, not everything goes. Because there are demons operating everywhere. And you need to have discernment to know what's going on. Yesterday in the clothes banks, isn't it, Ant? You need discernment of seeing what's going on. You need to discern those spirits which are not there to bless you, but to steal, kill, and destroy. So it's good to have the gifts of the spirit operating in your life. Gifts of faith, healing, and miracles. I've seen miracles happen. We had two years, no rain in Mozambique. We had a drought. Serious drought. A famine. And we prayed and fasted. And the last time we prayed and fasted, we all came together. One Saturday we all came together and we prayed for the last time. Four o'clock in the afternoon, a little cloud came. And it became darker and darker. And the rain fell and it didn't stop for three days raining. That was the end of our drought, of our famine. So there's miracles, healing. I can tell you stories. But that is the operation, the spirit of God operating, manifesting in your life. The gifts of the spirit. If we want to be different from the world, that's what needs to operate in your life. That's what needs to manifest in your life. We want to be different. We see what's happening in the world. We read the news. We see the news. And we see what's going on. We need to be different. We need to have the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit operating in our life, manifesting in our lives through the gifts of the spirit. And then we will see, the church will fill up. Then you will see how people will come in. In every ministry of MCF, when the spirit of God, the gifts of the spirit starts to operate, we see life. Jesus came to, the devil came to steal, kill, and destroy. Jesus came to give life more abundantly. And through the spirit of God operating in our lives, he will do that. He will work that out. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. We have a little bit of time left. And therefore I say, if you never receive the Holy Spirit, I say put your hand up. We'll pray for you because really, if you want the Holy Spirit to operate in power, it's for you. It's for all of us. No one to be left out. No one to be left out. It's for you. And we need him. This day and age, we need him. And therefore I say, if you haven't got the Holy Spirit, if you feel like I need the power of the Holy Spirit, come here. The music is going to play. Right? The music is going to play. We'll pray for you. I'll pray for you because I'm passionate about the Holy Spirit. I have a history with the Holy Spirit. I love him. Amen? Let me say a prayer first as they come up. I want to honor you, Holy Spirit. I want to thank you, Holy Spirit, for being with us. I want to thank you, Holy Spirit, that you come and lead and direct us, that you come and work through us to bring the kingdom of God. We thank you, Holy Spirit, for being here. And I pray, suddenly, may your presence come upon each one here. Holy Spirit, as we worship, Holy Spirit, touch each person. Touch each person. Fill each person. We need you. Thank you, Holy Spirit. Thank you, Jesus, for giving your Holy Spirit. Thank you for being with us, Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Good Things from Lemonada Media is a podcast about the good people in the world who are rolling up their sleeves and working hard to make things better. Each week, we'll be talking about this country's most complex and confounding issues in an effort to affect systemic change, with a rotating cast of incredible guests and Lemonada hosts. From the dire condition of the American foster care system to the decline of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, protecting democracy, and more, we’re focusing on solutions – with the people putting them into action In this episode, as the federal government has been making unprecedented funding cuts, many communities are facing more uncertainty and less support. In response, the Marguerite Casey Foundation is making a bold move: they’re distributing $130 million this year to organizations working for racial and economic justice. In this episode, Carmen Rojas, the foundation’s president and CEO, gets into the reasons behind the move, which organizations will benefit and how this funding aims to fill critical gaps. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Good Things from Lemonada Media is a podcast about the good people in the world who are rolling up their sleeves and working hard to make things better. Each week, we'll be talking about this country's most complex and confounding issues in an effort to affect systemic change, with a rotating cast of incredible guests and Lemonada hosts. From the dire condition of the American foster care system to the decline of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, protecting democracy, and more, we’re focusing on solutions – with the people putting them into action. In this episode, as the federal government has been making unprecedented funding cuts, many communities are facing more uncertainty and less support. In response, the Marguerite Casey Foundation is making a bold move: they’re distributing $130 million this year to organizations working for racial and economic justice. In this episode, Carmen Rojas, the foundation’s president and CEO, gets into the reasons behind the move, which organizations will benefit and how this funding aims to fill critical gaps. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Good Things from Lemonada Media is a podcast about the good people in the world who are rolling up their sleeves and working hard to make things better. Each week, we'll be talking about this country's most complex and confounding issues in an effort to affect systemic change, with a rotating cast of incredible guests and Lemonada hosts. From the dire condition of the American foster care system to the decline of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, protecting democracy, and more, we’re focusing on solutions – with the people putting them into action. In this episode, as the federal government has been making unprecedented funding cuts, many communities are facing more uncertainty and less support. In response, the Marguerite Casey Foundation is making a bold move: they’re distributing $130 million this year to organizations working for racial and economic justice. In this episode, Carmen Rojas, the foundation’s president and CEO, gets into the reasons behind the move, which organizations will benefit and how this funding aims to fill critical gaps. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Good Things from Lemonada Media is a podcast about the good people in the world who are rolling up their sleeves and working hard to make things better. Each week, we'll be talking about this country's most complex and confounding issues in an effort to affect systemic change, with a rotating cast of incredible guests and Lemonada hosts. From the dire condition of the American foster care system to the decline of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, protecting democracy, and more, we’re focusing on solutions – with the people putting them into action In this episode, as the federal government has been making unprecedented funding cuts, many communities are facing more uncertainty and less support. In response, the Marguerite Casey Foundation is making a bold move: they’re distributing $130 million this year to organizations working for racial and economic justice. In this episode, Carmen Rojas, the foundation’s president and CEO, gets into the reasons behind the move, which organizations will benefit and how this funding aims to fill critical gaps. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Good Things from Lemonada Media is a podcast about the good people in the world who are rolling up their sleeves and working hard to make things better. Each week, we'll be talking about this country's most complex and confounding issues in an effort to affect systemic change, with a rotating cast of incredible guests and Lemonada hosts. From the dire condition of the American foster care system to the decline of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, protecting democracy, and more, we’re focusing on solutions – with the people putting them into action. In this episode, as the federal government has been making unprecedented funding cuts, many communities are facing more uncertainty and less support. In response, the Marguerite Casey Foundation is making a bold move: they’re distributing $130 million this year to organizations working for racial and economic justice. In this episode, Carmen Rojas, the foundation’s president and CEO, gets into the reasons behind the move, which organizations will benefit and how this funding aims to fill critical gaps. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Good Things from Lemonada Media is a podcast about the good people in the world who are rolling up their sleeves and working hard to make things better. Each week, we'll be talking about this country's most complex and confounding issues in an effort to affect systemic change, with a rotating cast of incredible guests and Lemonada hosts. From the dire condition of the American foster care system to the decline of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, protecting democracy, and more, we’re focusing on solutions – with the people putting them into action. In this episode, as the federal government has been making unprecedented funding cuts, many communities are facing more uncertainty and less support. In response, the Marguerite Casey Foundation is making a bold move: they’re distributing $130 million this year to organizations working for racial and economic justice. In this episode, Carmen Rojas, the foundation’s president and CEO, gets into the reasons behind the move, which organizations will benefit and how this funding aims to fill critical gaps. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Good Things from Lemonada Media is a podcast about the good people in the world who are rolling up their sleeves and working hard to make things better. Each week, we'll be talking about this country's most complex and confounding issues in an effort to affect systemic change, with a rotating cast of incredible guests and Lemonada hosts. From the dire condition of the American foster care system to the decline of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, protecting democracy, and more, we’re focusing on solutions – with the people putting them into action In this episode, as the federal government has been making unprecedented funding cuts, many communities are facing more uncertainty and less support. In response, the Marguerite Casey Foundation is making a bold move: they’re distributing $130 million this year to organizations working for racial and economic justice. In this episode, Carmen Rojas, the foundation’s president and CEO, gets into the reasons behind the move, which organizations will benefit and how this funding aims to fill critical gaps. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Good Things from Lemonada Media is a podcast about the good people in the world who are rolling up their sleeves and working hard to make things better. Each week, we'll be talking about this country's most complex and confounding issues in an effort to affect systemic change, with a rotating cast of incredible guests and Lemonada hosts. From the dire condition of the American foster care system to the decline of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, protecting democracy, and more, we’re focusing on solutions – with the people putting them into action In this episode, as the federal government has been making unprecedented funding cuts, many communities are facing more uncertainty and less support. In response, the Marguerite Casey Foundation is making a bold move: they’re distributing $130 million this year to organizations working for racial and economic justice. In this episode, Carmen Rojas, the foundation’s president and CEO, gets into the reasons behind the move, which organizations will benefit and how this funding aims to fill critical gaps. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Good Things from Lemonada Media is a podcast about the good people in the world who are rolling up their sleeves and working hard to make things better. Each week, we'll be talking about this country's most complex and confounding issues in an effort to affect systemic change, with a rotating cast of incredible guests and Lemonada hosts. From the dire condition of the American foster care system to the decline of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, protecting democracy, and more, we’re focusing on solutions – with the people putting them into action In this episode, as the federal government has been making unprecedented funding cuts, many communities are facing more uncertainty and less support. In response, the Marguerite Casey Foundation is making a bold move: they’re distributing $130 million this year to organizations working for racial and economic justice. In this episode, Carmen Rojas, the foundation’s president and CEO, gets into the reasons behind the move, which organizations will benefit and how this funding aims to fill critical gaps. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Good Things from Lemonada Media is a podcast about the good people in the world who are rolling up their sleeves and working hard to make things better. Each week, we'll be talking about this country's most complex and confounding issues in an effort to affect systemic change, with a rotating cast of incredible guests and Lemonada hosts. From the dire condition of the American foster care system to the decline of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, protecting democracy, and more, we’re focusing on solutions – with the people putting them into action In this episode, as the federal government has been making unprecedented funding cuts, many communities are facing more uncertainty and less support. In response, the Marguerite Casey Foundation is making a bold move: they’re distributing $130 million this year to organizations working for racial and economic justice. In this episode, Carmen Rojas, the foundation’s president and CEO, gets into the reasons behind the move, which organizations will benefit and how this funding aims to fill critical gaps. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Good Things from Lemonada Media is a podcast about the good people in the world who are rolling up their sleeves and working hard to make things better. Each week, we'll be talking about this country's most complex and confounding issues in an effort to affect systemic change, with a rotating cast of incredible guests and Lemonada hosts. From the dire condition of the American foster care system to the decline of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, protecting democracy, and more, we’re focusing on solutions – with the people putting them into action. In this episode, as the federal government has been making unprecedented funding cuts, many communities are facing more uncertainty and less support. In response, the Marguerite Casey Foundation is making a bold move: they’re distributing $130 million this year to organizations working for racial and economic justice. In this episode, Carmen Rojas, the foundation’s president and CEO, gets into the reasons behind the move, which organizations will benefit and how this funding aims to fill critical gaps. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

L'invité : Pierre Verschueren, MCF à l'université de Franche-Comté Le livre : La thèse et le doctorat, socio-histoire d'un grade universitaire, éditions de la sorbonne / Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2025. La discussion :· Pourquoi étudier la thèse et le doctorat ? (1:00)· Thèse et doctorat n'ont pas toujours été synonymes (6:30)· Comment et quand est née l'idée que le doctorat devait produire et pas reproduire du savoir ? (10:15)· Les résistances au modèle de la thèse pour valider le capital intellectuel (18:00)· C'est quoi un « Ph.D » ? (25:00)· Les sources pour étudier les thèses, dont les anciens rapports de soutenance (30:30)· Le seul examen où le jury en sait moins que le candidat (37:45)· La fonction de directeur de thèse, en réalité très récente (46:00)· Les mentions honorifiques (49:45)· Plaidoyer pour desserrer les cadres uniformisant les thèses (54:15) Référence et conseil de lecture :· épisode 320 du podcast « thèses toutes neuves »· Thèse en BD de Serge Tisseron· Boulet, Les rogatons Un podcast créé, animé et produit par André Loez et distribué par Binge Audio. Contact pub : project@binge.audioDistribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Walmart and Target announced competing Prime Day sales. There's a new AI tool to optimize your listings in Seller Central, and Amazon is waiving some MCF fees for Walmart orders. These and more buzzing news this week!   ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos   We're back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10's Principal Brand Evangelist, Carrie Miller. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10's newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. Walmart, Target announce competing Prime Day sales https://www.retaildive.com/news/walmart-target-competing-amazon-prime-day-summer-sales-events/751328/ Amazon temporarily waives seller fee tied to Walmart orders https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/amazon-mcf-walmart-surcharge-waived/751236/ Amazon Seller Central: Update product listings with new Fix Recommendations tool https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHNU5XTFdHUVNUUzNNN0Ja Amazon Seller Central: Ensure compliance documentation comes from compliant labs https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHWE5LQVZaRjk3SkQ1NE41 Amazon Seller Central: Add or change price discounts in bulk with new template https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHRldHV0JMUk5HWUJNS1VT Amazon Seller Central: Quality guidelines for promotions https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHUVNMM1MzNzMyMzQ2SDVM Walmart testing ‘dark stores' to fill online orders, according to report https://chainstoreage.com/walmart-testing-dark-stores-fill-online-orders-according-report Wrap up the week with us as we share insights and highlights buzzing through the e-commerce world, preparing you for the upcoming trends and discussions. In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 00:54 - Big Box vs Amazon 02:22 - Training Tip: Index Checker 05:53 - Waived MCF Fees 07:22 - New AI Listing Tool 08:16 - New Compliance Req 09:22 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts 16:25 - New Buk Template 17:19 - Promotions Guidelines 19:16 - Walmart Dark Stores

As the federal government has been making unprecedented funding cuts, many communities are facing more uncertainty and less support. In response, the Marguerite Casey Foundation is making a bold move: they’re distributing $130 million this year to organizations working for racial and economic justice. In this episode, Carmen Rojas, the foundation’s president and CEO, gets into the reasons behind the move, which organizations will benefit and how this funding aims to fill critical gaps. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EL DE FIN DE TEMPORADA 24/25 Y SI NO NOS ENFADAMOS 270 Temporada 8  (Síguenos en twitter @ysino_podcast)14/06/25TITULARESEl Análisis de la TEMPORADA. -Resumen (Estadísticas )  PLAntilla tecnicoValoración del mercado https://x.com/solofichajes123/status/1931328034679693429 Asistencia al estadio https://x.com/GradaBpro/status/1930331217838387609 -Boqueroncito (LARRUBIA 10) y CATETO (MANU MOLINA 7). -Posición en la tabla. Un día con Al Thani.El jeque del Málaga se enfrenta a 14 años de prisión por el caso Al-Thani.https://www.malagahoy.es/malaga_cf/14-anos-prision-jeque-thani_0_2004123039.html?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=deportesmalagaEl Málaga ficha de nuevo a Alberto Martínez, el ingeniero del límite salarial  Desinformación deportiva. (En DD seguimos sacándole punta al periodismo deportivo malagueño)El

Amazon sunsets Posts, Temu's U.S. traffic drops 48% post-tariff shift, Walmart fee waived for MCF, and new Ads tool. These and more buzzing news on this week's episode! ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos We're back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10's Senior Brand Evangelist, Shivali Patel. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10's newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. The Posts API will be discontinued as of June 3, 2025 https://advertising.amazon.com/API/docs/en-us/release-notes/index#posts-are-deprecated-as-of-june-3-2025 Create up to 100 coupons at once with new bulk upload feature https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHUlc5Q0FTQjZGUVVVUjk1   Set automated ad rules in Ads by Helium 10 based on inventory levels—pause, bid adjust, or trigger actions as stock changes.   Floor loaded shipping now available for Amazon Partnered Carrier program https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHOUtGQlk0WUxITEI3Uk1B Surcharge waived for use of alternative carriers to fulfill Walmart orders https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHSFYzUEtXODg5Q0NMWURE Helium 10's Keyword Tracker with Boost lets you track keyword rankings hourly—24 times a day—for real-time insights across browsing conditions.   Temu sees 48% drop in US users after de minimis loophole ends https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/retail/2025/06/04/temu-user-base-plunges-tariffs/84028372007/   Prepping for Prime Day 2025? Don't miss our complete Prime Day checklist—stay organized and boost your momentum! Go to h10.me/primedaychecklist In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Shivali covers: 00:46 - Bye Amazon Posts 01:57 - Bulk Coupon Upload 02:42 - PPC Inventory Rule 08:38 - No Pallet? No Problem 09:38 - Walmart Fee Waived 10:35 - Hourly Keyword Tracking 13:19  - Temu Traffic Drops 48% 14:27 - EU Battery Ban Incoming 15:58 - Prime Day Checklist

The rent is too damn high, housing quality standards are far too low, and Tara Raghuveer is doing something about it. Tara is director of Kansas City Tenants, a tenant union which organizes to ensure that everyone in KC has a safe, accessible, and truly affordable home. In this powerful conversation with host Gloria Riviera, Tara explains how the union of more than 10,000 members is fighting against our country’s dysfunctional housing market and standing up for what they truly deserve. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Abdul and Katelyn discuss the latest in science and health including: Senator Joni Ernst's “we're all going to die” townhall moment The CDC and FDA's conflicting guidance on Covid boosters The errors in RFK Jr's MAHA report More devastating funding cuts to medical research, including a future HIV vaccine Then Abdul sits down with Dr. Carmen Rojas, the President and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation to talk about the role of philanthropy over the next four years, and why MCF has dramatically increased their funding to non-profits to meet this moment.  Check out our shop at store.americadissected.com for our new America Dissected merch – including logo shirts, hoodies and mugs. And don't miss our “Vaccines Matter. Science Works.” t-shirts! This show would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors. America Dissected invites you to check them out. This episode was brought to you by: de Beaumont Foundation: For 25 years, the de Beaumont Foundation has worked to create practical solutions that improve the health of communities across the country. To learn more, visit debeaumont.org.

L'invité et l'invitée :· Robinson Baudry MCF à l'université Paris-Nanterre· Caroline Husquin, MCF à l'université de Lille Le livre : Les Chauves. Histoire d'un préjugé dans la Rome antique, Paris, Armand Colin, 2025 La discussion :· Un sujet relativement neuf dans l'historiographie (1:00)· Les conceptions antiques de la chevelure et de la pilosité, et le vocabulaire latin qui y est associé (4:00)· Venus calva, et l'enjeu de la calvitie féminine (11:00)· Âge, calvitie, et « beauté convenable » du citoyen (16:00)· Les cheveux rasés des adeptes d'Isis (19:45)· Le stéréotype du chauve ridicule au théâtre (25:00)· Calvitie et compétition politique (27:15)· Calvitie et christianisme (35:00) Le conseil de lecture : Lydie Bodiou et Véronique Mehl (dir.), Dictionnaire du corps dans l'Antiquité, Rennes, PUR, 2019.Image de couverture : buste, Ier siècle CE, Metropolitan Museum 12.233Un podcast créé, animé et produit par André Loez et distribué par Binge Audio. Contact pub : project@binge.audio".Un podcast créé, animé et produit par André Loez et distribué par Binge Audio. Contact pub : project@binge.audioDistribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

This week, Nick delivered a powerful and timely message, urging us to look beyond the exciting projects and outward appearances of our church to the core purpose of our faith: Jesus himself. With the constant theme of "pour out your presence, Lord, pour out your fire" resonating through worship, Nick laid out a vision for a church that is passionate about God's presence and not merely its own accomplishments. Nick started by reflecting on the palpable sense of God's presence and activity within the church, particularly at Hub Church. He spoke of new people coming to faith and others rediscovering their walk with God, a truly encouraging sign of God's significant work amongst us. However, he quickly issued a crucial warning: what we see and experience, what God uses us to do, is not the main thing. The challenge, he emphasized, is to keep the main thing the main thing. He referenced the letter to the church in Revelation, which speaks of a church that had much going on but had "forsaken its first love." This served as a stark reminder that even a vibrant, active church can miss the mark if its focus shifts from worshiping Jesus above all things. Nick shared a profound prophetic word given to a powerful church he knew, which, despite its impressive mission and worship, was warned that "the seeds of your downfall are already in your heart." This wasn't a condemnation, but a gracious challenge to remain undistracted and fully devoted to Jesus. Our calling, Nick stated, is not to be a "successful church with an impressive portfolio of buildings," but to use those things to become a community that worships only Jesus, knows His power, and trusts Him entirely. Drawing parallels to the biblical story of Nehemiah, Nick highlighted a man deeply passionate for God's ways and God's city. Living a comfortable and privileged life, Nehemiah was stirred when he heard that the walls of Jerusalem were in ruins. His heart was grieved, leading him to mourn, fast, and pray. This grief propelled him to action, seeking permission from King Artaxerxes to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls. Nehemiah's story serves as an example of being awake to what is on God's heart and being prepared to step up and take responsibility, not for personal comfort, but for God's purposes in a society where "the walls are broken down." Nick vividly recalled how the sermons he first heard as a teenager about Nehemiah profoundly impacted his life, turning him from a path in the Royal Air Force to a calling for something more. He prayed that the young people present would experience a similar stirring, a yearning for "more than this" – a desire for the Holy Spirit to "breathe, blow, and burn" within them, preventing them from becoming merely "religious people going through the motions of church." Nehemiah's rebuilding of the walls, accomplished in an astonishing 52 days, was not the end goal, but rather a prelude to a national revival. The physical project provided the context for God to move in the hearts of the nation. Nick connected this to our own significant projects, like the refurbishment of the pub, 146. He stressed that our call is not simply to renovate a building, but for God to bring renewal, restoration, and revival on the back of such endeavors. The challenge remains: keep the main thing the main thing and don't get distracted. Nick shared about the recent "Big Bible Read," where over 30 people spent five hours reading the entire book of Genesis. This event, he explained, was a testament to a stirring and hunger for something beyond mere church organization or project management. It was a hunger for God's Word, and a powerful demonstration of a deeper yearning. He likened this to the people in Nehemiah's time who, after the walls were rebuilt, gathered with unified purpose as Ezra read the Law. As they listened, they wept, but Ezra and Nehemiah urged them to celebrate, for "the joy of the Lord is your strength." This celebration was unprecedented since the days of Joshua, highlighting a revival coming in the hearts of people who had only known ordinariness and struggle. Ultimately, Nick concluded, the project isn't what it's all about; Jesus is what it's all about. Even the powerful testimonies of lives being rebuilt and rescued from addiction are just a "prelude to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the discovery of what life is all about." He reminded us that God's plan A from the beginning was for us to know the fullness of His Holy Spirit. The cross, while central to our faith, is a "gateway to life," leading us to live "full of the Holy Spirit, in the fullness of the blessing of God, in the freedom of forgiveness." Our desire, Nick stated, is not for people to simply know "the Christian fellowship," but for Jesus to be a household name in this community. He shared a moving story of a man, deeply addicted, who, after hearing God speak to him in a mental health unit, found Jesus at the church and spent the rest of his life directing others to Him. This illustrates the core message: "He [Jesus] must become more, I [we] must become less." Nick specifically addressed the young people, emphasizing the crucial need to see Jesus, not just the church or its activities. He recounted his own conversion at 16, where he didn't commit to a church or project, but to Jesus himself. He prayed that our journey, despite wobbles and weaknesses, would always be characterized by that life-transforming encounter with Jesus. He concluded by challenging everyone, young and old, to seek after Jesus and nothing else. Attending activities and signing up for projects are important for building the "walls," but they are not the "main thing." God desires "more than this" for us – a constant hunger for His fire to fall. He spoke of the danger of filling our lives with Christian tasks while our hearts are far from Jesus. This is a call to lay our lives before God, inviting His fire to burn up anything that hinders our full pursuit of Him. For those who have never encountered Jesus, Nick urged them to reach out to Him today. For those who may feel nostalgic about past moves of God, he emphasized that we are not meant to dwell in the past, but to look forward to what God will do in 2025, 2026, and beyond. Our hope is not just for buildings or church growth, but for the fire of God to fall, stretching our vision and experience of His overwhelming love, leading to a fresh wave of testimonies. Bible References: Revelation (specifically referring to the letter to a church that had "forsaken its first love") Nehemiah Chapter 1 (The story of Nehemiah's grief and prayer for Jerusalem's broken walls) Nehemiah Chapter 8 (The gathering of the people after the walls were rebuilt, Ezra reading the Law, and the people's celebration) Joshua son of Nun (Referenced in Nehemiah 8:17, concerning a previous time of great celebration) John the Baptist (Specifically the phrase "He must become more, I must become less") Transcript Well, this is great. It doesn't even feel like 9.30, does it? Or 9.45. It feels like a lot earlier. That is great to see so many people as well. It's almost like spot the difference. I don't know what happened at 11 o'clock. Maybe there will be nobody here. But it is good to be together and to be setting out together on this new thing that God has for us, which is a great unknown, as I was saying last week. And I think the theme, as Jonathan and the team have been leading through, continuously hearing about, you know, pour out your presence, Lord. Pour out your fire. And the picture in my mind has been like us as a church coming together and having all that we are laid out before God, whether it's our two services, you know, all the things that we do through the week, all that we seek to be, all that we want to see God establish in our prayer. Continually, Lord, send your fire. Send your fire onto our offering, that our offering is that's all it is. It's an offering. But what makes sense of it, what makes it work is your fire, is your presence, Lord, is your, yeah, just the manifestation of who you are. And there's that theme coming through the worship this morning and I believe ties into what I want to speak about briefly this morning. We asked young people also to stay in. They might be thinking, what are we doing here? But I just felt strongly that there are things that God is doing amongst us. You might not understand all of how it all relates, but there are things that we need to know, things that God wants to speak to us, things that God wants to get into our hearts that goes way beyond just coming to church on a Sunday or just coming to youth or just going through the program of what we do as a church. There is so much that God wants to do in our lives and there's so many things that I could say on a day like today, but God is certainly calling us out of our comfort zone into something new. Like I said, our minds could be very much on what God wants to do, and on what part we need to play in it. And the story, as we've already alluded to, goes back over so many years, it brings us to this point. But also the exciting thing is though we also refer back, we look back, and we're grateful for the faithfulness of God over so many years. We're now standing on a threshold, like I said last week, looking forward into a great unknown, but accept that that old adage that says we don't know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future. And that we walk forward with God into the future and what He's called us to. One thing we know is that He's called us to something great and the center of gravity of what He's called us to. Even though we come from many parts of the city, and we come from many parts of the world even, He's called us together at this time for something that He wants to do in this place as He pours out His Spirit. And we are seeing a really significant move of God. I was at Hub Church on Tuesday night. If you've never been to Hub Church, pop in one of these Tuesday nights. There were about 50 people in Unit 2. It was packed. The presence of God was there. It was just so good to see people worshiping God freely. There was just a relaxed sort of buzz about the place, and the presence of God was there. And I reflected as I sat on the floor, because there were no seats, that it's about three times bigger than the first church I led in Hub Church. I mean, it's just like, and there it is on a Tuesday night, and God is moving amongst us. There are people coming to faith. People are discovering Him for the first time. People are rediscovering Him for the hundredth time. There's something happening in the hearts of people, and that's so crucial. There's one vitally important thing, a warning actually, I believe, that the Holy Spirit wants to bring to us. That whatever we see, whatever we experience, whatever God uses us to do here on earth, that's not the main thing. And our challenge is to keep the main thing the main thing, because if we end up with a church that celebrates what it does, that celebrates what it achieves, that celebrates what we look like, then we'll have missed it. It's so exciting to be part of the church. That is growing. It's so exciting to be a part of the church. That is making a move for world domination, at least on Jordan Thought Precinct, like, you know, with the 146, and Unit 2, and all that goes on here, and two services. It's so great to have that sense of presence and activity in the life of the church. It's not something I've personally been used to as life has gone on over the years. You know, church life is not always full of so much activity, but it's not the main thing. There was the letter to the church in Revelation, it says, the gist of it is, you've got all this stuff going on. It's great, but you've forsaken your first love. And the one thing that we have to do is make sure that we're never in that position. A church that we were connected with, we weren't at that church at the time, but was such a powerful church. There was so much going on in its life. There were so many things that we looked at and we thought, that's the sort of church you want to be in. There was mission going on, there was worship, there was the presence of God, and yet they had a prophetic word. Now, you know, sometimes our prophecies can be, you know, I love you, says the Lord, and you're great, I think you're fantastic, and you're the best thing ever, says the Lord. And we say, oh thank you, Jesus. And that's when we go away. But sometimes prophetic words come in and they come in with an edge. And this one said that I see, basically, it's a bit like Revelation, I've seen all that you are, I've seen all that you've achieved, I've seen all that you've become, but the seeds of your downfall are already in your heart. I think, wow, thank you, Lord. That's not what you want to hear, you want to pat on the head, don't you? But what a challenge, because, and there's, it's a gracious challenge, it's not like a, you know, well you're a terrible church or anything, it's saying that I want you to be the best that you can possibly be, but I want you to experience the fullest that you can, but yet you can so easily get distracted, and our hearts can so easily get distracted from what the main thing is, which is lifting Jesus above all things. So our calling is not to be a successful church on Jordan, Thorpe and Baitmore, with an impressive portfolio of buildings. It's to use those things to become a community that worships only Jesus, that knows his power, that trusts him entirely, and we use our buildings and our resources and our everything that we've got in our pursuit of those aims. God forbid that we ever become a church so absorbed in our own work and projects that we obscure the vision of Jesus, that we, our hearts get distracted and we think, oh we've, we've got something here. And briefly this morning I want to touch on the story of Nehemiah. I mentioned it last week. Nehemiah was a man passionate for the things of God. He lived in Persia roughly 500 years before Christ was born, and he was an official of King Artaxerxes. That's a name to conjure with. King Artaxerxes. He was cupbearer to the king. He was comfortable, he was privileged, and he had no reason to think beyond that life. Everything was good for him, but there was something stirring in his heart that was, that wouldn't stay quiet, and it was all to do with his passion for God and for God's ways and God's kingdom and God's city. And he heard, he got a message, I'm paraphrasing it, you can look it up in Nehemiah. He heard that the walls of Jerusalem, his beloved city, were in ruins, and his heart was grieved about it. Even the king noticed, why are you so sad? He said, but how, you know, my, my heart said here, he got a message that said in Nehemiah chapter one, things are not going well for those who return to the province of Judah. They are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem has been torn down and the gates have been destroyed by fire. When I heard this, I sat down and wept. In fact, for days I mourned, fasted, and prayed to the God of heaven. I sat down and wept. And so in that grief, he took it upon himself to do something. He actually sought permission from the king to step away from his duties and go back to Jerusalem and to rebuild the walls, because there was a passion for that city and a passion for God's ways and a passion for for all that had been lost. And he said, I want to do something to put it right. I want to do something to rebuild those walls. And our challenge is to be awake to what is on God's heart, just as he was. More than that, to be prepared to step up and take responsibility, to take action, to serve the purpose of God, not just, not just pursue our own comfort, but to actually give ourselves, because individuals give ourselves as a church, give ourselves as a community, to what is on God's heart for a community and a society where the walls are broken down. And there was a pain in his heart. He said, I've got to do something. The first sermons I ever heard in my life were around the book of Nehemiah. It was at spring harvest, 1980 something, and it was spring fever. All these old geezers that you see preaching and now they were young chaps then. It was the same guys, but they were, but anyway, yeah, they stories of Nehemiah, how God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things when moved by his spirit and motivated by what's on his heart. And it was those, and I think that's probably part of the year I have for the, you know, I can't do anything to connect God's word to your heart, but we pray that God's spirit opens it up. And I pray for our young people as well that they begin to see the sort of things that I began to see in those days when I was 16, 17 years old, and my life was set on joining the Royal Air Force. I had signed my life away. I'd got a contract until I was 37. There was, there was, everything was set and yet something broke into my heart on that day and in those days to say actually there's more to it than this. What will you do? A stirring, a bit like Nehemiah had a stirring to say I want to do something more. There must be more than this. We sang it this morning. There was that yearning like there must be more than this. Come breath of life. Come breathe within. And that was my prayer then and it's my prayer today that for we, for us as individuals and as a church and as a community that our prayer would become Holy Spirit. Breathe within us again. Don't let us just become religious people going through the motions of church. Oh we've got two services, great. And you, you know, we can enjoy ourselves and we can enjoy our worship and we can enjoy being together, but there's more, there must be more than this. Come breath of life. Come fire of God. Breathe and blow and burn in this place. And so he set about, he went to Jerusalem and he set about rebuilding the walls. He gathered people. He inspired people. He organized them. He managed them. There was opposition, fierce opposition and he handled it. It was a master class of leadership and in 52 days the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt. But what we see then as we go on through the book of Nehemiah is that the, that was just the beginning. The purpose God had was not for Nehemiah to be a builder. That was an expression of the, the passion and the drive that Nehemiah had to say there must be more than this. We want to see God. I don't want to see the walls of God's city broken down and in ruins and the people scattered. I want to see revival and renewal in the national life of Israel. And so he, there was that drive for him. But the walls, once they were there, the walls only became a prelude to a national revival. The physical project became just the foundation, just provided a context, just provided a shape for God to then move in the heart of the nation. And as we, we've got so many wonderful projects. We've got 146 is a project to end all projects as far as we're concerned, but you know there's so much there, but ultimately we won't sort of get it all done, get it all built, get it all post signed off, have a ribbon cutting ceremony and say we've done it now. We've, we've refurbished a pub. That's not the call of God on our life, to refurbish a pub. But what God wants to do is to bring a sense of renewal and restoration and revival on the back of the restoration of a pub and all the other things that we've got going on. And our challenge is to keep the main thing the main thing and not to get distracted by all of those things. Nehemiah could have been distracted, but yet at the end of it all in chapter 8 we're told that the people gathered after the completion of the walls and they gathered with a unified purpose and a priest named Ezra read the book of the law and all the people worshiped. I don't know if you picked up, I'm sure you did, we've been mentioning for some weeks we had the big Bible read yesterday and that was just such a great event. Sheila did a wonderful job of organizing it. It went like clockwork. If you thought that we couldn't run meetings by the clock, you should have come to the big Bible read. We read the entire book of Genesis in five hours and every section finished on the dot by the grace of God. Anyway, that's not what I'm celebrating. What I'm celebrating is the fact that we had nothing else on the agenda. We had 30 plus people here, nothing else on the agenda for five hours except just reading the Word. And when we got to the end it was quite emotional. It was like, oh my goodness, this is powerful. And the only reason I bring that up is because there is something stirring in our heart that is bigger than just what we do, just how we function, just the organization of the church, just the management of projects. There is something that God is stirring. Why would we advertise, oh let's all get together and read the Bible out loud for five hours and 35 people turn up? You know that you'd think they wouldn't come, but they did. And there's a stirring and there's a hunger for something that's beyond. There must be more than this, we're crying. Anyway, that's a bit of an aside. They went through the instructions of the law of God and explained it to the people and some of these people began to see for the first time what they were understanding. You know they had, they just had, people had been born, this generation had been born into a situation where the walls of Jerusalem were broken down. Things weren't going well for the nation and these people knew nothing and they all they knew was the stories of the past, but they knew nothing of what was going on and here they were for the first time perhaps beginning to see the the law come to life in their time and Ezra and Nehemiah, they gathered the people with a unified purpose and they read the law and it says as they listened the people began to weep and then the priest said, don't weep, don't mourn, but celebrate, this is a good day. And then one of the things that I prayed this morning as we came into this new arrangement is that there's a lot to think about, there's a lot to be anxious about. No there isn't, you can't be anxious about anything because we cast all our burdens onto Jesus, but there are things that sometimes cause us a little bit of anxiety aren't there? Things that worry us, things that give us cause for a sleepless night and yet there was that sense of don't weep, don't mourn, don't take yourself too seriously, enjoy the fact that God is on the move, let there be joy in the house, let there be joy in the presence of God. And as Ezra and Nehemiah said to the people, the joy of the Lord is your strength and so they understood for the first time a lot of what they were hearing. And it says in chapter 8 in verse 17 that the Israelites had not celebrated like this since the days of Joshua son of Nun, since the days when they crossed the Jordan river and experienced the most amazing miracles, they've never celebrated like this and these people weren't even born then, this was hundreds of years gone and so they had been born into fairly humdrum drab existence, they're just going through the motions of their life and suddenly they were beginning to see their eyes were open, their hearts were open to begin to see the reality of what God was doing and what he was doing amongst them and they had not celebrated like they celebrated on that day since the days of Joshua. And so there was a real revival coming in the hearts of people, they've never known anything except the ordinariness and the struggle of life and then they've been caught up in this great project to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and then by surprise on the back of that rebuilding project, God visited them and renewed them and restored them and empowered them by his Holy Spirit. And that in a nutshell is really what I want to say today, that the project is not what it's all about, but Jesus is what it's all about. Even the restoration of our lives, it's great to hear testimonies and we've heard many recently powerful testimonies of people who have been baptized and it's so wonderful to see how God is rebuilding lives and rescuing people from addiction and rescuing people from terrible situations and struggle and difficulty and all of that. But ultimately even the rebuilding of our lives is just a prelude to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the discovery of what life is all about. I think it was Ali last week was saying, this isn't plan B, this was plan A. God's plan from the beginning was that we would know the fullness of his Holy Spirit in our lives and so the steps that we take towards it, even the cross, we celebrate, of course we celebrate the cross. The cross is our gateway to life, but that's what it is, a gateway to life. It's an opportunity that we come back, we remind ourselves of what Jesus went through, we remind ourselves of how he suffered, we remind ourselves of how he paid the price, but now because he's paid the price we live, we live full of the Holy Spirit, we live in the fullness of the blessing of God, we live in the freedom of forgiveness and all that that means for us rather than continually going round and round in circles. And so all these things are part of the story, they pave the way to where God has taken us, but he wants to glorify himself and exalt himself, that people wouldn't know MCF here but they would know Jesus, that Jesus would be a household name in this community because that would be our legacy. Not that when a message goes up on Facebook, do you know when you know where you can get a cup of coffee on a Thursday morning? Yeah, the Christian fellowship. People know about the Christian fellowship, but our prayer and our desire is that fire of God would fall so that people would know Jesus is in this place. Remember one man who came to our first church after a few weeks of us being there and he sat at the back of the church and he just stared at the floor, he didn't have any life about him at all and it turned out that he was a very seriously addicted alcoholic and he told me himself, he said he used to drink a bottle of vodka every night and his daughter used to have to carry him to bed. He was in such a state and he ended, he'd been at a Billy Graham meeting many, many years before in the 1960s and he'd given his life to Christ and he'd forgotten all about that and he'd walked away and he'd got, his whole life was in a mess and he ended up in a mental health unit in the local hospital section and he said while he was in there, he said he heard God speak to him, say why don't you come back to me and so he didn't know what to do, how to come back to God so he looked up the church, so he came to the church and he just, life transformed, nobody did anything to him or for him, God just touched his life and he became one of our premier worship leader in the church and he was just like so exciting to see his life transformed in that way but yeah and then, not but, that sounds like a negative doesn't it, but what I got from him was he said, I came back, he said and then people asked me how do you find Jesus, how do you find, so I just told him come with me, I met him at the church, come with me and you'll find him there and so he spent his whole, the whole of the rest of his life, he's still alive, directing people to Jesus because he said I found him, he came to me, he met me in the mental health unit and he called me to himself and now I just tell people to go and find him, you know, and if you can't, if you don't know where to find him go and look in the church. John the Baptist said he must become more, I must become less. Jesus must become more in our experience and in our ministry and in our, in our activity. Jesus must be magnified and glorified and that's why I want to ask the young people to be here today rather than be at specific activities because this is absolutely crucial for you to understand. You might actually think I'm only here because my parents want me to be here or because, you know, because this is, this is what's expected and at our extent Andy said earlier on our vision of God can be like this, shaped like the church, shaped like the youth activity, shaped like whatever we do and yet God is wanting to stretch our understanding and stretch our vision of who he is and what he can do and what he can be in our lives and my prayer for you is that he would open your eyes to see Jesus, not the church, not anything else but to see Jesus. He did it for me when I was 16. I didn't commit myself to a church or a project, I didn't know anything about church, but Jesus called me to himself and when they said do you want to, want to give your life to Christ, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to go and find Jesus. I wanted to be filled with the spirit of Jesus. I wanted to understand who Jesus was. I wanted to follow Jesus. I wanted to, to, for other people to understand who Jesus was. That's all that mattered and that's what our prayer is, that that would be the hallmark of our revival and our renewal that goes on, that Jesus would change our life forever and I can say though I've had 30 plus years in leadership, I'm not a model believer or a champion prayer. From years back people bought me a booklet, this is how you learn to pray. I've never felt like an expert in anything to do with that, my faith has often been weak, struggles have been real, but something changed in my heart 40 years ago that's never changed back. The shape of my heart changed, the shape of my life, my outlook, my perspective, my understanding, my belief, my trust, everything changed and in the meantime it's been wobbly and it's been weak at times and there's been challenges and there's been issues and still there's so much for me to learn at my young age, but Jesus makes all the difference and it's our prayer that we don't just introduce people to what we do. It's great we've got our welcome packs and this is what we do through the week, but all of that are just walls, all of that is just shape, all of that is just a context in which we can meet God and so I would encourage you in your hearts, whether you're young, whether you're old, whether you get it, whether you don't, to be seeking after Jesus and going after Him and nothing else. You don't get points for how many activities you go to in a week or how many names you put on the sign-up sheet, you don't get points for that. It's great if you do it because we need it, it's the walls, but in actual fact that's not the point, it's not the main thing. God wants more for us, there must be more than this and so there is a challenge for all of us, whether we're young or whether we're old, we can't just bypass, you know this is a challenge for leadership, it's a challenge for me because in a way I have a full-time framework for what I do and I can and I can fill my diary with meetings, with projects, with things to do, with people to visit, with spreadsheets to fill in, I can do all of that. I think, wow, I'm a full-time Christian worker. I can do all of that and my heart can be far from where God wants it to be, my heart can be far from Jesus, and my prayer for myself as we respond to this is, is that God let your fire fall on me, that in this, you know there's a lot that I've seen in life, there's a lot that we've experienced, there's a lot to go back over, but yet looking forward that's what I want it to be, that's where I want to be, going forward, that's where we want to see the fire of God. I want to just tell stories of the past, stories of the past are important because they remind us of what God has done and how, how far we've come, but if we don't have anything, don't have any vision or hope or expectation for the future that the fire of God will fall, then we're going to, we're going to fail, we're going to, we're going to lose energy, we're going to run out of steam. When it comes to the nine o'clock meeting on the 13th of November or whatever it is, we're going to think, oh again, there needs to be that. And there's two categories of people, maybe you've never known what it is to give your heart to Jesus, maybe you've known, maybe no church, maybe you know, maybe you're trying your best, you're trying your best to to work it out, you're trying your best to, to give yourself, to build some religious walls around your life so that you can feel like a better person and you can feel like you've got things in order, but you've never known what it is to give your heart to the Lord completely. You've never encountered Jesus and the power of His love and that is crucial for you today, and if that is you today, don't leave this place without reaching out to Him. And there are those of us who do know, but we feel maybe it's all behind us, we knew that once, we're nostalgic. One of the things that was brought up at the conference last week that we were at was the issue of nostalgia, how easy it is to be nostalgic. For those of us of a certain age, there were exciting times in the 1980s, 1990s, the things that happened in the church. It's very easy to think, oh let's go back to that, but the whole point is not going back to that. It's about looking forward, about looking forward to what God can do in 2025, 2026, 2030. What stories are we going to tell then? Cornelius was praying this morning, don't mind me mentioning you, we were praying and he was saying, you know we've seen moves of God, we've seen Pensacola, we've seen Toronto, we've seen what God did in Mozambique, and yet there's a sense, there's a hunger for God to do something new and fresh here now. That's what we want. We need the stories of Pensacola and Toronto and Mozambique and all of that to encourage us and strengthen our faith and to focus our minds, but we're not just going to celebrate what that was. We're going to step into what God has for us, and it's much, much more than a building project. It's much, much more than a church with two services. It's much, much more than planting a church or whatever we do in the future. It's more than all of that. It's that the fire of God will fall, and so maybe you're not sure about what it all means for you now. We can be pleased about it. We can be pleased about what God is doing, but we don't know how we fit in. God is wanting to touch you with fire. God wants to touch your heart with fire, for you to see things, and His Word is absolutely relevant. We're like this. We've got God. We love Him. He's powerful. He's faithful to us. He does good things for us, but there's so much more, and He wants to stretch our vision, stretch our understanding, stretch our experience. Sometimes we're nervous of that word, experience. God wants to stretch our experience of Him, our experience of His love. Some of us can think back many, many years to times when we've really encountered the presence and power of God and the overwhelming love of Jesus, and yet it feels like it's all the way past. God wants to touch you again with those things, that you would have a testimony that we wouldn't be able to just say, does anybody have a 60-second testimony? Because it would throw the whole program out because of our experience of God, so we need to be hungry for Him. And so as we return, maybe the worship team could come back. Think about what this is. Lord, we're thankful, thankful, so thankful for what you're doing in our midst, so thankful for the shape of the church, thankful that we can have two services, thankful that we've got a building project, thank you that those things are coming together, but Lord, there must be more, there is more. Lord, let your fire fall, and what I want you to do is not just broaden this response, but look into your own heart. Like I said, young or old, whatever your circumstances, whatever the hang-ups, whatever the issues, whatever the things that are making you hesitate, bring it all to God. Lay it all out before Him and say, Lord, burn it up. Let your fire fall on the offering of my life. May I know you. Maybe you don't feel like you know Him. There's not a million miles, He's not a million miles away. Just reach out to Him, reach out to Him now as we respond. And if you want to come here, come forward, someone to pray with you, someone to help you, someone to encourage you, do that because we'd be more than happy and the space is here. Just come as we worship as Jonathan leads us and the team. Come and we will pray together and God's fire will fall upon us. Amen.

This week, Nick delivered a powerful and timely message, urging us to look beyond the exciting projects and outward appearances of our church to the core purpose of our faith: Jesus himself. With the constant theme of "pour out your presence, Lord, pour out your fire" resonating through worship, Nick laid out a vision for a church that is passionate about God's presence and not merely its own accomplishments. Nick started by reflecting on the palpable sense of God's presence and activity within the church, particularly at Hub Church. He spoke of new people coming to faith and others rediscovering their walk with God, a truly encouraging sign of God's significant work amongst us. However, he quickly issued a crucial warning: what we see and experience, what God uses us to do, is not the main thing. The challenge, he emphasized, is to keep the main thing the main thing. He referenced the letter to the church in Revelation, which speaks of a church that had much going on but had "forsaken its first love." This served as a stark reminder that even a vibrant, active church can miss the mark if its focus shifts from worshiping Jesus above all things. Nick shared a profound prophetic word given to a powerful church he knew, which, despite its impressive mission and worship, was warned that "the seeds of your downfall are already in your heart." This wasn't a condemnation, but a gracious challenge to remain undistracted and fully devoted to Jesus. Our calling, Nick stated, is not to be a "successful church with an impressive portfolio of buildings," but to use those things to become a community that worships only Jesus, knows His power, and trusts Him entirely. Drawing parallels to the biblical story of Nehemiah, Nick highlighted a man deeply passionate for God's ways and God's city. Living a comfortable and privileged life, Nehemiah was stirred when he heard that the walls of Jerusalem were in ruins. His heart was grieved, leading him to mourn, fast, and pray. This grief propelled him to action, seeking permission from King Artaxerxes to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls. Nehemiah's story serves as an example of being awake to what is on God's heart and being prepared to step up and take responsibility, not for personal comfort, but for God's purposes in a society where "the walls are broken down." Nick vividly recalled how the sermons he first heard as a teenager about Nehemiah profoundly impacted his life, turning him from a path in the Royal Air Force to a calling for something more. He prayed that the young people present would experience a similar stirring, a yearning for "more than this" – a desire for the Holy Spirit to "breathe, blow, and burn" within them, preventing them from becoming merely "religious people going through the motions of church." Nehemiah's rebuilding of the walls, accomplished in an astonishing 52 days, was not the end goal, but rather a prelude to a national revival. The physical project provided the context for God to move in the hearts of the nation. Nick connected this to our own significant projects, like the refurbishment of the pub, 146. He stressed that our call is not simply to renovate a building, but for God to bring renewal, restoration, and revival on the back of such endeavors. The challenge remains: keep the main thing the main thing and don't get distracted. Nick shared about the recent "Big Bible Read," where over 30 people spent five hours reading the entire book of Genesis. This event, he explained, was a testament to a stirring and hunger for something beyond mere church organization or project management. It was a hunger for God's Word, and a powerful demonstration of a deeper yearning. He likened this to the people in Nehemiah's time who, after the walls were rebuilt, gathered with unified purpose as Ezra read the Law. As they listened, they wept, but Ezra and Nehemiah urged them to celebrate, for "the joy of the Lord is your strength." This celebration was unprecedented since the days of Joshua, highlighting a revival coming in the hearts of people who had only known ordinariness and struggle. Ultimately, Nick concluded, the project isn't what it's all about; Jesus is what it's all about. Even the powerful testimonies of lives being rebuilt and rescued from addiction are just a "prelude to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the discovery of what life is all about." He reminded us that God's plan A from the beginning was for us to know the fullness of His Holy Spirit. The cross, while central to our faith, is a "gateway to life," leading us to live "full of the Holy Spirit, in the fullness of the blessing of God, in the freedom of forgiveness." Our desire, Nick stated, is not for people to simply know "the Christian fellowship," but for Jesus to be a household name in this community. He shared a moving story of a man, deeply addicted, who, after hearing God speak to him in a mental health unit, found Jesus at the church and spent the rest of his life directing others to Him. This illustrates the core message: "He [Jesus] must become more, I [we] must become less." Nick specifically addressed the young people, emphasizing the crucial need to see Jesus, not just the church or its activities. He recounted his own conversion at 16, where he didn't commit to a church or project, but to Jesus himself. He prayed that our journey, despite wobbles and weaknesses, would always be characterized by that life-transforming encounter with Jesus. He concluded by challenging everyone, young and old, to seek after Jesus and nothing else. Attending activities and signing up for projects are important for building the "walls," but they are not the "main thing." God desires "more than this" for us – a constant hunger for His fire to fall. He spoke of the danger of filling our lives with Christian tasks while our hearts are far from Jesus. This is a call to lay our lives before God, inviting His fire to burn up anything that hinders our full pursuit of Him. For those who have never encountered Jesus, Nick urged them to reach out to Him today. For those who may feel nostalgic about past moves of God, he emphasized that we are not meant to dwell in the past, but to look forward to what God will do in 2025, 2026, and beyond. Our hope is not just for buildings or church growth, but for the fire of God to fall, stretching our vision and experience of His overwhelming love, leading to a fresh wave of testimonies. Bible References: Revelation (specifically referring to the letter to a church that had "forsaken its first love") Nehemiah Chapter 1 (The story of Nehemiah's grief and prayer for Jerusalem's broken walls) Nehemiah Chapter 8 (The gathering of the people after the walls were rebuilt, Ezra reading the Law, and the people's celebration) Joshua son of Nun (Referenced in Nehemiah 8:17, concerning a previous time of great celebration) John the Baptist (Specifically the phrase "He must become more, I must become less") Transcript Well, this is great. It doesn't even feel like 9.30, does it? Or 9.45. It feels like a lot earlier. That is great to see so many people as well. It's almost like spot the difference. I don't know what happened at 11 o'clock. Maybe there will be nobody here. But it is good to be together and to be setting out together on this new thing that God has for us, which is a great unknown, as I was saying last week. And I think the theme, as Jonathan and the team have been leading through, continuously hearing about, you know, pour out your presence, Lord. Pour out your fire. And the picture in my mind has been like us as a church coming together and having all that we are laid out before God, whether it's our two services, you know, all the things that we do through the week, all that we seek to be, all that we want to see God establish in our prayer. Continually, Lord, send your fire. Send your fire onto our offering, that our offering is that's all it is. It's an offering. But what makes sense of it, what makes it work is your fire, is your presence, Lord, is your, yeah, just the manifestation of who you are. And there's that theme coming through the worship this morning and I believe ties into what I want to speak about briefly this morning. We asked young people also to stay in. They might be thinking, what are we doing here? But I just felt strongly that there are things that God is doing amongst us. You might not understand all of how it all relates, but there are things that we need to know, things that God wants to speak to us, things that God wants to get into our hearts that goes way beyond just coming to church on a Sunday or just coming to youth or just going through the program of what we do as a church. There is so much that God wants to do in our lives and there's so many things that I could say on a day like today, but God is certainly calling us out of our comfort zone into something new. Like I said, our minds could be very much on what God wants to do, and on what part we need to play in it. And the story, as we've already alluded to, goes back over so many years, it brings us to this point. But also the exciting thing is though we also refer back, we look back, and we're grateful for the faithfulness of God over so many years. We're now standing on a threshold, like I said last week, looking forward into a great unknown, but accept that that old adage that says we don't know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future. And that we walk forward with God into the future and what He's called us to. One thing we know is that He's called us to something great and the center of gravity of what He's called us to. Even though we come from many parts of the city, and we come from many parts of the world even, He's called us together at this time for something that He wants to do in this place as He pours out His Spirit. And we are seeing a really significant move of God. I was at Hub Church on Tuesday night. If you've never been to Hub Church, pop in one of these Tuesday nights. There were about 50 people in Unit 2. It was packed. The presence of God was there. It was just so good to see people worshiping God freely. There was just a relaxed sort of buzz about the place, and the presence of God was there. And I reflected as I sat on the floor, because there were no seats, that it's about three times bigger than the first church I led in Hub Church. I mean, it's just like, and there it is on a Tuesday night, and God is moving amongst us. There are people coming to faith. People are discovering Him for the first time. People are rediscovering Him for the hundredth time. There's something happening in the hearts of people, and that's so crucial. There's one vitally important thing, a warning actually, I believe, that the Holy Spirit wants to bring to us. That whatever we see, whatever we experience, whatever God uses us to do here on earth, that's not the main thing. And our challenge is to keep the main thing the main thing, because if we end up with a church that celebrates what it does, that celebrates what it achieves, that celebrates what we look like, then we'll have missed it. It's so exciting to be part of the church. That is growing. It's so exciting to be a part of the church. That is making a move for world domination, at least on Jordan Thought Precinct, like, you know, with the 146, and Unit 2, and all that goes on here, and two services. It's so great to have that sense of presence and activity in the life of the church. It's not something I've personally been used to as life has gone on over the years. You know, church life is not always full of so much activity, but it's not the main thing. There was the letter to the church in Revelation, it says, the gist of it is, you've got all this stuff going on. It's great, but you've forsaken your first love. And the one thing that we have to do is make sure that we're never in that position. A church that we were connected with, we weren't at that church at the time, but was such a powerful church. There was so much going on in its life. There were so many things that we looked at and we thought, that's the sort of church you want to be in. There was mission going on, there was worship, there was the presence of God, and yet they had a prophetic word. Now, you know, sometimes our prophecies can be, you know, I love you, says the Lord, and you're great, I think you're fantastic, and you're the best thing ever, says the Lord. And we say, oh thank you, Jesus. And that's when we go away. But sometimes prophetic words come in and they come in with an edge. And this one said that I see, basically, it's a bit like Revelation, I've seen all that you are, I've seen all that you've achieved, I've seen all that you've become, but the seeds of your downfall are already in your heart. I think, wow, thank you, Lord. That's not what you want to hear, you want to pat on the head, don't you? But what a challenge, because, and there's, it's a gracious challenge, it's not like a, you know, well you're a terrible church or anything, it's saying that I want you to be the best that you can possibly be, but I want you to experience the fullest that you can, but yet you can so easily get distracted, and our hearts can so easily get distracted from what the main thing is, which is lifting Jesus above all things. So our calling is not to be a successful church on Jordan, Thorpe and Baitmore, with an impressive portfolio of buildings. It's to use those things to become a community that worships only Jesus, that knows his power, that trusts him entirely, and we use our buildings and our resources and our everything that we've got in our pursuit of those aims. God forbid that we ever become a church so absorbed in our own work and projects that we obscure the vision of Jesus, that we, our hearts get distracted and we think, oh we've, we've got something here. And briefly this morning I want to touch on the story of Nehemiah. I mentioned it last week. Nehemiah was a man passionate for the things of God. He lived in Persia roughly 500 years before Christ was born, and he was an official of King Artaxerxes. That's a name to conjure with. King Artaxerxes. He was cupbearer to the king. He was comfortable, he was privileged, and he had no reason to think beyond that life. Everything was good for him, but there was something stirring in his heart that was, that wouldn't stay quiet, and it was all to do with his passion for God and for God's ways and God's kingdom and God's city. And he heard, he got a message, I'm paraphrasing it, you can look it up in Nehemiah. He heard that the walls of Jerusalem, his beloved city, were in ruins, and his heart was grieved about it. Even the king noticed, why are you so sad? He said, but how, you know, my, my heart said here, he got a message that said in Nehemiah chapter one, things are not going well for those who return to the province of Judah. They are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem has been torn down and the gates have been destroyed by fire. When I heard this, I sat down and wept. In fact, for days I mourned, fasted, and prayed to the God of heaven. I sat down and wept. And so in that grief, he took it upon himself to do something. He actually sought permission from the king to step away from his duties and go back to Jerusalem and to rebuild the walls, because there was a passion for that city and a passion for God's ways and a passion for for all that had been lost. And he said, I want to do something to put it right. I want to do something to rebuild those walls. And our challenge is to be awake to what is on God's heart, just as he was. More than that, to be prepared to step up and take responsibility, to take action, to serve the purpose of God, not just, not just pursue our own comfort, but to actually give ourselves, because individuals give ourselves as a church, give ourselves as a community, to what is on God's heart for a community and a society where the walls are broken down. And there was a pain in his heart. He said, I've got to do something. The first sermons I ever heard in my life were around the book of Nehemiah. It was at spring harvest, 1980 something, and it was spring fever. All these old geezers that you see preaching and now they were young chaps then. It was the same guys, but they were, but anyway, yeah, they stories of Nehemiah, how God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things when moved by his spirit and motivated by what's on his heart. And it was those, and I think that's probably part of the year I have for the, you know, I can't do anything to connect God's word to your heart, but we pray that God's spirit opens it up. And I pray for our young people as well that they begin to see the sort of things that I began to see in those days when I was 16, 17 years old, and my life was set on joining the Royal Air Force. I had signed my life away. I'd got a contract until I was 37. There was, there was, everything was set and yet something broke into my heart on that day and in those days to say actually there's more to it than this. What will you do? A stirring, a bit like Nehemiah had a stirring to say I want to do something more. There must be more than this. We sang it this morning. There was that yearning like there must be more than this. Come breath of life. Come breathe within. And that was my prayer then and it's my prayer today that for we, for us as individuals and as a church and as a community that our prayer would become Holy Spirit. Breathe within us again. Don't let us just become religious people going through the motions of church. Oh we've got two services, great. And you, you know, we can enjoy ourselves and we can enjoy our worship and we can enjoy being together, but there's more, there must be more than this. Come breath of life. Come fire of God. Breathe and blow and burn in this place. And so he set about, he went to Jerusalem and he set about rebuilding the walls. He gathered people. He inspired people. He organized them. He managed them. There was opposition, fierce opposition and he handled it. It was a master class of leadership and in 52 days the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt. But what we see then as we go on through the book of Nehemiah is that the, that was just the beginning. The purpose God had was not for Nehemiah to be a builder. That was an expression of the, the passion and the drive that Nehemiah had to say there must be more than this. We want to see God. I don't want to see the walls of God's city broken down and in ruins and the people scattered. I want to see revival and renewal in the national life of Israel. And so he, there was that drive for him. But the walls, once they were there, the walls only became a prelude to a national revival. The physical project became just the foundation, just provided a context, just provided a shape for God to then move in the heart of the nation. And as we, we've got so many wonderful projects. We've got 146 is a project to end all projects as far as we're concerned, but you know there's so much there, but ultimately we won't sort of get it all done, get it all built, get it all post signed off, have a ribbon cutting ceremony and say we've done it now. We've, we've refurbished a pub. That's not the call of God on our life, to refurbish a pub. But what God wants to do is to bring a sense of renewal and restoration and revival on the back of the restoration of a pub and all the other things that we've got going on. And our challenge is to keep the main thing the main thing and not to get distracted by all of those things. Nehemiah could have been distracted, but yet at the end of it all in chapter 8 we're told that the people gathered after the completion of the walls and they gathered with a unified purpose and a priest named Ezra read the book of the law and all the people worshiped. I don't know if you picked up, I'm sure you did, we've been mentioning for some weeks we had the big Bible read yesterday and that was just such a great event. Sheila did a wonderful job of organizing it. It went like clockwork. If you thought that we couldn't run meetings by the clock, you should have come to the big Bible read. We read the entire book of Genesis in five hours and every section finished on the dot by the grace of God. Anyway, that's not what I'm celebrating. What I'm celebrating is the fact that we had nothing else on the agenda. We had 30 plus people here, nothing else on the agenda for five hours except just reading the Word. And when we got to the end it was quite emotional. It was like, oh my goodness, this is powerful. And the only reason I bring that up is because there is something stirring in our heart that is bigger than just what we do, just how we function, just the organization of the church, just the management of projects. There is something that God is stirring. Why would we advertise, oh let's all get together and read the Bible out loud for five hours and 35 people turn up? You know that you'd think they wouldn't come, but they did. And there's a stirring and there's a hunger for something that's beyond. There must be more than this, we're crying. Anyway, that's a bit of an aside. They went through the instructions of the law of God and explained it to the people and some of these people began to see for the first time what they were understanding. You know they had, they just had, people had been born, this generation had been born into a situation where the walls of Jerusalem were broken down. Things weren't going well for the nation and these people knew nothing and they all they knew was the stories of the past, but they knew nothing of what was going on and here they were for the first time perhaps beginning to see the the law come to life in their time and Ezra and Nehemiah, they gathered the people with a unified purpose and they read the law and it says as they listened the people began to weep and then the priest said, don't weep, don't mourn, but celebrate, this is a good day. And then one of the things that I prayed this morning as we came into this new arrangement is that there's a lot to think about, there's a lot to be anxious about. No there isn't, you can't be anxious about anything because we cast all our burdens onto Jesus, but there are things that sometimes cause us a little bit of anxiety aren't there? Things that worry us, things that give us cause for a sleepless night and yet there was that sense of don't weep, don't mourn, don't take yourself too seriously, enjoy the fact that God is on the move, let there be joy in the house, let there be joy in the presence of God. And as Ezra and Nehemiah said to the people, the joy of the Lord is your strength and so they understood for the first time a lot of what they were hearing. And it says in chapter 8 in verse 17 that the Israelites had not celebrated like this since the days of Joshua son of Nun, since the days when they crossed the Jordan river and experienced the most amazing miracles, they've never celebrated like this and these people weren't even born then, this was hundreds of years gone and so they had been born into fairly humdrum drab existence, they're just going through the motions of their life and suddenly they were beginning to see their eyes were open, their hearts were open to begin to see the reality of what God was doing and what he was doing amongst them and they had not celebrated like they celebrated on that day since the days of Joshua. And so there was a real revival coming in the hearts of people, they've never known anything except the ordinariness and the struggle of life and then they've been caught up in this great project to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and then by surprise on the back of that rebuilding project, God visited them and renewed them and restored them and empowered them by his Holy Spirit. And that in a nutshell is really what I want to say today, that the project is not what it's all about, but Jesus is what it's all about. Even the restoration of our lives, it's great to hear testimonies and we've heard many recently powerful testimonies of people who have been baptized and it's so wonderful to see how God is rebuilding lives and rescuing people from addiction and rescuing people from terrible situations and struggle and difficulty and all of that. But ultimately even the rebuilding of our lives is just a prelude to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the discovery of what life is all about. I think it was Ali last week was saying, this isn't plan B, this was plan A. God's plan from the beginning was that we would know the fullness of his Holy Spirit in our lives and so the steps that we take towards it, even the cross, we celebrate, of course we celebrate the cross. The cross is our gateway to life, but that's what it is, a gateway to life. It's an opportunity that we come back, we remind ourselves of what Jesus went through, we remind ourselves of how he suffered, we remind ourselves of how he paid the price, but now because he's paid the price we live, we live full of the Holy Spirit, we live in the fullness of the blessing of God, we live in the freedom of forgiveness and all that that means for us rather than continually going round and round in circles. And so all these things are part of the story, they pave the way to where God has taken us, but he wants to glorify himself and exalt himself, that people wouldn't know MCF here but they would know Jesus, that Jesus would be a household name in this community because that would be our legacy. Not that when a message goes up on Facebook, do you know when you know where you can get a cup of coffee on a Thursday morning? Yeah, the Christian fellowship. People know about the Christian fellowship, but our prayer and our desire is that fire of God would fall so that people would know Jesus is in this place. Remember one man who came to our first church after a few weeks of us being there and he sat at the back of the church and he just stared at the floor, he didn't have any life about him at all and it turned out that he was a very seriously addicted alcoholic and he told me himself, he said he used to drink a bottle of vodka every night and his daughter used to have to carry him to bed. He was in such a state and he ended, he'd been at a Billy Graham meeting many, many years before in the 1960s and he'd given his life to Christ and he'd forgotten all about that and he'd walked away and he'd got, his whole life was in a mess and he ended up in a mental health unit in the local hospital section and he said while he was in there, he said he heard God speak to him, say why don't you come back to me and so he didn't know what to do, how to come back to God so he looked up the church, so he came to the church and he just, life transformed, nobody did anything to him or for him, God just touched his life and he became one of our premier worship leader in the church and he was just like so exciting to see his life transformed in that way but yeah and then, not but, that sounds like a negative doesn't it, but what I got from him was he said, I came back, he said and then people asked me how do you find Jesus, how do you find, so I just told him come with me, I met him at the church, come with me and you'll find him there and so he spent his whole, the whole of the rest of his life, he's still alive, directing people to Jesus because he said I found him, he came to me, he met me in the mental health unit and he called me to himself and now I just tell people to go and find him, you know, and if you can't, if you don't know where to find him go and look in the church. John the Baptist said he must become more, I must become less. Jesus must become more in our experience and in our ministry and in our, in our activity. Jesus must be magnified and glorified and that's why I want to ask the young people to be here today rather than be at specific activities because this is absolutely crucial for you to understand. You might actually think I'm only here because my parents want me to be here or because, you know, because this is, this is what's expected and at our extent Andy said earlier on our vision of God can be like this, shaped like the church, shaped like the youth activity, shaped like whatever we do and yet God is wanting to stretch our understanding and stretch our vision of who he is and what he can do and what he can be in our lives and my prayer for you is that he would open your eyes to see Jesus, not the church, not anything else but to see Jesus. He did it for me when I was 16. I didn't commit myself to a church or a project, I didn't know anything about church, but Jesus called me to himself and when they said do you want to, want to give your life to Christ, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to go and find Jesus. I wanted to be filled with the spirit of Jesus. I wanted to understand who Jesus was. I wanted to follow Jesus. I wanted to, to, for other people to understand who Jesus was. That's all that mattered and that's what our prayer is, that that would be the hallmark of our revival and our renewal that goes on, that Jesus would change our life forever and I can say though I've had 30 plus years in leadership, I'm not a model believer or a champion prayer. From years back people bought me a booklet, this is how you learn to pray. I've never felt like an expert in anything to do with that, my faith has often been weak, struggles have been real, but something changed in my heart 40 years ago that's never changed back. The shape of my heart changed, the shape of my life, my outlook, my perspective, my understanding, my belief, my trust, everything changed and in the meantime it's been wobbly and it's been weak at times and there's been challenges and there's been issues and still there's so much for me to learn at my young age, but Jesus makes all the difference and it's our prayer that we don't just introduce people to what we do. It's great we've got our welcome packs and this is what we do through the week, but all of that are just walls, all of that is just shape, all of that is just a context in which we can meet God and so I would encourage you in your hearts, whether you're young, whether you're old, whether you get it, whether you don't, to be seeking after Jesus and going after Him and nothing else. You don't get points for how many activities you go to in a week or how many names you put on the sign-up sheet, you don't get points for that. It's great if you do it because we need it, it's the walls, but in actual fact that's not the point, it's not the main thing. God wants more for us, there must be more than this and so there is a challenge for all of us, whether we're young or whether we're old, we can't just bypass, you know this is a challenge for leadership, it's a challenge for me because in a way I have a full-time framework for what I do and I can and I can fill my diary with meetings, with projects, with things to do, with people to visit, with spreadsheets to fill in, I can do all of that. I think, wow, I'm a full-time Christian worker. I can do all of that and my heart can be far from where God wants it to be, my heart can be far from Jesus, and my prayer for myself as we respond to this is, is that God let your fire fall on me, that in this, you know there's a lot that I've seen in life, there's a lot that we've experienced, there's a lot to go back over, but yet looking forward that's what I want it to be, that's where I want to be, going forward, that's where we want to see the fire of God. I want to just tell stories of the past, stories of the past are important because they remind us of what God has done and how, how far we've come, but if we don't have anything, don't have any vision or hope or expectation for the future that the fire of God will fall, then we're going to, we're going to fail, we're going to, we're going to lose energy, we're going to run out of steam. When it comes to the nine o'clock meeting on the 13th of November or whatever it is, we're going to think, oh again, there needs to be that. And there's two categories of people, maybe you've never known what it is to give your heart to Jesus, maybe you've known, maybe no church, maybe you know, maybe you're trying your best, you're trying your best to to work it out, you're trying your best to, to give yourself, to build some religious walls around your life so that you can feel like a better person and you can feel like you've got things in order, but you've never known what it is to give your heart to the Lord completely. You've never encountered Jesus and the power of His love and that is crucial for you today, and if that is you today, don't leave this place without reaching out to Him. And there are those of us who do know, but we feel maybe it's all behind us, we knew that once, we're nostalgic. One of the things that was brought up at the conference last week that we were at was the issue of nostalgia, how easy it is to be nostalgic. For those of us of a certain age, there were exciting times in the 1980s, 1990s, the things that happened in the church. It's very easy to think, oh let's go back to that, but the whole point is not going back to that. It's about looking forward, about looking forward to what God can do in 2025, 2026, 2030. What stories are we going to tell then? Cornelius was praying this morning, don't mind me mentioning you, we were praying and he was saying, you know we've seen moves of God, we've seen Pensacola, we've seen Toronto, we've seen what God did in Mozambique, and yet there's a sense, there's a hunger for God to do something new and fresh here now. That's what we want. We need the stories of Pensacola and Toronto and Mozambique and all of that to encourage us and strengthen our faith and to focus our minds, but we're not just going to celebrate what that was. We're going to step into what God has for us, and it's much, much more than a building project. It's much, much more than a church with two services. It's much, much more than planting a church or whatever we do in the future. It's more than all of that. It's that the fire of God will fall, and so maybe you're not sure about what it all means for you now. We can be pleased about it. We can be pleased about what God is doing, but we don't know how we fit in. God is wanting to touch you with fire. God wants to touch your heart with fire, for you to see things, and His Word is absolutely relevant. We're like this. We've got God. We love Him. He's powerful. He's faithful to us. He does good things for us, but there's so much more, and He wants to stretch our vision, stretch our understanding, stretch our experience. Sometimes we're nervous of that word, experience. God wants to stretch our experience of Him, our experience of His love. Some of us can think back many, many years to times when we've really encountered the presence and power of God and the overwhelming love of Jesus, and yet it feels like it's all the way past. God wants to touch you again with those things, that you would have a testimony that we wouldn't be able to just say, does anybody have a 60-second testimony? Because it would throw the whole program out because of our experience of God, so we need to be hungry for Him. And so as we return, maybe the worship team could come back. Think about what this is. Lord, we're thankful, thankful, so thankful for what you're doing in our midst, so thankful for the shape of the church, thankful that we can have two services, thankful that we've got a building project, thank you that those things are coming together, but Lord, there must be more, there is more. Lord, let your fire fall, and what I want you to do is not just broaden this response, but look into your own heart. Like I said, young or old, whatever your circumstances, whatever the hang-ups, whatever the issues, whatever the things that are making you hesitate, bring it all to God. Lay it all out before Him and say, Lord, burn it up. Let your fire fall on the offering of my life. May I know you. Maybe you don't feel like you know Him. There's not a million miles, He's not a million miles away. Just reach out to Him, reach out to Him now as we respond. And if you want to come here, come forward, someone to pray with you, someone to help you, someone to encourage you, do that because we'd be more than happy and the space is here. Just come as we worship as Jonathan leads us and the team. Come and we will pray together and God's fire will fall upon us. Amen.

El DEL APRETANDO EL OJETE Y SI NO NOS ENFADAMOS 267 Temporada 8  (Síguenos en twitter @ysino_podcast)12/05/25TITULARESEl Análisis de la jornada. ELDENSE VS MÁLAGA CF    ( 1 - 0  )-Resumen (La Crónica con Juankar) (Estadísticas ) -Boqueroncito y CATETO. -Rueda de prensa Post partido.  https://www.merchanendirecto.es/malaga-cf/pellicer-si-hubiesemos-jugado-en-la-rosaleda-esto-no-se-nos-escapa/-Posición en la tabla. Un día con Al Thani.Dardos cruzados entre AJ y la APA https://www.merchanendirecto.es/malaga-cf/cruce-de-dardos-entre-la-apa-y-el-administrador-no-buscan-la-transparencia-y-usted-es-como-un-mal-defensa/https://www.malagahoy.es/malaga_cf/administrador-judicial-contraataca-accionistas-minoritarios-malaga-transparencia_0_2003879029.html?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=deportesmalagaAL THANI en X:  CANSINO  Desinformación deportiva. (En DD seguimos sacándole punta al periodismo deportivo malagueño)Pablo Arriaza renueva con el MCF hasta 2027 (1 año en el filial y otro en el 1 equipo)CD Nerja se suscribe al Acuerdo Marco.APRETANDO EL MCF FEM -> vs Málaga CF Femenino  (    -   )  ATL. MALAGUEÑO -> R. Jaén vs Atlético Malagueño vs  (  1 - 3  ) V Debatiremos en el Debate Malaguista.                               -Hoy en el Debate Malaguista.La próxima jornadaMÁLAGA CF VS SPORTING H:21:00 D:17 SÁB M:MAY

Welcome to this week's message from our church, right here in the heart of our community. Today, Cornelius shared a powerful reflection on legacy, blessing, and the unwavering power of belief, drawing inspiration from the biblical account of Jacob's final blessings to his grandsons, Manasseh and Ephraim. Cornelius began with a relatable anecdote, a momentary scare involving a 97-year-old aunt who mistakenly believed she was nearing the end of her life. This lighthearted opening served as a poignant parallel to the main narrative: Jacob, at the ripe age of 147, propped up in bed, ready to impart his final words to his son Joseph and his grandsons. What do you say at the end of a long life? What words of impact can you leave for the next generation? Cornelius pondered this question, highlighting the significance of Jacob's impending blessing upon Joseph's sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. He poignantly recalled the recent passing of his own father, underscoring the weight and potential significance of such final pronouncements. While acknowledging the length of Genesis chapter 48, the passage detailing this scene, Cornelius focused on the serene and profound nature of the encounter. He referenced Rembrandt's 350-year-old painting depicting Jacob blessing the two grandsons, capturing the essence of this pivotal moment. What is the lasting inheritance, the ultimate blessing, one can bestow upon the generations to come? Cornelius then delved into key aspects of Jacob's final words. Firstly, Jacob reminisced about the loss of Rachel, his beloved wife, a deeply significant event in his life. Secondly, he recalled his transformative encounter with God at Bethel, a moment that irrevocably shaped his journey. Meeting God, Cornelius affirmed, changes everything. Thirdly, Jacob spoke of the "walk" of Abraham and Isaac, emphasizing the foundational faith of their lineage. Here, Cornelius drew a powerful connection to the defining characteristic of Abraham's life: his unwavering belief in God. "Abraham believed God," Cornelius declared, emphasizing the profound simplicity and power of this statement. He encouraged each listener to personalize it: "Cornelius believed God." This act of faith, he asserted, is what unlocks God's promises. He seamlessly transitioned to the teachings of Jesus, highlighting the central role of belief in the New Testament. He cited John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." Amen. Cornelius illustrated this further with the stories of Jairus, whose daughter had died (Mark 5:21-43), and Martha, grieving the loss of her brother Lazarus (John 11:17-44). In both instances, Jesus's response centered on the imperative of belief: "Just believe," and "I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe this?" This emphasis on belief extends to us today, Cornelius affirmed. God has a plan, purpose, promises, and blessings for each individual, especially new believers, and for the church as a whole, mentioning his personal connection to the promises for "MCF" (presumably the church's initials). He passionately prayed for the people of Jordan, Thorpe, and Batemore, urging the congregation to believe in God's power to save. Addressing potential doubts, Cornelius encouraged listeners to "leave your buts out," echoing Abraham's unwavering faith even when faced with seemingly impossible circumstances – receiving the promise of a son at the age of 100. Abraham believed, Cornelius reiterated. Moving on to the concept of blessing, Cornelius offered a practical definition: "empowered to prosper." God doesn't just hand out provisions; He equips us with the means, talents, and opportunities to thrive. He wants to bless us abundantly. Quoting Psalm 23:6: "Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life," Cornelius shared personal experiences from Mozambique and Sheffield, testifying to the continuous flow of God's blessings through all seasons of life. Cornelius outlined three pillars that define this blessing: God looks after us, He protects us, and He leads us. This comprehensive care brings peace into our lives, a vital message, particularly for new Christians. However, he acknowledged that this doesn't equate to an easy life. Drawing on his three decades of experience in Mozambique, he recounted tales of war, famine, and death, moments where coping felt impossible. Yet, in those very moments, God's promise held true. He then shared the powerful words of Isaiah 41:13: "For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you." This verse, Cornelius revealed, provided immense strength in navigating life's challenges, likening life's difficulties to a dense bush where the path forward is unclear. God's promise is to take us by the hand and guide us through. Contrasting God's life-giving nature with the destructive intentions of the enemy, Cornelius quoted John 10:10: "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." It is1 through Jesus, Cornelius emphasized, that we receive true blessing and step into the abundant life God has promised, a life unique to each individual. He acknowledged the reality of "curses" and hardships that can hinder blessing, particularly within the local community of Jordan, Thorpe, and Batemore, drawing parallels to the hardships he witnessed in Africa. These negative forces, he explained, aim to diminish faith and prevent progress. Yet, the answer remains the same: Jesus. Through Jesus, we can overcome these obstacles. Returning to the narrative of Jacob, Cornelius referenced a 1250 Middle Ages depiction of the blessing, highlighting the unusual detail of Jacob crossing his hands. This detail, he explained, is significant to the story. Jacob, partially blind, was guided to place his hands on Manasseh, the firstborn, and Ephraim, the second. However, intentionally, Jacob crossed his arms, placing his right hand, the hand of greater blessing, on Ephraim, and his left on Manasseh. Cornelius explained that the names themselves hold meaning related to Joseph's journey. Manasseh, meaning "forget," symbolized Joseph's overcoming of past hardships and the loss of his father's household through the birth of his son. Ephraim, meaning "fruitful," signified God's blessing of productivity and prosperity in the land of Joseph's affliction. By crossing his hands, Jacob prophetically reversed the natural order. Affliction, symbolized by the firstborn, Manasseh, was moving backward, while prosperity and fruitfulness, symbolized by Ephraim, were moving forward. "Your pain is past," Cornelius declared, interpreting Jacob's action. "Your time of prosperity has come." This blessing, he asserted, is for us too. Even in times of pain and hardship, Cornelius reminded the congregation, God is present, echoing the recurring statement in the story of Joseph: "God was with him." Just as God took Joseph through the pit, slavery, and prison, He takes us by the hand through our difficulties. The message of Genesis 48, Cornelius concluded, is one of hope: we will come out of our afflictions and difficulties. God has a blessing, a plan, and a purpose for our lives, and He will bring it to pass. The key, however, is to believe. Bible References: Genesis 48: The entire chapter detailing Jacob's blessing of Manasseh and Ephraim. John 3:16: The core message of salvation through belief in Jesus Christ. Mark 5:21-43: The account of Jairus's daughter being raised from the dead through Jesus's power and Jairus's belief. John 11:17-44: The story of Lazarus's resurrection and Jesus's dialogue with Martha about belief and eternal life. Psalm 23:6: A declaration of God's continuous goodness and mercy. Isaiah 41:13: God's promise of help and reassurance in times of fear. John 10:10: Jesus's purpose to bring abundant life, contrasting with the thief's destructive intentions. Transcript Jesus Christ amen The first one is a little story that happened a few months ago. We got a text message from Sarah's auntie who was 97 and she was in hospital and she said I'm dying, I just want to say thank you for everything you've done and I want to say goodbye. And that was it. So Sarah was quite shocked. She got a bit upset about it. But then half an hour later she got a message saying from Seth George saying there's nothing wrong with her, she's in hospital for the very first time and she thinks she's dying because she's coming out. But our story today is a bit like that. Joseph was called to his father as his father was dying. So his father was propped up in bed and Joseph went to his father to hear the last words he had to say. So Joseph came to his father, hang on, came to Jacob. Jacob was propped up and there you are at the end of your life. Jacob was 147 years. What do you say at the end of your life? You have a few words still maybe when you are dying. Where is the next generation? His son and his two grandsons and Joseph sort of considered Joseph as the first born and now he is going to say something. What do you say for the next generation? How can you still impact the next generation? Your son or your grandson? My dad died last year, he was 90. He died suddenly so there were not many words said anymore. But if you have the time, I'm sure Jeff would have some words to say. Well, this picture gives a very beautiful scene actually of that chapter 48. I'm not going to read it because it's going to take too long. But that chapter is very, very serene. It's Jacob there with Joseph coming and his son and it is a bit like this. This picture is from Rembrandt, it's 350 years old and it is Rembrandt blessing the two sons Manasseh and Ephraim. That's what the story is about. It's just a part of it. The last blessing of Jacob to his sons. What do you give your last generation? Now when we read that chapter 48, we can extract a few things. Jacob speaks first of all, he speaks about Rachel dying which was truly a big thing in his life. It was his big love in his life so that was a big thing. But then he speaks about Bethel, that he had that experience with the Lord in Bethel which was a big thing for him. Meeting the Lord in Bethel, it changed his life. When you meet the Lord, I met the Lord and it changed everything. Then the second thing, he talks about the walk of Abraham and Isaac. The walk because there is where it started. We have generations here. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and here he is going to bless Joseph, Manasseh and Ephraim. But he talks about the walk of Abraham. If we think about the walk of Abraham, it was amazing. Abraham had such a life. The whole of Genesis, what we read about Abraham obeying God, being called by God, receiving covenants, promises and he received the promise that he would get a son. But if I think about that whole and read that whole scene of Abraham, what really touches me and what I really take away from it is the next slide. Abraham believed God. From all of Genesis, I think the most important for all of us, Abraham believed God. It's so powerful. You can put your own name in there, you know. Cornelius believed God. I want that, you know, for everything. I want to believe God for his promises. For everything he's spoken to me. For the word of God. I want to believe every word of it. I do believe it, but sometimes I fail. I want to believe it. Everything he did. And then we can take it forward to Jesus because Jesus really he encouraged and spoke a lot about just belief. Just John 3 16 is what? John 3 16. Whoever believes, whoever believes will have eternal life. Amen. When we believe. And there's lots of those stories. When Jairus came, his daughter had died. And he came through the crowds to Jesus. And there he said, Jesus, it's too late. You don't need to come anymore. Jesus turned around. What did he say? Just believe. When Martha came towards Jesus because her brother had died. And there he came and he said, if you would have been here, he wouldn't have died. What did he say? I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe, Martha? She said, yes, I believe. Again, believe. To trust him. And that we can take forward to us today. What about your promises, the promises you have? Maybe you haven't, you're new, you're a new believer. God has a plan and purpose for your life. Amen. God has promises, has blessings for you. We're going to talk a little bit about those blessings. But as well, God has blessings for the church, for MCF. I pray at 146, I love the promises God has for this church. Great things are happening. And they're ahead of us. Do you believe? Do you believe? Hallelujah. Only by faith we will get those promises. They will, like Abraham, like Abraham, those promises came to pass. Like today, because Abraham has moved away, Abraham is in heaven. We are here today. It's up to us now. Do we believe? Those promises for Jordan, Thorpe and Batemore, for the people of Jordan, Thorpe and Batemore. God will save each one of them. We pray for them. Do you believe? You see maybe many buts, buts, we see lots of buts. But leave your buts out. Like Abraham, Abraham was 100 when he got the promise that he would receive a son. He was 90, but he got it when he was 100. Do you think that was normal? You know? Jeff, Jeff, you're going to get a son. So like, Pauline, Pauline. Abraham believed. Amen. We'll move on to the next slide. Blessing, because God has blessings for us when we believe. God has blessings for us. Now, just the definition, there are many definitions of blessing, but a good one is empowered to prosper. God wants to empower us to prosper. He wants to give you a net to go fishing and say, on your way now. He doesn't want to give you just a load of money or a load of fish. No, he wants to give you a job and the rest of it and the gifts and talents and say, on your way now. He wants to bless you. And blessings will be all over you. If God says, I bless you. Gil, next slide. As God says, I bless you. He will bless you. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. It doesn't stop. When I went to Mozambique, I had seen God's blessing on my life. And there we were in Mozambique, among the poorest of the poor. And I thought, maybe it stops now. No, it didn't stop. Now we're here in Sheffield and I think, is this the end? No, it isn't. No, it continues. All the days of my life. All the days of your life. It doesn't stop. Amen. Next slide. So there are three pillars which define that blessing. And this is really like, I look after you. He wants to provide for us. He wants to protect you. And he wants to lead you. It is really a full package of peace upon your life. And I think especially new believers, new Christians need to hear that. God is really with you. God really loves you. And God really wants to bless you. He wants to look after you. He wants to protect you. And he wants to lead you. Does it mean that life is easy? No. Life has lots of difficulties. I lived three decades in Mozambique and I've been through lots of difficulties. And I can tell stories of war, of famine, of death. We've been through a lot. That you think like, I cannot cope with this. I cannot cope with this. And he said, no you can. Can you do the next one? I am the Lord your God who takes you with the right hand. And says to you, do not fear I will help you. Now this verse might help someone today. Because it helped me to cope and to come through life. He says, I will take you by the hand. And I say, yes Lord I need to be taken by the hand. Because I cannot cope, I cannot cope. I take you by the hand. And he says, don't fear. Keep on going, keep on going. I will help you. And life feels like a thick bush sometimes. And we don't see a way forward. But he said, I'll take you through. It's okay. You're going through. Keep going, keep going. Next one. John 10, 10. We already spoke about John 3, 16. And already, Lara already mentioned this as well. The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. But Jesus came to give life, life more abundantly. It is all about Jesus. It is really Jesus who will help us, bless us. And take us into the life he has promised us. And the promise he has for you and the life he has for you is different than the one that is for you. And different from the one that is for me. We all have a plan and purpose. But there is another side as well. Next one. The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. There are lots of difficulties in life. There are a lot of, there is curses running through. When we look at Jordan, Thorpe and Batemore. When I come from Africa and seen hardships and difficulties. I've seen curses operating. I know that curses are operating in people's life and holds people from being blessed. But again and again I say, Jesus, you need Jesus in your life. And through Jesus, you will come through. You will come through. Don't want to talk much about curses. But know that they are there. And they will hold you, withhold you from moving forward. And the worst thing is, it wants to diminish your faith. You know, it wants to weaken your faith that you will give up. That you will not believe. That you will give up. Amen. Next one. I'm going back. Still got three minutes. I'm going back to Jacob. This picture is about from 1250. So this is a really old picture from the Middle Ages. And it shows us very clearly Jacob blessing Manasseh and Ephraim. Amazing that they made this picture. And do you see something unusual here? It's got the hands crossed. Well that's in the story as well. Because Jacob was a little blind. And Jacob asked the boys to come forward. Manasseh and Ephraim. And now Manasseh and Ephraim, those two names, they speak about the life of Joseph. Now Manasseh was the first born. Next one. Manasseh was the first born. And when he was born, Joseph said, God has made me forget all my hardships and all my father's household. He has forget by having a new son, having born a son, new life. He said, God, in the life, in the land of my affliction, he has given me a son. He gives me joy. He has forgotten, it has forgotten my hardships. That's the name Manasseh. So Joseph really was dealing with his past. This was his past. And then he got a second son. Next one. And that's Ephraim. And then he said, now God has made me fruitful. God has made me fruitful, productive, prosperous in the land of my affliction. So now there is a sort of healing taking place in Joseph, in those two boys. First it is really the affliction and the pain. But the second one, now he sort of feels like prosperity has come to my life, blessing has come into my life. That's the second one. And then, next one, we go back to this picture. Then he is going to bless those two sons and normally the first born would get the blessing, the first blessing and would get a double portion of the inheritance. But in this case, Jacob, he turned them around. He turned those arms around. And he makes the first born, he makes the first, the second and the second, the first born. Because affliction is now going backwards. Prosperity, productiveness, fruitfulness is going forward. And by crossing them he said, your pain is past. Prophetically, I believe, he said, your pain has passed. Your time of prosperity has come. And I bless you two boys with this blessing. Your affliction, your pain is passing. But now prosperity, productivity, blessing has come. So he has turned it around and that is often our lives. You know, if you feel pain and you are going through hardship, know that God is in that hardship. Because even Joseph, in his difficulties, Joseph, when he went into the pit, when he went into slavery, when he went into prison, it says it again and again, God was with him. And he prospered. Right there, God is with him. Like I said, even in your difficulties, God says, I take you by the hand and will take you through. So even when you go through difficulties, know you are coming out. You are coming out. You are not going to stay there. And that is really the message of today of this Genesis 48. That you will come out of your affliction. You will come out of your difficulties. God has a blessing for you. He has a plan and purpose for your life. And he will make it come to pass. But believe. You must believe. And that is the story of today. And that is two minutes past quarter two. Hallelujah.

Welcome to this week's message from our church, right here in the heart of our community. Today, Cornelius shared a powerful reflection on legacy, blessing, and the unwavering power of belief, drawing inspiration from the biblical account of Jacob's final blessings to his grandsons, Manasseh and Ephraim. Cornelius began with a relatable anecdote, a momentary scare involving a 97-year-old aunt who mistakenly believed she was nearing the end of her life. This lighthearted opening served as a poignant parallel to the main narrative: Jacob, at the ripe age of 147, propped up in bed, ready to impart his final words to his son Joseph and his grandsons. What do you say at the end of a long life? What words of impact can you leave for the next generation? Cornelius pondered this question, highlighting the significance of Jacob's impending blessing upon Joseph's sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. He poignantly recalled the recent passing of his own father, underscoring the weight and potential significance of such final pronouncements. While acknowledging the length of Genesis chapter 48, the passage detailing this scene, Cornelius focused on the serene and profound nature of the encounter. He referenced Rembrandt's 350-year-old painting depicting Jacob blessing the two grandsons, capturing the essence of this pivotal moment. What is the lasting inheritance, the ultimate blessing, one can bestow upon the generations to come? Cornelius then delved into key aspects of Jacob's final words. Firstly, Jacob reminisced about the loss of Rachel, his beloved wife, a deeply significant event in his life. Secondly, he recalled his transformative encounter with God at Bethel, a moment that irrevocably shaped his journey. Meeting God, Cornelius affirmed, changes everything. Thirdly, Jacob spoke of the "walk" of Abraham and Isaac, emphasizing the foundational faith of their lineage. Here, Cornelius drew a powerful connection to the defining characteristic of Abraham's life: his unwavering belief in God. "Abraham believed God," Cornelius declared, emphasizing the profound simplicity and power of this statement. He encouraged each listener to personalize it: "Cornelius believed God." This act of faith, he asserted, is what unlocks God's promises. He seamlessly transitioned to the teachings of Jesus, highlighting the central role of belief in the New Testament. He cited John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." Amen. Cornelius illustrated this further with the stories of Jairus, whose daughter had died (Mark 5:21-43), and Martha, grieving the loss of her brother Lazarus (John 11:17-44). In both instances, Jesus's response centered on the imperative of belief: "Just believe," and "I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe this?" This emphasis on belief extends to us today, Cornelius affirmed. God has a plan, purpose, promises, and blessings for each individual, especially new believers, and for the church as a whole, mentioning his personal connection to the promises for "MCF" (presumably the church's initials). He passionately prayed for the people of Jordan, Thorpe, and Batemore, urging the congregation to believe in God's power to save. Addressing potential doubts, Cornelius encouraged listeners to "leave your buts out," echoing Abraham's unwavering faith even when faced with seemingly impossible circumstances – receiving the promise of a son at the age of 100. Abraham believed, Cornelius reiterated. Moving on to the concept of blessing, Cornelius offered a practical definition: "empowered to prosper." God doesn't just hand out provisions; He equips us with the means, talents, and opportunities to thrive. He wants to bless us abundantly. Quoting Psalm 23:6: "Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life," Cornelius shared personal experiences from Mozambique and Sheffield, testifying to the continuous flow of God's blessings through all seasons of life. Cornelius outlined three pillars that define this blessing: God looks after us, He protects us, and He leads us. This comprehensive care brings peace into our lives, a vital message, particularly for new Christians. However, he acknowledged that this doesn't equate to an easy life. Drawing on his three decades of experience in Mozambique, he recounted tales of war, famine, and death, moments where coping felt impossible. Yet, in those very moments, God's promise held true. He then shared the powerful words of Isaiah 41:13: "For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you." This verse, Cornelius revealed, provided immense strength in navigating life's challenges, likening life's difficulties to a dense bush where the path forward is unclear. God's promise is to take us by the hand and guide us through. Contrasting God's life-giving nature with the destructive intentions of the enemy, Cornelius quoted John 10:10: "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." It is1 through Jesus, Cornelius emphasized, that we receive true blessing and step into the abundant life God has promised, a life unique to each individual. He acknowledged the reality of "curses" and hardships that can hinder blessing, particularly within the local community of Jordan, Thorpe, and Batemore, drawing parallels to the hardships he witnessed in Africa. These negative forces, he explained, aim to diminish faith and prevent progress. Yet, the answer remains the same: Jesus. Through Jesus, we can overcome these obstacles. Returning to the narrative of Jacob, Cornelius referenced a 1250 Middle Ages depiction of the blessing, highlighting the unusual detail of Jacob crossing his hands. This detail, he explained, is significant to the story. Jacob, partially blind, was guided to place his hands on Manasseh, the firstborn, and Ephraim, the second. However, intentionally, Jacob crossed his arms, placing his right hand, the hand of greater blessing, on Ephraim, and his left on Manasseh. Cornelius explained that the names themselves hold meaning related to Joseph's journey. Manasseh, meaning "forget," symbolized Joseph's overcoming of past hardships and the loss of his father's household through the birth of his son. Ephraim, meaning "fruitful," signified God's blessing of productivity and prosperity in the land of Joseph's affliction. By crossing his hands, Jacob prophetically reversed the natural order. Affliction, symbolized by the firstborn, Manasseh, was moving backward, while prosperity and fruitfulness, symbolized by Ephraim, were moving forward. "Your pain is past," Cornelius declared, interpreting Jacob's action. "Your time of prosperity has come." This blessing, he asserted, is for us too. Even in times of pain and hardship, Cornelius reminded the congregation, God is present, echoing the recurring statement in the story of Joseph: "God was with him." Just as God took Joseph through the pit, slavery, and prison, He takes us by the hand through our difficulties. The message of Genesis 48, Cornelius concluded, is one of hope: we will come out of our afflictions and difficulties. God has a blessing, a plan, and a purpose for our lives, and He will bring it to pass. The key, however, is to believe. Bible References: Genesis 48: The entire chapter detailing Jacob's blessing of Manasseh and Ephraim. John 3:16: The core message of salvation through belief in Jesus Christ. Mark 5:21-43: The account of Jairus's daughter being raised from the dead through Jesus's power and Jairus's belief. John 11:17-44: The story of Lazarus's resurrection and Jesus's dialogue with Martha about belief and eternal life. Psalm 23:6: A declaration of God's continuous goodness and mercy. Isaiah 41:13: God's promise of help and reassurance in times of fear. John 10:10: Jesus's purpose to bring abundant life, contrasting with the thief's destructive intentions. Transcript Jesus Christ amen The first one is a little story that happened a few months ago. We got a text message from Sarah's auntie who was 97 and she was in hospital and she said I'm dying, I just want to say thank you for everything you've done and I want to say goodbye. And that was it. So Sarah was quite shocked. She got a bit upset about it. But then half an hour later she got a message saying from Seth George saying there's nothing wrong with her, she's in hospital for the very first time and she thinks she's dying because she's coming out. But our story today is a bit like that. Joseph was called to his father as his father was dying. So his father was propped up in bed and Joseph went to his father to hear the last words he had to say. So Joseph came to his father, hang on, came to Jacob. Jacob was propped up and there you are at the end of your life. Jacob was 147 years. What do you say at the end of your life? You have a few words still maybe when you are dying. Where is the next generation? His son and his two grandsons and Joseph sort of considered Joseph as the first born and now he is going to say something. What do you say for the next generation? How can you still impact the next generation? Your son or your grandson? My dad died last year, he was 90. He died suddenly so there were not many words said anymore. But if you have the time, I'm sure Jeff would have some words to say. Well, this picture gives a very beautiful scene actually of that chapter 48. I'm not going to read it because it's going to take too long. But that chapter is very, very serene. It's Jacob there with Joseph coming and his son and it is a bit like this. This picture is from Rembrandt, it's 350 years old and it is Rembrandt blessing the two sons Manasseh and Ephraim. That's what the story is about. It's just a part of it. The last blessing of Jacob to his sons. What do you give your last generation? Now when we read that chapter 48, we can extract a few things. Jacob speaks first of all, he speaks about Rachel dying which was truly a big thing in his life. It was his big love in his life so that was a big thing. But then he speaks about Bethel, that he had that experience with the Lord in Bethel which was a big thing for him. Meeting the Lord in Bethel, it changed his life. When you meet the Lord, I met the Lord and it changed everything. Then the second thing, he talks about the walk of Abraham and Isaac. The walk because there is where it started. We have generations here. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and here he is going to bless Joseph, Manasseh and Ephraim. But he talks about the walk of Abraham. If we think about the walk of Abraham, it was amazing. Abraham had such a life. The whole of Genesis, what we read about Abraham obeying God, being called by God, receiving covenants, promises and he received the promise that he would get a son. But if I think about that whole and read that whole scene of Abraham, what really touches me and what I really take away from it is the next slide. Abraham believed God. From all of Genesis, I think the most important for all of us, Abraham believed God. It's so powerful. You can put your own name in there, you know. Cornelius believed God. I want that, you know, for everything. I want to believe God for his promises. For everything he's spoken to me. For the word of God. I want to believe every word of it. I do believe it, but sometimes I fail. I want to believe it. Everything he did. And then we can take it forward to Jesus because Jesus really he encouraged and spoke a lot about just belief. Just John 3 16 is what? John 3 16. Whoever believes, whoever believes will have eternal life. Amen. When we believe. And there's lots of those stories. When Jairus came, his daughter had died. And he came through the crowds to Jesus. And there he said, Jesus, it's too late. You don't need to come anymore. Jesus turned around. What did he say? Just believe. When Martha came towards Jesus because her brother had died. And there he came and he said, if you would have been here, he wouldn't have died. What did he say? I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe, Martha? She said, yes, I believe. Again, believe. To trust him. And that we can take forward to us today. What about your promises, the promises you have? Maybe you haven't, you're new, you're a new believer. God has a plan and purpose for your life. Amen. God has promises, has blessings for you. We're going to talk a little bit about those blessings. But as well, God has blessings for the church, for MCF. I pray at 146, I love the promises God has for this church. Great things are happening. And they're ahead of us. Do you believe? Do you believe? Hallelujah. Only by faith we will get those promises. They will, like Abraham, like Abraham, those promises came to pass. Like today, because Abraham has moved away, Abraham is in heaven. We are here today. It's up to us now. Do we believe? Those promises for Jordan, Thorpe and Batemore, for the people of Jordan, Thorpe and Batemore. God will save each one of them. We pray for them. Do you believe? You see maybe many buts, buts, we see lots of buts. But leave your buts out. Like Abraham, Abraham was 100 when he got the promise that he would receive a son. He was 90, but he got it when he was 100. Do you think that was normal? You know? Jeff, Jeff, you're going to get a son. So like, Pauline, Pauline. Abraham believed. Amen. We'll move on to the next slide. Blessing, because God has blessings for us when we believe. God has blessings for us. Now, just the definition, there are many definitions of blessing, but a good one is empowered to prosper. God wants to empower us to prosper. He wants to give you a net to go fishing and say, on your way now. He doesn't want to give you just a load of money or a load of fish. No, he wants to give you a job and the rest of it and the gifts and talents and say, on your way now. He wants to bless you. And blessings will be all over you. If God says, I bless you. Gil, next slide. As God says, I bless you. He will bless you. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. It doesn't stop. When I went to Mozambique, I had seen God's blessing on my life. And there we were in Mozambique, among the poorest of the poor. And I thought, maybe it stops now. No, it didn't stop. Now we're here in Sheffield and I think, is this the end? No, it isn't. No, it continues. All the days of my life. All the days of your life. It doesn't stop. Amen. Next slide. So there are three pillars which define that blessing. And this is really like, I look after you. He wants to provide for us. He wants to protect you. And he wants to lead you. It is really a full package of peace upon your life. And I think especially new believers, new Christians need to hear that. God is really with you. God really loves you. And God really wants to bless you. He wants to look after you. He wants to protect you. And he wants to lead you. Does it mean that life is easy? No. Life has lots of difficulties. I lived three decades in Mozambique and I've been through lots of difficulties. And I can tell stories of war, of famine, of death. We've been through a lot. That you think like, I cannot cope with this. I cannot cope with this. And he said, no you can. Can you do the next one? I am the Lord your God who takes you with the right hand. And says to you, do not fear I will help you. Now this verse might help someone today. Because it helped me to cope and to come through life. He says, I will take you by the hand. And I say, yes Lord I need to be taken by the hand. Because I cannot cope, I cannot cope. I take you by the hand. And he says, don't fear. Keep on going, keep on going. I will help you. And life feels like a thick bush sometimes. And we don't see a way forward. But he said, I'll take you through. It's okay. You're going through. Keep going, keep going. Next one. John 10, 10. We already spoke about John 3, 16. And already, Lara already mentioned this as well. The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. But Jesus came to give life, life more abundantly. It is all about Jesus. It is really Jesus who will help us, bless us. And take us into the life he has promised us. And the promise he has for you and the life he has for you is different than the one that is for you. And different from the one that is for me. We all have a plan and purpose. But there is another side as well. Next one. The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. There are lots of difficulties in life. There are a lot of, there is curses running through. When we look at Jordan, Thorpe and Batemore. When I come from Africa and seen hardships and difficulties. I've seen curses operating. I know that curses are operating in people's life and holds people from being blessed. But again and again I say, Jesus, you need Jesus in your life. And through Jesus, you will come through. You will come through. Don't want to talk much about curses. But know that they are there. And they will hold you, withhold you from moving forward. And the worst thing is, it wants to diminish your faith. You know, it wants to weaken your faith that you will give up. That you will not believe. That you will give up. Amen. Next one. I'm going back. Still got three minutes. I'm going back to Jacob. This picture is about from 1250. So this is a really old picture from the Middle Ages. And it shows us very clearly Jacob blessing Manasseh and Ephraim. Amazing that they made this picture. And do you see something unusual here? It's got the hands crossed. Well that's in the story as well. Because Jacob was a little blind. And Jacob asked the boys to come forward. Manasseh and Ephraim. And now Manasseh and Ephraim, those two names, they speak about the life of Joseph. Now Manasseh was the first born. Next one. Manasseh was the first born. And when he was born, Joseph said, God has made me forget all my hardships and all my father's household. He has forget by having a new son, having born a son, new life. He said, God, in the life, in the land of my affliction, he has given me a son. He gives me joy. He has forgotten, it has forgotten my hardships. That's the name Manasseh. So Joseph really was dealing with his past. This was his past. And then he got a second son. Next one. And that's Ephraim. And then he said, now God has made me fruitful. God has made me fruitful, productive, prosperous in the land of my affliction. So now there is a sort of healing taking place in Joseph, in those two boys. First it is really the affliction and the pain. But the second one, now he sort of feels like prosperity has come to my life, blessing has come into my life. That's the second one. And then, next one, we go back to this picture. Then he is going to bless those two sons and normally the first born would get the blessing, the first blessing and would get a double portion of the inheritance. But in this case, Jacob, he turned them around. He turned those arms around. And he makes the first born, he makes the first, the second and the second, the first born. Because affliction is now going backwards. Prosperity, productiveness, fruitfulness is going forward. And by crossing them he said, your pain is past. Prophetically, I believe, he said, your pain has passed. Your time of prosperity has come. And I bless you two boys with this blessing. Your affliction, your pain is passing. But now prosperity, productivity, blessing has come. So he has turned it around and that is often our lives. You know, if you feel pain and you are going through hardship, know that God is in that hardship. Because even Joseph, in his difficulties, Joseph, when he went into the pit, when he went into slavery, when he went into prison, it says it again and again, God was with him. And he prospered. Right there, God is with him. Like I said, even in your difficulties, God says, I take you by the hand and will take you through. So even when you go through difficulties, know you are coming out. You are coming out. You are not going to stay there. And that is really the message of today of this Genesis 48. That you will come out of your affliction. You will come out of your difficulties. God has a blessing for you. He has a plan and purpose for your life. And he will make it come to pass. But believe. You must believe. And that is the story of today. And that is two minutes past quarter two. Hallelujah.

El DEL ASCENSO DEL AT. MALAGUEÑO Y SI NO NOS ENFADAMOS 266 Temporada 8  (Síguenos en twitter @ysino_podcast)5/05/25TITULARESEl Análisis de la jornada. MÁLAGA CF VS GRANADA CF   ( 1  - 0 )-Resumen (La Crónica con Juankar) (Estadísticas ) -Boqueroncito y CATETO. -Rueda de prensa Post partido.  -Posición en la tabla. Un día con Al Thani.La causa de los Al Thani da otro paso clave: La Audiencia Provincial rechaza los recursos de varios exdirectivos y permite que el caso Al-Thani avance hacia juicio. https://www.laopiniondemalaga.es/malagacf/2025/04/30/malaga-cf-causa-thani-audiencia-provincial-116905960.htmlAL THANI en X:    Desinformación deportiva. (En DD seguimos sacándole punta al periodismo deportivo malagueño)La Liga permitirá con condiciones hacer tres fichajes a equipo que superen el límite salarial.Mediapro dará un partido cada jornada de la segunda división.Inaugurada la nueva tienda del MCF en Larios Nº3.Dioni quiere una renovación de dos años y luego ir renovando de 1 en 1.Aarón Ochoa , al quirófano y adiós al final de temporada con el MCF. (pinzamiento en el tobillo)CD 26 de Febrero suscribe el Acuerdo Marco.AT. Malagueño: FUNES: Loren Juarros nos ha dado la oportunidad de COMPETIR a un nivel más alto.MCF FEM -> Valencia Femenino B vs Málaga CF Femenino  (  2  -  5 ) V ATL. MALAGUEÑO -> Atlético Malagueño vs Atlético Mancha Real  ( 2  - 0  ) V Debatiremos en el Debate Malaguista.                               -Hoy en el Debate Malaguista.  - A debate  Jm viendo a su equipo en la Cartuja, final de la copa del Rey. (posible info sobre cumpleaños del hijo de JM en el estadío.) - La APA  las facturas de algunos gastos a JM. https://www.malagahoy.es/malaga_cf/apa-facturas-administrador-judicial-gastos-malaga_0_2003807882.html?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=socialshare&utm_campaign=desktopLa U televisiva de la temporada pasada (58.840€)Servicios para partidos (188.332€)Servicios de asesoramientos (163.049€)Donaciones entregadas (355.000€)La próxima jornadaELDENSE VS MÁLAGA CF H:18:30 D:11 DOM M:MAY

El DE UNA FLOR LLAMADA CANTERA Y SI NO NOS ENFADAMOS 265 Temporada 8  (Síguenos en twitter @ysino_podcast)22/04/25TITULARESEl Análisis de la jornada. EIBAR VS MÁLAGA CF ( 2  - 2  )-Resumen (La Crónica con Juankar) (Estadísticas ) -Boqueroncito y CATETO. -Rueda de prensa Post partido.  -Posición en la tabla. Un día con Al Thani.AL THANI en X:  (en orden correcto)Dejó la puerta abierta. Se olvidó que estábamos detrás de esto.Hubo un pequeño error… publicado hace años. Nadie se dio cuenta. Pero hoy, es lo único que necesitáis.  Y comenzamos a movernos.Alguien permaneció en silencio durante años. No borraron nada. no avisaron a nadie. Ellos simplemente… observaron. Y ahora, han empezado a hablar.Construiste tu silencio como un muro. Pero alguien dejó una grieta. Ahora, el pánico no es por lo que dije… Es por lo que crees que dijeron. Nadie lo oyó irse. Sin alertas. Sin fugas. Sin señales. Sólo un cambio en el aire. Y ahora se están haciendo la pregunta equivocada: ¿Quien lo vio?  Desinformación deportiva. (En DD seguimos sacándole punta al periodismo deportivo malagueño)La Administración judicial tiene los días contados https://www.malagahoy.es/malaga_cf/administracion-judicial-malaga-cf-dias_0_2003738821.html?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=deportesmalagaMCF FEM -> Cacereño B vs Málaga CF Femenino  (  0 - 2  ) V ATL. MALAGUEÑO -> Atlético Malagueño  (  -   ) V DESCANSADebatiremos en el Debate Malaguista.                               -Hoy en el Debate Malaguista. A debate la primera vuelta del MCF.  Continuidad de Pellicer.La próxima jornadaMÁLAGA CF VS CASTELLÓN H:18:30 D:27 DOM M:ABR

Les invité-e :· Victor Barabino, ATER à l'université de Lorraine ()· Lucie malbos, MCF à l'université de Poitiers () Le film : The Northman (Robert Eggers, 2022) La discussion :· Résumé du film et impressions (1:20)· Les sources textuelles du film et de la légende d'Amleth (6:58)· Langues, noms, animaux des cultures scandinaves (14:17)· L'épée du héros et sa valeur symbolique (21:50)· Les marqueurs d'authenticité du film et le travail de l'archéologue Neil Price (23:05)· Enjeux de pouvoir et de succession (28:10)· Le quotidien d'une société rurale et esclavagiste (31:00)· La mise en scène d'une confrontation entre païens et chrétiens (36:22)· Cosmogonie, rites, imaginaires scandinaves (40:40)· Le duel final (53:57) Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

The rent is too damn high, housing quality standards are far too low, and Tara Raghuveer is doing something about it. Tara is director of Kansas City Tenants, a tenant union which organizes to ensure that everyone in KC has a safe, accessible, and truly affordable home. In this powerful conversation with host Gloria Riviera, Tara explains how the union of more than 10,000 members is fighting against our country’s dysfunctional housing market and standing up for what they truly deserve. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Eric and Alex have featured discussions about complex bioethical concepts around caring for people at the end of life, including voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED), and multiple episodes about the ethical issues surrounding medical aid in dying (MAID). Recently, discussion has emerged about how these issues intertwine in caring for patients with advancing dementia who have stated that they would not want to continue living in that condition: for those with an advanced directive to stop eating and drinking, how do we balance caring for their rational past self and their experiential current self? Should these patients qualify for medical aid in dying medications? And is there a middle path to provide some degree of comfort while also hastening the end of life? To delve into these questions, we spoke with Hope Wechkin, medical director of EvergreenHealth home hospice, who authored an article describing a process of Minimal Comfort Feeding (MCF) for patients who have expressed an interest in not wanting to live with advanced dementia. MCF, which Hope implemented for one of her hospice patients, serves as a middle way between the discomfort to the patient and caregivers of completely withholding food and fluid, and the current practice of comfort feeding only in which food and fluid are routinely offered to patients even in the absence of a symptomatic benefit. We were also joined by Thaddeus Pope, JD and Dr. Joshua Briscoe, to discuss the topic of voluntarily stopping eating and drinking as a potential bridge to access medical aid in dying medications and their respective articles on the topic. We discussed what makes an illness “terminal”, what goes into assessing capacity for an action as simple as requesting something to drink, and whether the TV show Severance illuminates any of these answers. -Theo Slomoff, UCSF Palliative Care Fellow 2024-25 (guest host) Articles referenced in this discussion: “Mr. Smith Has No Mealtimes”: Minimal Comfort Feeding for Patients with Advanced Dementia by Hope Wechkin et al in JPSM Medical Aid in Dying to Avoid Late-Stage Dementia by Thaddeus Pope and Lisa Brodoff in JAGS Law not loopholes: Medical aid in dying for those with dementia also in JAGS by Joshua Briscoe and Eric Widera   Past GeriPal Podcast Episodes on MAID: MAID podcasts https://geripal.org/what-is-going-on-with-maid-in-canada-bill-gardner-leonie-herx-sonu-gaind/ https://geripal.org/conscientous-provision-of-maid-and-abortion-robert-brody-lori-freedman-mara-buchbinder/ https://geripal.org/assisted-dying-podcast-with-lewis-cohen/ https://geripal.org/dilemmas-in-aid-in-dying-podcast-with/   Past GeriPal Podcast Episode about VSED: https://geripal.org/tim-quill-vsed/  

In Illinois, like in other places affected by the War on Drugs, many people are feeling the impacts of incarceration and its negative, prohibitive effects on their futures. In this episode, Richard Wallace, founder of the organization Equity and Transformation (EAT), shares how guaranteed income has proven to be a transformative tool for this kind of systemic disruption. EAT is built on a reparations framework, providing direct cash support for recipients and leading directly to new employment, decreased recidivism, and a whole new form of community — all while setting a precedent for other municipalities to do the same. This episode is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nessa semana temos uma história de aventureiros, megalomania e impérios de papel. O resultado? Uma sucessão de golpes frustrados, alianças improváveis e um impacto que ressoa até hoje. Pegue sua bússola (ou seu mapa de delírios expansionistas) e venha entender como essas expedições chegaram até o BrasilManifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America – Robert E. May"Hunting a Home in Brazil" J. McF. Gastonhttps://archive.org/details/huntinghomeinbra00gast

Émission enregistrée en public le samedi 1er février 2025 au festival Longueur d'ondes (Brest) Les invité-es : Laurent Le Gall, professeur d'histoire à l'université de Brest Mannaïg Thomas, MCF en littérature à l'université de Brest Le livre : Tradition, éd. Anamosa, collection « le mot est faible », 2024. La discussion : Pourquoi questionner la tradition ? (1:00) Tradition, traditionalistes (7:35) … Continue reading "366. Questionner la “Tradition”, avec Laurent Le Gall et Mannaïg Thomas"

L'invité : Stéphane Mourlane, MCF habilité en histoire contemporaine à Aix Marseille université Le livre : Fascisme et Italiens de Marseille. La casa d'Italia, Presses universitaires de Provence, 2024 La discussion : Qu'est-ce que la « Casa d'Italia » ? (1:00) L'immigration italienne à Marseille dans la longue durée (6:00) Immigrés italiens et politisation (14:45) Le fascisme et les émigrés italiens … Continue reading "365. Quand le fascisme italien s'installait à Marseille, avec Stéphane Mourlane"

Les invité-es : Emmanuel Szurek, MCF à l'EHESS, historien de la Turquie Marie Bossaert, MCF à l'Université Clermont-Auvergne, historienne de l'orientalisme Augustin Jomier, historien, MCF à l'Inalco et chercheur à l'Institut de recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain à Tunis Le livre : L'orientalisme en train de se faire. Une enquête collective dans les archives de René Basset, … Continue reading "364. Dans les archives d'un savant colonial"

L'invité : Paul Chopelin, MCF à l'université de Lyon, président de la Société des études robespierristes La discussion : Laurent Cuvelier, La ville captivée, affichage et publicité au XVIIIe s., Flammarion, 2024 (1:00) Robert Darnton, L'humeur révolutionnaire, Gallimard, 2024 (7:25) Pierre Serna, La révolution oubliée. Orléans 1789-1820, Paris, CNRS, 2024 (14:15) Exposition au musée Carnavalet, « Paris 1793-1794. … Continue reading "360. Quoi de neuf sur la Révolution ? avec Paul Chopelin"

In this week's buzzing episode, new updated Amazon FBA fees for 2025, the results of Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024, and reimbursements for coupons for sellers. e're back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10's Principal Brand Evangelist, Carrie Miller. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10's newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. Updates to 2025 fees for Buy with Prime, Multi-Channel Fulfillment, Amazon Warehousing and Distribution, and Supply Chain by Amazon Managed Service Amazon's Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday deal event was its biggest Thanksgiving holiday shopping event ever https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/black-friday-sales-results-amazon-online-shopping Walmart Marketplace Records Record Black Friday-Cyber Monday Sales https://www.pymnts.com/walmart/2024/walmart-marketplace-records-record-black-friday-cyber-monday-sales/ New Feature to Edit Coupon Discounts Sellers are now able to increase discount amounts for active coupons without the need to recreate the coupon. This feature makes it easier for you to manage your promotions and helps you to adjust to changes in inventory levels. Limited-time coupon fee reimbursement for new FBA selection From now through January 31, 2025, sellers will receive an automatic reimbursement of the $0.60-per-redemption coupon fee for coupons on newly launched Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) selection. The promotion applies to FBA offers on products that first became buyable after November 2, 2024. Reimbursements will be automatically disbursed to your Seller Central account by February 28, 2025. Amazon's note on the recent Product Bundling Policy update This episode also introduces new features from Helium 10, including updates to our Profitability Calculator for TikTok influencer promotions, which could be a game-changer for sellers looking to expand their reach. Additionally, we discuss the innovative Listing Builder AI's keyword performance feature, which offers in-depth insights into keyword usage and optimization strategies, empowering sellers to enhance their Amazon product listings effectively. Tune in again next week to stay ahead in the ever-evolving landscape of Amazon, Walmart, and the E-commerce world. In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 00:45 - 2025 Amazon Fees 04:04 - Biggest Ever Black Friday-Cyber Monday 06:22 - Walmart 3P Record Growth 08:21 - Edit Coupon Discounts 09:05 - Coupon Reimbursements 09:55 - Bundling Policy Update 12:20 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts 14:01 - Training Tip: Listing Builder - Keyword Performance ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Carrie Miller: New Amazon fees for 2025, the results of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and reimbursements for coupons for some sellers. All of this and more on this week's episode of the Weekly Buzz. Bradley Sutton: How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the news stories that are going on in the Amazon, Walmart and e-commerce world. We highlight the latest new feature alerts from Helium 10, and we review a training tip of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Now, today, our host is going to be Carrie Miller. So, Carrie, take it away and let us know what's buzzing. Carrie Miller: All right, let's go ahead and get into the first article, which is about Amazon fees that are starting in 2025. So there's some more fees that have come out and there are some increases and there are some discounts in fees. So let's go ahead and go over what was posted in Seller Central. Now, in this first section here, they actually talk a lot about all the things that they've done to improve all these different services over the last year, and so you've got all that information. But then, if you scroll further down, it gets into the nitty gritty details, which is what I wanted to share with you today. And so the first thing that they talk about is AWD, which is Amazon Warehouse Distribution, which they seem to want to incentivize sellers to use AWD. And so here is the update A new AWD smart storage option will provide a 10% discount on your AWD storage fees If you maintain sufficient levels of inventory. This discount brings fees down to as low as 43 cents per cubic foot per month, and Amazon will also separate the AWD processing fee into inbound and outbound processing fees, rather than the current approach, which is charging both together. So these changes are effective April 1st of 2025. And for details you can actually go and there's a link there, and so this should be in your seller central. There's a link to more of details about the fees, all right, so the next one is MCD, which is multi-channel distribution. Okay, so MCD outbound transportation fees will move from a fixed fee to a distance-based fee, and this will lower fees for shorter distances and increase them for longer ones. So inventory replenished into Amazon, though, will not be affected by this change and will continue to be charged a fixed transportation fee that they were before and it will not be distance-based. So these changes are going to be effective April 1st of 2025. And then there's also a link still in seller central that will give you a little bit more details on all of that, if you need more information about that. Carrie Miller: Okay, and then the next part. Here it says we're updating the discounts for sellers who choose the supply chain by Amazon managed services to include 20% off of AWD storage fees and 10% off of AWD storage or transportation fees from AWD to FBA. The managed option for supply chain by Amazon provides a simplified experience where Amazon coordinates the end-to-end supply chain logistics, warehousing and fulfillment and these changes are going to be effective April 1st 2025 also, and then you can go in and get more details on that as well. And then MCF, multi-channel fulfillment. I know a lot of people use this. They're actually going to increase their fees by 3.5% on average and they say this is less than the average of 5.9% that some other carriers use. For units with shipping weights of one pound or less. The fees are actually going to remain unchanged for standard delivery speed and for units that exceed one pound, the fee increase will vary depending on the unit size and weight, and these changes are effective January 15th, so a lot sooner of 2025. And for details about the changes, you can actually go to the little link there that they give in uh, in seller central as well. And then the finally, we're going to talk about buy with prime and any fees there, and it looks like buy with prime there's going to be no increase to the buy with prime service fee and fulfillment fees. For some large standard size units it actually is going to decrease. So they're going to continue to offer the one to two day delivery at rates that are comparable to the three to five day standard delivery rates on other carriers, and so it'll still kind of all be the same, but maybe there will be some discounts, so that change is going to be effective January 15th. So you can check for more details in the link that they provided in there as well. Carrie Miller: All right, so let's go ahead and get into the second article of the day, which is about Black Friday, cyber Monday. For Amazon, this is pretty exciting news and I'll just go ahead and share this article and that is that Amazon's Black Friday week and Cyber Monday deals. It was their biggest deals event ever and if we scroll down, we can see a little bit more details in this actual article and it said Amazon announced that it's Black Friday week and Cyber Monday holiday shopping event from November 21st through December 2nd was its biggest ever compared to the same 12 day period ending on Cyber Monday in prior years. The deal event saw record sales and a record number of items sold. And then it actually, if you go further down in this article, it says the black Friday week and cyber Monday holiday shopping event was also the largest ever for independent sellers in Amazon's store, most of which are small, medium sized businesses. More than 60% of sales in Amazon's the Amazon store during the event were from independent sellers, so third party sellers anyone out there who sells on Amazon. Carrie Miller: Was this the story for you? Did you see a huge increase this year in your sales? I think that's pretty interesting to take a look at. And then, if we go further down, it goes to talk about some maybe contributing factors that might've contributed to this being kind of one of the biggest events ever, and it basically has to do with their AI features for customers. They're a powered assistant, rufus, that helps, you know, helps you kind of ask questions and find things quickly, and then they also have AI shopping guides that may, you know, make the decision-making process a little bit easier by the by consolidating the details of the products and breaking down technical terms. And then also Amazon lens, a visual shopping tool that allows you to just identify products with a photo, a screenshot or a barcode, and then Find on Amazon feature that lets shoppers discover comparable products while browsing online. So I think that you know they're pretty happy about the things that they did here for you know, just boosting Amazon sales during this time. So I'm really interested to know, if you're an Amazon seller, was this Black Friday and Cyber Monday your biggest sales year ever? For me, it certainly was. We actually did 32% more than we did last year on Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend, so we really just calculated that timeframe. So I'm curious to know if you put it in the comments, that would be great. Did you do better or worse this year in for Cyber Monday and Black Friday? Carrie Miller: Okay, so let's go ahead and go to the next article, and that is actually kind of related, and it's Walmart Marketplace. So Walmart Marketplace actually also had record sales in this last Black Friday, cyber Monday, Walmart Marketplace saw its highest ever sales day and also set a single day conversion rate record during the period between November 25th and December 2nd. Walmart goes further on and they say in this article if you can scroll and see, it's at the top here. Walmart says that this record comes as the company's e-commerce business is experiencing substantial growth. During its most recent quarter, that side of the business grew 22%, with Walmart marketplace sales increasing 43%, marking the fifth quarter in a row with more than 30% sales growth. So they're definitely growing. Carrie Miller: I'm curious to know if any of you are actually selling on Walmart and you've seen this growth as well, and you saw a huge increase in what happened on Cyber Monday and Black Friday. In addition, the company if you can just scroll down a little bit more. The company says that the marketplace is also gaining more high income shoppers. During its last quarter, around 75% of the company's market share gains came from households earning upwards of 100,000 annually, and that's actually interesting to note, because I do have people ask me quite often if they should put a higher priced item on there, and it looks like the demographics might be changing, for the online portion at least, so you might be able to sell some higher priced products as well on Walmart. So that should be something to keep an eye on. So for any of you who have kind of like those premium products, it looks like they are selling some of those, and then they further kind of said into this article they said that the these gains create exciting opportunities for premium brands and categories on our marketplace, because higher income customers are showing a higher propensity to spend on both discretionary and grocery purchases, and I think that's really, you know, kind of convenient for a lot of people. They want to buy things kind of all at the same time. So very, very good on Walmart's part to kind of work on combining those. I think it's only a matter of time and you'll see a lot more sales there. All right. Carrie Miller: So the next thing is was also kind of a feature update in seller central, and this is the coupons. Okay, so now the new feature update is that you can actually edit coupons and you weren't able to do this before, but you're now able to increase the discount amounts for active coupons without the need to recreate the coupon. This feature makes it easier for you to manage your promotions and it helps you to adjust to the changes in inventory levels. So if you're selling out, you can kind of work on that. But you have to note, to maintain customer trust, you can only edit coupons to increase discounts. So I don't know how helpful that is for some of you, but that's really the way they made it, so you don't have to kind of recreate the whole thing. Carrie Miller: So the next thing that we want to share about and this is also in Seller Central, that was talked about in Seller Central and it is a limited time coupon fee reimbursement for new FBA selections. So from now until January 31st 2025, you're going to receive an automatic reimbursement for the 60 cent per redemption coupon fee for coupons on newly launched fulfilled by amazon selection. So this is especially helpful for anyone who's like seasonal and you launched a bunch of new things and you did some coupons on there, so you can get reimbursed for those. The promotion applies to FBA offers on products that first became viable after November 2nd 2024 and reimbursements will automatically be dispersed to your seller central account by February 28th of 2025. So anyone who is seasonal and kind of just launched products in this last November, this would be a great thing to take advantage of. I think it actually is. So that's pretty cool information right there, okay. Carrie Miller: And then the next thing and this is the last kind of piece of news, but not the least this is about the Amazon bundling clarification. They kind of put a clarification out because when they announced this in October of 2024, there was a lot of confusion around it. So basically, during that time, amazon updated the product bundling policy for consumables to ensure bundle products are safe, authentic and meet stricter handling standards, and this change reflected the higher safety requirements for items like food, skincare and products for children or pets. And Amazon heard a lot of feedback from sellers that the new policy was really confusing. So we're gonna go into the nitty gritty details of this, all right. So the first thing clarification that they're clarifying is all bundles must be product configurations packaged by the original manufacturer for the brand. For example, you can list a bundle that includes Dawn dish spray and display refills, which was originally packaged by Dawn. However, you cannot list a bundle of Dawn dish spray and dish spray refills that yourself have repackaged. Okay, you also cannot create your own bundle combining Dawn products with gloves, sponges and anything else from other manufacturers. Carrie Miller: And then the next one is about products. Products may be reconfigured and repackaged as bundles if you have a letter of authorization from a brand owner or manufacturer granting permission to repackage. All products in a bundle must belong to the same brand and the bundles must be branded with the same brand name as the products. Okay, so that's something to note. Now we actually had Ashlyn had an insurance. She did a module in our Freedom Ticket 4.0 where she talks more in detail about this topic and you know what not to do because it is a liability and some somewhat against the rules. So if you want to learn more about repackaging stuff, you can actually go check out our bonus modules in Freedom Ticket 4.0 in that course, or actually it's in our regular modules in there, so you can actually see that. Carrie Miller: And then the last thing, but not least, in here that we wanna point out about this bundling is that gift items listed within the gift basket category may contain products from multiple brands that are physically bundled together for customers in a manner suitable for gifting. So there are some exceptions, and so I can see how this could potentially be a little bit confusing. So definitely good to kind of check out this information if you are bundling. This is especially helpful for anyone who's kind of a wholesaler or reseller. Um, so you know what the rules are. So the next thing that I want to do is I'm actually going to show you, uh, some feature updates. So Helium 10, we're always improving and always coming out with new tools and new, new support for sellers, and one thing that we are recommending is that sellers diversify to other platforms. So we have a lot of Walmart content and a lot of Walmart tools. We obviously were Amazon, but then also we wanted to give you some tools for TikTok, and so I'm going to go ahead and show you in here this is our actual, our coffin shelf listing right here. Carrie Miller: But say, you wanted to actually start selling on TikTok shop and sometimes you want to know what the data is for TikTok shop, and so what we actually did is we created a Profitability Calculator for TikTok shop and this is going to help you to take your Amazon products and kind of calculate and see if you could be profitable on TikTok shop. So when you go onto your Amazon listing and pull this, you can see that it pulls in the price and all of the dimensions here and then you can put in your manufacturing costs, you can put in your freight costs and then it gives you a spot here for the commission. So this is what you would pay for influencers to share your products within TikTok shop, and so we put it at 20%. But you know it depends. Sometimes people start at 30%, some people will give 10%, and so you just put that in there to calculate your profitability. You would also want to put your estimated time in storage and kind of storage fees for fulfillment by TikTok, and then you can put any duties and tariffs in here and other costs and you can calculate pretty easily your profit on TikTok. So that is something that you should check out if you haven't started on selling on TikTok, or even if you are and you want to kind of add more products and you want to just see how they would do on TikTok shop, that is a great place to take a look. Carrie Miller: And finally, we are getting into our strategy of the week and I wanted to do the strategy of the week in the Listing Builder AI. We have a lot of really cool features that are in the Listing Builder AI. So I've actually already pulled it up here for you to see, and this is just an example of all the amazing stuff that we have. Just kind of one example and that is keyword performance. So we put in our list here and you can see that you have the root words and then we also have keyword phrases. So you put in the keyword phrases and then it kind of automatically kind of divvies out these one root words to kind of show you what those are. Carrie Miller: But if you want to go in even more detail to see what the keyword performance is, you can actually pull up the keyword performance by clicking on that and it's going to show you all the root words here, so you can see all the root words there. And then you can also see over here. Say, for example, if we check, we want to see all the keyword phrases that have Gothic in it, and so we can kind of check that and hit the filter button and then what you're going to see is all the phrases with coffin in it, and then you can see exactly where it is. It's in the exact phrase exact phrase. You can see it's plural, singular field, field, broad. So it's kind of a broad match there, so not in the exact phrase form. So you can basically check any of these and kind of filter any of these different words that you want to see more details about and how you've used it and where you've used it, and you can also. Carrie Miller: What's something that's great about Listing Builder is you can also go ahead and you know you can pretty much put any listing in here, and so you can put your competitors in here and you can analyze their, their keyword performance and see where they're putting their most important keywords um, in the exact phrase and all that. So, um, it still gives you search volume here, the keyword sales, the click share, the title density and the organic rank of that listing. So it's definitely very helpful and just a good place to kind of see where all of your placements are and it gives you just kind of a good overview to see how well you're optimizing your listing. I think this is an amazing tool that you can use and filter and kind of just see where everything's at. So if you haven't tried it out, you should definitely trust uh, try out our Listing Builder AI. That's just one of the amazing features. There's some other competitor kind of comparison features in there as well. Carrie Miller: All right, so that is all that I have for you this week on the Weekly Buzz. Hopefully this was very helpful. I think we have a lot of great information in here today that you can kind of take a look at and just monitor, but next week Bradley Sutton should be back, so we'll see you again next week to see what's buzzing. Bye, everyone.

When We Win is back! In this episode, host Maya Rupert talks to Teresa Younger, the CEO of the Ms. Foundation for Women, about the impossible standards that female candidates of color are held to and the rising political superstars we all should know. Plus two women of color -- Kristian Carranza and Lauren Ashley Simmons -- are running for seats in the Texas state legislature. They talk to Maya about the obstacles they currently face and how they plan to win. This series is presented by Ms. Foundation for Women, a national public foundation that builds women's collective power to advance meaningful social, cultural, and economic change for all. Learn more at https://forwomen.org/ This series is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants. Follow When We Win wherever you get your podcasts, or listen ad-free on Amazon Music with your Prime Membership. Stay up to date with us on X, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.  Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium.  Click this link for a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this show and all Lemonada shows: lemonadamedia.com/sponsors To follow along with a transcript, go to lemonadamedia.com/show/ shortly after the air date. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Send us a textWatch it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rpYvdQxjlXALearn how Google's fast 3-day shipping badge can help Ecom brands using Amazon's FBA program get more sales. Steven Pope from My Amazon Guy walks through the steps to set up this badge using multi-channel fulfillment (MCF) and explains why it's key to building trust and improving your website's checkout experience. If you're using Google Shopping and Merchant Center, this badge is essential for competing outside of Amazon.Instructions from Amazon: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/GLH4AHF5NAYJ76K5?ref=nslp_at_GMGV7P8DKGG6W84X_en-US_nslnk_2Login to Merchant center here https://www.google.com/retail/ from GoogleNew from Amazon: Showcase your fast delivery speeds on Google!!If you use Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) and you have a Google Merchant Center ID, you can now showcase your fast delivery speeds and free shipping directly on Google.MCF fast badges for Google display the estimated delivery date to shoppers, which can help increase clicks and drive shoppers to your site. Additionally, if you offer free shipping, you can showcase that shopper perk alongside the MCF fast badge in your Google Shopping ads and search results.When you opt in to this integration, you can do the following:Attract shoppers' attention with fast, three-day delivery speeds displayed on your Google Shopping ads.Provide upfront delivery date estimates to help boost engagement.Increase clicks on your Google Shopping ads up to 7.6%*, which helps drive higher returns on your ad spend.To opt in, fill out this form.For more information, go to MCF fast badges for Google.*According to a June 2024 Google A/B test report, merchants saw a 1.5%-7.6% increase in clicks on Google Shopping ads in the US when their offers showed "Free 3-Day" shipping or faster. Google defines "fast" as arriving within three days from when the customer placed the order.#AmazonFBA #EcommerceShipping #GoogleShopping #AmazonSellers #FastShippingBadgeTimestamps00:00 - Why You Need a 3-Day Fast Shipping Badge00:45 - How Google Shopping Shows the Fast Shipping Badge01:20 - Setting Up Google Merchant Center for the Badge02:10 - Potential Downsides of Multi-Channel Fulfillment03:00 - The Cost Benefits of Using MCF for Ecom Brands03:35 - Final Thoughts and Subscribe for More-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow us:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28605816/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenpopemag/Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/myamazonguys/Twitter: https://twitter.com/myamazonguySubscribe to the My Amazon Guy podcast: https://podcast.myamazonguy.comApple Podcast:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-amazon-guy/id1501974229Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4A5ASHGGfr6s4wWNQIqyVwSupport the show

Topics this week include: Showcase your fast delivery speeds on Google, MCF fulfills orders on social commerce channels with FBA inventory, Veeqo Profit Analyzer helps unify your profitability data In the News: Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas go on strike, a standoff risking new shortages Walmart, Target, Nike among retailers affected if port strike lasts beyond this week FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Announces New Actions to Protect American Consumers, Workers, and Businesses by Cracking Down on De Minimis Shipments with Unsafe, Unfairly Traded Products | The White House Questions answered on today's call: Eventually I want to sell on Shopify where I can do TikTok Shop, etc. is there something I should consider now when setting up my website? I don't want to have to back track. When would you suggest we start selling on other platforms if we just launched on Amazon 4 months ago? Also, how do we go about doing that? Do you just have thousands of inventory at your house? It sounds like a big investment and something that would be hard to juggle. Does your agency help? Can you talk about the port strike and the potential impact to launching my product in the next few months? Things to think about? is air shipping the only way around the issue?   ⬇️ Click to view my available resources! https://www.andyisom.com/ Some products and resources mentioned in this episode may no longer be offered. Please visit my website or DM me on social media for currently available downloads, resources, and coaching programs!

We're back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10's Senior Evangelist, Shivali Patel. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10's newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. Amazon Multi-Channel fulfillment (MCF) can now automatically fulfill orders placed on social commerce channels like TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest using your FBA inventory. You can now offer Subscribe & Save and Reorder coupons on an ASIN at the same time. With this change, you can now offer both Subscribe & Save and Reorder coupons on an ASIN at the same time. Effective September 30, 2024, if Amazon requires you to submit product compliance documents, these must be submitted and approved before you can list the product. Amazon Pharmacy customers can have their medications pre-sorted into packets using this new PillPack feature https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-pharmacy-pillpack-feature Inbound shipping is now easier with the Amazon Partner Carrier Program's smart carrier options https://sell.amazon.com/blog/announcements/partner-carrier-program-smart-carrier-options Amazon marketplace sellers sue Walmart https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2024/oct/01/amazon-marketplace-sellers-sue-walmart/ Amazon seller-fulfilled heavy and bulky returns https://channelx.world/2024/10/amazon-seller-fulfilled-heavy-and-bulky-returns/ Amazon's recyclable packaging push https://www.packaging-gateway.com/news/amazons-recyclable-packaging-push/ Digital Domain Teams Up with AWS to Scale Autonomous Virtual Human Technology and Introduces Generative AI-Powered Features https://press.aboutamazon.com/aws/2024/9/digital-domain-teams-up-with-aws-to-scale-autonomous-virtual-human-technology-and-introduces-generative-ai-powered-features Amazon is launching its own Shark Tank where winners get to be Amazon sellers https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24258276/amazon-buy-it-now-show-trailer-shark-tank-jb-smoove With the holiday season approaching, we arm you with strategic insights to capitalize on events like Prime Big Deals Day, including essential tips on using Cerebro for effective keyword research. Tune in and stay ahead with these buzzing news and strategies that help your business thrive in the competitive e-commerce landscape. In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 00:49 - MCF Expands to Social 02:04 - Dual Coupon Boosts Promotions 03:28 - Compliance Deadline Approaching 04:17 - Holiday Peak FBA Fees Set 05:48 - Pharmacy PillPack 07:00 - Smart Carrier Options Introduced 08:19 - Sellers x Walmart Lawsuit 09:54 - Updated Returns for Bulky Items 11:51 - Sustainable Packaging 12:58 - AWS Powers Autonomous Virtual Humans 15:04 - Shark Tank but for Prime 16:30 - Training: Finding Keywords Your Competitors Top Keywords ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript   Shivali Patel: Amazon's MCF fulfilling orders for popular social channels, incoming holiday peak fulfillment fees and, finally, that dual coupon feature you've requested being implemented. This and more on this week's episode of the Weekly Buzz.   Bradley Sutton: How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the new stories that are going on in the Amazon, Walmart and e-commerce world. We highlight the latest new feature alerts from Helium 10, and we review a training tip of the week that will give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Today, our host is going to be Shivali Patel and so Shivali, take it away and let us know what's buzzing.   Shivali Patel: First up, we have a few news pieces directly from Seller Central News To start. An exciting enhancement to Amazon's Multi-Channel Fulfillment, or MCF. Amazon's MCF now enables sellers to automatically fulfill orders from popular social commerce platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Pinterest using your Fulfillment by Amazon inventory. This means, for those of you that were perhaps manually fulfilling orders up until now for TikTok shop can now transition to more effortlessly expanding your brands, maintaining accurate inventory tracking and quicker order processing. Or imagine just running a promotion on Instagram knowing that your orders are being handled seamlessly through Amazon's system. This can help you capture even more sales opportunities across different channels, keeping you ahead of your competitors. To streamline this process, amazon recommends that you utilize tools like Webby LingSing or Connector by Silk. These platforms can help you connect your social media accounts to your Amazon Seller Central with ease and, in my opinion, a great strategic move to enhance your order fulfillment capabilities, position your business for growth and encourage you to meet customers where they're most active, and that is social channels.   Shivali Patel: Then we have Amazon actually just announced its new dual coupon feature that many of you have been requesting. You can now offer both subscribe and save and reorder coupons on the same ASIN. Previously, sellers could only use one coupon per ASIN, which limited promotional strategies, and now eligible customers can choose between a 10% off free order coupon for a one-time purchase or a 20% off subscribe and save coupon for those who want to subscribe for regular deliveries. I can see this making a dent in impacting the quantity of repeat purchases and facilitating brand loyalty, as well as, if you are a seller, the ability to now cater to different purchasing behaviors. This will help you effectively engage your audience. For instance, if a customer is hesitant to commit to a subscription, that reorder coupon can persuade them to try your product without long-term commitment. Meanwhile, customers who value convenience can opt for the subscribe and save option, benefiting from a greater discount. Remember, guys, at the end of the day, promotions are a really great way for you to attract new customers and retain existing ones. By leveraging these dual coupon offerings, you can enhance your marketing efforts, drive sustained sales growth and, at the end of the day, it's about making your customers feel valued and giving them the options that suit their needs.   Shivali Patel: Okay, moving on, let's talk about an important compliance update that you need to be aware of, effective September 30th 2024, which is already passed, amazon will now require that any product needing compliance documentation to have these documents submitted and approved before it can be listed in order to uphold the highest safety standards for products sold on Amazon. This is just one additional way for them to ensure that customers are really receiving safe and compliant items. While existing product listings will remain unaffected, new listings cannot go live until the proper documentation has been approved. So make sure that you guys manage this process through your manage all inventory dashboard on seller central and, since they can ask for additional information to verify product safety and compliance at any time, you'll want to check back time to time.   Shivali Patel: Speaking of time, as we gear up for the holiday shopping season specifically, there are upcoming 2024 holiday peak fulfillment fees for FBA that you will need to be aware of. From October 15th to January 14th of 2025, you're going to see these seasonal fees applied to all products, reflecting the increased fulfillment and transportation costs during this busy period. This fee structure is similar to what other major carriers charge and it will be consistent across items within the same size band, and this will affect US FBA, Canada FBA, north America remote fulfillment, us multi-channel fulfillment and buy with Prime. I recommend that you guys factor these fees into your pricing strategy. Okay, and especially during the holiday season, when consumer spending typically peaks. The average holiday peak fulfillment fee will remain consistent with last year. However, a new peak fee will apply to products priced below 10 USD. This is for US FBA specifically. While these fees might seem like a hurdle, I want you to keep in mind that Amazon's average FBA fulfillment fees are still about 70% lower than the comparable two-day shipping options offered by third-party logistic providers. And, if needed, the new section does have the detailed rates linked by size and weight on the relevant help pages. So check it out to plan out your inventory and maximize sales during the holiday rush, if you have not already.   Shivali Patel: In other news and in an exciting expansion of its services, amazon Pharmacy is enhancing the way that customers manage their medications with the introduction of a new pill pack feature. This service allows customers to have their eligible medications three or more pre-sorted into convenient pill packets, which will then be delivered straight to their door. This updated offering continues the service from PillPackcom acquired by Amazon in 2018, but introduces new savings and a simplified sign of process. Each PillPack is organized and labeled by date and time, making it easier for individuals to adhere to their prescribed routines without the hassle of multiple pill bottles. I don't think any of us like that. Plus, customers can enjoy fast, free delivery right to their homes. I wanted to mention this as part of this week's buzz because, while perhaps it's not directly relevant to you as an e-com seller or service provider, this new service from Amazon Pharmacy could open avenues for partnership or product integration, especially if you offer health-related products. Later down the road, by keeping an eye on how the service evolves, perhaps you'll be able to identify opportunities to align your offerings with Amazon's growing healthcare initiatives.   Shivali Patel: What else we also have? Amazon introducing new smart carrier options for sellers using FBA and Amazon Warehousing and Distribution, known as AWD, giving sellers more choice and flexibility when sending inventory to the Amazon network. Available through the Amazon Partner Carrier Program, these options allow sellers to choose their preferred partner carrier and transport method based on dynamic freight-ready dates and cost estimates. This update aims to help sellers like you and I optimize our logistics and expenses, and these new features are integrated into step four of both the send to Amazon workflow and send to Amazon warehousing and distribution workflow. That is a tongue twister when you're trying to say it all in one sentence For less than truckload and full truckload shipments. The Amazon partner carrier program, known for offering reliable shipping services, includes small parcel delivery, LTL, FTL and intermodal shipment options, with savings of up to 25% lower compared to alternatives. So sellers can benefit from lower costs, while those delivering to AWD received additional discounts of 25% on storage and 15% on processing and transportation. I hope that you guys can see this as a valuable opportunity to streamline your inventory management and reduce costs, improving efficiency.   Shivali Patel: Okay, then, we have a significant legal development. Four Amazon Marketplace sellers have filed a class action lawsuit against Walmart, seeking $5 million in damages. The lawsuit alleges that Walmart has enabled organized retail crime and racketeering through its third-party vendors by not sufficiently vetting its Marketplace sellers. The complaint filed on September 17th, as written here in US District Court for the District of Delaware, claims that certain third-party sellers on Walmart's platform are engaging in fraudulent practices, buying and reselling products from Amazon vendors in a sophisticated scheme. This practice harms legitimate sellers and allows Walmart to profit from the fees that it collects from these sellers. So I think that this case really underscores the ongoing challenges in maintaining marketplace integrity and the responsibilities of platforms and managing selling ecosystems. So I hope that you're able to recognize, with this case, the importance of just being transparent and ethical in your business practices. It's vital that you guys keep up with the guidelines that these platforms have, and this way you can really protect your brand but also contribute to a healthier marketplace overall. Walmart has until October 10th to respond to a summons that was issued on September 19th and in their statement they indicated they're reviewing the complaint. So, regardless of the outcome, the lawsuit serves as a reminder of the potential risks and the need for the platform to maintain a robust vetting process.   Shivali Patel: Reporting hot from channel x. Starting on October 30th 2024, we also have amazon updating the seller fulfilled returns policies for heavy and bulky items in Germany, France, Italy and Spain stores. This aligns with changes already implemented in the UK since August of 2024, and heavy and bulky items are defined as those that weigh over 31.5 kg or have a longest side exceeding 175 centimeters when packed. Sellers will now be required to offer a prepaid return label and home collection service for these returns, along with issuing refunds to customers, while the responsibility for covering return shipping costs remains unchanged. The refund amount will depend on the return reason and timeline, in line with Amazon's existing returns policy. So the introduction of home collection for heavy and bulky item returns aims to provide a consistent returns experience for customers across all those stores. As the service is already available for FBA and seller flex returns, amazon recommends that we review our carrier contracts to ensure that home collection is included and make any sort of necessary updates.   Shivali Patel: As a seller, you may want to offer partial refunds or part replacements as an alternative to home collection, provided that it's shared the tracking ID of the replacement part with the customer and that you close out the return request with the reason code return request canceled. To avoid A to Z guarantee claims or impacts on order defect rates, sellers must authorize or deny return requests within 48 hours where the auto is not auto authorized. You also have these additional things to keep in mind, but as you can see here, you can just pause the screen and have a read. Otherwise you can reference this channel X article. I'd love to know do you guys think this will help reduce unnecessary customer claims and improve seller performance across amazon's European stores? Let me know in the chat. We do have just a few more things here.   Shivali Patel: It's been a packed week of news as the e-commerce industry continues to expand. Concerns about packaging waste have come to the forefront, prompting amazon to take significant steps towards sustainability. And, in response to the mounting pressure from environmental groups and regulatory bodies, amazon's introduced various recyclable packaging initiatives, one of those being the Frustration-Free Packaging Initiative, designed to ship products in easy-to-open, recyclable packaging, often eliminating the need for additional boxes. Since its launch, amazon reports having removed over 1.5 million tons of waste. I mean that is impressive and it shows a tangible effort for them to reduce waste. Amazon has shifted towards recyclable materials, introducing paper-based mailers that can be easily recycled, curbside, and this shift is part of Amazon's broader commitment to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2040. As a seller, you can adopt sustainable packaging practices to align with Amazon's initiatives, but also appeal to eco-conscious consumers who prioritize environmental responsibility.   Shivali Patel: Up next, we have an article directly from Amazon. According to Amazon's press center, digital Domain, a leader in visual effects and virtual human technology, has announced a collaboration with Amazon Web Services, AWS, to migrate its autonomous virtual human AVH technology to the cloud. This partnership aims to expand the reach and capabilities of AVH technology across industries such as entertainment, gaming, healthcare, hospitality and commercial applications, leveraging AWS's advanced cloud infrastructure, including Amazon's Bedrock for high-performing foundation models, amazon Polly, amongst others, for voice enhancements and for facial recognition. Digital domain is really poised to enhance real-time interaction with virtual humans. Aws's robust security and compliance features will also ensure the integrity and scalability of the AVH platform. This collaboration represents a significant milestone for digital domain following the success of Zoe in 2022. And, with the support of AWS and its cloud infrastructure, I think it's really going to offer AVH technology greater speed, efficiency and global accessibility in many sectors.   Shivali Patel: This collaboration does offer potential relevancy for Amazon sellers, particularly in enhancing customer engagement and support For sellers who operate in industries such as e-com, hospitality or any customer-facing business. Integrating virtual human technology can revolutionize how we interact with customers, and so Amazon sellers can really leverage AVH technology for real-time, ai-driven customer interactions, offering personalized and immersive experiences similar to virtual concierge services. This can help improve the efficiency, manage inquiries, provide product recommendations, offer after-sales support. Even so, by utilizing this advanced technology, we can really, as sellers, go in and enhance our brand experiences, boost customer satisfaction and stay competitive in this growing market where AI and machine learning are really taking on a very pivotal role in customer interaction. Lastly, I figured you guys could also appreciate some fun news how many of you have ever watched Shark Tank and how many of you have seen the new trailer for Amazon Prime videos, buy it Now, hosted by JB Smoove?   Shivali Patel: The Verge reports that in this unique competition, you're going to have contestants having the opportunity to present their product ideas to a panel of investors and an audience known as the 100, representing potential customers. If a contestant's product is well-received, it's going to be featured in a new section of the Amazon store called Buy it Now. The panel actually includes celebrity guests like Gwyneth Paltrow, Jamie Siminoff, who's the CEO of Door.com, serving as the resident judge, and others. Each episode features a $20,000 prize for one contestant, adding an exciting incentive to the competition. Viewers can access the buy it now store via a QR code shown during the episodes, allowing them to purchase featured products directly. The first three episodes will premiere on October 30th, with a total of 13 episodes airing weekly until January 8th of 2025. Additionally, a companion podcast this is Small Business Behind the Buy will be available starting the day after the show's launch. This initiative not only engages viewers, but also aims to drive sales on Amazon, showcasing products with greater transparency about their origins, their names, their brand story, and creating buzz and excitement around new product launches as the holiday shopping season approaches.   Shivali Patel: With that. That is it for this week's news. And, by the way while I didn't mention it, since Bradley's already talked about this in a previous episode Amazon's Prime Big Deals Day sale is also coming up on October 8th and 9th. So I hope that you guys are all squared away to rank at the top of all the keywords you hope to generate sales from. In case you're not, let's just run through one strategy that you can use to capitalize during this time. Let me show you how you can find keywords where your competitors are outranking you. Let's say you're ranked on one of the lower pages, like pages four, five or even just the bottom of page one. Sure, customers searching for niche specific items like coffin shelves underneath the keyword gothic decor may ignore irrelevant results and focus only on the similar products. But also, most people don't even really scroll to page two, which is a clear indicator of why you would want to pay attention to the keywords where your direct competitors might be outperforming you and where you may want to tweak your strategy if you care to be listed at the top half of page one, where all that traffic is. Here's how You're going to want to pay attention to your relative rank against competitors. You can find this metric inside of Cerebro, which is our reverse ASIN keyword research tool, and you are going to begin by putting in a multi-ASIN search. So find a bunch of the Amazon standard identification numbers inside of your niche and go ahead and click get keywords.   Shivali Patel: The second thing you're going to do is set a minimum for search volume. I went ahead and inputted in 300. Now the product I'm looking at is actually this automatic chicken water cup. In doing so, I can now filter out those keywords that don't have a lot of search volume associated. There's no right or wrong number for search volume. You can put in something that you feel is good for your niche. The next thing I'll do is input in a relative rank. I went ahead and added in three for minimum, and this is telling me that and this is basically saying that I'm at least number three amongst my competitors. Then go ahead and input in anything else you want and click apply filters. I actually added in a minimum for word count as well as the phrases containing chicken, because I was seeing some additional terms here.   Shivali Patel: In doing so, I had a output of 38 filtered keywords and you guys can scroll all the way over to the right hand side and check out the relative rank. If you hover over the number for relative rank, it's actually going to showcase to you where you are stacked up next to your competitors as well as what ranking you are at. For example, for this particular keyword, which is automatic chicken watering system, you can see that our relative rank is position number six compared to our competitors. This means that your product ranks sixth in relative rank for this keyword, and this is the sort of thing that can help you identify keywords where competitors are ahead and make adjustments like increasing sponsored ad spend to improve your ranking, or adding that keyword to your title to rank a lot faster, to prepare for a day like Prime big deals day, or even just put in a CPR campaign into motion where you're selling those products at a discounted rate to rank. Happy sales, you guys.

We're back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10's Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10's newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. Amazon just announced dates for its October Prime Day sale — here's what to know https://www.nbcnews.com/select/shopping/amazon-october-prime-day-2024-dates-rcna171355 Walmart announced an anti-Prime Day sale and it's no joke—learn about Walmart Holiday Deals now https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/reviewed/2024/09/19/walmart-holiday-deals/75289574007/ More than half of US Gen Zers are headed to TikTok Shop this season https://www.retaildive.com/news/gen-z-tik-tok-shop-social-media-holiday-purchases/726139/ Amazon small oversize FBA fee reductions https://channelx.world/2024/09/amazon-small-oversize-fba-fee-reductions/ Maximize your brand goals efficiently with goal-based bidding in Amazon DSP https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/amazon-dsp-goal-based-bidding/ 5 new generative AI tools to accelerate seller growth and enhance the customer shopping experience https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/amazon-generative-ai-seller-growth-shopping-experience In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 01:07 - Prime Big Deal Days 03:31 - Walmart Holiday Deals 05:14 - Gen Z Shopping on TikTok 06:25 - FBA Fee Reductions? 07:23 - Goal-Based Bidding in DSP 08:16 - Amazon Supply Chain Updates 09:50 - Buy with Prime Integrations 12:33 - Amazon Shipping App 13:00 - Faster MCF Shipments 13:37 - New Amazon AI Tools 22:11 - New Amazon Analytics Tools 23:24 - More Accelerate Updates 28:17 - Meet Bradley in South Korea 28:30 - More Upcoming Events ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript   Bradley Sutton: Prime Big Deal Days has been officially announced for specific dates. In October, amazon Accelerate had more than 20 new releases and announcements and we're going to go over almost all of them today. This and more on this week's Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Series Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the new stories and goings on in the Amazon, Walmart, e-commerce world. We also give you training tips of the week and let you know what new things that Helium 10 has that will give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing. As a matter of fact, today I don't think we're going to be able to get to any new releases or training tips, because this was the week of Amazon Accelerate. I just got back a couple hours ago and I want to try and like get everything out there while it's fresh in my mind. Hopefully I'm not going to miss anything, but we have got tons and tons to go over today.   Bradley Sutton: Let's actually first hop into just non-Accelerate related news. All right, let's go ahead Now. The first news story is from NBC News and it's entitled Amazon just announced dates for its October Prime Day sale. Here's what to know Now. You guys remember a while back, a few months ago, I had predicted when the regular Prime Day was going to be. Somehow, you know, I like use some just I used some just common sense and mathematical things based on dates that Amazon had, and I hit the exact date two months in advance, actually, three months in advance, I think. I hit it Now again. A month ago, I was like you know what, I'm going to go out on a limb and try and guess when Prime big deal days are. Take a look at what I said in August. If, again, I had to pick a date, it would be around October 9th. Now let me show you why. I noticed here that one of my products was eligible for prime big deal days window. So when I went in there, you'll notice and you guys probably have seen this yourself is that there's weeks for regular deals right All the way up to October 6th. Okay, and then the very next one it says is prime big deal days window. So first of all, it pretty much guarantees that prime big deal days is not going to be before October 6th.   Bradley Sutton: Now, historically prime big deal days, I think there was another it was called something different in 2022. It was kind of like on the second Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of the month. So that's why I'm thinking that, hey, it could be around October 9th, 8th, 9th, 10th, around there We'll see. You've got a lot of time to plan, but at least, again, it is now confirmed. There is another prime big deal days coming. Well, guys, Nostradamus Bradley back at it again, because, look at this prime big deal days was. Well, guys, north stardom is Bradley back at it again, because, look at this prime big deal days was announced on October 8th and 9th.   Guess what? I'm gonna make another prediction. I think I know when Black Friday is gonna be hint, hint, wink, wink. That's not a great, uh prediction. I think my prediction days are over two for two, that's it. But anyways, prime big deal days, guys.   Bradley Sutton: It's kind of like the second prime day of the year is coming on October 8th and 9th and hopefully you have gone ahead and applied for some deals. If you're going to do it, this might be the time to do Prime Exclusive Discounts. Don't forget, prime Exclusive Discounts aren't free anymore, as we reported on the Weekly Buzz. But whatever the case is, there's going to be a lot more traffic shopping online, and when I say shopping online, it is not just shopping on Amazon for this special day, because take a look at this new story from USA Today. It says Walmart announced an Anti-Prime Day sale, and it's no joke. Learn about Walmart holiday deals now, all right.   Bradley Sutton: So this is a new or special kind of discounts that Walmart is putting on. What date is going to be for these deals that will have up to 70% off? You guessed it starting October 8th. So it's kind of funny. Sometimes this Amazon and Walmart are going back and forth, trying to one up each other and make sure they don't have special days. But I think this is actually good for sellers that it's on the same day, because if you're doing deals on one site, you almost have to do deals on the other site because of price matching and things like that. So when Amazon and Walmart dates coincide, it allows you to go ahead and put the same discounts on both, and now you don't have to worry about things like buy box suppression and things like that. Now one difference, though, between prime big deal days and Walmart holiday days is this article says that it starts on the 8th, but it's set to continue through Sunday, October 13th. Now, this is important because, just like I just said, while the first couple of days are going to coincident have to worry about buy box issues. If you keep your Walmart deals going after the 9th and you have like the same maybe product identifier, like a UPC or something like that, it's possible that your buy box on Amazon might suffer if Amazon is price matching Walmart or price checking Walmart, I should say, and they could see that you have a special going on a Walmart but not on Amazon. So something to keep in mind. First couple of days you're good to go. It's kind of good that it's coinciding, but after the 9th, definitely check if you're going to stop your deal on Amazon but not on Walmart.   Bradley Sutton: Speaking of holiday deals, there's an interesting article from retaildive.com I guess they did this kind of survey and it says more than half of US Gen Zers are headed to TikTok shop this weekend. It said about 43% of Gen Z shoppers are planning to spend more for their holidays this year compared to 37% of millennials. However, going down deeper, it says, in the US, nearly 54% of Gen Z will find gifts on TikTok shop alone. A third of US respondents will shop for gifts seen on Facebook and Instagram ads. I don't know how that's a poll Like. Do you actually answer a poll saying yes, I plan on buying stuff from ads? So that was kind of weird for me. But however they got this information sounds pretty exact. So they're putting it out there and it says almost a quarter 24% of US Gen Zers will make their purchase through influencer recommendations. So just you know, it's kind of interesting how much the whole landscape of holiday shopping has changed. You know, a couple years ago there was no such thing as TikTok shop, right, you know. So the fact that a lot of people are going to be you know, more than half of a certain demographic are going to be looking on this platform that literally didn't even exist last year is just kind of interesting to me.   Bradley Sutton: Next article is coming from Channel X World. It actually has to do with Europe and it's an FBA fee reduction. All right, yeah, I did not say that wrong. It is an FBA fee reduction, not an addition. You know, usually when you hear me talking about FBA fees, it's about some new fee that we're going to have to do. That we're going to have to do. But if you're in selling in pan EU fulfillment, you're going to be able to save from 1.60 pounds up to 1 pound 87 for small oversized products across UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. So in those locations, what signifies a small oversize? So Amazon's definition of small oversize is 61 by 46 by 46 centimeters and unit weight has to be less than 1.76 kilograms. And then in Germany there's another set. But hey guys, take a look at this If your product is in this small oversize, you might actually be getting a reduction in fees, believe it or not.   Bradley Sutton: One more non-accelerate announcement this week was done by Amazon Advertising, so entitled Maximize Brand Goals Efficiently with Goal-Based Bidding in Amazon DSP. All right. So now when you're doing your brand awareness campaigns, you're going to be able to specify reach and frequency goals and DSP is going to optimize bids automatically in real time to maximize these goals. So, for example, how you get started is you set the goal in DSP to awareness, you set your KPI to reach or frequency, and then you're going to choose a weekly target frequency and then you set your optimization strategy to prioritize spending, full budget and then you hit save. So now you're going to be able to, you know, test out this goal-based bidding. So, um, I know not too many of you are using DSP, but something that maybe talk to your amazon rep to get more information on. Or, if you're using an agency, talk to them to see if this might be good for you all.   Bradley Sutton: Right now, let us get into amazon accelerate. Uh, this was my second accelerate um, and there was just tons and tons and tons of things that were released over the three days. Now, on some of these, we're actually going to get a little bit more in depth. I was able to interview some of the product managers at Amazon responsible for some of these, so we're going to go in depth on things like the customer loyalty dashboard and gen AI videos and different things like that in future episodes, but for now, let's just give a brief overview of a lot of the updates.   Bradley Sutton: Now, first up, we had supply chain by Amazon updates, all right. So first they were talking about hey, they're unlocking faster delivery speeds that increase sales an average of 20%, they said and now there is an Amazon fully managed option for US sellers to automate the entire supply chain process, so I'm not going to go too much into detail about that. We've talked a little bit about this in previous episodes. Now, multi-channel distribution for Amazon warehousing and distribution, also known as AWD it says it now offers the ability to do custom labeling, allowing you to distribute products in bulk to different sales channels, including other marketplace services. All right, so you know this is something that before you know, like you might not have thought that Amazon would be down to do like helping you, kind of basically like drop ship to other channels, and they're cool with it, with it going to other marketplaces. That's going to be a kind of a theme on some of these announcements I'm going to talk about from Amazon Accelerate.   Bradley Sutton: Now, speaking of Amazon logistics and supply chain, there is a lot of MCF and buy with prime announcements. All right, a lot of different enhancements. First of all, if you are using buy with prime on your website, now you are going to be able to accept PayPal payments. All right, you can't do that yet in Amazon, but if you're using the Amazon Buy With Prime, like on your Shopify, WooCommerce, you're going to be able to accept PayPal checkout. So that's going to be pretty cool. And then, actually, starting next year, if you're a Prime member, they're going to be able to link their Amazon account to their PayPal account so that Prime free shipping benefits are available automatically. Another update was, if you are doing Amazon DSP, like we just talked about, you're going to be able to now run ads on Google Shopping ads and TikTok ads all right to drive more traffic to your Buy With Prime enabled options. All right.   Bradley Sutton: So here's how this works, if I'm understanding this correctly. So let's say you've got Buy With Prime listings set up. Now, if you recall, buy With Prime it's been around for a while. It's so you can have on your website a literal Buy With Prime badge and you are able to see the shipping time. So, basically, your Shopify customers, if they purchase on your website, they're going to get it delivered from your FBA inventory or MCF inventory. But now if you're running DSP ads the cool thing is they showed a couple examples of this is like in the Google shopping. You know what? You can't link directly to an Amazon listing, all right, you can't put Amazon listings per se into Google shopping. But if you've got your Shopify or WooCommerce or whatever listing there that has the buy with Prime, which basically goes your Amazon inventory. Anyways, you're going to be able to see the shipping time, all right. So, like you know, two, three days shipping. It's going to actually show up in Google Shopping Right, which has not been done before, and also in TikTok advertising. All right, not TikTok shop. We're not talking about buy with Prime inside of TikTok shop. We're talking about that. If you run a TikTok ad, it'll overlay onto a TikTok right. You're going to see that Prime badge right there where it'll say like two days, three days shipping and people can just go ahead and buy it right from that TikTok ad and again, that's going directly to your Amazon Prime inventory. So, pretty cool enhancement.   Bradley Sutton: You know, like a few years ago you wouldn't have thought that Amazon is down to like help sellers. You know, sell on other platforms and things like that. You know, like last year, amazon accelerate. The big announcement was how you could have, you know, Shopify integration. You're like that was would have been unheard of just two years ago, you know. And then now we're talking about, you know, integrations now with google shopping, integrations with TikTok shop. So this is, I think, a move in the good uh, in a good direction here.   Bradley Sutton: Another supply chain announcement. You know we've talked on the weekly buzz before about how amazon's really pushing their own shipping methods, and so now Amazon has released a new Amazon shipping mobile app. So you know, with these you're going to be able to schedule pickups from your warehouse, oversee inventory across multiple warehouses, receive real time updates on delivery, delivery vehicles and everything. So that's like for those of you who are kind of like using Amazon now, as like you maybe have used UPS or something like that before. Another update was if you're using MCF multi-channel fulfillment you know, historically I think that like the fastest shipping was like four days, but usually five days or more. Now MCF is going to qualify for three day shipping, so pretty cool. If you're using MCF is going to qualify for three day shipping, so pretty cool. If you're using MCF to maybe run your TikTok shop or for your Shopify website, and that's how you're shipping you can now get three day shipping, which is a huge update.   Bradley Sutton: Now, that was the main announcements for day one. Let's go skip to day two now, which had a lot more announcements. Go skip to day two now, which had a lot more announcements, and the first one was like five new generative AI tools that are going to be designed for sellers. Let's go over them Now. The first one was a Amazon code name. Right, it says Project Amelia. It says adds a personalized Amazon selling expert for every seller.   Bradley Sutton: Now what this new app is going to be doing inside of Seller Central is it's going to be a generative, ai based tool where you can like have conversations with it, like you can say, hey, amazon or Amelia I'm not sure if you have to call it Amelia or you call it Amazon, or whatever the case is. You can be able to ask simple questions like how is my business doing? Which products of mine have sales been down year over year? You can be able to ask simple questions like how is my business doing? Which products of mine? Have sales been down year over year? You're going to be able to ask questions like what is the status of the shipment that I sent to Amazon yesterday? So basically, the things that you would normally do in Seller Central that you would just have to go around on menus to find, and things. A lot more of it now over time. You know it's not going to be rolling out all these things at once, but you're going to be able to start asking this Amelia, uh, project Amelia app, uh, these questions that it's going to go ahead and respond just like generative AI does. Now, not everything is something that I think that all sellers are super excited about. But hey, I'm, I'm, I'm here to just report the news and let's you know, let's give some honest feedback on it and let's see how things play out Now. And let's give some honest feedback on it and let's see how things play out Now.   Bradley Sutton: The next thing it was entitled Expanding Generative AI Product Listing Capabilities to Get More Products in Front of Customers Faster. So this is nothing new per se. Amazon had announced last year generative AI ability to just get a picture from a picture or from a brief description, make a listing. Now, the last time I tested it, let's be honest, let's keep it real. Well, this is a no BS podcast, right? Well, it was not that great and I would never actually recommend somebody using that, because you know, like we know, how important keyword optimization, listing optimization with the right keywords is for getting indexed, for being able to run ads, and you're you know the ai back then when it started. There's no way it was going to be able to ever get all of the right keywords from day one in your listing if you're just using it right now. That being said, that was a while back that I use it.   Bradley Sutton: I'm very curious as to how it has uh, perhaps improved over time. I still don't understand. I guess can't picture any world in which you, uploading just a picture or two of a product and maybe even one line of text, is going to make sure that Amazon gets all the right keywords. I just can't imagine it, you know, knowing what the status of Gen, you know Gen AI is now, but I got to give it a fair shot, so I'm going to go give it a try in like a little mini case study soon. But anyways, what was released yesterday at Accelerate was now you're going to be able to, even if you do trust the Amazon AI listing creator, instead of just making one listing, you can like have some minimal information on a bulk upload file, and then you can create up to like 10, 20, 30, 50 listings or more, all with generative AI.   Bradley Sutton: The next gen AI thing that they talked about was A plus content automatically creates brand storylines that attract customers. So with this, it's actually allowing you to take, like, maybe just your images or your listing, and it's gonna use gen AI to create a plus content just from an image, so like, for example you can see here those of you watching this on YouTube it just took a couple of pictures of some shoe and then now it like put it in these lifestyle setting kind of images, automatically designed directly for your a plus content, for your listing. Not only that, it's generating the text that comes in on the captions inside of A-plus content. So you know, like for people like me, who you know, I use agencies like professionals like AMZ One Step, to make my A+ Content and you know, some people might not be able to afford that. So if you're not able to afford professional agencies to shoot specific content, now you might be able to dabble into this A-plus content. Don't forget that even in Helium 10, we have an A-plus or not an A-plus content generator, but an image generator that you can output in the format of different A-plus content modules as well. But now Amazon is going to have this completely for free. So this is kind of like a cool update that Amazon is going to offer Now.   Bradley Sutton: The next one I think most sellers I talk to, and myself too, are the most skeptical about basically it's an announcement where they're saying, hey, they're going to use gen AI to personalize product recommendations that part is cool and descriptions for customers including the title. So, as far as the recommendations go, you know that that's totally fine. Like, like, I don't think that's going to affect us negatively. I think it might be a positive thing. Like, for example, it's going to start basing more things off of the customer shopping activity instead of just offering customers more, like this. Like you've probably seen that when you're shopping on Amazon, it's going to give more specific recommendations, such as gift boxes for Mother's Day or cool deals to improve your curling game. That's the example that they give. Who in the world outside of Canada needs improvement on their curling game? But anyways, this is something that's going to be interesting for their recommendations.   Bradley Sutton: But as part of this, there was a kind of like a demo, given that Amazon is going to kind of like redo titles in the search experience. Okay, so it's not necessarily rewriting your titles. You know that that was an announcement done before how Amazon is going to sometimes, you know, change up your title if it doesn't think it's, it's good enough and you can opt out of that program. But this is different. It's like if somebody searches a certain keyword, the way that it sees your title in the search results. Again, this is just the way it's displaying in the search results. It's not actually changing your listing. It could change some words around based on if it thinks that it could cause the customer to be more likely to purchase.   Bradley Sutton: Now, this is the one where people are like I'm not sure if we can trust Amazon, you know, to change the title of my product that I spent a lot of work on. So this is one I think we're definitely going to have to see an action, start tracking it to see you know once this starts rolling out. Is this going to negatively or positively affect sellers? Is it going to help your conversion, your click-through rate, or could it potentially hurt it because it just starts putting these random, hallucinating AI words there? This is one of those ones that we're going to have to wait and see the A+ Content. I'm like, hey, go ahead and start using that right now. Guys, I think it's available in most people's accounts. Let's start playing around with that. But anything that has to do with changing titles and keywords, obviously I think a lot of us sellers are a little bit more skeptical about. So let's see how that one works out. Now, another cool thing that you know maybe you're skeptical or not, but I think it's pretty cool because I saw some of it in action is the fifth thing that they're using.   Bradley Sutton: Ai is creating highly engaging video ads. So it gave a couple examples, like there was just like a speaker and then it put it in this crazy background with, you know, like a beach, and then not only that, it actually made a video like with waves crashing on the shore. The other example that I really like that it gave was it showed a cup of tea, a pitcher just a pitcher of a cup of tea, with steam coming out of it. Showed a cup of tea, a pitcher, just a pitcher of a cup of tea, with steam coming out of it. But then it totally made it a video Like the background was dynamic and the steam you could actually see it coming out of the cup. So you know, for those of you doing like special video ads sponsor display, sponsor brand ads this is going to be cool. You know like videos work better than just still images. It really conveys emotion better. And now, instead of having to pay tons and tons of money to an agency or have some special 3d modeling. You're going to be able to use generative AI to generate these ads, so that's definitely going to be pretty cool.   Bradley Sutton: One thing I neglected to mention from day one I forgot was the drone delivery. All right, so that was a pretty cool announcement where they're like hey, by the end of this decade I'm assuming 2029 or 2030, whatever they assume is the end of the decade they said they expect to have done 500 million drone deliveries. I mean, there hasn't been barely any yet because it's not fully launched, but they're aiming for one hour drone deliveries and to be able to make 500 million of those in the next five years or so. So that's going to be pretty cool to see your you know, maybe coffin shelves being delivered by drone to people's porches. All right, that's going to be pretty cool. Release Next up is something that I'm not going to go too in depth today on, because I actually interviewed the product manager for this tool and it's going to come out in a future podcast in a few weeks.   Bradley Sutton: But there's a few new analytical tools that Amazon is launching. You can see some of this information in your dashboard. But one of the cool things is customer journey analytics. It says it helps you spot trends and pain points so you can create strategies to optimize the shopping experience. It says this tool maps an end-to-end view of the customer journey, from awareness to consideration, to intent and purchase. Right, there's going to be enhanced audience tailoring. Right, we've been doing brand tailored promotions for, like you know, abandoned cart customers and different things like that, but now there's going to be even more opportunity to tailor make your promotions to certain audiences. And then the last tool that they announced under this was business planner, an AI power tool that helps you identify opportunities for sales growth. And again the first two like hey, let's go for it. This next one is probably the one that some sellers are a little bit more skeptical on until they actually see it in action, the one that some sellers are a little bit more skeptical on until they actually see it in action, but it's basing it off of what Amazon is going to recommend, that for actions that you might take to help your account.   Bradley Sutton: Now there's some other various announcements made after this. I don't have a bunch of slides on it or news articles, but there was somebody who talked about. You know how the counterfeit crimes unit are really cracking down on a review. You know manipulation and sellers who are, you know, opening up fraudulent accounts and attacking other sellers and fake reviews, and it was really cool. A lot of people were applauding over some of the announcements that they made about how they're really trying to crack down on a lot of these black hatters out there, so that was pretty cool.   Bradley Sutton: Another department that came up on stage was the customer service department. You know the for seller support, the support department, and you know, at the first part, you know, I think a lot of sellers like, oh, brother, you know what are these guys going to say? This is like the one of the most I hate to use the word, but almost hated departments at Amazon. But I think they got probably some of the most applause during their presentation because they launched a few things where, like now, you can 100% of the time do these chat customer supports where you can get resolution right away instead of going back and forth making emails all the time, and this is going to be pretty cool. Along with the live chat, you're going to be able to share your screen, even live, with an Amazon customer support rep, instead of them asking you to take a screenshot, then you send it and then five hours later you get a reply and they ask for another screenshot. You're going to be able to take care of that stuff live, because it is going to be right there with a share your screen. So that's going to be something I think pretty cool.   Bradley Sutton: A lot of sellers were excited about that, and then probably one of the biggest announcements was that there's going to be the ability to connect to specialists. All right, so from what I hear from people that have had a bit in the beta, it's almost like going to Amazon Accelerate and having a seller cafe appointment. By the way, that's like one of the reasons to go to Amazon Accelerate. You can get some of your issues solved in real time with like a specialist, like somebody who really knows what they're doing, as opposed to somebody who I'm sure we've all had experience with, where they're just copying and pasting answers from a knowledge base or something right. But you're going to be able to connect with a specialist and it's going to be able to connect with a specialist and it's going to be way more likely that they're going to know what you're. You know how to fix your problem, because that's like all they deal with, as opposed to they're trying to be jack of all trades. They're going to be specialists with a certain thing, like maybe compliance or something else. By the way, there's a lot of announcements based on compliance too, but that I think a lot of sellers were really applauding about, because you know how many of us have had that frustrating situation where we're trying to get our point across to a customer support rep and it's obvious they have no idea what the heck we're talking about. And then we're having to, like go back and forth over days where now you might be able to get your stuff resolved in minutes with just one person from start to finish. So that was something definitely really cool to look forward to. So that was something definitely really cool to look forward to.   Bradley Sutton: Other things is like generative AI, where there's going to be potentially again I talk about good things where it's like, hey, show me the money, like this is great, let's start on this right away. And then there's, you know, some things that are kind of like hey, we maybe need to take a wait and see approach, but there's going to be some generative AI things where you might be able to get stuff solved with just a bot, kind of right, and I know that kind of like is a turnoff for some people. But you know, ai is helping bots get a lot better. But one of the examples they gave was you could like say, hey, I need to change the product dimensions on my product to this by this, by this, and then that gen AI bot, as it were, is going to say, oh yeah, let me go ahead and take care of that for you, all right, without even having to open up a case, without even having to maybe go into your listing to change it there. So that could be pretty cool, but let's see how that works, all right. So that's about it.   Bradley Sutton: I probably knocked out about 15, 20 of those announcements. Like I said, in the future, two or three podcast episodes, we're going to go a little bit more in depth on some of these. I also did a recap video with Andrea Marquez, who is the host of the this Is Small Business podcast that's the Amazon hosted podcast and we went over a couple more of these in depth. And then I brought on some Amazon product managers, thanks to the Amazon team, and we're going to go a lot more in depth on some of those analytical tools and some of the gen AI tools. So a lot of exciting things coming to the podcast, a lot of exciting things coming to Amazon.   Bradley Sutton: Right, highly recommend guys, if you've never been to an accelerate, mark your calendars. I'm sure it's going to be around the same time next year, maybe around September. You have got to go to this event to like be the first to hear about these, to hear about these special things that are being released by Amazon, to be able to network with 4,000 other sellers. It's kind of like a really unique experience and I had a great time thanks to the Amazon team and thanks to all of you. I met so many of you out there at our Helium 10 booth, and just walking around is really great to connect with a lot of you. So I hope to see you at some future events.   Bradley Sutton: Don't forget, next week I'll be at the seller kingdom event in Seoul, Korea, h10.me/sellerkingdom. You'll be able to register for that event at the at the end of October. October 31st, there's going to be an Amazon advertising event in Sydney, Australia, so make sure to come out to that. And then November 11th, we're doing an elite workshop in Milan, Italy. So mark your calendar. If you're in Europe, that is another event you can go to. So, guys, thank you so much for joining us this week. We'll be back next week to see what's buzzing.

Want to unlock profit potential by cutting Amazon fees in 2024? This Tactics Tuesday episode of Brand Fortress HQ is packed with actionable strategies you can't afford to miss. Learn how to optimize your product dimensions and packaging to slash fulfillment costs, and discover the benefits of using third-party logistics (3PL) for multi-channel fulfillment (MCF). We also explore the invaluable insights from Amazon's new SKU Economics Report, which can elevate your decision-making process regarding products, advertising spend, and overall profitability.We're not stopping there. Tune in to hear how small adjustments, like folding long sleeves on products, can dramatically reduce shipping costs and boost your margins. We highlight the competitive advantage for smaller brands by redesigning products for cost efficiency and discuss the importance of balancing inventory between Amazon FBA, Amazon Warehouse, and 3PL. Our discussion extends to backup inventory strategies, including the use of staging warehouses and cost-effective storage solutions like Skewdrop in China, ensuring your supply chain remains seamless and penalty-free.Finally, we tackle the complexities of Amazon's warehousing and fulfillment options, including the limitations of AWD and the benefits of Seller Fulfilled Prime. Discover how combining AWD, FBA, 3PL, and Seller Fulfilled Prime can optimize your inventory management, reduce costs, and maintain stellar sales performance. Emphasizing efficient logistics management, we share tips on utilizing smaller shipments for quicker processing and the advantages of hiring a dedicated logistics manager. This episode is your roadmap to mastering the intricacies of Amazon's marketplace and maximizing profitability.

Unlock the secrets of skyrocketing your e-commerce sales with TikTok Shop! Join us as we sit down with Michelle Barnum-Smith, a leading expert on TikTok Shop, who will reveal why this platform is revolutionizing e-commerce and how you can tap into its immense potential. From unparalleled user engagement to an all-inclusive buying experience that supports brand building and data transparency, Michelle dissects the unique advantages TikTok Shop offers over traditional platforms like Amazon. Get ready to learn how full visibility of sales data and direct customer interactions can transform your business. In this episode, we explore the seamless customer journey on TikTok Shop from sparking awareness to completing a purchase all within the app. Discover how the shift from traditional influencer marketing to a collaborative affiliate model is empowering creators to drive sales through direct rewards from TikTok. We also get into TikTok's growing prominence as a search engine for younger generations and the new shopping features that make discoverability effortless. This is a golden opportunity for sellers to leverage TikTok Shop's innovative ecosystem to maximize engagement and boost sales. Prepare to be inspired by real-life success stories and practical tips for setting up your very own TikTok Shop. We cover everything from business registration and linking social accounts to optimizing your listings and content for viral success. Michelle shares invaluable insights on inventory forecasting and the ripple effect of TikTok Shop's success on other platforms like Amazon. Plus, learn the importance of adhering to community guidelines to avoid account suspensions and ensure your business thrives on TikTok Shop. Don't miss out on this comprehensive guide to navigating and conquering TikTok Shop's dynamic marketplace! In episode 578 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Michelle discuss: 00:00 - Exploring TikTok Shop for Sellers 02:56 - TikTok's Influence on Consumer Purchases 06:23 - Enhanced Shopping Experience on TikTok 09:32 - Maximizing Sales Through TikTok Shop 11:04 - Reviving Live Selling With TikTok Shop 16:22 - TikTok Shop Viral Success Stories 16:40 - Success Tips for TikTok Shop Setup 19:55 - Maximizing Marketing Opportunities on TikTok 25:11 - TikTok Shop Guidelines and Best Practices 26:40 - Navigating TikTok Shop Suspension Guidelines 33:48 - Effective Creator Outreach Strategy Guide ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: TikTok shop is one of the hottest marketplaces in 2024 to sell on. Today we're going to do a deep dive into everything you need to know to get started selling on that platform. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our special Freedom Ticket monthly workshop, where we actually film live a training, a deep dive training, into a certain aspect of e-commerce and we put it later into Freedom Ticket so that you guys can benefit from it. But you guys here on the podcast are going to get the benefit of getting this training too. Now today's guest is going to be Michelle Barnum-Smith, who is definitely an expert in the field of TikTok shop and she's going to do a deep dive into like hey, what do you need to do to get started and what are some best practices? You know we've had some people on this podcast who sell on TikTok shop. You guys have heard them doing some crazy, crazy numbers, some of them even doing more than their Amazon business. So if you guys want to know what's involved with getting set up on this platform, this episode is going to be for you.   Kevin King: Now, Michelle I've known for quite some time, and so today she's going to be showing you why you need to be considering TikTok and talking about some of the opportunities that are there and what she's doing to help herself and her clients actually crush it. So please welcome Michelle.   Michelle: Today we've got lots of ground to cover and we're going to be talking about the TikTok shop opportunity. Just like Kevin said and Shivali said, unless you've been living under a rock, it is all the buzz, and rightly so. Some people don't realize this, but TikTok shop was born from a hashtag and the whole idea of TikTok made me buy it. This hashtag has been around for several years and it basically was like hey, I discovered this on TikTok and I went and bought it. And here I'm showing it off again because TikTok made me buy this. And essentially, TikTok shop allows businesses to showcase through engaging short videos, live streams and creator collaborations, and users can discover and purchase products directly within the app, creating a smooth and convenient shopping experience. And we're going to talk about, like, just how powerful this really is for you as brand sellers.   Michelle: So the opportunity of a TikTok shop has never been hotter. I mean, essentially, we're talking about a billion monthly users. They're on the app 17 times a day, with 83% of people saying that TikTok has influenced purchase decisions on what they're doing and what they're buying. So consumers are on TikTok specifically to be entertained. They hang out for hours. One and a half billion monthly user base spending an average of 95 minutes a day on the platform. I want you to think about that. That's like at least three episodes of your favorite show on Netflix. It's, you know, it's like people are just like scrolling, scrolling, scrolling and, um, all, all times of the day, like, like we saw in that previous stat of 17 times. You know, essentially starting the app 17 times a day, kind of crazy. Um, they offer a frictionless buying experience from creator to product page, to checkout to back to scrolling in seconds, which is one of the huge reasons why TikTok and TikTok Shop is such a powerful opportunity for sellers, right this second, so you can literally go from an organic discovery experience to a checkout experience in just seconds, and you can amplify that opportunity with some certain promotional activities that we'll talk about. So, bottom line, TikTok shop really helps build brands, not just sell products, so they have more high quality traffic, more sales and repurchases, have full visibility of data, end to end loop closing data.   Michelle: So one of the things that I love so much about TikTok shop is having previously just used TikTok to drive traffic to Amazon. So I have tried it a whole bunch and it is so frustrating because Amazon's a black hole. They don't share data back with you. So if you've ever tried to run ads, drive influencer content, even do social media like, just focus on the social media side of TikTok or Instagram or Facebook or whatever it might be. There's no data back from Amazon, even with using attribution, because Amazon attribution is 55% inaccurate to actually tell you what converted, what drove sales. It's kind of like a guess most of the time and if sales rise you're kind of like, okay, well, what contributed to that In TikTok shop? You know exactly what contributed to that sale. You know exactly what social posts drove how many sales. Which affiliate is your number one affiliate? If you're running ads, you know exactly how those ads are performing.   Michelle: It allows you to speak directly with your viewers as well, your customers, your prospects, every step along the way. It's you the face of the brand, your brand, interacting directly with customers. So most of the time, most sellers, most consumers, don't realize that there's sellers behind their brands on Amazon. They just think that they're buying a product on Amazon. That's not the case with TikTok. TikTok gives sellers opportunity to interact directly with the customer on every step of the customer journey. So there's no question who is? You know who this relationship is with and there's serious marketing opportunities, and I'm such a marketing geek. I love all of the marketing opportunities that TikTok has. Just this, just today, they released promo codes. Super excited about that. So let's talk about the full shopping journey within TikTok. Essentially, TikTok allows you to discover through shoppable content and through short videos and lives to select, basically go and learn more from about the product on the product detail page and then actually check out and buy, place orders and check out without ever leaving TikTok. So why this is so significant? As a marketer and as a seller myself, if I have, let's say, the counter to that is on Instagram and if you've ever been influenced on Instagram, you know, let me know, raise your hand, you're watching, you're watching that content and then the person is saying, oh, go to the link in my bio and you go to the link in your bio in, and it's some linktree that may or may not have been updated and that link might take them to Amazon. Take you to Amazon, where their Amazon storefront is like laid out, all for you to have to sort through just to find the product that you were interested in that caught your attention for just a second, that interrupted your entertainment experience that you were there on Instagram to experience, and now you can't even find what it was that caught your attention. You just give up in frustration.   Michelle: What I love about TikTok shop is that you can go from being entertained seeing a shoppable video, seeing something that a creator is promoting, to all the way to checkout in just seconds and back into your entertainment. That experience has very little interruption. So TikTok has several ways to checkout. Essentially, you have the opportunity to go from a shoppable video to a TikTok shop where you can see that brand's full lineup of offerings, and go to the product detail page where you can then check out. But this is not typically the shopping experience. Usually, it's you see a video. It takes you directly to the product detail page and then you just check out. These are the things and ways that you can build your brand on TikTok shop directly. So let's talk about the customer journey on TikTok versus Amazon. So previously TikTok, when it was just a social media channel, sat a little bit higher up in the customer journey. So if you guys aren't familiar, the customer journey is this idea of a funnel or this process where somebody goes from awareness to consideration, to purchase, to customer service, to going deeper in their rebuy or loyalty to that specific brand. So previously, TikTok the app, the social media side of TikTok was just in the awareness phase, the awareness and consideration phase. Just like Instagram, it was like a place of discovery, a place of entertainment, a place to maybe get educated, but it wasn't a place to purchase. That was where you would go to Amazon, and Amazon fit squarely in the consideration phase, like I need more information, I'm aware of my need already and then I'm going to purchase. So essentially, Amazon is solution solving. It's a search engine for buying. Customers are already aware of a need. They search, research and buy on Amazon.   Michelle: Buyers don't hang out on Amazon for fun or entertainment, despite Amazon's best efforts with Amazon Lives, Amazon Post, Amazon Inspire, and that's really why TikTok shop has taken over in that regard. Not necessarily like I'm not saying that Amazon's going away anytime soon. Obviously that's a huge opportunity, but TikTok shop now owns the entire customer journey, from awareness through consideration, purchase, the customer service experience, all the way to rebuy opportunities, average order value increases, um rebuy rates, all sorts of things that TikTok shop makes available to sellers to be able to do and accomplish all within the TikTok shop platform. Are you guys seeing the potential and the opportunity here? And, as a marketer, this is why I'm so passionate about it, because if you own the awareness, if you are the one creating the awareness of the need and you immediately go into a checkout scenario, you win. The checkout is not okay we're making you aware and then you're being taken to a page where you and 100 other competitors are then brought up with different options and people are overwhelmed with options. It's not like that. It's literally going from awareness to checkout to back to entertainment in a matter of seconds. So TikTok really comes down to need awareness. Their focus is on entertainment and education and their goal is to keep users on the platform with their addictive algorithms. Users are made aware of products and the purchases is done within TikTok shop with quick checkouts and then buyers are back to scrolling within seconds. So that's really kind of the crux of TikTok shop there and live selling. I don't know if you guys have seen have been on the platform yet, but live selling it really had its heyday. I feel like you know as far as US consumer behavior goes in, like the late eighties, early nineties, Saturday morning infomercials Anybody remember those?   Michelle: I know I was like, always sucked in. I was always sucked into those Um. And then there's QVC and home shopping network where, you know, basically little ladies hang out to buy kitchen kitchenware, but TikTok shop, specifically, is bringing live, selling back, and it's crazy's crazy, the amount of organic viewers you get checking out your products live, seeing what you have to offer live, you know, and it's a form of entertainment, so they're already on there to be entertained and then they get to watch you pitch whatever it is that you have. That's kind of crazy. And also creators we have this. Creators have been kind of like put up on this pedestal as influencers, right, and this kind of title and with that has come a little bit of a combative nature. When it comes to working with brands, right, how many of you have worked with an influencer where you've reached out to them, you've tried to recruit them and they're charging like a couple hundred dollars of post to like two thousand dollars a post, five thousand dollars a post for the honor to get to work with them. Anybody experience that. And then you're like, um, what did I get from that? I got a post. Did it do anything, right? So the awesome, the awesome thing with working with creators now is that they essentially become affiliates because TikTok is rewarding them for sales that they make through the platform. So creators are now motivated to work with brands and to push products and seek out opportunities. It's no longer just like oh well, I'm a creator and so my creative needs are above your needs as a brand. Now they're willing to be more collaborative with brands in and focusing on content that converts and that drives sales, because, at the end of the day, they want to make money right and we all want to make money, and so it makes it more of a win-win relationship. So that's one of my favorite things about this kind of shift is it goes from the honor of working with a creator and an influencer to now like okay, we're affiliates and we're in this together.   Michelle: So there's kind of four native ways to discover and buy on TikTok. There's the browse area, which is shoppable videos. That's what you would generally see if you're just scrolling through TikTok. You're going to have some content that is just entertainment content. You're going to have content that's educational and informative and that sync to and our shoppable videos, basically, and shop pages. That's where you know brands show up with their brand presence, um, live shopping, like we discussed, and the shop tab. So that's the new kind of search functionality within TikTok. That's all about finding and discovery and searching for solutions. It's kind of crazy, but TikTok has now become a search engine for a certain demographic. Anybody who's less than 25 years old, instead of going to Google with their questions first, they're going to TikTok with their questions first, and it used to be that videos were what was served first in the search results and now it's product. Are you picking up? What I'm putting down? Like this is this is a significant opportunity. This is such a crazy shift and I will say that every almost like 80 to 90% of the in TikTok shop contacts that I have were recently recruited from Amazon. Like Amazon employees are moving over to TikTok shop just like clawing their way over here. So it's very soon there's gonna be some aspects that are native to Amazon that we'll start seeing show up in TikTok shop, especially this kind of search portion, the shop tab, and then the buying experience, like we've talked about, is very seamless, from the product page to the checkout page. You literally can like sync your Apple Pay with TikTok shop, click the side of your phone gosh and be back to doom scrolling in seconds, if I haven't, you know, beat that into you enough.   Michelle: But let's talk about this idea and this question is TikTok shop just a distraction for you as sellers? I hear this kind of objection a lot, and from really big sellers, and so I'm a little surprised. I'm always a little surprised because, like Kevin said, I think that if you have an opportunity to make money, are you going to say no to that opportunity, especially when it's relatively zero to low cost to get started? You already have inventory. You just bring it over to TikTok. So let's talk about just some case studies really quick. Every time I talk to an Amazon seller who is looking to expand off Amazon or diversify their revenue off Amazon, they're usually happy with like, hey, if I can get 5% of my Amazon sales off Amazon, like my Shopify site or Walmart or Etsy or something, I would be happy if just 5%. So here we have a few sellers and I'm just going to cruise through here. This brand got serious about TikTok shop beginning of April and year to date, they are 8% of their Amazon sales on TikTok shop. This brand launched in September of 2023 with TikTok shop. They're one of my brands and we immediately went viral. Immediately, like the bestseller that we had became a bestseller on TikTok shop and then, as we got to know our audience a lot better and affiliates a lot better, launching products on TikTok shop with them, we saw halo effect on Amazon. Every single time that we launched a new product on TikTok shop it would go viral. It would go viral on Amazon as well. Rank would skyrocket and along with sales. So their year to date revenue is 11%.   Michelle: Our biggest struggle with this brand is every time we go viral. Like it's really hard to forecast inventory for going viral. So we keep running into like our bestsellers going out of stock because they just take off. They just take off, so that I guess that is like one of the sides of TikTok shop that is a warning is that your shop could go viral and with your inventory. This seller I did a big training in Cancun back in February and in and around TikTok shop this seller was doing two sales a day before my training and after that, um, 180 sales in the week following. So I was a little proud of that. And then subsequently, uh, we've been working together and now their brands, their, uh, they have 15% of their total brand revenue, uh, of their Amazon revenue they're making on TikTok shop. I'm not going to talk a lot about these brands, because these brands are just like killing it. They're 16% of Amazon sales for this brand. This brand, gosh, they're just like. I just met with their category manager last week, their new category manager. They're number one in their category on TikTok shop, all of TikTok shop, and their year to date is 17% of their Amazon sales. So I guess you have to ask yourself, like, is it worth getting started? Like, yes, I think the answer is obvious, right, like I'm not doing a sales pitch here guys. I don't like this is you already have the inventory, right? You're already selling on Amazon. It's not too much more difficult to extend, uh, what you're doing and get started with that same inventory on TikTok shop as well. So, but there's some nuances to it and I want to talk about those nuances. So there are some keys that are necessary to a successful setup on TikTok shop. So this is where we're getting a little bit down into some specifics. On setup, I am not walking you through step-by-step a setup step-by-step at this point. This is not necessarily how to. This is more of kind of like lessons learned from setting up over 30 brands personally on TikTok shop and some of the nuances, some of the troubleshooting, some of the kind of like things to avoid, basically from a high level perspective.   Michelle: So this is kind of my setup checklist to be successful, this is what. These are all the things that you have to do one time during a setup. You need to get through your business registration. You need to complete that. You need to link a TikTok social account that is US based based with your TikTok shop seller account that is US based. You need to create or connect a TikTok ads manager to that account ads manager account to your TikTok shop account. You need to get your shipping set up and your listing set up and your content optimized for TikTok shop. You need to import available reviews, meaning, if you have like and this is all legal TikTok shop owns well, TikTok is owned by a company called ByteDance and ByteDance owns lots of different tech companies. One included is the main tool that's used for importing reviews. So if you have a Shopify site or another website with reviews on it, then you can bring those reviews over. If you don't, you can import reviews from Amazon to your website and then import those reviews from Amazon. It's a little bit of a process. It's a process, but you only have to do that once. To help you build up, to start the process of building your review presence, you need to select and implement promotions for your listings, such as pre-shipping with qualifications, product discounts, flash sales. Now the new promo codes that are released, and for select accounts, if you qualify, there's now a customer marketing whole section where you can go back and offer, you know, present offers in app. So showing up in the customer's TikTok inbox, basically like they already bought from you once, or, if they're a potential client, you can get directly inside of TikTok users' inboxes with your offers. My marketing heart, it just loves this from an opportunity perspective and we can actually measure how many sales converted from those messages. I love email marketing, I love SMS marketing, I love all of that, but sometimes we just can't close all the loops. And when we're talking native platforms and the marketing opportunities that are native to that platform, we're able to see all those loops close. When it's when we're talking native platforms and the marketing opportunities that are native to that platform, we're able to see all those loops closed and the associated data with that. So we know what further to invest in, what's working, what's not working, and then, of course, they're the final step in success. A successful setup is making sure that you have an affiliate plan set up for affiliates creators to find your products and to start promoting them and to make sure free samples are available. We'll show that here in a second.   Michelle: Okay, the second thing that you need to make sure that you do is to review the prohibited products list. So just because you can sell something on Amazon and Shopify doesn't mean you can sell it on TikTok shop. And this is probably like the number one thing that I see sellers screw up on, um, that they just like rush to get all of their products on TikTok shop and all of a sudden uh, they didn't ever check prohibited products and all of a sudden their account gets deactivated. Um, because they're promoting products or promoting it in such a way that's against, that's either prohibited products or against community guidelines in how you talk about it. So the most suspensions and account deactivations could be avoided by checking this first. So essentially, just, I mean you could even just search for it TikTok shop prohibited products policy and go on there or also look at their restricted categories on there as well to see is my product a prohibited product? I've been surprised how many products are not allowed on TikTok shop that are allowed on Amazon and, of course, on Shopify. You can sell whatever the heck you want to. So it's definitely one of those things that just because you can sell it somewhere doesn't mean you can sell it on TikTok shop.   Michelle: And this is just from a having been through it so many times. Business registration is not what it used to be. In September, I was able to get just like a ton of brands on TikTok shop with very little effort. Now there's a few more steps. Now there's a few things that kind of slow people down. It's amazing to me how many sellers just like give up. They just roll over and they're just like oh no, I can't get it to work. And I'm like guys, you are Amazon sellers, it is selling on Amazon is not an easy thing. Why are we giving up so easily? Have some like, have some resilience here. Also, TikTok shop like says oh, your account setup failed. I wish they would use different language, because sometimes it's not true failure and sometimes it's like they're just um, you get to a certain place in the process and then the system is moving you forward, but it needs more information, like you need to submit additional documents or you need to submit them in a certain way, and so it says failure, but really it just means like you need to go add more, add more documentation or whatever it is that they're actually asking for. So my advice to you is just keep pushing forward, keep pushing through that. It is worth it in the end. And just as a little like hack is any requested documentation, even if it says that they accept PDFs and PNGs, only submit them as JPEGs. Like their system, their bots read JPEGs and more often than not they don't read PDFs. So just, even if it says it'll accept a PDF, just submit it as a JPEG. Okay, cause it will help you. And especially if you're talking to support, support. It's so crazy because support can't see submitted PDFs or PNGs, but it can see submitted JPEGs. Does that make sense? So that's a little, a little note for you to take and make sure that you're doing Okay.   Michelle: This is relatively new and this has to be. This is around community guidelines. Community guidelines were updated mid last month and essentially it's just saying hey, this is the way that we behave on our platform. So there's, they become a lot more strict about what creators as well as sellers can and can't say on their product. You know, on the platform and that includes your listings and what you say about your products, especially, um, you know if something has an effect on weight or weight loss, physical performance or physiological effects or changes. So in this example, I had a seller reach out to me and they're like I don't know what I did wrong, I don't know why this account is frozen, or this product is frozen, I don't know what's wrong with it. And all I had to do was read through the title to see what the issue was. They're essentially saying this eliminates snoring and enhances facial structure and post-workout recovery claim, claim, claim, claim, claim, like you're physiological effects, physical performance, eliminate snoring. You can't say that on Amazon had. Like how can you say that? Like you can't say that on TikTok shop either? Um, and if you have any product in and around weight loss, I'm not saying it's not possible to sell on TikTok shop, it absolutely is. But how you talk about it is really critical. You cannot say weight loss, you cannot say metabolism, fat burning oh my gosh. I had another brand that was just like beside themselves. They were so like offended that TikTok shop suspended their product, their you know key seller, and I was looking through their account. It was like weight loss, metabolism, dah, dah, dah. And I'm like you can't say those things. You. You failed TikTok, you know like. You showed up like, oh well, we can sell it on Shopify. Yes, you can sell it on Shopify, because on Shopify you can say whatever the heck you want about your product. There's nobody policing what you can and can't say on your Shopify site. But this is their market and so they get to say what you can and can't say. And it's not just what you say in the text, in your title, in your bullet points, it's also what you say in the images, on the products themselves as well. So if you have packaging that you're showing and it's making claims. You got to scrub that. You got to like, get rid of it if you have infographics. So that's why I say you're not just pulling over everything that you've created for your Amazon listing or your Shopify listing. You got to be really careful in what you're bringing over and being aware of these community guidelines and what you can and can't say. These are the main ones. It's worth looking at, it's worth reading through and I do talk about that extensively in my course where I detail and outline it, but these are the top ones.   Michelle: Okay, focus on your bestsellers. I often see that the second somebody gets started on TikTok shop, they bring their whole category, their whole catalog of offerings over at once and I really advise you to just test the opportunity and to learn the platform and which of your products is the best opportunity first. So too many products are a distraction to affiliates and your ops team. So, like in this example, this brand brought over gosh all of their products and anytime that they were doing creator outreach they basically all of their creator and targeted plans was just like hey, here's everything that we sell and that's a lot, that's too much. So instead we shifted their focus to okay, what's your best seller on Amazon, what's the one with the best reviews, the strongest call to action, the most obvious for how it helps a consumer? And they're like, okay, this one, their free sample request took off, the affiliate performance took off, their sales took off. So just don't flood. It's a distraction for your team. It's a distraction when you start to reach out to affiliates, so just focus on your best sellers first. Now hear me out. This is probably the biggest warning that I have for you. Second to prohibited products okay, so this is probably the biggest area that I want you to be really careful with. And don't use the shortcuts, okay. So oftentimes I see that sellers are you're on Amazon, you're on Shopify and there are apps available within TikTok shop where you can just sync your Shopify account or sync your Amazon account and sync over your listings. So all of your listing content immediately gets imported into TikTok shop, and I have seen so many issues with this. Like I've said so many times, there's things that you're saying on your listings that you can't say in a TikTok shop, and what happens, guys, is that your listings are not reviewed by human beings, right, they're reviewed by bots, and what I have seen happen so many times is that people have seen those listings and they bring over their entire catalog, like we just talked about, and they're making claims or bringing over prohibited products or something like that that they didn't know.   Michelle: I didn't know and immediately they get account violations and account violations and they get a million account violations and then their account gets suspended because there's a limit to your account violations that you can receive, and then you lose your account, your account gets deactivated and it's over before you begin. So that's an extreme example, but I have seen that too many times to count what also happens, especially in the case of Shopify. For example, if you're syncing your listings, let's say you want to make a change to your TikTok shop listing, like your price or your title or something like that, because your listings are synced with these apps. You can't do that because Shopify and the Shopify listing owns the TikTok listing, so you have to go and make the change on Shopify If you want to make that change, show up on TikTok. You see how that's a problem, right? So and it's not an easy fix, it's not, it's not just like a quick separation, um, because I have a seller, like I've talked about. He's number one in his category and he set this up, his like. When he first got set up, an account manager told him to do this and they didn't know. These account managers have no clue, they really don't, um, and so he is dealing with this issue. If he were to try to separate at this point, he would have to create a new ASIN, for lack of a better term. A new listing for one of his best sellers and one of the big areas of social proof on TikTok shop is to see how many people have purchased the product. He would lose all of that history on that listing that now has like a hundred thousand purchases. So, yeah, it's, it's like a serious deal. So please don't do that. If you're wanting any kind of true shortcut, use the bulk uploading options. This is new the import product upload accelerator. Go this route if you're looking for shortcuts. But, like I said, I really do want you to like set up your listings manually first, at least the first couple, so you understand what TikTok is really looking for, so you can then go and add more products in the future.   Michelle: Offer free shipping. Oh, my goodness, we're running out of time, guys, we'll send you these slides. Basically, bottom line, you set up the free shipping opportunities within the promotions tab and not when you're setting up your shipping templates and your shipping solutions. So it's a promotion and you can apply all sorts of qualifications to qualify for free shipping and fulfilled by TikTok is now a thing, and they're gonna start pushing this really, really hard. So start with your Amazon inventory, start selling via Amazon MCF syncing with TikTok shop. Once you've proven the opportunity for your brand, immediately apply for FBT as soon as you set up your TikTok shop account so that when you prove like, hey, is this an opportunity for me, cause MCF is expensive, you want to get that inventory into FBT and start taking advantage of the opportunities and like super cheap pricing that they have for fulfillment over there. Okay, I'm going to cruise through this, but, just like I showed you, there's kind of like the setup checklist and then there's the ongoing success checklist. This is what you need to do ongoing, daily, weekly, monthly to be able to make sales on TikTok shop. Really, what it comes down to is working with creators, making sure you have your free samples turned on. I have my three S's to targeted outreach, which is search, sort and then save. And just a warning if you are using bots or planning to use bots, that gosh. They've now put regulations in place where new sellers are limited and restricted on how many people they can reach out to because of these messaging bots that are out there. So I really recommend focusing on target collaborations versus and reaching out to creators that way, versus messaging and spamming methods. So this is my search and sort and save method. Essentially, you're under the find creator tab and you're searching via relevant search terms for your brand or your category. You're sorting I like to sort by GMB, and if they're fast growing that's even better, because then they're hungry, they're starting to see success, but they're not so successful yet that they you can't get the time of day with them. And then you hit the little save button over here and then when you go to target collaboration up here, you can import your saved folks I recommend at least 50 per day that you're reaching out to via this message.   Kevin King: Thanks everybody for showing up today. We'll be back again next month to do this again on a whole new topic. Remember there's a replay of this, if you missed part of it, in Freedom Ticket inside the Helium 10. So if you're a member of Helium 10 at any level, there's a little button somewhere up around the top in the education section or resources section that says Freedom Ticket. You'll be able to find this recording in a few weeks in there, added as a permanent addition to the Freedom Ticket. So thanks everybody for coming today and thanks again, Michelle.   Michelle: Thank you, bye, guys.

After getting engaged, Nikki Vargas was staring down a lifetime of white picket fences, suburbs, and 2.5 kids. And deep down she knew she couldn't do it. So years into a confining relationship, and even deeper into a love affair with travel and journalism that compromised the future her fiancé imagined, Nikki had to make a life-changing choice. She talks with Stephanie about how, ultimately, that choice might just be the best one she's ever made. This series is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants. Follow Stephanie on Instagram at @wittelstephanie. Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.  Have a story you want to share? Head to bit.ly/lastdaystories to fill out our confidential Google form.  Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium. And if you want to continue the conversation with other listeners, join the My Lemonada community at https://lemonadamedia.com/mylemonada/ For a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and every other Lemonada show, go to lemonadamedia.com/sponsors. To follow along with a transcript, go to www.lemonadamedia.com/show/lastday shortly after the air date.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kat grew up internalizing that it was her “responsibility” to be careful around men. But when a male friend sexually assaulted her after a frat party, Kat knew the burden wasn't hers alone to bear. She needed to seek justice. In a deeply vulnerable and reflective conversation with Stephanie, Kat provides a glimpse into what happened after she filed a report against her assailant. She found herself in a struggle that consumed her entire college career — and that compromised who she's able to be now. This series is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants. Follow Stephanie on Instagram at @wittelstephanie. Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.  Have a story you want to share? Head to bit.ly/lastdaystories to fill out our confidential Google form.  Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium. And if you want to continue the conversation with other listeners, join the My Lemonada community at https://lemonadamedia.com/mylemonada/ For a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and every other Lemonada show, go to lemonadamedia.com/sponsors. To follow along with a transcript, go to www.lemonadamedia.com/show/lastday shortly after the air date.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.