Building Safe Spaces When People Are Hurting

All right, welcome in everybody to the Gaming Outpost podcast here with the Church Digital. We're hanging out with Papa Tsunami today who wants to devote all of the time to the conversation that we're going to have and not get distracted by anything else.

So he's just on our channel. So you're going to have to catch it later if you missed it. But it's going to be a great conversation.

I'm so looking forward to this, buddy.

Me too. Me too. I'm very excited to chat, tell a little bit of my story, and again, stay focused because man, I have a hard time staying focused sometimes, and it's something I still I'm really working hard on. God's really testing me. My priorities got to get straightened out.

Yeah, I'm just looking at my audio here and it doesn't look like it's like it normally is. So I'm going to check earbuds here a second.

Make sure it sounds okay. I sometimes, well, I had been doing this to begin with of always doing that and now that I get it right most of the time, I kind of go, "No, I don't need to." It looks like I probably should do that today. So give me a second here.

I totally get that. There's so many times where there'll be like a Windows update or something updates and I'm like, "Oh, everything's going to be fine."

Followed.

Yep. Hey, Zack Daddies, thank you for the follow, friend. And then I because I don't check one little setting, everything falls apart, which is fair.

Oh yeah. Well, and the one time.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then and then I've done the I did this not too long ago. I pull up a window to check that the other person's live, forget that I have the window open and I'm getting a double feedback loop of like, why do I hear you twice? Why do I have an echo?

I've done that too many times streaming all these years and you think you never do that again, but then you just and everybody's like, "Why am I hearing multiple voices?" And for me, sometimes I won't have like my browsers routed through my headset, but they're routed through stream. I'm like, "You're crazy. I'm not hearing voices."

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And then, yeah, all of that stuff. Yeah. Hey, Zack Daddies. Thank you. Welcome. Hello, gent. Ah, how very polite of you to call us gents. Appreciate that.

Zach's awesome. He's been supporting me for a very long time.

Okay.

He also is part of some of a retreat that comes out to the camp and brings youth group out. He helped us out with some photography for the disaster from the tornado. He's a good guy.

Oh, that's really cool. That's really cool. I love the juxtaposition of people that you know in person, people that you know online. When there's an intersection of those things, it's just really cool and exciting where all that overlap happens.

Yeah, it's definitely interesting because cuz like in person I'm not normally as outrageous as I am online. And I'm a little goofy in person, but I really cranked the personality up for the internet just to be a little bit more entertaining, a little bit more uh I guess

Yeah, just entertaining is the best word I can say. Um not so boring. Cuz if it was just me being just the chill self I normally am where I can sometimes be a little goofy, I'd be I'd be I'd be boring compared to how I am now or how I normally act.

Well, first I'm very mellow.

Yeah. And I think I hear people at times talk about how that's not genuine, but it is. It's one facet of who you are, you know? So if you're doing it for just likes and follows, well, then maybe it's not genuine. If you're if you're playing a character that you go offline and you leave it behind, then it's not genuine. But if it's just one aspect of who you are when you're hanging with friends and when you're playing games, then it can be totally genuine and be different from what you would see otherwise. Like for instance, like if you see me anywhere except behind the pulpit, I have a hat on and I like

So does that mean I'm fake when I'm behind the pulpit cuz I don't put a hat on?

No.

I can't imagine you without a hat. Oh no. I don't I don't need that image in my head. I got You got to have the hat. You've had the hat forever.

For how long? How long have you been collecting your hats?

Seventh grade was the first one I got.

Seventh grade.

That's a long time.

I know. I really wish I don't know what happened to that one. I really wish I had that one still. It was this really awful banana yellow, but yellow's my favorite color, so I don't know how to describe it other than an awful banana yellow. Um, so that was my first one. And then it took like years to find another one. They It's not like you just go to the corner store and find them. You you had to you had to kind of go to the the secondhand thrift shops to find them. Until this until this century, I couldn't find them. Like they were super hard to to come by. So I I don't think I have it here. I think it's upstairs. My oldest and dearest one uh that I do have is probably since 2001. So it is a good 25 years old and it is worn so bad. And I I've not given that sucker up. That sucker is treasured.

It's almost as old as me. Oh my.

It's real close. I'm 29. It's right there.

This hat's been been around the world for a while. Oh man. No, that's awesome. I do have one that's probably older than you. It's over on my shelf. It was my my dad's hat. It's not the same style I wear, but it's it means something to me because it was his. So

Oh, that's sweet.

Yeah.

Sweet.

Yep.

So you know, I I love the uniqueness of everybody and it's so fun to I mean, man, we had a blast at at Reach Conference hanging out.

Oh yeah. The chances that we got to uh Oh, uh, Banana Zahana, sorry. Thought you were going to your own channel. You were waiting to snag snag first. Must be chatting at you. Or is she chatting at me? I'm not sure.

Yeah, at me. I since I want to be focused on you. I thought I was going to stream on my channel, but I I really want to make sure I'm giving you all my attention. So I I I want that again, that's just me. I I know my weaknesses. I know where I get distracted.

Yeah. And uh and so I want to make sure that I'm I'm focused in this moment and answering questions because who knows, you know, my story or where where I've been, what I've gone through. Uh it could it could help somebody who's going through a block of their own right now, going through a hard time of their own.

Absolutely.

And uh and I want to make sure that I'm I'm being respectful of your time and being respectful uh to my thoughts that God places on my heart.

Yeah. So hey, do you uh often when you go live have uh an announcement on your Discord that says, "Hey, you're live." If you wanted to maybe just put a little note there that says, "Hey, we're here's where you're going to catch the live if you were looking for me on the on the channel." That might be helpful for people.

Yes, I I went ahead and I sent a notification and told people we're on the Church Digital Twitch page if they need to swing by or would like to swing by.

Awesome. So awesome. Just thinking you had a couple of people coming in looking for you and you're like, I thought you were here. Well, I do the you know that same thing happens to people too when they're coming in looking for flat cap dapper pastor and I'm over at the church digital. Uh but I do that because this is the podcast section. My Bible study is over there. My my bicycle riding is over there. Uh my cooking streams are over like all of my shenanigans are over there. Here we're just hanging out and and we're chatting with friends and and learning about how did God bring you to the place where you are right now and what you're doing.

So I I refer to my friends who are doing things to be salt and light in Twitch as digital missionaries. You don't have to give yourself that label. You may not like that label. Uh, but it's just helpful for me to think through a missionary is someone who goes into a space, studies the space, and then reaches out to people with the the love of Christ. And so that's that's how I like to identify myself and other people in the space. And and I would agree, you know, sometimes it's it's uh a bit intimidating to even consider myself an online uh missionary or in general just somebody to that stature because that's a huge responsibility.

Um, and I think a lot of like Christian streamers, younger Christian streamers, no matter how old they are, but if they've just started out streaming, some of them don't don't realize how much responsibility that that's that's on our shoulders. Um, we're we're being held to a high standard at that point. Uh, which oh man, it it really can.

But we but we really are all called to be witnesses.

So absolutely. I'm I'm trying to and and I love the I know where your heart is and where you're coming from of the respectfulness and the responsibility. So I'm not trying to diminish that. But one of the things that I'm coming from a different spot is people don't think they can do it unless they have the title that says they can do it. And I want to break that barrier down because if you are salt and light, I want to acknowledge you are fulfilling the great commission, which is what every believer and disciple of Jesus and follower is supposed to do. So I'm going from one thing to highlight you're coming from another thing. I love that. I love that we're both we're both coming at it from a different place.

And it's and it's you're absolutely true. You speaking truth when it comes to people who don't want to be called a missionary because they haven't felt like they've earned that title. They haven't gone overseas. They haven't done this or that. I remember friends growing up that would go to Jamaica or tropical places for mission trips. They would only do a mission trip or missions for maybe a day and they'd be there for a whole week.

Oh.

And they they felt like it was fake. They're like, "We we were only doing missions for one or two days. Uh and the rest is just a vacation. This doesn't feel right." And and I remember like being 16 17 years old and hearing this from friends who got to afford to pay for this mission trip and when they came back and it just jumparted a whole thing at my churches growing up where they're like we're we're not supposed to these are teenagers talking to adults saying we're not supposed to go on a vacation. We're here to help people in those those areas. And that that was a huge change. So I think for some people they get scared. They're like I don't have I don't have a um any form of missionary license. I don't have any form of certifications, trainings, when all the training you honestly need is biblical training uh and faith and trust in God. You're not going to be perfect at it when you first start. I I know I wasn't. Uh but if you allow God to work through your heart and you're patient with him and patient with yourself, you'll you'll get to that point where you will be salt of the earth and uh light onto the paths for others. And uh and so I I it definitely I've heard that several times where people get intimidated because they feel like they haven't deserved a title like that.

Yeah.

Yeah. And like I said, that's why I just clarify at the beginning like I don't care what people call themselves. This is my perspective as I see people living into and living out God's calling in their lives. So with with that in mind, how did you get started on Twitch? I mean, first if it was separate from, hey, I just knew immediately when I was on Twitch I was supposed to be doing ministry.

So if how did you get started and then what was the shift for you into deciding ministry could happen on Twitch with you? So this would be about ten years ago.

Uh, I've been streaming for nearly seven, but about ten years ago, I stumbled upon a game called Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege. And me playing the game, I wanted to get better at it. I was really drawn to it. I really like the teamwork aspect of it and the tactical shooter aspect. I just loved the war strategies involved and I knew the only way I could get better was watching people who were better than me.

Uh, so at the time Twitch was, I think I can't remember quite when Twitch changed from Justin TV to Twitch, but it was around that time where Amazon just got a hold of it or and it got changed to twitch.tv and I started watching seed streamers online. Um, and that got me into the streaming space. Uh, I started, you know, I was a freshman in college and I had a lot of free time because I was so used to early morning classes and I didn't want to have to get a job if I didn't have to because I wanted to relax a little bit. And so I would watch Siege streams after I got all my school work done. I'd be playing Siege and I'd be practicing.

And I got drawn into the Twitch communities of the Siege communities back then. I was involved in several of those channels at the time. Uh, modded for one or two of them. A huge active chatter in all of them. Uh, but I was really just a chatterbox in Twitch chats at the time. I now I wasn't necessarily probably the best Christian example because I just was focused on a video game at that time. But I had recently started revamping my faith with God and returning back to him.

And in one of those streams, one of the streamers that I had been watching for nearly two or three years, uh, somebody brought up God in the chat and he said, "Hey, I'm not here to believe in your fantasy and your imaginary friend. If you're going to talk like that, leave my stream." And I'm a mod for him.

Yeah. And I reached out, you know, respectfully, and I said, "Hey, I know you may not believe in God, but I do. And I know I'm not the best example of a Christian, and you may not have had the best examples of Christianity and in Christ in your life, but I would appreciate you having a little bit more respect for us."

This streamer has had at the time probably four or five hundred average viewers, which was amazing back then in the starting phases of Twitch. And he instantly demoded me and uh said, "I'm not going to be reading your chats ever again. I don't want anything to do with anything that you believe in." And that that hit, you know, I was a mod for this guy.

Yeah. And was a part of this community for such a long time and it hurt. So I for a while I stayed away from just live streams in general. I stopped watching all the R Six streamers that I watched. Uh, in the meantime, I had started dating my now wife and uh, eventually we got married and a few of my friends had always joked about starting a stream together, starting community together uh, for YouTube and I ended up saying, you know what, I'm going to do it. So I uh, I actually started streaming not on Twitch uh, but on um, oh gosh, the other one for on Xbox. I forget the meme of it. It was uh it was the one that that Ninja got signed to and then it closed out. Um, a lot of streamers lost their communities there and had to run back over to Twitch, but I started streaming there for a little bit and uh real Mixer.

Mixer. Mixer. Mixer. Yes. I started streaming on Mixer. I started kind of getting a couple of viewers on there and uh next thing you know I realized I'd get better quality on Twitch than Mixer streaming through my Xbox because I that's all I had at the time. And uh so I switched to Twitch and slowly but surely got to affiliate and that's how I started. It went from not being in the best place of my spiritual life uh to being involved heavily in big Siege creators uh to realizing where what I'm missing out in my life with God returning to that and realizing there needs to be a change.

Yeah. All right. See, you may know Siege is known for very toxic community. Most most PvP games, most uh really toxic most really uh sweaty or um uh competitive games are very toxic communities. They they have no to everything to them is a joke and they can say whatever they want. They just want to hurt somebody's feelings or or trigger them or rage bait them. That's all they want. And uh well, if they do that, they get you off your game and they're going to defeat you. So yes, it's it's it's trash talking to the extreme. Uh I you know, I was in sports. You know, most of the stuff that I did was, you know, wrestling, so it's one-on-one, so there's not a lot of trash talk in there, but there's a lot of bravado that's there. And and so, you know, I I know exactly what you're talking about is the I want to bring all of this. And if I can get an edge by calling your girlfriend something or your mother something or your sister something, I'm going to take advantage of anything I can in that arena. So it's no wonder it would just transfer over into competitive uh you know, esports from sports.

Yeah. And and with Siege, it's it's definitely one of those first person shooters that you really have to learn it. It's it's very tactical. You have to know the ins and outs of of your maps of your your operators that you play. And so the community really bullies new players and in general they'll bully you if you're just not if you have a bad game, right? And that just bothered me. I'm like, why why is this the why why is this the regular? Why is this the norm for for Siege? Um why can't we just have fun? Sure, we can have a little bit of banter. Uh, competition is healthy as long as we're being healthy about it and being respectful. Competition is good. It it helps us strive to be better and build each other up if you're using it correctly. And I'm like, we can have that, but we can get rid of all of this hate and this anger. Cuz I know I know personally I live that life of hate and anger online. And everybody always says, "Oh, it's just an online persona I have." You know, in in life, in real life, I don't act like that. Like, yeah, you do. You just don't say anything.

Yeah. Or you're very you're very short or you're you're you're wanting to say something, but you're saying something else. You're still thinking it and you you've still acted that out in your head, which means that you want to do it. And so, you know, I'm trying to trying to be that light in that space u because I I was a part of the darkness in that space uh was really the reason why I wanted to start streaming it.

That's and honestly, I just wanted to see if I could do it. That's also one thing. It's like can I actually do it?

Can I actually do the thing that I wish was out there? That's a cool thought. That's a cool thought.

Um, just going back and I and and maybe you haven't been able to. Um, the guy that you were modding for, so you're saying that was like ten years ago. Have you come across or run into him or bumped into him since then where you've been able to reach out or engage or you know do anything as far as hey I you know you planted a seed maybe you never get to water it maybe you never did need get to see anything grow but I'm just wondering if there was any chance that you've you bumped into him since then.

I did attempt to reach out again.

Okay. I attempted because uh he was he was having a a tournament like a one v one or two v two tournament within the Siege community and he was willing to bring in small content creators for it. Well, because he remembered who I was from previous DMs, he didn't even respond to me.

Okay. Uh so so I tried once. Have I tried since then? That was probably about six years ago. I haven't tried since then. He's just gotten to be a bigger bigger following, uh, more people, and he just doesn't pay attention to those types of messages anymore.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I wasn't Yeah. I wasn't making the assumption that you were reaching out because he you he'd already demonstrated he wasn't going to respond to you. I was thinking maybe you both ended up in the same place or on the same stream and and and there was an opportunity because you never know how God weaves things back around.

Hey, not Nick Cage. Welcome in.

Yes. And uh if I from what my I remember, I don't think I bumped into him on any other streams. Uh I wish I I could. I mean, honestly, maybe that's something I need to pray about is see if an opportunity with him would pop up again. And uh you know, it's it's one of those things I used to say who it was years ago cuz I was mainly just trash talking them and I realized that's not right. And and in the end, it just is going to cause unnecessary drama. So it's best to just keep it simple.

Yep. Be respectful to him because it's how I would want to be treated. And uh and so, you know, I need to pray. I need to pray about that more and see see how he's doing. Maybe maybe six years has changed him and uh he'd be willing to talk or something.

Yeah. Or or if he's suddenly at a place in life where he's struggling and you know, you just happen to be somewhere, maybe he would open up. I don't know. And and maybe all it was is you confronted him about the circumstance, planted a seed in there, and it is waiting for somebody else God has planned to come along and water that so that it'll grow.

Oh, yeah. And and that's something that I know with streaming, you know, we were talking earlier about how we we are online missionaries. We all need to strive to be the the term or the definition of a missionary because that's what we're called to do. And I remember when I first started streaming, I I was trying to make it all about me reaching people, not me potentially making an opportunity to tell people what God's done for me.

And I I learned real quick that for me, I had more effect to tell people about Christ and tell people about what God's done for my life if I just let it happen naturally. If I just made an environment where we're hanging out, you know, we try to keep it as clean as possible. I I used to really gatekeep uh every every word that you can think of in the dictionary, but I let some things go because if we're just blocking that, how how can we reach those people if all we're doing is blocking that?

And and so I I wanted to be a family-friendly streamer and I try to be as family friendly as I can, but that's just not the case in the Siege community. Um and uh yeah. Yeah. Family friendly in some communities is going to be difficult.

Yes. Yeah. And and so I used to be so, you know, gung-ho about telling people about Christ. As soon as they come in, I'd be like, "Do you know God?"

And and now like I think about how I used to do that. The the way the way you did that, this is going to be too old for for you. You you won't know the reference. That's okay. But uh I I remember as a kid um I got cassette tapes of comedians that I would listen to all the time and that that just kind of like flashed in my mind of a Cheech and Chong bit. Have you heard the word of the lord? And uh and it's not like lord.

Yes. Have you heard the word of the lord? And it's like it's a whole it's like it's not one it's a whole skit that they keep bringing up from tape to tape to tape because it was tapes back in the day of to drop too good they thought.

Yes. Yeah. We got to keep bringing it up because these people are persistent. They're not going to leave you alone. Every time we go from one skit to another, we might run into them. Have you heard the word? And h don't become the personification of a meme to reach people for Jesus. I guess that's just some good good thoughtful advice there.

Yeah, I it it's it's one of those things where I would be so ser I'd go from being really goofy with gaming to suddenly being super serious with God.

And which is is fine. I think that's sometimes very necessary depending on the conversation, the topic, what things are being said. But it was me turning on a a light in the room and everybody would scatter if I did something like that.

And it's like, well, how am I supposed to reach people if I'm just instantly trying to judge them basically is what it feel felt like to me.

Yeah.

Um and so it took me some time to learn to to reel that in and uh focus on making an environment that is honoring of God. So that way, you know, because on in person, you know, it like with the camp, we're here to take care of people's physical needs and then their emotional needs and then their spiritual needs will follow suit with all that.

And online, we can't physically be there for people, but we can be there for them emotionally. We can be there for them spiritually. And uh I think that's a big big deal for communities to figure out how can you make that how how can you make that environment uh for God to do what he does best. uh how how can you help plant those seeds and definitely was a was an interesting journey to get to that point.

Uh a lot of a lot of people I scared away when I was first doing that cuz they're just like, "Oh man, he's just he's one of those. He's just going to he's just going to want to talk to me about just God. I'm here to play video games. What are you talking about?" You know, or something like that.

And and yeah, anyway, I'm cringing at my past self because I knew I had good intentions, but I I think a lot of us if we grow in in our faith and we grow as a person uh in the way that we build relationships with other people, yeah, there's a lot of cringe things in our past. Uh but we may not have got to where we are without doing those things that we learned from. Uh absolutely. and and now we're growing and then hopefully a better reflection of Jesus today than we were 20 years ago, you know, or 10 years ago or a year ago.

Uh, you know, every every time we can can move in that direction, I think it's a good thing.

Man, you're preaching at me right now.

Oh. Oh, gosh.

No, we're just friends hanging out, man. I'm just

No, you're right. That's something that I've been I've been starting to do the last uh six six and a half or it's like nearly seven years of streaming is I I every once in a while I take notes of where my growth has been over the last year, over the last two years, three years and now we're up to nearly seven years. And it's a bit it's really hard to um especially with like content creation where you have people who enjoy watching you for you and you're you're trying to juggle especially if you're if you're like me. You're not a uh um you're not like a Bible study channel. You're not someone who does open openly always has a Bible study plan.

The Bible study uh streams are are the exception, you know, here they're and then I would say they're the exception. And then there's probably a bigger group of Christians who will take and say, "We're going to do a devotion and then we're going to stream or we're going to read a verse and pray and stream." The I'll add a piece of flavor of we're going to take time for God and Endgame is probably more of a norm than anything like what I do of hey, we're going to we're going to read the Bible and we're going to dive in and we're going to like I'm I'm on I'm out on the extreme for sure.

Yeah. But it's an extreme that's necessary. We, you know, talking talking about a little bit.

Hey DJ Stacy Bless, thank you for the bitties. Appreciate you, friend.

And with the booties.

And uh and Sabic uh Lurk from Sue's community. Love the flat cap. Thank you. Thank you. Have a couple from Ireland. Best hat ever. Yes. Yes, it is, friend. We're going to have to hang out. I I just met you and you're already you're like a a really close friend that I just haven't met.

Inspock's an OG. He's from whenever I first started streaming.

Okay.

Yeah.

Cool.

He's a good He's a good man. Hard worker. Works himself to death all the time.

Got to get to a flat cap. I don't know. I mean, I don't know if I could rock it. I don't know if I'm cool enough to rock a flat cap. I could always try.

Hey, there there are plenty of different styles. We'll find the right one.

I know what I what for for Halloween I'll look at having a flat cap dapper pastor in a costume.

There you go. There you go.

I think I can pull it off.

Yep.

I can be cool.

Well, welcome in. It's great. I You know, Webbby got a flat cap. Yeah, Webbby got a flat cap. There's a few There's a few people that have them and that they they love to bring out when when they're on the podcast with me. They're like, I I wore my hat for you. Like, yay. It's super cool. Wear it with confidence for Jesus. There we go.

You're right. Oh, you're right. You're right, L.

Oh, that's so funny. That's so funny.

Uh I'm sorry. I I lost my train of thought there. Uh I got so I got so distracted by the hats for a moment. I I lost where we were at.

It's your brand, you know. It's just part of you. You hear flat cap, you Oh, my people. My people. My people. Well, yeah. Funny story. We And then we'll come back. Uh I went to to Boston a few years ago. My wife had a work trip. So went to Boston. Uh one of the companies that ha that portion of my hats are from is Boston Scoly Company. And so walking around Boston, it it wasn't that there was, you know, half of the people walking around with flat caps, but everywhere you looked up and down the street, somebody was rocking a flat cap.

And my wife is like, "Have you found your people?" I go, "No, they found me. I was They found me. They just saw me show up and they're like, "Hey, we're wearing our hats today cuz Flat Cap showed up in town." Um, but it was like, no, because there's still not enough flat caps. There still should be more in the world. There still were over 50% of the people not wearing them.

We got to get we those are rookie numbers. We got to get that up. You're right.

Exactly. Exactly.

Raise flat cap awareness.

Oh, but you know that goes to like Yeah. So that's that's my thing, but I don't take it too seriously. You know, it's it's not the reason that I'm online. um is like I actually if somebody wants to sponsor me and and and and you know give me flat caps and all that, I'm good with that. I will not turn that down. But I I'm more interested in why you're doing things and how you're growing and what you're doing in the space that that that meet people where they need.

So, we've we've talked a little bit about the the catalyst for you deciding to jump in and do it u and then move into the space. What have been some obstacles that you've overcome as you have been a Twitch streamer? Uh they can be related to streaming or they can be related to being life and getting in the way of streaming or streaming and and uh connecting uh scheduling with life and all that kind of stuff.

So, probably I I want to probably reach back to whenever I was first streaming.

Yeah.

This is before tags were available for Twitch. Uh Twitch, it was a you know, King of the Hill style everywhere. Uh there was there was hate raids everywhere. It was just a very toxic stream environment, especially for people who were Christians or pro probably in all honesty of people of any faith. But uh most of the time all the hate I always saw was towards Christianity and Christians and Christian streamers. At the time when I first started streaming I only knew of three other Christian uh centered channels.

I knew of Redf Fire extrever and uh Pastor Susie.

Yeah.

That those were the ones I had known about when I first started. And it was like it was awesome to be able to find those. A lot of times I would just kind of chill in Suz's or Ducson's chats uh just because it was nice to hear how other Christian streamers, you know, would interact with others. Uh same for Trevor. I found him actually through Instagram and we've been think thick as thieves since then. I can't man. That's a tongue twister. Uh we've been real close since then. And um and so whenever I was first streaming though in in the Siege community, I was playing on console and uh for those who don't know, there's the console community for Siege and the PC community for Siege. And the console community is way bigger, of course, because they're easier to get, but also the console people are a lot more immature. Uh and so because there was more people and I played off console, I had quite a few stream quite a few viewers in my streams as I slowly built up.

Got to the point where I was averaging 30 40 viewers and I started getting targeted quite frequently uh by atheist communities. That was probably my first biggest hurdle.

Okay.

Uh was uh was an atheist community, a Discord community. Uh some guy found me, one of their people found me and shared me out and I was targeted by them for probably three or four months.

Yeah.

Uh that they were doxing my friends and family, they were uh doxing me. They were posting horrible things in my Discord no matter how I changed my safety settings. They would hate raid me. They would view bot me. They would uh they would even um uh chat bot me like crazy. It was just it was a lot.

Uh it was I again you I'd been streaming for about six maybe seven months at the time. The first three months were real slow of me trying to figure out my identity, try to figure things out, getting affiliate, and then I started collaborating with other uh R six streamers and people liked my my comedy. They liked my character and so they're like, "Oh man, this guy's nice. This is weird that there's a nice person out there." And uh well, trolls get attracted to that as well.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so, so I learned a lot real quick of I'm really good at reading chat before I answer chat because I'm proofreading it before I I say it because I I got bamboozled a lot by them

and

Oh, yeah. Yeah. You got to be careful, especially when you're a newbie, of of streamer names come in and they'll be spelled just in a certain way that you'll mispronounce them into something you do not want to accidentally say.

Yes. And that happened to me way too many times. And uh you know it's it's a classic right a passage I think for streamers in general but it was even more so uh intimidating for me especially I I have dyslexia so sometimes reading can be a little bit difficult and uh and so it really would get me sometimes. Uh but that was probably my first big hurdle. I had finally got like a taste of success and streaming uh quite a bit of success quite a bit of viewerships. I'd only been streaming for a few months and people really like the content. They really like that. And then suddenly out of nowhere, I just get hit with all this hate.

And I'm like, I I did nothing to y'all. I'm I'm here to be a positive, encouraging influence. And when I get the opportunity to tell people my story of of how God's changed my life and how God's there for me, and y'all are just bringing in all this hate because you're afraid of it. And I remember I tried to reach out to the Discord owner

uh and confront them as an adult. I'm like, "Hey, I'm not backing down. like you're you're you're not going to stop me from doing this. Even though deep down I really considered not not streaming anymore, especially after several my my friends and family their addresses were leaked and they were doxed.

That was terrifying.

Did anything more happen other than their information getting out? Like did they get threatening letters or anything else that made them uncomfortable where they lived, that oh no, people know or they can find me?

No. From what I understand, nobody was messed with. There was nothing sketchy in real life.

I ended up screenshotting all of it, submitting it to Twitch and submitting it to Discord.

Okay.

Um, and I'm pretty sure I got those accounts banned and removed as well as that Discord banned and removed. Um, because it was a lot. It was a lot, a lot of stuff, even my mods didn't see at the time. I didn't have very many mods and they were all under the age of eighteen.

And I'm like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna put this in front of their eyes. They're too young for that. I don't even want, I don't even want to think about the liability that could be tied in with that.

So I was handling a lot of that stress by myself and dealing with a lot of that. And again, it was a big hurdle that that owner of that Discord messaged me every day for probably nearly two years straight that he hated me and he wished I died.

And every time I just respond with, "Hey, I love you. I'm praying for you," or I'd respond with, "I hope you're having a good day today." Never would respond to what I said.

And after about a year or two, because he'd message me through Xbox, he'd say, "Here, I'm this person from Discord. I just wanted to let you know, I hate your guts. I hope you die today." You know, that's normally how the conversation started with him.

And after again about two years, he stopped messaging me and I even reached out to him and I said, "Hey, I hope you're doing well. Love you." Didn't respond. So I guess, you know, he then blocked me, I think. Odd how that turned around on him, I guess.

But yeah, that was huge. That showed me a peek into a darker online community than I realized. Um, because I grew up playing Call of Duty in high school. I grew up playing Halo, so I was in a lot of very rude and toxic.

Right. And not to say that like we were talking earlier of how if you're in that it does influence you, and you know.

But you having had that experience, I think on some level allowed you to understand. So when you did get doxed, when you did get attacked, you could just say I'm going to love you anyway. Where somebody who's not coming from that background or understanding has that attack and could either, you know, if you go with the fight or flight or freeze, some are going to fight, some are going to flee, and some are going to freeze.

And so you were able to put all of those aside and respond out of love. And then of course protecting people who needed to get protected. Like you got people underage being doxed and family members, you need to step in and make sure that there's no harm, it doesn't lead to further things. It's one thing for people to voice things, but when there's certain people that need protected, yeah, I get that. Let's step in and make sure that nothing else nefarious happens here.

Yes. I ended up, uh, you know, when all that happened, I didn't want my mods to be targeted. So I told them, "Don't ban anybody. I'll ban them. Don't delete their messages. I'll delete their messages. Don't draw attention to yourself because this is on me. This is my responsibility and I don't want anything to happen." Uh, and I mean, whenever I contacted all my friends or families that they had been saying where they live or around where they lived, and even to the point of saying their address, that's what I was just, I just ended up telling them.

I said, "Hey, all the people you're doxing live in Texas. Um, they all have guns. Just know that." And when I said that, like I felt silly saying it because it's just a basic like.

Yeah.

That's just a thing to say.

But it apparently really hit because they kind of stopped.

Yeah.

Um, and then following that is when the reports happened and things died down for a while, uh, for probably the rest of that year, that first year streaming. I'd get some of those people back and forth occasionally, but it was a lot. It was a very dark time. Uh, it was a lot of just self-doubt.

Yeah. How did your stream community respond as those things were happening? Because your mods would have been made aware of it. So how did they respond towards you in that time?

I know a lot of the mods said, "Hey, this is what we're here for. Let us help. Let us help. Let us help." And it's, I was very, you know, grateful for that. Some of them, some of my mods aren't Christians, and that's for a reason, you know. It's like, if we're here to reach as many people as possible, I need outside opinions. I need people who respect me and respect what I believe in to give me insight because then that in the end helps me be better for others.

And so a lot of my mods were trying to help and they wanted to be there, but you know, I'd be like, "No, we can't do that." A lot of my Twitch chat at the time, we hid quite a bit of it, and my Discord, we hid quite a bit of it because we didn't want that to be the focus. If we let the chat run away with it and have the attention with it, then these guys would have gotten what they wanted, which is attention.

And so it was working overtime. I had a lot of, two, one eye on one screen while one eye is playing Siege because I would just, I'd have two gaming mice or I'd have my controller in my hand. I just be playing Siege with one hand, which fun fact, that's, I used to have a channel point redemption to play one-handed because I actually got not bad playing with the left hand so I could delete messages on chat or in the Discord and whatnot.

So, you know, it didn't really have a big effect on the community. And quite a few of the mods I had at that time no longer hang out. They've gone their own ways. They've gone to different streams. And uh, I think I only have one mod from back then. Uh, and so, you know, it was cool to see my mods willing to stand up for me and be there for me.

And it was nice to continue to keep that hedge of protection over the chat because they would have ran away with it, especially Siege people or just in general online gaming people. They would have been trash talking. They would have been threatening themselves. It would have just devolved into something that wasn't what I wanted. It would have devolved into something that was out of hate. People would have been hateful. And so I felt it was better and more necessary to delete, tell people not to give them attention, and let's focus on the game and how we're having or how we're spending our day today. How's today going?

Yeah, that's, I say the aspects of all of that, like, wow, that's a horrible thing to have to go through. But the keeping the, here's why we're here, here's what we're doing, and here's how we'll respond, just reminds me of what I've done going into churches that are in crisis and don't know what they're going to do. Should we close? Should we not close? What are we pursuing? And it's the constant, here's where we are, here's where we're looking, and here's what we're going to do.

And so don't get just don't get distracted by, well, only so many people showed up for Sunday school or only so many people responded for this or only so much of this is going on. It's the, what are we doing? Why are we doing it? Just, and then you have to repeat it over and over and over again to just make sure because that's comforting too. That's comforting to just continually hear the same message. Okay, we'll get through it. We'll get through it. Let me do it. This is what we're doing.

Yeah, that's, I don't say that's not something that I learned when I was younger. It's just something that, you know, it's like, oh, now I understand. Like I was always one, like when I was doing teacher training, they're like, "Tell them what you're going to teach them, teach them, and then tell them what you told them." I'm like, "How about I just tell them and we're done." You know, why am I going to tell them what I'm going to teach them and then teach them and then tell them what I taught them? That just seems like a huge waste of time. I could teach.

Got a bad time.

I could teach three times as much stuff if I just go on, you know, but it's like, "Oh, okay. I kind of get this now of, but it applies to other things in life. It's the reassurance of we have an approach. We know where we're going and we're going to stick with it. So that's really cool, man.

Yeah, it was terrifying in the moment, but looking back, it really equipped me with life and just decisions that I've made over the last few years since that first year streaming. Uh, it definitely actually helped me have more grace towards trolls and people who are just hateful.

Yeah.

Um, I didn't want that. Like the human in me, the human in you, just like, no, bust, squash, ban, get the ban hammer out and just go to town and turn and burn. Just get him out of here, you know. And uh, I realized though, like, again, they are somewhere dark to have to act like that.

Yeah.

And a lot of times, you know, it's like, okay, hey, I'm going to be praying for y'all. That's what I would say in chat. You know, I may not have like a Bible study or a Bible reading, but if somebody comes in with a prayer request, I physically grab my sheet of paper that gets larger every day and I add more and more on and I put people's prayer requests on it and I want to remember that. I want to, and I normally later translate that to some post-it notes in my Bible so that way when I open my Bible, I know who to pray for.

And so normally when people, if they hear me talk about God for the first time, it's either somebody's asking for prayer and I'll be there in prayer, or somebody's coming in and they're having a real deep question about their spiritual life or spiritual journey, or in general they're just unsure of what to do and does Christ really love them? Does God really love them? And then it's like, well, okay, let's look at scripture.

Yesterday we had this happen. Alex was in the chat and he was talking about how he just felt like his relationship with God was just always kind of dry recently. It's kind of a dry run or dry rut right now. He's just not, he's not sure. He feels like he's just going through the motions and he's not feeling that connection and that it's just life is just kind of tough right now.

And I, you know, I told him, hey, we have to look at Matthew 11:27 through 30 where, you know, Jesus describes himself, you know, come to me all who are burdened and heavy laden, you know, take my yoke upon you for my yoke is easy, my burden is light. And you know, for him that was a huge moment and we had that conversation and who knows who else got to hear that and got to get something from it.

And so I found, like, for me, you know, I'm a pastor's kid, but I've never gone to a seminary. I've never gone to any Bible school. I just know what I've learned growing up and in my studying of my own and from others that I listen to and have my studies with. Um, that, you know, I'm just not that type of scholarly person. I'm very simple. I'm a very black and white type of person. And so if somebody comes in and they have a question of scripture, then I'll answer them.

I don't shy away from it. And it's always fun when people try to come in and misquote scripture. And then you're just like, "Okay." Oh, man.

All right. So, you're saying this is what scripture says. Well, let me go get my Bible. Let's look at the context of just this one verse.

Similar, which I will say your Bible studies did help me with that. It's like, let's look at the context. Let's not just focus on the one or two verses or three verses. Let's look at the whole chapter. Let's look at what's happening beforehand because you're pulling something out of nowhere. It's like I can't quite remember the verse off the top of my head, but I remember hearing this years ago in Bible study where our youth pastor, our leader had given us strips of paper that were verses from the Bible and we had to guess.

Guess.

Did Satan say this or did Jesus say this or did God say this or who said this?

Right. Right. And a lot of people were putting verses that Satan said as words that God spoke.

Yep.

And you know, that just stuck with me from then on. I remember I kept those verses on those Bible pages until basically they dissipated. I really need to reprint them and place them there again because it's always fun to reference them and say, "Hey, you're saying this verse. Let's also look at this one verse. Satan said this. Do you want to trust that? I don't know if I want to trust him. He seems like a bad guy." You know, a context clue say he's pretty bad. And so it's definitely by letting that just be natural for people online. For me, going through this toxic time, it really helped me know how to talk to them better, how to talk to people better with that.

Now do sometimes do I let those conversations go a little long and my mods are all itching and saying, "Jesse, you're just you're giving them too much time. Too much time. It's we, you know, we appreciate what you're trying to do and giving them grace, but too much time." And then I'll get like a ping like, "Hey, you've been trying to like reason with this person for a while and all they're doing is belittling you and not being respectful. Can we please get rid of them?" And I'm like, "I'll give them one more shot." And if it doesn't go through, then the other they're being a distraction for what we're trying to achieve, which is always tough.

And so I'll get that little ping and I give them that one shot, they fail, and then my mods just go, "Oh yeah, they're gone." And they have a good time. You know, they get to get rid of the person that's messing with them, which I'm very grateful for for my mod team. They really stand up and step in for me and take care of me. They make sure I'm taking care of myself is a good way to put it, too. So, sorry that little side tangent, but

No, no, no, no. Like, I have no agenda here other than to share a little bit of how you get started of what you've experienced, what God is up to. And what God is up to is going to go in various different ways for whoever it is. And sometimes God is up to something when people are being destructive towards what we're trying to do of being salt and light. And sometimes it's going to go a different direction entirely.

14 just followed. Courageous. Thank you for the follow.

Um, follow.

Supersonic, uh, did ask you a question. I don't know if you see that in the chat. Uh, he how should how should the how should this be calmly addressed for myself? I prayed and gave God the matter yesterday and I'm trying to let him take care of the matter. I can't control how others respond but letting God handle that as well. I've had a person doxing and harassing me and others I'm involved with online. I've tried to ignore but I obsess. I can only give it to God because I can't fix this problem. More can be said if you need.

In the end when it comes to doxing, you know, sometimes people get attached because of a reaction that they're giving that you're giving them and they're feeding off of that. They're feeding off the idea that you're losing sleep, that you're obsessing over them. They finally have somebody that is obsessing over them. And one of the biggest things you can do is report them and block them. Ignore them. Anytime they're messing with you, get them out of your life. They're if they're trying to be invasive of your privacy and you've asked them politely to stop, then you need to take those steps to just ignore them.

And I know that's easier said than done. I too obsessed over the idea of these people who were targeting me, targeting my friends and family. And like you said, you have to give that to God. You have to pray that out. You have to continue to ask and seek and knock for God to take that off your heart, to give that to God.

Um, it's a scary thought to have somebody know where you live who might have ill intentions. And it terrifies me even now with streaming. You know, I have my family that I have to care for. I have my wife and my son. And then at the camp, I live on the campgrounds and property along with other co-workers who live here, too. And their safety is dependent on, you know, me not allowing people to have that type of leeway. We have campers. We have close to 450 campers during the summer nearly every week. We have that many people here. The responsibility of their safety is a big ordeal. And so, the biggest thing I could just tell you is you just got to remove them as much as you can. If they just keep on making accounts to bother you, keep removing.

That's part of what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. And just and just don't even interact. Don't say their name as soon as you pick up because you'll learn as online people have a cadence to their words. They have a style to how they type. And that's how I started picking up on people who would get banned, make a new account, and troll. And now there's way better mod tools on Twitch where you can see how old an account is. And you can even set those settings where if an account is under so many hours old, they can't talk in your chat. And so that helps with keeping a lot of those people away.

The biggest thing is you remove them. You don't give them the attention and then they'll no longer be interested in you because they're not getting anything from you. And you really have to work hard to give that worry up to God. It's a scary thought, but you have to work really hard in that.

Yeah. Supersonic's asking about cadence when you type. In the same way that I might have lots of pauses or I might use um unintentionally when I am speaking verbally. When I type, I may do the same thing where I use the same word repeatedly to start a sentence. I use the same word repeatedly to end a sentence. I might continuously put commas where they don't belong, or every time I make an exclamation point, it's four exclamation points every single time. So, you give little clues in the way that you would word things when you type the same way you word things the way that you speak.

So, I don't know if you add anything else to that, Papa. That's absolutely right. It's like I know how each of my mods talk.

And if I couldn't read, I really want to try this now that I'm thinking about it. If I couldn't see their tag, their Twitch tag, would I know which one of them is talking to me? Yeah. And I think I would unless they really try hard to change how they talk, but they're all they have their own way of talking in chat. It's they've become they've had they now have their own voice, so to speak, through text.

Yeah, that's a good example there, too, of the different mods in your chat are going to come across if there's a troll saying very similar things, but there's a style that they each have of how they're going to do it.

Yeah. Like, could you pick out my mods or, you know, from one another? I mean, I've got Luces who's in here right now. Definitely a different mod than I'm watching you people for me. Uh, they're going to come across totally different in the way that they say things. I could pick them apart pretty easily.

I can't control how others in the crossfire respond to this adding attention without wanting it drawn.

Well, that's when you got to get together with those people that are also a part of that situation. Y'all have to discuss that y'all are literally feeding this person what they want. They're getting everything they want.

Hey, thanks for the follow. I didn't catch who that was. Desonia.

Oh, okay. Desonia, thank you. Thank you.

But you can't you got to talk with those people. All right. You got to talk with the group that's all being bothered by this individual and have them realize to just block that person. And I've said that several times. I'm reiterating that because that's literally how I stopped quite a bit of the people who mess with me.

If somebody's coming in and they're trolling and they're being inappropriate, I just don't read their message. If they're coming in and I may not even delete it. I just won't read it. Literally, I'll just skip right over top of it because I want them to know I saw it, but they're not even worth the time to delete it.

Now, that sounds real harsh, but

They've already established the behavior.

That is what you're responding to. So, yeah.

Yeah. And as Christians, we want to have grace. We want to give chances, but at the same time, we as streamers have a responsibility to our community to have a safe space. They're depending on us and our mods to keep the chat safe, to keep it from them getting messed with or ruined or bullied.

We don't know where people are coming from. They may be bullied daily at school and they finally get a break online when they're hanging out in stream. And so, we don't know how far people are being pushed and what that final catalyst could be for them to make a horrible decision.

So, we have that responsibility where we have to step up and we sometimes just have to ignore the people who are being extremely rude or they're just making fun of you or not there for the right reasons. Because that's what they're wanting. They're wanting attention in some way shape or form. It doesn't matter if it's positive or negative. So, it's not via Twitch. It's in a game. But yeah, ignoring the constant friend requests. Yeah. Ignore them. Report them. Report them. That's a big thing. Like if you report it enough, it will be taken care of eventually. Be the squeaky wheel. If somebody is bothering you on your platform and or whatever platform you're making content on, you're gaming on, you have those tags. You have all that email support every day. That's what I did for the Discord that had these atheists that were literally coming into my Discord and posting horrible pictures. I'm sure people could have their imagination lead them to what I'm talking about. But if you can think it, that's what they posted. And they were horrible people in general. They were very immature. And all they wanted to do was make people uncomfortable. And I reported them as soon as possible. And I waited 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours. Nothing was done. They were still the Discord was still coming in in troves into my Discord channel, which is when I finally turned it into where they had to have a verified email and phone number, which is, you know, nice to have, but at the same time,

Lot of people don't have that phone number option. And so I end up having to do that eventually, but I still had to report that Discord nearly every day for about a week, and they finally, they finally got taken care of.

Yeah. Well, some, just to just to think through, you know, we're we're talking about some pretty serious stuff of of when you get attacked and those kinds of things, but I do know several different Discord communities that certain times a year there's groups that come in, they will try to send a new person in to infiltrate into the group and then learn who's new and all of this and then they'll come back with. It's like they they will just travel around and do this and repeatedly try to to go into and this has happened with some of the uh the digital churches that I know where oh yeah, you know, come whatever it is end of the school year or beginning of the school year, they'll get a whole bunch of attacks because oh, some new people got together talking about what they what they've been doing and what they've done in the past and now let's go do it again and let's let's you know relive uh going and giving getting people upset and It's I don't I don't know what else. I don't know how to stop it. I wish there was a way to stop it, you know. But the the same way I can't stop a riot when it's going to happen. I I don't have power to do that. I only have the power to influence one person at a time is is the only place I think I can make any change.

I think some of the biggest thing to do as well for me, I I all I could do is retreat into prayer.

Yeah. You know, cuz my my my human self wanted to respond only in anger and frustration. That was my jump like straight, you know, jump the gun. I wanted to just say horrible things to them and make them feel bad about themselves. And I and I had to fight that urge and I had and it was not easy.

Yeah.

And you know, I'm not perfect. Offstream I said some things. I I'm human. Offstream. I said things. You know, I'm talking to myself. I'm talking to God. And I'm just upset. And I'm like, you know, God can handle it. God can handle it.

Yeah. God can handle it. It's I'm so glad he can.

Oh my gosh. I'm so glad he can. I'm so glad he can handle me and my my my my frustration. But at that time, it was just it's like you you've helped build this awesome community. And I know I know it's not me, God. I know it's you. I know you're putting yourself in the center of this or it wouldn't be successful. And um and now you just you're just allowing these horrible people. You know, that's what I would say. You know, you're allowing these horrible people to come in. And then I'd sit there and I'd realize, you know, I'm foolish and being hasty and I need to breathe. I need to stop throwing my temper tantrum and say, "God, deliver them from themselves."

Yeah.

God, deliver me from them.

Y and and that's when I started finding peace in that. Of course, I still was being active and in in reporting them, like I said, and active in being cautious for chats, new chatters. I was suspicious of new chatters for nearly two years straight.

Oh, I imagine.

Yeah, I had near I guess you could you could consider it PTSD when

I would definitely I would definitely there's an element of that.

Are you here?

Are you here from them? Yes.

You know, it's

Did you just get a new research their Did you get a new account? Yeah. Yeah. H and so it and that that kind of soured some stuff for a while. Honestly, that that really soured it for me. Uh at the time, you know, I I was working at the camp and everything was going so smoothly and the the the income from subscriptions, from donations were there and they were starting to show that, hey, there's a potential that I could do this full-time and this could basically be an income that me and my wife will combine and I could, you know, make this my life all the time. And well, I I ended up taking that step and I'm glad I did. Uh I know I know it's what I needed to do. It was a huge that was a huge hurdle. Camp life is is not easy. Uh we we're very busy. Uh again, during the summer, maybe one day off a week. Uh with summer camps, you're working from 6:30 uh until 8:30 at night. You're working 14 hour days, 16 hour days sometimes. And then with being a full-time staff, we have rotations where we're on call for the group. So sometimes you're on call, next thing you know, a water line breaks. Next thing you know, a kid's like faceplanted and you got to get up and you got to go take care of them and deal with all of that. If if you even get told about it, which sometimes doesn't happen, you're like, you talk to us. We're here, you know, we're the host. Uh but you know, we're responsible for so much during the summer and so life is very busy during the summer. Life life is uh there's not very much room to breathe and during retreat season there's it's a mix. Some day some weeks are way more busier than others just depending on retreats we have in. And so at the time I was trying to juggle streaming six days a week at six hours a stream with with my my full-time job with trying to balance spending time with my wife. And we hadn't even had a kid at that point. And I was maybe spending an hour with her those days that I would stream. She'd basically get Sundays with me. That's all she'd get. And uh and that wasn't healthy. You know, we I'm I'm very grateful for God for for uh being there with us in our relationship at the start because, you know, it was man, not a lot of time spent together, not a lot of time talking, discussing what's going on, you know, her telling me the stresses of her day, me me just listening and being being there for her. I was so focused on so many other things. And uh and so I convinced myself that this is what I was called to do, that I was called to do this full-time.

Okay. So, let me let me poke at that. You convinced yourself. You didn't feel a calling. You you so you're so is a reflection now that you say that's what it was. What did you feel at the time?

At the time, I felt like I was being called into it. You know, I've been I've been praying sincerely over it for for the three years that I had been streaming. I'm like, God, if this is your will for for me to do this full-time, uh, allow the funds to be there so I don't have to try to get a part-time job where even more time of my life will be taken away. You know, allow the funds to be there, allow the viewership to be there, allow the community to continue to thrive and grow. Um, and at at the time, uh, in Siege, there's a little bit of history with Siege. Um it got really bad uh dosing problems or where people would hit you off of your router and off of your game and in the middle of the game and you couldn't play anymore.

Oh no.

Uh for quite a while. It's a huge brief breach of privacy. It's a federal offense and people were doing it for a video game. Uh and Siege was probably in its lowest point at that time and my viewership crashed because the the player base of the game crashed. Nobody wanted to really play it anymore because you'd play a game, you play your ranked games and you you'd lose because you'd get kicked and next thing you know you're banned because you abandon the game when you really didn't. Uh that is the same time that I went full-time.

Okay.

And and I just I told myself I'm like, "Nope, this is what God's been calling us to do." He laid a path for us to go. And I know for sure, like looking back, I know I'm I was supposed to do what I did. I knew I was supposed to to pursue it for full-time. Uh there was a lot of other background stuff that happened where it was a perfect opportunity. You know, it it all the stars aligned, however you want to say it. And uh within a month of uh within a month of being little_ot just followed.

Thank you for the follow. Um uh at the at that time about a month after I went full-time, my average viewership went from about 30 to 40 down to 7.

Ooh.

A lot of my my supporters, my financial supporters, my giftters, they they dropped. Uh and that that was scary. Um cuz I'm like, God, you I feel like you've been preparing me to do this for all these years. I even had picked up painting. uh for like jokingly been painting and now it was starting to turn into something more uh and kind of backtracking a little bit. I also gave away Bibles which was part of like all of that. Um the Grenadier just followed.

Thank you for the ball.

Thank you.

Uh some of those trolls had been ordering Bibles from me and then sending me videos of burning those Bibles.

Oh, I had not heard this story.

Wow. So, I I meant to touch on that. It wasn't in my notes. I I wrote down footnotes and I'm not following them. Uh but yeah, those those trolls had Yeah, they had ordered some some of my Bibles. I give I I provide them for free as long as my supplies last and my funds last. And uh I've been doing it for years. I started doing painting to to kind of just mix that in with Siege. I thought it was everybody really enjoyed it from the siege community, which was odd to me that they enjoyed the painting. And so now back to where I was where it had been a month that I'd gone full-time. My my average viewership crashed. Uh income crashed, love for Siege crashed. Uh I even tried to pivot and switch to playing PC Siege. And I'd spend hours every day playing on on computer because it was way different than a controller to get better. And there was no growth there. And there was a lot of of me spiraling. That's probably those those 3 months after going full-time is probably the darkest part of my life mentally I've ever been because um I I was questioning myself. I was questioning God. I was questioning everything. And uh eventually I just said, you know, we're just going to start playing a variety of different games to just ignore this. You know, this is a dry patch for this for Siege. And it taught me to not be relying on one thing. Uh because well, you never know when it gets swept out from underneath you. Um but that would probably be my second most difficult time was after three years of streaming going full-time and everything just crashed. It's it at the height of Siege, I was probably averaging 60 to 70 viewers. And then it would it was as soon as I was starting to get really good at the game.

Yeah.

And getting more popular is when everything crashed in Siege. And you know, it was so easy for me to just blame it on everything else. I did, you know, I was like, it's all this and that, this, and that.

But the most important lesson that was there is I was relying on a video game and not on God.

Yeah. I was I was relying on numbers on a screen and not on God. And that taught me a lot of reliance even further. You know, you think I'd learned that from the trolls. That I think taught me great.

Oh, well, you you might learn it, but you think you know it, but you don't want to apply it again. That's what I end up finding often is, oh, I know this. I've gone through it. I don't want to go through it again. Oh, wait. I have to h in a new way, in a new space. Um, the the one phrase that I I've run into several times as a Twitch streamer is, "Are you going to trust God again?" What do you mean again? I already did in the past. I don't need to do it again. I I already trusted God. I I've done that part. What do you mean trust him again now?

Heard I've heard that before and said basically the same same thing like I do trust him. I do trust him. And then and this is where I I'm grateful for, you know, having strong followers of Christ that help support because I have so many Christ followers that lurk in the shadows.

They're there to support and they'll send me encouraging, you know, just encouraging messages every once in a while. They'll see something's going on and they're like, "Hey, it's going to be okay." Or, "Hey, I see you're going through this." And I remember one of them, you know, I'm complaining and complaining.

I've been complaining for three months straight about blaming everything else in the world of why I was unhappy, why, you know, all this was going on.

And finally, one of my secret supporters, my probably one of my bigger Christian influencers who really kept me aligned in my values and faith said, "Could you stop complaining?" Like they said, "I love you, but please stop complaining. You're not helping anybody. You're not helping yourself. And I'm like, "But all this, this, this, why this problems, you know, it's not my fault." They're like, "It doesn't matter. You're making it your fault. You're making it all on your shoulders and you're doing everything the exact opposite of what you say to do. Stop." And I was so grateful for that. Now, did I have to learn, like we just said, learn that again later down the road? Absolutely. But when they said that, it was just like a light switch, you know? It was just like they're 100% right. I can't just keep wallowing in self-pity with what's going on. So I leaned into variety content, playing a bunch of different games. I leaned into painting a little bit more. And I just felt like, okay, maybe God's creating an opportunity for painting because people really like the painting streams. They really enjoy just coming in, listening to some music, chatting, and watching a painting get put together.

And so I kind of turned into that a little bit more. I didn't play Siege as often. And then it eventually got to where I basically blew a gasket on stream one day. I was playing Siege and I was playing with a couple of streamer friends and this, like, I don't know, he sounded like he was like 15 or 16 years old. You know, Siege is very competitive and I try to be, you know, goofy but also serious because I want to win the game, right? In the end I want to win. You know, that's that's the human nature. We want to win games. And in my brain it's like success in the Rainbow Six space is tied to winning. If people don't want to come in and watch losers, right? That's that's what I kind of fooled myself into thinking. And so this guy blames me for something that happened in the game and he's yelling at me. He's cursing me out. And I just finally, like, I had never had the term "crashed out" on stream before, but this was the time when it finally happened.

He's complaining, complaining, and I just, you know, I didn't say anything inappropriate. I just said, "You stop yelling at me, you immature child. It is a video game. You were literally so stupid to think that I did this when it was your fault." And I, like, I don't want to say I screamed it, but I said it with a really stern voice and I threw off my headset and I walked out and I forgot to turn off stream and it streamed for like three hours. I felt so silly after that, you know, that I had allowed the game to get under my skin.

So my relationship was secret. See, the exact same thing you were accusing him of was exactly what you were doing.

Yes. That sounds, that sounds to me, I totally resonate with that. I felt like such a dummy, you know. And I come in about three hours later. I just closed the door. I gone to the living room. I just chilling.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What do we got here? How many was this? LT gifting 10 subs. Let's go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Yo, thank you. Awesome. Let's go. So cool. For the tickets and subs. Got to get some hype and hearts in the chat for that. Hold on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's blow up the chat with some hype for that, man. That's fantastic. Thank you so much. Boom, the hype. We just got copy pasted. Just got copy pasted. Felt the clock on my heart to bless for more from here. Hey, Flat Cap is definitely one that you can trust that blessing with. All right, y'all. He's super cool. We were talking. He taught me the ways of two truths and a lie at Reach.

Don't give it away. Do not give it away. I won't give it away. But he taught me the truths of it. He taught me the truth of two truths and a lie.

Yep. We're sitting there. I'm like, "Here, I'm gonna tell you how to pick. I know exactly which one it is. Here's how you know." And I was like, "Dude, like, see, told you."

How did you know? He's like, "I just know. I just know." And hey, if y'all come to Reach, you get to meet, you get to meet Flat Cap. He's pretty cool. He's got a lot of stories. Again, a lot of us Reach creators will say the same thing that probably the best part of Reach was just being able to sit down at a table totally with everyone else that we interact with online all the time and then just have a chill, chill, relaxing environment where we're not stressed out to try to please people. We're not stressed out to try to, you know, oh, we're not on stage. We're not on stage here. We're not performing, you know, we might at for a moment be on stage and paint on stage or, you know, present something, but that's not why we're there.

We are there to hang out with everybody else. And yeah, just like I say in my chat often, or in my stream often, I'm no better than my mods. I'm not. I just happen to be the one that's live. My mods are just as needed. So is everyone else that's in the chat. Thank you. Thank you for the hype train there. That was awesome. I don't get those too often on this channel. It's fun whenever there's a hype train that happens. So thank you. Thank you for that. Appreciate that.

Absolutely. Again, the mods are the backbone of the streamer. Absolutely. We, I mean, I know I can speak for myself. I'm sure I'm speaking for Flat Cap. We're picking people who we know can handle the stream just as much as we can. We trust that. We trust the people that we pick. And so big support. Can't do without the mods.

No, it's so needed. And then, you know, as you were talking through there, yeah, you had your mods there. So you had your big blow up and you walk. So what then? So I came back, saw that my stream was live, and there was still a couple people there, you know, just like, I've never seen Sue mad. I'm very good at keeping in my frustration. I'm very good at being patient. I don't get angry often. I don't blow up that much. Yeah. But there was a lot going on in my heart, in my mind, and I wasn't aligned with God, and it let loose.

One of my one of my longtime supporters, a VIP, Turtle. There was one time he asked for input on something and it was one of more of those serious days. I wasn't going to, I wasn't making time for any shenanigans. So I cut to the point when I answered his question.

Yeah.

And this really hit home and I bring it up every once in a while as something to laugh at now, but it was really hit then. He said, "Sue, you literally make me sometimes feel like the dumbest person in the world." Oh. And he's like, I don't mean anything bad about that. I just, I just feel like sometimes. Thank you for the pities. He's like, I just feel like sometimes whenever you answer my questions, I just feel like such a dummy. And I'm like, oh no, Turtle, I don't mean that. Like, I just answered the question. And that combined with recently I had blown a gasket, I just was like, "Okay, something's got to change. I'm doing something wrong here." And I ended up taking a huge break from Siege again.

I'd been playing that game. I played it since it came out 10 years ago. I played it before I started streaming. I knew the ins and outs. I was watching pro league games back to back. I had stats memorized. It was like anything you could think of was sports and football. That was me for Siege. And I was so serious about it. I was doing tournaments. I was hosting tournaments. I was a part of smaller indie teams. I, you know, I was very into it and I had basically been streaming it six days a week, six hours nearly every stream and then that's not even counting when I would play it with friends off stream or play it with other content creators to collab with them whenever I wasn't streaming. My life was Siege and I'm like, this isn't healthy. You know, if God, you know, God called me to be in this space and I've made it my space.

There you go.

I shouldn't have.

See, and that's and that's where I was wondering when I said, "Hey, let me poke at that a little bit." So God was calling you into it. You just weren't going into it hearing the calling and obediently following the calling. Kind of like the same way that Abraham does obey and go to the land, but then he goes down to Egypt for a little bit and, you know, doesn't fully just trust God the whole time to wait on God to provide. He just does it in his own power every so often of, well, yeah, God said this, so I'm here, but I got to take matters in my own hands.

Yes. And I had been trying to do that. I'm a very particular. I like planned out things. I know I can be very chaotic, but I like things being planned. I like to know what I'm going to be up against. Recently, for church, the main lesson has been the story of Elijah and how he, you know, called out all of the Israelites and Baal, the followers of Baal, and God's like, "Okay, you're not ready for this quite yet. Let me just throw you in the wilderness for a little bit. You're going to live at this brook. You're going to drink from this brook. You're going to get fed by birds. And now you're going to go live with this widow." And you know, he's being prepared through all this to be able to have this big showdown in the end.

And so for me, I was trying to make things happen. I was trying to think 12 steps ahead, but I wasn't worrying about from step one to step two. I was already trying to solve my problems on step 15 when I hadn't even solved my problems for step two yet. And all of that was compacting and compiling and stressing me out. And I knew that the root cause was Siege. And I love the game. You know, I'm back to playing it recently. This is literally one of my favorite first-person shooters. Again, it's just the idea of working as a team and working as a community. The whole idea of Siege, Rainbow Six Siege, Team Rainbow, is a group of specialized soldiers and operatives from different walks of life coming together to fight a common enemy.

That was the main root story of Siege, which I just love that, you know, the whole idea of us settling or putting our differences aside and working together to defeat just followed.

Blue, thank you for the follow. Stay blue. Um, you know, we all, we all love, I mean, I love a good story of just people putting aside differences and coming together to fight a common enemy. And then there's so much to be learned from that. There's so much that you can take away from those types of stories. And I, they always inspired me as a kid to just try to be the best I can be and show God wherever I go.

And so I took a break from Siege, took a year and a half off. I think I booted the game up twice and it was only to get like some reward that I knew I would be able to get and I played maybe one game. I barely played it, which was weird, you know. I full sent into playing different survival games, story games, painting.

I did more work for YouTube content than I did for Siege. And I was just running away. I honestly was running away from Siege, which I think I needed to space myself away from Siege, but running away wasn't the full answer at the time.

In my life, I'm really good at interacting with people in the game. I'm really good at interacting with people in that area.

And so I went from being on fire for it, being depressed by it, being angered by it, then running away from it. And then coming back thinking I accepted it, getting mad again, not learning. So then I had to relearn. And literally just for like the last five or six months, I have finally gotten to the point where I don't get mad at the game. I finally have gotten to this point where it's a game. I can. If I win, great. I want to win. But at the same time, we're here to have fun and play a video game. And again, that's just like the Siege aspect of the content.

You know, there's so much to apply to my spiritual growth in life because of a video game. And I'm like, wow, God using things to do things and teaching me. Man, why are you targeting right now, God? You know, jokingly like, ah man, you know, but I need it. And between all of that, I got to meet so many people who saw me going through all these different stages and realizing myself that this is all being planned out for a reason. If I hadn't gone through that, I wouldn't have relied so much on painting. I now paint like once a week, sometimes two times a week. It's one of the main things I'm doing at Reach this year. Because Romans trusted and believed in me last year and now it's happening again.

These paintings sell primarily to pay for Bibles to be given out. And if I hadn't gone through all these issues and stages and frustrations and failures, we're here soon about to ship out our 200th Bible. We're coming up on it. Which when we give out Bibles, we're not just giving out a Gideon Bible. We're not just giving out a paper or plastic copy.

We're given a high quality Bible from Crossway. If those who don't know, they do the ESV value thinline Bibles. Those are the kind of popular Bible style. It's a very simple Bible, but it's a very nice Bible. And years ago when I first started streaming, me and my wife's friend, Caitlyn said, "Why don't you like offer Bibles to people and put their gamer tag on it for them?"

So that way they can say that that's mine. That's my Bible. And she told that to me. I'm like, "You're a genius. That's so smart." And so I started doing it. And nowadays, more and more people want their real life name on it than a gamertag. Sometimes we'll get a nickname that we put on there, but still people order Bibles and the biggest feedback I get from it is some. I think it was probably the fifth Bible that I shipped. The person who got it, he didn't read it for probably two years. He wasn't a Christian, but he just felt he for some reason felt like he needed to order a Bible. He got it delivered. He opened the bubble wrap packaging, closed it back. He made sure the Bible was there and then he put it in his desk. And he didn't look at it. Two years went by. He's cleaning out his desk. He sees this package and he opens it up.

And at that time, and even still, if I know the person who's ordering the Bible, if I've known them for a while, I'll write a note. Nowadays, I don't have the time to write out huge notes like I used to. And so I had written out a note for him specifically. And it ended up just making him cry. Because he's like, "There's somebody online that cares for me." And I haven't talked to them in two years, but they said something for me that is now working. And at that moment, he dove into that Bible. He said he never read the Bible before. So he looked up where's a good starting point. And then he reached out to me and he told me everything he was going through now that he's going to church. And that just made my day. Like that made it all like I was on a high like no other that day. I was just like, it was great. I couldn't believe it. And I started, you know, I only would bring up the Bibles every once in a while. I really didn't make it a central focus. But when that moment happened, I started saying, "No, this is where God wants me." And the fact that, you know, we all have our cell phones. We can get the Bible app for free on our phone, but I try to tell people this phone can be just as much of a distraction than a help. You know, it can be great tool for your Bible, but if you're not diligent to turn off your notifications, you're not diligent.

Do you hear that sound? I do not. Okay. I may have a pump going bad on my tank. Another fish. It's making an obnoxious noise. If it's not going I can't like I'm not going to end the stream to fix it. I'll deal with that. We must save the fish, though. They're okay. They're okay. I can see them. It's just making horrible noises. So if nobody's hearing it besides me, we're good.

But you know, I would tell people, you know, having that physical Bible in your hand, there's just something different about it. You know, you get to have the tactile interaction with the pages. You have the smell of the pages. You are forced to or you're really needing to try to remove all distractions so you can just have that peace with God. And if I hadn't gone through everything I would have gone through, I wouldn't have gotten to the point where painting is helping make that more of a reality. It helps open doors. Those painting streams, you know, go from my more, you know, we still have like a goofy, chaotic time with the painting, but it's way more chilled out and mellowed out than when we're gaming. And it leads and opens doors and opportunities to talk to people. You know, they'll bring up sometimes trauma they're going through. They'll bring up past mistakes and failures. They'll talk about what they're going through that day. And it takes it, it's an opportunity that has it slows everything down. And now we can talk about that. And if it hadn't been, well, it's creating this. Yeah. It's creating the space for all of that to happen and for people to be in there.

There was a comment earlier. I'm watching you people like my shirt. Well, I wore this because I it makes me think of art when I wear this shirt. It's a nice shirt. Yeah. It's like, you know, it looks like it's a painting of some kind that somebody did somewhere and I just, you know, now it's a shirt.

But the creating space for things and like this is one of the things that I always think about is where you are today. If God had told you everything it was going to take to get you to where you are today, you would have said no. But all you could do when he said it's time to go full-time live, you're like, "Okay, I heard what you said, but my idea is this. So I'm going to go try to do my idea and pursue me in the space." And God's like, "Okay, I still know you. You do you. I still yeah, I know what you need, but you do you. And I'll be here. I'll pick you up afterwards. I'm going to be along for it." Yeah, that's he definitely picked me up because and again, there's a lot of things learned in that time. You know, I didn't rely on one game. So it forced me to be a better streamer because all I knew to talk about was Siege. And so now I have to talk about other things. It's like, oh yeah, did you see the game last night? You know, it was really easy to carry on conversation if people hadn't seen it or did you see the new updates? Now it's, oh, we're playing a different game like every other stream. I can't just talk about Siege anymore. And that was really uncomfortable for me.

I'm a very introverted person in real life. I used to be super extroverted and then life happened to where now I like to kind of keep to myself, you know, that's just how I am. I'm definitely the type of person that at a party I'll choose to be in the back of the room going, "Yeah, y'all are having fun. I'm having fun by watching y'all have fun. Y'all keep having fun now. Don't bother me." But you know, as I started streaming, this is another thing. It pushed me out of that shell. It pushed me out of that introverted shell where I need to be active and be there for people and talk to people because I'm decent at it. I'm pretty good at just having conversations. And so mixing all that with having to do variety, it really took me out of that comfort zone. And that's all the three years was of full-time content creation was, man, I got ripped out of my comfort zone. I got ripped out of my comfort zone. All my safety nets were gone. And I learned a lot. I learned a lot in those three years. Yeah. Yeah. The safety net thing. I think that's one of those things that is really a difficult thing to step away from safety net to follow God. At times you it's like I'll follow you, but I want to make sure I'm safe. I want I don't want to give up. Let me, you know, just not to just keep going to Abraham, but it just makes so much sense. Go to a land I will show you. Well, how will I know when I'm there? I'll show you. What about my family and all that? Yeah, you're going to leave your family to go do this. Okay. I don't know how I feel about it, you know.

And it all came to a head when I started playing Siege and I started realizing I came back to Siege and I was mixing it in with other content and I was having all this balance and things were starting to work out. Things were starting to look up. But then I was burning myself out. I realized I had burnt myself out so much. Not just burning the candle at both ends. There is no more candle. There's no more wick is gone. It's dust. And I had done that because I hadn't worked well enough or been diligent enough in my relationship with God for him to continually refill my cup, for him to continually keep the candle burning, to keep on adding wax to it. And because of that, you know, God doing what he does best. Because of that, I realized I love streaming. I love making YouTube content. I love doing all this. It's a lot of work. You know, when people say they want to do it full do content creation full-time, unless you're of the world and you're chasing drama and you're being super edgy and all this stuff that we're called not to be, I mean, you'll get success fast if you do that. There's plenty of people who are big content creators that always pick on people like me who say being a content creator is not easy. That's because they don't have any cares. They don't care. All they care about is themselves and money and maybe a few of their family members and friends. They don't care. So that's why it's easy for them. They're able to shove off all that horrible thoughts that they have. They're like, "Oh, whatever. We'll just lean into it. That'll get clicks. That'll get views." Whereas people who want to be known for a certain image or for like Christian content creators, if you're not doing something outrageously big or entertaining or crazy, it can be harder to grow a community in that.

And so when I tell people if you're going to go into full-time content creation, it's going to be one of the hardest things you got to do because you have to be your own boss. You have to do your own research. You have to figure all the stuff out. And you also have to maintain a healthy life. You can't just sit at a computer all day.

I went from working outside every day, anywhere from eight to 16 hours a day, physical labor, you know, 190 pounds to sitting at a desk 18 hours a day because I had to do all my YouTube stuff. I had to edit the YouTube stuff. I had to interact with other streamers. I had to stream myself. Then I had to clip and edit those streams after stream and I'd only get six hours of sleep at night. And I went, you know, from all that physical labor sitting at a desk 190 lbs to pushing nearly 300. And that's because I didn't respect myself.

I didn't respect my time. I didn't respect God's time. And I didn't respect my relationship with God. And I wanted to do things my way. And through all that and reaching that burnout peak, I thought about my family. You know, we me and my wife had a son about two years ago now. And I was going to go get a full-time job to pay for daycare because Bailey, she's a special ed teacher. She loves teaching her kids. She is emotionally tied to those kids. Those kids are emotionally tied to her. And that's her mission field. And we talked about it. We prayed about it. And I was like, "Well, I can go get a part-time job. That way we can afford to put them in daycare." and then I'll still do stream stuff on the side.

Well, I started doing research on half decent to decent daycares. And basically all my paycheck from a part-time job would go straight into daycare. And I'm like, I don't know how comfortable I am going to be with this, but I told Bailey like I think I'm going to have to be a stay at home dad.

And she's like, what do you mean? I showed her the math. I showed her the hours that I was going to be forced to work. I was going to be forced to work basically up to the like right under the 40 hour mark to be part-time. So my, you know, I'd basically be working a full-time job at part-time pay with none of the benefits and I'd have less time with her, less time with the kid, less time with stream and we basically not see any of that money because it's going right into daycare, right?

And so I'm like, well, you continue to pursue, you know, the schooling because you know your kids love you. They're they're tied to you. I'll be a stay at home dad. That was a hard year. That year was tough because there was a lot of me not used to that, you know, motherly approach to taking care of a kid. You know, moms are moms for a reason. Dads are dads for a reason. Moms can do some of dad's jobs. Dads can do some of mom's jobs. And some stuff one side of the coin is better suited for. But I loved having that year home with Jeremiah because if I didn't have that year home, I wouldn't have had all the time and peace and opportunity to pray to God to ask for what what does he really want from my life? What do I need to do to serve him to the best of my abilities? And through that, through this past year, prior year, I had been praying, God, where am I needing to be?

Ever since I left the camp, it was still on the back of my mind. No matter what, I was always wanting I missed the camp. I wanted to be back. I missed the environment. I missed the people. I missed the ministry field. Yeah. It was just I love I love hosting. I love having people over. Specially like I know that's strange sounding as an introvert, but I love just taking care of people. I want to make them happy. I want to see smiles. I want to hear laughter. And I want to make sure that they're they're taken care of. And so I I'm praying intently over this year, you know, holding my son and I'm just like, I think that's it, God. You're preparing me to return back to the camp. You're helping me see what where I need to be in my life. You're not telling me to stop with streaming. You're not telling me to stop with content creation. You're not telling me to stop with art. You're not telling me to stop with giving Bibles out. You're telling me to balance things better. You're telling me where I need to say no, where I need to say yes. And in the end, content creation is a huge open door to the online world where we at this camp are fairly disconnected. You know, we're we're in our own little bubble. You know, we hear some news, you know, we we pay attention to the news and whatnot, but we're pretty secluded in all things considered.

And I'm like, okay, I'm dwelling on it. I'm praying on it. I'm like, God, you're you're wanting to prepare me to juggle all these things and showing me that if I'm respectful to your time, to my time, my wife's time, my son's time, my the camp's time, stream's time, all of this, then you're going to do something amazing. I have no idea what, but you're going to do something amazing. I just know it.

Yeah. And so just as much as it was a step of faith to leave the camp, it was just as much a step of faith to go back to my boss. And we left on good conditions. We left on a good relationship. But I returned to him. I said, "Hey, this is where I've been the last three years and I want to be back. I I I love the camp. It's a love that I can't I can't I can't express. It's just I love it."

It's the best.

Yeah.

And I'm so at home. I'm so comfortable here. It's not just a safety net anymore. I know I can leave and I can survive on my own. I know I can provide for my family.

Huge difference if you're running back there to hide and not be obedient as opposed to being called back and yeah, I don't need all of this, but I am here and connected and serving.

Yeah, that's totally totally a great lesson.

I I'm like it took three years to learn this.

Hmm.

Well, I'm only 29. I'm scared of the next three years. That's like the first thing I think of. It's like, oh no, what's the next three years gonna be like, but you know, I I I approached my boss and I told him that and you know, instantly he's like, you know, I talked to them off and on. I used to I would come down to the camp for a week before every summer is kind of like my getaway from, you know, unplugging for a week. I'd help them with summer camp setup. You know, there's a lot of maintenance things that need to be done before summer goes, you know, full tilt.

And so I was still connected a little bit and but even still he's like man you've really grown up in the last three years.

And for him to tell that to me.

Oh yeah.

And you know I respect I respect my boss. I respect boss man like no other. You know he's he's been a big influence in my life and he's given me a lot of grace. He's taught me a lot of valuable lessons. And so for me to hear that from him was, you know, I was just like edge of tears in the Olive Garden that we were eating dinner at, you know, it's like I don't want to cry in the Olive Garden. It's going to get in my not in my salad. No, you know, and when they come and ask these breadsticks are just so amazing. I just salty. There. Uh, and so, you know, he he not only, you know, offered me a job, he offered me a position that I personally don't feel like I would be good at, but now that I'm looking back, that's what God's been preparing me for.

He's like, you got you got two choices. You can either come back to your your original position that you used to be at, or I'm in need of a food manager and assistant director. And I'm like, "Oh." And he said, "That's what I need. Which one do you want?" He gave me the option. I said, "I'm going to be honest. Uh, I'll take any job. Whatever whatever you feel like I'm the best fit for because that's what I feel like I need my answer to be."

Yeah.

I'm like, all I know is I'm being called back. All I know is that my love for this camp has not diminished over the three years. It's only grown.

Yep.

And that tells me that this is where God wants me to be. It's where God wants me to raise my my son, my future kids. It's where God wants me to have as a home base for streaming and painting and sending Bibles out. And it's built on a foundation of Christ. It's built on a foundation of serving others. And what's more powerful than that was was my thought. And it's so funny talking to a lot of the the staff where I'm online gaming and being a complete ridiculous person, right? And you know, I'm still ridiculous in work cuz I'm a goofball. You know, you can't take that away from me. But it's just a different person. They're just there. Sometimes they're like, "Oh man, that's so weird that you do all that." And I'm like, "Yeah, but it's it's me. It's what makes me me." And uh and it's it's been a it's been a really busy last six months. It's been about six months, uh, five months that we've been back. Um, a lot of relearning. I'm mentally healthier than I've been in a long time. I'm physically healthier than I've been in a long time. And most importantly, I'm spiritually healthier. Um, I feel closer to God than I've been in the last three years. And except for like the day my son was born. Like the day he was born was just unlike any other. You know, it's like God, you trusted me and Bailey, me and my wife, with this child. That's a huge responsibility. And yeah, it's a it's certainly an event that is life-changing. It is.

And I'm like, I don't feel like I'm prepared to be a parent, which everybody, you know, always says you're well, you're not.

You're not.

You're not. You can try to be prepared. You can you can put up.

If you wait until you're prepared, you'll never be a parent. You'll never be a parent.

And so I'm like, you you thank you for trusting me with raising this child to learn to know you cuz cuz he's not mine, he's yours. And I remember saying that the day that Jeremiah was born and instantly a lot of clarity just kind of overcame my mind and thoughts were being more concise and coherent. I was getting a little bit better sleep. There's just it was just all starting to slowly come together. God's like, "All right, you're watching you're watching me paint from the back of the canvas. You're about to see the front of it. Get ready. It's we're coming together." And I'm just like, "Oh, I'm so tired. My mind, God, hurry up." And he's just like, "Just wait. You don't rush it. This is all part of the slow cooking process, you know." And um you know it's just there's a lot I could talk about in the last six and a half years of streaming and and just life in general.

It it's been a great conversation. We we have stayed a little bit more into the darker side of of things. But somebody needs to hear that.

Somebody needs to hear that. But one of the other things that was kind of resonating as you were talking several different places of being overwhelmed, doing too much, working too hard, all of those kinds of things, and then all of a sudden the thing you were striving for is gone. There's that's a whole lot like the people of Israel aren't giving their Sabbath rest to the land. They're trying to strive. And that's one of the things that I think that we don't think about in that story. This is where I resonate from it. Why are we supposed to rest one day a week? Because we're supposed to acknowledge that God is in control and I'm not. So if I don't start from a place of rest, then I'm starting from my own strength. If I start from a place of rest, then I'm starting from a place of being in God's presence and coming out of that of relying on him instead of I work as hard as I can and I crash to sleep so I can get up and work as hard as I can. So that I crash and I mean you know and and I am fine I am all fine.

So don't hear me say something I'm not. I'm all fine with there is a season where, you know what, the harvest is here and I have to work as hard as I can because rainy season is coming and I'll be able to rest then.

So I'm not saying that there's not that aspect of life because frankly this week my wife is going to be going to be with her father. He's having back surgery. She's going to be gone and I am going to be super busy this week. I've got three podcasts this week.

It wasn't planned that way, but I got—I was finally able to connect with you. I'm finally able to connect with someone else who, in order to do that podcast, is going to be 11:00 at night tomorrow. Oh, and I'm in bed at 10:00 and I'm going to do a podcast at 11 o'clock at night because my wife ain't home and I can put it on my schedule and I hope it's amazing.

I hope it's amazing. I hope I'm not past my bedtime and I'm just going to be dead and going, "Yeah, so tell me more." Yeah, tell me more.

I don't know what else to say. You know, it's I'm going to have to rely on God tonight, you know. You got—you have to take a nap if you can in the middle of the day to get prepared for tomorrow.

You don't want to see my schedule tomorrow. I teach a class at 8:00. I teach a class at 10:00. I got a podcast at 1:00. Uh, the only thing that'll give me rest tomorrow is if the cross country meet that I'm going to go to—my niece's—is rained out or I get rained out from trying to get my bike ride in tomorrow. That's the only place I'm going to find. I will try—I will get a little catnap before the podcast, but you know, it's okay. Depending on how good the cross country race is going, you could just—you're doing great. You do just a little little quick five minute intervals.

Yeah, I the my story does have quite a few low points or darker points. Um, and I really, you know, I'm really grateful for those because they make the brighter moments even brighter. And, uh, and for anyone that might be, you know, put down a little bit by my story, just know that I'm so happy where I'm at right now.

If it wasn't for those lows, if it wasn't for those lows, I wouldn't be able to be even more grateful in worship for the highs. I know life's not going to be perfect. I'm only 29, all right. Some—I'm not even halfway through my life, God willing, right? If that's what God's plan is, and I know there's going to be more lows.

And so right now, I'm going to worship God as much as I would worship and call out to him in my lows. And that's probably one of my biggest lessons that I've had to relearn and learn the last few years.

And I know there's hope in tomorrow. I know there's hope in Jesus. I know there's hope in God. But sometimes you have to go through those lows to really concrete that into your brain, into your mind.

And sometimes you may think that a low isn't a low because everything else is going so great. And that's kind of where things were before I went full-time with streaming. There was something missing when I went full-time. There was something missing and that was my relationship with God. I wasn't praying before my streams as often as I used to.

I'd forget and I'd do a quick little two-second prayer after I clicked go live. I wouldn't give him some time first. There was little things, little chinks in the armor that were starting to show because I wasn't being respectful of God's time.

And it's good to look back at it now and see that because now I need that to be a reminder so that I don't fail in that way again. I'm not perfect. But I know that I have to keep up and I have to be respectful of time. That's probably one of my biggest—my biggest lessons I try to tell people.

It's like people are like, "Oh, I'm going to stay up all night and game." I'm like, "No, go to bed." Yeah, don't do it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I could tell you stories that are not good stories from back when I was in my 20s. So, no, we—yeah, we learn from those hopefully.

Um, yes. I I did wanna ask because I I I know you've had some really good moments on stream. So you have like two or three stories of impact that God has allowed you to have through streaming.

All right. So first thing that comes to mind is a few years ago. This was before Reach Conference was founded and Romans was reaching out via or in partnership with Compassion International. Oh, yeah. Uh, so that's how I met Romans and I think that's where quite a few of the foundation content creators of Reach met him was from Compassion doing charity streams and whatnot.

Uh, he reached out along with Courtney Doll at Compassion and they were wanting to try to get streamers together to fundraise for uh, some Compassion events. I had never tried to do any form of charity work and uh I was really nervous because it's like oh gosh I gotta—I got to be—I got to step up for this charity. It's not just about me. It's for the children, you know, and uh uh but what was wild and I'll kind of combine the three charity or uh yeah the two major charity streams that I was a part of—it was just seeing how much people are willing to come together to support somebody or support a group.

Uh I know uh between the two charity streams, I believe my community raised like close to $8,000. Nice. That was the most I had ever seen on my stream at that at the times. I probably averaged maybe 100 to 200 subs a month. Uh and that was pushing it. Some months were shorter or lower than others. And you know, I'd have some donations. I hadn't really been pushing painting, but those charity streams made me kind of step out of comfort zone of painting and I started painting and selling those paintings for charity.

I was still a noob. I was still painting with Bob. So I I didn't want to sell them outright because they're not my original idea and I didn't want to be robbing Bob. I don't want to rob his legacy. I respect him too much to do that. But people have been asking and asking to buy some of my art.

I'm like, well, I'm not selling it, you know, yada yada. But then these charity streams had an opportunity happen and that's how Romans started having those wheels turning for me to have an event on stage all those years ago. You know, it's crazy just how all that builds up. But that's a huge high in my life when it comes to the streaming was doing those Compassion streams.

It was about a year after I'd gone full-time. And so I was starting to get back up out of that dark place. And at first when I was asked to do the charity streams, I instantly wanted to say no because I knew I was going to be surrendering probably a month to two months worth of income because I was going to start plugging that a month beforehand and be like, "Hey, save your money. Save your money. Save your money."

Oh, it's very—yeah. It's very—it's very hard to do and ask for multiple things. It's like here's the one ask. If you're promoting someone else, it's hard to also say and also give to me. Yes. And and I and I remember I was told that from uh one of my close friends. They're like, remember when you do these charity streams, you need to make sure that you're good financially. Make sure all your ducks in a row because you're probably not going to get as much income those months.

Well, I was nervous about it. I was nervous about it, but I just had come through this low. I'm like, "No, God's here. God is here and he is real and he is taking care of me. I'm like, I will step out in faith in this and I've never done charity events, but I'm going to make it the best streams I've ever done."

And they went wild. They went crazy. Uh doors were opened with painting. Doors were open for Bibles to be given out. Doors were opened for people's lives to be changed through Compassion. And if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't know Romans. I wouldn't know most of the streamers I know nowadays. And so that's a huge up in my streaming career was just those Compassion streams.

And I'm waiting for the day that Compassion comes back for doing charity streams. I've been debating. I did a charity stream for my camp uh whenever they got hit by a tornado uh and we were raising funds for them. And so that's kind of like a little charity event I did, but I'm really excited for whenever Compassion will reach out again hopefully and we'll see about doing another one for them because that was that was always so fun.

Um, I want to say another another high of my uh streaming career was I got—I got two—and the first one was is with painting because, you know, painting is a part of the content and part of my stream, part of my life. I'm I'm just in love with painting so much now. Uh, painting is definitely probably the best decision I've made. It's so good for my mental health. It's so good. And just, you know, dwelling in the moment, thinking about the beautiful creation that God has made of earth. Like, oh man, landscapes are magnificent.

That just—how how how did—like I cannot comprehend God's mind to be able to make that and allow that to happen. Um, to allow nature to be how it is. And me trying to paint it is just such a cool imitation compared to God. And you know, it's just such a such a big moment for me or just such a great moment for me to just spend time with him.

There's a lot of times I just don't paint. I paint on my own, not even on stream, and that's even better for me. And so painting has been such a high and you know, the day that I finally started um selling originals and my benefactor—there's several people in my community who donate, who gift or who give away merch or things that like to be anonymous. They don't want anybody to know who they are. So we kind of tied them all up in a bow as the benefactor, the original benefactor, the OG who started it all really.

Um, he not only bought my first original, he also ordered my first commission. And he said, "This is for you to know that there are people out there who believe in you and who like your art and want to support you in your ministry because the paintings are primarily there as a way that somebody gets something in return for donating. Really, that's that's what it is. It's like if you're wanting to donate towards what the stream is doing, this is how you can do so. You can buy a painting. You'll get something for trade in return so you don't feel like you're out of something." And uh and he—the benefactor—he just opened a door with that.

And it shot my confidence through the roof. God used him to just just launch me to the moon with confidence. I didn't want to stop painting. And it wasn't just because I was getting some income. It was because people liked it, right? And and it and it was just such a peaceful moment. It's like it's something that I can do that other people also enjoy watching and the last few—you know last couple years that I've been streaming and painting—every once in a while it just always created such a peaceful time where we could just chat and relax.

And that that's why I got to say that painting is definitely an ultimate high, working with Compassion is an ultimate uh high point of of uh my stream. And then probably the next one would be when we got the funds to buy our own embosser for Bibles for naming and personalizing the Bibles.

Uh combined with I reached out to Crossway and I I was real with them. I was like, "My local—my my local Bible shop will only give me 10% off Bibles and I have to buy 50 at a time through them and I have to leave the Bibles in their shop. I don't like that deal." And they won't work with me in any other way. And they won't let me bring in Bibles that I get from like Bibles.com.

I can't bring in outside Bibles to be embossed on their machine because liability. I need help. I said, "I would love the opportunity for free Bibles from y'all, but any support would be great." And the head of sales, he's the one that got the email, like the whole manager over all the sales.

And he said, he forwarded me to now my account handler, Summer, super sweet. She's always on top of things. And said, Summer will get you taken care of.

Give him, you know, the major bulk discount we give to churches, but make it to where he can order as many Bibles as he needs where a lot of times they limit it where you can only order in bulk count of 24 or more, but they're letting me order smaller amounts because I may not need that many. And they they did not have to do that. They did not have to do that, but they're on fire to get Bibles in people's hands.

And so we got that permission or we got that opportunity from Crossway. And then plus we were able to fund buying the embossing machine and it really just put in perspective of how many people we can reach.

And you know here recently it's been a little bit of a stressor because Banana is a Hannah. We all know Banana. She had her story blow up and go viral online and you know millions of people seeing her story, millions of people wanting to encourage her and you know donate and support her.

And she has my Bibles on her social links. I have ran out of Bibles twice because of that social link, which is such a blessing. It's it's a little bit of a stressor because I'm like, I'm not prepared for this. I was like, oh no, you know, but at the same time, I'm just like, oh, this is so cool.

Like if I hadn't listened to our friend six years ago, if I hadn't listened to Caitlyn six years ago and decided to give Bibles out, the opportunity to do this wouldn't have happened. The stories I've heard from people wouldn't have happened. So those definitely three of the biggest highs. And I got to say I got to say my community though on top of all that.

Like I have a couple people who stuck with me after I you know after the initial crash when I went full-time and those are the real ones. They've been with me for years, you know, nearly since I started six years. In fact one of my longtime supporters, King Co, is coming down to visit this weekend. We're going to go pick him up. He's going to hang out with us and I've known him since he was like 16 in high school.

Nice. And now he's in the military and he's a grownup and doing grown-up things. And I said, "Hey King, it'd be cool if we hung out in real life." He's like, "Well, I have leave. If you're willing to hang out, I'll fly down to you." And I'm like, "Say more." And so like I'm really really excited about that.

But then also the people who have found me after my huge low of my mental and my spiritual, the people who God has placed in my life have saved me in so many ways that they'll never realize or they'll probably never understand. You know, I could be here another four hours talking about how much they've saved me in so many different ways and how God has used them in all the ways that he's used them.

And so if it wasn't for the amazing people that took a chance to listen to this goofball self and hang out with me, I still wouldn't be doing this because I'm here because, of course, God called me to be here, but I'm also here for them. Yeah. And that's the best part of it is being for people. And I I I think on some level when you're starting and you're trying to pursue it for yourself, it's never going to be satisfactory and long-lasting if what you're doing is I need to be it because then you do like you were finding out. I had to put 18-hour days in. I had to do all of this and it didn't like it didn't pay off the way that you were hoping and thinking there.

Yeah, it it did not. I I thought there would be way more return for my hours and for my lack of sleep, my missed moments and opportunity with my wife. And now now there's effects from that that I'm having to unlearn. I'm having to, you know, reattach myself how to act in certain ways.

You know, being basically chronically online for three years straight. It does a lot to you mentally. You know, you're just it way more than I thought. Way more of a change to me than I thought over three years. And so that's that's definitely been something to be easing through is getting back into, you know, listening to God way better, following his plan way better.

You know, realizing he kind of knows what he's talking about. I guess I should listen. You know, it's like almost creator of the universe, you know. Ah, you know, what do you know? You know, realizing that he does know quite a bit and I need to listen a little bit better.

Yeah. Yeah. Um just just thinking through so I know you were talking about the sending the Bible earlier and a story of impact with that, the person who got it and a couple years later being able to finally say, "Oh well, God's got this. I'm listening to God. I'm pursuing him." Do you have other stories where you've had impact with other people in your community? It doesn't have to be as dramatic. It could be anything small where because of either you or your community or something God did in that space that is just a really cool story about what God is up to in digital spaces.

So one recent opportunity or one recent event that happened was I had a painting paid for to be given away to the community. Okay. And the we had had some spiritual talks throughout the stream and I was trying to make it interesting. The painting had been paid for, but I wanted to make a challenge.

Like we've been playing this game called Peak. I think you've probably heard of it. And your goal is to get to the top of the mountain and escape. Well, we had I said I will give away this painting if I reach the peak by the end of tonight's stream. If I reach the peak, my person, my character has got to be up there. I can't. The team can't win. I got to be up there. Well, on top of like this challenge, there's also was some serious conversations that were happening, some spiritual conversations that just kind of poofed in, which is just again, that's just how it works in my streams. It just out of nowhere. Somebody will come in and ask a question about God. And so all this had been happening through some shenanigans. I got to the peak. We may have cheated a little bit in the game, but it was speedrun strats, so it technically was allowed.

Oh, okay. Say that. So yeah, we're good on a speedrun. Yeah, exactly. It was speedrun strats. We just did some glitches. It's fine. Oh, my daughter, my daughter hates when I exploit glitches that are in there. And it's like, excuse me, if they wanted the game without glitches, they could have made the game without glitches. I get to take advantage of them. I'm sorry that I'm aware of them. And that that's kind of how it was with Peak. You could cheese the game before a patch. You could launch yourself out of the cannon at the very starting stage and you could just suddenly be at the top of the peak.

Oh yeah. And my original plan was I specifically it said I have to see the peak biome title show up on my screen and I'll give away the painting. So my plan was I was going to make it to the top and then I was going to accidentally fall off the mountain and make everybody think that, oh no, ah, I can't give away the painting.

Well, we did some research and we found out that the devs had patched this particular exploit where you couldn't go from suggest followed. Piggy, thank you for the follow. We couldn't just go from the very beginning stage all the way to the top. We could only skip stages with four or five stages in between. So we ended up getting to the final part and then I was able to escape and we gave away the painting.

But through that, the young man, I don't know, I feel weird saying the young man, the viewer who won the painting asked for a Bible. Oh. He said, "From all the conversations that have been happening and just me knowing you for so long, can I ask for a Bible?" I said, "Absolutely." You know, click on that little link. You go to my website, you get that Bible ordered, I'll send it with your painting. Not only you're going to get a painting, you're going to get a Bible.

And you know, I was so excited. You know, I I messaged the benefactor who paid for this painting and I said, "Hey, you got a Bible into somebody's hand who didn't have one because of that painting." Yeah. Just look what think of the possibilities. And you know, you know, having a little geek out moment with them and, you know, just being so excited that we're able to get a Bible into people's hands is is just is just exciting and exhilarating.

Um, and following that with also with Banana, with all these people ordering Bibles, I I've gotten so many people ordering Bibles that have said, you know, because of Banana's story, I feel like God is real. Yeah. And I want to know more. And I see that you have Bibles. Well, and I can't afford one. So the question came up. Someone said, "I'm not aware of Banana Story." We're going to just we're not going to share Banana Story. I just confirmed earlier today Banana will be on the podcast next month. So you'll have to stay tuned. And those that are not here live will have to wait and it'll come out whenever it comes out.

Actually, let me go look a second so I can confirm. Anybody that's here, what date did we so October 10 at 12 p.m. Eastern is when that podcast is going to be. So October 10. So not too long. Not too long. So just a couple weeks. Just a couple weeks. It's a good story. It's it's worth it. It's worth it to come and hear that story. Yeah.

And the podcast will be out later at some point. It probably will be November by the time that podcast comes out. So just to give you a heads up, I've got a whole bunch in the can. I just released one a week. So if you are listening to this one and then you're going, when is it coming out? It will, this one will probably be out after October 10 anyway.

So you won't get the announcement on the VOD. You'll be afterwards. So apologies for that, but that's just how it happens if you're not here live. That's that's one of the pluses of being here live. Cliffhanger for next month. Exactly. You'll cry. The story will make you cry. That's right.

Well, here for the emotions. Yes. Yes. Well, there's nothing wrong with a good cry, especially if you're touched. I mean, Jesus several times is moved to with compassion. And I think that's one of the things we're able to do is move other people with compassion when we resonate and connect with what God is up to or the needs that people have and those kinds of things.

So I mean, I know for me whenever I do big events, um I a couple years ago I did my one I did a Sabbathon. Ended up going for like six days straight. You know, one sub equaled five minutes is all I had done. So you can do the math on that. My brain can't. So six days of just straight streaming. And I remember just after I ended that stream being so exhausted and I passed out, I woke up and I was just in tears because of how much of a blessing it was.

Yeah. I had had those two dry, you know, the whole year of just drought spiritually, emotionally, and I had tried something new with the content.

I had taken a step of faith again, you know, not relying on siege, not relying on me. And, you know, God doing his thing, he blessed the channel with all that.

Because of the income of that, I was able to, you know, the summer months are very dry when it comes to, you know, donations or subs or incomes for my channel anyway.

And so I knew that it was going to be a tough summer, but then all this gifting happened and this subathon went for so long, I didn't have to worry about that.

And so now after, you know, after crazy donations happen or people buy a painting or people gift a ton of subs, you know, I keep the emotion in. I'm taking it in and I'm doing really well. But normally whenever I'm done with stream and I've processed it and I've thanked God, I'm just in tears. I'm normally weeping.

Yeah, and that's just because I'm so, I don't know what else to do besides just, you know, cry out to God and say, "Thank you for continuing to provide. Thank you for continuing to have that security." And it's something that I just can't help myself, but cry tears of joy for.

And it's great. Yeah, tears of joy are not often appreciated. You know, I didn't grow up like, I grew up with, "You're crying? Well, I'll give you something to cry about." That's the way I grew up. So, you know, tears of joy are not like, I actually still at times like I'll get to the end of a really good movie and something joyous will happen. I'm just like, why are my eyes sweating? My eyes are sweating. What's wrong with me? And what is this? Emotions. Yes. I thought that was beaten out of me.