The Family That Games Together Stays Together

Welcome in Aki and fam to the gaming output po. Oh boy, I'm gonna stumble over my words today. It's too late in the evening.

I've been talking all day and now now I'm twisted over my tongue. So, we'll try that again. Welcome in Aki and fam to the gaming.

Hello podcast. And Mama Peach, good to see you or good to hear you.

Hi. You too.

You too. Yeah, you're you're gonna Yeah, you'll definitely hear it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Hi. Yeah, her fingers kind of floated in magically for a second there. Oh, I am uh of of I mean I I get excited every time I do a podcast. I honestly do. I get excited about talking with friends and talking about ministry and just saying, "Hey, what's going on in life? How did you get to the place where you are? What is God up to?" I really don't find anything more exciting than just chatting with people. I know gaming, we're on a gaming platform and all that and games are fun, but finding out what God's up to, it just really gets me excited.

Absolutely. Absolutely, man. No, I And you know, I've known you for long enough now that it's just I know this is going to be a fun fun evening. So, I'm looking forward to chatting and yeah, catching up a little bit and yeah, talking about all the things. It's going to be good.

Oh, I know. Hi, Mel. Yeah, there's there's a bunch of people going to be in here that I'm going to be So, this is this is one thing I just leave it up to the guest. How do you want to engage chat? Just do it. I mean, we're going to interrupt our conversation. That's usually how I do it. Yeah, we'll just we'll just conversation join in. We get engrossed and we forget chat for a while. We can always get caught up, but we go we go wherever it it flows.

I've got some specific questions that are just ones I'm going to ask. But what I get more excited about is the Wait a minute. You just said something I had no idea about. Let's pause there and and let's explore that for a minute, which is super fun. And it ends up in places I had no idea where we're going to go. That's that's really fun to me.

So that's the best part, all the places you'll go, right?

Yes. Yes. Well, I do like to start out with not how did you get started in in doing, you know, ministry in Twitch, but first, how did you get introduced to Twitch and then when did you decide that it was something you could utilize to do ministry?

Yeah. So, how I got introduced to Twitch is very different from the how did I see it as something we could utilize from a ministry perspective. So, I got I got introduced to Twitch long long time ago. Like I've been a gamer ever since I was a young child, right? So, I've always been kind of tech adjacent. Like I knew what Justin.tv was, which you know ended up becoming twitch.tv. I didn't have an account back in the day because it just wasn't something that really grabbed my attention early on. Um, but specifically when Overwatch had the Overwatch League, okay. Um, I made a point to have an account so that I could lurk in the Overwatch League streams and earn that currency so that I could buy the digital like basically costumes um that you get with uh Overwatch. They're just skins that you get for your team. I was a Dallas Fuel guy. I really like the blue color. So, it was just I wanted I wanted my Reinhardt and and the Dallas Fuel Blue, which I I think I still have that somewhere if that all carried over. But anyway, long story short, I did that and then way way way back in the day, I had a buddy of mine that was going through he was getting his PhD in machine learning. Yeah. Yeah. And and he uh you know, he he had to study a lot. He had he had a lot of school work. He had a lot of things going on. And so me and the rest of our friend group, we would be playing like PUBG and stuff. And so I would literally throw up a Twitch stream and we would call it Pants TV because he went by Mr. Pantaloons. That's was his name. He's actually still, you guys may see him in stream occasionally. He still comes around. Um, but it was Pants TV. And so it would just be me and the guys and our shenanigans and we would just be playing games and he would have us on as background noise while he would be studying for his PhD. And so uh, robot robot's an OG too. Robot in chat. He's an OG too. So he he he remembers these days. Um, but it was I think 2018 or 2019. Um, it's it's funny all of these things are kind of interrelated because this friend group at the Mr. Pants, we all we all met each other in the comment section of the gaming blog, Kotaku, right? And so used to be a big avid reader of kotaku.com. Um, bunch of us became friends in the comment sections and we have our our little friend group. We're still friends today. We still hang out. We still play games. We still chat. Um, we're all still in each other's lives. Most of us have now either gotten well I was married. I think Greyband had got married not too long after me and then you know we've had children and we've gone through literally almost 17 years of life together in this friend group. So, but we became friends in the comment section of kotaku.com and then, you know, like 10 years later, ended up reading an article on this place called Godquad Church on Kotaku.com and then Pastor Susie. And so, I was just like, oh, this is really cool. There's a bunch of Christians online. There's a church online and was I'm going to go check this out. And so, I went to Suz's stream and I was just like, whoa, this is really cool. There all these people talking and chatting and playing games and actually talking about Jesus in a in a digital space. This is actually really, really cool. And um you know so I got to know Susie, got to know Dustin, got to know Jonno, got to know a lot of people that I consider to be kind of pioneers in the space. Actually, I don't think Don was streaming yet, but Jon Jonno was for sure cuz Jonno was one of the early ones. And uh you know, I just kind of looked around and I was just like I remember one time Susie actually raided this other streamer. There were a couple that was playing Rainbow Six Siege and they had this dual perspective stream and I was just like wouldn't it be really cool if me and my daughter like were able to do something like this at some point? If we had we had something where we could do this. And so I started to catch a vision for creating a place that could feel like home for those who don't have one and try to demonstrate that healthy family dynamic and be a light in a more family-friendly and family focused environment. And so Aen Peach was the name that we ended up settling on. We went through a few different iterations early on and I watched a bunch of YouTube tutorials and made some really crappy overlays and emotes and just just just really not very good stuff. But it was something to get us started, right? Um, yeah. So, we went live as AI and Peach. And my wife at the time, well, why not wife? Still wife, by the way. Uh, my wife at that point in time was just like, "This is kind of silly." And I was just like, "Well, we're just I'm going to go." I thought it might just be, you know, a way to to noly game.

Yeah. She's like, "It's just an excuse to play more video games." Like, I'm like, "Yes." Yeah. Is it is ministry just an excuse to play video games? But that also is is going to be true if you are going to go to youth group and you're going to be a youth pastor and you're going to do shenanigans. You're going to go to pizza parties and you're going to have, you know, you're to do anything. Play laser tag. You're going to play laser tag. Is this just an excuse to play laser tag? Is this just an excuse to play paint?

Get in a mosh pit.

At that point, it's just an excuse to be in a mosh pit.

Sure. Weren't sure how the the quote unquote ministry would evolve, you know, if it would even be that. And it didn't take very long before my wife kind of caught a vision. She was like, "Oh, okay. There's there's something here." Totally unfamiliar with Twitch until you Yeah, absolutely. This whole thing came up. So, and so eventually we ended up adding in what we called Oy after dark, which is basically when at the time little Oy, he was like 2 years old. Yeah. Um we would put him to bed and then after he was in bed and to sleep, we would come downstairs and it would be basically time for the adults to hang out and and play games. Still keeping the family-friendly focus. um but engaging in mental health discussions and some of the more deeper relationship. Yeah. Talking about addiction, talking about our struggles, talking about the things that make us human and sinners and how we can engage those topics and find redemption in Christ. And so just yeah, there's there's a whole bunch there that I want to jump in on and and but I I I want to come back to the mental health thing in a second, but be I just want to let you know that so that we'll come back to it. But when you when you saw uh you know Pastor Susie and XP Church and doing that, had you had any thoughts before that or had you had anyone talking about thinking about doing ministry in the space such that Cardinal Redbeard just Oh, sorry. It's got a follow. Thank you for the follow, Cardinal Redbeard. And we had one earlier, hope heals you. Thank you for the follow, everybody. Uh I may not interrupt every time when those happen. and they'll just keep happening. Those are good people. I I appreciate anybody giving us the follow. We we we love it. And uh thank you Hope Heels for the for the follow and then the first time chat. So the uh Oh, I've lost my train of thought. Go back to it. So when you saw XP Church and Pastor Susie doing it, was it just the revelation that it could be ministry or was it because of the way he was doing it that you wanted to pursue the idea of that?

I think it was a combination of the two. I think it was absolutely a revelation because I'd only ever really seen Twitch as entertainment, right? I'd really only ever seen that as this is just a form of media where you know the streamers are influencers are their personalities and never really considered there is a possibility to to do this differently and really you know be that light in those dark spaces which is really what Twitch needs and still does need every single day arguably more so than 5 years ago five and a half years ago when we got started. Well, I I think every place on the internet needs more salt and light in it than Salt and Light was one of the early early uh Twitch names we considered, but somebody somebody had that one already. Yeah. Yeah. Like I say, the the good names are usually salt. I got some gray in my beard and then Peach would be the light. Sorry. Anyway, cute. Oh, I thought you were going to go with the direction of being salty and then she would be the light. But yeah, that's that too. Yeah, absolutely. Oh. Um, so yeah, cuz for for me, you know, my son watched Twitch and I'm like, why do you want to watch people play video games? I don't understand that. But then I didn't investigate it. You know, it's it's just my son who's in high school watching it and I know he's doing that and and it's like, well, I don't trust all the trends that, you know, my kids are going through that they're going to last, they're going to be anything of value. I also full-time pastor. I didn't have, you know, space to go and explore it. I mean, at the time, what's kind of funny is back in the day, I was in a pastor group and six out of the eight of us were Assassin's Creed players.

So had we really investigated Twitch, we probably could have had a six pastor group of all Assassin's Creed playing online. Of course, when they came out with the one, I can't remember which one it was that first did the multiplayer and would do that.

I tried it out and I went, "I don't like this. Let me just go back to beating the game." And I just went right away from it.

So it's interesting how our minds can be closed to the opportunity that's there because we don't see it. And it takes somebody, it takes somebody else who's seen it to actually be able to have our minds opened to what God could do and use us to be able to do in spaces.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's just one of those kinds of things where obviously there's a lot of not so great content in online spaces. And you know, with me who had young kids, it's hard sometimes to find areas where they feel safe or areas where they can navigate what it's like to be in online spaces in an environment that's safe, right? There's a lot of kids out there whose parents just kind of let them create. We've had kids that are not of age come into our Twitch stream and stuff, right? We have. They're just scary, you know. And it's just like, bro, like if you, A, you're not supposed to have an account. B, go talk to your parents about what you're doing. Like, because kids are smart. I mean, I even see it in little AI today. He's sharp. We all have everything in the same space up here. All of our computers are up here out in the open so we can kind of keep tabs on each other. And it's crazy how smart kids are. And I think what we do and what a lot of other places that keep things family-friendly do is so important for kids like that where you know you have parents that are just busy, things are going on, kids are responsible and entertain themselves. I, you know, glory to God, hopefully a lot of them can find safe spaces online to be and learn how to have that behaviors online because, you know, dysfunctional kids grow into dysfunctional adults. So we see that a lot.

Yeah. Well, in regards to people who are underage on the platform, if I just go back in my experience as a pastor and where I've run into people, no matter what the platform is, Facebook or other places, I've seen two different patterns of it. One, parents who want to introduce their kids to it to just give them something to do and they don't know what to do with their kids and they're maybe not the best parent. They're not really functional, but they're trying their best and it's like this will help. And though they're misguided, they give their kids the blessing to do it. And then there's the more creative kids who know how to get around things and they're seeking things out themselves that may not be the most healthy thing. And the parents may not be aware of it entirely and they're more trusting parents than they probably should be. But in both ways, you end up with people coming into the space that the space isn't designed for. So I love your heart of wanting to create a safe place that you would trust your kids to be in and allow them. So I love that mentality and thinking through that to be able to create it and it would bless other people. That's cool. Why on top of that did you think through adding a mental health capacity to what you were doing instead of just focus on family-friendly and we're just doing stuff that's going to be for the family watching together or kids who are in the space. Why did you bring in the mental health piece of it? What was the decision behind that?

It's a topic. I'm gonna let my wife talk a little bit about this and then I'll add on.

I think so much of it was just what the Lord allowed to come up. You know, people came in, they said things. I personally have a lot of experience with my own mental health issues and mental health issues within my family. And it just naturally kind of evolved and went in that direction. And the more we talked about it, the more others wanted to talk about it. And suddenly just occurred to AI and I that this is a topic that within you know religious communities we kind of shy away from a lot and there's a lot of really important and redemptive discussions to be had on this topic that go hand in hand with you know our faith. So we just kind of leaned into it and it just snowballed and it happened more and more. And when I started to see these things and started to realize the Lord was saying, "Listen, Mama Peach, I want you to come in and contribute in this way. This is an area I've equipped you to help serve." And the Lord allowed me to see that and think, "Okay, this is something. This is true ministry that's important that needs to happen that can happen on this platform here. It's not just my husband wanting to play more video games, you know, there's a lot more to this." And he allowed me to see that and so I got more involved there and then it just continued to just snowball further from there.

Don't you think?

Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of it too was just kind of born out of it's part of my identity.

Yeah, for sure.

Like for me, I was, I'm an adult. I'm an adult diagnosed with ADHD, right? Off the charts. I've told the story like I'm a record-breaker and my wife, you know, has struggled with anxiety and depression. And so those things all combined just make us really passionate about these. We live with this every day, right? Like even so many people do. Just Saturday, I was going to the store and I was trying to like form thoughts to my wife and I'm like my ADHD is like on fire today because I just I can't even like get a coherent thought out without wanting to go elsewhere with what I'm trying to say. But transparency breeds authenticity is something that I've kind of said on a regular basis.

Talking about it like that.

Well, it just, just our conversation.

Yeah. Just being open and honest. It's like, hey, so much just like liberty and peace and just joy to just this is just a part of life.

This part of life kind of sucks. Here's how I'm dealing with it. Let's build community around that and support each other around that. And it's just that's really a gift.

Yeah, to ourselves and to each other.

Yeah, it's beautiful. And I love how things progress as you start doing things that you're not, I mean it's not that you're not intentional about it. It's just that if you sat around and thought through intentionally every aspect of everything you would end up doing, you would do that for so long you'd never do anything.

Um, exactly. So sometimes you have to realize, yeah, you just you just have to be open to okay, where's the Lord leading me? And it's like, hey, this is something that I think is important. And you just you lean into it. Doesn't mean you full send it, but if you just lean into it, all of a sudden you're like, whoa, there's a whole host of opportunity here to talk about this.

Bring it to him after to the Lord as we would pray as a couple. Like, okay, Lord, this came up a lot.

Mm-hmm.

Do you have something for us here? Is this something you would have us do and bring up more and more?

And then the more you ask the Lord to show up, the more he does.

And you just have to kind of lean into whatever it is that he shows you, whatever that might be. It might be a surprise.

It often is a surprise. So yes. Yes. I love the surprise of things. I also at sometimes and my stream knows this. I'll talk about this openly if I argue with the Holy Spirit when the Holy Spirit leads me at times like going, I am not, I'm not down with that. I'm not interested in that. Why would you want me to do that? And then the Holy Spirit lead. Yeah. Oh, I totally, yes. I argue with the Holy Spirit at times like no, I'm not, I'm not thinking that's what I want to do.

Other times, this is where I added mine. God, oh yeah, especially for her as an introvert and it's just like this is literally like pulling like come on. I'm like, how dare you have me talk to people I don't know about a topic like this. Like what are you thinking?

But there's a beauty in that.

Absolutely. And I have grown. Some of the most incredible moments in our stream have come from times where we get super vulnerable in an uncomfortable way where it's just like by the way we're broken people.

Yeah.

But thankfully we serve a perfect God that has heaven in store for us.

There's a way through this. Yeah.

Together we can draw strength from each other, you know.

Yeah. I think no matter who the streamer is, I would say the most memorable moments for me when I'm watching streamers are when the streamer is the most vulnerable around things and the community is embracing that and or someone in the community is incredibly vulnerable and transparent and the community is loving and embracing that person along with the streamer. Those are the things.

It's like electric. You just feel it in the atmosphere, you know, and you just, it's a beautiful thing.

There's nothing like those moments or those nights where you're having those hard discussions and you're talking about something and somebody comes in and it and just shares a little piece of what's going on in their life and watching people just rally around each other, just that's a really special and powerful thing.

Truly the body being the body.

Exactly. Yeah. That's exactly what it is. And there's a piece at which I've done a lot of things in life and you get the expression of well, you just had to be there in order to, you know, experience it. You just you wouldn't know if you haven't been there. And really those moments in streaming, if you've never been there for one of those moments, you really don't grasp how intimate that is.

Intimate with people you may not know, bonding you with other people in such a deep way that your life can be changed in those moments in amazing ways.

Yeah. Supernaturally. For sure.

Absolutely.

Oh, yeah.

Absolutely.

So that's really cool. And I wish on some level that everybody's story was so well, my wife and I were all figuring this out and we're all going together. My wife's not watching me stream. She used to when I first got started listen in the other room. I was upstairs so she could listen through the wall and she would sit there texting me, laughing at me of what I was doing on stream.

Yeah.

And then I moved to the basement and she's like, "I miss listening to you." I go, "Well, we can set you up with an account. We could put you on the screen right next to you're working." Oh, no. I'm working. I can't do that. It's like, yeah, like, why not? Like, you don't have to be on camera. You know, so it's it's, I don't know. It's I wish my wife was diving in and in the scene. I don't, she doesn't need to be on camera. She's camera shy as well. Doesn't want to be on stage. Introvert. And by the time she's done working all day long, you know, dealing with all the things she does and Zoom calls and phone calls. She's like, I'm done with people. I need none of that.

If you're not energized by the human interaction, sometimes it can really be a hard conscious choice that I've had to make. There have been times, you know, I won't be plugged in.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

There's some times where it's just like, it's okay. It's on me.

I got this.

You know, and sometimes I'll get kind of bratty about it. I'm like, I just I don't think I can have it.

I don't have it in me today. And he's like, okay, that's totally fine. But then the moments I do, I'm always so blessed and joyful that I do.

And sometimes when I force myself to do it, even when I don't have it in me, the Lord shows up and he's like, "Man, I'm so glad you came because I had something waiting for you here tonight."

I did give her plenty of prep for this evening, just by several multiple days of notice. Just by the way, I would love it if you would come and sit and join me on Monday evening.

A treat and I'm already growing so much just from this conversation.

That's awesome.

But I bet you, your wife does pray for you and supports you and encourages you even if she can't be there.

She's totally supportive of what I'm doing. She can see what I get out of it. She hears me tell stories often without names or with names she has no idea. She doesn't remember. She's got no connection to these really weird names that get thrown out there. I love the names, by the way. It just reminds me of when I was a kid and my parents would have the CB radio out and you got all the trucker names out there.

Oh man, oh my gosh, yeah.

CB radio just unlocked that core memory for me.

My dad was a driver.

We had one in our camper when we would go. Yeah, that's so cool. See, that's and that's a generational thing. Like our, my children will never understand what a CB radio is and like going on vacations and everything.

Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Which is really cool if you think about it. I do think it's an important point. There have been times in our marriage and in history where we haven't been pulling in the same direction and it's in moments like that where it's just like, oh well, you know what, looking back on it it's like I wish I would have listened to my wife more or things like that. But there is an absolute wonderful beautiful thing when you are working together in union before the Lord.

Usually that's indicative of a greater issue like a spiritual thing or a couple things.

Well, that's why I said it's absolutely on me, 100% or me.

Well, you know.

But you're saying I feel the inverse. I wish I would have listened to you a little bit more or you know, whatever.

Yeah. I've got a really good one of those that this is a really funny story. So when we started seminary, or I started seminary, I say we because it's a family thing.

Really? It is.

Sure.

Amen, amen.

And I'm taking care of the kids because I get home first. I'm in school. I get dinner ready. My wife comes home. I'm in the kitchen making food. She walks through the door. She says, "How was your day?" Well, I was at school. I'm studying and I'm doing other stuff. It was fine. And I go back to cooking. And as this just like happens every day, I'm complaining to my single friend at seminary at lunch one day. Man, my wife comes home every day. She asked me how my day was. Like nothing. I was just studying. It's all this. He goes, "Did you ever think to ask her how her day was?"

No.

I had no idea because it was bothering me that you were asking me. Single friend giving you a good relationship.

My single friend and I. So I tried it the next day. Oh my goodness. That's what she needed. She was asking me because she had something to share. She needed to tell me how her day was. I had no clue that that's what she needed. And my single friend was the one that gave me that advice. And it was like, "Oh my goodness, I'm an idiot."

My prince.

Yeah.

Well.

But you apply that to this space, too.

Yeah.

So many people just need to hear, "Hey, how are you? What's going on with you today?"

Yeah.

And they come in and they answer that question and they just light up because they haven't been asked. People are lonely and maybe they don't have a wife that cares enough to ask the question, you know? So sometimes if we ask the question, what a ministry that can be just in and of itself.

I think the biggest thing is just knowing that somebody out there genuinely cares. Every single person, every single person that comes into my stream. Right now, Hannah is sharing a praise says, "I did my normal summer Sunday cooking stream yesterday. Nothing out of the order. Thirty minutes and I hear the radar go off and turn around and find a raid of 126 people."

That's amazing.

Praise the Lord.

That's a huge raid.

We get, we need some hype in the chat for that. I mean, come on.

Also.

What were you cooking? That's the better question.

For real. I hope it, I'm sure it was something delicious to get that much hype.

It's amazing. Congratulations. Thank you for sharing that with us.

Oh man, that's exciting.

I don't know. Community is so important. It is just the absolute core of what we do.

Yeah, for sure. And because it enriches our life so much.

Absolutely.

We're so much happier.

It truly is the fam. Like we say, and fam, which is myself, Mama Peach, Peach, and little Ay, but it's also the community as a whole. It's our chat. It's everybody who comes in. It's the people who are in our Discord. It's everybody that we interact with online, like everybody. Everybody that is part of our stream and our community is part of the fam.

If you want to be part of it, we want you as part of it.

Yeah.

If you don't want to be part of it, we kind of want you still, you know, just.

That's right.

Give in. Come on.

Well, glory to God that you did, Hannah. Very cool.

Yeah. And then and then. Yeah. She's saying also, and even what's even more wild, I almost didn't stream yesterday. I almost.

Thank goodness you did. Isn't that the way it always goes? I find that the days where I don't want to and I do anyway.

Yep.

The Lord does something really cool pretty much every time.

When you're obedient when you don't want to.

Yes, yes.

Some of the most beautiful fruit.

Grows from that tree, you know.

Yeah. Or or even when you decide you are going to be obedient and you're just like, I don't know how I'm going to make it through. There are there are connections in the community. So there's there's the idea sometimes, and I would bring this up when when people would say something along the lines of attending an in-person church of, "Well, I'm not getting anything out of it."

And it's like, maybe you are there to give to other people.

Maybe today you didn't get anything out of it because you weren't there to get something. You were there to give something.

And so it's the same thing when I show, when you show up for stream. Sometimes you're like, I have nothing to give. Well, maybe that's the day you're there to receive because other people are going to come in and give to you in that space. It goes both ways, but we live in a consumer mentality culture.

And so it's like what is it in for me is usually the approach we have to things and then you're a streamer and you're trying to give to the community at times. So we get flipped on that and go I have nothing to give. Well, that's okay. Maybe today is not your day to give. Your day is today to receive.

Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. And it's, I think the most powerful thing that I've learned in the past, well it'll be six years next week, that our in-person church that we go to is that getting plugged in and serving, whether that's in online spaces or that's giving, whatever that looks like, that has developed my relationship with Christ more than anything else in my adult life.

Just a spiritual discipline, you know, even if you're not seeing the whatever it is you're thinking you should be seeing, keep at it.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. We, yeah. We don't have a good society that really embraces discipline as a whole. So to embrace spiritual disciplines becomes a difficult thing too. And then even how to take, take anything in life that is a discipline and you can make a spiritual element to it as well to make it into a spiritual discipline in some ways. We just have no concept of that.

Yeah.

Sure, absolutely. Just trying to make sure I'm not missing anything on chat.

Vanosaur, is that right? Vanosaur 3. I've learned if it doesn't happen on your timeline, it will happen on God's timeline for you.

That's so true.

Preach. Amen.

Amen.

That's the timeline we want. You know, my timeline is messed up a lot of the most of the time.

Right. You could thank Matt for the TV.

I'm a mess. I don't need to be calling the shots.

Yeah. Well, I often do want to call the shots. That's that's my personality. I I want it all happen. Yes. Like I I strategically think through things. Here's how it should happen. Here's the order it should happen. Like we we can sit have a conversation and I will like and my first inkling that I I was wired this way was when I was like seven years old and my dad put me in charge of packing the vehicle.

It wasn't because.

Seven, at seven. And partially it was because we had the station wagon and everything had to be packed on the roof.

And I would tell my dad, "No, that needs to come up here first. I need that next. No, no, no. Wait for that thing." Because I could strategically figure out the placement of everything.

You were, you were the Tetris player.

You're a Noah. You're an arc builder.

Yeah. I was like, I know where everything goes. The proper order of things and how to do everything exactly the right order to get the outcome that we wanted was the least amount of space, the easiest way to tie it down, what you would put on top that's longer to hold everything underneath. It's like at seven years old I was doing that and it's just like I do that in all kinds of things in life and I don't even at times realize that it's that's that's what I'm leaning into and that's what I'm doing. But that also means at times I want to argue with God about things. No, no, no. I need this first because this is the order that makes sense in my brain.

Do this without that.

A little bit, a little bit of Moses in you, you excuses.

You know, a little bit of.

It's funny, too.

Go ahead.

Were station wagons the precursor to SUVs? Like is that, that's what that's what became SUVs, right? It feels it feels like that was just kind of the natural evolution.

Well, we did have the Grand Cherokee wagon back in the day, too.

Oh, yeah.

You know, and then the I'm trying to the panel, you know, trucks and vans and so so I don't know. Somewhere in there.

Somewhere it became that.

I love it.

That's awesome. So as you've been doing things, you can go in whichever direction you want to go and you can both share on this. What have been a couple of moments of really joy that's been brought to you of something being overcome, it doesn't matter what that is, how big or how small, for yourself or someone on stream. And then the other side of that, what's been a difficult thing that you have either helped someone overcome or you as a family faced as being in streaming and had to overcome.

All right, I want to hear my wife's answer. That's not fair. That's not fair.

You have to think about it.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. I knew you were going to throw me under the. Why not? Okay. I think I think biggest achievement, my favorite thing that we did, we achieved Twitch partner status. We had less than 2,000 followers. We had only been streaming for two years. It was like two years in two weeks. That was a massive milestone.

Yeah. For the whole community, all of us together.

That was so cool. That was a really, really neat thing to be able to achieve that so early on in our career.

That was glory to God. Uh, for those who don't know, if you're watching this later, uh, Twitch Partner requires you to have a 75 viewer average over a 30-day period of time, and you usually have you have to hold that for multiple months because your first application normally is denied.

Um, so we were we were really, really blessed, really really blessed. Really amazing community and so many familiar faces that have stuck with us um, all this time.

Even even beyond that, people who have been here before, there are some some familiar faces in chat that have been here since we were AI and Peach before we became Aian fam.

And uh, yeah, it's really cool. I think for me, the thing that I've loved the most is that we have met so many people in person and have truly become part of each other's lives.

They've stayed with us, we've stayed with them, we've been in weddings, you know, we've couples have met in our stream that have are now married with children.

Really, what a cool cool way to just be included and involved in somebody's life to know that the Lord planned they're going to meet through Aki and fam like wow it's mind-blowing. But thank you so much um Bushidito of Christ of Christ to see you guys in welcome.

So blessed to have you. God bless y'all. Thank you so much for the raid. Welcome to the stream you guys. If you if you need to welcome anybody as they come in go ahead and do that I had Bashidto on uh last week on the podcast.

Awesome. How cool. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. Welcome in, Wolfpack. Katada, welcome in you guys. Well, Bashita, tell us about your stream. We're just sitting here talking about, we just talked about big victories, the cool some of the cool things, the biggest challenge.

Um, I would say my own flesh. Um, if I'm being completely honest and transparent, followed. Um, I really I really think for me I and it wasn't, you know, it's it's funny too how some of your biggest victories can be followed up by your biggest failures as a person.

Um, and so Mama Peach and I have been very open and honest and transparent on stream about, you know, we've had some relationship struggles, we've had some issues on stream, and like I said, you know, nine times out of 10, it's me that's the problem.

And it's me that's getting in the way and it's me that's throwing everything to the wind and uh you know if it wasn't for my own hard-headedness and my own um sin nature, sin nature you know same here. I don't want to go too deep into the weeds but you know there was there was there was there was a period of time where we had to step away from streaming and it was just directly the consequences of my own actions my own choices where the Lord I was in a deep rebellion and the Lord had to get a hold of me in a in a real visceral way. And you know, glory to God that I went through what I did when I did. Um because I feel like at this point in life, I'm walking closer with him than I ever had.

I have a better relationship with my wife than I ever have had. Um, and the the kids are happy, the family's healthy, and I think that, you know, even though it was a really really hard path, harder my wife than anybody else, um, that the the fact that the Lord brought us through it and the things that he did in and through that season in our lives has been something that we're going to carry with us till the day we see him in heaven.

You have to figure out how to juggle it all, how to balance it, how to not get too involved in one area of life and not enough in the others, how to like make it all work. And you have to rely on the Lord for that. You can't rely on yourself for that. Um, and I think that was a lesson that we really have had to learn and it was kind of a hard lesson.

I'm thankful now and I'm really blessed by your courage and your humility now in this moment. Makes me really proud to be your wife.

I'm very blessed to hear that. I'm so thank you for sharing openly about that. Other people need to hear that. I think especially other men I think is super important and it's we get in our own way. We're it's going to help others stupid. Ain't that what grief? I'm as I'm a mess. I said that earlier and it is the truest.

So, but navigating those things and also I think accepting u our limits as givers can be hard especially when you're a really giving person and you want to be a fixer and when somebody comes to you with a problem you want to be able to fix it all. Sometimes you can't, you know, and that's that's that's God's job, you know, to try to encourage a person and love on them, but also know, listen, I have limits here.

I can only go so far, but I can pray for you. I can take it to the creator of the universe. For me personally, that can be hard to accept, not to get too involved and try to create healthy boundaries there, too, while still loving on a person as intimately as I can. Yeah, I I really become messy. So, yeah, I resonate with with both of those things. I'll just I'll just touch on the the other people sharing all the stuff and the burdens they have.

I I was a teacher uh at one point in a in a career and I had a hard time leaving the kids' problems at school. I wanted to solve their problems. I wanted to help them solve their problems. I wanted to fix their problems. The problem was I was carrying around all of their problems trying to spend all of my time and energy fixing their problems. They weren't ready to work on and fix their problems. And I couldn't change them. They had to own it. And it didn't help me any to in my family and my relationship with my wife and kids to walk around carrying their burdens when I had my own stuff I should have been working on. Amen. So, even though it's such a noble thing and it's a precious thing. Yeah. If you care about always a healthy thing, you know, you care about people, you want to help them. You want to you want to fix what's going on. Absolutely. And but I I'm carrying otherwise you don't in my opinion if you don't want to fix what's going on you don't really care about them obviously like but there's there's a line there. Absolutely. But it's a hard one to draw. It is for sure. Well, you have to get taught on some level or figure it out the hard way that I can't carry your burdens for you. I can walk alongside of you while you're carrying the burden. I can lead you to Jesus who will pick your burden up. He can carry your burden. I can. Absolutely. But we've got to him. Yeah. The harder line to draw and the harder thing to do is understanding when it's like, okay, there's a there's a pattern here. There's a repeated behavior um where you are this is either self-inflicted or there there there's obvious solutions that have been offered and you're not taking them. And then there's where you have to figure out how and where to draw that boundary. And that's something I've had to learn. That's really in a streaming space. That is very hard not to overstep and not say yeah you don't want to be that one that's like okay listen this is the fifth time where you have come to me with this same problem where I've offered you four different ways that you could fix it and you have taken zero steps towards any of those solutions. At what point does it become like you know it's like man I'm trying I'm you just have to kind of create a healthy boundary within yourself. Man I'm going to pray for you thank you so much for sharing that with me we love you so much all that is totally true. Oh Jesus frosting it. I'm just saying you have to sometimes to stay in a healthy place. That was a phrase we learned in learned in therapy. We as Christians love to put Jesus frosting on things and sometimes all you're doing is putting a bandage on top of an infection instead of actually a rotted fruit, you know, you know, carving the carving the problem out and and then let allowing true healing to take place. Yeah. Maybe maybe another way that that I've I've seen or or talked about that when you're running into that person would not take ownership of Oh, wait. I got a raid coming in. Let's go. Webbby pumpkin pumpkin. We love Webbby. Yeah, we do. Loveby's wife, too. Treky for Christ. Welcome in. Good to have you. So, Webbby Webbby came over from the closure of Mixer and it was really, really, really, really fun to meet him. Got to meet him last year at Reach, which was really cool. Yeah, that was that was the first that uh I got to meet Webbby as well. And uh I've had Webbby on the podcast already. So I don't know if that episode is out yet or that one will be out. It'll be out in the next two weeks. So we we do the podcast live and then I trickle them out every Thursday. There's a new one. So if I have a vacation week or a lull week where I need to recover, there's always one that's going out uh every week for people that are just following along. So uh love that. Oh, and the conversations are just so it's like this is like a reunion on some level like with these they got two raids coming in with people that have been on the podcast. It's like it's just a reunion here. I love it. Awesome. So very very cool. Very very cool. Uh the other thing you were talking about is having a struggle in in your life that you needed to deal with. How did you make a um decision on needing time away from stream to deal with it? And how did you address that to your community so that they could have I want to say some open honest understanding of what was going on so that they could embrace the the the need that was there that you were addressing. How did you approach that? That's a really good question. Um, so at the time, like I said, for for me where I was at, I was living in rebellion, but I also recognized that if the fam wasn't healthy, that we weren't going to be able to do Yeah. We weren't going to be able to minister to the rest of the fam, right? So, it was just an honest take of, okay, we've got to step away from this for a season, maybe for good. Like, we we were ready to put it down. Yeah. Permanently at that point and it was just like we've got to we've got to focus on us. I didn't want that to happen. Well, but it was but it was the right thing to do and we just we just we totally laid it on and honestly I didn't totally lay it down right away. Um, there were there were times where I talked with Mama Peach and she got upset and I was just like, "Okay, I was I was wrong to try to push this early. I just wasn't going to tell you what to do. It had to be your decision." And really what it boiled down to was it wasn't until I fully surrendered it to the Lord. I fully laid it down and I fully said, "Okay, you know what? If I never stream again, that's okay." Mhm. Mhm. that the Lord started to do some really cool stuff. Yeah, that is that is a beautiful place when the thing that you were trying to do for ministry becomes a little piece of idol or identity that's out of place. Absolutely. 100% it was an idol right absolutely that's a perfect description. I am treating this as the thing that uh I'm getting all of my praise from instead of God getting praise from and it's become something else in that that it's like if God's going to take it away am I willing to still follow God. Yeah. Something for me boil would always boil down to what's my identity? What's the number one in my list of who my what I my identity is? Is it Oy's wife? Is it Mama Peach? Is it uh Lily and Peach's mom? Yeah. It's got to be child of God first.

That has to be number one. Um, and it wasn't I think for you for that.

That's changed for me too.

And and it's funny because back to that point and when you did is when he allowed you to have a fan back and absolutely and and put his hand back on it in a way he never even had before even tremendously more. Well, and for for me, what is different now, and I was just thinking about this today, is it always boils down to putting the the first things in life first and not allowing those other things to take a better prior a higher priority over this kind of stuff.

Sure. You can install it. I know. We've got a I let it be bedtime.

Absolutely. Hey, welcome in Lucifer. We're glad you're here. Um, what I was going to say about all that though is, you know, today I was just thinking about how before it was all about content. It was all about making sure that things were things looked a certain way, things performed a certain way, things were a certain way on stream.

And now um the difference in where we were and where we are now is the priority is truly the fam. It's you know doing content the way that the kids want to on their nights.

It's not just something you say.

Yeah. Doing it's it's genuinely it's it's genuine. It's real. Just because we have things planned or want things to look a certain way just because maybe that might be better for content. It's more important to keep the Lord first and the family first and allow everything else to naturally flow out of that.

Oh yeah.

And I think there's there's that whole level of your whole life has to be uh the same on and offstream. You know, you can't and you were talking about identity there u Mama Peach about what is your identity in uh my wife and I had to deal with some of that at different times. I lost my job as a teacher. That was what my identity was. Uh before I went to seminary, my wife got a latex allergy and could no longer serve or work as a registered nurse w nurse, which was her identity.

So, give me one second. One second.

Uh while you while you do that, I'll I'll just address a couple of comments in chat.

So, uh Webbby, yeah. Uh you were going through your own rebellion and faith crisis when Aki announces time off. You hate that there was hurt in Aki and his fam's life, but it immediately felt less alone in the space. I think that's one of the most beautiful things about online ministry that I see is we have the ability to be transparent and open in the space which encourages other people where sometimes if you are in ministry and you are in front of the church you're not allowed to be open and transparent because people expect you to not have any problems and if you try to go the route of being open and transparent they either try to silence you or you end up being attacked by the people who probably have very similar things going on in their life because we want to keep it quiet. We don't want anyone to know. Uh so I think that's one of the most beautiful things is that and yeah I find the same thing Webbby Pumpkin of it encourages me when I see people being as transparent as they are and you know right now there's a situation with the kids and we just let it happen. I mean, from the standpoint of, well, we don't end stream. It's a thing that happens. It's all part of life.

I mean, when I've been a pastor in churches, we would always talk about, you know, hey, we love the sound of kids in the church. We're so glad your kids are here. Hey, do whatever you need to. If if they're in the church and you're making noise, don't feel embarrassed. We all had kids. We all know what that's like. Uh, on the contrary, when I was in Iowa and I was 45 minutes away from this church, 45 minutes away from this church, but by the next day, I had heard from three different people independently that in the middle of a service, somebody's kid was acting up and the pastor from the pulpit said, "We have a nursery. Please take your kid to the nursery. You are disrupting the service and they have you need to go." Whether this is a person's first visit or their hundth visit to treat them that way and call them out like it was so egregious that 45 miles away I heard from three different people in 24 hours that the pastor had done that how do you think the parents felt I mean awful awful

I would say uh yeah red ve uh yeah children are a wonderful blessing totally totally agree the uh river, the not being alone part is big. It totally is. Uh we often feel like we're the only ones going through things. We're the only ones dealing with problems. To have friends and or just realize that other people face similar things, it's it's just amazing.

Webbby 100%. Sometimes it's really really hard to be open in the space that should be safe. Yes. This Yes. Sometimes the church space, the physical church space should be really a safe place and we don't always let it be a safe place.

Do not keep the children for from me. Oh yes. Yes. Bananas Hannah. Absolutely. Yes. Jesus wanted the children. Like I think actually if I remember right the the there's several terms for children. It would have been the the very youngest uh in that group, the smallest, the ones who society uh until modern times said were of no value. You know, that kind of a thing. Uh Vanessa, you had a friend who forcibly kept forcing faith on in a time you was you wasn't ready to accept and needed to find your own route. You had to distance yourself from a lot of people to find your own path. Um, on my time and your own way. I might even say it was God's way to find your path, not just your own. You were following the steps God was leading you. Yeah. Sometimes we uh have the idea that we need to help people find Jesus. We need to introduce people to Jesus, but the Holy Spirit's the one that needs to really do all of that work. We don't need to do the Holy Spirit's work.

Uh Lucifer, we're down Mama Peach, but you got me back.

Okay. Uh Lucifer, uh on half the time I like the joke with Aki saying, "Time to grab the tape."

Yeah.

Can't do that anymore, but they they outlawed that in the in the late 1990s.

Ask me how I know. I'm just kidding.

You get overwhelmed a lot and quick because you need time to decipher things. You know, I don't think at times we we fully and and here's a good thing about Twitch. There's lots of time for people to absorb things in the stream and then share when they're ready or share another time. It doesn't have to be an instantaneous thing.

You know, we'll come back to a conversation we were having earlier and and we'll repeat it and we'll bring in another piece of it.

So, yeah.

Uh, you know, I made a joke really early in the stream that I don't want to punch people in the face with Jesus.

I like I like to just present the truth, u present my life, talk about the things that the Lord has done and let the Holy Spirit do the rest.

Yep.

Yeah. I say I don't I don't want to do the Holy Spirit's job. I won't do a good job of it. I mean, I argue with the Holy Spirit, so I don't want his job. So, that's right.

That's right.

River is just asking me about uh Final Fantasy 14. I've not gotten very far. I I play very sporadically. I play on this channel on Mondays. Uh sometimes Final Fantasy, sometimes Assassin's Creed. Today was Assassin's Creed. And it's just like I'm exploring a couple of games. One I love, another one I have friends who I love who play it all the time. And I'm trying to learn and grow, but I only play for like four hours max a week. I'm not getting very far at all playing four hours max a week.

So, uh very far, especially not in Final Fantasy 14.

No, no, not at all.

So, I don't remember where we were in the conversation when you left. Um but we were

It's funny because I just talked about having the importance of putting the family first and then the family had a moment.

Oh, yeah.

And it was Yeah. I was just like, well, you know what? No better time to put it into practice.

Yes.

Oh, hold on. Go ahead. Go ahead. Mama Peach wants to see.

I just wanted to say so sorry about that, guys, but as we were talking about, when life happens, life happens. So, I'm gonna go do bedtime with our little one. It was such a pleasure and a joy to talk. Um, thank you so much, Flat Cat, for having us.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And while you were gone, I was just pointing out and sharing a story about how in the church, how do we welcome kids in the middle of worship? Do we embrace them and say this is a part of life and we're glad your kid is here and don't need to be embarrassed and you don't need to leave. And then I told a story of a pastor who was 45 minutes away from the town I was in. And within uh 24 hours I heard from three different people when he called out a parent and said, "You need to take your kids to the nursery in the middle of worship."

Yeah.

Yikes.

Yep. Ah, it was a big old Oh my goodness. I'm never taking I'm never going to that church.

Yeah. That's a thing that'll uh when you hear kids, one of the things I love about and it's every church is different, but our pastor always talks about how listen sometimes you're going to hear kids and that's just that's just part of the service.

That's a sign of a a wonderfully growing congregation.

Yes.

Yeah. Like the alternative is no kids.

That's right.

So we we want the sound of the youngest people who are here and They're learning how to how to do everything in life.

Oh, you got a rate coming in.

Welcome in, Mystic Mama. How y'all doing? It's good to see you guys. Welcome to the stream, everybody. Welcome to the stream. How was your stream, Mystic Mama? You guys are coming in from Mystic Mama stream. Hi, my name is Ay. Welcome to A and Fam. We're hanging out with a wonderful flat cap dapper pastor tonight over on the Church Digitals podcast. But tell us about your stream. How are things?

We're doing good. We're doing good. We're having some great conversation this evening.

Yeah, we're having some pretty in-depth stuff, some serious stuff, some fun stuff. And uh if if you don't know me, uh I hang out in digital spaces. I work with the church digital. We're a digital missionary sending agency. I highlight my friends on Twitch by having a podcast where I bring them on and we talk about all kinds of things they're doing in digital ministry and how they're being salt and light in a place that really, really needs it. And I love to hear their stories and get to to to hear their heart of what God has been up to. You can also find me on my own channel which is Flat Cap Dapper Pastor where I read the Bible and I do other weird stuff like I right now trying to ride 500 miles in the month of September and stream all 500 miles. So that's a fun thing I'm working on right now. And I've got fish and I've got hats and I got all kinds of other stuff. So welcome in. Glad to have you here.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Playing Fortnite. Ooh, did you get any victory or else tonight? That's the important question.

Okay, so we were we were talking about family is is primary and important and I think uh it applies no matter where you are. I know sometimes we we think that it only applies within the church, but it also really applies with no matter what your job is. And it applies if you're a streamer. It applies if you're a mod. It applies if you're just a volunteer. It you know the how do I and I I've been trying to use a new word instead of balance. I've been trying to use the word harmony. I want my life to be in harmony because things that are in harmony work together. When think you know when things are in as somebody who's musically inclined I love that right so so like if I want to build a fish pond I

Want it in harmony with the rest of my environment around me. When I went to put the greenhouse, I want it in harmony with everything else. As I go and plant trees, I want them in harmony with everything else that's going on. I don't just say grass over here. I've got so much grass over here, so I need to balance out the amount of grass with all the plants I want. I mean, that's the approach of balance.

And so I could have the front yard all trees and the backyard all flowers and a pond and a greenhouse would bear dirt. There would be no harmony there. But I could be in balance that way. And so I love the idea of thinking through—like I said, this is a new idea for me. So if it doesn't resonate with you and you're like, you're not sure about it, that's okay. I've still got more work of playing this out. But that idea of balance to me sometimes feels like, well, I have to give my kids time. I have to give my wife time. I have to give my job time. I have to like, well, how do I get forty hours with my wife if I'm given forty hours to work? I can't. How do I get forty hours to my kid? How do I get forty hours to ministry volunteer? I can't.

So you don't sleep. That's how you.

Right. Right. Yeah. Exactly. So it's like, but if I have things in harmony where I'm able to, like you're doing, have your wife and your kids involved in the streaming, now there's harmony of what's going on as opposed to balance. Like, well, I'll spend my time with Peach and we'll video game. And then I'll have my time where I'm online with friends video gaming. And then I'll have to find time to make that all up with Mama Peach, you know, going out to dinner and doing something there. And then I got to find time for Aki. It's like, why can't you have it all harmonized together and flowing between different things? So that's one of the things I've been playing around with. I don't know if that resonates with you at all.

It absolutely does. I think it's an important concept and I think if things are not balanced or not in harmony, it leads to burnout and it can be burnout. Burnout can happen so quick.

It creeps up on you too. It'll be there before you know it. And I think the important thing is good communication. That's the key to anything. It's key to good relationships. It's also the key to literally keeping things in balance and in harmony. Good communication with your spouse, good communication with your children. Good communication with those around you, the things that matter, and with the Holy Spirit. There will be nagging points of conviction where it's like, hey, I've been doing too much of X or Y lately. I need to do more of this.

And I've been trying to be more intentional about listening to that voice when it pipes up. And it pays off every time. It's real easy to shut that voice up. It's a lot harder to lean in because usually it's telling you to do something that you don't necessarily want to do. It's less of something that you want to do and more of something that you may not necessarily enjoy as much. Not that I don't love spending time with my kids, but it's more about engaging in the things that they want to do rather than engaging with them in the things that I want to do. There's a big difference there in dichotomy and priority. And finding it, like you said, that harmony and that balance is important. Communication is number one with those around you and with the Lord. And just being obedient to that, denying yourself and being obedient to that, is just it brings crazy fruit and it's worth every single sacrifice you can make.

Yeah. And in regards to communication, there's also the—it's not what you do to communicate. It is verifying that what you wanted to communicate has been communicated. I know many times in life that I thought I was clear on what I was saying and the person that was listening did not hear or understand what I was saying. They heard the words but they interpreted them in a different way. They did not apply them the way I was thinking. And that can happen sometimes when it's just a text message. It can happen when you have something out of context. It can happen when I'm not taking my time to explain myself thoroughly and I just abbreviate it for trying to get on to something else I want to do. So I'm lacking in my communication skills and trying to think I can do it more quickly with something shortchanging things. And it's like, no, no, no. I need to take the time to fully make sure that I'm heard and understood in what I'm communicating and do the same for other people.

Absolutely. And there's a concept that my wife and I learned in therapy. It's called a heart talk. And basically you go to the person. It doesn't matter. You can do a heart talk with anybody. It doesn't have to be your spouse. Doesn't have to be your—it could be with your boss. It could be with your kids. And you're just like, "Hey, can I talk to you about something for a second?" And make sure you're ready. They're ready and in a place to hear that, right? And be prepared. If you go to someone and you ask them, "Hey, can I talk to you about something?" and they say, "No, not right now," you have that—has to be okay. You have to be in a place where you're prepared for that. But then in addition to that, it's a two-way street. You communicate the thing that is on your heart and then they take that time to regurgitate that and make sure that it was correctly understood.

Yeah.

And then you get that confirmation. And having that, you know, there was a really structured way that we did it early on. And they even said that like if you follow this pattern—yeah, exactly. Active listening. But we've developed our own kind of method of it over time. And it's transformed our marriage. It's transformed our relationship with our kids. Like you said, it's so important to be able to not only communicate effectively, but make sure that the message is received properly. Because so often, especially with my kids, I'll tell him to do something or give him some direction and some instruction and I'll come back ten minutes later and it's little Aki—perfect example. His biggest thing is just like keeping his space clean. He'll clean things on the surface like on his desktop, but anything that's under the desk or around and beside his space, I'll have to come back and be like, "Now, this is all part of your space. These things matter, too. And you have to make sure that you're not just dealing with what's on the surface, you're dealing with what's underneath." And there's a whole sermon there that I'm not going to get into right now, but you know—

Well, it's there. There's a difference there too in personalities at times. For instance, I know people that like my list would just list laundry, but I know other people need to list collect the laundry, sort the laundry, do loads of laundry, put the laundry in the washing machine, put it in the dryer, take it out, hang it up, fold it, put it away. They need to list every step along the way. And I'm like going, "Laundry, I'm done. Okay, I got it." You know, but—

Yep.

You need to know the person and to know what blesses them along the way. If you just say laundry without any instructions, it can be overwhelming for people. If you give all the instructions to other people, the instructions become overwhelming to people.

But some people need a step-by-step guide.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, totally. My wife at times cannot visualize a lot of stuff when I do projects around the house and I do lots of projects and occasionally I stream those for no good reason. Just to be able to say, "Hey, I'm doing something one-off and you know, when I redid the floor in this room here, I streamed it just to have fun and to have something to share with my community. Hey, you're going to see this space a lot. I'm fixing it." But when I try to explain to my wife the things that I'm going to do, she cannot visualize. And even if I draw a picture of them, it's really difficult. So she's just learned to, "Okay, you clearly have the vision. You're going to do the work. I just can't wait to see it when it's finished." And we can have the conversations about what do you need to do, why are you going to do it, and is it important to do? Is now the right time? We can have all of those conversations, but when it comes to the details of it, she's just like, "I trust you, and I can't wait to see what it turns out to be."

That's awesome. It's good to have that level of trust, too.

Well, you know, with—let's see, when is it? Thursday's our anniversary. And so it will be—is it thirty-two? Thirty-three years. Trying to think. It's thirty-two years this year. Thirty-two years.

Very cool.

So yeah, I'm pretty excited about that. I'm always excited when anniversary rolls around. Like, let me put it this way. If you were betting on me and my siblings of which one was going to be in the most stable marriage and was going to stay married, you would not have put your money on me.

I'm not saying you are—

I wouldn't—saying who you're putting the money on, but I wouldn't have been the one that you're going, "Oh, yeah, that's a stable bet. We'll he'll make it to twenty-five years, no problem. That'll last." So we've had all of those hard times. We also—this is an interesting thing, too. As we've gone through some hard things, there are times where each of us know we're not ready to deal with something, and we have to give the other person the space until they're ready to deal with it. It might not be a relationship piece with us. It's a personal piece that we're dealing with. And it's like, I can't force you to do that. And so I'm just going to give you all the time that you need. And sometimes that's years of you're not in a space to be able to move on because of whatever it is that you're facing, you're dealing with the hurt or otherwise or the not seeing a way out of it. It's like, but I'm here for you and I don't care how long it takes. I'll wait until you're ready and then I'll walk alongside of you when you are ready to do it.

Kind of goes back to some things we were talking about earlier of the timing of things.

Yeah, absolutely.

Which in ministry sometimes we want everything microwaved. It seems like we need to do it fast.

Oh, yeah. You know, well, we live in a culture that has that instant gratification, right? There's so much of that these days. I blame the advent of the modern cell phone, right? We have a wealth of information at our fingertips and we want it all right now. We want all the answers right now. We don't want to, you know, spend the time or the investment. I mean, you know, do you see it? Gosh, man. I couldn't even imagine. I've been married for eighteen years now. And praise the Lord, I don't have to live in today's dating culture because it is—it seems like it's a nightmare out there.

Well, I don't even have a clue. I mean, I, you know, I haven't had to go look for a date in a long time. So—

That's a good thing.

Yeah. Yeah. I'd have to sit down and figure it out. It might be thirty-five years total that from the time we started dating. I have no clue how to go date. I mean, I know there's online dating apps. I might be able to figure that out, but you know, it's not the way it was back in the day.

I am dropping frames like crazy right now, my friend. I'm sorry. If you can hear me, okay, great.

Yeah, I can hear you.

Okay. Okay. I wasn't sure if that was on your side or my side. So it's on your side. Okay. Yeah, it seems to be on my side.

Hopefully it'll recover in time.

Well, the sound is coming through, which is the most important thing anyway. So perfect.

Ah, Vic Stigma saying, "Yeah, having problems with stream buffering." Yeah, sometimes.

Hopefully nothing majors broke.

Oh, what happened?

I said hopefully nothing majors broke because what is that?

Well, I've got you totally frozen now.

That's not good. Can you hear me? Okay, I can hear you. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. My stream not having a great time at the moment.

Well, it must be because we're just about to talk about the most important thing that people need to hear. That that might be it.

Of course it is.

Yeah, I'm definitely 100% locked up at the moment.

A second.

Yeah, no problem. We can give you a second to try to get back here.

I have had my share of technical difficulties as I've done the podcast. I think I was well I did one uh last month and didn't realize it till later but for some reason instead of being connected and hardwired which is how I run my PC it had switched over to Wi-Fi and I was having this problem and could not figure out why. And it was because I was running on Wi-Fi and I am at the furthest location away from the Wi-Fi in the house.

So it's like I don't run on Wi-Fi.

That's the worst place to be. Yeah, that's the worst place to be.

Yeah, it's upstairs the opposite side of the house and I'm in the basement the farthest away. It's like that's why I hardwired it. Why did you switch to being on Wi-Fi? That makes no sense. I mean, there's a level at which I'd just assume disconnect it and tell it there is no Wi-Fi, but RIP.

Yeah, my stream is totally disconnected right now. I'm not sure what the deal is.

Yeah, they're you're back. Are we back back? I had to refresh the actual thing.

Um, and now I have to recopy the browser source settings. Adjust this. Hit. Okay. Oh, interact. Hold on. I need to refresh the cache.

That's what it is.

Ah, okay. Yeah, cuz I pulled you up on the side. I was going to try to knock cuz I I didn't see you coming in.

I got it. Yeah. So, for some reason it said I went to pull it up. I was like, "We should be back by now." And it said stream together has ended.

I was like, "It hasn't ended." He just had to do a thing. All right, we're good.

All right. Uh, all good. Love you, friend.

Promise you watch Vod. All right. Dealing with transition. Yeah. Okay. Uh, I have no idea where we were. Uh, doesn't matter where we were.

You said you had something important that we were getting into. It was just, it was funny because

Yeah. I just full full transparency and disclosure. It's like, you know, we've had some really good discussions tonight. Been really raw and honest and vulnerable at times. And uh I I love the way that the Lord moves.

And I also love the technical issues that try to get in the middle of that. It's like, come on, man.

Oh, yeah. Well, and I I usually blame myself and my lack of expertise and all that.

This one was absolutely on me. Um, like I said, that is one beautiful part about working for my local ISP. I can see exactly what the problem is, and it's not something I can fix right now.

It has nothing to do with my house or internal wiring or anything. It's a it's a neighborhood problem. So,

Okay. Well, you're you're slowly pixelating again here as we we keep going.

Of course I am. Of course I am. Okay. Now, actually, no, it seems it seems to be pretty good. We just had a little I haven't dropped any frames, so hopefully it'll hold.

Then why is it so pixelated on my end? That is so weird.

That's super weird. Are you guys seeing any problems on stream?

Hey, listen.

Well, maybe maybe OSB or I mean OSB OBS is showing. Let me just pull it up on my phone and see how bad it looks.

I got to wait through an ad there a second and I can check it there if that's funny.

Maybe it's just showing on my stream that would be weird and it's going through and doesn't have a problem because it's picking up the browser.

But usually it's whatever I see in OBS is what it looks like.

Yeah. River saying my side's fine. Church digital side is off.

Well, then you know what we can do here if you're if you're up for it is just afterwards send me the clip of the last half here and I'll cut you out of there and post it on I've done that a couple of times where my quality is not so good.

We will just if you're on my side, hey, pull up both windows if you want to see AI and fam, you'll need to do that and uh we'll go from there.

So, we'll just keep the conversation going whether we can see each other or not because the conversation has been really really good and I really feel like we've been addressing some things and to your point uh and some of the things we talked about earlier of the feeling called into doing something and stepping into doing it and and then re-engaging starting over again. How did you know that it was time to jump back in and start streaming again and move forward with that?

How did you have that assurance that it was time to start re-engaging and and to jump back into streaming?

My wife told me.

Your wife told you.

I was that was literally the I didn't I didn't I had like I said, I had totally laid it down.

I had walked away from it. I was pouring everything I had into my kids. Um, and actually the first reach conference cuz we were talking through some of that.

Um, Romans and I were having some early conversations and yeah, my wife was just like, I think I think it's time I think it's time we talk about what it would look like to come back.

And I said, okay, let's pray about it. Prayed about it. And we both felt led that, okay, let's do this thing together. And yeah, it was it was 100%.

It wasn't me that brought it up because it was that point of laying it down. It was that point of being willing to walk away.

It was that point of completely surrendering it to the Lord and saying, "Okay, God, if I'm ever to have this again, you've got to make it clear." And he used my wife to do it.

Yeah. Oh, that's so good. Um, how or what what uh was the process then of of picking it back up? Was it uh well, let's just run and let's go full force.

Was it okay, let's ease into this? Let's let's see that God is truly uh in agreement with us and that we're we're we're hearing correctly and moving forward.

And then just how has it grown and your um connections in in Christian community grown out from from that point of reach conference a year ago?

Sure. Um, Reach Conference was definitely a big sea change, life change moment for me. Um, you know, being able to work alongside Romans and so many different Christian content creators.

Um, to to see that come together last year was just incredible cuz it was it was 100% the Lord really at the end of the day.

It was just I just said yes and kept saying yes and just kept watching the Lord move and the Lord do things and it was just so cool.

So cool to see how that all came together last year. I'm excited for this year. And uh when it comes to streaming, there were a few things.

Um first was um Mama Peach again, she was like, I think it's I think it's time for us to start walking towards this. And I was like, okay, let's see.

And then there was a uh there was a Mother's Day competition that Asus did and my daughter Peach and I submitted a video uh talking about Mama Peach, our my wife, her mother.

Um, and we ended up winning and Asus actually came out here and we built a PC together as a family. And it was at that point where it was like, okay, we're going to put a date on the calendar and we're going to walk towards this and we're just going to couple times a week ease back into it and here we are a year and four months later back at it. God is good.

Yeah, that's that is that is really cool.

It was just it was just little little intentional steps and confirmations along that path and there were there were a host of different things in between um that happened and lots of really cool little moments.

Um but those were like the big things where it was just like oh that's really cool God. Oh that's really cool. That's really cool.

That's really cool. Like holy crap.

Yeah. Yeah. The the the little steps along the way and and I don't know if you were thinking of it when when you were like hey let's let's do a Mother's Day thing.

there's a chance to win as much as as thinking, oh, we're going to win. We have to win, so we have to go do this thing.

As as much as it was probably more of a, hey, let's let's honor mom.

Yeah, that's exactly what it was.

Let's honor. We can do this together and share what she means to us regardless of outcome. We get to do this project together.

Yeah, it was 100% uh let's just throw this out there and see what happens.

And I'll never forget when I walked I walked into the bedroom and I was just like, "Honey, I got an email that I need to talk to you about."

She had no idea.

Oh man.

Oh yeah. Of course not. I could just like I'm just thinking that conversation with my wife would be, "Honey, I have an email we need to talk about." Like, "Oh, okay.

Now what?" Uh, what did you do? Uh that would probably thing we did a thing.

Yeah. And I was like, "Here, you need to watch this video." And so she watched this video and we cried and it was just it was it was really good.

So yeah, it was cool.

Oh man, that's that's super exciting. Uh and I and I love that. I know several people who I I can I can think of who've had those little moments of, "Hey, God, um if I'm going to go in this direction, you need to uh help me get equipment to be able to do the thing that I think you're calling me to do."

And if you do that, I'll have confirmation that that it's moving in that direction.

I mean, one of them was something as simple as a stream deck. Okay, God, I'm thinking about gaming, but I don't know if it's of you or if it's of me.

Is it my idea? Is it your idea? I entered I you know I've entered a contest here for a stream deck and and if if if I win I know it's a clear sign.

Doesn't mean it's a not a clear sign if you don't. But sometimes those become clear signs that God is moving in you when little blessings like that come about um to give you affirmation that yeah, you're heart's in the right place.

Like you know, Peach has been gaming on this old PC that I built ten years ago now and uh it won't move to Windows 11.

This is a very technical portion of the discussion, but like now we have this additional PC that we got um from ASUS, glory to God, and we're able to shuffle things around um and make it to where we're not taking a hit with even with the loss of that PC thankfully as a result of that, which you know, it just it enables us to keep moving forward and not have to do any sort of crazy incentives or subathons or dono goals or anything like that.

like we can just we can just keep going because the Lord has blessed us and enabled us to just continue to have what we need to do what we do as a family.

Yeah, it is it is wonderful to watch uh God bless when you pursue what he's placing in front of you to do it.

I know you probably have stories of that in in your community and stream. Do you have others that you could think of that to be able to share just how God has blessed someone in your community or you in this process of pursuing and following after him?

You know, I there's there's a billion things that I could say and I could point to. Um, I think the the highlight of recent memory, um, my wife actually put together, we had a video for my birthday this year and they they did a whole just it was just this montage of

People talking about how our stream and our community has impacted them. And hearing those stories, yeah, hearing those stories, I cried several times.

And just to know that if anything else, if I can be a conduit for what the Lord wants to do in people's lives, because at the end of the day, I'm just a sinner. I'm just a dude that has messed up and fallen short more often than I care to admit. But glory to God, he can still use us in spite of our failures.

I mean, the Bible is full of examples of broken men that the Lord took and used to do mighty things. And not comparing myself to any of them, but I'm just saying that we're all broken sinners. We're all messed up people. And if we're all authentic and we all just say yes to what the Lord has for us, the Lord can do really cool things in people's lives and through each person's testimony, each person's story, each person's giftings.

Yeah, he absolutely does. It's amazing how that happens. But even more, I'm just thinking through that video that was put together, how that is going to be able to be something that, you know, not only your kids can come back to in ten years or something, but they can continue to come back and say, "Hey, look at what my dad has done, my mom has done, what our family has done in the lives of other people when they have kids." You know, that's kind of a really cool family heirloom on some level to be able to hold on to and just be blessed by. That's really cool, man.

Yeah. Amen to that. Absolutely. To God be the glory. And it's as Peach has gotten older, when we first started, she was nine, but now that she's, you know, like fourteen and stuff, she gets it a little bit, you know. Like she understands. She's of the age now where she's able to hear and listen and understand some of the things that we talk about and the importance and the value of that.

So it's really powerful to see how she's grown up alongside of what we've done in and with the stream. And you know, she was in the trenches with us when we were offline for several months. And man, God's just done such amazing things in my family's life. And I will never take a moment for granted that even in the midst of rebellion, he still loved me enough to shake me out of it and bring me to where I'm at now.

Yeah, that's an interesting thing I hadn't thought of asking is because you are intentionally family along the way. How has in your mind that journey been for Peach of the initial start of hey we can do some gaming together and then now I know you still continue to do that but for her faith journey walking alongside, how have you seen that or just her development as a gamer or whatever you want to talk about, just the yeah, that time for her of being a part of the family stream.

Yeah, there's any number of things that I can point to and discuss. You know, it's on a personal level, she went to public school for elementary and then when she had sixth grade, we started homeschooling her and we do an online accredited Christian academy, which means that not only is she getting all of the standard like credits that she'll be able to take, she'll have a transcript if she wants to go to college or whatever she wants to do with her life, all of those things kind of setting her up for success in that, but she's also able to study the Bible. And so it's really neat to see her grow in her knowledge of the Lord in and through not just the stream, but also what she's doing in her personal life for her to have that personal relationship with the Lord.

And there's some things I can't pull the curtain back on right now because I don't want to do that without her out here. But there's really neat parts of her personal journey where I know she has done some really cool stuff with the Lord. Really prayed, really brought her concerns to him. And just this past summer I had the privilege of baptizing her. So that was just a really cool personal step in that direction.

But also, you know, we've taken the time to play Destiny together all of these years. And last year right as we were coming back to streaming, Jake Lucky, he's a big esports influencer kind of guy on Twitter. He actually tweeted out one of our clips where we finished a big achievement in Destiny 2 together and that was viewed by millions of people which is just crazy when you think about something like that getting that kind of reach.

And to know that that's my kid and we get a chance to do that together on a bigger stage to be that light in those directories. There are a lot of other Destiny creators that don't know Jesus that love our stream because it's a father and daughter that are gaming together, that are doing life together, that are talking about important things together.

And I don't know, just that whole journey has been really cool to watch. And I know that that's a story that's going to go on for a long time. And whether she ends up wanting to be a content creator on her own someday or whatever she ends up doing, these are memories that I'm going to treasure forever and I know she will, too.

Yeah, that's really cool. And I know, you know, I don't want to dock her and all those things going on. She's not there. All those things and speaking. But just as a dad, I understand the level of which you have the ability to watch and reflect on your kids and see their growth and their journey with God and just want to celebrate that because you've been doing it in a public way and that's not always an easy thing to do, right?

No, it's not always easy, but it's just been really special. Been really, really special.

Yeah. I'm trying not to cry because it's just man, I'm proud of that kid. She's a good kid.

Yeah, I know. I know where that is, too. Yeah, my daughter can force me to cry. My sons, that doesn't happen when I think about them in the same way. There's something about that dad and daughter that she has you wrapped around her little finger and watching her. Well, just to share in regards to that of weddings, I told my kids because I was a pastor when they were growing up is I'm not doing your weddings. I get to be a dad three times.

Yeah.

So I'm not doing your wedding.

Yeah.

I get to be dad. So when my daughter's wedding happened, she didn't care about, you know, the first look of the groom seeing her in the dress and all of that. She's like, I want to see my dad because he's going to ball his eyes out. So we did the reveal and we were in a historic home and so she's at the top of the steps and I'm standing at the bottom of the steps and I get to turn around and look up and see her. Oh, and sure enough, I'm balling and it was awesome, awesome day.

Oh, stream went down again.

Man, my stream just died again. Yeah, dang it. What a night. That's what happens. Well, if you're back up, we can keep going for a little bit longer, but the other thing I was going to talk about is just kind of looking to the future and what you're excited about coming up and then if there's anything within reach you wanted to talk about. So it acted like it came back, but it's not looking good.

That is some ugly business right there. Golly, what in the world, man? I'm telling you, I have never had issues like this before. And it's funny to me that it's happening on a night where we're having these conversations. And I'm not saying it's the enemy, but listen, leave me alone, bud. I don't like you. You know, I am not usually the one to point the finger and say Satan's at work all the time and make excuses on some level of stuff, but at times I do want to say, you know, maybe it is possible.

Maybe he's working something there because yeah, a doobie. What a doobie, man. It just died, too. Okay, come on. You can do it. I believe in you. Okay, we're green. How am I looking on your side?

Uh, you're still been the same pixelated the whole time.

So yeah. Yeah. Since Mama Peach left. That's what it is.

Oh, it's because my wife left. Yeah, that's what it is. It's my wife left.

Yep. It's just gone downhill from there.

That's it. That's exactly what it is. Refresh. Okay. Well, it seems to be holding steady. Seems to be holding steady at this point.

Okay. I will just end up piecing this one together. Well, I'll get your footage.

Yeah, absolutely.

Hey, no worries. The people that are here get to yeah, rebuke technical issues.