Okay. Good morning and welcome everybody to BC 308 class on Revelation and Daniel. Thank you for connecting to the class today. Let's take a moment to pray and then we'll get started. Could somebody please pray with the class? Who'd like to pray? Come below. Ask. Ask. Okay. Go ask. Pray. Go ahead. Can she pray in my mic? Because her mic isn't working. Okay. Please. Thank you Pastor. Okay. Let's pray. And then by the way, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you Lord that we're going to learn more about your word and that you're imparting more revelations to us, Scott. Thank you for helping us prepare to live consciously to live honorably before you and God I pray that you just continue to just teach us and to guide us to lead us forward. Thank you God for helping us learn in Jesus name I pray. Amen. Amen. Okay. Thank you. Amen. Amen. So once again, good morning everybody. And thank you for joining the class. We, as we stood last week, we will have three hours of lectures today because we have completed the other course. So we will just continue here in the same classroom for three hours. Of course, we'll have our usual breaks, 10 minutes break. So let's get going. We have been joining through Revelation. We came till Revelation chapter 9 and we stopped at verse number 12. So that's where we paused last week. Revelation chapter 9 and verse 12. So we are in the place where the trumpets, the seven trumpet judgments are being sounded one after the other. And each trumpet is indicating a certain judgment or certain thing that's happening. Revelation chapter 9 and Revelation chapter 9 verses 1 through 12 is the fifth angel sounding the trumpet. So it describes what happens. We are still in the first part of the seven-year tribulation. So when we look at the seven years of tribulation, the middle is three and a half years. And we are still in the first half, that's the first three and a half years of the tribulation. So what has happened in the first three and a half years starting, Revelation chapter 4 and 5 gives us a scene of what's happening in heaven, worship going on, so on. Revelation chapter 6 starts off with the scene here on earth, what's going on here on earth. So Revelation 6. We see in Revelation 6, we see the seven seals being opened. Revelation chapter 6. And it begins with the man on the white horse, which we said was the Antichrist. And then there are certain things happening here on earth. Revelation 7 had 144,000 Jews who've been marked by God to serve him. Now, both in Revelation 6 and Revelation 7, we see many people dying for their faith in the tribulation, and they are all coming up into heaven. Revelation 8, we see this big prayer movement happening on earth. An angel throws a sensor full of incense, which incense is representing prayer, prayers, and that is thrown to the earth. And there's a lot of the prayers of the saints arising up into heaven. So that's what we say, that it describes a prayer movement on the earth during that time of the tribulation. Then Revelation 8, we see that after seven seals are over, seven trumpet judgments begin to be sounded one after the other. That brings us into Revelation 9. And we're going to pick up now from verse 13, which is the sixth angel. Now, so we come to the sixth trumpet. So there are seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls, three sets of seven judgments. We are now in the sixth trumpet judgment. Now, why am I emphasizing it? Because after the sixth, we can see that we will come into the middle of the tribulation. The seventh trumpet comes in the second half of the tribulation. Just an interesting point to remember. So the sixth trumpet happens before the middle of the tribulation. Seventh trumpet happens on the other side, the second half. How will we know it? We will see as we keep reading. So verse 13 to 21, that is the sixth angel or the sixth trumpet, could somebody read, can we take turns? Three verses each. Verse 13 to verse 21, Revelation 9. Everybody's with me? Any questions so far on the previous, what we have covered so far? Okay, let's read then. Let's go ahead and move forward. Starting from verse 13, please, Revelation chapter 9. Somebody could start. Three verses each. Revelation chapter 9 verse 13. Then the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four votes of the golden altar, which is before God. Saying to the sixth angel, who hath the trumpet? Release the four angels who are bound at the great river, so the four angels who had been prepared for the hour and day, and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. Verse 16, someone? Anyone else? Now, the number of the army of horsemen was 200 million. I heard the number of them. And thus I saw the horses in the vision. Those who sat on them had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth, blue, and sulfur yellow, and the heads of the horses were like the heads of lions. Out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and brimstone. By these three plagues, a third of mankind was killed by the fire and smoke and brimstone, which came out of their mouths. Amen. Thank you. Verse 19 on somebody, please. 1931. For their power is in their mouth and in their tails. For their tails are like serpents having heads, and when they do the harm, for the rest of mankind who are not killed by these plagues did not repent of the work of their hands, and they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear or walk.  Thank you. Thank you. So, this sick trumpet is talking about the release of angels that were bound to the river Euphrates. Now, this is very strange. Now, what does this mean? And I'm not sure, you know, we can fully understand it other than we can make some or we can deduce a few things. First of all, you know, the question we have to ask is, are these good angels or are these bad angels? Because we see both good angels and bad angels operating throughout the book of Revelation. We see good angels. They're doing God's work. They're sounding the trumpets. They are marking the head of the servants of God and all of those things. They're doing their part. Then there are bad angels or evil spirits being released. So, you know, so that's the first question. Are these angels that are being released from these four angels that are being released from the Great River Euphrates? Are they good or bad? Second, why does it say that they were bound at the Great River Euphrates? And they were bound there until this moment when something had to be taken place. That's the next question. Now, we don't have clear-cut answers to these questions, but we can make some deductions. First, by inference, we can say that these are most likely bad angels because they're being released to cause, you know, the destruction that is described thereafter. Whereas the good angels are either announcing judgment or they are doing, you know, certain things like marking people on their foreheads or, you know, bringing a scroll to be eaten or answering John's questions and so on. So this is only by inference. It's likely that these four angels are bad angels, demonic powers. The second to answer the second question is, what does it mean that these angels were bound to the River Euphrates for that moment in time when this, you know, what was described here in Revelation 9, 13 to 21 should take place? Well, again here, we can make some deductions and what we can say is we do know from Scripture that fallen angels, especially fallen angels are territorial. That means they, for whatever reason, they are assigned to specific territory. And we see this especially in Daniel chapter 10 where when Daniel has been fasting and praying, there is Angel Gabriel coming in to bring his message, bring God's message or answer to him. And along the way, he has to face opposition from the Prince of Persia, from the Prince of Greece. And we can understand that these are opposing spirits or opposing demonic powers of angels that were trying to prevent Gabriel from coming through. And they are territorial. That means there was this angel of the ruler of Persia, of Greece. And then this angel Gabriel says, Michael came and helped me. So we can see that angels are territorial, Michael is Israel's prince or Israel's angel. So that's the second deduction we can make, meaning these angels, back in Revelation 9, verse 14 and 15, these angels were territorial. That means they were operating there in the region of the river Euphrates, Middle East, just like the ruler of Persia and the ruler of Greece, demonic angels or demonic powers. So they are territorial and they are attached to that geography. They are there, they're operating there. So that's what it means, a bound to the river Euphrates. And river Euphrates is significant because from there, a lot of things originated. The Garden of Eden was around that region, Tower of Babel around that region. So very significant. Abraham called out of that region. So the river Euphrates is very significant and these are demonic angels assigned to that territory. And now God is saying, just release them so that they can do what they're going to do. And that's what happens. Again, this is not answering the question completely. These are just deductions we can make because we don't have complete information on this. But the outcome is described here, like when these four angels are released from their region around the Euphrates, they go and what they do, results as in verse 15, one third of mankind is killed. That means 30% of Earth's population are destroyed. 30%. We're talking almost about, almost. I mean, we don't know. If you're talking about current population of 8 billion people, we're talking about almost over 2 billion people being destroyed by what these angels do or cause to happen. Now, what do they do? Now it's described here. They instigate verse 17, horses. Verse 16 says, there's an army of horsemen, 200 million. So horsemen means, of course, remember, we have to translate it. God is showing things in a way John can understand. It doesn't literally mean horsemen as in how we would understand today because there is no country that has 200 million horses as part of their infantry. Most countries don't have infantry or they would have very small infantry, more for moving certain kinds of people around, but not as part of their defense. But here he's talking about 200 million horsemen who are going to go and cause destruction. So we have to interpret it, translate it, that this is describing some sort of a military strength because horsemen in John's understanding would represent military power. Those days soldiers would go out on horses and fight, but not so today. But the understanding is conveyed that this is some sort of a huge, huge army. And the destruction is described for us in verse 17 and 18 and John is seeing all these things happening. He is seeing sulphur, red, blue, yellow, smoke and fire and rimstone. Now John in his time had no idea of what today we would call as atomic warfare, nuclear warheads and the kind of weapons that we have which can actually create this effect over 17. John had no idea. Those days they didn't have those kinds of weaponry. But he's just describing what he's seeing. He's seeing this huge military army going around and he's seeing these things happening, fire, smoke and rimstone. And he's trying to describe this, again in verse 18 there is fire, smoke and rimstone. But he's trying to describe it. These things look strange. They look like lions with heads and they've got these serpent-like tails and so on. So you can imagine if John was seeing an armored tank with this pig going out on the ground, how would he describe it? He has no point of reference to describe it. He would say lion or he's trying to describe it in terms of animals he knows. But that's how he's capturing it. When we read verses 16 through 19, we can understand it in our terms that here is a military power that's causing so much destruction. The destruction is very much like what we would see through the kind of warfare that's so possible today. And the quantum of destruction also is so big. We're talking about 30% of human population being destroyed, which is very possible today with a kind of weapons that can cause mass destruction. So to sum up verse 13, the 6th trumpet causes the release of demonic powers that have been so far localized to the Euphrates vision. But they are released from there and they are causing a global or something huge that 200 million, an army of 200 million soldiers or people of war. Whether they are all from one nation or not, we don't know. Because of the number, 200 million, many Bible teachers will say this kind of has a reference to China because if there's any nation that has such a huge army, that's China, they have 200 million plus armed personnel, they can mobilize them. So this is just by inference. It's not directly mentioned. So this is probably talking about an army like the army that China has, the People's Republic of China, that huge number of people. So whether it's just one nation or whether it's a multitude of nations joining together, the result is 30% of human population are destroyed by the weapons that are being used at the time. What is interesting versus 20 and 21, Revelation 9, is that people are seeing all this, the rest of mankind, meaning people are seeing all this happening. They are experiencing the plagues, they are seeing all this destruction happening. Yet John reports and he records that people are not repenting. They're continuing to worship demons, they're continuing in idol worship, they're continuing in their evil works of murders and sorceries and immorality and so on. In other words, there is going to be a group of, while on one side we see people coming to faith in Christ, prayers rising up, people being martyred for their faith, on the other side we are also seeing people just hardening their hearts and refusing to turn to God. So that brings us to the end of Revelation 9. Any questions on the 6th trumpet? Shrikma, go ahead. Thank you, sir. Sir, I want to know that when we say that angels blew the trumpet. So is it really they will blow the trumpet? We are able to hear it. Even Vigil says that the last trumpet, so is it there any specific timings are there that when the first trumpet, second trumpet will be blown or is it going to happen only after the rapture? Is it like that? I just want to know. Or can we hear it also? Okay. So in the spiritual world, there is sound. Just like there is sound in the natural world. Because we see John, we see others, Paul and Ezekiel and other prophets in the Old Testament as well. They talk about, they describe sound in the spiritual world or in their spiritual encounters. Just like there are colors in the spiritual world. There is material in the spiritual world, except that all of this is in a different dimension than what we are used to. For example, when we talk about sound, for us, sound cannot happen in vacuum. It requires a medium. Medium is air. And so there is sound in the natural realm. That's how sound happens in the natural realm. But in the spiritual realm, there is sound, but it's different, meaning it doesn't require a medium to be transported. And there are colors and all of that. So to answer your question, is this sound? Yes. Is this audible from a spiritual standpoint? Yes. Because in the book of Revelation itself, we see John says, I heard a voice and I turned and looked, meaning there was a sound. There was also a sense of direction. It came from behind. So he turned around to look. And this was in his spiritual experience. It was not on the earth, but it was in the spiritual realm. So we can say that even in the spiritual realm, there is sound, there is direction, there is so on, so forth, colors and all. So John's question, is this sound? Yes. Now the question is, is there a timing? The answer is yes. We see that there is a sequence to these trumpets. They're not being sounded arbitrarily, but God has determined when they have to be sounded. And these angels are following the sequence or the plan of God, whether they are opening up the seals or sounding the trumpet. And as we go along, we will see more. There will be seven thunders. There will be seven bowls. They're all following the sequence that God wants them to follow. So it's not happening arbitrarily, but they are timed according to the plan of God. Okay. So is it happening after the rapture? Yes. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Pastor. Yeah. So keep in mind, book of Revelation, the sequence. Remember what we said. Till Revelation chapter three were things of the past. From chapter four are things into the future. And what we said was chapters four and five are giving us a picture of heaven after the rapture. The rapture has happened. Chapter four was one. Okay. So you can, you know, we can put some events in chronological order through the book of Revelation. So the book of Revelation in our minds must be very clear. It's chronological. And there's a time sequence to it. Meaning it's not just a mishmash of events. It's a chronological unveiling of events. Meaning it's happening in the sequence. Chapters four and five is right after the rapture in heaven. Chapter six is right after the rapture on earth. Chapter six was one. And everything that happens from there on is a sequence of events that are happening all during the seven year tribulation. So Revelation chapter six was one till the end of chapter 19 is a seven year period. The tribulation. It should be very clear in our minds. Is that okay? Yes, sir. Thank you. So now we come to... So we are still in the first half of the tribulation. That means we haven't reached the three and a half year mark. So the rapture has happened. Tribulation has started. Revelation six was one. And we are here now. So, you know, a good reference points. Revelation four was one. The rapture. Revelation six was one. The beginning of tribulation here on earth. Revelation 11 was one. The middle of the tribulation. These are good reference points to keep, right? So we are still, you know, before the middle of the tribulation. So in chapter 10, we call it a parenthetical chapter. Meaning it's a description of something that John is experiencing while he's getting the vision of the future. So in Revelation 10 one, there is something that happens in heaven. There are seven wonders. But God says, don't record that. You know, don't record the seven wonders. Just leave it. So John doesn't record. After that, he's given a book to eat. So we know that, you know, from the Old Testament, even Ezekiel had an experience like that.  And that's symbolic of God saying, I want you to receive my word so you can prophesy some more. The scroll or the little book represents prophecy or prophetic message. And God just take it, receive it so that you can prophesy some more. So it's a parenthetical chapter, meaning John has this experience and then he goes on to prophesy. So let's look through, let's read through Revelation 10. Let's read verses, let's read first, verses one to seven, please. Revelation 10 verses one to seven, three verses each, please. Revelation 10. And so it's still another mighty angel coming down from heaven, fully with the cloud and the rainbow was on his head. His face was like the sun and his feet like the flowers of fire. He had a little book open in his hand and he set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the head. He cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roars, when he cried out seven thunderous, uttered their voices. Now when the seven thunderous uttered their voices, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, seal up the things which the seven thunderous uttered and do not write them. The angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land, raise up his hand to heaven and so by him who lives forever and ever. Who created heaven and the things that are in it. The earth and the things that are in it. The sea and the things that are in it. That there should be delay no longer. But in the days of the sounding of the seven angels, when he is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished as it declared to his servants the prophets. Thank you. So, John is continuing to see the vision, see his visions, and he sees something spectacular. He is seeing an angelic being who is so big.  Because typically when we read about angels in scripture, they appear like human beings. They seem to be the same height and the same stature as human beings. So, in our minds, we think, okay, angels are like that.   But actually, John says here in Revelation 10, I saw a mighty angel. And this angel is so big. His head is up in a way. It's like the sun and the clouds and his feet are like pillars of fire. One hand on the sea and one feet on the land. That's huge. So, how big are angels? We have no idea. It's likely that by things we see described in scripture, when they come to visit, when they come to bring messages, when they come to visit people, they come in a form that we could relate to so that we are not overwhelmed. But we'll see here in Revelation 10 that these angels could be extremely huge and powerful. Now, there's no way to get a grasp of the measure of the size of this angel. But John is describing what he saw. He saw a very big, powerful, mighty messenger and angel. And at that moment, he's hearing things, which to him sounds like thunders, but they are intelligent. That means the sounds he hears, which on the one hand he describes it as like seven thunders.  And at that same time, this was three, there are like seven thunders. He's hearing the sound. But yet that sound is intelligent because he says, I hear their voices and he was ready to write the voice of the seven thunders, what he heard, the message he received through the voice of the thunders. So on the one hand, the sound is very powerful, very majestic.  So he's using those terms to describe how majestic and powerful the sound is. But it's also a voice, meaning it's communicating something very intelligent. It's communicating a message that John understands. And he wants to write it down. So he wants to record it and God says, don't do it. So don't record it. Now, why is it that God would tell John, John, don't record it? There's no reason given. God just wants to keep that secret. And the Bible tells us the secret things belong to the Lord, which means there are many things that are not revealed to us that are kept secret. And God says, okay, you don't need to know these things. So God tells John, John, don't, there's no need to record it. Just let it go. So even the Apostle Paul, from his experience in 2 Corinthians 12th chapter, he says, you know, I was caught up to the third heaven. And I heard of things which I can't even express. I can't even explain. So while the Apostle Paul recorded so much revelation for us, it's very possible that he saw and he heard and experienced so much more than what he communicated to the church through his episodes. Meaning there's so much more that we don't know. So God is telling John, John, I don't want you to write these things. And then this angel, this, this mighty angel has one announcement to make. So this is a messenger angel. And this angel is saying basically this, this is verse number seven. This mighty angel is saying the meaning is announcing that we are getting close to the end. And he's saying there should be delay no longer. Look, you're coming close to the end. And he's saying from the time the seventh angel sounds, this is verse seven, the days, that means, okay, there's a little time, days, plural. He didn't say day or hour. He said days, plural. So there's a little time, very little time from the time the seventh angel sounds till the end for all the prophecies to be fulfilled. So literally this marks the middle of the seven year tribulation. Because when we start chapter 11 verse one, you will see very clearly it is stated. It's the middle. Okay. So the sixth trumpet is sounded just before the middle. And then there's this angel that this mighty angel that comes to John and says, John, or he's making the announcement saying from the time the seventh trumpet sounds. So the seventh trumpet happens after the middle of the tribulation. From the time the seventh trumpet sounds, the days are very short. It's, there will be no more delay for all the prophecy to be fulfilled. So literally there's only three and a half years left. So that's what happens. And then let's read verses eight to 11, please. Somebody could read verses eight to 11 of Revelation 10. Then the voice that I heard from heaven spoke to me once more. Don't take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel who's standing on the sea and on the land. So I went to the angel and asked him to give me the little scroll. He said to me, take it and eat it. It'll turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey. I took the little scroll from the angel's hand and ate it. It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth. But when I'd eaten it, my stomach turned sour. Then I was told, you must prophecy again about many people, nations, languages and things. Thank you. So here once again, it's like a parallel experience to Ezekiel. John, in his spiritual room, it's a spiritual experience. It's not like, it's not a physical experience, not in the natural. But in the spiritual, the angel says, hey, there's a book, you've got to eat it. And so John eats the book. It's sweet in his mouth, but becomes very bitter when it gets into his stomach. And then he says, you've got to prophesy. So the book, so this spiritual experience, eating a book. So keep this in mind. If you have a dream of eating a book or somebody tells you a dream of eating a book or you see a vision of somebody eating a book. It's a prophetic symbolism of God giving you a message. That is to be proclaimed a prophetic message. So John has this vision of eating a book. It's sweet initially because it's a message from God. But it's bitter because the content of that message is judgment and destruction. What's going to happen, the next three and a half years is going to be the great tribulation. We are in the tribulation, but the second half of the tribulation is called the great tribulation. So he says, look, you're going to prophesy. It's going to be bitter.  So that's chapter 10. It's a parenthetical chapter. It's an experience John has seeing this big, mighty angel who says, hey, look, from the time the seventh angels trumpet sounds, things are going to happen very fast. No more delay. And John has this experience of eating a book saying you've got to prophesy some more. But it's bitter. It's judgment that you're going to prophesy. So think about some things here. In spiritual things, taste has meaning, sweetness and bitterness. Bitterness has meaning. It means you're going to prophesy judgment. You're going to prophesy things that are one meaning of bitterness is judgment coming. The word of God is like honey, but prophecy concerning judgment, bitter taste. So keep that in mind. So in the spiritual, tastes have meaning, smells, orders have meaning. If it's a pleasant smell, prayers are like incense. Incense means sweet smelling. Believers in Christ are like a sweet aroma to those who also believe, but then a aroma of death to those who don't believe. So there is smell in the spiritual that has meaning, taste in the spiritual also has meaning. So sometimes if you get that, you know, like, hey, I'm getting some sort of a funny taste of funny smell and it's not natural, but it's something in the spirit, then you understand that the fragrance, the kind of smell also will tell you what God is saying or what God is doing. So we come now to chapter 11. Okay. Any questions so far till end of chapter 10? Okay. So now we come into chapter 11. Okay. Now let's read chapter 11. And we will read verses one through six, please. Revelation 11. One through six, three verses each. Somebody can read it. When I was given a measuring rod like a staff and I was told rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, but do not measure the court outside the temple. Leave that out. But it is given over to the nations and they will trample the holy city for 42 months and I will grant authority to my two witnesses and they will prophesy for 1,260 days in sack clothes. Thank you. Thank you. Verses four to six. Somebody please.   If anyone wants to harm them, he must be killed in this manner. This have power to shut heaven so that no rain falls on the day of their prophesy and they have power or waters to churn them to God and to strike the earth in all places as often as they deserve. Thank you. How can we say Revelation chapter 11 is the middle of the tribulation? You know, I said very confidently you can make these reference points. Revelation six was one, the beginning of the tribulation. Revelation 11 verse one is the middle of the tribulation. Why can we say that? Well, it tells us very clearly. Verse two says, talking about the temple, he talks about the holy city will be clawed and underfoot for 42 months. And verse three says 1,260 days. So 42 months, 1,260 days is three and a half years. So that is why we can say very confidently, Revelation chapter 11 verse one is the midpoint of the seven year tribulation. So till now, whatever we have read is the first half of the tribulation. Revelation 11, one, middle, whatever we are going to read now is going to happen in the second half of the tribulation. The next thing we notice here is he's talking about the temple of God in Jerusalem, the holy city. So right now that temple doesn't exist. There is no temple in the holy city. There is a temple mount, but you know, you'd have read in today's news the last couple of days yesterday, today, there's been violence there. The Israeli soldiers have gone into the mosque, you know, because of all the trouble. This is the holy month of Ramadan. And so the Muslims are coming into prayer there. The Jews are opposing it and there's violence. And it's happening right now in our time. So on the temple mount, there is the al-Aqsa mosque. And that whole place is very sacred to the Muslims. The Jews have access to the western wall. So there is no Jewish temple there. So that's why we say that that's one of the reasons we say that there has to be a heard temple. Some people call it the tribulation temple or the third temple. So Solomon built the temple. We refer to that as the first temple that was destroyed by the wickedness. It was rebuilt during Ezra and Nehemiah's time. So that's called referred to as the second temple. That was then destroyed later on by the Arabs around 600 A.D. which at that time they built the mosque and they took over the whole place. So since that time there's been no temple. But here Revelation 11 says there has to be a temple. It says go measure the temple of God. Go measure. That means there's a physical temple. That's how we measure it. It's not a spiritual, it's not just a gathering of people. It's a physical because it says go measure it. And the other reasons we say it has to be physical is because when you look at Daniel, Daniel says that this man, the Antichrist, he stops the offerings and the sacrifices in the temple which means the temple was fully functional up until this time. So that's why we say that from the beginning of the tribulation till Revelation 11, the temple is in place and is operational with sacrifices being offered. But by the time we read Revelation 11 verse 1, what do we read? We read that the holy city of Jerusalem has been given over to the Gentiles. That means the Gentiles have moved into the city. The temple is there, it's functioning. But at some point here in the middle of the tribulation, the Antichrist is going to stop the sacrifices and he's going to set himself up as God. That's coming up in chapter 13. We will see that. So Revelation 11, middle of the tribulation, a functioning temple is in existence. The Gentiles have taken over Jerusalem. They're controlling the city of Jerusalem. And at this time, verse 4, verse 3 and 4, there are two witnesses whom God raises up and they are going to be ministering for 1,260 days. That means they're going to be ministering the second half of the tribulation. They will be on the earth for three and a half years about the second half of the tribulation. Let's pause here. We'll come back and pick up from verse 3 and talk about these two witnesses. We'll take our 10-minute break and we will come back and talk about these two witnesses. Thank you.


First and foremost, we just want to welcome everybody for being here today. We're so glad that you guys are here. This is actually, if I'm not mistaken, our ninth Mayors' luncheon that we kicked off this series this year. And we're so excited about what this event has become. It's really kind of brought out a lot of view, young professionals out. And we see your young faces. We see it's so exciting to see, well, all of us, as the future leaders of Forward, to come together once a month, have lunch, with the mayor, and as we just get introduced to some of our current leaders, and some of the big things that are going on in our city. So we're really, really proud of our partnership with the Twin Steer for Award and LYP. One of the things that I definitely want to put out there, I'm Mori Padilla, I'm the chairman for the Latino Young Professional Organization. And hopefully within each table, there's an LYP representative that you can, if you have any questions about who we are, what we're trying to accomplish as an organization, please, please don't hesitate to ask any one of us. With that said, the next thing I just want to introduce, Mayor Betsy Price is gonna be coming up here. She's gonna be presenting our speakers for today. So please give a hand for Mayor Betsy Price. Actually, there were probably stairs on the other side, but I'm not known for my grace, so I just climb up. I grew up in horseback with brothers and riding horses and bicycles, and sometimes high heels are not my shoe of choice. It's so good to see you all here. Y'all hear from me all the time, but I just have to take just a second out of the program and thank each and every one of you for last Thursday's presentation. It was incredible, and the community is still talking about it. Several of you here presented. Sarah and Hannah, Jonathan are here. Several of you presented. And it was a tribute to all of you as young leaders that all of our downtown leaders, our south side and our so seventh leaders, both our police chief and fire chief, the city manager, stayed for the entire presentation. And I sat with Kay Grainger Mundy at a funeral, and Kay said, I am so sorry that I missed your young adults, she revealed, she said that is all anyone is talking about. So you deserve a big hand for your hard work on that. What work, I always say it, I'm kind of like a proud mama with all of y'all, we're in great hands, and I'm very proud of what y'all have taken hold. Maury and LYP, y'all have done a great job. Rachel, wherever Rachel is, getting it going. And my staff, who's worked so hard on it, Keeman, Misty, Beth, everybody else, Callie. I don't know who else here. Mary Ann, the others, Mary Ann. Sandy, where's Sandy? There she is. And Belinda's back there from Sal, and I didn't see you over there. There's Sal right there, our council member for this district, and we're all still alive and well after yesterday's budget votes. I'll do it with just a bit of housekeeping, and then I'll introduce our three outlaw guests, shall I say, or two outlaws and one distinguished guest, I think. And y'all have to sort out who's who there. You know, we're kind of giving you a little breathing room now. The next couple of months will be fun things. You have Kay Granger next month. It'll be really interesting to see what she has to say. Then we have Jeff Fagan at DFW on November the 7th, and on November the 28th, we'll have our second annual celebration at Jotiz. Can you believe it's been a year? So plan to come and bring some additional friends with you. This is kind of wind-down celebration mode, but you are in no means dismissed. Your work will start again in January. Today we have Dr. Andrew Walker from the Amon Carter Museum. Andrew might not be the outlaw. He might be the good guy. Who's there celebrating their 50th anniversary, and I have a hard time believing that Carter is 50 years old, the museum, it's incredible. And the work that they have done and continue to do for this community is phenomenal, and I think you'll enjoy hearing from him. We have Gary Brinkley, who is also the mayor of Saginaw. So he's mayor Brinkley, who for 13 years has been with the Stockyard Station and Hickman Investments, and this is one of Holt Hickman's property, the museum in this, and has done wonderful things for us. And Gary is also a VP with our Convention and Visitors Bureau. And then we have the only trader in the room, the only true outlaw, David Devois, who's our director for CVB, and we say that because David is leaving us and has taken a job in Dallas, but he is not competing with Fort Worth because he's smarter than that. So he's gonna be bringing business, he's working for International David Tim. So you got the title, and he'll be bringing business to Fort Worth in his new role. And he's promised us he wouldn't sell us short, and I know he won't. So David, we're sorry you're leaving us, but we're delighted to have you gentlemen. We're so glad to have all three of you, and I'm gonna let y'all sort out who's gonna present first and how you're gonna go. Thank you for being with us, and thank you for sharing today. Thank you, Mary Price. I think I'm becoming an outlaw slowly. I've been in Fort Worth now a little over a year and a half, and I've come from St. Louis, where I was the deputy director at the St. Louis Art Museum. And I have to tell you, when I thought about this topic today, which was really the impact of the Eamon Carter as a representative of the arts district, of the cultural district, what struck me first was what drew me here. What drew me from the position that I had in St. Louis to this city that was unfamiliar to me in many regards, but the Eamon Carter wasn't. And the cultural district wasn't, because it is such a critical dimension, not only of the art world more generally, that Fort Worth distinguishes itself in a very dramatic way with the quality of those three art museums. That was really what kind of drew me. It gathered my attention, and over time, when I've thought about that in relationship to the idea of what is the impact of three major art museums in one small spit of land in Fort Worth, is that it really can bring, it can draw people here from other places. It's one of the great qualities of the arts, I think, certainly in Fort Worth. But I wanted to talk really briefly more generally before I get into the story of the Eamon Carter about the impact that the arts have generally within municipal centers as well as across the nation. Here in Tarrant County, many of you know, I'm sure that the arts, both performing and the fine arts, contribute more than $85 million to the overall income just within the county itself. And if you were to extend that, of course, in the entire Metroplex, you could just continue to multiply that. And across the nation, that continues to sort of expand. And how you measure it is hard. What the impact is, is not just measured in dollars, but it's measured in experience. But one statistic that I thought I would just throw out because it kind of made me smile as a nerdy art historian who spends his time looking at paintings, that overall across the nation, nearly 850 million onsite visits happen in museums every year. And that is more than all of the major league sporting events across this country together. That actually in the museum visits, much to my surprise that there are 850 million nerds out there like me who enjoy looking at works of art. But if we could advance the slide, but I do really wanna talk up today and focus in on the arts in Fort Worth as it's defined in the cultural district by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Kimball Museum, and the Fort Worth Modern Museum of Art as well. And really begin to think about how do we measure that impact? Each one of these museums like the Amon Carter is as much a place, a destination for rich experience in the arts, but we're all businesses as well. We actually, we don't see our product as a sales product, but what we are really attempting to do in adding to the experience of Fort Worth citizens to increase visitorship, participation, the active participation, it's not a passive kind of experience. And then how do we measure that impact within the community? What is our actual impact and what are the criteria that we bring forward in order to measure that? It's, I think we can advance. I don't have to admit, I don't have my slide list here, so I'm not quite sure how this is gonna go, but one of the reasons I wanted to show this picture is that that first one's kind of stale. It kind of looks like these great architectural monuments for which they are in Fort Worth. It's incredible, the internationally renowned architecture that exists right there in the cultural district between Phillip Johnson, Louis Kahn, to Dal Ando, and soon to be unveiled in a year or so, the Renzo Piano Edition to the Kimbell. But it's also, those are spaces that are activated that part of our experience is to bring people to us to have a meaningful experience. That, again, we don't, we're not selling something per se, but we're providing the environment for an experience. And it takes many, many people to make that happen. We have, just in the Amon Carter, more than 100 employees, FTE employees or full-time equivalent employees, and then another 30 who are either part-time or volunteer. And so when you think about this institution on the hill there, it is really a kind of beehive of activity across all of the departments and divisions that we have. In our 50th anniversary year, which was in 2011, we saw, because of our focused sense of marketing, of getting exhibitions, of getting our word out there in a way that was very different, we actually went through a whole rebranding exercise and we became the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. And I just have to ask you, did any of you notice last year the visibility through our billboards that we had? And you saw that kind of grand identity that we reinforced over and over and over again. And then actually if you wanna believe that that works in a business model, what we saw was an increase of 20% in our visitorship over last year through those efforts, but also tying it to the tremendous impact over 50 years that not only the museum has had, but the Carter family in supporting not just the museum, but also many other charitable endeavors throughout Tarrant County. And it got me really to start thinking and because that number that went up by 20%, we see a visitorship of about 120,000 people every year. The Kimball does bigger numbers than we do.  I went to an executive training session where they were teaching the nonprofit people to think about their competition as complementors rather than competitors. And I love that idea, but sometimes you're competitive. But it got me to thinking in that increase, which we're on track to continue. In other words, we got people in on that anniversary year and that we're gonna meet that again. But how do we increase that? Well, first of all, it is the quality of the experience. And when you, I think we can advance. I just wanted to show another vision of one of our evening events on Athenaeum and Carter. And then the next slide, please. One of the aspects of that complimenting and competition is really what's something that's happening this weekend called Day in the District. It's the seventh year that this has happened. It's really a demonstration of cooperation. The museums all come together, not just the art museums, but the museums throughout the district to really offer an experience and there's performing arts throughout the day as well to draw more and more people. And it's grown and it's become a real demonstration of what Fort Worth can do when we all work together. That's the great complimenting part of it. So I encourage you, if you don't have plans for Saturday, to spend at least an hour or so going to all the museums because they are all opened and free on that day. The next slide. But when I began to really think about Athenaeum and Carter and that increase, quality experience, we are free. This was an ad campaign this summer, free admission, priceless art. We do offer this experience for free, but that doesn't really, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're gonna get more people just because it's free, right? And in fact, sometimes when you actually value something, you find that you get more response. And so it's something that we really think about as a nonprofit professional organization. But when you think of our visitorship, it cuts two ways. One is programmed visitorship. People we know are gonna be there. And of that, 120,000 people that come every year, 112,000 of our visitors are coming through program visitorship. And part of that, if we can have the next slide, you'll see, this is our program visitorship. You'll see how it has grown in the last 10 years from when the new building opened in 2001 or so to 2011. You know, the increase of the way that we've been able to develop program visits to the museum through our lifelong learning education programs, whether it's student tours, teacher programs, you can read it there, the increase is pretty remarkable. That's part of that 112,000 people in the next slide. And it really is about making the collection and that this really priceless collection of American art that has grown over those 50 years, relevant and accessible, but tailored to the needs of those audiences that we identify. So every fourth grader in the Fort Worth ISD comes to the Iman Carter for an experience that's tied to their curriculum. That's over 16,000 students every year. And we see, as I said, through all of our programs, nearly 112,000. And it extends the next slide to our adult programs as well. I mean, we really have built this on a lifelong learning model. So from age one to age 99, we provide an experience that's targeted and tailored to be quality. The next slide.  I wanna go to the Iman Carter. I mean, what would it be? Anybody? Wine? No, no, that's a great answer, actually. That is a great answer, in a way. Because we don't necessarily do that. Certainly the modern does it, the Kimball does it in a very specific way. They both, I learned, I should know this. They both have liquor license. We do not have a liquor license at the Iman Carter. We're gonna fix that, I hope. Please, please don't tell Ruth that I said that. No, no, but there is a benefit for beginning to tailor that unprogrammed visitorship in different ways. What is it that people want? Well, one of the others, and I think about this as a movie, and I'm gonna tie this up because I know I'm way over 10 minutes, is what we do and offer in our special exhibitions. You know, it's always like the New Yorker who doesn't go to the Empire State Building because it's there. Well, it's often permanent collections are like that in art museums as well. It's like, you don't necessarily, oh, I can do that another time. But if you know, for example, if we can go back one, I'm sorry, real quick. If you know that the masterworks from the Phillips collection of American art from Winslow Homer to Mark Rothko, a hundred works of art from Washington D.C. of one of the great American collections is gonna be at the Iman Carter for a short period of time, and it's free. Hopefully, that's gonna impact your decision. The better and the quality of our exhibition programs is one way to begin driving people in an unprogrammed way to our museum. So I just wanted to show you a few things that are in to entice you, hopefully. So the Phillips collection and then coming in the early of 2014, we're having a major exhibition put together by the Art Institute of Chicago. Looking at the relevance and the representation of food in American art from the federal period all the way up until the pop artists of the 1960s. And as well, bringing masterworks like Edward Hopper's Night Hawks at the Art Institute or Norman Rockwell's Freedom from Want. These are experiences that don't happen very often as works of art in North Texas. And yet, here we are, we're gonna be bringing them. And then the next slide and last. But also exhibitions that we generate committed to the research and the presentation of the American West, certainly, although we do much more than just that. But we are developing an exhibition about George Caleb Bingham. Many of you may not have heard him, but he's one of the great 19th century American artists. If I showed you his work broadly, you would recognize it. Because it's so ingrained in our historical memory. And yet, it's not as well known by the artist's name, but we'll be bringing his major works of the paintings of the river in the 19th century. And then an exhibition that opens this fall, or next fall, I'm sorry, in 2013, looking at the history of color in the medium of photography. We have at the Amon Carter the second largest collection in the country of American photography, a little known fact that many of you may not have known. But if you're lovers of photography, this is one of the destinations not only in North Texas, but in all of the country to come. So I just wanted to give you a little bit flavor of those two aspects of our audiences and how we try to tailor quality experience in order to continue to make that impact through the culture and the arts in our community. So thank you so much. Good afternoon, I guess, Mayor, I'm the outlaw. You know, when I announced that I was leaving about eight weeks ago, it seems like eight months ago, I've had a lot of people calling me traitors. So I'm kind of getting used to that. But my wife keeps tapping me on the shoulder saying it's okay, dear, so we'll move forward. Andrew, thank you. And I tell you what, I'm gonna share some numbers with you. I'm gonna talk for a few minutes about the economic development of certainly tourism, meetings, conventions, trade shows, and visitations into our city. But Andrews sparked some thoughts and I wrote down some numbers. In the cultural district alone, outside of the million plus, well, it depends on whether, as Brad Barnes will tell you, they go to the Stock Show rodeo every year, anywhere from 800,000 to a million. Over three million people visit our museums, including the cowgirl, and all of the activities that take place at all the equestrian shows. So in total, in that small area, that is just over here, a couple miles, over four million visitors a year, enjoy the festivities and all the activities and the venues over in that area. Downtown Sundance Square in the downtown area, over 10 million visitors a year. Now, some of them obviously overlap and come out to the cultural district and Gary just told me the updated number for the Stockyards is two and a half million. So if you add that together, it's a pretty healthy environment that we enjoy in the great city of Fort Worth. So I'm gonna kind of take you through an overview of what is a Convention and Visitors Bureau and a DMO. Ryan, if you can go to the first slide.  DMO a couple years ago, we changed the nomenclature of our profession to start focusing on destination marketing versus just convention and visitors. So we're kind of moving, kind of morphing towards a DMO nomenclature. I'll mention the purpose of the CVB, past achievements and how you all can play a role. Next slide, please. 1896, the first CVB was founded in Detroit. They got together four or five ladies and gentlemen and I'll just say they're probably just five guys back then. They got together from Toledo, Ohio and Detroit and maybe Chicago and a few other cities because they wanted to share leads of various festivals and trade events that would go on throughout the country. So that's how that started. Today there's over 1500 CVBs or DMOs just in North America, let alone another 300 internationally. And they go by a bunch of different names which kind of we're trying to morph ourselves towards a little bit more consistency in what we do across our industry. What is the CVB DMO? We're the umbrella organization that markets promotes and provides services to the city of Fort Worth. In this city, we are a 501 C6 organization nonprofit. We signed a service agreement with the mayor and council that right now we're in year five of a five year contract. So they outsourced that to us as a sales and marketing services organization for the city of Fort Worth. We work very closely with the major chambers of commerce to make sure that we're attracting visitors from all multicultural sex, all business segments. And so there's a whole economic development need that the CVB and our various chambers help to work on together. We are funded, I think the next slide, Brian, we are funded predominantly from hotel tax. So those of us who live in the city of Fort Worth do not fund or underwrite the efforts of the Convention of Visitors Bureau. 15% is charged. I think it's the next slide if you would, Brian. 15% is charged, I know it's in there somewhere. 15% is charged to every guest. So if a guest pays $100 for a hotel room to stay at the X Hotel or Y Hotel, an additional $15 is added on to that. Nine of it comes to the city of Fort Worth that helps to pay for bonds of the convention center expansion helps to pay for a lot of different things that happen under what's called an enterprise fund. Right now, Mr. Slaughter and I helped manage on behalf of the mayor and council a $30 million enterprise fund which also includes all of the equestrian event venues here in the Will Rogers complex as well as the convention center downtown and certainly the sales and marketing efforts of the CVB. So our job at the bottom here is to be the voice of the hospitality industry to the community and the local government. In my current role, I probably sit on seven or eight different boards because it is very important that whether I'm on the Hispanic board, the black chamber board, sister cities, the arts council, whatever it may be that we have an integrated approach and a consistent messaging to make sure that the visitors outside of our city be it in the state and the region and certainly nationally and internationally that we have consistent voice in talking about what we do and have here in Fort Worth. This is our branding. A couple of years ago, we tweaked it a little bit. We are indeed the city of cowboys and culture. Always fun to balance the cowboys and culture aspect, right? Andrew, to make sure that we are sensitive to the incredible economic impact that our arts community be it live or otherwise bring to the city of Fort Worth as well as Mr. Gary Brinkley and the menics and others at Billy Bob and the great stockyards continue to make sure that we do balance the wonderful branding of the city of cowboys and culture. Next, please. So here's our mission, which I've kind of gone over if you can go to the next slide. Our structure, as I mentioned, is that we are solely funded through Hotel Oxypsoid Tax as a C6. We have 33 member board, nine member executive committee. The city manager, Tom Higgins, sits on our executive committee. One of our councilmen, Joel Burns, sits on the executive committee. So we obviously have very valuable input from the ladies and gentlemen on mayor and council that provide us guidance. And certainly they are our client because as a service organization, we service a very long, probably 30 page contract with the city of Fort Worth to make sure that we report out every quarter properly. As I mentioned, the occupancy tax, as it's paid, are oversight predominantly as a convention center to the Will Rogers and certainly to make sure that mayor we get enough money in every month to pay those bills and make sure that the expansion of the convention center, which happened many years ago, is certainly paid for by hotel occupancy and probably 96% of the ladies and gentlemen and families who stay in hotels are from outside this region. So once again, it really does help to supplement the great quality of life we have here in Fort Worth. The next please. Just some historical perspective. In 2003, in order to renovate and expand the convention center at $75 million, bonds were floated and those were paid by 2%. That 9%, 2% go directly to paying those bonds. The other 7% go to the enterprise fund. Obviously we had incredible growth in our downtown hotel product with the Omni, the Sheraton, and the embassy suites. We've added incredible number of restaurants in the downtown area than the south side area, West 7th, certainly here in the stockyards. As I was explaining last night in an event that we were at when Mayor Moncrief and Council, I think Sal, you were on the council then as well. Back in 2007, when I went in in my first meeting with Mayor Moncrief and city manager and staff at the time and asked for a $2 million increase after they called security and almost moved me out of Mayor Moncrief's office, we were able to convince them at that time that the city of Fort Worth was poised to be this wonderful destination that we all love and enjoy. And we were ready to have a party and the bar was set up, the food was out, everything was ready to happen. And the chairman at the time who was a banker said, you know, we don't have enough money to pay for invitations. So we needed additional $2 million which will help us to add staff and not only in sales but in marketing. For all of your business that you work for, if you don't drive that top line, nothing else is gonna happen. So that's what we focus on every day. So great historical perspective to the city. I was mentioning last night at an event that we've helped grow the collective we, the venues, the restaurant tours, the ladies and gentlemen from all the various chambers, mayor and council, we have been able to grow the room tax generation from $15 million to $20 million and in five years and not ever have to go back to our local taxpayer base to help us grow that business which is so valuable to all of us. Next please. The economic impact, we host in downtown alone in terms of out of town visitors. And once again, these are people who stay in hotels that we can track, 5.5 million. And with an economic impact of $1.3 billion, our CVB staff, the two ladies, raise your hand that are part of our staff here, that are part of your young professional group, help us with 30 other staff associates to support, book support and service over 300 meetings and conventions held annually. It is estimated that approximately 17,000 jobs are supported by the meeting convention tourism business in our city was certainly a very important number. Direct earnings from the hospitality employment exceed $453 million a year. We call it kind of an invisible industry. I know y'all love it when you see, when you're walking down main street or walking down exchange and you see people with badges that go all these tourists in town, all these conventioneers, they help us drive the economy because about a third of the reason that restaurants and bars stay open is because of out of town visitors and convention attendees that come to enjoy our great city. These are just some results that have happened from calendar 09 through 2012 and as you can see some beautiful increases, not only in the number of conventions that we've been able to host, meetings, conventions and trade shows, but also the number of attendees. The big spike as you can see in 11 was our ice bowl, I mean our Super Bowl week, but Mayor we did kind of smoke the other city to the East, Dallas, I think our great team in the city of Fort Worth cleared the streets within about 12 hours and I was slipping and sliding in Dallas for three days when I had to go over there for events. But we're very proud of these results and how can you all get involved? Brian, the next slide. A lot of these conventions that you see here, we just listed some of the major conventions that we host every year. We have some annuals like Kenneth Culp of Ministries, Fourth of July week, 8,000 people every year, take over downtown, wonderful ladies and gentlemen and families, premier design, every summer. A lot of these conventions happen, but they happen in a lot of ways because the local residents of Tarrant County and especially Fort Worth, they'll call us and say I'm on the board of directors of the American Association of Short French People, or tall French people like me. And they'll say I found out in an executive committee meeting last week that they're looking at the middle of the country for 2016, I'm gonna send the RFP to you. We would not have received that lead if it wasn't for that lady or gentleman who sat on that board for his or her professional association that helps us generate leads that then put our salespeople to work and try to close business. So we have community partnership programs and certainly the program I just mentioned, Bring Meetings Home, is not unlike what we do in the great city of Fort Worth to make sure that people enjoy everything that we have. Our number one referral of bringing visitors into the city of Fort Worth are people like yourself, 750,000 ladies and gentlemen and kids who live in the city that say you need to come here for vacation next spring, you don't need to go down to Florida for spring break, you need to come and enjoy the great city of Fort Worth. So I think that might be it, Brian. I thank you and I'll stand around for any questions if there are some afterwards. Thank you. Gary's really the unofficial mayor of the stockyards, too. No, that's supposed to be Steve Murr. No, that's Steve Murr and that's right. Yeah. I had a set of them on. I have to do the cleanup. Steve does the party in part. We work together very, very well. My pleasure to be with you all today. I've been here for a long time and it turned out like that and ended up being a little over 14 years now after a 13-year career in mall management. David talked about the macro and I'll talk to you about the micro. Are you aware that the only public property in the stockyards is the Coliseum? Everything else here is privately owned. I manage about 55 acres and our number one partner, Mr. Hickman, has interest in several other properties so we roughly manage about 108 to the 125 acres of the district. Now, we manage as a quasi-governmental agency and the reason we do that is so that people don't know that it's not part of the city of Fort Worth. We want that perception, especially if you're from Europe, people from Europe assume that it's part of the government.  You don't work for the government, you don't work for the city, you don't work for the state. I said, no, I work for private industry. He goes, but these are public buildings and then the don don, they're used to everything being public over there and so it's a different way of doing it. We want people to think it's part of the city. It's a real easy sell. When I use the term we, I'm gonna use the term we as a collective stockyards and I will confess that I am very biased about what we've done at Stockyard Station but I strive for inclusion, strive. We recognized the tenure, about 10 years ago we recognized a girl in 10 in historical tourism and we jumped on that as our future. According to the citywide preservation plan adopted in July 2003, historic tourism adds more to the economy. City report shows historic tourism spends $29 a day more than the average tourist and is more than likely to come from somewhere out of state. You know, Stockyards, when you look at all these rankings, four Stockyards typically ranks about number eight in attractions and if you condense the Alamo and the Riverwalk and SeaWorld together we're always in the top five after that. So I always condense it when I'm talking. Top five. We see about two and a half million visitors a year. Yeah.  I managed a mall in Cleveland, Texas for eight years and it was with John Hancock real estate and it was a good deal but I wanted to come back home. I saw more people here the first week I worked in eight years in Cleveland, Texas. And it's so funny cause you'll see a blonde hair blue eye person walking by and you say, howdy. And they go, good and dog. But it's so awesome to be walking the street.  And it's no, because they're leaving their credit card money around. It's great, but it's just so fun to watch that.  And I think they were from Japan to be honest with you. And they were all in their business suits. They always walked around in business suits, white shirts and dark ties. And they all went to the first table they saw and bought the cheapest straw cowboy hat you could find. And all 43 of them walked around the whole event with their cowboy hat on in their business suits and felt so much part of the Stockyards. It was great. Usually on any given day, you'll find about 60% of the people on the street are from the area and about 40% are outside the metro area. Now that switches back and forth but every time you do a stop intercept, it's a 60, 40 split. We provide education programs in the Stockyards for about 25,000 kids a year. And regrettably, most of those aren't from Fort Worth. They're from the Outline. They're Asils, the Saginas, lot from Arlington because they have the money to travel. We do the Frontier Fort Day every year to celebrate our city as a fort. And with that event, we're able to bring in a little over 4,000 students from Fort Worth ISD. So that's a good program. We've also had evolution over the last 10 years or so about this perception of the Stockyards. I need an honest opinion.  How many? You can't. You're not gonna own up to, well, we lost that generation to be honest with you because we didn't have the best reputations because the Stockyards wasn't taken care of. We've turned that around now. And the best thing that's happened to us has been the explosion in the Metroplex because we've had so many people move in and this is their new home and they don't know where to fit in or how to fit in and the Stockyards and our distinct culture as a Western destination, they can relate to it. It may not be who they are or what they are but they can relate to it and they're bringing in all their friends and all their family that show up. The Northeast Tarrant County Corridor, the Grapevine, the Colleyville, the Southlake, those are great for the Stockyards. Those people are transients. They move in, they move out and they don't have an identity when they're here and they can really relate to the Stockyards. We, the last ball game that we had here, there was a group setting in riski's eating at the bar and I just happened to listen and they're talking about, oh yeah, you do this here, you do that there and they do the cattle drives and Billy Bob's and I'm like, they don't look like us and they don't sound like us and they say, yeah, we moved in like four years ago and we found this place and we just love coming here. There's your Northeast Tarrant County again. It's just really, really good for us. Another huge success for us in the Stockyards is Jerry Jones, world over at Cowboy Stadium. I tell you those college ball games they bring in, not just Super Bowl is great but those college ball games, God, we love the SEC.  Oh, the LSU's and the Alabama's, just can't lose when you have an SEC coming through here. Several years back and it's just how we have evolved as the Stockyards and moving up the top of mind and the perception of you gotta stop here. When Tennessee won the national championship out in Tucson at the Fiesta Bowl six, seven years ago, we were getting ready for the four o'clock cattle drive, eight buses pulled up and unloaded and they were Tennessee fans. And they said, well, you know, we heard about the Stockyards and cattle drive, we wanna stop by and see it. So they pulled and unloaded over 200 and something people here for the four o'clock cattle drive and everyone of them had to buy a match cover or something to take with them from being in Fort Worth. Since I've been here, we've overseen the redevelopment of Stockyards Station about at 6,100 square feet inside another 55 redeveloped. We developed the High Place Hotel and it was originally in Merritt Suite. I don't know if some of y'all may remember that. And, you know, things happen quickly in development. I'd spent six and a half years finding the right partner and then the right flag and it took another year to do it.  You always hear that, right? Mr. Bass was here for a presentation. I was congratulating him on Sunday at Square and he said, son, you spend hundreds of million dollars and wait 20 years, you can be an overnight success. The purchase of this collection that you see here, the three different collections, I was able to work with the Hitman family to get that and then develop this billing out. We developed the livery back there and then we spun it off to somebody else. Let me tell you, the livery was great for me personally because at the first start out of here, it was a very difficult job and very frustrating trying to figure out all the pieces. So at about two o'clock in the afternoon, I'd call down the livery and say, settle up a horse. And I'd go out on the river for about two hours or an hour there and an hour in back, just hand it off to a wrangler. They'd take care of it, come back and you can work till eight o'clock at night and free and clear it. So that was a lot of fun. We were also on our second time of refreshing the livestock exchange building. So a lot of it we do is special events. You know, we saw the decline and the elimination of pioneer days in Chisholm Trail but we also saw the creation of what I said, the frontier fort days, the Labor Day concerts, Willie Nelson bringing his Fourth of July concert here, Christmas in the Stockyards. And one of our best events is kind of obscure, it's Caltown Goes Green, that's our St. Patrick's Day celebration. It's all family-oriented fun and you can't get on the street for the cattle drive. Some of the one-off events we've done is the Red Bull X Fighters. Did any of y'all get to come out for that? Yeah, they set up, they built a stadium on our property for 25,000 people to sit and watch motorcycles do flips. When Red Bull has real money and they're fun, fun, fun people. They were looking for a venue and they saw Fort Worth and they really liked it and they really liked cowboys. And so the Stockyards as part of the Fort Worth culture all worked well for their branding. And so they came out and we showed them such a good time. This is the first time they've ever come to America. They do 680 a year and they've never been to America. It's all in Europe and South America. They had such a good time. Unprecedentedly, they went back to the same location and had such a good time that the next round, we were on the final list and they decided not to come back to America but if they ever do, we are on that short list. We also did a Sensei event, served like summer, it was 104 when they showed up at that convention. So we set up water stations and serviced about 10,000 people for the day. They had such a good time. They spent the whole week out here. Thank you for that, David, by the way. Another real cool event was the International Powwow Travel Expo. Dallas spent thousands of dollars to fly these people from all over the world to talk about tourism in Texas. We set up one night out here on Exchange Avenue, blew them all away. So not that we were proud of that, it's just what we do. And most of you probably know, we have a remarkable public-private partnership with the City of Fort Worth Heard program. That's iconic to the city and to tourism for Fort Worth. I've been fortunate enough to be on the inception of it when we're trying to negotiate the original contract with the city on how this was all gonna work. And then through the transition over to the CVB, which has been very, very good for the CVB and the Heard because it's just a phenomenal marketing tool to market the city. Last year we saw over 720,000 people on the street for the cattle drives. And you say, why 11 o'clock, 11, 34 o'clock? Well, originally the train from Grapevine would come over. And so this was, when it worked great, it was phenomenal. But the train would show up at 11, 15, 11, 20, go across the street, put water in its tanks, come back across the street, blow its steam off. And as it cleared the track, the Heard would come back the other way. And you just see people, it was a stimulation overload. I mean, it just was wonderful. Grapevine schedule has changed and so they don't do that as much. And we knew we had a lot of people here, but it was kind of hard to count them because they were all over. And so we could see that about two o'clock people left. So we set the last cattle drive at four o'clock to keep them around. And you'll go out there at 11, 15, the street will just fill up with people and it'll dissipate. And at about 335, you'll start seeing a few, but about 345, here they'll all come. They'll come out of wherever they're at on the street and then they'll dissipate. So it's a great way for us to count for who is here and who hasn't been here. Stockyard Station itself personally puts in about 150,000 in in kind. We are the staff that secures the street for the cattle drive and we also let them have all of our facilities. Stockyard Station alone averages five media contacts a week. And there's a lot more that we don't even know until it hits the press or the internet that they've been here. And the large part of that is due to obviously the cattle drive. We know that that popularity won't last forever, but trust me that we work very diligently to address every concern. When somebody says we're coming, can we meet with you? Absolutely you can meet with us. Can we take a picture of that? Absolutely you can take a picture of that. We work very well with the press to make sure they get whatever story they need so that it gets printed. So what's next? Stockyard Station, our Billy Bob Partners, former association and master plan in 2009, the 108 acres that we managed and that plan was for the next 40 years. Regrettably the economy slowed down a little bit and we weren't able to get any of those projects off the ground yet, but they're all ready to go. The plan was so good that the American Planners Association recently gave us an award and the plan won a state award at American Planners Association. The growth potential for what Stockyard is going to be is phenomenal. It just takes a little bit more time, a little bit more money. The next phase is going to be pretty easy, but the second phase is going to be a little more difficult because we're going to have to add structured parking to handle the volumes of people that are coming down. They say that if you like what you do, you never work a day in your life. I've worked about 20 days in the 14 years I've been here. So I love it here. It's a great place to work. I love the fact that the city is very proud of what we do and that we can continue to deliver a product that the city is proud of. Thank y'all.


So, we should then receive a Form 1099R showing the total amount of any distribution from your IRA, before income tax, or other deductions were withheld. The amount should be shown in Box 1 of Form 1099R. Now note that if you're doing taxes for older individuals past retirement age, you would expect to receive 1099Rs. That would be a normal kind of process because that's when you would expect the retirements to be happening and those could be taxable events at that point in time. And we'd have to do tax planning based on how much tax they would owe based on how much they're gonna pull out of these kind of plans. However, you also might get like a 1099R when someone's still in their working years. And that's scary because that might mean that they pull the money out early, not only triggering a taxable event but possibly substantial penalties. So that's the thing to be careful about. So, unless otherwise noted in line 4A and 4B instructions, an IRA includes a traditional IRA, Roth IRA, simplified employee pension SEP IRA and saving incentive match plan for employees, a simple IRA. So let's just break those down a little bit here. So a normal IRA is kind of similar to like a 401K plan where you get the benefit of putting the money in and deferring it instead of reducing the money when you put it in in line one of the Form 1040, it's gonna be an above the line deduction because it wasn't pulled out of like your W2 wages and instead it has to be the above the line deduction. A Roth IRA is a situation where now you don't get the tax benefit when you put the money in but you get the tax benefit basically when you take the money out. Why would they do that? The government once again trying to incentivize you to put money and save it. Now, what if you're in a situation where you don't have that much tax right now at this point in time because your income is fairly low or you think that the government is spending massive amounts of money and at the point of retirement the tax rates are gonna have to go up at some point in time or something like that. So I'd rather take the hit now than pay the tax later because something's gonna hit the fan at some point. You might think something like that. Well, in that case, then it wouldn't be an incentive to use the IRA because you're not paying much taxes or you think the taxes will be worse later when you're gonna be hit with them. So then you could put money in using a Roth IRA where you basically pay the taxes now but you get like the benefit of the earnings and when you take it out, you don't have the, you get the benefit at that point. So it would be nice to have a little bit in both something like a Roth and a normal IRA. So at the point of retirement, we can live on income which is only part taxable, right? So if I got, if I lived on a hundred thousand and half of it came from an IRA and half from a Roth IRA, only the half, the 50,000 from the taxable IRA would be subject to tax, which means I could be living on a hundred thousand but only paying taxes on the 50,000 which would be a lower income threshold. And that means in our progressive tax system we'd be paying a substantially less amount of tax, right? So that would be ideal if possible. But again, most people are putting money in from a 401K plan. And so there's somewhat kind of limited tide to work. And we'll talk about those possibly later. Then you got the simplified employee pension, a SEP plan. Now this is gonna be kind of like a 401K plan but it's gonna be for smaller businesses because 401K plans are quite expensive to manage. And if you're a sole proprietor you might set up a SEP type of plan for yourself to be able to put more money in than you otherwise would in like an IRA. We might talk more about that when we get to schedule C's and a saving incentive match, a simple same similar kind of concept that's kind of like a 401K for a small business trying to mirror some of the benefits they can be provided and possibly giving more ability to the owner to put money into something like an IRA to give tax benefit from it without the burdensome prospect of making a 401K which is quite burdensome. So except as otherwise provided next leave line for a blank and enter the total distribution from form 1099 or box one online for B. So remember we're talking about the distribution side of it. We're taking the money out now that have been put in to say an IRA. So.