Good afternoon. Welcome back from lunch. My name is Alan Douay. I'm the product manager for Logregator. How many folks here know what Logregator is? All right, lots of people. Anybody want to do a source code review for Logregator right now? Just come on up here, dude. Only joking. Today in the presentation, what I'd like to do is go over Logregator just a little bit of a high level, explain what it is, how it works at a very simplistic level, and then we'll look at each of the different components. Logregator within the Cloud Foundry kind of broader spectrum is one of the components where you have to make choices about how much loss versus how much performance, how much resources you want to throw at it. And so we'll go over some tuning tips here, some experiences, maybe a little bit of an explanation about each component, and then some common problems. These are problems that we kind of see quite often from an inbound customer request perspective. Open it up for Q&A at the end, although if there's any questions along the way, please feel free to interrupt me. I'm happy to field some questions. And because everything's better as a CF app, this presentation is actually pushed. You can go look at it live there on that URL. So to kick it off, how does Logregator work? Well, easy. It works just like this. This is the boxes and lines diagram of our architecture document. One of the core things that we're trying to do with Logregator is that when you, outside of the Cloud Foundry ecosystem, when you have an app that crashes on a machine, you normally just log into the machine and go look at logs. You want to go see the standard errors. Maybe you have to restart that machine to get to it. Maybe the machines crash, but what you see is what the application state was at that termination phase. With Logregator, you don't really, or with CF, you don't have that, right? Because the machines themselves are ephemeral. We get rid of them. If the app crashes, we kill that container and bring up a new container. And so there's no place to go back to. There's no going back to that old machine state. And so what we do is we create a system by which we take the standard in and standard errors and we bring them out of the containers, make them available externally. There's a couple things. It makes it available. You don't have to be on that machine in order to get this information. But secondly, it really just preserves it so that that way the state of the container isn't the deciding factor about whether or not you get to see information about what your applications, what they were doing, what the environment was like at the time that something happened. It is fairly complex in that we have multiple different things sending through Logurgator and multiple different outputs. The key thing that we do though is application logs. And so within the broader diagram here, you'll see that we're sending metrics about the container. We're also sending component metrics through. There's different outputs. There's a native syslog piece. There's nozzles. We'll talk a little bit about each one of those. But at the high level here, I wanted to kind of go back down to a more simplified view and just look at app logs and show you kind of how they work at a high level. So whether you're running DA or Diego, you have the same thing here. On each individual cell, you have one component called Metron. And this isn't as part of the containers. This is just in the host cell. What happens is if you're using Diego, Diego will come in and has a piece called Executor, great name. And it will actually start reading off from the containers. It will read each line out of standard error or standarded out. Put it into an envelope, drops on envelope, and send it to the Metron component on that cell. Metron then sends that packet out over to a collection of servers we call Dopplers, right? And so the idea here is that you have, with Logurgate, you have two different things. One, sending information from these cells. And then another, people consuming from that middle tier, that Doppler layer, and they're bringing things out. That's an important concept to understand because what we're trying to do when we talk about tuning is right sizing that flow of information through. Basically egressing the data out of the system as fast as you're inputting it in or finding that right balance. You can obviously over provision on one side or the other, but that's where you really kind of run into problems and you get what we call log loss. The log loss piece here is probably a big topic for Logurgator. We obviously kind of have to answer this question of why did I lose my logs? And when we design Logurgator, the key concepts that kind of come into play here for us are that we don't want to, in that very first picture you can kind of see, we don't want to put any pressure back on to the applications, right? So the one thing that often happens is when an application is crashing it's because it's got resource constraints, it's got environment constraints that basically the app is under stress. The last thing you want to do is say, no, you have to write this thing out to this service endpoint and that's really where we would get into if we said, well, it's critical that all messages come through. So I don't want any of this stuff to produce back pressure, produce this requirement back onto the application in order to service this need. What that means is we allow a lot of preemption, right? We allow the application to be able to send this out in that 12-factor app way to just say, just log it to standard out and I don't care, that's a transaction that I don't have to manage, I don't have to keep track of, I can just keep moving on. What will happen, though, is in some cases you end up seeing post that right, things go awry, right? Like the application, that particular log can be lost in several different areas. We'll talk about those in a little bit. The other kind of tenet that we're trying to adhere to as we're producing a aggregator is that we want to get you into information as quickly as possible. So that means that if there's something in the system that's slowing down or jamming up other pieces of the system, we're just going to let that information go in order to prioritize traffic that's sitting behind it. We don't want stuff to get backed up, so to speak, and therefore we're going to try and send information as quickly as possible, find those areas where there might be some issue, and just blow past them. And then the last piece here is within the system there's this concept that we're going to allow multiple consumers to feed from this same information. So you might have a monitoring solution that's pulling metrics and information out. You might have an integration with something like Splunk pulling logs out, but you still want to see those logs if you see a tail, for example. And so within our system here we syndicate effectively the information so that it's available, the same information is available to multiple consumers. There's several tricks along the way here to do different things, but these are the tenants that drive the architecture of what we're trying to do. So when you look at those pieces and you're talking about what we call loss, or how to scale, right-tune the system so that you minimize loss, but you don't super over-provision one way or the other, really there's two things that are very helpful for you to know as an operator or somebody trying to set up the system. One is what's your application log per some time period? Like how many logs do you think you're emitting from your apps every, for example, every second? And then the second piece is like, how are you consuming these out? Do you run in multiple nozzles or are developers just kind of casually come along doing tailing logs every now and then just to see what the apps are like? Do you have syslog drain configured? The reason for that is as you look at the components each has an impact across the system will go through. So when you're looking at this there's really the three areas that you have an option to kind of do things about when it comes to Logregator.  Now within the system here, kind of the key piece as a high level is to look at the Dopplers. These are the middle, really they're right in the middle of Logregator, so to speak, and they're doing two different tasks. They're receiving information inbound from your Diego cells and they're moving things out. When we see loss, I see loss happen usually at two different places. It can happen more than one place but kind of the first place I really see loss happening is when messages kind of get stacked up at the Doppler itself. So your ingestion is faster than what your egress or your consumption of logs coming out of Logregator is and that happens sometimes when you have how many people here run something like Splunk or have a syslog out, drain, right? Lots of folks. When you have that kind of syslog drain and you're pulling that information out, if you're pulling it slow then what will happen here is that you'll start to see a message in Splunk, that's what it has about Splunk. You'll see a very helpful log message in Splunk that says, hey by the way you got like 999 messages for you. You're like, why did you send me this one then? But the idea here is what we did was we went ahead and made a cautious decision to say hey look, too many of these things are being stacked up in the middle. We're getting rid of the buffers so that we can actually let more stuff flow through. It's kind of a signal that says one or two things happen. You either got a spike in traffic beyond what your buffer could handle or you just really slow what we have here. So you need to make a configuration change.  I'm going to dive into Metron first and then we'll go to Doppler's and traffic controller. With Metron we've done a lot of research especially on virtual machines where we try to see how many messages we can pump into Metron before you start to see loss happen right there to Metron. Really we start to max out on virtual hardware about 8,000 messages per second. For the purposes of kind of like a planning area here what I try to do is I try to help folks target about 1,000 app logs per second is maybe the range where you want to look at how many Diego cells you need. So really you only have kind of two options here. One is you can increase your number of Diego cells. That the number of tenant apps on any one cell will decrease and as it decreases the load on Metron kind of a balances out it will subsequently decrease. Oftentimes that's usually the case. The second piece here is when I mentioned earlier is every single line within standard error or standard out gets its own message. One way to decrease message traffic is actually to kind of trick the Diego cell into sending multi line messages as one message package. That's the next slide I'll show you what we're talking about there. But the key there is if you're in about 1,000 app logs per second range within each of your Diego cells you have some additional overhead. You can have spikes that will help accommodate you for. There is a built in you're going to pay the price for some metrics flowing across. So every per cell emits container metrics every 30 seconds. That's also flowing through Metron. So this kind of that 1,000 messages a second is just a good baseline. You're probably going to be sending about 2,000 messages a second at that rate anyway. And again it's just a starting point. What we really ask you to look at here is Metrons don't overflow them beyond that 8,000 point. You're going to start seeing loss happening there beyond the 2.5% range and part of that is because Metron can't handle that rate on a lot of hardware. You'll start to run into things like UDP buffer size gets overflowed so UDP will start dropping it. Metron agent will start, its diodes will start dropping it through the process there. One of the key things here I think we'll just actually jump into it. How many folks have multi-line stack trace dumps? And then have you done anything about it yet? What you see with those stack trace dumps is that each line comes across as a separate message. And then even if you're using Splunk or Elk or any other tool to try and reassemble logs which you see is logs that kind of come across really choppy. In fact they're hard to reassemble because you don't even know the sequence where they got in. One of the key tenets about the system is that it runs sent to Dopplers that are within its own zone. So when you're talking about when you're talking about the number of Dopplers you want to make sure that there's an equitable number of Dopplers for every zone. They actually have three of them. Three zones for example, availability zones instead of running 13 or 14 run 15 Dopplers. You have five each in each area. What that does is it gives you a better chance of having at least all of the messages within the same availability zone of Dopplers, but the metrons will naturally try to spread the load out across those Dopplers. What that means is that you might not even receive those log lines in sequence from that. Because some of the lines might go to one Doppler others might go to another Doppler. Really kind of the strategy we've seen a lot of folks employ here and apologies we've been working pretty hard on the aggregator side to try and take care of this multi-line issue, but it really boils down to like this is a component portion of Diego so we're working with that team to try and overcome this. You can kind of trick it. This is what we've seen a lot of folks do. They use something like log back or every standard out before they standard out they'll add some sort of ruin to try and make it look like a single line. The key things to know if you use a strategy to try and send a multi-line message and then recompose it back at the consumer in is that in certain versions of CF we're going to truncate that for you anyway. We're going to go ahead and split that up because we only want messages of a certain message size. Since we use UDP UDP has 64k message send limit before it starts breaking up packets anyway and so in CF237 I think we went ahead and increased the max packet size that the executor will create and allow to send through. So the multi-line messages you're going to start seeing in older versions will get truncated but you'll see bigger and bigger messages that you'll be able to send through Metron. This obviously one of the things the strategy does is it reduces your message rate through to Metron. Metron doesn't care that the package is size X it just cares how many it has to send. That's its overhead actually and so for a lot of folks this is actually the strategy they would rather. They would rather send the message whole as much as possible. We've been working on this for a while obviously part of the limitation but the technology perspective has been the fact that we don't actually own some of the message assembly piece, the Diego team but we have been working on the logarithm side to try and make bigger and bigger packages supported. There will be some limit obviously we don't want to send in 10 gig log files through the system that will obviously be a problem but this is a good strategy for folks who are trying to who have this kind of problem are trying to reduce their message rate through to Metron and then there was Dopplers. Dopplers are interesting. The key piece here I think a lot of folks will kind of like rule the thumb say that about four to one, four Diego cells per Doppler is kind of where you want your your deployment sizing that's okay. I mean one of the things that I kind of start off with is say if you know what your average rate is through a system then the Dopplers you don't want to get them too high that's pretty much above about 4,000 messages a second that's messages total so that's the metrics coming across as well as the logs and the reason for that is that actually and technically the Dopplers can take more ingress than that but what we start to find is that on the consuming side you're going to actually not be able to pull it out as fast as that and so the Dopplers have an interesting feature they each of the Dopplers have every single sync so if you guys do a syslog configuration that's cups dash L where you send it directly to your syslog stuff the log there it'll create what we call a sync for that s-i-n-k not synchronization s-i-n-k and the idea there is that that's what we call a buffer or a queue if you will it allows us to put messages in there and hold it temporarily it's completely a temporary store while consumers start to pull information off the idea there being kind of twofold one we allow you to kind of use that for spiky traffic so if you have the same kind of egress from the system you're pulling information out of Dopplers as fast as you're putting it in and then you get a big spike it's just a place where it'll let you kind of pile them up for a bit so that your consumer can continuously take them out the second piece is we store it temporarily so that you can kind of see that backlog anybody ever run CF logs and then tail some logs out and you see like the logs that previously had will store like a hundred of them for you so we can kind of see that those are the concepts there now every single sync gets their buffer on every single Doppler meaning the Dopplers have if you have five or six different consumers there you might have a bunch of these different sync and their subsequent buffers so when you look at that you need to consider hey am I do I need to put additional RAM or ephemeral disc here for my Dopplers just to give them sort of some room if you've got really really large buffers one of the big things that that changed let's see if releases we changed like the default buffer size the buffer size is per message count not per size and previously it was 99 messages so if you're ever seeing that you lost 98 messages you know that you've got 99 messages as your buffer count there but recently that's been up to I think 9999 just because we feel like that's actually helping folks in terms of giving a little bit more head space and it obviously for the most part you don't have a ton of the messages themselves aren't very large so they're not taking up a lot of space on the disc if you do send multi-line messages so you send those logs whole then obviously you have to reconsider you know can you take 10,000 messages at 60k a piece on there and make sure you appropriately size the Doppler so they can absorb those types of pieces but I want to kind of stress here that that whole queuing that buffer piece is really not meant to be a sort of a long-term storage piece it's really meant to accommodate spikes if your consumer end is slow then it won't ever matter you're always going to end up we're always going to end up filling the buffer and for us when we fill the buffer we just drop the whole buffer we just kill it all and then let the stuff behind it come through and that's that's sort of the methodology that that we're using right now what it means is you do get that log message that lets you know that that happened but no guarantees of what we just dropped whatever was there that's what we that's what was dropped and that's per that buffer per sync so in order to avoid that what we kind of hope to get people to do is look at three things first you know look at the number of Dopplers you have per zone like in a couple of cases that I've looked at folks had four Dopplers in two zones and three Dopplers in one zone and so it just so happened that as they were seeing that log loss it was from the zone where they had three Dopplers that that's where you'd end up seeing the consumption for whatever reason the ingest effectively there was happening faster across those three Dopplers than they were in the in the other Dopplers in the other zones so try and balance them out make sure you don't have an imbalance there secondly look at your buffer size from a you know sensibility perspective if it's at a hundred you could probably do more than that but but is it really accommodating spikes or do you have sort of just slow ingestion throughput if you have slow ingestion throughput you have two options there one is you can actually kind of decrease Dopplers ingestion rate by increasing the number of Dopplers and so it'll spread the load the metronomal spread the load then the average rate of ingest into each one of the Dopplers will effectively go down and so if you're pulling it out that doesn't necessarily mean that that's going to work for you because obviously still has to go through all the information from all the areas each of the Dopplers but it will it will basically mean that each one of those buffers have more time before they're going to expire before they reach the max load the second thing you can do is if you have this opportunity of this option you can create two two nozzles and use the same subscription idea that effectively splits the traffic up so what what will happen on that front is they'll basically pull from the same syncs but they'll randomly pull half the traffic each right and so that effectively it doubles your egress of the information out of the system but of course it means you'll have to figure out a way to reassemble that stream back on your consumer in but these are some successful strategies we've talked to other folks about and we've looked at it's really that balance area and unfortunately there's no one answer here which you look at is just a combination of those different things how do I get that right balance of flow through the system and using the buffers just as that sort of that spike that spikiness type of accommodation and then lastly the traffic controllers I think some information has been out in the past about how many traffic controllers per Doppler that's okay that's kind of a good rule of thumb but in general you want to look at how many consumers you have when it comes to traffic controllers within the system if you're familiar with like a reverse proxy effectively what traffic controller is it's saying here's one endpoint but it creates connections to every single sync on every single Doppler and so as a result what you can do is if you have a ton of traffic controllers but only one or two nozzles you're basically making the Dopplers pay an extra overhead cost for managing each one of those connections when in reality you don't you don't need to do that in fact you can probably help the Dopplers out there by scaling down your traffic controllers in that in that respect there are some things obviously you don't want to scale them down you don't want to constrain them too much because they are proxying and managing that output for you but what you want to do here is maybe look at how many different consumers you have if you're just running one nozzle and people are coming see if tail usually a couple of traffic controllers are enough for you on that front so that's the that's kind of the high level pieces for for traffic controller I'm going to stop here because the next pieces I do are just common problems are there any questions or any areas where I can clarify for anyone yes yeah it's a good question so we get this request a lot so that that is actually in the backlog as a request both the prioritization of log messages from call it a classification scheme where we'll say priority one priority two priority three and then try to somehow sequence out and drop like priority threes first and then priority twos the challenge I think on our end is that there's probably a bit of work we do before that around saying can we even segment the stream for example right now you're getting message loss but you don't know whether those messages are in fact logs or if they are metrics coming from other parts of the system in fact they're probably a combination of both so I would feel like one of the other requests here is maybe to split across split apart those particular pieces so now when you have log loss you have log loss you know or metric loss and so maybe our first attempt at this will will likely be to try to split out logs and metrics into different streams and then try to prioritize all logs first and instead of introducing a you have to pick how you want you know the classification of the logs to be so that's some future stuff that we're looking at yeah any other questions yes yeah sure they're actually it's synonyms for us the sync is really that visual representation and I almost apologize to say this of having like a sync with a faucet with you know you turn on the hose and that's the that's the metron sending into the dopplers and then the drain effectively so in fact I think we even call it syslog drain just because we want to like reinforce that visual is pulling that stuff out so it's just like a sync if you're if you're not able to drain as fast as you're putting in you're gonna overflow and for us the moment we overflow we just dump the whole sync out and then give you a fresh one and that's really what it's meant for not meant for longer term storage anything that's in there is going to be pulled as soon as you have a consumer that's ready to pull it and so I sometimes would call it cues a buffer sync my apologies here but I think in the documentation we call it officially a sync SINK I'll just start here with a couple of like the most common issues that we're seeing around that come to us from you know a perspective of support issues or support escalations one of the challenges within system is when you have this many components they have to have a way to find one another we don't actually hard code it in fact what happens when we want you to roll or produce another set of Dopplers we want all the other components to dynamically find those new things so we don't want to throw everything away we we're trying to help in fact we don't want you to roll these in order to get more Dopplers we don't want you to roll Diego cells for example and so what we do is we use etcd as our service discovery component and most of the time I'd say probably close to 50 or 60% of the issues that get escalated to us end up having to do with some challenge that happens some breakage along this route here where Metron for example is talking to I'll give you a specific example here one time an etcd node came up and it didn't join the cluster so it created its own cluster and now Dopplers some Dopplers say hey I'm new and it talks to it goes to console DNS and it says hey there's an etcd IP address and it goes there and it says I'm registering and it finds itself the only one there and now Metron agents even though it's one of ten Dopplers in the system two or three Metron agents start to say hey I'm also redirecting now and then they start to flood that one Doppler so there's a classic output on this as you say well some of my apps I'm getting everything but I'm just missing tons of logs in these other apps and we end up always saying go check your etcd health cluster and they always come back and say well etcd is fine you say how many of them do you have and then they say well two that's the problem right there right so one of the things to check out is these other systems and that's the etcd one has I think a couple of manifestations there's that one sometimes the keys get missed sometimes an event in etcd so a change like hey a new traffic controllers come online or a new Dopplers come online doesn't get published as they're pushed as other pieces often times what you'll hear from a support perspective is somebody say well just go roll that Doppler or just go roll that traffic controller and then it suddenly works nine times out of ten when that happens this is what's behind the scenes causing that is it's that dynamic configuration isn't quite synced right and so they don't know of one another and that's what's kind of causing that that flow piece we're obviously spending some time here we're like like all the components from a service discovery perspective we're trying to make this a bit more robust and consolidate it down but this is probably the number one piece there if you're if you're managing the aggregator deployment and you see issues here start here because this will probably save you some time the other one is we get a lot of questions well because people do see this big long this message that comes in says hey we've just dropped nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine and it's almost always because they're a slow consumer and most of the time when we look at this it'll be you know you're using Splunk and you're using like a small syslog forwarder but you're sending a lot of information its way and so there's a couple of different strategies on that you know you can if you're using something like that you go move up to a heavy or medium syslog forwarder something that can pull information faster most folks don't know this but you can actually spread the load you can actually send this to like a low balancer and f5 or something like that and spread it across multiple consumers behind us behind the scenes for us and that'll usually speed up the right technically what's happening on the syslog drain piece is that we have a routine that's writing out and so it's waiting for the response back over that connection before it writes the next one and so that's why we know when something slow is we can say hey we just waited a really long time for these pieces and now the queues backed up and so again based on just that that simple architecture what we do is we just go ahead and drop the whole buffer and try to bring in the latest greatest the newest messages behind that in order to try to catch up when you see this most of the time if you see it we're going to ask you for two kind of pieces of information is this because of a spike do you think this was anomalous if so consider either spreading out your load across multiple Dopplers or increasing your buffer size or if it's continuous we're going to work with you on how to get egress faster out of the system even though you might spread it across multiple Dopplers the best way to go is look from the back end if you can get it out of the system faster you won't you won't get this issue this message it's a lot easier normally to try and do that's a lot better across the board yes yes it is yes that's exactly right we do writes across that for syslog drain irrespective if you're using something like the firehose the syslog nozzle that's a little different but yes it's effectively the same kind of thing if you can get it faster out the better for you but if you ever need to get a hold of somebody or you want to just chat with the logger gator team we're happy to do that we're based out of Denver, Colorado we are always interested in kind of hearing feedback about logger gator we're kind of like deep in the guts of CF so we don't always get to meet everybody so it's kind of fun feel free to slack us that's usually the best way to get a hold of anybody we have some good documents and we try to document at least in the github repository as much as we can it's probably one of the better ones if you ever want to look at some of the source code and documentation there we do put up a decent amount of information so feel free to kind of look through there reach out to the team I'm happy I'm going to be here for the rest of the day and so much more so if anybody wants to chat about logger gator let me know I'm happy to do so and right on time cool


Dear students, in this module, we are going to talk about the theory building process. We have frequently confronted with the theories. However, it becomes very difficult for us to grasp that how this theory building process is initiated and what are the mechanisms behind the theory building process. We would see that there are two approaches that would help us in this theory building process, inductive and deductive. Inductive approach starts with the empirical observations like the limited number of observations and data collection. And based on those limited number of observations, we move towards the development of theory. So based on the limited number of observations and then towards the theory building process. On the other hand, for the deductive approach, we start with a theory or a hypothesis like a specific particular statement and then we test it through the empirical observations and the data collection. Inductive approach is more a kind of exploratory approach. It's a more general approach that generates different new ideas and new hypotheses. However, inductive approach offers us relatively less reliable knowledge as compared to the deductive approach. So deductive approach is more like a confirmatory approach and it tests different existing theories and hypotheses. So both approaches are used in the field of sociology to build and test different theories or hypotheses. For example, inductive approach in the field of sociology can be used to study the emergence of different social movements in a society. For example, the social movement that would lead to the gender equality or the protests against the gender equality or the latest feminist movements which are initiated in Pakistan. And here we would say that inductive approach would help us to draw certain conclusions based on our limited number of observations. And then the example for the deductive approach would be used to test certain hypotheses that social class can affect the educational attainment. Here we have a specific statement that can be testable through this deductive approach that whether social class affects the educational attainment or not. Social class ki jab hum baat karein toh phir hum aage age module to hum dekhenge ke kis tara se social class jo hai wo different variables aur different assumptions ki bunyaad ke upar ek testable variable ban sakta hai aur phir uske baad hum uska effect ki tara se dekh sakta hai educational attainment ke upar. So this is a pictorial reflection of these two approaches that deductive approach is from general to specific and inductive approach goes from specific to the general mode of knowledge.


I'm so glad you're joining us on Hope Today. I'm here with Tom Hollis and today you're gonna hear about how God is moving all around the world. And so we're so glad that you're joining us because we know that hope not only happens here, but God is truly moving in every sphere and every place, Tom. Yeah, Sidney, a lot of times I think that we use our own frame of reference and what our church is going through and what our lives are going through. But when you hear the word Iran, what do you think of? You hear that country? Well, if you're of an age such as me, you might think of the hostage crisis or you might think of a closed off militant Islamic regime there and that would be true. But Dr. Hormuz Shariat, the president of Iran Alive Ministry is gonna be with us in just a second. And man, there are amazing things happening in Iran. You're gonna hear some amazing stories and some amazing things that God is doing there that I just can't wait for you to hear him and to hear. Also, he has a very interesting take on Jeremiah. I think what is it? Jeremiah 49. And you're gonna wanna hear where Iran fits in prophecy of today. It's gonna be a great discussion. I love to always hear how God is moving and I know he's doing so many amazing things in the Middle East. And so I'm so excited to hear about what God is doing, how he's moving. And we also have an update, Tom, about what is going on in Ukraine. Yeah, you know, if you remember late last year, we put out the call that our friend Phillip Cameron and his ministry, Orphans Hands, was doing some great things where they're in Moldova right near Ukraine and they were going across the border and bringing food and bringing supplies, but they needed coats for the winter. And you all responded amazingly and brought, we had 3,000 coats and gloves and hats and everything that we sent over there. And they just gave us an update on it. Watch this. Hey, CTVN, Tom, all our family there, friends. We are standing in a refugee center in Jungain, Moldova at the moment. We're about to hand out the warm blankets you see behind us, all these coats and these boxes that you see. Many that have been donated from CTVN in the Pittsburgh area. And then we've got groceries, hundreds and hundreds of pounds of groceries through in another room that we're about to give to these people as well. And we just wanted to take a moment and say thank you for getting involved. The 3,000 coats and thousands of hats and scars that you guys gave are impacting real lives. And we're just so excited that we get the opportunity to hand those out in a few moments to these people who have lost everything from what happened this past year. But we appreciate you all. We are thankful for you all. And we just can't say enough and how much we appreciate you all. So thank you so much. God bless you. Cindy, I love that video. I see those U-Haul boxes. Those are our U-Haul boxes over there. And I see some of the coats that we packed are being pulled out. I knew it would be like this. They're kind of looking at them and trying to size them up for themselves or their kids. But it's great to see that they're making an impact. They're doing something and really you did this. You all that responded, that brought up coats. We had so many that we couldn't believe how many people responded. And it was fantastic. And we shipped the whole big truckload of coats over there, fantastic things. I think it's so beautiful. You see when the body of Christ, when we come together, we can truly be the hands and feet. And so we just wanna say thank you again for all of your donations and all that you've done to make it possible. And I just wanna even encourage you today. I know in our world, there are so many things, especially in 2023 that is happening, even in our city, even in our nation, in our world. And maybe this is the time as you are watching that video and seeing what was happening in Ukraine, I just encourage you to just ask God, ask the Holy Spirit, what can I do to be a light in the midst of the darkness? We know there's so many shakings, there's so many rumblings, there's so many things that are happening in our world. And we know it's gonna continue to get darker, but we are called to be the light. And so we just wanna encourage you today, just seek the Father and be like, God, what can I do today? What difference can I make today? Because Tom truly, one thing I love that I'm our dear friend, I remember James Gull, he said, it's like we're called to be hope solutionists. If we do not do the call of action, who is? So I think it's time for us to like stand in the gap to pray, but truly to walk and be the light. We've all got something that we can do, it's amazing. It could be giving a code, it could be traveling around the world, sharing the gospel, but it could be just traveling across your street and sharing the love of God with someone. Our next guest is very passionate about that, about bringing Iranians to Christ. He is the founder and president of Iran Alive Ministries, which aims to transform Iran, listen to this, into a Christian nation one soul at a time. Dr. Hormuz Shariat is a great friend of ours here at Cornerstone Television Network, and he joins us now to share more about what's going on in Iran and how Iran fits into biblical prophecy. Dr. Hormuz, it's great to have you back with us on Hope Today. Thank you, it's good to be here and share what the Lord is doing. Well, when you were introduced to me a few years ago, you were introduced as the Billy Graham of Iran, and I'll never forget your response when someone introduced you that way. You said, so many people are coming to Christ in Iran, anybody could be the Billy Graham of Iran. So tell me about that, because we don't see that side of what's going on in Iran. Well, we know the Lord loves the world that he sent his son, and the Muslims are included in this world. So the Lord loves Muslims, and he wants them to get saved. How? By showing the true face of Islam, and that's what has happened in Iran. For the last 40 years of Islamic rule, the people of Iran have come to have an experience, to have a great and deep look at Islam and experience it for 40 years, and they've come, Iranian people, Iranian Muslims, have come to this conclusion, Islam is not our way, it's not the solution, it's the source of our problem, and we need to get rid of it. So that's what's happening in Iran. The Lord has used the suffering of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the oppression it has brought, to open the eyes and hearts of the Iranians. They're having a look at Islam, and they're saying, we don't want it. And what else is out there? And that's where we come. We need to present the gospel, present Jesus in a clear way, and once they hear it, many, many of them are coming to Christ. And Iran, yes, Iran will be a Christian nation. Sometimes people ask me, where did you get that idea? Well, that's crazy. Iran, Islamic nation, to be a Christian nation, I say, yes, where did you get that idea? I say, I stole it. I stole it from, where did you steal it from? I stole it from the Lord in Jeremiah 49, 38. That's where the Lord promises that He will set His throne in Iran. Setting His throne is a major promise. It's more than just many come to Christ. He is gonna rule the hearts and minds of the Iranians in a very near future. Yes, in fact, let's read that verse right now because we wanted you to comment a little more about that, Jeremiah 49, 38, and it says this, I will set my throne in Elim, says the Lord, and I will destroy its king and officials. Now that sounds like a really hard word, more than a promise, but tell me your interpretation. And again, of Elam, is that modern day Iran? Yes, Elam is completely inside the land of Iran today. And so any prophecies in the Bible about Persia and Elam both are being fulfilled in Iran today. Because both of them are part of today's Iran. And Ezekiel 38 talks about Iran with Russia and other nations attacking Israel. That's really negative. It will happen in the future. And we can see the government of Iran developing nuclear bomb, trying to fulfill that without them knowing they want to attack Israel. But when you come to the people of Iran who are so different from the government of Iran, the people of Iran are fulfilling Jeremiah 49, 38. So the government of Iran is trying to fulfill Ezekiel 38. The people of Iran at the same time are fulfilling Jeremiah 49, 38. Setting his throne, his throne is not up his throne. What does it mean? Does it mean many millions come to Christ? Yes, of course, many Iranians are coming to Christ. Does it mean many churches? Yes, there are underground churches and soon we will see churches in every city. But it's more than that. I live in Dallas. There's so many churches here. But I don't think God can say I rule Dallas. I rule Texas with all the Christians, all the churches. So Iran will be a nation as a nation, love the Lord, worship the Lord and obey the word of God. And that's the future of Iran. By the way, it's happening. It's moving in that fulfillment of that prophecy very, very fast. Iranians are coming to Christ like never before. I'm amazed to hear even a statistic. What was it, 19% of the growth in the church and just in a very short time. But let me ask you something else. What we have seen on TV in the last few months is the women protesting, taking to the streets, protesting against having to wear head coverings because of an incident where one woman showed up without a head covering and was beaten to death. And that's been the government's, every time there's some kind of protest or some kind of freedom begins to break out, their response has been to clamp down and to persecute and to imprison and to do beatings and things. What is happening in all this? Well, there are many things happening in Iran which is very unique and first in history. And one of them is what you mentioned. Iran is the only nation in the history where there is a revolution happening led by women. The women, Islamic women who are coming to Christ and Islamic women who have rejected Islam, they are the forefront of revolution in Iran. This uprising is not gonna go away, it's gonna turn into a revolution. The government is killing many people, including many women, many young people, many children, but they cannot stop it. So that's one unique thing. Women led revolution in Iran is happening. And why? Because they're oppressed. You know, when you're in darkness and those who are in darkness, they come to light, they appreciate the light. So women of Iran, when they come to Christ and they realize their value, their identity in Christ, because in Islam, they're just the property, they're just slaves to men. And suddenly they're set free and their children and their princesses of God, suddenly these women become agents of transformation. When a woman comes to Christ in Iran, she starts letting many people to Christ. She's not afraid. Many of them say, I'm not afraid. I was dead anyway. I was worthless anyway. So women in both political revolution in Iran and spiritual revolution in Iran, the women are at the forefront. It's truly incredible. Dr. Armuz, what we're seeing is going on in Iran with the revolution. I just wanna ask you, you know, here in America, what are things that we can do for prayer or even reaching out to the Iranian community, just to show the love of Christ? What are some practical things that we can do now? Well, Iran has the potential, actually has a promise that will turn to Christ.  He's gonna use Iran to reach out to the whole world. So Iran is the key, not just to the Middle East, but the whole world, because he says, I will set my throne there. What should we do? Of course, the prayer, because we know the Prince of Persia is there. You know, Daniel talks about Prince of Persia and we have to win the war first in the heavenlies. But also, this is a historical opportunity to turn an Islamic nation to a Christian nation. God has started the fire. He wants us to cooperate with him, do our part. He needs to, for us to add fuel to that fire. The fire already has started. Now, what is the need? Is that evangelism? I say no. Evangelism is easy. The simplest message of the gospel that I share on the air, many, many are coming to Christ. As you know, we have a 24-7 satellite broadcast. We go over the heads of the Mullahs into people's homes and many are coming to Christ. So what is the need? The need here is discipleship and training leaders, which we are doing, but the growth is so fast, we cannot catch up. So I'm inviting, yes, pray. Yes, if the Lord leads you to support us financially, but also come and join us, disciple of that nation. Many, many new believers, many babies in Christ, they need milk, they need meat, they need to grow fully in Christ and we need help there. Absolutely, you know, you shared something with me that I think is good to bring out. We've heard in many cases in the Islamic world that when a person comes to Christ from a Muslim background, that they're not only persecuted culturally, but they're from the government, but they're persecuted from their family. Tell me what goes on in Iran though. It's a little bit different there. Yeah, Iran is a very unique Islamic nation. First of all, it's the first Islamic nation where Islam has experienced its defeat. It's a, you know, there was a recent survey asking 50,000 Iranians, what do you believe? Can you believe it? Less than one third said, we believe in Islam. When I tell people, Iran is no longer an Islamic nation, people say, crazy, are you crazy? Just Google it, it's 98%, let's know. Recent survey, less than one third say we believe in Islam. So Islam has been defeated, that's one thing. Now, another one is persecution. As you mentioned, it's so unique in any other Islamic nation. When somebody comes to Christ, the persecution comes usually from friends and family members or neighbors. Sooner or later, they have to run for their lives because of their family, friends, and they want to kill them, but not in Iran. Iran, Islam is non-issue.  So when a family member comes to Christ, this is the norm. Most of the time, many of the family members come to Christ also. And even if they don't, they have a positive view of Christianity. Can you believe in Larry? I've done this, I've asked the Muslims in Iran, what do you believe about Islam? These are Muslims, okay? And I usually hear like this, oh, I don't believe this Islam, I don't believe this God, I don't believe what these Mullahs are telling me. And I tell them, so what do you believe? He said, I believe if there is God, if he's a God of love, he loves us and asks us to love one another. I think if there is God, he will forgive us and wants to ask us to forgive one another. Without knowing, they describe the God of the Bible. That's why when I share the gospel, it resonates with what's in their heart. And when they come to Christ, people see a life transformation and many family members come to Christ. Just last week, I was talking to somebody from Iran and he was so excited. He was saying, you know what's happening? Just all these suffering, all the killings on the streets has opened the hearts of the people. And that's what he said. He said, my family were against my faith in Christ. Just six months ago, they were telling me, we are going to turn you in. If you don't come back to Islam, of course they were threatening. And he said, the last three months when the, since the protests had started, he said, I have led 23 of my friends and family members to Christ. Those who used to threaten me, those who used to be against Christ, they're coming to Christ. So there is a move of God in Iran. And if we work together, Iran will be the first Islamic nation that's come to Christ. That is thrilling. It would be thrilling. I just have this picture of this jewel of Christian, Christianity right there in the Middle East. But let me ask you a little bit about your ministry because you said something about broadcasting over the head of the Mullahs. I like that imagery. But in Iran, the internet is suppressed quite a bit and people don't have internet access. You think, well, they would go looking for alternatives on the internet, but they don't really have that kind of access. But they do have access to satellite broadcasts like yours. Tell me the power of Christian television in Iran. Exactly. That's the only way to get to a close country like Iran and in the privacy of their homes. Internet is very controlled. Many times they shut it down when there are protests on streets. They just completely shut it down. And even when it's working, they're watching people. It's technology. They know which website you went yesterday, last night. They keep track of you. And many times people are being arrested for even going to a website and doing a like. That's dangerous. Going to a Christian website, writing a comment or just doing a like. You could get arrested and some people have. So it is a satellite television. Of course, in the US we see fewer and fewer people watching satellite and they're going online to watch things. But because of the limitation of internet, satellite television is still number one. Everyone has a satellite dish, even the government officials. So this is the time to go into people's homes, to living rooms, even bedrooms, look at their eyes and tell them Jesus loves you. And that's what we are doing. And they're looking for God who is loving.  And they're looking for the true God. That is so great. And I would encourage everyone. In fact, what's your website? We wanna make sure that people are able to go to your website. And I would encourage everyone to sign up for your email newsletter or your daily updates because there are great stories coming all the time. Tell us what your website is. Yes, please go to iranalive.org, iranaliveoneword.org. And sign up for newsletter or email. The newsletter is once a month, you receive that. Email is once a week, you receive that. But every time, every time, amazing stories and amazing happening of what's going on in Iran, we share that, we share that. And you will be up to date. You will be not just informed, but you will be inspired. And we need that in America. As persecution is coming to US, we need to learn from our brothers and sisters in Iran who have been persecuted, how to stand firm and how to be in light in the darkness. That's right, absolutely. Thank you. And we will have a link on ctvn.org to your website. Dr. Sharia, thank you so much for sharing with us today. We're excited to hear what God is doing. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, Sidney. I appreciate you. It's fantastic. God is about changing things where we think He can't change things. He can do a miracle. And you know what? He can do a miracle for you. We're gonna be back with a time of ministry in just a second. Tom, what you doing? Oh, I can't find anything good on YouTube to watch. The commentaries, the blogs, the tier videos, the gaming videos, it's all boring. Oh, have you thought about subscribing to Cornerstone's YouTube channel? Cornerstone has a YouTube channel? Of course it does. Hold on, taking a pause to remind you to subscribe to our channel. Hit that like button and ring that bell for notifications. Now, back to the video. I'll show you how to subscribe. Just search for Cornerstone Television Network and hit the subscribe button so you can stay up to date getting filled with the Holy Spirit with consistent uploads every day. Keep up with your favorite moments and never miss a beat. Will you help us as we race to 100,000 subscribers? We can't do it without your help. The content is never ending with countless hours of entertainment. So subscribe to the Cornerstone YouTube channel today. Hope happens here. We're so glad you're joining us on Hope Today and we just wrapped up our conversation about what God is doing in Iran.  And I know there's such a heart cry, Tom, that all around that people are desperate and are crying out for a move of God to happen in their families. And so I just really feel oppressed in my spirit that we just declare and decree in this moment that what is God is doing over in Iran, it is coming right now into your living room, into your family. Maybe there's a prodigal son or daughter. Maybe you have a wayward son or daughter. Maybe a son that's an addiction. Maybe a daughter that has run away. Whatever it may be, we know that God is a God of impossibilities, that there's nothing that is too hard for God. And so I just really feel like in this moment, just to take a moment to pray for you. So Father God, in the name of Jesus, we just lift up everyone that's watching right now. And Father God, we just declare and decree that you are the King of glory. And we pray, Father God, that you would just come in into those broken places. Father God, you are a God that repair of the breach and restoration. So Father God, we pray that as you are moving in Iran, as you're moving in Asbury, as you're moving in India, as you are moving all over the world, we pray God that you would not forget about our loved ones and that as we humble ourselves, that God, we would fear you. And because of your great love for us, that you would come down, that you would make room, we would make room for you. In Jesus' name. Amen. And as soon as you were praying and as you were speaking, I felt impressed by the Holy Spirit. God loves the hardest cases. What we would think would be the most impossible place, Iran, is where he is building his kingdom incredibly. God loves that. And guess what? He loves that for you too. What's the hardest case you know? What's the hardest situation? God loves that. There's a old time evangelist CT study. He said, go for souls and go for the worst. God loves to get the person that we think is the hardest, the ones that's never gonna come to Christ's Sydney, the one that seems like they're sitting their whole life away and never gonna come to Christ. He loves that to bring that person. Maybe you're that person. Maybe you're the one that you say, I was so far from God and I'm watching you today. Well, I wanna just tell you, you can come to God right now just to open your heart, open your life, ask for forgiveness of your sins, take him as your Lord and Savior and follow after Christ. God is gonna do something amazing. It's like a garden growing, Sydney. It's fresh and new pretty soon. All the flowers will be growing around here. It'll be all fresh and new and that's what God loves to do. He loves to do. And just even you were speaking that God just put this in my spirit about there's an Psalm and it says, even if I make my bed in hell, you are there and that's speaking of God. That doesn't matter how dark we go. It doesn't matter what the situation is. It's not too hard for him. So maybe you're watching today and you are in a really tough situation or you're just like God, why me? I just wanna give up. He's reaching down to that deep dark place and let his love just rush into your heart and just surrender all. That is the most beautiful place is that when we all come to that place of surrender, when we lay our lives down before him, even I just encourage you, maybe that's your thought for your loved one that you see the mistakes that they're making. I just encourage you today, lay it all down before God. Take that burden, it's too heavy for you to carry. And then when you place it at his feet and you trust in the Lord, watch how he moves, watch how he does a miracle in the heart. The greatest miracle that we can ever see is a changed heart. God can do the impossible. So have you surrendered? That's the thing, I love that word. God is impressing that word on me. Christian, have you surrendered? Person who feels far from God, well, you know you need to surrender to Christ. That just means that whole thing of laying it all down, laying it down and say, Lord, I've made a mess of things. I'm laying that down.  You resurrect it. That's what he loves to do and that's what he's doing for you today. And Christian, maybe you've walked with Lord for a long time. Maybe it's a time of surrender for you too. So we're so glad that you joined us for this time on Hope Today where we heard how God is moving and God is on the move. I love that so much. Just to take a moment, he is a manual. He is God with us. And just remember that no matter what you're walking through, if you're on the mountain top, if you're in the valley or in your hard place, that God is with you in the midst of it all. And that is our greatest hope. Have a great day. On tomorrow's Hope Today, discover one man's journey from ruin to restoration. Former Major League Baseball player Jason Grimsley shares the highs and lows of his career and offers proof that God can take a broken person and put them back together. That's tomorrow on Hope Today. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.


I can finally officially say that I have joined the Air Force. Oh my gosh. It is so exciting to be able to say that. But with that being said, let's talk about meps day two. So I'm finally filming this on February 2nd, 2021. And I went to meps on January 14th and 15th. Day one of meps is where anybody who needs to take the ASVAB will do that. And day two is the extremely long medical day. And that for me was on Friday, January 15th. So I woke up at 3.50 a.m. And I had my first alarm set for like 3.20 so I can half wake up and then still stay in bed but then still get up early. So it's 3.50 and I'm gonna go ahead and get up and get dressed because I wanted to make sure that I wasn't that person that was gonna be late. So I went ahead and got everything packed last night. So I didn't have to stress out about it this morning. And then I laid my clothes out. So I have my shoes and socks and underwear and non-sports bra. Ladies, don't bring a sports bra. Bring a regular solid color bra. A pair of briefs, jeans. My tank top, I'm gonna wear a button up over this. My glasses and then just some extra things. My mask and jacket and papers. This is what I'm wearing today. I just have a black button up and it has a collar on the top. A pair of non-ripped jeans, a pocket big enough to put my social and driver's license in because you gotta carry those on you at all times because they ask for them a lot. And then just a pair of tennis shoes is gonna be a long day. So I am trying to be comfy. So meps day two, let's go. I left my room at 425 to go down to the lobby and I just saw downstairs a room full of people and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm late. I thought they said 430, did they say four o'clock? And I was freaking out a little bit. Me and this other guy got on the elevator and I was like, are we late? He's like, yeah, I think we're late. Thankfully we weren't late but when you're at meps, every little thing that you think you can get in trouble for seems a little bit terrifying.  So it's a little styrofoam and they have roast watery eggs and I could only eat one sausage link because it was just gross. The biscuit was not good. So it was not a good breakfast but make sure that you drink plenty of water because you are going to have to pee in a cup whenever you are doing your medical evaluations. So I started drinking lots of water early in the morning but then foreshadowing for later. When it got to the time for me to have to pee in a cup, like I had to pee so bad. So try to make sure you're drinking water in the morning but just don't overdo it. But then of course you don't wanna have to drink so much that where you have to go to the bathroom before you get a pee in a cup because then you don't wanna be the person that has to keep walking around and sipping on water until you can pee because we did have a few of those people. Ladies, this one is for you. Don't forget a hair tie which normally I have one right here on my wrist and when I was at Meps, I had very long hair. I just cut my hair a little over a week ago. I cut 12 inches off my hair. My hair was down and I meant to bring a hair tie so my hair was just down all day. It ended up not being an issue but it's just a lot easier to get it out of the way. So don't forget a hair tie.  It was freezing outside because you're at a hotel and then we were waiting on the shuttle to take us over to the Meps location. And of course it is much better to have a jacket and be warm and take it off than be absolutely freezing and not have a jacket to put on. Those of you who wear glasses in contacts. This may depend on when you're going to Meps but personally, I usually wear contacts but going to Meps and knowing that we have to do the vision and they want to test your vision with your glasses on and then with them off. So I thought it would be easier just to wear glasses, easier to take on and off. But right now during COVID and having to wear a mask the whole time it was so annoying to wear glasses. So honestly, if you have to go at a time where you're wearing a mask, I would recommend just wearing contacts and taking your contact case that has solution in it and just sticking it in your pocket. Wear jeans. I know I'm kind of throwing a lot out here right all together but if I think about it I'm just gonna say it so I don't forget. Wear jeans so you have pockets because you're gonna need to keep your driver's license and social security card on you and that way you have a pocket to put anything else that you need like your contact case. So we ate breakfast and then just sat around in the lobby. We started lining up at 5.30, ladies first. Then they came down the line of everybody and gave us all pumps of hand sanitizer. And then at 5.45 we were on the shuttle and heading over to the Mepps location. I am going to have some stories for you guys. More like tips and in-depth stories about a few things that happened at Mepps. But I'm not gonna put them all in this video because I'm just gonna kind of go through how the day was. But some of these stories deserve to be told. So we get to the Mepps location and there were about 30 to 40 of us. We just standing outside and a man came out and gave us a little speech about some things making sure we didn't have any weapons or anything on us. Guys, do not bring weapons to Mepps. Do not bring weapons to Mepps.  You're gonna have everything with you that you have at the hotel because you don't go back to the hotel after that. And then there is a room that has little cubbies in it that we can put all of our things in. Once you put stuff in there you can't go back to that room throughout the day. You can't go back and forth to get things.  If you need that, but you leave your phone and literally your backpack, everything else stays in that room. Once you're through security you go in and check in at the main desk and then they're probably gonna tell you to go and check in with your branch because there is people from every single branch there and during this whole time at Mepps you're gonna do a lot of going to the main desk, going to your branch office, going to the main desk, going to your branch office and they'll just keep sending you back and forth a whole bunch of times. Then you'll go check in with your branch. Put a sticker on that has your name and maybe like an ID number or something on it and you'll wear that all day. It has to be visible, which was another thing for me.  So once you're checked in with your branch you will go over to the medical wing and you'll check in at that desk and then they are going to hand you a folder with some papers with your information in it and then there will be a paper clip to the top of your folder that looks something like this. It's a checklist of all the things you need to have done. You are not gonna fill this out. This is for all of the medical staff to fill out as you go through each step. So BP for blood pressure, vision, hearing, blood. This is to get your blood drawn, urine and interview. These are all the steps that you have to take at MEPs to be able to pass. Now everyone may not get these things done in the exact same order because you'll file in and someone will say, okay, you too come to vision and it'll be like, okay, you four go to hearing and then you might switch or they might send you to get your blood pressure done. It's kind of all over the place and that's why there is a checklist to go over it all and make sure that you've hit all the boxes that you needed to.  Super quick. With the vision, you will do the colorblind test, which is a little flip book and it will be like this and she'll just literally flip through like this. She was going through it so fast because you're either colorblind or color deficient or you're not and it's gonna be really easy for them to tell of that. So I went and she was like flip, flip, flip. I'm like 25, four, 18, two, seven and then they're like, okay, you're not colorblind. Other people, if they hesitate, they're gonna know, you're probably colorblind or color deficient. That doesn't mean you're going to fail maps. It is just going to disqualify you for certain jobs. My husband Kyle, for example, is color deficient so it disqualified him from certain jobs that he was able to join.  And honestly, it is really hard and surprisingly I passed depth perception. Like there were some that I could tell and there were some I was kind of hesitant on but I actually passed. It's not a disqualifying factor. Again, it just limits you to certain jobs or it disqualifies you from being able to go into certain jobs basically. So I tried a little trick and as you are looking down at the machine because when you're staring at the same thing for a while you know, things kind of like blend together. So try to like take your time, breathe, because you're not in a rush. It does, in the moment it feels like you're in a rush while you're at meps. Cause it's like, I gotta do this, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. But just when you're in each test, just like take a breath, it's okay. And something I tried to do, I don't know if it really helped me or not is I would like, I would blink to try to like refresh and I would like wiggle my head back and forth like this because if maybe one's standing out a little more than the other and if I did that I would be able to like see that possibly. Maybe it worked. It worked for me I guess cause I passed. The next part is where you will read the lines that have all of the letters and you will do this with and without your glasses or contacts. And it's just this one, just for a few seconds where you have to take your glasses or contacts out. So again, I wish I would have worn my contacts cause I would just have to take them out, do that, put them in, I would be fine at the beginning and the whole rest of the day without my glasses fogging up. Personal preference though, my recommendation. The next part is where you sit down and you look into the machine and you see a picture like all the way at the other end and it might be of like a farm or a hot air balloon or something like that. I honestly think that part is just for people who do need a prescription because the picture will go in and out of focus and that's how they tell how good your eyes are. So everyone may not do that part but regardless it's super easy. You just look at the picture, goes in and out of focus and then they'll have you read letters again just like you did when you were looking into the machine earlier and see what the smallest line that you can read is.  So no worries, super easy. That's the vision. Then you get your checkbox once you're done with all of that. Next is the hearing test.  For example, it might be like and you'll have a little clicker in your hand so you hold it in your hand and you'll press the button whenever you hear it. And there's another story for this. Basically, when you hear the sound present only one time per sound that you hear. So if you hear, don't go, you hear one. Once you're done, you just sit there. Don't make any noises. And it also doesn't tell you when you're done which I hated because I'm like, is it just a really long pause? Am I done? But I still just sat there with it and I didn't hear anything. So I was like, I'm pretty sure I'm done but it was me and two other people and you have to wait for the lady to open the door because she can see everybody's testing like on the outside. So once everyone's done, she'll open the door and let you out. The next thing was the meps briefing and this could be the very first thing you do. It could be mixed in all over the place. It probably just depends on when the commander has availability to come in and do the briefing. This is when they go through and just talk about expectations of meps, not lying at meps. This is also when they do the breathalyzer.  At least there was for me. It was just telling you that you were having medical evaluations done that day and females would get their breasts and genitalia checked out and the men were gonna get their genitalia checked out.  Another foreshadow, it is like the quickest thing ever. Not a big deal. Don't stress out about it. So easy. Don't worry, it's gonna be okay. All right, after blood pressure, vision and hearing, you will go and sit and wait until it's your turn to get your blood drawn. You'll go in and you know how it goes. They'll tie the little thing here and they'll put a needle in your vein right here. It goes by super quick. In the moment it was fine, but I bruised like crazy. I hope that didn't scare you though because it really does go by really quick. It's not a big deal and they'll do that. Just look away. And I'm not even afraid of blood but I don't really wanna watch it. And the doctor talks to you the whole time. Well, at least mind it. All the people at MEPs were actually really, really cool. Mostly friendly, but just listen and pay attention.  And it's just gonna make the people at MEPs even more mad. They're trying to get through their day just like we're trying to get through our day. Just listen and follow the rules. If you can't listen and follow the rules, I do not think that joining the military is the right path for you in life. Next for me was the urine and we had to wait for the lady who was doing all the vision testing to be done with all of the people in that group. She came over and there was only like six of us girls. I really had a small group of MEPs. The amount of people at MEPs can vary day to day because it might be a day where people are getting ready to ship out but then there are also people in processing into MEPs and it might be like a really busy hectic day. But for me, it was just a in-processing day for us who were joining. This is all different branches by the way, not just Air Force. Once the lady was ready, all six of us girls and the lady went to the bathroom together and I was thinking like we would be in line outside of the bathroom and then she would have us like come in one at a time. You'll go into the bathroom and there are two stalls but neither of them have doors on them. So I was thinking maybe one, maybe two people at a time but no, we all just went in there and she's like, all right, who wants to go first? And me and the other Air Force girl actually we both were like raised our hands and we were like, we gotta pee real bad because I drink tons of water at breakfast. So it made it easy. Like if you're in there and you're nervous but then like maybe you already have to pee it just makes it easier because it's like, well, I gotta go anyway, whatever. If you don't have to pee real bad and then like you're nervous then it may take you forever to go but me and her went, no problem.  It has to hit that you cap it and then you're actually not allowed to wash your hands after you get in line because there is a window in the bathroom. From that window, you can't see the stall. The way it is, is there is a doctor's office in the middle and then there's a window over here and then the female bathroom and then there's a window on the other side in the male bathroom.  So then they would come to each window and like test our urine. So yeah, you could see the other people. You could see people with their pee cups and everyone's different colors of pee. It was pretty gross. So when you get up to the window the lady will pour like a certain amount in this other container and then seal that up and put like a sealed sticker on it and you have to like look at it and make sure it's completely sealed because they send that off to somewhere else and that's like the drug test thing and we have to sign off on it. Signature and initial saying that it was completely sealed and then ladies we also have to do a pregnancy test and then what's the other thing you test for? Sugar and protein in your urine. The last part for me was the interview with the doctor and the doctor I had was so sweet. She was the doctor for everybody at that location that day but she was so sweet and just went through, asked just a bunch of questions. This is especially the time where you want to make sure that you know everything that is on your paper that you came with from the recruiter because when you go to MEPs your recruiter will give you a paper and it has like anything on there like maybe a waiver that you had or for me, for example, I wear glasses or contacts. So that's on there. Have you ever had any surgeries? Yes, I've had my wisdom teeth removed. Oh, are you taking any medications? And I have a pregnancy implant, not a pregnancy implant, a birth control implant. I'm not trying to get pregnant right now. I have a birth control implant in my arm. So that's notated on there. So just look over everything that you talked about with your recruiter and know what is on your paper. So those were the things for me and say for example, if she would have said, are you taking any medication? And I would have said, nope. But then it's like, oh, but it says here you have this birth control implant. You wanna make sure your answers match and that you're being truthful on that. Like anything that's on that paper with the recruiter be honest about all of that because it's already okay because you're at MEPs. Otherwise your recruiter wouldn't have sent you to MEPs yet. It's not really a test but they just wanna make sure that you really are qualified. The most important thing is if there is something that you mentioned that is not on your paperwork, that's when you could possibly like get in trouble or just not be allowed to swear in that day. For example, if I had had surgery because I had a broken arm but I never told my recruiter but then I'm at MEPs in the doctor interview and she's like, have you ever had any surgeries? But all my paperwork so far says no because I never told my recruiter. And then I said, yeah, I had a broken arm and I had surgery to get it fixed. Then it's like a big red flag, like you're not telling the truth here. So know what's on your paper from your recruiter and stick to that. Once all of those boxes are checked on your checklist that you did, all the things that you were supposed to do then you just wait for the underwear Olympics which really are not bad at all. It wasn't embarrassing, at least for me it wasn't embarrassing. There were only six of us girls and it's just like, this is something that we all have to do regardless. So it's not a big deal. Don't make a big deal about it. So all of us girls went into a big open room. It was real cold. It's just like tile floors, cinder block walls. It was so cold in there. It's stripped down all the way to just your bra and your underwear. I'm gonna make another video going more in depth about everything that you do. During the underwear Olympics, but it was so easy, so simple. Another thing that we did while we were waiting is we had to fill out a scar tattoo form where you have to notate any scars or tattoos on your body and you have to like measure them. They have a measuring stick in there if you need to do that. So for me, I don't have any tattoos but I have a little birthmark. Oh, cause they had birth like scar birthmark tattoo. So I put this birthmark on there and they said you have piercings anywhere to put that other than earrings. They didn't mind, but I have my nose pierced. I don't have my belly button pierced so I put the scar right there. Yeah, so you follow that form and then you just wait to do the underwear Olympics.   Yes, but there were like curtains in between so you could like pull them out and like get undressed. So we couldn't see each other. Yeah, cause there was like one bench along the wall and then there were like little curtains that you could pull out and we were kind of like in those. If there were more people, they probably would have had us go in the room and then get fully undressed but where there were so little of us that we had enough curtains to block us then we got fully naked right there.  The examination is literally so easy. If you have ever been to like ladies, if you've ever been to the gynecologist is not even as bad as that. Cause I was thinking we were gonna put our feet up and stirrups and we didn't even do that.  She said they just stopped doing that like a few weeks ago. So all they do is a visual exam. So open one side and look, open the other side and look and then you butterfly your legs and literally she just looks like this and then literally to your butt just goes, okay like two seconds, not bad at all. Don't stress, it's all good. She also did some basic stuff where she would be like, look at my finger, follow my finger and then for the Air Force something they have to do now, they look in all of our ears but for the Air Force we have to do that like thing like that where you pop your eardrums cause she has to be able to see your eardrums move and that's just a requirement for the Air Force people now. After you pass that, then you're done and as long as you passed everything, then you passed.  So you go back out to the lobby, check in with them then you'll go check in with the branch people again and you'll kind of do that whole back and forth thing again. Then you'll go and have another interview with a whole other person. I honestly don't even know who this guy was. He just is the guy who kind of interviews everybody. He'll take all your fingerprints and then after that they have you do a survey and then you just have a whole lot of waiting until it's your turn to swear in. For the Air Force we also have to lift a weight like there's a machine, that's just like a tall machine like this and you have to at least do 40 but the more that you can do then you qualify for more jobs. So I actually was able to do 70 pounds. You have to pick it up from the ground and then like twist your wrist and like keep pushing it all the way up and there's a certain line you have to get it across. If you are worried about that, I mean as long as you can do 40 then you're gonna pass that and it just helps you qualify for different jobs. So thankfully I was able to do 70 on that so I was pretty much good for everything and then they do provide a bagged lunch for you. It was like sandwiches and chips and like fruit and water, things like that. So I was done with everything about 1130 and then I had to wait to swear in at 1230. So we go to a room and had to watch a video which honestly at the moment I can't remember what the video really was but it was me and two other guys who were swearing in at the 1230 Air Force Swear In. They do different swearing times throughout the day and after we watch that we go to the Swear In room and somebody will show you how to stand at parade rest and how to stand at attention and then the commander will come in and swear you in. So there was a guy who was going guard first so he swore in by himself because he had to say different things and the words are actually right there on a big plaque so he could read off of that and then he would have to stay like in the state of Alabama but then me and the other guy were going active so we would just repeat what the commander said because it just covered everything because we weren't doing a specific state. So I actually have a video of me swearing in. Where you right again? There's a mean eye. What's your name? I'm Canada. The song we swear. The song we swear. That I'll support and defend. That I'll support and defend. The Constitution of the United States. The Constitution of the United States. Against all enemies. Against all enemies. Born and domestic. Born and domestic. That I will bear. That I will bear. Truth, faith and allegiance. Truth, faith and allegiance. To the same. To the same. And that I will obey. That I will obey. The orders of the president of the United States. The orders of the president of the United States. And the orders of the officers of the court of me. And the orders of the officers of the court of me. According to regulations. According to regulations. And the uniform code. And the uniform code. Military justice. Military justice. So help me God. So help me God. I'm going right here. I'm just glad that I have something because they do not record you there and before I went people were like, oh yeah just ask for someone to record you and they'll record you. And I asked so many people and I kept getting, oh yeah we'll get someone to record you. Oh yeah we'll get someone to record you. Oh yeah we'll get someone to record you. And then like I go in there and the lady who taught us to stand at attention and parade rest. Like once we were standing at parade rest and she's like, do not move from that position until the commander comes in. And then I was kind of like, hey I have my phone. And she's like, what do you have your phone in here for? And I'm like, because people keep saying that someone's gonna record. She's like, who's gonna record? I'm like, I don't know. Everyone just keeps saying someone will. Finally she went out and got one of the Air Force guys and he came in and recorded for me. I was hoping he was gonna record like all three of us swearing in because I was gonna give the video to those guys but he literally like only recorded me.  So guys just keep asking if you want it to be recorded. Find someone to do it. Mostly I would say someone that's in your branch office. Make sure if they say, oh yeah we'll get someone and be like, can you do it? That way you can be guaranteed to have somebody that will do it. After that you'll go back to your branch office again. And during these times of like going back and forth you are signing your contract. So I'm signing a four year contract and you sign with just your fingerprint. Like that's how you sign everything there. I was done with everything at about one but we didn't leave until about 3.30 so we just sat in the lobby forever. It seemed like doing absolutely nothing. All my stuff was in that closet from where we checked in from security in the morning but before I swore in I went to one of my Air Force guys and I said, hey can I go get my phone because you can't get your phone until you're done with everything and the last thing that you have to do is swear in. Some branches may allow people to get their phone but the Air Force guy had to walk me over there to get my phone and I didn't get anything else out. So thankfully the rest of the time I had my phone while I was waiting but other people by the time they thought to go get their phone the people from their branch office had already left for the day and they wouldn't let people go get it until it was time to leave that day. So people just had to sit there and literally do nothing. I talked to just a few people and it actually ended up being people that were on the same shuttle I guess because we were all had the same waiting time. So finally about 3.30 the shuttle got there and I had a two hour ride back home and I passed out as soon as I got on the shuttle. I was so tired. You have to keep your mask on on the shuttle as well and yeah I had my backpack and I just was like I was out but anyway I was supposed to be with my recruiter when I got back and do job selection. Depending on branches the way you do job selection is different because I'm pretty sure Navy people swear in and select the job like at meps but for me I swore in but I don't have a job selected yet. So I met with my recruiter two days later. I'll talk more about all the job selection stuff later but currently I'm actually still waiting on a job and a ship date but I finally swore in. This is the furthest I've ever been. I'm excited. Really don't stress out about meps too much. You'll do it. It'll be great. Thanks for watching. Talk to you guys later.