I guess I'll go ahead and talk for a couple minutes. I guess we'll see how long I can talk for. If he doesn't show up, I might run out of things to say. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the US Embassy. Nice to see everyone. My name is Holly Miles. I am the Environment, Science, Technology, and Health Officer here at the US Embassy. I work in the Economic Administration upstairs. I'm happy to see everyone here for this digital video conference that we're having today. This will be with American entrepreneur and businessman Philip Harding. Philip was in Uzbekistan at the end of October. I don't know if any of you had a chance to attend his previous lecture that he gave. He came to the National Library. I think on, like, October 24th or 25th. Was anybody there? Did they see Philip the first time? Oh, yes. He was at the Innovation Week that the Ministry of Innovation put on. He gave a couple of presentations there. And then he was also at the National Library giving presentations in October. Well, that's OK. He's happy to come back and to talk to people in Uzbekistan one more time. Like I said, he's an American businessman. He's an innovator and an entrepreneur. Philip founded his own company. It's called Impact Junkies. And the point of his company is to help businesses, to help startups, to help them think about their ideas, think about the change that they want to make in the world, and how to take those changes and turn them into an actual business. His business center is on taking ideas and commercializing them, helping people figure out what they want to do with the changes they want to make in the world. Is anybody here interested in entrepreneurship? Yes, I'm interested in entrepreneurship. All of us, is that what you're talking about? Is anybody ever thought of creating their own business? Yes? I get very tentative. Yes? Yeah. About what? He said yes. What's your idea? Online websites, not to sell, or selling online something. I don't know. I love my audience, but just the plans. I'll fully talk, but no. What's possibly selling something online? OK. Where's he? In the morning. Here he is. OK. It's very early in the United States. That's where he is right now. It's about 6.30 in the morning, so I'm thinking maybe he's having breakfast, coffee, I don't know. Can you hear us? Yes. Maybe I'll come where he can see me. Michael. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. You heard the song I was singing? No, that part, you can repeat it. We didn't hear it. Oh, good. OK, good. Good. No, we just. Good. How are you, Holly? I'm doing pretty good. I'll come maybe where you can see me. Wonderful.  They know who you are. You've been fully introduced. Wonderful. OK, let me make sure I can share my screen with you all. And so you can see some of the things I want to talk with you about. It's so great to see you all. Thank you for coming. And look forward to talking more. And if Holly already mentioned, I look forward to taking some questions and hearing your thoughts. And any way I can help you, I look forward to that as well, helping with that. So let me just get open up my presentation. I want to share with you some photos. How many of you, when I was there, how many of you were at one of the sessions I did when I was there about a month or so ago? Was anyone? OK, great. So it's all new, folks. Is this all new people? Yes. OK, great. Awesome. All right. Well, it's wonderful to meet you. I was just in Tashkent in Uzbekistan. Just what was it, Holly? A month or so ago? Time flies. And I just love the time there. And Holly is doing great things. And the State Department there. And it's an exciting time in your country right now. It's an exciting time to see the focus on entrepreneurship and innovation, which is very exciting to me and something that I do a lot of. And I'm the co-founder and CEO of Impact Junkie, which is an organization and network of entrepreneurs and investors around the world. And so I get very excited when I see the possibilities then and what's happening in your country. And meeting with, it looks like a lot of young people and a lot of energy there as well, and the possibilities for your future and what you're going to be able to create in the country. So I'm very excited about that. On the wall here, some of the pictures. This is my office. Some of the shots from around the world and different ventures that we've started everywhere from the jungles in Central America to the deserts and around the world. So it's in here in the United States. And we're working on some things right there in Uzbekistan. So I'm excited to hopefully be working with some of you all on some new ventures and new business ideas that you may have. Is everyone speaking English well enough? Or that's good? Am I just want to understand how am I speaking OK? All right. I'll take silence as a yes. OK. Let me go full screen on this. I just don't want to. Great. OK, one second. All right. Can everybody see that or just me? Can you see this slide? This says, do more with what you've been given? Yeah. OK, great. So this is what I was talking about, impact junkie. And today I want to talk a little bit about your story. And maybe you're in this place where you're not quite sure about this word entrepreneurship or about starting a business. Maybe that's kind of why you're here. You're interested in that. You've heard a lot of talk this year in your country obviously about entrepreneurship and the president saying, this is the year of entrepreneurship and innovation. And you're wondering about that. And so I want to talk to you about how your story and the journey that you're on is pivotal to that.  And I'm going to talk to you about why I think entrepreneurship is so important and that the impact you can have and how you can change so many lives by starting something. And I hope to encourage you in that regard. And I would love to take questions after I talk. And so be thinking of questions or ideas that you have that we can discuss as we go on here. So I want to talk to you about this idea into action, turning an idea into action. And a lot of people have ideas. A lot of people see problems in the world. And especially when you say entrepreneurship, some people really you can define that as just solving problems. Finding needs, understanding needs, understanding pain that someone else may have, something that's frustrating or something that's slow or that can be made better. So a lot of people can have an idea and that's a great way to start. But how can you turn that idea into action and actually turn it into reality? Make it something real. And that's what separates successful people from people who just have an idea. And so there are tools that we can talk more. We won't have time to go into all of them in detail today. There's a lot of tools that you can utilize, that you can use to understand who your user is, who your customer is. And I say user more broadly because they're not always just a customer. But the people you're trying to help, trying to understand understanding their needs, ways to test ideas that you have on those user, on those people and understand if it's helping them or if it's not helping them and how to change it slightly to improve the product. And the word iterate comes up a lot. And that's sort of like changing with slight improvements. And you say, oh, that didn't work. How can we change it to make it better? And that's a whole part of this curiosity and learning process of figuring out how can you help others in the world around you and make their life better? So that's at the core of this. And then, like I mentioned, I'd love for you to take just a moment and reflect on your life, reflect on your life to this point and think about what really gets you excited. What are you really passionate about? What are the things that you just love and what maybe are the things that not only you love, but that you are one to see made better as well? And so take a second. If you have a piece of paper or a pen, write those down, write down a couple of things. It can be one thing, it can be three things, let's maybe keep it less than five things. So one to five, but one to three is probably a sweet, a good number. And write down a couple of things that you're really passionate about, things that you really love doing and things that you would love to spend more time working on. What are those things? And then, if you can write that down, I'd also like for you to write down why and what motivates you. So don't just write down, okay, well, I really love technology or I really wanna work in agriculture or what have you or I wanna work on mobile apps, but why? Why is that, why are you attracted? What do you like about that? And it may be based on a personal experience you've had, maybe something with family. We have one, yesterday I was doing workshops here in the United States and one of the women in the workshop for her father died two years ago and she got inspired to start making healthy food. And she was, and they have just completed a marathon. If a marathon is like the very long big race, I've never done a marathon, but she had done this with her father and he had died. And so she decided she was gonna do an Ironman race, which is like, it's a running, a swimming, bicycle race, a very long bicycle race and then a running race all put together. And she did this for her dad. And in the process, she discovered she was making these smoothie drinks, the fruits and vegetables and mixing them together. And that was really a passion that she was passionate about. And it was also really inspired by her father. And when you really can get deeper into why you're passionate about something and what motivates you, that's a deeper and more powerful reason to want to do something and to want to start something. So I want you to just take a second and if you have a piece of paper, write it down. If not, try to think really hard in your head or see if you can borrow paper from somebody. And I'd love for you to write down just a sentence or two on what motivates you, what inspires you, what excites you and why. Just another minute, one minute. One minute. While you all are finishing up, if you're done, I just want to show you also, this is impactjunkie.co, our website or part of it, you can sort of see here. And this is you start ventures that change lives. And I'm going to talk about that as well. There's some videos and things on here you can watch. And we're about to release some new exciting changes with more training and resources on our website. So please follow along. You can definitely follow us on Instagram, find impactjunkie. You can also find me, fill the parting and connect with me. This is me right here. And send me a message. Would love to follow along with your journey. And here, look at this. Look at these photos on my Instagram feed. This is a wonderful meal we had there. I'm sure you all recognize that. And this was at the Innovation Week where I was fortunate to speak and be a part of the events there. And this, I'm going to show you this slide and just, this is my next slide I want to talk to you about and this is giving a talk here with the leadership and some of the government folks on entrepreneurship. Yeah, so that's me getting ready to go up. So anyway, these are some of my photos. These are a couple of awesome ladies there in Uzbekistan that are starting a maker space for new startups which is really cool. And these are some of the different places they are including the airport. Anyhow, yeah, please connect with me and would love to continue working with you all. And all right, so let's get back to it. So you had a little bit of time to think. And how did this, how did this feel? How did this process feel for you all? Anybody? You don't have to say what you wrote down, just how did it feel? Was it easy? Was it really easy for you? No. Was it really hard? Yeah. Yeah, I understand. If it felt hard, that's completely normal. This is a very hard thing to do. So I kind of made it seem like it was really easy, but it's very difficult to condense your life into just one or two sentences and all of your passion and everything you're inspired. And so I understand that they can seem very difficult. So know that congratulations, if you got something written down, that's fantastic. That's a great start. If you didn't, it's okay. We'll keep working through it together, okay? We'll keep working through it. And we're just warming up. So I wanna talk to you about why start something. So we're gonna continue on this idea of developing out your story and how important that is to starting a venture and how important it is to change lives and to do something meaningful in the world. So why start something? There are many benefits to entrepreneurship. And like I said, I'm so excited to see the doors opening. It can't just be the government that says entrepreneur, everyone go be entrepreneur, everyone go start. It's gonna take awesome people, wonderful people just like you to actually make this happen. It's gonna also take education. It's gonna take private industry and others to move the entrepreneurial landscape in Uzbekistan. And so you are a key part of this. So when I say why start something, this is you can do this. And when I met with the new ministry of innovation and the government leaders, they're wanting you to, they're encouraging you to, and they're trying to make it easier to start businesses. And we're trying to continue to work with the, like I said, the ministry of innovation and other parts of the government to create opportunities for you all that when you have an idea and something you're passionate about, how you can actually turn that into reality. So why start something? Entrepreneurship honestly has a lot, it allows you to have a lot of freedom. It can allow you to obviously set your own schedule and the opportunity, it opens up and the richest people in the world are entrepreneurs and they've started something. So there's obviously a lot of personal benefits to starting something, to starting a new venture. There's the freedom, there's the financial benefits and the ability to control your own life and your own destiny. But more than that, I think it's really special aside from just the personal benefits, the thing that really excites me about entrepreneurship, even more than that, which I love the freedom, I love being able to spend time with my family. I love all of that, but, and yet some days it's actually more work. People would say it's more work, but when you're doing something you're passionate about and something that you love, like we've just been talking about, it doesn't feel like work, you enjoy it. It's something you would do anyway as a hobby for fun. So there's the personal benefits, but more importantly, the benefits that you can bring to the world, the impact that you can have in other lives. And by starting something, you can find a problem you see in the world and you can do something about it. If you see something you don't like, something that frustrates you, something that you think could be made better, that's awesome. And you can have a bigger impact in the world by starting a venture, by starting a business. And there's a company that was started in the U.S. called Tom's Shoes. I don't know if anyone's heard of Tom's Shoes, but this is one example and there's many others where instead of just starting a charity or something like that to change lives, which you can do and there's a lot of benefits to that, but he said, I could have sold my other companies. So let me back up. Blake is the founder of Tom's. He went to Argentina and found out that kids didn't have shoes, he found a group of kids and he saw that some of them didn't have shoes and he was moved by that. Just like we were talking about, you may identify a need that you see in the world and he said, I'm gonna do something about this. And so he started a company and a shoe company. And so they sold, he started a shoe company and he said, I could have sold my other companies and just donate and gave money, but, and that would have maybe, we would have given out a few thousand pairs of shoes, but he said, because we started a company, it became a sustainable business and they've given out over 80 million pairs of shoes, right? So the impact you can have in the world, the debt you can make in the universe, the change that you can see can be so much bigger when you start something. So I believe that is the main reason why starting something is so beautiful. So let me tell you this in the context of something that, and I'm gonna show this to you as an example, as well for how you can turn an idea, put an idea, put it into something visual that you can share with others, right? So you've heard this concept of a pitch deck perhaps, basically a presentation that you can give to either an investor or your friends, your family, other businesses, you can show them and explain what problem you've identified in the world, what types of solutions you're trying, what kinds of things you wanna, you're trying to improve, to solve this problem, and then some kind of call to action to get them involved as well. So this is one of the pitch decks I would show for Impact Junkie, and this is what we say, love people, go places, change lives. We say, if you love people, if you wanna help them, this is what we wanna do, we wanna have the words empathy, which is putting yourself in the place of others and understanding the pain that they're feeling and the problems that they're facing and trying to help them, right? And so love, if you really love people, that's what we believe in starting, through entrepreneurship, we can start sustainable businesses that can help people around the world. And we say, go places. We believe you need to go places so you can put yourself in their shoes so you can understand the culture, understand the community, understand the needs. If you're trying to help someone in another part of Uzbekistan, you should go there and be with them. If you're trying to solve a problem in restaurants in Uzbekistan, you should go spend a lot of time in restaurants, right? If you're trying to solve problems for business owners, you should just spend a lot of time with business owners and get to understand. If you're trying to solve a problem for students, you need to go spend a lot of time with students and hear from them and understand the needs that they're facing. And then ultimately, we say change lives. And that's at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is to improve lives. And so in the world, there are a lot of problems in search of a solution and the world has really big problems. Some of these problems around the world include and the same planet we live on, almost a billion people don't have access to clean water. Over two billion don't have access to clean sanitation and that leads to a lot of disease. Millions of children live without a shelter. Billions don't have access to basic financial services. Over a billion live without electricity in the same planet we live on. And in the United States alone, over 120 people die from suicide every day. And these are really staggering facts. And when you're kind of faced with these problems that you see around the world, it can be really overwhelming. And we have impact junkies that go with us around the world and we have different investors and entrepreneurs that we work with. And when you're kind of exposed to some of these needs, it can be really overwhelming. And we say there are three ways sort of that you can respond. One is, and we've seen this happen, you can easily get depressed because you realize, oh my goodness, with your eyes, you kind of open to the needs. And you say, how have I not been aware of these needs before? Whether that's your next door neighbor or someone right around the corner that lives near you and your neighborhood and your community or someone on the other side of the world. And when you're kind of open to these, your eyes are open, you say, but one, you can be depressed, kind of spiral into depression. Two, you can kind of block it out and just live in your bubble and be upset about the normal day-to-day thing. Or three, you can do something about it. And so that's what we're all about with Impact Junkie is helping people realize they can be part of the solution. And in fact, the problems are not the problems. We can fix the problems. The problems are getting all of us to take action and to be part of the solution and you can be. So we say, do more with what you've been given, start something that changes lives. And when you realize how much you've been given, how much knowledge you have, expertise you have, you can use that to help others. There are others that don't have the knowledge you have, who don't have the expertise you have. They have other skills and other knowledge and you can learn from them just like they can learn from you. So we say, do more with what you've been given. And we focus a lot on the impact, not just making money, but also making impact. We believe making money is great. And it's a great side effect of starting these businesses. But we also believe that we wanna do good and help others. And so when we do, for those in need, what they have the capacity to do for themselves, we disempower them. So we wanna empower people and we wanna help them help themselves. And so there's more I could say on that, but I'll kinda skip forward. So basically we say with Impact Junkie, imagine if you could. And this is a overview of sort of what we say, we call the ecosystem, the different parts of our organization and ways that you can come in, either as an investor, as an entrepreneur, or as one of our partner organizations. And so depending on who I'm talking to when I'm giving this pitch, I will cater the talk to them, right? And the idea here is I want them to get excited about this idea as well and want to join and become part of this story. So we talk about understanding your story. So just to kind of reflect here on what I just shared with you, did you all pick up on these key elements when I just kind of gave this short pitch? Did you get the problem, right? Did you hear me talk about problems? We talk about problems right up front, right? I started, actually I said it, there's problems in the world in search of a solution, right? So I start that out from the very beginning. There are a lot of problems in search of a solution. Later I come back and say you can be the solution, right? And so I go through these problems to give you some examples, right, around the world. And then I say, in fact, the solution can be you, right? And I make it personal to your story. So whoever you're talking to when you have an idea and you're saying this is a painful, whether it's a restaurant, it's a business owner, it's a student, you say this is a pain point that I've seen in your story and something I want to help you with. And so here's where I've identified and here's how you can be part of it. And so depending on who I'm talking to, they may say, yeah, this is something I've been looking for, I've been wanting to be part of something like this, right? And so I help them understand that it's not just them talking, me talking about my story, but helping them understand that, helping them with their story. And then I would show them the website and say, here's how you can join to be an impact company. And then I'll have a couple of stories that I'll share. This one is if you go down eight hours in Belize, in Central America, there is, this is the jungle. It's called Punta Gorda is a village down there and you drive beyond the paved roads and you get down here to dirt roads and you'll see a beautiful family. This is Elfina and her husband and their daughter. And we went down to do some entrepreneurship training and workshops with them and to help them start chicken farms because that is something they said, we have this skill of chicken farming, but if we could scale it and turn it into a larger business, it could transform our villages, it could help our community. And so we went down to help them with that and develop out business plan and all of that. And while we're doing that Elfina, this is her, she stopped to make, she was joining us in the sessions, but she also stopped to make us lunch and we had a break. And this is her making it with rice and beans in their kitchen there with the open fire. And one thing we noticed was they had this ancient Mayan weaving technique. And I said, could you make that into like an impact junkie X? So if you don't know, this is, I don't know if you can see me here, but this is the X that we have for our impact junkie. And she said, yeah, I think I can. So the next morning I came back, we came back and she had made some prototypes, some first editions of it. And this is her finishing the first one. And we said, Elfina, what do you think if we turn this into a business for you and we could sell these and it could, it could, we'll see how it goes. And she said, I think that's a great idea.  And that was, it was kind of crazy.  And then five months later, we went back. And what do you think we found when we went back five months? This is what we found. Elfina had brought together women from across the village. They'd all, they've all become experts on how to make these bands. It was beautiful. There were hundreds and hundreds of bands and they were smiling and they'd come from all over. It was awesome. And then this is my favorite picture here. This is Elfina with a big smile and a big stack of cash, a lot of money. And so that, then we did another workshop and this is how I ended up standing in this home in the jungle working with these villagers on doing the same kind of talk I'm doing with you all. And they all went up and put their dreams and their ideas for starting ventures on this chalkboard. And it was fantastic.  And we celebrated and we went out in the jungle with machetes that night and slept by the river and almost died, but it was fantastic. So that's a one story I wanted to share with you because it's just a really powerful way to explain the kinds of things that we're doing with Impact Junkie and it's a really cool tool you can use when you're thinking about, I wanna solve a problem or I see a need and these are the kinds of things I personally, years ago said I wanna be a part of helping people that may not have access to this, to think like entrepreneurs. And so to go in and have, there's other stories I can share from refugees from countries facing war to just children that don't have families to all sorts of stories that are improving lives around the world. And that is the most rewarding thing for me and for our team is to see those stories. And so also when you're trying to get support for an idea, you should try to figure out, if you're trying to help, I keep going back to restaurant owners or business owners or students, I'm just using those as examples. If you can start sharing some stories of how you've helped these students or you've helped these restaurant owner or business owners, you're gonna start getting more support.  And so this is why storytelling is so important. And when you think about your life and this journey of storytelling, it really, it sort of makes things clearer in your head when you understand we're all just trying to go through a story and how are our stories overlapping? And so one thing that I'd love to hear some of your ideas on some of the things you all wrote down earlier. I would love to hear that. If anyone's brave enough to share, I would love to. And before we do that, I was just gonna share one other thing that this is sort of my life in a slide.  And this is a great exercise that I encourage you all to do. You can take different snapshots. If you have photos, it's great. If not, you can do it other ways. You can draw it out. You can do all the different ways. But in one slide, I have images that sort of represent my life story. And so I can show in this one story, in this one slide, I can take you on a journey of how I grew up in California. And my dad is a pastor of a church and I was a youth pastor. And I was really involved in helping young people in the community and people of all ages. But I specifically worked a lot with youth and developed the passion for service and loving others and helping others, which carries on to this day. I was very entrepreneurial, starting businesses as a young boy to starting more ventures as I got older. But right out of high school, I went to a local college, a community college and said, I want to learn how to build websites because I was really passionate about this idea that I could connect with people on the other side of the world and how beautiful is it that I'm sitting here today talking with you on the other side of the world. It's like a dream come true. But I was excited about that at the time. And I thought, that's what I want to do. They said, you should go to this department. And I went into those computer information systems and I started asking more questions about design and how marketing can influence people.  So I went to that design department and then they said, I realized I was really passionate about business. So I went to the business department and this was over three years. And so I ended up getting three degrees and three certificates in three years. And my papers when I graduated said undecided because I didn't actually declare a major even though I was following my passion. Anyhow, I'm the first of my family to graduate from college. I'm the first to even think about a master's degree. But education was really important in my family. So anyway, right after I graduated there, I got married to my wonderful wife. We now have three children, but we got married and I started a few different businesses. One was a national training, a digital media company. Another was an eBay business and another was a design firm. And one of the businesses I was visiting universities around the United States, one of them was Harvard. And I found out that Harvard had a distance program an extension program. And so I thought that would be perfect because we can maintain our comfortable lives and not move out of our comfort zone. And I could finish my bachelor's degrees what it's called and my undergrad graduate degree. And so I enrolled in long story short. I ended up being encouraged to run for student president and I ran for student president from California which is 3,000 miles away from Massachusetts on the other side of the United States and used all those same skills that I developed from web design and marketing and social media and video. I used all those same skills to campaign from the other side of the country 3,000 miles away. If that had never been done and I got elected that was the first time that had ever happened. So that was a big chapter closing in our life and a new one's beginning. So my wife and I, we ended up moving to Cambridge, Massachusetts on the other side of the United States. And I ended up running in eight elections over the next four years and later being elected university wide student president across the entire university. And then I ended up working in United States Congress which was a dream and doing things there. And this picture on the right is me standing giving the commencement speech at graduation in Harvard yard with over 30,000 people and a former United States president was right next to me and famous celebrities and it was an amazing moment and I gave a speech about dreams and destiny and entrepreneurship and this was a beautiful moment in my life and another big chapter sort of changed and a new one beginning. Then I went, I was selected for a presidential fellowship and went to work everywhere from the White House to the Pentagon, which is the Department of Defense in the United States. And in the bottom corner here's a picture of a selfie I took in the White House which is kind of funny because I was acting like I was paying attention and really was taking a selfie of myself because you have to take a selfie if you're in the White House so anyhow. And also the entrepreneurial sort of background I also was able to bring a large program into government a pitch event for new ideas that are good for government bringing sort of like a private entrepreneurial startup approach inside of government and that was over 16 million dollars we used to build this fund that would keep government services improving and anyhow.   In mind you see digital media and technology and service from the very beginning is really important in my life and you see an interest in government as well and public service and entrepreneurship throughout. And so that's to say I'll leave out some of the details but I felt this drawing and sort of a passion to do more in the world and some of these needs that I pointed out to you earlier in that deck those were things that were being kind of opened up my eyes to needs around the world and I'm like man I wanna work on these big problems I wanna work on these big needs and I think I could do something about this and it really excited me. And so two years later from where I'm standing on that stage at Harvard I'm standing in the mud in Haiti helping dig a water well that was our first project with Impact Junkie and it's a beautiful story because we realized instead of us going and building the wells we can empower the people there and create a water well business and create jobs for them we can invest in them and they can build three water wells a week we could bring water to over a million people in less than a decade. And that's in the bottom right corner is a pitch competition we ran in a giant stadium here in the United States with young people like many of you there pitching their business ideas that not only make money but also make a difference in the world. And that has led me to like riding on an elephant in crocodile infested waters to roasting marshmallows in the jungle overnight with a lot of creepy crawly things to being in Turkey to being in Uzbekistan with you all and Honduras in the bottom right at an orphanage there. And so, and then you already know the story of how I ended up in the jungle doing an entrepreneurship workshop. So all that to say I wanted to tell you these stories to kind of inspire you and also give you some examples of reminding what your story and that was the key takeaway for today is what is your story and what other stories are you gonna create by helping others around you? And I honestly believe through entrepreneurship in our heart of hearts with ImpactMP entrepreneurship is the key to unlocking human potential and possibility for others and I believe the best way you can have an impact in the world. So with that, I'd love to hear from y'all. Stop sharing. I'd love to hear some of your ideas from some of you and any questions as well we can open up for that but does anybody wanna share any of your passions or dreams or ideas that you wrote down? Put it on the spot. Right, yes. No, we can see. I noticed that you placed the first place a lot of people. Why? I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time hearing. Maybe, Holly, you can help. There are three points. A lot of people go place and change places. Yes? Why in the first place, love people? Explicitly. Oh, very good. Thank you, good question. So love people, we believe that, so at the heart of entrepreneurship is understanding needs and solving problems, right? And so we believe that's sort of with our organization we believe it starts with let's really love and that's like at the heart of what we, how we see our role in this and so when you love people and you have a sense of hey, I wanna help a lot of times emotion, you can get very emotional and just you wanna give but sometimes it starts becoming a selfish motivation because it's like I want to make myself feel better about doing things because I feel good by helping and so you have to be really thoughtful about if you love people, what's the best way you can help them? And we honestly believe through entrepreneurship by helping them help themselves that can be the most sustainable way you can show you love people. So we come at it rooted in love and try to, that's our priority and that's why we wanna make a difference whether it's in communities locally or around the world, like I mentioned. And so that's the short version. Some people say when you're talking about impact and a lot of people think like a charity that's sort of mindset and while we have that sort of some of those elements we want to think, we say do more with what you've been given we want to bring our entrepreneurial thinking into these situations.  We say let's not stop there, let's help them buy the lake finance and purchase the lake or start a fish hatchery at the lake and start or start selling fishing licenses or start selling fish by the pound and helping them think about how can we help them create a sustainable business so we can come in and train them and work with them and help them so that they can really be a sustainable adventure that can live on. And so rooted in the heart of that is love and that's where we start with. We start with the love first and it's so ingrained into the core of entrepreneurship the way we see entrepreneurship is about understanding problems in people you see understanding needs that people are facing and you want to do something about it. And so that's who we are as like a network that's what like an impact junkie we've kind of branded that we've got thousands of impact junkies around the world now that are part of this that are constantly looking for ways how can I like come with this the word empathy if that I don't know if that translates as well but empathy is really understanding go putting yourself in other people's place and trying to help them. So we come from a place of love and knowing that that's how we try to help. So that's why we start with love and then we want to go and we want to help change lives. Good question though. They have to answer your question. I agree. They ask you sir. Yes go for it. You showed the lot and what about your neighbors? Do you help your neighbors for example? Yes you like folks here in the United States. Yes. Absolutely. We have ventures one example are prisons. We have the folks who made a mistake in life and ended up in prison. And so we are doing work with prisons to help people that help them while they're in prison but also as they get out to help them start businesses that can improve their life and use some of this. Sometimes folks in prison have used they have entrepreneurial skills they just maybe use them in the wrong way perhaps that invoke the law. And so we're trying to help say like you can use those powers for good. Another there's other examples. One is human trafficking in the United States. Most people think like oh that's somewhere else in the world but we have an impact junkie in Texas to state here in the United States who found out about human trafficking that happens right in that it's called the I-10 the highway is called the I-10 the road the I-10 corridor the area there. And so she got fired up and we've been working with her she wrote a book and she speaks out a lot and has created a movement around creating more awareness around human trafficking and trying to end that. Those are just a couple of examples. There's others we're trying to work with kids in schools from high schools to do anti-bullying and help them sort of work together to. To yeah there's more examples but absolutely. I think it's not just something on the other side of the world. It's sort of viewing and I love that the beauty of entrepreneurship and specifically like the way we view entrepreneurship is you're constantly looking at what needs are right around me and how can I improve the lives of people. My neighbor as well as making a difference to for folks on the other side of the world. Did that answer your question? I have a question. Yes. You showed us a scheme. A scheme and I noticed one word angels. Why? Oh okay yeah it's a good question. So we call our investors that's great. Man I can't believe you saw that that's fantastic. So angels is a term that is used for early stage investors. So you'll have venture capitalists and larger investment funds and things like that which we have as well but we also have our angels that kind of come in early stage on some ventures. So we call that group the angels, impact junkie angels. That's the term in the United States in the investment space. That's it's sort of once your friends and your family invest in your venture if you're starting a business you'll typically have what they're called angels that help you before you get to like larger investment. And angels also are typically mentors and will help with guidance and education to help a young entrepreneur or an early venture grow. And so that's why we use that term and it also is sort of like a special meaning because it's sort of like a double meaning because you're like you're actually like an angel to help people. Thank you. Good catch. Could you tell about your business story? About what? About business story. Business story. Story? Yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of what I shared today. So the impact junkie story that I shared and that's the one business that we've started that is really, that's created a movement. So now we've got thousands of folks who are feeling the same way I felt. When I said I wanna do something about these needs I see in the world and how can I do that? So we started a monthly membership and so we have impact junkies who invest every month starting at $25 to higher numbers and then we have a larger investment group who want to say I want, we wanna invest and make a difference and we also offer training for them so they can learn some of these ideas and maybe they just start as an investor and they just wanna give to other things and be a part of, we also work with them on trips and other things and we give them resources and kind of educate them on places. Well, for instance, like you in Uzbekistan, there's a lot of people in the United States who don't know a lot about Uzbekistan. So it's really great to be able to share the culture and learn about Uzbekistan. So we'll help that just like it's great for you to learn more about what's happening in the United States. So we try to help connect people globally, I have this global network to connect people and then we have folks who maybe join and just say, oh, I just wanna kind of be a part but they don't really think of themselves as an entrepreneur but by the time they go through the education and they watch our videos and they come to our sessions and we do sessions like we're doing here with you, they're saying like maybe I do wanna be an entrepreneur, maybe I do wanna start a venture and take that next step. And so we have a lot that will move over and have started a lot of different business ideas and we take a long time to tell you all of them but I don't even know all of them right now but there's a lot. And so it's a beautiful story from like a personal story from me to have started this kind of movement and then have others stories, other people's stories being written and starting their journey in a similar path of what I went through. That's a really beautiful thing. So I hope that answers your question. I have an interesting question. So you mentioned previously about that you uphold some of the women's to start their business and pick up some ideas about their business but how about the disabled people? Do the entrepreneurship and coverage like people who is like poorly ill and like disabled, the people who cannot like start their own business or to earn the money? Yes, that's a great question. And I hope you wrote some of that down on your paper earlier. That was a beautiful, that was beautiful. No, that was wonderful. Yes, absolutely. And I think even more so with technology, there is an app that I have on my phone that people who are visually impaired or blind can't see, they can use this app and call other people to help them. So I'm driving down the road the other day and I got a call from someone and she said, can you help me read my mail? And she holds up papers and asks me to help her read her mail and I'm driving but I was like, yeah, so I stopped and I'm helping her read her mail and I just thought that was really a cool experience. That's someone I don't know but I think startups can empower people, anyone, to start things and I think it's an opportunity and maybe that's something you're passionate about or you have experience in that could be part of your story that you can, you can, I think Phillip may be experiencing some technical difficulties. Oh, hello, sorry, I just wanted to say that I went unstable for a second. Yeah, that's good question.  It's been about an hour and we really can't go much longer. I'm so sorry, no more questions. Awesome, connect with me on social media, everyone and go start something. Yeah. Make it sound, please. I want to come back and see you. I want to come back and see you all, yes. When, when? Oh, when, yeah, let's work on that. Yeah, let's set that up. Thank you so much, Phillip, for doing this and talking to everyone. It was very interesting. I'm sure everybody's quite interested. Thank you, everyone, thank you. Thank you. Have a good day. All right, the sun's up now.


Hey y'all, welcome to What Chelsea Eats. My name is Chelsea Knudsen and I'm a fiber healing coach and I also help women with other reproductive health issues. Today I'm going to be answering a question from a viewer who said that she is struggling with low libido and wanted to know what she could do about it. Well I've got your answer and it is a simple answer but it's not an easy answer. So low libido comes from hormonal imbalance and the thing that contributes to hormonal imbalance is what we eat, what we drink, what we think, and what we're putting on our bodies. That's the main thing that is contributing to it. So if that stuff is out of balance and out of line it's going to impact your hormones. So for example if you're eating a lot of processed food, you're eating meats and you're drinking dairy and eating cheese and alcohol and caffeine and all that stuff, those are hormone disruptors.  So whenever you put on your skin is absorbed into your skin and if it's toxic it's going to affect your hormones.  And lastly if you are stressed out and emotional and you got low self-esteem and all that stuff and you're self-conscious and all that stuff that kind of stuff, those things are hormone disruptors and if those things are present they're going to cause your hormones to be out of balance. So what you have to do is work on those four areas by changing what you eat, what you drink, what you think, and what you're putting on your body. So you change your food to healthy nutritious food that is full of water rich, that is water rich so fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. The other thing that you do is you need to look at what's going on in your head space, why are you so emotional, is there something going on like are you stressed out because you hate your job, are you in bad toxic relationships, like what's going on that is affecting you emotionally, you need to address that and what are you eating and drinking, is it toxic?  Like really think about that because that is going to affect your hormones and lastly what are you slathering all over your skin? Are you going to bed, what is that bath and body works? Are you putting Victoria's Secret lotion on, does Victoria's Secret still sell lotion? I don't know, it's been so long since I used it but like things with chemicals in it you have to stop doing that, stop putting that on your skin because it is, they are hormone disruptors and they will affect your libido. Okay so what do you do about this?  So one of the things you could do is if your skin is not super super dry you can use oils like coconut oil or jojoba oil or argan oil or olive oil things like that. My mother she used to swear about olive oil, she had the softest skin on earth but she used it for so many years that I think her skin was just just soft like that because of how she took care of her skin with the olive oil but like for me personally I make myself my own butter so that's what I use on my skin. I don't use any chemicals on my skin because as soon as I even think about putting something on my skin that is toxic like a lotion or something like that I can feel it immediately in my body so I don't do it so if you're hooked on the toxic body care products get off of them immediately because that is affecting your hormones and the next thing is of course change your diet download that free foods to avoid list get that list and then learn connect commit yourself to learning a new way. I know y'all always hear me say that learn a new way to eat healthy foods and even if you hate healthy foods because I hated healthy foods can I just say that again I hated healthy foods but I had to learn to like them or else I wasn't going to feel well and my hormones were going to be all out of balance so now I love salads and fruit bowls and smoothies and juices and vegetable dishes I love all that stuff but I didn't like it before so some of you are like I'm not eating any bird food well maybe you want to load the low libido so but I don't eat bird food I eat plenty of food if you guys go to my Instagram page at what Chelsea eats you can see what kinds of foods I eat it's lots of fruits and vegetables but it's a lot of it and it's not bird food but pay attention to what you're drinking is it you know drink plenty of water get like get yourself some spring water some distilled water I like distilled water I have a distiller and that has been wonderful and the reason I like distilled water is because it my body absorbs it like very very well so this will works better for me but purified water those bottles waters and those little plastic bottles that you get at the store this leeching plastic no um that those are hormone disruptors too so by the best water you can find and that's part of the reason why I bought the distiller it's because I won I didn't want water in plastic bottles because I I know that it even when it's BPA free sometimes it still doesn't feel right for me to drink it when I'm drinking and I could like I'm very sensitive to that kind of stuff and um and um lastly um you got to look at your emotional health like what's going on are you stressed are you in toxic relationships like really what's going on and if there is something going on that it's not quite right you're feeling you're feeling like you're um self-conscious and you know always afraid of things and just not feeling your best then it's time to maybe make some changes so you can feel better um so there's that um and if you're like Chelsea like this is all fine and good and everything but I've been doing the best that I can and nothing's changing and what I would I bet is either not been long enough that that's one thing that could be going on and two the other thing that could be going on is that you are probably not doing it quite right and if you need help pulling this together I have um my Fibroid Detox Workshop and you can join the Fibroid Detox Workshop um down in the description box is a link to that but other than that just watch my videos binge watch my videos and I'm always teaching on something go back you know years all that information is still relevant I mean there might be a little shift in maybe some things that I have thought over the years where I have you know continued in my learning and maybe I might have changed you know what I think about certain things but for the most part if you go and you do what I say on my videos you will get the results you're looking for and your libido will be restored and I'm and this is coming from somebody who whose libido was such that like I was completely numb like in that area like no feeling at all like nothing so if God can restore that then he can restore whatever's got going on with you what you've got going on with you too so hopefully this has been helpful to you if no one told you that they love you today Chelsea in North Carolina loves you very much and I'll talk to you all soon take care


Welcome to the First Unitarian Society. My name is Emily Smith, and I am a member here. Today's service will be led by three members of the 20s and 30s group, Aaron Haas, Brian Rainey, and myself. The service was inspired by discussions we had over the last year with the rest of the 20s, 30s group. We are joined by the worship team of Reverend Kelly, Aspreith Jackson, Linda Warren, Drew Collins, Daniel Carnes, and Stephen Gregorius. And a special thanks to the members of our Chime Choir. Thank you for your beautiful music. At First Unitarian Society, we question boldly, listen humbly, grow spiritually, act courageously, and love unapologetically. If you are visiting us today, welcome. We are so very glad you are here. If you would like more information about First Unitarian Society, please stop by the welcome table located in the Commons. We hope you will be able to stay and join us for coffee hour, immediately after service, also held in the Commons. For those of you joining us virtually, welcome to you as well.  We hope you will take a moment to watch the announcement slides shown immediately after today's service to learn more about our upcoming programs and activities. Today's service will include a special ritual, for which you will need both a piece of paper and something to write with. Hopefully, many of you received each of these items on your way into the service today. But if you need one or both of them, please raise your hand now. Excellent, thank you. And the ushers can help bring those items to you. So keep the hands up, and we'll get the ushers coming around. Speaking of the ushers, there are many important volunteer roles that go into making a successful and welcoming service each weekend here at FUS. Greeters to welcome people in, ushers to assist them while they're here, and volunteers to make and serve the all important coffee. While individuals and families are always invited to volunteer for any of these roles, we've recently begun to encourage ministry teams, committees, and other specific groups of FUS folks to adopt a service and take up this work together as a fun way to contribute to the life we create together. Special thanks, therefore, to the friends of the Meeting House Board for adopting today's service. The Friends of the Meeting House is a 501C3 organization whose membership is open both to members of this congregation and those of the larger community. Their purpose is to support the preservation of our landmark Frank Lloyd Wright Meeting House and share this architectural heirloom with others through guided tours and other educational opportunities. If you would like to know more about the group, or might be interested in joining, or would like to learn more about the relationship between our spirituality and our building, today is a wonderful opportunity to talk to some of them after the service. And now, I invite you to join me in a moment of silence to center ourselves and bring ourselves fully into this time as we join together once again in community. It is not by chance that you arrived here today. You have been looking for something larger than yourself. Inside of you, there is a yearning, a calling, a hope for more, a desire for a place of belonging and caring. Through your struggles, someone nurtured you into being, instilling a belief in a shared purpose, a common yet precious resource that belongs to all of us when we share. And so you began seeking a beloved community, a people that does not put fences around love, a community that holds its arms open to possibilities of love, a heart home to nourish your soul and share your gifts. Welcome home, welcome to worship. I invite you now to rise in all the ways that we do for the words of our chalice lighting. As surely as we belong to the universe, we belong together. We join here to transcend the isolated self, to reconnect, to know ourselves, the eternal, under the stars, linked. Join us for our opening hymn, number 188 in the gray hymnal. This hymn has an ostinato, a repeated melodic and harmonic pattern that Kelly will demonstrate for you. And on the second time we sing this hymn, you are welcome to sing the ostinato instead of the melody. Removed from the original version of the poem, turned into the hymn. So puts it back here, it goes like this. Though you've broken your vows 10,000 times. Like that, over and over again. Who would like to, to join me at the front for a story? Hi everyone, I'm Emily and this is Brian and we're going to read you a story today. So our service today is about belonging. And sometimes in order to belong to a group, people tell us that we have to behave in a certain way. So for example, if an animal is going to belong to the group called cats, we might say that animal has to say meow. It says cow, okay, so here's my question. What are some other ways we might expect an animal to behave in order to be considered a cat? Clio, because it's on your name tag. I'm very sneaky. Okay, so in order to be a goat, maybe you have to have a beard. That's a good idea, a fake beard. All right, so some goats might have fake beard, some goats might have real ones. This is an interesting idea. Yeah, I'm getting that impression that we have some plants in the audience who know the story. All right, so here's my question. How do cats typically feel about water? Do they usually like water? We have mixed responses. I see, all right, so we've heard some stories about cats that swim, but we also have the sense that perhaps usually they do not. Our story today, it could be harder to move around when your fur is wet. Our story today is about a cat named Jet, and we're going to see what she thinks about water. Jet is a cat, just like any other cat. She loves to pounce, she loves to sprawl, and of course, she loves to swim. She loves to swim all day until the sun goes down, and even a little bit longer, just like any other cat. Actually, real cats can't stand water. We can't, asks Jet. We can't, says Tom the cat. You are not a cat.  Huh, says Jet. And with a shrug, she dives back in. Jet is a frog, just like any other frog. She loves to swim, she loves to eat bugs, and of course, she sings in a high voice, just like any other frog. Well, to be honest, even our tiniest tadpoles sing low. Really, truly, asks Jet. Truly, really, says bold a frog. You are not a frog.  Weird, says Jet, and with a sigh, she climbs on up. Jet is a bird, just like any other bird. She loves to eat bugs, she loves to sing high, and of course, when she jumps from a tree, she falls flat on the ground, just like any other bird. Well, technically, flying is kind of what we do best. That's not true, says Jet. Oh, it's true, says Blue the Bird. You are not a bird.  Harumph, says Jet, and with a grunt, she trots off. Jet is a goat, just like any other goat. Totally flightless, check. Born to prance, you know it. And of course, she's completely beard-free, just like any other goat. Sorry, ma'am, a goat is not a goat without a fine, long beard. No way, says Jet. Oh, way, says Bill the Goat. You are not a goat.   I can't do this anymore, whales, Jet. Jet goes home for a nice, long swim. She feels like herself again. Now she has something to say to all those creatures still arguing about what she can or cannot be. Listen up, says Jet. I am a cat, unlike any other cat. But I'm still a cat and a great cat at that. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to work on my backstroke. But as she turns to go, we have all these animals who have some secrets of their own. The goat says, my beard is fake. And the cat says, my best friend is a mouse. The mouse doesn't care for cheese. The frog sings soprano. And the bird is more of a runner. Well, grins Jet the Cat, what's wrong with that? Then they all swim, run, sing, explore, and play around until the sun goes down, and even a little bit after. We have a question about the story? Yeah, the goat says his beard is fake. That was his secret all along. We will now sing our children to their classes. Thank you for joining me for the story today. You can turn the day from to share your gifts and sprang. My name is Erin. The words in our opening hymn today come from 13th century poet and Islamic scholar Rumi. He invites us to come, though we've broken our vows a thousand times. When I first heard this line recently, I felt an immediate sense of belonging. I hope it doesn't come as a surprise to any of you, but as human beings, we're not perfect. We make mistakes. We overcommit ourselves. We falter and fall short. That does not make others in our community unworthy of belonging, and it does not make you unworthy of belonging in this community. Though you've broken your vows a thousand times, come. After my initial sense of belonging when I heard that, the pesky negative voice in my head is charmed in with Erin. You've probably broken your vows at least 10,000 times. So this doesn't really apply to you, and it's selfish to keep letting other people down. Inherent in that negative talk is the assumption that desire to belong is a selfish or self-serving one. I know that I'm not alone in feeling like I've let others down or acted in ways that go against my morals. Increasingly, psychologists and spiritual leaders are recognizing that many of us are struggling with moral injury. Moral injury is the damage done to one's conscious or moral compass when that person perpetrates, witnesses, or fails to prevent acts that transgress one's own morals, beliefs, values, or ethical codes of conduct. Moral injury is most commonly discussed in regards to members of the military, but there's also recent recognition that many medical professionals are suffering from moral injury. They've had to make difficult decisions during the pandemic. Some even suggest that there's widespread moral injury in Western nations as a result of the climate crisis and how it may not always be feasible in our society to act in a way that reduces our carbon footprint. Moral injury can look a lot like burnout. It can lead to guilt and shame that is debilitating. The loss of hope that people facing moral injury can feel can cause them to stop trying to make the world a better place. Many experts say that community is an important part of the healing process from moral injury. Communities allow us to confront our shame and our shortcomings and to find meaning from our experiences. To do that deep work, to expose the parts of us that we are not proud of, it requires us to foster belonging. In that sense, belonging is not a selfish thing, but it's important in making sure that we have the spiritual strength to create a more just world. In Brené Brown's book, Braving the Wilderness, she writes, most of us are showing up to ensure that people's basic needs are met and that their civil rights are upheld, but we're also working to make sure that everyone gets to experience what brings meaning to life, love, belonging, and joy. These are essential, irreducible needs for all of us and we can't give people what we don't have. We can't fight for what's not in our hearts. And the proposed changes to our Unitarian Universalist Association bylaws that are being voted on next year. The value of equity includes a statement. We declare that every person has a right to flourish with inherent dignity and worthiness. The word flourish is what really stands out for me in that statement. Our commitment to justice is not simply making sure that people have their basic needs met, but it's also making sure that they have the right to flourish. Having communities of belonging is part of that. I'm gonna read that again for you. We declare that every person has a right to flourish with inherent dignity and worthiness. If you're like me, you may fall into the trap of thinking that every person means every person besides you. It's not written that way and I think the amendment process is closed so I don't think we could get it written that way. Well, I would not be a good Unitarian Universalist if I told you what you had to think. I am very confident that each and every person in this space is included in that statement. You have the right to flourish, the right to belong, even if you've broken your vows a million times. Thank you. One of the ways in which we help our community flourish is through our gifts. So now I invite you into this time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously to this offering which sustains and strengthens the work of our community. You will see on your screen that you can donate directly from our website, fussmedicine.org. You will also see the text to give information there as well. We thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life that we create together. The vision of First Unitarian Society is to be a spiritual community of belonging. That's the first sentence of our new vision statement which we voted for at the parish meeting in May, to be a spiritual community of belonging. I feel like I belong here. I joined FUS in 2019. I had left the Catholic Church a few years earlier and I didn't feel like that church respected me for who I was. I felt like it asked me to believe things that I didn't feel comfortable with. So when I came here, I was skeptical about going back to church. Here's what I remember from my first few times at FUS. I remember the pride flags. I remember hymns that were far more inclusive than anything I used to sing at St. Mark. How could anyone ever tell you you were anything less than beautiful? And I remember learning the first principle of Unitarian Universalism, the inherent worth and dignity of every person. At FUS, I know that I'm respected for who I am and that makes me feel welcome here. I also think that feeling welcome was just the first step in feeling like I belong here. I didn't feel like I was flourishing here, as Aaron said, until I connected with other people. As a new member of the community, it was not easy to put myself out there. I don't think that's necessarily anyone's fault. I felt nervous about meeting new people. And I also felt scared to take a chance on a community that might not be a good fit for me. This fear reminds me of something the rabbi Harold Kushner says about love. I'm afraid that we may be raising a generation of young people who will grow up afraid to love, afraid to give themselves completely to another person because they'll have seen how much it hurts to take the risk of loving and have it not work out. They'll be so fearful of the pain of disappointment that they'll forgo the possibilities of love and joy. I think that's why reaching out to a new community felt risky. It made me vulnerable to rejection and I wanted to protect myself from that. When I reached out, I wasn't necessarily going to find the loving community that I was looking for. Here's what I can say from my own experience. If I did not take the risk and reach out to other people when I was new to FUS, I don't think I would still be here. I emailed Drew, the music director, and I asked if I could join the choir. He responded right away and said, all you need to do is show up. After that, the pandemic made reaching out to people a lot harder. I did take another chance and I joined a Zoom call with the 20s and 30s group. I did not know any of them, but they were all lovely people. It's helpful for me to think about these experiences like a sapling in a forest. A sapling starts out fragile until it reaches its roots out to the other trees in the forest. Once it takes root, it becomes part of a community where the trees literally take care of each other. When one tree is ailing, the other trees send nutrients to it through their roots. That's when I felt like I belonged at FUS. After I reached out to the community, people in the community started reaching out to me. Emily asked if I wanted to help lead a few worship services. Leslie asked me if I wanted to help facilitate Coming of Age, which is one of the classes in our religious exploration program. I do wanna take an extra moment to talk about religious exploration because I'm told we still need more teacher volunteers. And the kids here, as you've seen, and their families and the teachers here are delightful. And I think being in community with those people may be reason enough to volunteer to teach. More than that, though, I think this is an RE program that teaches kids that they are inherently worthy of respect, that what they think matters, and that it's part of a larger truth, and that here they're safe to be the person who they want to be. And if I could give that reassurance to every kid in the world, I would totally do that. I can't, but I can help make that happen here. And so can you. So if you wanna volunteer, the person to talk to is Leslie Ross. And now that I'm recruiting volunteers for stuff, I'm starting to think that I might not be new here anymore. So when I was in high school, I got very good advice about not being new anymore. It was from this really charismatic guy named George N. Parks, who taught me how to be a drum major. Remember what it feels like to be new. When I remember what it felt like to be new at FUS, I remember the pride flags, the inclusive hymns, and the first UU principle. I remember that when I reached out to people, they were responsive and kind. I don't remember an instant sense of belonging, but I do remember having the thought that maybe I could belong here. There's a lot we can do to help people find a sense of belonging here, but I think the most important thing for me is to be welcoming, to respect the right of every person to flourish with inherent worth and dignity, to walk up to someone I don't know and introduce myself, to listen to their story with genuine curiosity, to introduce them to someone new. And I think that being welcoming is our collective responsibility as we foster the spiritual community of belonging that we want to be. Let's remain seated to sing him 1053 in the teal hymno. How could anyone? We'll sing it two times. The title of our service today is creating belonging. The way we create belonging in our community is by sharing our gifts and receiving and appreciating the gifts offered by others. In a moment, I'm going to ask you to write or draw a gift you bring to our FUS community on the piece of paper you received at the beginning of the service. Then you'll offer that gift to the community by bringing the paper to the front of the auditorium and placing it in the vase in front of the pulpit here. At the end of the service, you'll receive a gift by taking one of the papers that someone else offered. We'll place the vase by the center doors of the auditorium so you can take a gift on your way out. If you're feeling nervous right now, be assured that each of you, whether this is your first time at FUS or your thousandth, brings many gifts. Maybe you give the gift of welcome by saying hello to those sitting near you in service or checking in with new faces in your small group. Maybe you teach the children of our congregation or bring silliness and play to the adults. You might cook for the potlucks or listen with a caring presence when someone is having a hard time. You might offer understanding or forgiveness when someone makes a mistake or something larger than a mistake. And of course, your presence in our community in and of itself is a gift. In each of these ways, we reach out our metaphorical tree roots to share nutrients, to strengthen our connections, to create belonging. Though you bring many, I ask you to select one gift you want to offer to the community today and write or draw it on your paper now. When you're ready, you can fold your paper and bring it up to the vase. We gather each week, carrying with us all the joys, the losses, the celebrations, and sorrows of our days. We bring them here, knowing that they are held in love and in support. We light a candle of grief and memory to mark the passing of and to celebrate the life of C.C. Boyard. C.C. was an educator, a real estate broker, a painter, and a poet. She was a mother and a grandmother who moved to Madison in the last decades of her life, where she came to live at Oakwood Village and became a member of our congregation. C.C. passed from life on July 11th, and her family chose to have a small private memorial last week. May the memory of her life continue to bring solace and encouragement to all who knew her. We light a candle of celebration for the 40th birthday of Alyssa Ryan Joy, member of this congregation and now immediate past president of it.  She asked me to include the number, don't blame me. And I invite you now to join me in the spirit of meditation and of prayer. A prayer is like a poem. There is no one right formula to which it must adhere, but there should be some rhythm, some flow, however particular to that one alone. Otherwise it is neither a prayer nor a poem. A prayer is like a letter. It does not have to be sent. It does not have to be received. It does not even have to have any particular destination in mind in order to express something profound in the one or the ones from whom it originates or who stumble upon it by accident. A prayer is like a song. Everything in it doesn't have to be true, but the ones that don't have something true in them don't get sung for too long. A prayer is like an apology made once and left unattended to. It means as little as if it had not been made at all. But undertaken with an intention that is repeatedly returned to and refreshed, it can hold us to something nobler, guide us towards something better. And the most important ones are always very hard to make. A prayer is like a raincoat applied on the wrong circumstances. It can be heavy and cumbersome, a burden to the bearer, towards no particular end. But its value is instantly proven when the storm comes. A prayer is like the weak nuclear force, the fundamental interaction in particle physics which can change the flavor of quarks, which operates at an unseen level on items at best dimly understood, doing work which is strange but somehow necessary to our continued existence. In the same manner to the way in which a prayer may operate on a heart. A prayer is a reaching out. It doesn't always connect, but it always tries to. Thank you for praying with me. Amen. Please join us for our closing hymn, number 354 in the gray hymnal. We laugh, we cry. We will sing verses one and four. One addiction today is a responsive reading. Because there have been times when shame has crushed our ability to be wholehearted. Because we have not always had the courage to be imperfect.  Because we have struggled to have compassion for ourselves or others.  Because we have been afraid of our own vulnerability.  Because we are sometimes too scared to live authentically.  Because we want to be wholehearted people, confident in our worthiness and our belonging.  Blessed be, go in peace and please be at rest for the postlude.


Hey everyone, welcome back to some more Python programming videos We're on the Python challenge now. We're looking at challenge number 10 We're on a bull dot html and we are presented with this picture of a bull and the only hint that we get here is Len of a 30 equals question mark. Okay. Um, I would think that that is Python code considering the Len function we'll get the length of something and a Must be a list because it's being indexed at the 30th position And it wants to know what that is I guess at least that's what I would assume Let's do some investigation. Let's view the source here. Check it out The title of the page is what are you looking at? I guess to match our little a little bull here and Looks like we just got a typical picture the bull JPEG using a map like we had beforehand with the B or B zip challenge and There is Coordinates for being clicked on here. So let's click it. Yep. If I move over the bull my cursor changes to a clicking thing I Just I guess it just means that I can click here because I can't anywhere else in the picture So it'll take me to sequence dot text. You can see down the bottom right, sorry bottom left and Huh a equals an array One But the array is incomplete the list Does not continue Obviously if I view the page source here, it's just a simple text file. So we're not gonna get anywhere What is the pattern here one? I would assume that okay since it's asking us to find the length of a being this sequence right because this is a equals all this wants the 30th Term in the sequence and I should find the length of it but Don't know how to continue this series. It's not like it's counting. It's not like it's adding the ones to it I'm zooming one 1121 1211 111,000 221 I don't know One two one one two two ones are What if like okay it adds it gets to a tense place And then it brings it carries one over here No, that doesn't work because I don't know what to do to get to the next step a equals one one two ones One two one one one one two two ones Wait a sec this index being one one Written out one one right here, and you say two ones Two and one being the next index and then one two One two and one one being said here and then one one one two two ones I don't know all right I'm just gonna Do some research copy this your new tab Oh All right, Wikipedia to the rescue Don't want to donate right now sorry guys Mathematics to look and say sequence is the sequence of integers beginning as follows one eleven twenty one Okay, so this is the same sequence we were looking at over here in our sequence Look and say sequence To generate a member of the sequence from the previous member read off the digits of the previous member counting the number of digits in the same digit So one is read off as one one One one is read off as two ones or two one and two one is read off as one two then one one or one two That's exactly what we just did that. That's it. That's sweet. Okay, and One two one one is what office one one then one two and two ones or one one two two one one So that's exactly What we've got here and just continues in that pattern Like looking at it and saying what it is the look and say sequence That's cool Look and say sequence was introduced and analyzed by John Conway. Dude. He's a cool guy.  All right. Yeah. Yeah, he had the game of life. All right, let's How do we Let's say we start with just one This Start with a string of one because I'm not gonna use engines because I can't like add things to that and we're gonna want to loop through it, right? So Start because eventually we're gonna add more stuff to this. So let's say we're looking at Actually what we're gonna be looking at previously because we want to keep track of what we've just last seen in the loop, right? Let's say if we move on to If we go to one and one one if we start at one and then let's say, okay, we're looking through it We look through it. We say The count we're gonna keep count of what we've seen it's gonna be and then you say count and the number that you're looking at So one one now when we look through this one, it's gonna say count is gonna say Okay, we found one one and now we found two ones. So the next term is gonna be two Once so we keep track of account and what we've been looking at previously because in this case is gonna be one two and then one one right, so Got a count of one one and a count of one two and a count of two ones one one two Two ones So is that was that our next term? Yeah, it was One one two two one. Okay. So if we got a looking at previously variable, I'll just set that to be Right now the start of it Count is gonna start at zero and then next term We're gonna fill but right now it's gonna be an empty string So four term in start if term is what we were looking at previously And we'll add to our count variable count plus equals one If it's not Then We'll reset the count. We'll say it's back at one Not at zero, but at one because if we move on to something else We obviously are going to have one count of it to begin with right? That's why we're using count as one not count of zero up here and We can update our next term So plus equals as if we have multiple things like multiple different numbers or digits in the Term we want to keep track of every single one of them. So that's why we're gonna keep Keep it relative addition relative assignment and gonna change our count variable into a string And the way we would read it like we had earlier we would say okay There are two ones so count comes first and then we were actually looking at so count plus Looking at previously Now every time the loop Want to say looking at previously is gonna become what we were just looking at the term and then we can print out Next term if I run this Okay Next term is nothing for term and start if term is looking at previously which is count plus equals one So we're adding one and we're going to the next term. Oh, we're not even adding it to the first term we're not even adding to next term if Our start is only equal to one. Oh, so we have to do it at the end too, right? Like in this case We look through it Okay, looking the term is equal to looking at previously. So this runs this executes count plus equals one, but the Code block to actually change the next term is not being run So We should do it at the very end of the loop as well Demonstration I'm talking now if I run this hey, we get one one Now if we start at one one we get to one works We started to one One two one one that works just fine for us and one two one one Now we get the exact same sequence that we would have had in our in the sequence here Okay, cool But now we need to Do this over and over again you make it recursive Yeah, let's try and make this a function Define look and say With a start all this can be indented and we'll return a Next term and that as well and now if we print and say We start And I get one one now. We want to do this Oh, I'm super zoomed in on the bull We want to do this 30 times it says so for I in range Learn to type 30 What we'll do We'll say let's make a recursive start equals Look and say start So it's gonna keep what's gonna pass in one four Because that's the first start in this function and then it's gonna be your turn one one and then it's gonna do it again Get to one Pass in to one get one two one one do it again and again and again, so it's like oh This loop is doing it all for us. So now we can print out start. Oh Oh And there it is all right copy and paste this oh No, because it wanted the length of this right? Yeah, length of a 30 so Print out the length and we get this number 5,808 Maybe this is it When do our URL up here? Change bowl to 5,808 Hey, all right. We got it awesome Okay, that's pretty cool The look and say sequence Thanks Wikipedia Thanks Wikipedia for explaining how this works and trying to think through it That's the beauty of programming here. Now. We're on the 11th challenge guys sweet Sick nasty all right Let's uh Let's end the video now. I think I mean we accomplished the goal and got to the next challenge And we'll have to try this one in the next tutorial, but thank you guys for watching Hope you enjoyed this and I'll see you in the next tutorial


In this trading video, we're going to look at the use of cell referencing in formulae. So what we're trying to do in column E starting on E2 is trying to find out what each of the regions are for the sales are the percentage of the total sales. So we're trying to find out what north sales are and percent of total sales, east sales against total, northwest against total, so on, so on, so on. So everyone is going to be looked at against the total sales. So if we look at how Excel will do the formulas, we'll start with an equal sign. It's going to be D2 divided by D8. These have been formatted to the percentage, but the idea behind the formula is to copy down. We don't want to do this one at a time. You could do it one at a time and just repeat the process, but that's going to take a long time. And if you've got the hand with the D to do, it doesn't make sense to do it one at a time. So you want to copy this down. And when we copy it down, okay, there's a lot of error messages. So div zero means divide by zero. So what's happening is as we come, as we copy down one cell, it's looking at the east region, but then Excel is moving away from the total because it's keeping the formula pattern reset. So we've set the formula pattern for the first formula, B2 against D8 divided by D8. Well, the next one should be B3 against D8, next one, D4 against D8, and then it repeats the pattern, D5 against D6, D7 against D8, and then D8 against D8 for 100%. Now the computer in Excel, and the calculator behind Excel, doesn't know to hold D8 in place. It just copies a pattern. So all it's doing now is saying, okay, B2 divided by D8, if it moves one down, that means it's going to be B3 by B9, it moves two down, it's B4 by B10. So it's just moving according to the pattern we originally set. We could correct this by going to all these div zeros and just going back and saying, well, I don't want it against B9, which is zero here. I wanted to go against D8, so we could now manually change all these back to D8. I've worked with companies in the past that have actually done this, and I've done this for hundreds of rows, so you can see how long this might take and the risk of error. So just a couple more, you can see what I'm doing, I'm just going back against D8 all the time, which is a total, and the final one, D8. Okay, so we know that by copying it down, Excel doesn't automatically give us the right answers. We know we can correct it, but correcting is okay for a couple of rows like I've done in this example. If that was 2,000 rows, that would not be appropriate, and it would lead to error and frustration. So we need Excel to help this and be a bit more helpful to us in copying these kind of formulas down. So I'm going to delete all the corrections I've made, and go to the 10.64%. Look at the formula, and think which part of that formula do I need to hold in place and do I need to lock? Well I need the B2 to move down to B3, B4, B5, B6, B7, and B8, so I need it to cycle down column B from B2 to B8. But the B8, which is the divisor part of the formula, I don't want that to move away from the A, because that is the total. So we can hold this in place by using dollar signs. Now if you type in a dollar sign normally, so let's escape this for a second, and I'll go into a different cell, if I type in a dollar sign and type in 1, 2, 3, a dollar sign with standard type in means currency. But dollar signs in formulas do not mean currency, they've got a different meaning, and I'll explain that now. So if I go back to the calculation, I want to put dollars around the B and the B8. So I click before the B, and I'm going to press a key, that's F4. Now F4 works on all desktop computers, on the majority of laptop computers, but there's some laptop computers, you've got to press function F4 to get dollar signs, and advising it used to the F4 key is a much better way of learning dollar signs instead of put them in yourself.  Now dollars inside a formula, we know we're inside a formula, so any dollars inside of the formula, they're like keys, they lock in something shut. So the dollar before the B locks the B shut, the B's a column, the dollar before the 8 locks the 8 shut, the 8 a row, if you lock the column on the row, you lock in a cell. So the first press of the F4 is known as absolute cell referencing, dollar, dollar, it locks the actual cell. If I press F4 again, the referencing moves. This is called relative cell referencing. So the B now is unlocked, it can move to C, D, it can move across, but the 8 cannot move from row 8 because it's got a key in place and the dollar's before the 8. Press F4 again, the dollar's now before the B. So the B can't move, but the 8 can go 9, 10, 11, so it's got no key against it. Press F4 again, it gets rid of all your dollar signs. So the F4 cycles through all your dollar signs. In our example, we want to hold the cell in place because we want to hold the cell B, 18th place so it doesn't move. So it's a dollar, dollar, press enter, copy down. And I can always get the formatting back by using the format painter quickly. And then just changing the currency to a percentage. You can quickly get formatting back if you ever need to. I can put it to two places if I want to. And there we go. So now we can see that every formula is divided by B8 because it's held itself in place. You can see B8 is held at 100%. It's B8 divided by B8 gives you 100%. So in this video, we've looked at the use of cell referencing and to get the right answer for the formula we wanted here, we have to use what's called absolute cell referencing. An absolute cell referencing is dollar, dollar and it holds a cell in place. So that's what we've done in this example. But this completes the training video for the introduction of cell referencing and this example, looking at the F4 key and the different choices we've got. Plus we've covered absolute cell referencing.


To infinity and beyond, we go with the new Sailor Professional Gear Pen of the Year 2024 Celestial Gray fountain pens. They are available in both the standard and slim fountain pen sizes. The pens come in these blue Sailor Navy blue gift boxes. There's cartridges, a converter, and some more information about the pen and the brand itself that are inside the box as These fountain pens draw inspiration from the infinite beauty of the night sky in a homage to the stars that blink at us from above. The 2024 Pen of the Year fountain pen is a limited edition featuring a semi-transparent charcoal gray body sprinkled with silver sparkles which is where the Celestial Gray name comes from that evokes the majestic beauty of the night sky. The pen also has a ring around the cap engraved with the year 2024 to mark it as a collectible item. These fountain pens are fitted with the standard size Progears 21 karat gold nib with rhodium plating to match the harmonious silver trim that enhances the Celestial Gray pens sparkle. The pen also uses a proprietary cartridge converter filling system. There's nothing included on the inside of the pen already but inside the box like we showed at the beginning of the video there are cartridges and converters that you can choose either or to put inside your pen when you want to start writing with it. Learn more about these amazing pens at


One thing that hits me immediately is the redirect that he does. The journalist says, I don't understand, a grandmother does not leave her grandkids. And he says, that's the question. Well, no, that isn't a question. She just made a statement. That was all. It's not a question at all. Nobody was asking you to answer a question. Somebody just made a statement. And what they were looking for was your reaction to that statement and your reaction to that statement is to deflect away. And at the same time, he takes his hanky or a cloth or whatever that is, and he brings it up to his face and he does a block at that point. He puts up a barrier of some sort around then. Those two elements for me are enough for me that I'm kind of go, okay, we've got something going on.


The Nigeria Center for Disease Control, NCDC has registered additional 238 COVID-19 cases in the country. The NCDC made this known on its official website handle on Thursday morning. The new infections indicate an increase from the 233 cases announced before. The country's COVID-19 cases continue to rise for seven consecutive weeks across Africa, including Nigeria, signaling the third wave of the deadly Delta variant. The 238 additional cases were reported from five states.


Μαγνέτικα ρεζόνουσή ηματζήν is increasingly used for brain or a head and neck radiotherapy treatment planning but the thermoplastic masks used for patient immobilization don't fit inside the diagnostic head and neck MR receiving coils. A commercial solution for gymming scanners involves attaching two flex large four coils inside the holder which is placed in the head recess of the scanner couch. The flat tabletop and the board with the mask are placed on top of the holder and the coils are closed over the mask. We propose a custom solution by attaching two ultra flex large 18 coils and placing them in the head recess of the scanner couch. We use a slightly modified tabletop. We place the board with the mask on top and close the coils over the mask. But which flexible coil setup offers the best imaging quality? To find out, we have scanned 5 healthy volunteers in the flexible coil arrangements using mobilization masks and in the diagnostic head and neck coil without immobilization using a T1 and a T2 weighted turbo spin echo and a short tough inversion recovery sequence from the clinical protocols. A qualitative evaluation was performed by clinicians reviewing the images for treatment planning stability. Images were quantitatively evaluated by calculating signal and contrast noise ratio and artifact size for its use of interest along the head. In addition, the ICL phantom was scanned in the three coil setups monthly over two years using the two ICR sequences and the three clinical sequences which were applied on the volunteers. Image quality parameters were calculated according to ICR recommendations and specific absorption rate estimations were obtained from the diagram headers. Comparisons of ratios of image quality parameters obtained with each flexible coil over those obtained with diagnostic head and neck coil showed lower ghosting and higher contrast SNR and uniformity with a custom than with a commercial coil setup for the clinical series on the ICR phantom. Volunteer comparisons confirmed that the UFL18 provided higher SNR and it was also more spacious and perceived as less claustrophobic than the commercial level 4 coil setup. The ultra flex large 18 coil setup was thus selected for clinical implementation in brain and head and neck MR simulations. Ευχαριστώ για την εξεγραφή. Για τελευταίες εξεγραφές πραγματικά δείχνω το παιχνίδι μας και εξεγραφήσω την εξεγραφία αν έχετε εξεγραφία.