I'm going to look at the first 15 verses of Acts 16 today. And so let's begin reading at verse 1, Acts 16, verse 1. And I'll read to verse 5. Then he came to Derby in Lystra. Behold, a certain disciple was there named Timothy, the son of a certain Jewish woman, who believed, but his father was Greek. He was well spoken of by the brethren who were at Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted to have him go on with him. And he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in that region, for they all knew that his father was Greek. And as they went through the cities, they delivered to them the decrees to keep, which were determined by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem. So the churches were strengthened in the faith and increased in number daily. So at this point, we're introduced to a young man, a young man that we become very familiar with later on. His name is Timothy. And so as we look at Timothy, let me give you a little information concerning him because it speaks concerning that in verse 1, where it says, behold, a certain disciple was there named Timothy, the son of a certain Jewish woman, who believed, but his father was Greek. Let me give you a little background on Timothy. We know that Paul had preached in Lystra and he had done so around eight years earlier. Due to persecution, he had fled to Lystra from Iconium. In Acts 14 verses five and six, it said, when a violent attempt was made by both the Gentiles and Jews with their rulers to abuse and stone them, they became aware of it and fled to Lystra and Derby, cities of Lyco and Nia, and the surrounding region. So while he was there, Timothy, his grandmother, as well as his mother had been converted under the ministry of the apostle Paul. Now, the Bible makes it very clear to us that his grandmother and mother were both Jews and they had received the gospel. Paul, when he writes to Timothy in second Timothy, in chapter one, verse five, said it like this.  So his grandmother and his mother were both Jews and they had received the gospel when the apostle Paul had preached. It would seem that Timothy had been open to the gospel also. Paul makes mention of this in the fact that as a child, Timothy had received training from his grandmother and mother in the Jewish faith. As a matter of fact, in the laying down of the principles of scripture and the stories of the salvation of God and all that you find in the Old Testament, the foundation had been laid in Timothy from his youth all the way up, which made him capable of receiving the word of God and actually being converted. You see that in second Timothy three, verses 14 and 15, where Paul said to him that you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them. And he said, and that from childhood, you have known the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. You have known the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise unto salvation. That's a very important thing for us as parents or grandparents. The scriptures are able to make you wise unto salvation. That's why you pour scripture into your children. That's why you read the Bible to them. That's why you pray with them because you are cultivating a faith in them. And when you deposit the word of God in them, it is a word of God that God uses to draw them to a knowledge of him, draws them to a knowledge of salvation. So that alone would be incentive for parents to deposit the word in the hearts of their children because he says, the sacred writings are able to make you wise for salvation. They originate the destination of salvation and they work to arrive at that destination. He says they are able. When he says the scriptures are able, this speaks of the present power of the word of God. Somebody said this speaks of the ever present power of the scriptures on the human heart. Now remember the scriptures had not completed their work on Timothy. They were at continuation of work in him because salvation is the destination that God's word was taking him to ultimate salvation and being with him. So through Paul's ministry, Timothy had come to faith in Messiah and it was Paul who had the blessing of bringing him to Jesus and later he wrote of it. In 1 Corinthians 4.17 he said for this cause have I sent unto you Timothy who is my beloved son and faithful in the Lord. There's something about having somebody that you refer to as a son in the faith that really matters. It is something very special about that. There are some who are in pastoral ministry today that I refer to as sons in the faith. One coming to mind right now is David Trujillo in Calvary Chapel, South L.A. He's a son in the faith and I actually call him my son. You know there are guys that come to faith through your ministry and that's what Paul was saying here concerning Timothy. In 1 Timothy 1 verse two he wrote his letter and he said here, he said to him to Timothy my own son in the faith. And so Paul was speaking concerning this young man who had received training from a grandmother and a mother who had been converted but as Jews had been placing within him the word of God. Paul had arrived given the message the grandmother, the mother had come to faith as well as young Timothy. The word of God was working in the life of Timothy and Timothy was moving on the road of salvation as a saved person was moving to the destination of heaven and this all came because he had opened his heart to Christ and the word of God had been working within him. And so what had made it possible for Timothy to be open to the gospel? Well the question is it's interesting because he had a Greek father. When it says that his father was a Greek there in verse one his father was Greek. He was the son of a certain Jewish woman who believed but his father was Greek. That's another way of saying his father was not a believer. When it says his father was a Greek that's a way of saying his father was an unbeliever. He was not a saved man. Let me give you something real brief here but it is important. His father was very unusual because it seems that as a Greek he was very benevolent. When you look a little bit in the history of Greece especially during the time of the writing of the New Testament, Greek husbands had what has been called a stranglehold. Greek husbands had a stranglehold on the life of their wives. The respectable Greek woman led a totally secluded life. She never appeared in public alone. She never appeared at meals or social occasions. She had her own apartment and none but her husband was ever allowed to enter in. There was a writer named Xenophon who said the purpose of this isolation was in order that she might see as little as possible hear as little as possible and ask as little as possible. Those are the good old days. So his father was benevolent. He allowed his wife under those conditions to continue in her Jewish faith. That wasn't always the case but it was great for them that they had this relationship because in the laying down of scriptural foundations it made it possible for Timothy to be saved. And so as it speaks here it says there was a certain disciple named Timothy the son of a certain Jewish woman who believed his father was Greek. Verse two, he was well spoken of by the brethren who were at Lystra and Iconium. Now when it says he was well spoken of by the brethren the fact is ministers of the gospel need to have an impeccable reputation because their lifestyle actually adorns the message of the gospel. They are to be Christians who live out the message. The Bible in Proverbs 22 verse one says it like this a good name is more desirable than great riches to be esteemed is better than silver or gold. And so he was well spoken of. One of the things that my father tried to teach me he wouldn't have known he was succeeding when I was a teenager but after I got saved at the age of 20 I would say that his training that went into me actually had an impact it had an effect because my father had told me and I've said this out loud more than once here in this church. My father told me that I needed to guard my reputation. He said you know David ultimately a man has very few things that matter and one of those things that matter is a good name. And so that's what Timothy had and that's what ministers ought to have a good name. In first Timothy 3 7 Paul said an elder must also have a good reputation with outsiders so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil's trap. So he must have a good reputation and that's what he was he was well spoken of by the believers who were at Lystra and Iconium. And so this is a man who's being pointed out as being somebody that is very respectable. So in verse three Paul wanted to have him go on with him and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in that region for they all knew that his father was Greek. And so obviously Timothy was trustworthy and Paul felt that he'd be a great assistant. Who can you trust more than a son in the faith? Later on Paul was writing to the Philippians and he said this in chapter two verses 19 through 23. And again, it's a testimony of Timothy. He said, I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon that I also may be cheered when I receive news about you. I have no one else like him who takes a genuine interest in your welfare for everyone looks out for his own interests not those of Jesus Christ. But you know that Timothy has proved himself because as a son with his father he has served with me in the work of the gospel. I hope therefore to send him as soon as I see how things go with me. As a son with a father he served with me in the gospel. I had a spiritual father by the name of Chuck Smith. And I remember speaking to him on one occasion I said to my pastor, I said, you know, Chuck I see my ministry responsibility as it pertained to him is to take pressure off of you and not to put it on you. I wanna be the kind of man that you can trust. That is what Timothy was to Paul, a son, a son in the faith. And he loved him. And he said, I have no one else like him. He honestly concerns, he has an honest, sincere concern for you. And there are very few people like that but Timothy was one of those guys. And so in order to take him he needed to make him acceptable to those that he was going to minister to. And because he's going to minister to Jews that required circumcision. You see, if he was uncircumcised, which he was because he had a Greek father and thus never received circumcision. If he's uncircumcised, the Jews would not listen to him. It says here, Luke says it, he says they all knew that his father was Greek. So when you look at it, you need to see this as an exception because Paul strongly taught that circumcision was not physical alone but true circumcision was of the heart. It isn't simply a physical thing. It is a spiritual thing. Remember in Romans in chapter two verses 28 and 29 how Paul said a man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly and circumcision is circumcision of the heart by the spirit, not by the written code. Such a man's praise is not from men but from God. So genuine circumcision was never simply the cutting away of skin. It was the work of the spirit in a human heart. And so when Paul performed the act of circumcision, Paul being a rabbi and he performed that act himself, he didn't circumcise Timothy in order to make Timothy someone who was what would be called a debtor to the law. That would have contradicted the teaching of grace. Remember in Galatians 5-3 how Paul says, I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he's a debtor, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. He didn't bring Timothy under the law. What he was doing, it was making Timothy acceptable to speak to people concerning the grace of God. Circumcision was not necessary for a person to receive salvation, but what he was doing is he was giving to him opportunity to have greater usefulness in ministry. And Timothy was willing to undergo great pain to reach people for Jesus Christ. This was a voluntary humiliation if you will. And he did it in order that he might be able to continue ministering. It says in verse four, as they went through the cities, they delivered to them the decrees to keep which were determined by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem and verse five. So the churches were strengthened in the faith and increased in number daily. They delivered the decrees that were established in chapter 15, the decrees that James and the council had established. And the result of this is that notice the churches were strengthened in the faith and they were growing, strengthened in the faith. Now, when you see the term the faith, strengthened in the faith, remember with me that the faith is speaking of the entire doctrine of Christ. He's basically saying they're well taught and they're abiding in the word of God. When you see the term the faith, very often in scripture, it isn't speaking of the saving faith or living faith. It's not speaking of variations of faith. What it's speaking of when it says the faith is that speaking of the apostolic doctrine is speaking of the Bible. An example would be in Jude, verse three, where it says, dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints, the faith once for all time entrusted. And so the faith that he's speaking about here is strengthening them in the doctrines of Christ. So they're delivering to them teaching that they might be able to grow in grace and knowledge. Like it says in second Peter 318, growing the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And so as they're giving to them the word of God, the churches are being strengthened in the faith and they're increasing in number daily. I don't know if you care about this, but I'll share it anyway. I was having a conversation recently and let's see if I can make this acceptable so that it doesn't come off wrong. It's almost impossible. I'm not very good at that, so I'll try. I mentor a group of young men every two weeks. I meet after second service and I spend an hour, hour and a half with them. Go through books and I share with them principles of ministry. And part of our conversation just recently, one of the young men said something pertaining to Calvary Chapel Ministries and there's a book that was published and put out called Distinctives of Calvary Chapel, the Calvary Chapel Distinctives. We were speaking a little bit about that and this young man said that those are things that are simply stories of the past. And in our conversation, I wanted to clarify something so I'll say it here too. Sometimes people think that because Calvary Chapel Ministry is old, I mean Pastor Chuck picked up Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa in 1965 and so the movement, the Calvary Chapel movement has been going over 50 years. God did a wonderful thing as you know history in the Calvary Ministries and all. Pastor Chuck had this heart to reach the hippies. I was one of those hippies that he reached and quite a number of others like us. Eventually I was ceded into the Calvary Chapel family and became pastor in the ministry and the rest is our history. And so there are other movements that some of the younger pastors are now looking to saying Calvary Chapel has passed by, our time in the sun is over, we need to look to others and not that my young friend was saying that but that is being said today. Just had a conversation with someone today who was bringing that up that that's what people are saying. Well in the meeting I was saying, well there are different churches that get a lot of limelight now, Hillsong. All of you probably have heard of Hillsong Ministries in Australia, New York, Los Angeles. I said there's a group that's well known now, Hillsong, that many people are beginning to use as their model. How many of you have heard of Hillsong? I want to know who I'm speaking to, okay, so.  How many Hillsong churches are there? A handful. I said, do you realize that there are 1,800 Calvary Chapel Ministries? 1,800. Just this week I fellowshiped. I have a responsibility to bring people into fellowship and recognize them as Calvary Chapel. That's one of the ministries I have. And I just recognized the church as a Calvary Chapel ministry this week. We are seeing Calvary Ministries continuing to grow. We continue to move. Some of the largest churches in the United States are Calvary Chapel. And we are not, you know, past our prime. I think we're just starting to shift gears into moving into the future. You know, because the Lord wants to continue working and he wants to continue doing what he's done in the past. And I really believe that God wants to continue working now. I believe that God wants to work in you. There are young people in this room right now that God has called. I have no doubt in my mind that there are people here that the Lord is equipping for works of service into the future. Eventually, people like myself, I'm gonna step away. I'm gonna mentor. I'm gonna be a pastor in this church until Jesus takes me home. But I may not be the one who stands up on a Sunday and a Wednesday anymore. And I'm okay with that. I will put somebody here who can lead this church into the future. But the bottom line is we have a future in Jesus Christ. The bottom line is that we are going forward into the future because the Lord will have us to do that. And there are young men in this ministry that I know that God's gonna raise up. I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt. We'll see more and more of that taking place in the future and all of that.  And the result is an increase. And that's what happens. And so we're not caught up with trying to entertain goats. We wanna feed the sheep. And that comes through the word of God. And that's how it is in the New Testament. So going on in verse six. Now, when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. After they had come to Chino, they tried to go to Ontario. But the Spirit did not permit them. So passing by Missia, they came down to Trois and a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, come over to Macedonia and help us. Now, after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them. I wanna show you something here. They're traveling along the southern area of what today is modern Turkey, just to give you a geographic, modern Turkey would be northwest of the nation of Israel, so it's to the northwest. And so they're traveling along the southern area of Turkey and they're moving to the west. But I want you to see this. The Holy Spirit forbids them from traveling to the northwest. Now, we have seen, as we've gone through the book of Acts, how the Holy Spirit is the center of the life of the early church. As we've been going through Acts, we've seen the Holy Spirit baptize people, gift people. We've seen him fill people, direct people. We've seen him expose sin in people. We've seen how he has spoken through people, spoken to people, and he has been leading the people. So this is an important point. It is the Holy Spirit who directs the work of the church. Remember that always. It is the Holy Spirit who directs the work of the church. In Acts 13, verse two, it says, they ministered to the Lord and fasted the Holy Spirit, said, now separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. And in verse four of chapter 13, so being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus. In ministry, it is obvious that the Holy Spirit must be in charge. The Holy Spirit must be in charge. A.W. Tozer said it like this. If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95% of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95% of what they did would stop and everybody would know the difference. That's true. It may be a little hyperbolic. It may be a little exaggerated. Maybe the statistic is at 95%, but it's true. Much of what goes on in church services and church circles is pretty much just human effort. Pretty much is. But in the early church, the Holy Spirit was in complete control. He directed, he gifted, he led, he spoke. He had them move out to do the works. He was the one who was responsible for it. And notice it says in verses six and seven that they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. Now when you think Asia, you might be thinking, they couldn't go to China or Japan, but that's not the Asia that's been referred to here. It's not the Far East. This is an area that is ancient Turkey and certain places there. Asia is an area that contains Ephesus and Smyrna and Sardis and it would seem that the ministry team had decided they wanted to go to those areas. And why? Well, because there were a number of Jews there. They had large cities. Idolatry was rampant. These would be attractive cities to these evangelists. They want to go to these major places in order to preach the gospel there. And so naturally for them, it simply made sense, let's go here, let's go into Ephesus, let's go into Smyrna, let's go into Sardis. That's where the word needs to go. And that makes sense when you're strategizing, but here's the thing.  You don't go. Even if you see that there is possibilities that you do not go. Listen, there's something I've said in the past. I haven't said it for a while. It is something that others have said. The burden is not the call. The burden is not the call. Just because I may see something in a need there doesn't mean God is calling me to that. We have to be aware of that. Paul had this heart. He wanted to go out and preach the gospel. Like he said in Romans 15, 20, he said, I have made it my aim to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build on another man's foundation. I don't want to go and plan a church next door to another church. That happens a lot. I'll just plant my church next door to another church. The disgruntled ones will leave that and come here and start meeting with me. That happens all the time. It's true. It doesn't take any faith to plant a church next to somebody else's church. It just doesn't. Paul didn't want to do that. Paul wanted to go out and preach the name of Christ where people hadn't heard of him. That was his heart. And so as he's thinking about this and all, and it makes sense to me, let's just go to these places and notice what it says. Again in verse six, when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. After they had come Missia, they tried to go into Bethany, but the Spirit did not permit them. God was not allowing him to do that. You may feel a desire to see people in a certain area or a city saved, but God may not be calling you at that time or ever to that place. When our church was first beginning, we were meeting in Ontario and we had been meeting in a particular location, a small church in the city of Ontario, and they had kicked us out. They said, we don't want you here. They thought we were a cult. They thought we were a cult because we had a Halloween alternative. So on October 31st, we had all 15 of our kids come to a little party we gave them. We called it a hallelujah party. We didn't celebrate Satan.   But these people got very upset. They thought we were Satan worshipers.  We celebrated Christmas. And when we had a Christmas service, that was it for them. They said, this is a cult. You've got to get out of here because you celebrate Christmas and you celebrate the devil. And so they kicked us out. And so we spoke to them and they gave us until the end of January. And so I sent my assistant and he went all through certain portions east in Ontario. I looked through the West area. We covered all of Ontario and could not find any place that was open to renting to us. And it's time for us to leave. We only have a couple of weeks and I'm thinking we don't have any place to go. So we went to upland. I thought, well, perhaps the Lord would have us in upland. And we actually put $1,000 deposit down on a 3,200 square foot building, which to us was enormous. That was a huge building for 60 people. We could have seating for up to 100 people and offices and everything we needed. So we put a deposit. And I thought, well, perhaps the Lord is leading us to upland and that fell through. And so it was the middle of January. And I fell on my face in the carpet in my bedroom, speaking of the Holy Spirit and how he works. And I cried physically. I know that you can't believe that I actually cried, but I did. On my face, on the carpet. And I prayed and said, God, there are only 60 people. We only had 60 people, but they're the most important people in my life. And we don't have any place to go. Father, please provide a place for us. The Holy Spirit works. The next day, I was preparing a Bible study, John 12, 24, unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit. And I remember closing the Bible and I said to the Lord, I am dead. I am dead. That Wednesday night, I forgot to mention this, I had placed my head on the pillow as I was about to go to sleep that Wednesday night. And a voice spoke to my heart in a very audible way and said, you will need a place that seats 200 on Easter Sunday. And I remember thinking, that's right. I went to sleep the next day. As I was praying, I said, Lord, I am dead. A mailman walked up and the Spirit of the Lord spoke again and said, your letter is here. I had written a letter to Chuck Smith and I had said to Pastor, I'd like to be associated as a Calvary Chapel ministry and I was waiting for his response. And I went and I took that. There was a pile of letters and I put one down and it said Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa. I opened it up and it said, we'd love to welcome you to Calvary Chapel as an associate. We have that letter in the hall. Some of you perhaps don't have never even noticed it but if you go into the main sanctuary and you walk on down from the foyer, you take a left and go north, we have that letter. It's there and a portion of it where he welcomed us in. We used to have breakfasts with the whole church. And so that Saturday the whole church showed up for the breakfast. We only had 60 people. And I said, we're changing our name to Calvary Chapel, Ontario. We were Ontario Christian Chapel at that time. And we became Calvary Chapel on Ontario. Within a week, we got an extension and we were able to remain at this small church for another two months. And then the church doubled in size because we didn't have the funds to be able to pay for the cost of renting a school. We were only spending $150 a month and now it was going to be like $1,500 a month. We didn't have that kind of money. But the church doubled and the offerings increased. And we moved in the first weeks of March. It was pouring rain on Easter Sunday. In Ontario, some of you lived there. Some of you are familiar with it. Off of Sultana and G Street. There's a school called Central School. And the curbing there is like 12 inches or higher. I forget it's high because of the floodwaters that come down from the north. It was pouring water, pouring over the curbs. That's how much rain on Easter Sunday. When I walked out there and saw 200 people sitting in that hall and I said, you don't know this, but God said you would be here today. You are the word of God alive right now. He has promised that you would be here. And that's part of how the Holy Spirit works. I can tell you lots of stories. I had to learn, I had to remember some of these stories just to remind you or to tell you what God has done in this church through the spirit of God. He still moves. He still directs. He still blesses. He's still on the throne. And it just, and that's what he does. He moves in that way.  Isaiah 48, 17 says it like this. This is what the Lord says. You're redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.  In Romans 8, 14, as many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God. Now, how is it that the Holy Spirit was forbidding him? How is it that the Spirit did not permit them, more than likely the way that he had done it before? We saw in Acts 13 that the last time his leading came through the mouths of the prophets. It's possible that he gave an internal witness. There may have been an audible word to them because we did see how the Spirit led Philip to the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8, 29. But in one way or another, he led them and that's what was going on. So what happens? Verse 8, passing by Messiah, they came down to Troas and a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him saying, come over to Macedonia and help us. Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them. And so God gives a vision Paul in the night. In the New Testament, visions are fairly common. A vision can also be described as a waking dream. We saw in Acts 9, 10 that this happened with Ananias. It says there was a certain disciple at Damascus named Ananias and the Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias. And he said, behold, I am here, Lord. We saw this with Saul in Acts 9, 12. He has seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in. It happened with Cornelius in chapter 10, verse 3, where it says he saw in a vision evidently about the ninth hour of the day, an angel of God coming to him. And in chapter 10, verse 17, we saw this with the apostle Peter and it spoke concerning a vision. So visions are very commonplace up to this point here in the book of Acts. So Paul and his companions take this as God's leading. They immediately leave. Paul had a vision. The group decided to go and they together went out to do the work of ministry. In verse 11, therefore sailing from Troas, we ran a straight course to Samothrace and the next day came to Neapolis from there to Philippi, which is the foremost city of that part of Macedonia, a colony and we were staying in the city for some days. And on the Sabbath day, we went out of the city to the riverside where Greg Laurie was. Oh, no, excuse me. Where prayer was customarily made and we sat down and spoke to the women who met there. Now, a certain woman named Lydia Hirtus, she was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira who worshiped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul and when she and her household were baptized, she begged us saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord come to my house and stay so she persuaded us. So we'll just wrap up and we'll pick up next time at verse 16, but let's wrap up now as we look at these last few verses. Paul, Silas and Timothy as well as Luke are now a ministry team and they embark on a two day journey. They're traveling Northwest from the Mediterranean. It speaks of various places. Troas was a port city in Northwest Asia Minor. Samothrace is an island. Neapolis is off the Macedonian coast and Philippi was a Roman coastal city 10 miles away. And so just speaking of the geographic location in their ministry, in verse 13, it speaks of the Sabbath day how they went to the city, went out of the city to the riverside. So normally as we've been going through acts you've seen this, Paul would first go to a synagogue and he would share with fellow Jews. The absence of a synagogue gives us the knowledge that there were apparently very few Jews because it took 10 Jewish men to form a synagogue. But these people were gathering for prayer. This would be what would be called an unofficial meeting place. It was a prayer meeting. More than likely made up of Gentile converts. It says in verse 13 that we sat down and spoke to the women who met there. So this reminds us that the gospel is to go to all, to Jew, Gentile, to male as well as female. And this, by the way, is the first time the gospel is preached in Europe because that's where they're at in Philippi. This meeting that's taken place here with a few women could appear extremely insignificant. And I wanna point this out to you. Think of it, we have a small Jewish man. When you see historical references to descriptions of Paul, history though, you can't really rely on it frankly, but the historic accounts of Paul is that he was a very small man. And not only that, but the descriptions are not very attractive. That he had bulging eyes, that he was bent over, that he was very unattractive and all of that.  You think of this man, and when you read 2 Corinthians especially, he's called fleshly, he's called a madman. They say he's untrained in speech, he's unattractive in looks, and yet what seems to be, and this is so important, I hope I can make it clear, what seems to be so insignificant is actually an amazing thing. The gospel is being preached for the first time in Europe.  It was from this simple prayer meeting that a church was born. And by the way, Philippi is remembered because of the book of Philippians. Small insignificant thing at that time, that turns out to be a historic thing in proportion.  When we speak of Philippi, we don't think of the city of Philippi, really. We think of the letter to the Philippians. We think of the church that was in Philippi. Do not despise the day of small beginnings. Small things sometimes erupt into amazing things. Never think that what you're doing doesn't matter. Please don't fall into that trap. I'm just a woman raising kids, you may say. Are you kidding me? What is greater than raising children for the Lord? What is greater than that? Oh, I don't have a job. Oh, you do too. And it's a difficult one. And you're not thanked enough for it. But it's not insignificant. Oh, I just spoke, I work. I don't even have a ministry. Yeah, yeah, I drive a truck, really. But I've led people to Christ. And those people I've led to Christ have gone out to do works for Jesus Christ later on. The things that you're doing, you know what, I'll say it this way. When the Lord is handing out rewards, you may be surprised at what He rewards you for. Your faithfulness and how that God used an insignificant conversation that you had with somebody one day to bring them to faith in Christ. And you didn't even know it. And they went off and they did works for Jesus Christ. Like when D. L. Moody was inside of his sore that he used to sell shoes. And his Sunday school teacher came walking in and D. L. was in the back room. And the Sunday school teacher just wanted to make sure that every student he was ministering to came to faith in Christ. And that's how D. L. Moody got saved with a concerned Sunday school teacher. I don't remember the Sunday school teacher's name, but nobody forgets D. L. Moody. It just happens that way. Mordecai Ham, very few people have ever heard of him. Mordecai Ham is a guy who goes from city to city. He does crusades. 17 year old kid in North Carolina comes forward. We don't remember Mordecai Ham, but everybody will remember Billy Graham. That's how that works. It's a stormy day and the pastor can't make it to church. So a farmer takes the pulpit and he preaches a gospel message.   And that boy is Charles Spurgeon. And so don't think that the work you do is insignificant. It never is. It never is. In the kingdom of God, he multiplies your efforts and he produces fruit. And don't forget that ever because this is an insignificant prayer meeting in Europe and the gospel is preached and a woman is saved and that church is famous to this day. Her name was Lydia. She was a business woman selling purple dye and she became Paul's first European convert. It says in verse 14, she worshiped God as one whose heart had been opened. She was a convert. The Lord had opened her heart. She was a sincere worshiper of God. She was prepared to receive the things spoken by Paul and his companions. And as she was faithful to the grace she received, God gave her more grace and gave her now a divine conviction that what was spoken by Paul was true. The Lord opened her heart as she listened. As the gospel was presented, Lydia believed and she was saved and God graciously granted her salvation. What happens verse 15, she and her household were baptized. Her faith moves her to be baptized. She identified with Jesus Christ completely and begged them to remain. These men were not looking for financial reward. They needed to be begged. She wanted them to stay with her partly because she wanted to learn more. And by the way, a hunger to know the Lord's word is a great evidence that you've been saved. Jeremiah 15, 16, your words were found and I ate them. Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart. I am called by your name, O Lord God of hosts. And so she had her heart open to the Lord and she said, please, if you've judged me worthy, would you please stay? And it says she persuaded us and they remained that she might continue to grow. Wouldn't that be a blessing to have the apostle Paul hanging around with you for a while? Wouldn't that be cool? Oh yeah.


Hey, we are sitting in a Cessna Citation XLS private jet trip from Asal Bahamas to Potakana Dominican Republic. I just spoke this morning to about 150, 160 insurance agents for a group there that had a trip in the commas unbelievable time, had an unbelievable event. Now sitting on and doing a private jet, doing a jet charter from Bahamas to Dominican because I got to be at another event that I'm speaking at and helping host in the Dominican Republic. Just left Western marketing in the Finkins now I'm going to hang out with Roger Short and power producers, Coach Burd will be there as well. And so I'm like, I can tell you that you want to get your business and your company in a position to do stuff like this. Okay, so these last few days have been incredible. That's why I love events and traveling is there's no better place for me to think about ideas and sort of accepting responsibility and doing some big stuff than on a plane. Even more on a private plane because my wife looked at me when we took off and she's like, Hey, we got to figure out a way to keep doing more of this, you know, and why? Because it's freaking incredible. That's exactly right. Everybody deserves to do this at some point in their life. And everybody truly deserves to get to a point where they can do this more often, right? We're not in a position yet where we can do this all the time. However, every now and then why not? Okay, why not? So the reason why we're doing this specifically private jet Bahamas to Dominican after I just got off this morning speaking to a bunch of insurance agents on Skelling. Now details delay and it's time to take action time to think bigger. Know your numbers like some of those things when it comes to becoming going from a six figure to a seven figure insurance agent because I coach a lot of people in the insurance industry specifically some outside the industry but mostly in it at this point. And I coach a lot of individuals that are making 200 to $600,000 a year. And a lot of them are simply doing it all. They're in a position to where they're not delegating. They're a control freak. They want to do it all, they got to have their hands in all the freaking cookie jars and on everything and in everything and doing everything. Instead of surrounding themselves with a team of people, which is my message this morning is my same message when I get to Dominican Republic here in about an hour and 20 minutes. It's a 90, it's a 95 minute flight hour and 35 minutes. We were supposed to be on a Cessna Citation Mustang and we got upgraded to a Cessna Citation XLS. It's bigger, faster. We got like nine seats in this thing. So we should have had you on this with us. But that's been the message of what I've been preaching these last several years and I've been trying to do myself is to really start to skill and grow and produce and to really take a small company with just me by the way and know people and to really scale it to where we've got people, processes, products, that's more than just me, okay? So as I show you around this thing a little bit, a couple of pilots up front, unbelievable plane. I can tell you that I'm naturally thinking bigger because everything we got going on, everything we're trying to do and I can tell you this, you don't want to do it alone forever, right? Most people get into business so that one day the business can produce revenue, whether they're there or not, okay? So our companies will probably do, let's just call it at least 50 grand today from all the companies and we will not be there, okay? I'm sharing that with you because it's the dream of a business owner. Every business owner's dream is to eventually have a company they can fly from Bahamas to Dominican, not be there and the company runs and produces without them. Now you need a lot of good people around you for that to be reality and we're fortunate and lucky to have a lot of incredible, amazing people as you should too, okay? So as you're scaling, maybe you're not at six fingers yet, right? Or maybe you're at six fingers, you want it to seven. Maybe you're at seven and you want to get to eight figures like we have when you take our total company revenue. We'll be in excess of 13 and not even putting the storage facility we just bought. We'll get over $13 million this year in 2021 and I'm sharing this with you because along the way I've made a lot of mistakes. We've made a lot of mistakes. We don't know it all. We're trying to figure it out. We're trying to scale this thing up. We're trying to really grow and think on a whole nother level and really push and getting exposure to different countries, different trips, a charter trip like this. Guys, I'm waiting to take ownership of my own private plane. It's not a private jet yet like this, not as big. My own private plane here the next week and a half, this gets me thinking, okay, so how do I go from the twin engine turboprop plane to a big old freaking private jet that sees like 11 people with pilots, right? How do I get to this point? Well, how do I get to that point? And I can tell you that being around stuff like this gets me exposed to if I wanted to travel like this permanently forever, how would I pull it off? Well, we need more revenue, we need more people, and we need more attention, right? Everything that we've done of us five and a half years has came back to branding, attention, getting in front of more people, getting more people to know us, okay, because if more people do not know you, it's going to be hard for them to do business with you. But I'm telling you, the more attention you get, the more you focus on your brand, the more you put out content for free, just like this one, the better everything we'll get. So I can tell you that one of the main things that we've done and that we're constantly doing is we're trying to reinvent ourselves, if you will, is we're trying to shed our skin and take on a whole new skin as we start to grow, start to change up what we're doing, start to try to think about, okay, how do we push the envelope, right? How do we get to from eight fingers to nine fingers one day? How do we even get to 20 or 30 or 40 million? And then what other companies could we add in the near future? So I mean, for example, what I'm wanting to do is get our sales team to 50 people, because having 50 salespeople means that we would do over a million dollars every month, just with two small sales teams, if we grew that to 50 people. Okay, so that's where knowing your numbers really comes in. You also got to hire up. So we're always asking ourselves, okay, when we're hiring people, they make our team better, worse, or the same. If they do not make our team better, then we do not hire them. Okay, also when we're hiring people, we always ask them, our first interview question is, what do you know about our company? And if they don't know anything, the interview is over. That's it. Why? Because they're lazy. They're not as coachable because they didn't do the research before they came in. Like ask yourself, would you look me up if you were coming to interview with me? Would you look up my name or my company or something about me? Or would you at least make it up and you would, I promise you, you would. Right?  That's how you start to really scale a company in a business is by having a lot of amazing people around you that are better than you at certain things. Right? Like Dylan is better at video than I am. Right? Andy is better at operations, interviews, hiring, etc. than I am. Okay? Cassidy, better at events than me. Right? Kelly, my assistant. She's better at all the details than I am. Okay? And so I can tell you that the more you start thinking about action is surrounding yourself with incredible people, the more this vision, this dream becomes reality and is really possible. Right? Because there's this book called Rocket Fuel and it talks about the visionary versus the integrator. And I can tell you a majority, as we show off the life of an entrepreneur today, majority of entrepreneurs are visionaries, not integrators. Which means if you're the visionary, you're typically not great at both, which means you need the integrator, the implementer, the operational officer around you to make sure everything's full and smooth and to make sure everything's getting implemented like you want. Right? My father always said, hey Cody, inspect what you expect. Right? Which means I'm going to inspect to make sure that I'm going to check in and make sure something was done properly because that's what I expect to happen. And it doesn't mean that I'm going to have to be involved in every detail along the way. I just want to inspect at the end or have someone in place to inspect it at the end to make sure the idea was implemented and when it got to execution it was implemented properly and was executed the way I wanted to do. Okay? So I remember when I was 10 years old watching my grandfather as a Baptist pastor, I always told myself I want to be a public speaker, motivational speaker, I want to travel the world speaking one day. I'm 30 and I can tell you that it's an incredible feeling even though I'm nowhere close to where I want to be. I'm pushing myself like I never have. I'm nowhere near where I really want to be because I know I've got a lot more in the tank. I know I've got a lot more potential. I know we've got a lot of growth to do and I'm impressed and excited about the journey. However, it is a cool feeling to speak in the Bahamas, jump on a private jet and go speak in the Dominican Republic for another company, another event. Okay? So I can tell you whatever dreams you want to happen or can become reality, you need to be thinking about writing down your goals. You need to be thinking about having daily habits that get you better. Right? You need to be thinking about knowing your numbers. That's why we have a monthly P&L on all of our salespeople every month. Okay? So I can tell you that the moment you start to really think about scaling a company and what that comes with, right, you need people to hire great people to train great people. You need to have events. Okay? You need to be recruiting.  You need to have a coach, a mentor, you need to surround yourself with unbelievable people. You need to be branding a company and yourself. You need to be marketing you to people in the world. I can tell you the moment all those stars start to align and you really start to push and drive, everything in your world will start to change. And trust me, you deserve to be here just as much as I do. See y'all in the next one. Hey, if you love this, okay, I can promise you, I actually guarantee it. The next one? All right. My first investment, I guess our first investment in real estate is a climate-controlled self-storage unit. The building's 10,000 square feet. I've got all the numbers and all the details. If anybody ever wants to own a real estate proper...


What we wanted to do was, we wanted to build a library to make development easy for developers. For example, if a developer is developing a game, that's what we tried to do. He is developing a game, and we wanted the seeking part, with the users, the players. We wanted to make it easy, without the use of the product, that's what we wanted to do. We thought, LifePay Direct was the solution. But, actually, we were searching for the information about DirectWay Paint. But, we have lots of shortcomings. For example, it only supports devices with Android version, about 4.0. What we want to do is, we want to build a library with which users can connect with other users. You can create a group, as simple as creating an object. There should be a single function with which you can create a group. The other users in the network should be able to see that this user has created this group. If he wants, he can join this group. They can also see the other groups created by the user. These kind of services are already available in the satellite. We are trying to build the whole thing decently. Without the use of the internet, we want to give the users, that's what we are trying to do. What you said yesterday? What they did was, they just provide video streaming between users. We are trying to bring a whole new range for the same theme. That's what we are trying to do. So, as I said, we still don't have a clear idea of how we should proceed. Now, we are much more clear about how we were yesterday. What we are able to do is, we were using direct method, we were able to establish connection and send messages. But as I said, it's not enough for what we are trying to do. We will be doing custom coding to present the communication between the devices. It need not be limited to the entire devices. Without framework, it should be possible that all the devices which support Java should be able to communicate with each other. And it need not be limited to just gaming. It should be possible if a developer wants to create a game using a framework, it will be providing a class for gaming. Gaming has a specific set of... What do you call it? It has specific functions, calls and everything. All libraries should be able to take care of them and differentiate between the applications. For example, we can also present a video calling and making calls and all. Because the reason is support Java. So, basically, I just wanted to... Can you use the zoom button for me? The Android screen. There's a zoom button on top. I didn't keep it in the full screen actually. This is the basic UI we just needed to showcase. Initially, the first version, what we did was to set up the connection stuff, which will take care of the connection part, how you connect to the two devices. Let's say I have my own device and he has his own device, and both of them, as of now, we are using this Wi-Fi Direct, and we are still going to find out where we can connect directly to the Wi-Fi screen. So, from this screen, you can directly enable your Wi-Fi addressing Wi-Fi, and then switch on the Wi-Fi. For this demo, I need two devices, which will use this. So, this mobile also has the same application, which you have seen on screen. So, I'm just clicking on the discover peers, which will actually try to discover who are all the available peers. So, you can see this is the device that got captured here. And when I actually try to connect to this device, from this screen, you'll get a request here to connect this request. So, this is where you will actually connect to the connection part of the game, as the whole area, initially, where we started is to create a multiplayer game. So, this all, and this everything will generalize in a common API. Like, as of now, we did a lot of internal coding, which will take care of the individual connection patterns and all. So, what we do is that, we make it like an outside common classes, like common objects kind of stuff, and they can directly call this, and everything will be taken care of. It's like a library. So, once we accept all these server connections, so the client will be able to connect. So, you can see automatically update here. So, connect it to the host, so that address got connected. So, there is a thing we were able to achieve within this time, actually. So, we still need a lot of research to be done. And because it's like, we want to extend it as a general platform, we need to do a lot of research on how we can generalize it, actually. Because our aim is to make it like common thing. So, we are doing a lot of research, actually. So, we are hoping to have any ideas on how we can take it forward. Questions? Any questions? Okay, thanks a lot.


Welcome to Public Good App House. My name is Aretha Simons from TechSoup. Today we have some amazing people who are going to share some creative tech solutions to address COVID-19 and other health demands in the community. Here we have today, Helen York. She's a community manager at Golden Mutual Aid and she's going to share with us how Golden can help us with COVID App. So thank you for having me. I'd love to share just a little bit about Golden for those that might not be familiar. It's the number one most award-winning volunteer software in the world. We've got mobile iOS apps, Android apps and web portals and web apps for volunteering, support organizations all the way from multinational, non-profit organizations, companies, governments, all the way down to the grassroots level. So typically that's what we've been doing. You'll see the problem that we encountered during COVID-19. As a lot of organizations were put on hold during, you know, the craziness, a lot of volunteering was just put to a complete stop. Communities and individuals really came together and we started to see the formation of these mutual aid groups. I'm sure some of you remember those, all the Facebook groups popping up, all the Google Docs going around. People just trying to get the needs in their community met. But it was a bit hectic. I mean, we were using a Google Doc and it's like we're talking about very sensitive needs, right? So some people were needing food or just even protection cleaning supplies and using Google Docs and these kind of convoluted systems that weren't, you know, purpose built for handling mutual aid. You know, things were falling through the cracks. There's disorganization. So we made the first ever purpose built software for mutual aid communities where individuals can respond to needs in their community. So you can volunteer. You can list a need. So if I'm an individual in the community, I really need help. I can list that on there and someone can find that listing and sign up for it. Organizers of mutual aid communities. So these people that are with the liaisons still have their role. It does not decentralize their role. They can still have their role and facilitate and coordinate the administration of these things through our dashboard. While also automating the entire process, being able to track whose needs have been met and whose hasn't, being able to get analytics in real time and all of this engagement data that proves really helpful for reporting and just understanding the needs in our community. So as you'll see here, this is the main screen that you'll come to. You can clearly or do you need help or are you here to help? You designate which one you are. So if you're in need of help, you get a very quick and easy form that you can fill out and right away your need goes live for people to sign up for and get the help that's needed to you.  What's your time availability? If I'm only available Sunday afternoons, I can filter for that. Find something happening here near me. Maybe Steven's quarantining here needs some help walking his dog. And I can click on that and sign up in a few steps. You'll see the quick description here. It keeps all their information private. So you're not having to publicly list your phone number and address and all of that until the connection has been made. That was one of the big safety concerns when using Google Docs and a lot of these forms. Why mutual aid communities almost became a little hard to join because there was so much, you know, well, I don't know who I'm sharing my information with. So Golden was really a solution there as well. Here's the organizer dashboard gives mutual aid organizers a ton of tools that they've, you know, never before had to be able to track and automate all of these things. So there's no more having to email all these people, connect them, track it in a spreadsheet. It's just, it's all done, taken care of. If someone cancels, automatic emails go out. If they change the time, oh, I need your help at this time. Oh, I can't at this time. All automated through email, just making the whole process very simplistic, all tracked, nothing slipping through the cracks. So you'll see here, here are some of the insights. So this is a top view of an organization and what they may have done. So total number of participants completed sessions, total number of hours that people spent volunteering in the dollar value of those hours based on the independent sector's value of an hour of volunteering all in real time. So a little bit about our tech stack, Golden's volunteer and organizer tools are powered by Unify API hosted AWS and Atlas database. So the calls to action, so nonprofits, of course, get in touch with us. We can set you up on free dashboard tools that support not only your in-person volunteer opportunities, but we've opened up virtual volunteering to all of our organizers to help support COVID as well. Mutual aid organizers absolutely reach out to us at support at goldenvolunteer.com and we'll set you up on free dashboard accounts where you can automate and manage your entire mutual aid efforts all in one spot. Individuals who are in need, please go visit mutualaid.goldenvolunteer.com and list your needs so we can have people in the community help meet those. And volunteers, feel free to visit us at portal.goldenvolunteer to help out with local nonprofits in your community or individuals if you're looking to do that more peer-to-peer volunteering you can find people in need around you at mutualaid.goldenvolunteer.com


Sanchez and I'm originally from Portland, Oregon, but I live now in Kennewick, Washington, and I heard about a hungry generation from a friend. She was going through some hard times and she decided to come and she loved it and she invited me, and at first I would keep saying no I'm not ready, I'll go when I'm ready, but one day I decided to come and it was probably one of the best experience I've had at the church. So I was raised Catholic, I would go to church mostly every Sunday in the Mexican community and it was in Spanish, so I really didn't pay attention to that church and after a while I'd stopped going to church. I was always believed in in God, but I didn't go to church, so before I got saved, I think I was going to church for about a month and I didn't give my life to Christ. I was really shy, I didn't want to go on stage, and I had to talk with one of my mentors and she really, because I told her that I would always get this burning sensation in my heart that every time I'd come to church every time we would have service and then I asked her what it was, and she's like, that's the fire from God, you know, so you can give your life to Jesus Christ and that next Wednesday is when I raised my hand and I gave my life to Jesus Christ and I wish I would have done it sooner, because the biggest difference since giving my life to Jesus Christ is I'm just more positive. I was always a happy person, but I would always think negative, like about myself, about my life, where's my life going, but now I think positive. I'm like, okay, I'm in a rough patch right now, but there's, I can't get out of this, I just ask for help, I ask God for help me get me through this. I'm getting baptized, I was really, it took me a long time to get baptized because I don't know, I wanted to be ready, I wanted it to be my decision that someone else's decision. A message really spoke to me about two weeks ago when Pastor Vlad was talking about how there was three stages, there's a baby, the youth and the father, and I thought, okay, I am definitely in the baby stage, but after that message, I'm like, I'm ready for the next step, which is the youth stage. I'm ready to take that next leap so I can tell other people to come and be a better role. I know we're gonna ask you a question, a few questions. Do you believe in Jesus Christ as God's Son and your personal Lord and Savior? Yes. Do you promise to follow Him with good and clear conscience all the days of your life? Yes. Now based on your faith, confession and your commitment, we will baptize you in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.


Why would it be Mungy not Manjai? Alright, just my gut tells me it's Mungy. Oh my god. Mungy. Well, you're probably right. Mungy. Mungy.  As with me as always is this moron named Rick. Hello. Hello. Hello. Please follow us on Instagram and Twitter. And also thank you to everyone who's following us on Patreon. We love you, DPD. Once again, let you know there are stuff up on there that is not on our YouTube. True. Because it either got copyrighted, or it could get copyrighted, or it's just exclusive to Patreon. Yeah. Also, all of our videos that we film and I edit are uploaded onto Patreon before they are uploaded here. You mean you get a sneak peek before the others?  Juicy! Juicy! Love it! So today we'll be reacting to the Mountain Man, whatever the first. Manji the Mountain Man, which is either the remake of Jeremiah Johnson with Robert Redford, or it's actually a spin-off film from Game of Thrones. Well, I do believe it's actually a true story. That's what I've heard. And I think we've heard it's a South Indian film. That could be wrong. Sorry if I am. But people have requested, why don't we do South Indian films? We don't know where a film is from, honestly. We have to do research. In fact, we did research on this and it still didn't tell us. So, if you want us to react to any film, we react to whatever film is requested the most, regardless of where it's from. So, please know that. But this one was highly requested. I hear it's quite good. So, let's just get into it. You are very big. That's what she said.  Like a Bible? Like a Bible. 8 times. It's on 4 miles. But for that, you have to find 40 miles to go. Check it out. I mean, how many miles. Either true or loosely based, true. It did seem like, I know it's not a biblical story. But at least in the American Bible stories that I've heard. Not that the Bible is from America. I'm just wondering. Show me that one. But it's like this kind of a story where a man takes out a mountain. It's like a... Yeah, it's epic. It's epic. But yeah, apparently it's a true story. This guy for 22 years hammered through a fricking mountain. That's crazy. I love the stubbornness. That... He would. Yes.   That's right. She died climbing you?  It's pretty epic though, but it looked really cool though. Okay, that last line. The reason I threw my hands up in the air is because that is a very deep resonating thing with me. An actual sentence that's part of this just core principle for me. Of too many people are waiting for God to do something for them. And then most of the time God's waiting for you. So that line for me was just like hitting a nerve. I would love to see this. Is he just digging through the mountain to dig through the mountain? So he can do it? It's probably a three hour movie of him digging. Digging through the mountain? Yeah. I've been working on the mountain. I hope. I hope. I hope. It's off to my people. This is where we got the seven doors from. That's not true. Monji, the eighth door. But yeah, it looks really, really cool. Looks fantastic. Once again, please let us know how it was in the comment section below. We've had films that people were like, cool trailer, don't watch the film. Watch this trailer now. Don't watch the film. Do not watch that movie. Whereas I've actually had some people tell me that the trailer is weak compared to the film. The film is great. I thought the trailer was really good. It did look like, like obviously they were very in love. Oh yeah. And then obviously, I believe, I could be wrong, maybe his wife got three years here, but it looks like she died. I bet she died on the mountain. Yeah.  Yeah. And so I don't know if it deals with the mental health at all. Very well made. Yeah. Obviously he is going through something, doing something like this after somebody dies is right. Not healthy. Right. I mean it makes for a cool film and a cool story. Absolutely it does. Absolutely. And that actress, I recognize her but I don't think you would because you're about to watch so we can review a film that I've seen and I'm 99.9% certain she's in it. Oh really? Yeah. Gotcha. I am almost 100% certain that's her. Gotcha. Yeah. But it looks pretty epic. Yeah. I'm excited. Once again, let us know how it is. Let us know what other trailers we should watch down in the comment section below. And if we should watch this movie, wow that was a good one. Thanks. I can get pretty high. No! I just need to kind of...


Studies are still exploring its full power, but trust us, this dark night packs a surprising punch. So, don't judge a book or a bulb by its cover. Black garlic may be the unexpected hero you didn't know you needed in your culinary crime fighting team. Give it a try, and who knows, it might just become your new favorite secret weapon in the kitchen. Remember, sometimes the most powerful allies come in the darkest of packages. Think of it as general knowledge, not treatment plans. Remember, while studies highlight the potential of anti-cancer foods, comprehensive cancer prevention demands a broader strategy. Alongside a balanced diet, evidence suggests that regular exercise, stress management, and other lifestyle choices are crucial.


Hi, this is George Kao. In today's short video, I want to touch on the topics of the connection between money, freedom, impact, and fulfillment. I know that's a lot, but let me just share with you that there is a belief out there that more money means more freedom, more impact, and more fulfillment, right? And yes, I can see why people believe that. I know if I have more money, then I could work less, that means I have more time, then I could do the things that are fulfilling. Now, interestingly, I haven't found that to be true myself. For the first four years of my business, I was using the leveraged model, one to many. I was selling information products to a lot of people. I was selling group coaching programs that cost $2,000, where my clients didn't have one-to-one access to me except in a group Q&A call. I was selling online courses. And honestly, I wasn't seeing the kind of impact that I am now. And guess what I'm doing now? I'm doing one-to-one coaching, mentoring, and consulting now. One-to-one. So I went from a leveraged model, so-called leveraged model, one-to-many, to a one-to-one model. And the irony now is I have more time now than I had before. Now, granted, I'm making three times less money now than I was before, but I am also happier now. I have more free time, and I've been creating more content than I ever had before. So in the past year and a half, since I fully made the transition, oh, and I should say briefly, I make enough money. Even though I'm making three times less money, I'm making enough money to pay all my bills and to save a retirement and to take occasional trips like this. I mean, right now I'm on vacation with family. We rented out a gorgeous little cottage in the countryside, and this is our backyard. There's even a little, I don't know if you can see, there's a little hammock there. So I take more vacations now. Most of them are staycations because I just, there's enough beauty and rest where I live to really nourish me. I don't have to always be traveling, plus traveling is not good for the carbon emissions and other pollution. So I have more time now, even though I've less money. I have more time now. I have more happiness now. I see more impact in my clients, and I get to have more time to create content like this free content that can touch many, many more lives. So in the last year and a half, since I made the transition from one to many to one to one, I have been more prolific in writing, speaking than ever before. I have, for example, I've made more than a hundred videos in the past year and a half. They're all on YouTube. You can find them at youtube.com slash our highest work and youtube.com slash George Cal. So I put my videos sometimes here, sometimes there. I've started a podcast that now has more than 70 episodes uploaded. I have written more on social media than ever before, and here's the thing. I've gotten more people emailing me that their lives are being deeply changed by what I'm creating now. I've gotten more of those types of emails than ever before when I was making three times as much money and had huge numbers, audiences of clients and customers. But there's something that's deep impact that I'm making now that I wasn't making before. And so impact isn't just about the numbers. Maybe some of us may be here in this life to really deeply impact one person or a few people. So when we think about impact, let's not think just about the number of likes or comments and shares we're getting, but the real quality of impact we're making. So anyway, I hope this is interesting and helpful, and as always, I'm open to your comments and questions, and until the next video, be well.


Hey folks, Johnny here joined by Nick and we just wanted to do a quick video to Tell you that we are going to be taking part in blackjack legacies Firefight slow grow challenge. Hopefully if you've checked out Andy's YouTube or you've seen on any of our socials, you'll have seen what's happening The idea is between now and I think the end of November to paint up a thousand points of a firefight strike force and Starting with your leader then a vehicle or a fly or some description and then on to completing the the whole army So we were dead excited to to get involved So which what we do little video to tell you what we're doing. So do you want to start yourself Nick? Cheers? So, yeah, I I have an existing army and forces that I'm quite excited to play with Unfortunately, they're not Terribly well, I've not progressed painting them. I'll admit to that right now So I currently have a Enforcerer cues are painted and a peacekeeper captain painted in gray and orange. I saw those in the previous video Yeah, we talked about that in the previous video I was very excited about the pathfinder models though So I think my army for the slow grow is going to have quite a lot of pathfinders in it I really like those models.  So my army is going to be pathfinders and jet bikes primarily It's gonna give me an incentive to go paint my miniatures, which is the key ingredient here So the benefit of it being slow grow is I can paint them in batches and stages in the right order that Blackjack legacy has asked for which is great. Yeah, I get to paint the character first It's good motivation to have those deadlines, isn't it? Absolutely brilliant motivation for that sort of thing Yeah, I agree and I've got the benefit that all my models are built already. Yes, quite a lot of the head start Yeah, I'm not so sure about the color scheme. I think that my existing color scheme of scheme of Gray and orange I'm not so happy with the orange. I'm not so happy with the gray So we shall see I might repaint them in a different color Yeah, that's always great is easy enough to paint over great is easy enough to pay to is always Do you put a another color over the top of the gray? Yeah, absolutely cool. How about you Johnny? I'm also going to do enforcers because You may have seen in the previous video when Nick was talking about all his jet bikes I got quite jealous because I think the jet bikes are fantastic models So I'm gonna copy Nick and do enforcers with predominantly jet bikes It's gonna be a bit of a race as to who has the most jet bikes in their enforcer army I have a feeling you're gonna. So If at any point you see the Mantic store suddenly ran out of jet bikes, you know, who's got them Apologies But I'm gonna instead of doing pathfinders like yourself. I'm gonna do my core troops as peacekeepers I Prefer building to painting. I enjoy painting but but building is where my hobby lies and So I tend to Yeah, I tend to steer clear of big hordes where I've got to paint an awful lot of troops So peacekeepers gives me that ability to just paint a Lesser amount of troops to be able to then get my jet bikes So Verman was a little bit lower down your list then it was yeah I did look at the idea of doing just rat swarms as my core troops and then have lots of tunnel runners, but I Thought to I prefer the jet bikes for the tunnel runners as nice as they are Yeah, really so so I thought I'd go I'd go enforcers I've been threatening to do a jet bike army for a very long time Yeah, and again talking about motivation. This is obviously the the kick up the backside Maybe I needed to actually get out there and do it. I think it's yeah, really good motivation to do these things Absolutely, and and it also means like it's the motivation longer term to actually play the game as well You know, we've had a few games ourselves of firefight. We really enjoy it, but Neither of yet sort of delved into fully immersing ourselves of getting a big army. So that will hopefully Be be good motivation as well to have an army to actually play with as well at the at the end of this It's a thousand points is the slow grow challenge Which is more than enough for a good game of firefight. Yeah So I'm looking at doing As I say jet bikes with peacekeepers Just under a thousand points on the list I've made at the moment I need to make the decision whether I want maybe a fly like the interceptor or whether a strider because I've got a Free free support a slot left. Basically. Do you like the robots? Yeah Strider but going on to my my ideas for my paint scheme, I've got a number of ideas and I think I want to stick with the sort of the law enforcement aspect of of enforcers So one of the ideas I had was if you've seen the old Mad Max films the original and before his Jensen interceptor car gets beat up and and All black and rusty. It's bright yellow with red and blue trim, I believe That's the sort of the police Colours I thought that would be quite fun for the jet bikes to be that color and then the extra enforcers to be to be in black Almost like the wearing levers. Yeah. Yeah, and so of course if I did that, then I'd have to have an interceptor as my flyer Because you know, yeah, just make sense Or I go sort of more down the lines of like Tron legacy that sort of Thought you know jet bikes. Yeah, really good in in maybe shape shift color shift paints or bright fluorescence something like that So that's what the idea is that I'm toying with at the moment It would be the case that I'll build a few and then do a couple of test paints and see which I prefer Let's go leave some ideas available for me. Yeah, because I don't I'll leave you the more difficult one We have matching armies. That's just embarrassing. It would but it would mean we better play like two on two. Yeah Yeah, I mean out of those two paint schemes what I'll probably end up doing is panicking and picking the easy one But we'll see I think you should you should test yourself Johnny. Yeah Yeah, it'd be fun like they I've painted those jet bikes in the past and they are they are fun models to yeah to paint so We shall see But yeah, it'd be great to see what you guys are up to as well if you're getting involved in in the slow grow Yeah, obviously, you know Send your works in progress over to to Andy at blackjack for him to feature on his channel But also send them our way as well and hopefully ours will be good enough to feature on his channel. Hopefully. Yeah, maybe Yes, send them our way as well We'd love to see what you're getting up to you have to feature me like the midweek round up that sort of thing And it would be really exciting to see so our hashtag they can use They can use hashtag my mantic on the likes of Instagram and that sort of thing to To help me find them a little easier And Yeah, it'd be really interesting and really fun to see come the end of sort of November We have a you know a lot more thousand-point armies Hitting the tables for for firefight around the around the community. We're on it. Awesome. Yeah, absolutely We'll also try and get some more guys at Mantic HQ to get involved I know Dave has said he might do his esterians. So I'll be called now. We've got that on camera He has to do it absolutely He's attached to it now, but we just thought we'd give you a quick update to let you know that we're getting involved So I'll see you again soon


So this is the story of how it into it. We got GitOps to all our developers and what it really takes to enable front-end, back-end, AI developers, everybody, to rapidly create, update, and dispose very important of applications. This is the Cliff Notes version. For those who know what Cliff Notes are, so our learning involved that we had to do deployment, we had to do configuration, we had to cover monitoring, we had to cover cloud interactions, cloud resources, alerting, and more and more and more. There is really a lot that goes into this. And so what we found out, like most people know, in most software that get working with GitOps, create different software assets. You need to create a repo. You have to populate it with sample working code that demonstrates and propagates the standards we'd like to follow in the company for consistency, security, and compliance. And so it was it into it. And we were very proud of ourselves about three years ago when we got to this point. And then we realized that there's add-ons, that there are things that people want to add afterwards and we had to give them documentation instead of automation, database access, messaging access, and so on. And they used to file a ticket, they used to create the new resources or get access permissions and then follow some Wiki to update their code, but not anymore. And then there were different updates that had to be happening. For example, the platform change, we went to Kubernetes 116 and suddenly we had to send 3,000 PRs and trace all those teams and work with them and everything else. And while there are tools like Dependabot and SNCC and so on that help with the simple dependencies, when you need to handle the more complicated ones, there is a lot of work that goes into keeping that system update from a central team's point of view well beyond what needs to happen. And finally, there's the whole issue of cleaning up because there were a ton of resources that were being created with all this wonderful automation and they cost money, as the AWS guy knows very well. And so in order to understand how to solve the problem, a lot of the presentations I've seen here today mainly address the developer but we found it's only one piece of the puzzle. We have capability teams and at Intuit capability teams, we have a separate team that runs GitHub and a separate team that runs Jenkins and a separate team that specializes in performance. But really what they want is they want their resource used, used correctly, used by the developers, give them what they need and they run around to keep it operational. And whether it's one person doing it or at Intuit, a separate team, the one person may be running around spinning plates but it's still a capability team and that was, they had their own needs. The next piece that had to be taken into account is a paved road team. This is an Intuit term. I hope it will become more general. These are people that handle a specific type of resource such as a service, a web application, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera and want to propagate everything in their paved road off to a specific team. And then of course there's the product development team that wants to use the blueprints and wants to not worry about anything else and just push a button and there they go. And so we needed to develop what we called an asset life cycle management team and following the GitOps and everything else. We wanted it to be declarative, it important, retain what should be, get very GitOps, know what is so we could do the diff. We wanted it to be data-driven. We didn't want to have to build a workflow for every single pattern. That was getting unmanageable so quick you can't believe it. We wanted that the data for each one would be the true source of truth for Jenkins would be Jenkins, for Git would be Git, et cetera, et cetera, and yet from the point of view of somebody accessing the system it had to all operate as one. It had to support making changes after the fact and it had to be low no code for people that want to create patterns or for developers to consume. And it needed that all these different teams can work independently instead of having tons of meetings to coordinate with each other on every piece of work that had to be done. So what we did, we built this on Kubernetes but not using the Kubernetes infrastructure. We used GraphQL as federation, as the technique to assemble all these microservices. Each microservice acts as a controller. We used a bus to shuttle messages between them to allow all this occur, eventual consistency. And what the users ended up doing is they go to a UI which is set up by one of these paved road builders. That paved road builder then fills in this huge YAML document. I need two repos. I need this code. I need this. I need this. Everything, Splunk, indexes, certificates, anything, cloud resources, anything. They build it. That was the majority of it. One of the squares you'll look there and we have currently 25 different integrations that go into this to all the different resources is content. Our content system allows both this system to send either new code or send updates as PRs. It also allows through the UI to get a list of PRs available for PRs on demand, for example. Upgrade me from Java 8 to 11, which requires changes to the code, changes to the POM, or to Gradle build or into the Dockerfile, etc., etc. So all these automations, and they all use tools like Combi and Gradle and other tools, but they put it all together. So it's really simple to operate all of this. This is the UI that's used to see people accepting the PR and nudge them when that's needed, and some metrics about what happens. So currently we have an excess of 17,000 durable assets which are managed through this system and it grows on a regular basis. We have 15 active paved roads of which 12 were built through contribution in the company. We had nothing to do with them. We're managing 20, well it's now up to 25 microservices, that 12 were them and now it's even more contributed. This is our growth pattern and 65 engineers internally contributed to this, but we over the last three years only had 15 engineers ever working for us. So now what happened as a result of making it so easy that with a click of a button you can get this GitOps everything A through Z and if you need to add a database you go to the UI and you say add a database, you select and you connect or whatever it is, is two things. One, because it was easy, 50% of new resources being created live between one hour and one month and then they abandon it. The experimentation level has skyrocketed and innovation as measured by features pushed to production has gone up well over 100% it's actually gone up, I didn't want to put it down here but I'll say it, it's gone up over 400% and I checked that number several times with several people because it didn't seem likely but that's what happened. So that's a 10 minute quick story about there is no question and answer to a lightning talk. I'm at CubeCon all week and can be reached at this address. Thank you very much.


So the IOHK summit is an experiment like most of the things we do. So when you run a decentralized company, there's kind of a pro and a con. Pro is you can work with anyone, anytime, anywhere. We operate in 16 countries. But the con is that people don't see each other every day. So you tend to get a little siloed, you develop microcultures, and it's sometimes difficult for people to feel like they're part of a greater vision or greater company, which they would feel if there was a campus and they went there every day. So to compromise, what we do is we bring our entire company together every year. We've done it in Malta, we've done it in Corfu, Greece, we did it in Portugal. But every time we do that, a lot of our fans say, well, we'd love to have this be an open event where we can come and buy some tickets and see what you guys are working on. So in a way, this is kind of our Beijing Olympics back in 2008. China opens itself up to the world and said, look how great we are. So similarly, IOHK is going to try to do the same thing. We're going to open ourselves up to the world and show the world what we're doing. And we're going to have a lot of workshops, a hackathon, cryptographic puzzles that if you solve them, you make money. The Steve Miller Band and CCR are playing for VIP ticket holders. And there's going to be a lot of great guest speakers like John Katz, a pioneer in cryptography, Stephen Wolfram, who wrote a new kind of science and started Mathematica. We got Rudy Rucker, a famous author and one of the original cypher punks from back in the 80s.  So just a great opportunity to meet me, the entire team, all of our engineers, all of our scientists. And it's going to be a lot of fun. So it's April 17th and April 18th in Miami. And if you go to IOHKSummit.io, you can check it out. We'd love to see you.


The training we're doing here today is basic riot control, crowd control formations. The training is important because you never really know what's going to happen. If you're in a situation and you come across a hostile crowd that they may not have lethal means but they're causing some sort of disturbance in front of you, you need to know how to conduct yourself, how to disperse that crowd without being hostile. It's a tool that you can use without having to engage a crowd with lethal means. What riot control and crowd control will be used for is anytime you have a hostile situation where you have an active crowd or an active personnel that don't want to disperse from a certain area or if you just need to show a force to get a crowd to disperse, that's when you use riot control and crowd control. The exercise that we were doing was the basic shield line and then behind the shield line you have what we call snatch teams. Usually it's a five man team.  A snatch team, their basic job is to provide security for the members behind them and restrain that individual that's out in front of them. Non-lethal training gives commanders an option that they can use. It's a tool that they can put in their book so they don't have to engage someone with lethal means. It gives them that extra option to use. That's what we bring to the table.


My name is Sam Baknin and I am the author of Malignan self-love, Narcissism Revisited. Patients with personality disorders have a body language specific to their personality disorder. The body language comprises an unequivocal series of subtle and not so subtle presenting science. A patient's body language usually reflects the underlying mental health problem or pathology. Consider, for instance, a patient with avoidant personality disorder as opposed to a patient with narcissistic personality disorder, the two diametrical opposites. Of course, both of them will comport themselves differently. The narcissist's body language is pretty unique. It's haute. It's arrogant. The narcissist adopts a physical posture which implies and exudes an air of superiority hidden powers, mysteriousness, amused indifference, etc. Though the narcissist usually maintains sustained and piercing eye contact, he often refrains from physical proximity. The narcissist maintains his personal territory and does not allow anyone to invade it. The psychopath, on the other hand, is likely to be expansive, is likely to dominate and invade other people's personal territory, is swaggering and vaguely menacing. The narcissist's manifest equanimity is bound to be mixed with an underlying streak of agitation, violent impatience, hypervigilance and an impending doom, a lack of impulse control that is evident yet not fully there. The general impression is of a wound time bomb bound to explode. The avoidant, for a patient with avoidant personality disorder, is reticent. She maintains a clearly demarcated, personal turf to which she often withdraws, for instance by folding her legs underneath her. Her body posture is tense, defensive, shoulders stooped, arms folded, legs crossed. Patients usually avoid eye contact. The borderline is all over the place. Her body seems to not be fully under her control. She is irritated, fidgety, manic, alternates between displaying empathic warmth and a demanding, sulking and even threatening position. The schizoid is robotic, slow and deliberate. Patient with schizoid personality disorder moves reluctantly, maintains great distance from the therapist and is passive but not aggressive throughout the encounter. The schizotypal is hypervigilant, but friendly and warm. The patient with schizotypal personality disorder does not hesitate to gesture his emotions, affection, anger or fear. Similar to the obsessive compulsive, the schizotypal has small, private rituals which he uses to reduce his level of anxiety. The paranoid patient with paranoid personality disorder is cold, defensive, hypervigilant and has a startled reaction. His eyes dart, he fidgets, sometimes sweats and his difficulty is breathing. Outward manifestations of panic attacks. The paranoid speech is likely to be idiosyncratic and he maintains eye contact only when trying to prove a point and to gauge his interlocutor's reaction. In itself, body language cannot and should not be used as a diagnostic tool, but in conjunction with psychiatric interviews, psychological tests, it can provide an additional layer of diagnostic certainty. We speak through our bodies.