Hello, my name is Katie Lasdowski, and I'm one of seven candidates running for the five available seats on the Amherst School Committee. I'm here with my campaign treasurer, Diana Karkamo, who will read my statement in Spanish. My name is Diana Karkamo, and I'm the treasurer of the campaign of Katie Lasdowski. Katie is one of seven candidates running for the five available seats on the Amherst School Committee. Democracy at the national, state, and local levels is only as strong as we practice it. On November 5th, vote for someone who will use the different perspectives in our community as a source of strength. I will ensure that the numerous standpoints on issues are represented and use them to strengthen our schools and the vision we have for our students. Democracy at the national, state, and local levels is only as strong as we practice it. On November 5th, vote for someone who will use the different perspectives in our community as a source of strength. I will ensure that the numerous perspectives on issues are represented and use them to strengthen our schools and the vision we have for our students. I've lived in Amherst since 2010 and have a child in second grade at Fort River. For the past six years, I have served as a member of the School Equity Task Force, a subcommittee of the Regional School Committee. I've lived in Amherst since 2010 and have a child in second grade at Fort River. For the past six years, I have served as a member of the School Equity Task Force, a subcommittee of the Regional School Committee. I offer over 18 years of experience in education in both U.S. and international settings. From my experience as a 7 through 12 grade educator, a teacher educator, and an educational consultant in both local and international settings, I bring to the Amherst schools and the ARPS District at large someone with the ability to analyze and weigh the information that informs the decisions we make for our students. As a member of the School Committee, I was once a member of the School Equity Task Force, a subcommittee of the Regional School Committee. I've lived in Amherst since 2010 and have a child in second grade at Fort River. For the past six years, I have served as a member of the School Equity Task Force, a subcommittee of the Regional School Committee. As a member of the school committee, I will push for data-informed decision-making processes and turn to the research and best practices that my years in education afford. I will lead constituents through decision-making processes that respond to previous outlined considerations in order to provide appropriate school infrastructure for students and staff. I will ensure the success and expansions of programs that reduce the opportunity gap and increase access, such as the restorative justice program and the dual language program, Cominantes. As a member of the school committee, I will push for data-informed decision-making processes and turn to the research and best practices that my years in education afford. I will lead constituents through decision-making processes that respond to previous outlined considerations in order to provide appropriate school infrastructure for students and staff. I will ensure the success and expansions of programs that reduce the opportunity gap and increase access, such as the restorative justice program and the dual language program, Cominantes. On November 5th, I ask that you vote for me, Katie Lasdowski, committed to bringing voices and choices to the table. Thank you. On November 5th, I ask that you vote for me, Katie Lasdowski, committed to bringing voices and options to the table. Thank you.


Amen. Keep a bookmark in Revelation chapter 2 and turn to Ephesians chapter 5. Turn to Ephesians chapter 5 for just a minute. So this evening, we're starting a new sermon series talking about Revelation chapter 2 and Revelation chapter 3. And Jesus, if you have a red letter Bible, these words will all be read. This is Jesus giving advice to seven different churches. And the church in Ephesus is the one that we are going to start with this evening. But why should we study through this? What relevance does it have to us? Look at Ephesians chapter 5 and look down at verse number 22 where the Bible says this. This is used many times in weddings and marriage counseling and marriage advice and just the roles of husbands and wives. Ephesians chapter 5 is a very important chapter in the Bible for marital relations. But look at verse 22. It says, Wives, submit yourselves under your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church and he is the savior of the body. So all that to say this, Jesus Christ here in Revelation chapter 2 and Revelation chapter 3 is giving advice to the churches and Jesus is the head of the church. So this is something that we should pay attention to. So basically what we have in Revelation chapter 2 and chapter 3 is the boss giving instruction is what we have. So we need to pay attention to the details of what he is talking about to these churches. So we are going to look at the church in Ephesus which is basically Revelation chapter 2 verses 1 through 7 this evening and see what we can glean from Jesus' advice to this first church that he is talking about. Look at verse, starting in verse number 1, unto the angel of the church of Ephesus, right? These things sayeth he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. He is talking, he is saying here to the angel, he is saying to the messenger that is going to bring this message to the church. He is telling John that he wants this message delivered to these churches. Look at verse number 2 talking about Ephesus. He says, I know thy works and thy labor, and thy patience, and thou canst not bear them which are evil, and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles and are not, and has found them liars, and has borne and has patience, and for mine's sake, my name's sake, has labored and has not fainted. So he says a lot of good things here about the church of Ephesus but then in verse number 4 he goes into some things that he has problems. He says, nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hath left thy first love. Remember therefore, from whence thou art fallen and repent and do the first works, or else I will come unto thee quickly and remove thy candlestick out of its place except thou repent. But this thou hast that thou hateest the deeds of the Nicolaotans, which I also hate. He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what the spirit sayeth unto the churches, to him that overcometh why give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. So Jesus starts out and he gives this whole, that's all the advice that he gives to the church at Ephesus, but he starts out with some good things and he says a couple of things twice. In verse number 3, in verse number 4, in verse number 2, in verse number 3, he starts out with some good things about the church at Ephesus and he says he commends them on their labor twice on how hard they work. So look, these people, these people are hardworking, you know, they have some staying power, they didn't quit. It says in verse 3, it says that they've labored and they have not fainted. So they've worked and worked and worked and they've not fainted. Another thing that Jesus commends the church of Ephesus about in verse number 2, it says they would not stand for people in their church that were teaching false doctrine. So this is something that Jesus commends them about and what we can take from this is this is something good that we should not allow in the churches. He says that would try them. You know, you've tried them again, how do they try them? They tried them against the Word of God, against what they were saying and found that they were not apostles. Instead, they were liars. And then down in verse, I'm sorry, in verse number 6, it says also again in this same attack, it says, but thou hast thou hast hated the deeds of the Nicolaotans, which I also hate. So the Nicolaotans, the Bible, the New Testament doesn't really tell us what this doctrine is. You can go out and you can read all kinds of commentary on it, but it's irrelevant. All we need to know is that God hates whatever they were teaching. So the Nicolaotans were teaching something that God hates and the nice thing about the Ephesians that Jesus commends them on is that they hated the same things that Jesus hated. They hated the same doctrine that Jesus hated. And that's a good example for us is that we need to hate the things that the Lord hates. That's what the Bible would call a perfect hatred right there. So look, I mean, the funny thing is about, you know, this isn't a sermon about what we should hate and what we should love.   So the only thing we need to know about the Nicolaotans is that they were teaching doctrine that the Lord hated and the church in Ephesus, they hated that as well. So Jesus commends them for that. So he commends them for their labor and their patience. And I'm going to talk about their patience a little bit later. But then he commends them for not tolerating false doctrine. There's a lot of good things here that the church at Ephesus has on their side. So the question is, you know, I mean, we can't have this, anything goes church. That's what we're learning here from the church at Ephesus. So the question is, then Jesus comes into verse number four, and he says, I have something. He's like, all that being said, he's like, there's some problems here. He's like, you know, he's kind of, he's kind of, you know, these management styles where if you have to deliver bad news to somebody, you're supposed to sandwich it in, you know, you're supposed to like, give them some good news. And then it's like, hey, Bob, you're great, Bob. But the thing is, you're fired, Bob. And the thing is, Bob, your family's really nice. You make it a sandwich like that, right? So I mean, I'm being extreme. But the point is, is Jesus is giving some good news. But then he says, nevertheless, there's some problems. And look at verse number four. So there is some bad things here. Verse number four, nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee, because thou have left thy first love. Remember therefore, from whence thou art fallen and repent, and do the first works, or else I will come unto thee quickly, and remove thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent. So it's kind of a serious problem that they have here.  But when we see that the consequences, if they don't get this right, is Jesus is literally going to take the candlestick away from their church. He's literally going to remove his hand from their church. They're not going to be a legitimate church anymore. He's saying, you know, you get this right, or you're on your own, and you're just running one of these other worldly churches that just call themselves a church, but aren't a church. Okay, so the problem is listed in verse number four, where it says that thou have left thy first love. So the problem here is, is that they lost the love for the first works. In short, these people, they were out there, and they were still laboring, and they were still doing a lot of the things that they were supposed to be doing. They were going through the motions, so to speak. But they lost their zeal, is what happened to this church. Look at Ephesians chapter two, in verse number one. Look at Ephesians chapter two, in verse number one. Look at, and I'm going to read for you verse number five, one more time, where Jesus says, and he says, remember therefore, from whence thou art fallen. He says, remember where you used to be. Remember where you came from. Remember how you used to operate. And he says, go back to that, repent, turn back to the way that you used to be, is what Jesus is saying. Well, how did they used to be? Look at Ephesians chapter two, in verse number one. Paul here is saying, you know, basically, you know, where they used to be. He kind of answers this for us in his letter to the Ephesians, and it says, and you, he hath quickened, he's talking to the church at Ephesus, who were dead and trespassed in sins, where in time passed. So these people in time passed, you walked according to the course of this world. So these people in the past, they're not there now. It's like now they're walking according to the spirit, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. He's saying, look, you used to be these worldly people. He says, among whom also, we all had our conversations again, in times pass, in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. And we're by nature the children of wrath, even others. But God, who in his rich mercy for his great love, wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ by grace he are saved.   And he's, he's saying, look, he's like, we need to go back. This is what Jesus is saying. They need to go back to that love when they were first born again. When they were first, you know, when they were first brought and quickened by Christ is what Jesus is talking about in Revelation chapter two. But somehow these people in Ephesus, they're laboring. And somehow they just lost this love. They lost this zeal. And they were just going through the motions. So this evening, I want to look at how this can happen. How can this happen? Because look, this is in the Bible. This is in the Bible, because this is not just relevant for the church at Ephesus. This is relevant for all of us. That's the beauty of the Bible. The Bible is the only book ever written that applies to everyone. And this one, specifically, talking about a church that Jesus Christ is ahead of, is specifically applicable to us. So look, how can we lose our zeal as the church at Ephesus had lost their zeal and what can we do about it? So the first thing is, you know, here's the process. Here's what happens. You know, you get saved. Right? Somebody tells you the truth. Maybe you were seeking the truth. You obviously had a desire within you to want to know the truth. Your conscience is looking for the truth. Somebody preaches the gospel to you, you get saved. At that point, you know, hopefully, I mean, everyone here for sure. But hopefully, you at that point, get into a good church. At some point, it wants to live a profitable, fruitful life where you can learn the Bible, start living the Bible. And then guess what? You get into these first works. And I'll talk about that in detail in a little bit. But then what happens is what happens to the church at Ephesus. Look, get into the first works. You start laboring. You have some patience. You're laboring for the Lord. But then zeal is lost. Just like the church at Ephesus, zeal gets lost. So how do we lose zeal in our lives? Why? Why does it happen? I mean, I'm going to, the first thing I'm going to show you, I'm just going to give you some thoughts on why we lose zeal, not just for the Lord in our lives, but for pretty much everything in our lives, we lose zeal. And some people are worse than others.  If you lose zeal, you don't recognize it.  So the first thing that we do in our lives as people, as human beings, is we take things for granted in our lives. We just, you know, we just get used to things as people, as human beings, we get used to things. And look, why is this? Why do we just get used to things? We lose what I like to look, we lose our reference point. We find something that we always wanted, and we get that thing. And then we get used to that thing. And we take that thing for granted. And then all of a sudden we lose our zeal for whatever that thing is. We lose our reference point to try to understand this, and how we can fix this and stop this from happening. Let's look at a few things in the life of Paul. Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 12. 2 Corinthians chapter 12. Look, Paul was somebody who was very, very good at not allowing this to happen in his life. He is he is probably the best example of someone in the Bible that protected his zeal in the Bible. So let's look at what we can learn from Paul. So look, this is why, by the way, this is why, you know, struggle is good in your life.  When you have financial struggles in your life, those are reference points. When you have struggles, maybe in your marriage, those are reference points for you. All these hard times that you go through. If you have physical problems in your life, or you have a family member that has physical problems in your life, those are reference points for you. Reference points that you can always look back to and that can stop you from taking things from granted in your life. That can stop you from losing zeal for things in your life. Let's look at Paul. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter 12. Let's try to understand what I'm talking about tonight from the life of Paul. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter 12 and look at verse number 7. Look what the Bible says here. It says, And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. So Paul here is saying, he's like, and Kate, you know, he's like, look, first of all, he's saying, I don't want to glory in these things. He's like, because look, would it be hard to be exalted? Would it be hard to glory in the fact that Jesus Christ came and taught you something personally? If Jesus Christ showed up to somebody in this church and taught you something personally and spent years with you, just preparing you for a special mission in your life, don't you think that that could go to your head? And Paul here is saying, he's like, unless that would happen to me, that I would start to be exalt myself more than I should. He's like, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh. We don't know what it was. It was some kind of physical issue that Paul had. And for this thing, look, it was something that was so, you know, distressing to him that he asked the Lord three times to fix it. He said, for this thing, I'd be sought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me. He's like, Lord, just take this away from me.  Look at verse number nine. And he said unto me, and this is Jesus responding, he said unto me, my grace is sufficient for thee. For my strength is made perfect in weakness.  He's saying, no, the answer was no. I mean, when you pray, if you pray and it's just not happening, it's not, look, the answer just may have been no in your life.  And he says no for our own benefit when we don't even think that we should be, you know, we're probably not even asking the right things most times. But Jesus says my strength, like Jesus says my strength. The Lord says my strength. The Lord's strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore, why rather glory in my infirmity. So this is nice, right? I mean, God has proven right in like two verses here. So Paul's saying, I don't want to be exalted. I don't want to glory in my knowledge, in my revelation from the Lord. He's like, instead, I will glory in my pain and suffering. Like you're like, wow, that sounds weird. But look, that's what he says that the power of Christ may rest upon me. If he says, if that's what it takes to stay in the grace and stay in this position that God has put me in that, you know, I'll just glory in my infirmities. That's where Paul will, you know, boast, so to speak. That will be his boasting and just in his infirmities. Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Am I become a fool and glorying? You have compelled me for I ought to have been commended of you for in nothing. Am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I be nothing? So yes, God is keeping him humble here. But God is, you know, Paul had a lot of pain and suffering in his life. Talk about a guy who never had a chance to be comfortable. Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 11. He never had a chance to just be comfortable and enjoy things. He never had a chance to take things for granted in his life. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter 11. 2 Corinthians chapter 11. And look at verse 23. This is Paul glorying again in these infirmities. Look at verse 23. 2 Corinthians chapter 11. Are they ministers of Christ?  I am more in labor is more abundant in stripes above measure in present in prisons more frequent in deaths off of the Jews five times received I 40 stripes save one thrice I was beaten with rods once I was stoned thrice I suffered shipwreck a night and day have I been in the deep in journeyings often in perils of water in perils of robbers in perils of my own countrymen in perils by the heathen in perils by the city in perils in the wilderness in perils in the sea in perils among false brethren in weariness and painfulness in watchings often in hunger and thirst in fastings in cold in nakedness look it sounds kind of like he's he's you know he's glorying in this a little bit but this is what he gloried in besides those things that are without that which cup upon me daily the care of all the churches he's like plus you know I'm just worried about everybody who is weak and am I not weak who is offended and I burn not if I must needs glory I will glory of the things which concern mind infirmities he's like if I'm going to get lifted up if I'm going to be exalted I will be exalted in these things that the Lord is using to keep me low which what he's saying and Paul I mean that's that's pretty good he's basically saying the only thing that the Lord wants me boasting or glorying in is my suffering Paul had the ultimate reference point in his life he had the ultimate reference points turn to Ephesians chapter one and you know what that produced you know what that produced with Paul so he had these great reference points he had all these hard times and all this suffering in his life and you know what that produced you will find I don't think you will find anybody in the Bible who was more thankful than Paul and if you remember maybe you read past this real quickly in every single epistle that Paul writes but nearly every epistle that he writes to churches Paul says things like this wherefore I also look at verse 15 of Ephesians one wherefore I also after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and love unto all the saints sees not to give thanks for you in Romans one eight he just gives thanks for the Roman church in first Corinthians first Corinthians chapter one in verse number four he gives thanks to them at Corinth in Colossians one he gives thanks to them in verse 13 I mean your verse number three he starts out every letter saying saying look I'm so thankful for you even before he starts yelling at them and just rebuking them and exhorting them he says but look he's like I'm so thankful for you Paul was very thankful and that is the opposite of being ungrateful that is the opposite of taking things for granted so what God did by keeping Paul in all those infirmities in all that suffering was he kept him thankful in his life and let me just point this out because it seems like something that is that is that is minor to us but it is not look there is a reason in Romans 121 there is a reason in one of the most serious books of the Bible in Romans chapter one that it says neither were they thankful was one of the first steps that those people that ended up being rejected by the Lord took they were they knew God but they were not thankful for God so look being thankful is something that is extremely important in your life you know that unthankfulness in general in your life not just unthankfulness to the Lord but in unthankfulness in your life is an extremely dangerous place to be and it's look it's equation it's an equation that has to do I wish I could graph it for you but it's an equation that has to do with how long you're unthankful because if you live a life look there's a T in there if you take unthankfulness times time it gets more serious the longer you are unthankful because guess what guess what if you go through life and you are unthankful in your life for long periods of time you will start making decisions on that unthankfulness and those decisions will be disastrous imagine making relationship decisions based on the fact that you're unthankful it'll cause major problems in your life I've seen major issues in people's life because of this turn to first Thessalonians chapter five with people with relationships first Thessalonians chapter five look at verse number 18 first Thessalonians chapter five and verse number 18 first Thessalonians five 18 says in everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you look that doesn't just say for the Bible that says in everything that got look everything you have is a gift from God everything you have from your your spouse to your life to all the good things that that are in your life all those things are gifts from God and the Bible says you should be thankful in everything everything and if you start living this life where you're not thankful for things and you look and you start making decisions in that state of mind look not appreciating what you have I mean there's people out there that live their lives and they only become thankful for things after they've lost the things that they took for granted that's a disastrous life right there that's the type of person do not want to operate as every single marriage problem here's a statement for you every single marriage problem starts with unthankfulness think about that it starts for because guess what you know what I come home from work every single day look I'm not immune to this I come home from work every single day and guess what she's there I come home at noon she's there I come home all the time I wake up she's there she's not going anywhere she's not going anywhere guess what you used to that he's not going anywhere you start thinking that way and guess what you just get used to it you get used to each other and you just guess what guess what folks every single husband and every single wife in this room he will not always be there she will not always be there you said what my wife's going to leave me my husband's going to leave no you will you will wake up one day and your wife will not be there guaranteed or the other way around you will wake up one day a hundred percent folks and your husband will not be there you need to have that reference point remember you know remember that reference point when you first got married and you were so thankful to be married and then you're married for 10 years 20 years 25 years I'm not there yet but look you need to appreciate people in your life you need to appreciate your spouse every single marriage problem starts from one or the other or both taking each other for granted not being thankful for one another think of Solomon turned into Ecclesiastes chapter 7 look the Bible says I mean the Bible says in Revelation 2 it's like they lost their love that's what happened they lost their love it says nevertheless I have someone against you you left your first love they left their love they stopped loving that they started taking that for granted they lost that zeal that can happen in your marriage you can lose the zeal for the people in your life you can lose the zeal for your children you can lose the zeal for your friends you can lose the zeal for your brothers and sisters in Christ every single relationship you have with the human being you can lose the zeal for that and you do it by taking it for granted you do it by getting used to it things that are always there you get used to you got to stop doing that you got to have reference points in your life look at Solomon think about Solomon's wife and then all his wives you can be so unthankful for your wife your spouse and live that life of unthankfulness and then make decisions in your life imagine making decisions out of unthankfulness look this ruins marriages there is there's been husbands that have decided to leave their wives and wives that have decided to leave their husbands out of unthankfulness you say oh it was something else it started with unthankfulness it started because they they took each other for granted and they got used to each other and they lost that zeal for one another look at Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse 28 which yet my soul seeketh but I find not one man among a thousand have I found but a woman among all those have I not found look he lost his zeal for his first wife by taking her for granted living in that unthankfulness with his first wife and then going and having all these other wives and concubines that's what Solomon had I mean look do not take the relationships in your life for granted you should not have to get to the point where you lose things in your life before you are thankful for them that is look that is a serious character flaw that is a serious character flaw that will define your entire life it will define your marriage it will define how you raise your children it will define you know it will define how your children think of you if you are the type of person that needs to lose things before you then become thankful for those things look it can even go further than that you could be so unthankful for things and then lose those things and then be bitter that you lost those things it would be better to be the type of person that lost those things and then was again thankful for those things but look you just don't ever want to be thankful and lose the things in the first place you don't want to lose your zeal for the Lord you don't want to lose your marriage you don't want to do any of these things you don't want to lose anything in your life because of unthankfulness It's a terrible thing to do. Family, church, the Lord. Look, appreciate this church. Never get used to it. I know that's a hard thing. You come here three times a week. How do you not get used to this? But you're gonna get used to it. You're gonna get used to it. You're gonna take it for granted. I mean, think about soul winning.   But look, that's what happened to the church at Ephesus. They lost their zeal for it. They were still laboring, but they lost their zeal for it. Turn to Matthew 22. And Jesus said to get their zeal back. He's like, do the first work. So what is that? He says, do the first works. So look, the first point is this. You lose your zeal by taking things for granted and becoming unthankful in your life. That's how you'll lose zeal for anything that you should have zeal for. I hope that you have zeal for your marriage. I hope that you remind yourself constantly that you should have zeal for your marriage. Guess what? You should all do this mental exercise every now and then. What if she wasn't there tomorrow? And then maybe that'll give you a little bit more zeal for your wife. Wives, you should think about what if he's gone tomorrow? Would I feel differently about him today? Guess what? You're not guaranteed a husband for another day. You're not guaranteed anything. We think that we're guaranteed these things, folks. You're not guaranteed a wife for another day. I'm so thankful that I have a wife, but I guarantee, I'm telling you, I don't appreciate it like I should. I mean, I should show my wife my zeal for her more than I do. And every single spouse, every single husband and wife in this room should say the same thing. Because guess what? Just imagine, here's your reference point. Imagine they're not there tomorrow. There's your reference point for your marriage. But Jesus says to the church, so don't be unthankful. Remember those reference points. Paul had the perfect reference points, a life of nothing but suffering and hardship. Look at Matthew 22. Look at verse 36. Master, which is the greatest great commandment in the law?  This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as yourself. Jesus basically, he lays out right there. He's like love the Lord your God. That's the first great commandment. And the second one, he's like love your neighbor as yourself. He's like every single thing is underneath those two umbrellas. Every commandment in the Bible is underneath those two umbrellas. Love the Lord and serve your neighbor. It is basically what it's about. Anything getting in, I mean, and from there, you know, I mean, how do you do that? Well, I don't know.  Go ye therefore and preach the, go ye therefore into all the, you know, and preach the gospel to every creature. That is how you love the Lord and serve your neighbor. That's why we call these things the first works. I mean, if you love me, obey my commandments. So those, that is the remedy. That is that that's the medicine that Jesus gave this church to get their zeal back. Look, you need to remember those reference points. If you say, oh, I'm losing, I'm losing my zeal for spiritual things. I'm losing my zeal. I'm laboring. I'm going out, but I'm losing my zeal. So many doesn't seem like it was. Remember, get a reference point. I remember, I remember the first time, the first time that I heard somebody effectively get someone saved. Effectively preach the gospel to somebody. It was in 2016 and I was standing next to, we had come here to visit and I got sent out the very first time I got sent out by Verity Baptist Church to go soul winning. I was partnered with Pastor Logan Robinson. From, I think, you know, he was from Australia. Now he's in the Philippines. I haven't heard where he's at now, but in the Philippines last time I knew, but I saw him at like the second door that we knocked, I saw him lead someone to the Lord. And I'll never forget that. And I remember thinking at that point, I remember thinking at that point in my life, I'd be like, man, I would love to be able to get one person saved. In my life, I remember thinking that. And I mean, I went out and then I was a silent partner, I was a silent partner for a long time because I didn't want to mess it up. So I was a silent partner for a couple of months, maybe longer. And then when I went out, I would go out with brother Oliver, brother Stucking, just be like, you guys tell me when I'm messing anything up, I want to be good at this, right? And I'm sure I wasn't good at it at first, but the point is my reference point was I wanted to go out and I wanted to do what he did. I wanted to get just one person saved in my life. Look, that's the kind of zeal that I always want to remember. We can go out and weaken labor.   You get to go out and meet all kinds of people, Scooby-Doo or whoever. I mean, you get to meet all kinds of people out there and they're different people. And look, there's people, but we also met, when we met Scooby-Doo, we met somebody that actually needed some help, that actually was having problems in their life, talking about maybe they didn't want to live anymore and all these types of things. Look, this is a big deal that we're out there and we're making differences in people's lives. And somebody told brother Matt today, this was like the greatest day of my life. She told him. She's like, I can't remember the exact words, but if something along the lines is the greatest day of my life or this is like the best thing that's ever happened to me and we're like, exactly, but guess what? We're part of that. I mean, don't ever forget that. Don't ever forget the importance of what we're doing. I mean, sometimes I get it. Sometimes you just got to labor, you just got to push things, push through things. You know, look, there's nothing wrong with faking it until you make it. All right, there's nothing wrong with you know what, I just don't feel good today and I don't really feel like being here today and just faking it until you make it. But look, if you're just constantly have no zeal anymore, there's something wrong there. There's something wrong that needs to be fixed there. So I mean, this is another problem. So just remember these reference points. Remember, find that time in your life when you had that zeal and always remember that and don't lose that. Be thankful for the fact that you can be part of people's lives. Be thankful for the fact that you all have been, have been, look, this is your destiny. You have been predestined. You have been predestined to go out and share the most important message that anyone has ever had ever for anyone. I mean, that's pretty important. Don't ever take that for granted. Remember a reference point in your life to keep that zeal. You know, hopefully, you know, this is another thing with young people as far as Paul and the suffering that Paul went through. This is another problem that young people, and no offense to the young people in the room, but young people are generally gonna take things for granted easier than older people. Because why? Because they don't have a lot of hard times. They don't have a lot of those reference points in their lives. That's why, you know, it's important that they find their own reference points.  Those are valuable times. Those are valuable reference points for you. Generally, Proverbs chapter one. Proverbs chapter one.  I mean, I'm sure, you know, there's many, many people in the world that had way more reference points than me. But look, I don't want to be the kind of person either that God has to, like, give hard times to to give me more reference points. I want to take the reference points that God has given me, and I want to learn from those and use those going forward. Look at Proverbs chapter one. Let me turn there myself. Look at Proverbs chapter one. Look at verse number five. The Bible says, a wise man will hear and will increase learning. And a man of understanding shall attain unto wise councils.  I mean, it's not rocket science, but it's basically saying a wise person can learn things. Guess what? A fool has to learn things again, and again, and again. And I don't want to be that person. I want to take the reference points that I have. I'd actually like to learn, but the best kind of way to learn is to learn from other people's reference points, to take hard times that other people have gone through. But the sad thing is, is really we need to fight our own battles a lot of times to understand these things, but really the smart, the wisest person will learn from other people's mistakes. And especially, at least, they will learn from making one mistake.  So look, I want to prove to God that those hard times, that those reference points that I have, that those are enough. And I can use those to keep me zealous in my life. Turn to 2 Kings, chapter 10. Turn to 2 Kings, chapter 10. I just have a couple more thoughts on how you can keep your zeal and the importance of keeping your zeal this evening. Turn to 2 Kings, chapter 10, look at verse number 16. This is Jehu. This is Jehu.  And he said, come with me and see my zeal for the Lord. So they made him ride in his chariot. So he rode in the chariot and he's like, come witness how zealous I am for God. Come witness the works that I'm doing. The point, the only point I want to make out of this is your zeal affects other people. Your zeal in this church, you think about your role in this church, every single person in the, and I am sure that most of you underestimate this. I'm sorry, I'm just gonna throw that one out there.  Because guess what? One person comes in and they're, guess what, good or bad by the way, good or bad. One person comes in and they're super excited and they're just like, whew. I mean, I made one comment to Matt one time, just I don't know what, even what I said. And he's just like, all of a sudden I'm just pumped up right now. But that is the effect. It's not just cause I'm the pastor. The effect that one person who is zealous for the Lord can have on every, I mean, if one person comes in, if one person's having a bad day, another person comes in and just like super excited. My wife made some comments. She's like, I hope I get a really good map today. I really want to go soul winning. It's like that excited me. That excited me to go soul winning. Cause look, not every day you're gonna feel like that, but your zeal affects others. And that is what Jehu was pointing out here. Turn back to Revelation chapter two. Turn back to Revelation chapter two. There's one more thing I want to point out about this. Look at Revelation chapter two and look back at verse number two. So your zeal, look, your zeal, you have a lot more effect on people than you think. And guess what? Especially in a smaller group like this. You know, the zeal of one person goes a long way in a small church like ours. Look at verse number two of Revelation chapter two. The Bible says, I know thy works and thy labor. Actually you turn to Romans five and I'm gonna read for you verse two and verse three again. I know thy works and thy labor. Turn to Romans five. I know thy works and thy labor and thy patience. Twice he uses this word patience. Again in verse number three and has born and has patience. And from my name's sake has labored. So twice he uses these two words, labor, we talked about that, and patience. Why is that? Go to Romans chapter five. Go to Romans chapter five. Romans chapter five and look at verse number three. Romans chapter five and verse number three. So these people, they had a lot of patience. You know what that tells me? It tells me they had some trouble. It tells me they had some trouble in their church.  They got these Nicolaitans in there causing trouble. I mean, they're probably getting persecuted from other people. And look, these people had trouble. Because how do I know that? Because that's where they got the patience. Look at verse number three of Romans chapter five. The Bible says, and not only so, but we glory in tribulations also. This is Paul, right? You should glory in tribulations. Knowing that tribulation worketh because out of tribulation comes patience. So tribulations, hard times, suffering produces patience in you. Did you know that? And patience. So this is just a great, beautiful pattern of what happens and how things progress from suffering, from hard times, from those reference points. It says from those hard times comes patience. And that's what the people in the church of Ephesus had. But then you get experience. And experience, because guess what? You know where experience comes from? What are the two things that they said in Revelation chapter two? This correlates perfectly with Romans. They had labor and they had patience. Guess what experience is? Is continuing to labor, even through tribulation. So these people, they were gaining patience and then they were gaining experience as they continued to labor. So what did Jesus tell them to do? He's like, get back to the first works. He's like, get back to the right works. He's like, get back to the correct works. Get the zeal back for those works and then you'll end up with what in verse number four? What's the last word? Hope is what you will end up with. So here's what you do. You go through hard times and suffering and you just keep pushing through it. You're gonna gain patience there. You keep working through it. You keep your eyes focused on the first works. You keep your eyes focused on the spiritual things and you continue to labor in those first works, in those spiritual things. Look, fake it, tell you make it if you have to. And then guess what will pop out of that? Hope will come out of that. You know what? Hope equals zeal and you will get your zeal back. That is what Jesus is saying. He's saying, look, he's like, you guys are hard workers. You guys are hard workers. He's like, you already have patience.  He's like, just get back to the first works that you're supposed to be doing and you will get that zeal back. Is what Jesus is saying and it matches perfectly what Romans five says. What, and look, that's suffering and let's remember the suffering so we don't have to go through the suffering to keep working, to keep getting our hope and our zeal back. Fake it till you make it. There's nothing wrong with that. But look, if you're just faking it all the time, there is something wrong there. So tribulation works patience, patience, experience, and experience, hope or zeal. So if you're losing your zeal, don't take things for granted in your life. You know, remember, make reference points in your life. Appreciate the things in your life and you know, imagine the things, it's basically just imagine the things in your life that you say, that you appreciate the most and just imagine that they're not there anymore. That'll be a good reference point for you because there's no guarantee folks that these things are always gonna be there and they just keep working. Keep doing those first works and that hope will return to you. And look, the zeal that is the end game here is so important that we never lose individually and especially as a church. We need to be a zealous church. There's super exciting things to be happening here. I mean, look, this church and churches like ours, we are, we are the explosion of Christianity in this country. You know, everyone's like, we need revival. Look, we are the revival. Our zeal is the revival and that is what we always need to have as a church and this is what Jesus is getting at. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.


What is up everyone my name is Zesty Mike. Today I came across something that I think would benefit some of you guys who are looking to build your online business. Now we've all heard the phrase you have to go to college to succeed. Now although it does have some truth to it it's not necessarily all true. Although degrees do look good on paper there are some other good ways to show how talented you are. You can build an awesome demo reel, simply blow them away in your interview or be certified in the trade that they're looking to hire you for. For instance with YouTube you can go through their program and at the end of it you'll receive a certification saying you're certified in audience growth on YouTube. Now another certification that I found useful was to be social media certified. This will help you land many different marketing campaigns as well as any jobs that revolve around social media. Now there's plenty of different schools and online courses that you can go to or use to become certified. However yesterday I received an email from one of my favorite companies Hootsuite. They have a free online school called Podium that trains you in social media strategy. Now before we continue this is not a sponsored video this is just something that I found useful when building a business. In the past I made plenty of different videos around Hootsuite and how powerful it is. They have many different training opportunities but recently they brought to my attention that they have an online exam that will get you social media certified. So if you're a student or someone studying to try and build their own business this is a great certification to have in your arsenal and judging by the company it'll be a good and valuable course not to mention the course itself is free it just cost to take the certification exam. Now if you act today you can actually sign up for the certification at 50% off by entering in the code 50 off at checkout making the course $99. Now although this may sound like a lot to some people I think this is something really beneficial and they'll pay it back in the future especially compared to other different colleges or online courses this is pretty much nothing and if you don't have any money you can ask your friends your parents your boss or your friend Bill who secretly has a crush on you and then this could be a potential investment into your future. Now again this 50% off is only today unfortunately I just found out about it or else I would have let you guys know sooner but you don't have to take the exam today all you have to do is purchase the opportunity to take the exam and then you can study it up on podium and then once you feel ready then you could take the exam whenever you want but if you want the 50% off you do have to purchase it today. Now do keep in mind that this is something for your future this is something for your business this is something for what you want to build because to be able to say that you're certified in social media this looks really good for any company looking to work with you and build a marketing campaign. Now do keep in mind Hootsuite is not the only option you can go to many different schools or online courses to get your certification in social media but you need to start thinking about these types of things when you start to build your business you need to have something that shows that you are able to do what you say you're able to do whether that's a demo reel whether that's proof and analytics and stats or just be able to say you're certified in these different things these are things that you need to start thinking about when you start building your brand but anyways guys that's it for me today if you want to see more of me and my personal channel you can click the link up at the cards above or you can click the links on the description below and of course if you want to see more of my tips and tricks you can click the link in the sidebar and lastly be sure to leave some comments down below of what you'd like me to cover next week but anyways guys that's it and I'll see you next week see ya. Impulse is produced by the Freedom Network ever wanted to earn revenue from your videos? Freedom offers a great partnership program which includes access to hundreds of thousands of audio tracks, sponsorships with great partners and most importantly a no lock-in contract you can leave at any time for any reason we accept everyone both big and small for more information click here or visit the link in the video description


a scrolling your account that tells you that this download content can only be rows and rows that was included in the service field. The Kenna case has beaten leg z G Ka and hollabookgan that is for the show. And if the show comes to hollabookgan, it's a- it's uh- It's only because it has a executive policy to implement the executive policy for the show. It's rarely gonna happen to it, but it's a regular message about the show, whether or not it is made. And so that will be more how it is. But we've got a very good poll on the show, it's a new experience that we've got at this show. So if you can make sure that it's done well, if you know it's on the show, And this person was waiting for land times to complete or end. Last person is nobody, so they are thinking that this is not going to happen in here, but only because this is very sad and veryいきます, as long as the怎麼辦 would actually take those people to the moon. d'un dwe kan dwe kan dwe ime gd genn'y mpa, da nouchet honi wl'he do, nd'un dwe le na, by the chumpere, nd'un dwe ond pwa ot o bade, pan dwe li na mpa nsir ll'osm, one do gd o ngo h'n do or r'ldi krodd, a dwe le s'på to k'ch sai gd, to e mpa n'l'o l'pato'y. We- I do n'enli, h' ad-dwe r'ldi r'h-on n'e go, mywa l'h'n do dwe l'h'o autere l'tvun, nn ch'ypio' w'hath dh'h looked around in a dress of red chry chefs by some of the chroy alloy chesh open, dh but it seems like they were full to the timeνηty really acting of choy shrimp hot. In spite of the dark chry ch'ypio' who's got the chypio' ful chon g't the most of my ch don't you could see that it's not so dazzling that this happens to this town very well. If also didn't you can too, but it would n't get like ful chon ful chon. Now I don't think chitch and chitch are being cooked up by a chypio' choy ch'ypio' kch'ypio' right. What and what the making you wouldn't be breaking at this hour. d'uade, d'uade, d'uade, d'uade, d'uade, d'uade, d'uade, d'uade, d'uade. A l'alanghe, d'uade, d'uade, d'uade. skebe, dee dee dee d'uade. Okay. What is it mean to be a non-landing person who doesn't do what I can in science again? Can you play music on simple, if you like to do music right now in science? So, non-linders in science, need to do music in science. Okay. When the world yer simps 25. When the world er simps 25. Because we able to do this in science, as you know, theDiddy Ryderworks. And it's always interesting And do you think that some of the arts in my life have been so Aldatti-related. Isbunin al, was just also called the It has been inspected as such that w


Five, four, three, two, one, and Mrs. Reagan. The most equal is your own honor to accept the verdict of the people. The true winners are, of course, the people. I'm told, Mr. President, that in your embassy here in Washington, pictures of every slump ahead that we have indeed in you are first and foremost the democratic ideals of the president. It is a pleasure for us to have scored this heartfelt commitment that Japan should not be given its full freedom. They argue that Japan should remain shackled as a punishment for its role in World War II. As the representative of Sri Lanka, you spoke out for the president we share your dedication to freedom and goodwill. This is more than political theory, it's a way of life. This spirit makes it natural that our two names recently we were reminded of the men of those who seek to impose their will by force and terror. This is a political situation. The skill and courage that you demonstrated helped Friart, not the men, and at the same time prevented the terrorists from initiating it.  You wrote, I hope that the international community will be able to eradicate terror like some that I recently attended in London. I know this sentiment is shared by the people of all the democracies. When I say the free management of this planet will never coward before terrorists. In your own country, as well as your efforts to find through the democratic process a peaceful resolution of community strife. There is no legitimate suit all in a democracy. Dividing your country into separate nations that some would have you do is not the solution. Instead of separating people, now is the time to bring them together, yourself and the rest of the world. Mr. President, we wish you every success in your search for reconciliation and a better life for all your people. And their lives are improved. Your leadership will reap rewards for many years to come thanks to the bold economic steps that you take. We're pleased that Americans are playing a part in this effort. Your endeavors to improve your people's economic well-being continues to have our solid support. Your country has passed. There goes the expectation extended by Mrs. Reagan and you. Yet only do you feel we are among friends and try to follow common ideals for the welfare of your friends held at the San Francisco. I came as my country's representative to adharm our land and people also that we should forgive those who are our enemies those of the ideals which inspire us then and inspire us now for 2,500 years. There were glimpses of modern democracy even then as in the appointment of mayors to aid cities. We cannot forget the modern revolution when the U.S. leaders of Finland are viable education through schools, order, and manage by the U.S. themselves. We feel the company role has not been known for the handling of the country. Awesome. We have freedom of speech and writing objective governance, the use of my life and their career. Then we have the whole of Central and South America the whole of Africa, the whole of Asia. The citizens, the developing nations of the world received from the World Bank some of them are unique to our peace in the eastern part. We still have the speech to drive it to the north. The terrorists are called to to seek their result among the civilized world. I was very happy. Thank you.


Dw i oed i'r ddechrau, yr ddechrau a lŵr, yn ein ddweud yma, yng Nghymru o 7 oed y Gymraeg. Ond mae'n cael ei wneud i'r ddweud er mwyn i'r ddweud.yn ni'n cael ei ffau'r ddweud. O'r ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud a'r ddweud i'r ddweud. Ac mae'n wedi bod yn ei ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud. I ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud. Ac yn ystafod y camau nhw, maen nhw'n rhaid i'n ffordd, dwi'n wneud i'w masylau ffawr, ond mae'r parwysau ffwrdd am gweithio, maen nhw'n ddiwedd yn dweud yn y fawr yn nifelig? Mae'r cyflwyaf sydd yn y cyfle i ddiwedd sydd yn gweithgweithiau i ddwyf sen. Ond mae'n ffordd yma yn dweud beth mae'n dwylo ddwylo, cael y ffordd mae'n dwi wedi eu gufnod arfer. Ac mae'n gweithio, sydd y gallwn gynnwys. Mae nhw wedi bod chi'n meddwl ei wneud hyn yn viw. Felly, cydwyddiad am yr hyn phon o'r ddaf y gweithio sydd wedi'u gifeth fel frir Professor Dawkins, wedi'u myfyd i chi'n dweud y yr unrhyw o'r newid a byddai'r ffordd yna o ddysgol. Y cydwyr wedi'u ddysgu'r perfformaeth o'r ddaf i chi bwyddo,ais i'r ddych yn fair ddysgu'r hyn o'n gyrdd yna i gael pethau, felly dwi wedi'u ddysgu'r hyn i fel cydwyr o'r ddysgu'r bod yn cywir未ies. I am, mae hynny Steve Richards, rydyn ni wedi gyfnod o rhai pryd yma ymlaen, beth rydym ni'n ei fath o bwlynyddiadol, iddyn ni'n gweithio ychydig i'ch cefnod, ac mae'n meddwl i gael i gwybod hynny o rhaid â'r orlygluriad hyn. ac mae'r ddelch yn ystod i'r cymdeithasol'r llwyffol, oherwydd – oedden nhw'n mynd i'r cymdeithasol, ac mae'n gwneud i'n ffordd mwy o'r ddweudio cymsgol a'r ddweudio'r cynsig o'r ddweudio'r ddweudio. Ffawr, mae'n meddwl a'u meddwl o'r panthau na fydd yn meddwl i'n meddwl i ffordd ac i wneud am sylwg i'r ffochol. Fawr, mae'n meddwl i'n meddwl i'r ffordd, ac mae'r ddweud yn ardal yn mynd i, ond rydyn ni'n ffordd. Rydyn ni'n gweld o'n ardal, y dyfodol yn ymgol. Rydyn ni'n gweld o'n ardal yn y dyfodol yn y 10 ym 10. Yn amlwg yn chi, ar y ddechrau, mae'r ddysgu, ac mae'n gweithio'n ddysgu, yn ddechrau, ymddangos. I was an Arsenal fan, so Little Steve had run about in a little Arsenal kit. Those were the days before I found music, before I found computers, before I found Nintendo. Nevertheless, this project held a really big place in my heart, something that I got really excited about when I heard that it was a project that we had won. It was an exciting prospect. It was going to be an extensive project with some really complex goals. Some of those overarching goals, they really wanted to increase their fan engagement. They really wanted to extend the reach of their digital fan base. They wanted to look at ways that they could monetise and drive traffic to their revenue streams, to their shops and to their partners. We had an extensive bid team, and then finally that culminated in a final pitch at our office. Everyone got in their best football kit, and ultimately we won the project. Here is someone who extended our pitch team on that. That culminated in a re-platform. They wanted to optimise their platform for mobile. They wanted to make it future-proof, and they wanted to centralise their content. So previously everything had been split out across a few different platforms. They wanted to add ongoing value and find a way that they could build on what they had and continue iterating it over time. We had an extended team that was led by us in Vika. That was out of a number of different offices. London, Brighton, Manchester and Sheffield. It was also a project that we won and implemented in partnership with another couple of agencies. Phase 2, a number of you will know, based out of the States. Our team extended across the Atlantic as well. And Ask Modern was a London-based design agency. We moved into implementation. That started with a very extensive discovery process, looking at all their long-term goals and analysing all the different platforms that they were currently using. That, of course, ended with us recommending Drupal 8. I think partially because it ticked all the boxes, but also because we had done, at this point, at least one Drupal 8 project. I think we had reached that tipping point where Drupal is no more an option anymore. Drupal 8 really had started to gain traction. So this was back, I think, summer of 2016. So on the recommendation of Phase 2, we moved into an atomic-based design process. That was using that and that. That also recombinated in multiple Drupal themes to handle the various different properties that existed within this single platform. That was arson.com, player.arsson.com, and the junior gunner site. So everything running off the same code base but being displayed in slightly different ways. Then, ultimately, it had to power a REST API. Their existing platform had a REST API that serviced their mobile apps. This platform would have to be a direct replacement for that. So we sketched out a basic architecture diagram for that. With Drupal 8 at the centre of everything acting as a content hub. Delivering Jason to the Android and iOS apps. Delivering RSS feeds and content out through the pattern library out to desktops and mobiles in that way. So continuing the replatform, we also had to utilise their existing CDM. As part of the rebuild, we would also be migrating to platform SH. As well as servicing all those API users of which there is very, very, very many. And migrating all of their legacy content from their existing system. Which, luckily, was PHP and Minus Graph based into Drupal 8 platform. OK, so I'm going to kick off into the first half now. I'm going to go through some components of the project here. So that's the business stuff out of the way. Sorry, I really like transitions. So, as you can imagine with a property such as arston.com, performance considerations need to come in at a very early stage. You really think about how you will be handling that level of data. So to give you a bit of an idea, these are some stats from October 2017. So through the API, they were doing 90 million requests just over October. That culminated in 496 gigabytes of JSON data. Which, in total, when you add in the desktop and the responsive mobile stats as well, culminated in 555 million requests for October and around 22 terabytes of data. So that's some serious heavy load. So, typically, we'd focus on a number of things to improve performance and load times. And so, we'd look at lazy loading from an application perspective, try and avoid loading stuff that's below the fold. We'd look at profiling and how we can manage our code bets up. We might look at internal caching and examine how we could use cache tags and cache context to ensure that we're only serving out things internally as appropriate. Scalable hosting. So, obviously, with PlatformSH, we have something that's very scalable, container-based, and can respond based on traffic. We'd look at load testing. And, ultimately, we'd look at external caching. Sorry, another football type thing. The importance of well-timed headers. So, we wanted to leverage the CDN as much as possible. So, we wanted to really put the focus on how we could optimise the site from the outside in. So, typically, you would use like a CDN or a proxy cache provider for this. So, Platform works very well with Fastly. They're a partner with Fastly. Cloudflare is something that I'm sure many of you have used before. LimeLite was a CDN provider which our client is actually working with at the time. They had a very good relationship with them and wanted to continue on that process. So, we looked at how we could integrate with that. So, if you've used Cloudflare before, you might put your DNS configuration directly into Cloudflare and that would be handled by Cloudflare and you wouldn't necessarily need to worry too much about it. But in terms of LimeLite, there was a lot of configuring things ourselves and going through the steps really to make this work as efficiently as possible. So, what I've got here is a basic diagram of how the traffic comes into your Edge server, your Edge load balancer and then through the CDN and down to Origin. So, what you're really looking to do is to minimise your traffic to Origin as much as possible and to utilise the CDN in the most efficient way possible is the best way to do that. So, we're really focusing on the Edge here and focusing on minimising the traffic down to Origin there. So, we do that, we place an haste, a haste to be off between the CDN and other things and the only thing that can get to Origin is authenticate traffic from the CDN. So, as I said, we're utilising the existing CDN provider. We had to have a seamless transition at launch so that as far as the fans were concerned, as far as the client was concerned, nothing would change between pre-launch and post-launch and obviously serving it across these multiple channels of web and the API and handling our £55 million requests a month upwards of, I quickly checked, January's and it was, I think, significantly more than that. So, we do that using cash control headers. So, Drupal obviously implements this out of the box. There's nothing we necessarily have to do to make this happen, but it's worth knowing. They're counting some of how this works. So, cash control is a header that also specifies this max age value which defines the lifetime of the page and essentially how on the page it's fresh for and how long it can persist in a CDN cache. So, if you were to take your Chrome browser and inspect the request, inspecting the arson.com request here, we can see that cash control is saying that this page would exist for 300 seconds and specifically, this page is 43 seconds old. So, Drupal core has a few cache limitations out of the box. So, you get your performance tab here, you get some caching options or a caching option, that's literally what you can get out of the box. It has a maximum cache lifetime of one day and that's global for your entire application and that might work for 90% of sites. So, straight away, we look to implementing this module. This is the advanced page exploration module. This gives you some additional max age options. It allows you to define some alternate caching options and gives you a UI for managing the original function that you can pass to the client. It also exposes some custom events and hooks that you can also implement to kind of outfit your own logic for covering different scenarios and different business logic. So, the UI for this looks like this. It's very similar, but straight away, you can see we've got one month global exploration time as well as up to one year. So, it also gives you these two different caching levels so you get there out of the box so that you can say generally pages on these paths will cache for this amount of time, but you can specify and say the home page might be 30 minutes. Why is this great? So, that means that you can give different lifetimes different pages based on how regularly the content changes. So, you can really determine from within the Drupal UI exactly how long a page should exist for. So, home pages and news pages might be changing very, very regularly and actually asking when my page changes every five minutes, every minute, maybe. And a player profile, for example, might stay for a month, a year, I don't know. I've got not a massive football down, but I don't think there's changes really. But it also gives us this ability to specify some sensible defaults so that we can have that fallback generally for everything. So, what it meant for us is that we could essentially launch and do a soft launch and through the UI we could configure how long we wanted that global exploration to be, how long we wanted that fallback exploration to be and kind of change that value over time as we kind of measured the performance in the server. So, it allows us to kind of manage that gradual escalation of traffic to origin directly through the UI. So, I don't want to trivialise this. So, our implementation was anonymous only. So, obviously, it's harder to cache authenticated traffic. This sort of aggressive caching will produce its own problems if you find that a page isn't quite correct in the CDN UI, they have to wait for it to expire or go to your CDN UI and start purging objects, which really you want to do as infrequently as possible. So, future scope release for our implementation would be to kind of look at how we could provide regional content, potentially using edge-side includes or a-jaxing in content into the page so that we're still serving out the same page to everyone which is kind of injecting the current personal content into the page. Implementing some kind of deep-level CDN integration so if you've used Farsi, for example, there is a Farsi module that enables you to expire stuff directly in the CDN based on a content change directly and directly using hashtags. And, yeah, extend the exploration logic that we get out of the box. We have a few rules that already exist kind of below the surface, below those kind of two different options and we could extend those to kind of have different ways of capturing different ways. So, how do we know that we're ready for all that traffic? How do we know that we're kind of there? So, obviously, we do that by testing and measuring. And so, in this project, we used Apache JMeter to basically simulate some behaviours, simulate some traffic over time, ramping it up and then reviewing New Relic in the background to kind of see what came out of that. So, to be able to review errors and to be able to review bottlenecks and the overall performance as we're hammering the site through JMeter. And JMeter also gives you a... you can use GlazeMeter to run your JMeter test and that's kind of the tool that we use ultimately. Cool. Okay, so, into the second half. I'm not sure what the score is. I'm not really keeping the score. So, in the second half, I want you to look at the symphony components in core and explore some real-world examples of kind of these components in action. We're going to see how they really bolster kind of a dribble specifically. So, obviously, it's opened the door to a lot of new design patterns and that's something that we really embraced on this project. It enabled us to kind of use external libraries. I guess you could use external libraries before, but I think this kind of provided a slightly more flexible way for pulling in services from packages libraries and stuff like that. Obviously, dependency injection. I'm not going to explain dependency injection now. I think there was a session this morning on that, so it's worth kind of dialing into that. But ultimately, it meant that our code was more efficient. Plug-ins and the event dispatcher and subscriber. And I really want to explore the last one of these because I think this was the one that we really utilised the most. So, one of the key ways that we wanted to utilise this was to notify the fans. So, one of the key requirements was to send match event push notifications. So, we had to replicate this existing behaviour using their API, using their current mobile apps, using the pre-defined external service that they already had. So, we had to integrate with that API. And most importantly, we had to avoid sending fake notifications like BBC did here. So, as yet, we've not sent any fake notifications. Is that right, Felix? You haven't sent any fake ones yet? No. So, take steps to make sure that we can send everything out to their millions and millions of fans, or whatever it is. So, of course, we didn't want to reinvent the wheel. There wasn't a Drew Blake module that integrated with their API. But there was, however, a PHP library available that did integrate with an airship, which is the notification provider here. So, this provided a key opportunity to kind of look at our toolbox. So, I want to introduce you here to Felix. He's over here. Sorry. So, Felix was a symphony developer. I'll say once. I guess he still is a symphony developer. But he has extensive knowledge of a fashion of the symphony and the PHP best practices. However, he was new to Ibiza and Drew for when we started this project. However, being passionate about symphony, he went to Symphony Live and he was inspired by a session that he saw on Symphony Live. And actually, one of the key questions that he kept on asking me throughout the beginning of the project was, why are we doing things this way? Why aren't we doing things in a kind of modern design pattern way? So, a lot of my time is spent explaining freedom of several isms. Anyway. So, Felix was inspired by another employee's Symphony Live presentation and was now able to use these components in a truthful environment. So, he was able to create a reusable implementation using the subscriber and the dispatcher and integrate with any existing work that we have within his site. Utilise that PHP library that we just identified and add that as a dependency in our composer location. So, including that library was fairly trivial at that point. So, this is what that journey looked like. So, essentially, this is driven by the editorial team. They'll put an action into the CMS, that action in this case is a goal. That will fire a pre-safe hook. So, yeah, we all know that hooks still exist in Dream Plate. However, that gave us a jumping point to kind of prepare the event data and then dispatch that event. So, this is a very kind of basic version of what that event dispatcher looks like. The dispatcher. There you go. So, that's the dispatcher. It's a very basic version. It doesn't include all the extra code around it, but it enabled us to implement this and then dispatch this event. And the important thing about dispatching events, as opposed to maybe triggering a function, is it wouldn't break if there was nothing at the other end to catch it. There's kind of a very loose dependency there. So, ultimately, we catch that event with our subscriber. This is subscribing specifically to the event that we've just sent. And then, ultimately, we can utilise the urban airship service to send out that notification and to basically trigger it that way and send it out to the authorities. So, the other thing I wanted to kind of take a look at was another off-the-shelf piece of work that we used and then integrated with. So, essentially, this was managing Twitter media. So, as a bit of an overview, all Arsenal players tend to have a Twitter account. Arsenal themselves has their own Twitter account and, obviously, players continually communicating about the games, about events around the games. So, they want to be able to integrate those into their minute-by-minute flows into their news-art calls and to kind of really harness that rich media. However, they had some strict rules around the kind of storage and kind of the sponsorship and the kind of tone of voice of those tweets. So, we were challenging with kind of looking at how we could pull that data in but in a kind of manageable way. So, we looked at the media entity's Twitter module and this has a tweet feature service built in. So, I encourage you to look at services in Drupalate. Essentially, what this gives you is a service that is available globally that you can call on to utilize any of the functionality around, in this case, the Twitter API integration. So, this enabled us to retrieve tweets using a tweet handle. And then, because it was based on media entity, it also allowed us to map that data to entity fields, store that data locally. So, this was a key requirement of Arsenal in that they wanted to retain full control over the data. They wanted to retain the kind of full control over the display. So, I think that's really important because of, you know, that meant that they were able to kind of use it and display it in any kind of way that they sort of fit really. So, it also, the module also includes a Twitter-based formatter, but, yeah, it does give you the ability to kind of take those fields and as you map them to kind of data locally, you can go into them just using a tweet directly. So, this is the basic media type of Twitter. So, it extends the kind of, the media type base where harness is kind of all the kind of media entity type that's in for and then extends that to kind of create a version specifically for Twitter. It's worth noting that we added a number of different patches over the course of the project to kind of extend the capabilities of this module as well. And that was essentially to kind of make sure it could keep up with Twitter's API, the part that's accessing extended tweets. So, you have a slightly richer level of data in the tweets. Also, to map more fields that then get exposed in that way. Twitter supports animated gifs and videos and we want to be able to map that and have that something that can be kind of displayed in any news feed. And also down to multiple images, which was something which was added to Twitter by a guy over the course of our project. So, I think there's something for me to do on that in terms of finishing the patch, but the code's up there if you need to extend it and you need to use that base. That's all I'm doing for the whole. So, I want to give a little bit of an outline of the journey that you might see as a player tweets about something and then how that might end up within our media storage. So, we associate each player with a Twitter handle and then that goes through into our tweet manager service. We can retrieve all players that they'll have a Twitter handle. And then we can utilise the tweet fetcher service that media entity Twitter has given us and we can use that to access the Twitter API. So, I think what's really key with this is that we have dedicated services to all the sole responsibilities so we split out everything. We don't try and group everything together as we might historically have done in a Drupal server module. We split everything out into its individual components. But additionally, we interrupt the standard media entity Twitter flow by adding this blacklist constraint validator. So, this is another component that we have available to us in core. We can extend the constraint validator class to implement something that will interrupt that flow and stop certain tweets coming in if they match their own criteria. And that was specifically a blacklist of terms or a blacklist of sponsors or a blacklist of things that don't match the tone of voice or match the information which the team wanted to distribute. So, all that means is that then we can automate everything. We can have a cron hook that will build up a queue triggering our tweet manager service to ingest all of the player tweets and then put them in the media storage ready for the editorial team to use as they see fit. And actually, if you go to arsland.com today you'll see a player tweets page and that lists everything that they've tweeted every 30 minutes. It goes off and ingests any of the most recent ones and displays them and filters out and you don't match the tone of voice. But ultimately, because we're just storing it as media storage, they can go in and change those. They can edit those and delete those as they see fit as well. So, if something goes through, they can delete it that way as well. So, here's an example of our constraint validator. So, we're exposing a list that they can add to or just text stop terms that they can add and then ultimately, as we're ingesting a tweet we can trigger this validator to then see if it contains any of those terms. So, it just provides a really nice way of kind of automating math that can be giving it a bit of sanity and giving it some level of checking on the way. So, ultimately, I think it's no surprise that Drupal 8 gains significantly from the symphony components which have been added to it. I think there's a number of different realised benefits here. Specifically, transferable skills. So, I saw with Felix and a number of the other people in our team have been able to jump onto a Drupal 8 project having very little Drupal experience but having a lot of symphony experience and they've been able to kind of get their hands dirty with Drupal straight away which is not something that we saw very often with Drupal. So, I think we've seen that there's kind of less hard dependencies. Obviously, you could code hard dependencies if you wanted to, but there's the toolkit to be able to split things out and to be able to make things a little bit more interoperable. It's more extensible in this way if you're splitting out your components and kind of giving things a sole responsibility. And it opens up to kind of future potential. So, there may not be a module for something today but there might be a PHP library for it and that PHP library might have certain symphony components that it's utilising and so you can use that not necessarily wait for like a Drupal module to come along to wrap around that. And yeah, from a personal preference thing as well it gives you design patterns that you can look at in other frameworks and kind of see kind of how they're being used and you can kind of meet in your code op and kind of follow some of those other standards which you might not necessarily have done before. So, that's full time. So, there's a few other adventures which we could cover. There's not necessarily time for it today but there's a number of other API integrations that we did throughout this project. We integrated with a sports data API called OPTA integrated with the video data API called UALA as well which pulls in videos. Entity and beds, social sign on minute by minute experience and one of the key ones I think, lion match mode. So, when the lion match is happening you'll see the whole front page kind of changes and switches to this different takeover page and ultimately culminating in a kind of platform usage implementation and a full kind of scene change from then everything building using composer and then going out into production in a kind of scalable way that can react when there's kind of peaks and troughs. So, I think overall there was a great team spirit on our project. This is a terrible picture of me so let's move on to the next one. It's slightly better. I think I made over black. There was a great team spirit so this was our most recent game. We lost... 83. Even worse, I scored an un goal.  I shouldn't play football, it's just terrible. But six months on from launch we continue to foster a really good relationship and it's really key to getting the most out driven way I think to be able to have that product owner who's really engaged and is able to help to iterate actually in this case our product owner the guy in green here was actually on our team because we were outnumbered so I think that that goes to show how much of a great integrated team you had. So hopefully next time I won't play and they might score some more goals. So thank you very much. There's time for host match Q&A if anyone has any questions, thank you. It's a football thing to be asked. How long do you feel you're safe? That's a good question. I don't know, you have to ask your idea or maybe Richard, I don't know. I didn't realise it was a Brighton home game tomorrow. Yes, that's a good point. They are playing today. I'm from Brighton by the way and they're playing today. So you mentioned design patterns and I just want to know if you could elaborate on us for what you felt was the most useful one in this project and if there was one which you came across that works really, really well in this context I just want to know if you could talk a little bit more about that. Yes, so I think the one that we've used the most and actually across other projects is the repository design plan. So to essentially keep our content navigable in such a way that you can have a repository for accessing those specific entities. So, for instance, we have a repository for teams, we have a repository for players, specifically a repository for players that are playing in fixtures. That kind of gives us this kind of way of navigating through it and kind of grouping together logic in a very specific way. So that's probably the one I think is the most beneficial. Is that more relevant to simply or would that work really well on Drupal 7? It would be really well on Drupal 7, right? Yes, I've seen it implemented in Drupal 7 as well. And it's really about, instead of kind of maybe putting everything in a dot module file you might sort it out into a class and you access your content through that class. But yeah. And another question specific to a project I'm working on. It's very soft and my server does some scraping and that can slow down the page load speed naturally of our server. And I was wondering if you would recommend giving your scaling experience, obviously far, far bigger scale than I'm at the moment, what your top technique to prevent that would be or if there's anything that's just an actual thing of the design, is it just about offloading that onto a different server even? Is that your size being scraped to your screen? Yeah, my size being scraped to the screen. Legitimately with a degree from the person. I think we've done a similar project where we have to scrape content. Richard knows a bit about that, but no. So in that case, we've kind of offloaded it to a cube. We basically kind of said, yeah, manage it, but manage it kind of in increments over a period of time. So if you can cube on the same server? So we move it to a rabbit MQ I think of what we used. So it's a kind of queuing service, but there's a module that means you can integrate it directly with Drupal's cube API as well. And actually generally we've got a lot of tasks that kind of happen in the background and the way that they operate is by using the QAPI to just queue up different tasks that you might have to do like ingesting tweets or putting content down from different places. And yeah, we'll spread that out over as long a period as possible to kind of distribute the operations really. Thank you very much. Any more questions? I've got a question on the Twitter idea. It's the same that it follows not just from players, the team. So it's their scenario to put in for if they start spurting off some balance to another player or something that could be damaging to the team or they get hacked and some expand and get thrown through. Like how quickly does it get picked up and does it learn from those experiences like is it like self-learning? Oh no, that would be amazing. No, it's not that clever. So is there someone literally sitting there waiting for them to come in? Well there's a bit of that. I guess there's probably, I'd hope there's something in their contracts that says you can't do the X, Y or Z. But if there's something in life it's a no, it's not that happened that. Absolutely, if someone gets hacked then I don't know. We've not had that happen yet. The thing we protect against is swearing against people talking about their other sponsors, because we're asking one specific sponsor they have to work. Sorry for the confusion. We're just about to say that we have a very extensive, there's a few thousand blacklist keywords that if they're found in the Twitter text the Twitter is not being imported into the system and just being discarded. So that would cover hopefully also the situations where the some nastier stuff would potentially be written. So if something does slip through and the content is taken, they delete it and they answer that like is it easy for them to do it? Well I think in that scenario you're not really sure necessarily what the tweets going to contain could be someone just saying something which in general every day might be fine but in context could be deep defensive or whatever. But I don't know there are services that you can use to handle your social integrations and they'll have more extensive ways of managing that. Intermediaries but for a cost. Do most players have two Twitter accounts like one for themselves and one which is their public base and that will just be done by an agent anyway? Not that I know of but I think the only ones we deal with would be the public ones because that's exactly what's really interesting. Exposing API data there's a couple of really useful modules that are proposed like entities as API stuff but that relies on you having your entities mapped the way that service provider that you're providing into it once. You were trying to match it against what they already wanted. Did you match your design for how your entities worked to that or did you just roll your own model? We had to match what they had so I think in an ideal world and this is I think the passion of the client hopefully going forward saying something I'm advocating is for them to use some standard format like JSON API and that's something that we're using on other projects and that gives a bit more of a standardised interface that shows all those different relationships for the content and they can then expose it in a way that the subscribers or the actual devices that are ingesting it can then determine how they want to use it. As it stands I think we're iterating over different versions of the legacy format which isn't ideal but it's still fairly clean and it's something we've built a framework to work with now and it actually made a little bit easier because of Drupal 8 has a certain element of the best API built into it so whilst some of the formatting has to be a little different we were able to use a lot of the serialisation classes to normalise our data and push it through that as well so that was another design pattern we used a lot of normalisers to filter that data Excellent, thank you very much everyone so yeah, we're hiring no you were hiring and we are hiring as well but yeah if you want to come down to our booth down there and correctly on my spelling please do thank you very much so that's it, you have to swing it so that's it you can you tell us if you want to ask the process absolutely thank you how does it work of course, yeah it's simple simple as it is you got your name


Hey there guys, remember that we have created another video before called Other Monetization Features Outside of YouTube Ads? Well on this episode guys, we will be giving you updates on those other monetization features. But before we do guys, you know what to do, like, subscribe, and gong that bell. Hey what's up freedom, my name is Nolden, welcome to Freedom Central, the home of all freedom content. As I said a while ago guys, we will be discussing or I will be giving you an update on those other monetization features outside of YouTube Ads. This episode aims you to give more information about Super Chat, about merchandising, and about channel memberships. So guys without further ado, freedom, quick tips. On my previous episode, I have relayed to you the other monetization options outside of YouTube.  Another monetization option is Memberships. Memberships is a way to keep you have passive income every month as your members will be given exclusive access to products or other gimmicks you can think of. We're mostly going to be talking about those three options so let's start with Super Chat. Some of you might be wondering what is Super Chat? Well, Super Chat is a feature where your YouTube channel can do live streams. Like Twitch, people can donate to you while you live stream. Once they do, they will be sending you a message and it will be featured in the live stream. So you might be wondering, how can you be eligible for the partnership? Well, these are the requirements you will need to achieve before you are eligible for this feature. Number one is your channel is monetized. Number two is your channel has over 1,000 subs. Number three is you are over 18 years old. Number four, make sure that your location is available on Super Chat. Number five, if you want to know more about this, you can go to this link which can be found on the video description below. I know you might be wondering now, does it require some heavy setup? Well you know what, not really, but it kinda does. I know that you are confused. So in order for you to have this feature, it doesn't require much. And in order to live stream, you will be needing a couple of things. These things are basic equipment like your desktop, a good microphone, a good camera, and a software where you can process your live stream. Last time on VidCon, it has been said that Super Chat will have an update. Yep, Super Chat will be having stickers, but not just ordinary stickers. These stickers will be bought so that you can give your favorite YouTuber the love with those cute and zany characters. Channel memberships is now the best thing you can get besides from sponsorships because in channel memberships, you can have a steady stream of income from the people who subscribe to you. You will need to give back to your people or to your fans or to your audiences. You must ask yourself this before creating a membership. What is the payoff that I will be giving my fans in exchange for this membership? What will they get out from me?  Don't force them because that is bad and we don't like that. On channel memberships, it is known that there is a monthly fee of $4.99. Join in with exclusive emojis, badges, and other gimmicks. Now, right after VidCon, this has been announced that there will be a new addition. I know guys, you will like it and it is actually pretty good. You will be able to have tiers now on your channel memberships because the new addition is membership levels. Yes guys, you can advance in tiers and channel memberships and depending on what kind of tier you are in, you can get other exclusive prizes or another kind of package. You can sell your merchandise if you have merchandise to sell. Once you make a brand for yourself, you can create a t-shirt, a jacket, souvenirs, or other gimmicks you can think of. You can use your channel to advertise your merchandise or from a different site as well. You can create your own website for it or you can create a mobile app for it as well. It depends on you, whatever you decide. If you don't have funds or skills to create your website or mobile application, you can use different sites on YouTube that you can help out with that. You see this link which can be found in the video descriptions below? This link right here can help you out get the site that you can sell your merchandise to. Now for merchandising, YouTube has partnered with Teespring that allows content creators to sell merch to their fans directly from their channel. Not only that, today YouTube has added five partners that will help you content creators with your merchandise. These partners are the CrowdMad, the FTBA, Fanjoy, Represent and Rooster Teeth. What are you waiting for guys?  These are kind of some exciting stuff guys because it lets you monetize your channel even outside of YouTube ads. That's the episode freedom for now because this is just an update on those other monetization features. I hope you guys had fun. Also guys, do you have other tips for us to monetize our own channel outside of YouTube ads? Let us know down below. Of course guys, if you have a friend who does super chat, merchandising and channel memberships, share this video to them so that they can be updated on those kinds of features. Before you leave guys, don't forget to leave a like, subscribe and gong that bell. My name is Noel guys bringing you tips on how to grow your channel and of course other monetization options outside of YouTube ads. Always remember, freedom, quick tips. I'm going to be seeing you guys on the next episode. Bye.


An end to terrorism in Banditry, North West is in sight. The presidency assured Nigerians yesterday, pointing to the success recorded in the fight against insurgency in North East. It said the escalation of terrorist activities in the North West would also be brought under control soon. The presidency said there was ongoing re-equipping and reorganization of the security and intelligence forces. The North has been reeling on the serious terrorism and Bandit attacks which have taken a turn for the worse. There have been daily attacks including kidnapping for ransom, insurgency, killings and incessant farmer-header clashes among others.


So a huge thank you to Coaster Limits for grabbing this footage for us. I do wanna let you guys know that this video is going to be about the construction and why it has come to a halt in terms of land clearing and what else is going on the land. And then I'm gonna have my analysis video come out sometime tomorrow. So on Friday, my analysis video of the leaked layout of the Giga Coaster for Kings Island will come out. I know I've been silent on this topic for a bit and it's just because I've been doing my research. I've been digesting everything and I've been looking at multiple people's layouts that they've recreated based off of the leaked, supposed leaked blueprint for the Giga Coaster coming to Kings Island. Anyway, so as you can tell, there is absolutely nothing new in terms of land clearing over at Kings Island. And based off of the leaked layout, this would somewhat make sense. It's a very small Giga based off of the leaked layout. So this layout of the current land clearing would make sense for that. There are markings that are and stakes that are in the ground closer to the firehawk side of the construction site. And it looks like they might be moving a hot building to another location near Racer from what I understand over near firehawk or Racer kind of in between there. It looks like they might be moving a hot building. There's a new storage building going on the back. You can see that that's come along very nicely as well. But based off of the leaked layout, the station area will be in the old firehawk location. It'll head on over those red barn areas, I believe, and then come on all the way out to the Racer's turnaround and then come on back very quick, short, yet extremely sweet if those blueprints are real layout. And it looks like construction equipment is arriving to start digging for footers and footings as well, which is definitely really cool. So super exciting that construction looks like it's gonna pick up any day now. We know that footings have to start probably in the next two weeks for this coaster. So definitely looking forward to that. And I'm sure all the King's Island people, all you guys are super excited about that because there's nothing more exciting than a good teasing campaign and watching your home parks coaster be built. Even if it's spoiled, even if you know the layout, all you know, I knew the layout mostly for Yukon Stryker and I still had a blast following the construction and I know you guys are as well. I do wanna point out that it's really cool. They built like a path for the construction equipment. It looks like there's this little white path that goes along the land clearing. So it looks like they'll be using that for construction equipment so they don't always get stuck in the mud. We saw that at Canada's Wonderland, things get muddy really quickly. So they built a cool little path for them to maneuver through and dig those footings for the giga coaster. Anyways, not much else to report on in terms of this. We're definitely keeping an eye on further land clearing and obviously over the next two weeks, footings being dug. Thanks for watching guys. Don't forget to hit that like button, subscribe if you haven't and share this video for others to enjoy. Have a good weekend guys. Bye.