 Yeah, we gon' talk, we gon' have. Check it, check it, check it. It's the unique hustle. It's your boy, E-C-E-O, and I'm here with the lovely official, Mr. Mako. What's going on? Nothing, my dad will all go on. Hey, man, we here today, man. We got a nice flavor here today. You know what I'm saying? When somebody from the hometown show up, man, I get excited. People don't realize, man, people wonder why, like, man, this man, he grew up in East Texas. He love East Texas, but man, I love my people, man, in a nutshell, man. Check it, man. We got Mr. and Mrs. Morgan in here, man. Landon and Rotunda. What's going on? What's going on, now? Man, y'all sound good, man. We practiced that. Y'all did it in sequence, like synchronized. I know, I know, I see. So, man, hey, man, thank y'all for coming on the show. Absolutely, thank you for having us. Man, it's totally a blessing just to get, you know, man, season people. You know, I deal with the youth, I deal with a lot, but when I deal with my people, especially believers, I can take it there, you know what I mean? Cause it's a lot of people that don't, you don't know where they at with what. And you have to guess, but when you know that you said and in the midst of believers, you can feel it in the spirit. Some people in the young, the young say, keep that same energy. They call it energy, you know what I mean? So, man, hey, man, what you think about these two? This is official, Mr. Maker, y'all. This is my wife, man. Give it up, man. I love it, I love it. I love to see good couples who can get along, especially in today's society, where you have a lot of couples who, they leave marriage for drop of the dime, any little thing, any argument. So, especially working together in business, that's the part. A lot of people always ask us, how can you work together? So that's the main part. How can you not, though? Yeah, how can you not? How can you not? Definitely. But some of the disadvantages though is you don't ever leave work at work. You bring work home. That's the part. That's the struggles. Right. How do you, do you leave work at work? Yeah, get them, babe. She go right in. No, I mean, I love waking up and being able to roll over in bed and see her get behind the computer, work all day and see her take my lunch break and see her, you know? And then when I clock out, I'm seeing her. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why it's not worthwhile. I'm the same way, right hand too, yeah. I love to see my wife get to it. That's what he's saying. Yeah. All day, all day. But then sometimes, you know, I don't know if it's just a woman thing. Sometimes you want more time together without the work. Just let's leave the work alone. It's just bonding time. Let's talk about something other than work. You know what I mean? Let's have some conversation about us, you know? Because we are growing and as times we grow, we are taste changing stuff. Let's find out what you like, what you don't like. Hey, let's go here, let's go there, let's go dance. You know, let's go to our lounge, let's go hang out, let's go watch a movie, put the work down. Well, I tell you, for me, I had to learn that in our relationship because when I met her, I was already an entrepreneur and I was just all about work, work, work and trying to build. And so marrying her, I had to rewire everything because she was more about us bonding even while we were doing work. And for me, just learning that, learning that part to give her that space and give her that time. So I think for me it was just, I had to learn that. I had to learn to be able to give her time, you know, while we were working. Okay, but let's go back because, you know, we started talking about work and we gotta get into what work is. You know what I mean? We gotta get into how y'all met. We gotta get into where you were raised, all of the good stuff that happened to mold you into the people that you are today to be able to, because people don't realize how God put us through situations to mold you into being prepared for the person that you are to meet. Let's tell us how it was written. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So, let's start. Wow. Well, we actually met. No, let's go back to where you were raised. Oh, well, I'm from right here in Oak Cliff, Texas. Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas. Oak Cliff? Oak Cliff. Oak Cliff, business. And over there, over there off of Kiest and Westmoreland area, Hampton area, grew up right behind Kimball High School and went to Booker T Washington for the performing arts here. And when I met my wife, it was actually in church. I wasn't, I didn't, I wasn't raised in church actually. And because my dad was hurt by church really bad here. And so I knew about God. I knew, you know, I didn't understand the call in my life, I didn't understand none of that. And so when I was about a teenager, I started learning how to play the piano. But hold on, were you raised by your mom and your dad? Well, both parents, yeah. Both parents. Now, when people talk about Oak Cliff, they always make it sound like it's a bad area. It has its places, right? So were you in the bad, the rough? No, no, I didn't, I didn't. And that was, that was intentional because my dad, he had refused. He did not want us raised around that. My dad grew up poor. He grew up poor in South Carolina. And so when we moved to Dallas, when I was a couple of months old, you know, he had vowed that I didn't want my kids around that. I didn't want my kids around the drugs. I didn't want my kids around the violence and everything. How many children? Do they have? I'm the youngest of four. Of four. Are you an only boy? He's the oldest and I got two older sisters. Okay, so he had an even, two boys, two girls. Right, right, right. But see, and it's funny because I'm the only child of both of my parents. Everybody else is my half-brother and sisters. Oh, okay. And so, yeah, when he, when my dad came here, he had an angst against the church because of things that it was doing. You know, the parcel would try to hit on my mom and it was about money. And, you know, we were very meager. We didn't have a whole lot, especially, you know, with four kids. And so we didn't have the church clothes and the suits and everything. So we, you know, my dad used to get teased for that. And so he just really kind of just pushed church away. And he, we still love God and we still would pray and everything, but we just didn't go to church regularly because of his hurt with that. And so I didn't really start going to church myself until I was a teenager when I was learning how to play music and learning how to play piano. And I was always musically inclined. And so... Where did you get that from? It's funny because neither one of my parents played nothing, right? Like my dad loved music, but he, they couldn't sing, they couldn't play to do anything. And so... No grandparents, no aunties, no uncles? Not that I know of. Your mom is, I mean, your dad is an artist. Well, my dad is a visual artist, right? And so I get my creative side from my dad. But as far as music is concerned, I couldn't tell you, you know? I didn't, he didn't really know his, he never knew his father. And I never knew my dad's side of the family. So how, what was the type of person like you could say your dad was other than you said that he was not into the church. You said that he had to act, you know, with that. But like, how was he as a dad and with your mom? Pops was overall a great guy. He was a military man. So very strict and stern. I won't say very strict. Dad was a little bit more easier than I thought he could have been coming out of Vietnam, Vietnam dad. But he wasn't just heavy handed. No, he wasn't like that. Because you're the baby boy. And I was the baby. Maybe I was because I would see my sisters and brother, but they get towed up if they did something. I was a little bit more lenient on me. So my dad, but my dad had a problem with drinking. And when he didn't drink, he was the coolest cat in the world. But when he took alcohol, you know, he is like Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde, you know what I'm saying? So he would be a totally different person. That's why I meet today. I abstain from drinking, you know, alcohol, smoking anything because I saw how that transformed him into somebody that I didn't want to be. And that's so funny that you say that because a lot of people will say that as children and still turn out to be just like their dad. So what makes that different? Right. I think for me, it's all about choices. Because again, I saw the bad in him when I saw him drink. And I knew my dad was, when he laughed, it was like I knew the world was okay. My dad was laughing and jovial and just tripping out. I knew everything in the world was cool. And so that's how I love to see him. I wanted to see him that way. But when my dad was uptight, you know, jobs were hard to come by. He was very educated, very articulate, very smart man. But he experienced a lot of racism. You know, they weren't really helping veterans at that time, you know, financially, you know. So it was tough for him to keep good jobs here. So he had a lot of hate in him against certain things. And a lot of black people probably here in the United States do have that on them. Well, let me stop because she's Jamaican. So she don't remember about what's going on with racism. No, when I say that, We ain't gonna let her speculate on racism in America. Now we're not gonna do that. No, no, no. It's in all different forms and ways. When I say that, it's different percentages. Because some people might have some more hate because of the things that they've been through. And some people might have a little bit less because of the things that they've been through. Rotonda, you being an East Texas girl, you know about racism. I know a lot about it. Yeah, that's right. And to be quite honest with you, you know, everybody over here, we over here, we had to deal with circumstances that you may not have had to deal with, but it was a thing for us. And I definitely could understand where you was coming from when you talked about your father and it does become a deal. You know, where are you dealing with different things? You're trying to be a good father. In Oak Cliff, Texas for sure. And then was it like it is now in Oak Cliff? No, and it's funny because where we grew up, it was safe. I had never heard gunshots, ever. Now you said West Marlin, did you say Camp Wilson? No, I grew up near Keest in West Marlin, right behind Kemba High School. Oh, okay, okay, I get you. Because I had you up there by Camp Wilson. Right, right. Well, I had you by Rack Daddus. No, I wasn't there, but, you know, Oak Cliff grew to that. Like when I was younger, it was a melting pot of Latinos, Asians, Filipinos. I mean, white people, everything. Like I went to elementary school, it was just a mixture of everybody, you know. And so it grew to become more predominantly black. A lot of the whites, wealthier rights, whites were moving up north. Everything was being built up north. So what people don't know about Oak Cliff is that, you know, you had wealthy middle class white people that were in Oak Cliff back in the 60s and 70s, yeah. And then they started moving out, moving north. And so when we were there, I mean, it was still cool. But then you started seeing the decline, unfortunately. Yeah, and to this day, you still see it somewhat decline because a lot of, and I believe that has to do a lot with the city too because people can keep up what they want to. The money is pretty much stirred where they want to take it to. So that, I think that's a big issue. I think it's a real big issue because we don't have the right people in the right places to speak up for what needs to happen in the right communities. Absolutely. You see what I'm saying? And when you talk about racism, you know, my wife being from East Texas, I mean, I know it's just her talking about it. Oh man. It's, it dominates. We had a place called a Kielder Kozik kitchen with three K's. I told him about that. You see what I'm saying? And then didn't nobody go, I'd never seen nobody go in that of color. Right, right. We also had place, I have friends that got hung and nobody know how they got there and they said he committed suicide deep in the woods. Wow. You know, we had situations where things happened all the time where, you know, you knew that you could get credit at this store, but then you knew already to stay in your place. This is the thing that we came up around. You know what I mean? But I felt it was better. And I don't know if you agree with this, but there was a time when blacks stayed, were a black state, and they dealt with black on business owners. And I remember those days and I treasure those times. I mean, like the black barbershop, the black store owners, the black, and we stayed in our place. Kind of like what this shirt represents. You know, where the Oklahoma thing, where he talks about how, yeah, I mean, we had a time period where when I was a kid, I remember in Smifling where my dad was from, I remember that bubble lane store, and I remember the Mr. Luther, and I remember the different ones, the Skeetalang or CD Weaver, Wood Company. Absolutely. So I remember that time, and that time was a good time for me, because I felt like that was an entrepreneurship just in a different time and a different way to represent our people. And I think we needed that. And I think we needed that now, actually. We needed even more now. And it was funny is because me growing up in Oak Cliff, I didn't see that. Yeah, see, and that's, you know, we got a 13-year age difference. Like she's 13 years older than me. So I'm a millennial. She's Jen. Yeah, Jen, yeah, for sure. Yeah, one of them. And so what she saw and grew up around is totally different from what I, I didn't see black businesses. Right? We didn't see a lot of the family unit. We were seeing more broken homes start coming in in the early 90s and everything. And so I'm the crack generation, really. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it, I get it, yeah. And so we didn't see that. We didn't see a lot of businesses and people together and family units. It's like, for me, I was an anomaly, you know, to have both of my parents and my brothers and sisters all in the house. I mean, and it's funny because, you know, the visceral that I got from growing up in Oak Cliff, you know, it has this negative moniker that is the hood. You know, we got sounds about it. Right. That's my hood. Yeah. Little kid play. Kid play, sung it on play. Right. You know, and so it has this reputation of being the hood and being just, you know, load of bar, just the bottom. But it's not that, you know. And for me, though, it was tough because I was artistic. I was a creative. I was well-spoken. And that was, that was frowned upon, unfortunately. If I didn't come, you know, my hat turned backwards and, you know, talking fly, blah, blah, blah. It was like, oh, nigga, you gave something wrong with you or you don't, you don't, I didn't fit. So for me, it was awkward going up in Oak Cliff. And I'll be honest, early on in my life, I had angst against Oak Cliff or against where I was from because it didn't accept me. It didn't, it didn't accept the different in me. You know what I'm saying? And so I wasn't, I didn't have this bravado where I had to go off and show off being macho, being a man. I was just artsy. I was just, you know, I was just that cat. I was well-spoken. I was, you know, it was yes sir, no sir for me. And so how my parents even raised us. We got teased. We got talked about, you know, as if, oh, we trying to be something that we know. You know, you talk white. White. Yeah, you know, so I got that a lot. So when you get that a lot from where you from. But how did you deal with that peer pressure? Well, I had, I had a strong father. And so what I would do is I would come home and be able to tell my dad, pops, I'm going through this. You know, they don't understand me. Why, why people, and my dad, he was, he was an artist. He was articulate. So he would just instill in me, son, you just different. God just built you different. And your outlook on the world is different. And so people are not going to understand it. They're not going to understand where you're coming from. You know, just being artsy. It's like, I love to read books. Well, we as black people at that time, we couldn't read books. We would get beat if we read books. So I didn't understand why we were not accepting of the fact that, oh, I can read books. I'm articulate. I'm smart. I'm an A student. Why do we frown on that? But then we esteem the negativity of our culture. We esteem, yeah, nigga, what's up, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't understand. I didn't get that. And so I grew to kind of resent where I was from when I was younger. And so me and my wife, she, I actually prayed for my wife. I actually prayed in about 2003. I was dating this young lady in Hawaii. And she was Filipino, exotic looking young girl. I thought she was the one. She was beautiful and everything. And I had prayed though, about a year before I met my wife and I wrote down a four page letter of what I wanted in a wife. And I was explicit. Like, I was, I said, God, if I can't be 100 with you, who can I be 100 with? And so it was physical, emotional, mental, everything, sexual on that list. And I met her in 2004. And I didn't know she was gonna be my wife. Of course I didn't. And she was coming out of a tumultuous, you know, marriage. You know, she had a daughter already. So it wasn't ideal for me. But when I say God answered my letter to a T, I mean to a T, you know, we can keep it real. I mean, there's a certain kind of woman that I wanted as cup size. I'm like, Lord, you know that, hey, I like that, that voluptuousness, you know. And she came with that cup size. She came with that cup size. Beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah. Well, we'll return to what you, did you plan it? No, I didn't plan this at all. I get it, I get it, I get it. I wanna go back to something you said earlier about your dad and how he had issues with, per se, church. What, was he right? He was right from his perspective. He was right, but he wasn't right to denounce church. Okay, explain. And I think he wanted to hide the hurt that he got from it from us. He didn't want us to feel it, but he never dealt with it. Did he give you a reason why? Well, you know, there were stories where the pastor would try to hit on my mom. You know, they would kind of try to fleece the families there because we were a family, we're a bigger family than most people there. They would try to fleece the families for money and different things like that. And so just made them feel pressured. It made them feel bad if he couldn't give more money or if he couldn't do, you know, XYZ. And so- And this was on multiple occasions, I'm promise. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, because it's easy to get caught up in religion when you're dealing with- Americanized standards when it comes to Christianity. Yeah, yeah. And I think back then, nobody was talking about the realness of Christianity like they need to now. And they're starting to get there now. It's still kind of watered down in some areas, but they sure weren't talking about it in the early 80s, mid-80s. And so that made my day. That was the humming time. Right. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the thing about it, a lot of things back then would be swept under the rug. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And so our generation, when we walk in, and minding our business, we end up tripping over that hump in the rug. Yeah. And don't know where it came from. I like the fact that your dad recognized when somebody was trying to run game on him. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? That's all it is, bro. I mean, he's an OG, so there you go a time. I mean, when you come from the streets and you see the activity, you recognize it. And no matter where you put it at, it can be pimping in the church. I'm gonna be honest with you. Right, right. And that's what it was. And you have to understand that seeing and seeing, no matter where it's at, no matter how you fancy it up. And that was the thing. It was like, at that time, excuse me a minute, at that time, they could call out our sins. Yeah. But you couldn't call out the past to see it. Yeah, he said, touch not the mind. No, I know it didn't. I knew my profits in the home. Oh, yeah. And like, I'm not anointed. Exactly. Now you get it. But I think a lot of times, in the early times that we were dealing with then, I think it was a lot of ignorance. I think it was not knowing that made some of those things happen. Education is something else. That's why I said the humming part, because a lot of the humming excludes the knowledge. Y'all don't, y'all don't really know. You don't have to think about it. You just sound good. It's a good sound. And you hear it at the right time and you respond to it. And we're definitely eloquent when it comes to sound. You know, black people or something else, they can make sounds that nobody else can make, you know what I mean? So I really think that, I think your dad got it right. I mean, just from the outside looking in, I'll say that a lot of times. Your dad, because my children, they never been a member of any church in their life. They are the church. The word come from the Greek word eclesis, it means to simply be called out from among them. I'm gonna be real with you. We don't forsake not the assembling and do a symbol, but I just don't put a structure on it like everybody else try to do. When I say that structure, meaning it gotta be led by the spirit. You understand where I'm coming from? I'll go anywhere with you long as you know that God got to be in the car. We gotta have the word. I can't play with it, not with my kids. I like what Joshua said when he said fast for me and my house. We gonna serve the Lord. Forget about what they're doing on the outside of flooding them people. And I'm just paraphrasing and forget about the Amorites and New Zealand dwell, but that's for me and my house. Yeah, I know what we gonna do, us right here. Been doing it for almost 20 years. You know what I'm saying? But at the end of the day, I just feel like a lot of times we try to fancy it up in a way to where we make it religious instead of spirituality. That's what happens. But like for me growing up in the church, I always knew, yes, I grew up knowing that that was a church over there. So now that my eyes have been open to certain things, I'm looking at that building over there and saying, you know, that's the building because it's only a church so-called when all of us go in there and that's when it's a church. But then people will be walking by and be like, oh, there's the church over there. I'm like, no, there's a difference. I used to turn my music down. And I'm gonna be honest with you, the word church is taking out a concept when you do it that way as well. And you can confuse people if you don't use it correctly. Because there is a difference and we gotta make known, you know, what really is going on. And I'm not trying to tell nobody not to go on worship. You worship, however you feel the worship, you gotta get to God. I don't tell you don't go here and don't go there and they don't do stuff for the community because you do have good people out here who represent God in the right way. But let's articulate it in the right manner so we don't confuse the young. I think people have, and you were talking about coming from the hum generation. I grew up in church as well. And my dad was a deacon, mom deacon as, you know, we Baptist and all of that. And as I got older and especially, you know, now of being with my husband, we learned, yeah, the church is a building, but we are the church. Like you said, we are the church. And a lot of times I think we misunderstood that we were so into, oh, okay, this is the pastor or this is the first lady or this is the deacon of the church. You have to understand that people came from the world into the church. So everybody, it wasn't about God. They saw something that they could do that would be something that was quote unquote a hustle. Everybody's not, the Bible says that you know the fruit that it bear by the right. When you see the fruit, that's where you judge. That's where you look. You don't look, you don't look at our appearance. You don't look at that, but you look at the fruit of what that person is doing. I don't care if it's a pastor, I don't care if it's a prophet, I don't care if they call themselves that because like you said, what we walk in is real. We don't play with this thing. We didn't ask to be prophets. We didn't ask to be what we are in what God has called us to be. So when people play with this, they play with this because they don't understand. And they weren't called to do it. God, he calls you just like you were talking about Joshua and you talk, and all the other ones, Peter and Paul, all of these, they were called to be what they are. And you have to be called into this. And if you're not, and if you're playing with this, this is not the time. This is not the time to play with God. When you think about the spirit of... Go ahead. When you think about the spirit of error and the spirit of truth, you have, and I'm definitely gonna let you speak, when you think about the spirit of error and the spirit of truth, so many people have been taught under the spirit of error. Absolutely. And so you can't even... You look at them and you feel sorry for them because they was taught a certain way and it may have been the wrong way and they so stern about it. The Romans chapter 10 said that people have a zeal for God but not according to their knowledge. You see what I'm saying? And people do have a zeal where they may be doing it and they was taught in the spirit of error, man. And I think that confuses a lot of times. And for leaders who I believe know the truth, a lot of them, not all of them, but a lot of them know. But they use it for what they wanna, so they can benefit from it. And I think that a lot of times clouds, I know it clouds the word, it clouds truth. And you gotta be careful. But what I was gonna say is also that we as a people are lazy in a lot of different ways. We don't like to go search for ourselves for the truth. We don't want to go pick up a book to read because the Bible is there and a lot of times, yes, as a child I open it and look and I'm like, well, I don't understand this. I get this part but I don't get that. So a lot of times we look for somebody to teach us to lead us. Now you have YouTube, you have videos. Let me tell you, when I read, I read get what I gotta get and then I look up sermons, I look up teachings and I try to get bits and pieces because I'm not gonna say I'm gonna listen to everything this person is saying, but I pick out bits and pieces from what they're saying. I'm like, oh, okay, well, I can, okay, I get that. Just a touch on that and it's, my wife was raised in a church, I wasn't. Like me, huh? Right, and so for me, but you know what? When I tell people this, some people might take offense to it but I thank God that I didn't and I'm gonna tell you why I say that because for me, my love for God was genuine. It wasn't contrived, I wasn't. How can I be forced to love? He says that all the time. Yeah, how can I be forced to love a God and I don't understand him? And so for me, I was, I'll say it this way. I got into all my mess. I did everything that young people do, girls, sex, while and now I did all that. And I thank God that he kept his hand on me because I see some cats who did that and they came up with STDs, all kinds of things. It messed up their lives. For me though, I thank God that I was able to experience that because now my witness is more realistic. And that's the problem with a lot of us sometimes in the churches that our testimony isn't real because we don't wanna put out there that we were flawed. We don't wanna be transparent. And so we're losing the generation because we don't want to say, well, yo, young blood, I did that too. I've done that. And here's the solution that I found from it. So we don't make Jesus relatable. And that's in everybody, because today, this generation, we want to see results right away. You know what I mean? But yes, people have been more transparent than how they used to be because people used to be, everything used to be shut up. They would never talk about it. Now because of social media, you see a lot of people talking about their demons, things that they've been through. So I'm seeing that a lot more. It's not there yet. You're not seeing a lot in the church as much but you see people talking about it. And it is coming up. It's just not everybody. Right. I mean, and you see it even, with women going through what they're going through with sexual abuse, the Me Too movement. And so now people, like you said, are starting to get more comfortable with conveying, hey, I've been hurt. I've dealt with church hurt. I've dealt with molestation. Mental health. Mental health, right? And so we haven't even, we're just scratching the surface on those things. Exactly. Especially in the church. It's not so funny because the Bible talks about we are to confess our sins to one another. Well that's counseling. We don't see it like that. But that's actually. Oh, we do. Yeah, that's counseling. You dig what I'm saying? I definitely see it that way. And I tell you, I had them two counselors on here. Y'all gotta watch that. Cause I go in about the fact of how can you counsel me if you're not connected to God? I mean, you know, I'm not, I don't want to hear from you to be honest with you. The word of God has to line up with what you counsel me with. And if you don't then I'm not dealing with that. And people don't live. They don't live by the word. About the doctor that if he ain't saved, why would I have him operating on me? Right, you have to ask that question whenever you go to professionals, so to say, do you believe in Christ? You know what I mean? If I'm putting my life in your hands, do you believe in him? And then by knowing the word, you know how to handle certain things. You know, just like if I have something against you and I come to you, I'm not gonna go to social media and say what I have a problem with you about. I'm gonna come to you and say it. And if I can't get through to you, I'm supposed to go find somebody else who I can talk to and say, hey, let's go to this person. And then even then, let's find somebody else. That's the book. That's in the book. Exactly. But people don't know that. And that's why I'm saying knowledge is power. And if they just pick up the book and read, they'll know how to handle a lot of different things in life. But let me just say, picking up the book and read is not gonna be enough. It's not gonna be enough. They like to let some things go. You know, you got to pretty much, you got to let some things go to make room in your life to grow. You can't, I mean, so many people, that's why they can't understand it too. Because they'll say, oh, I can't get it, or I don't understand it. It's because you are holding on to all this other stuff. Until you let those things go, then you're not gonna grow. And I believe that. And also God could have hardened that person's heart where it wasn't time for them to get that yet. A lot of times I look at that in life because just like how Pharaoh's heart was hardened, he could have always, Moses could have went in there and okay, I'll let them go and that's it. But it's a reason for everything. There's a message. It's not our job to know what that message is. But you're touching somebody and I always say there's a reason for everything. Your life is not your own. So true. It's for somebody else. Absolutely. And you might not even know that person. That person could be watching your life and you don't know who you're touching. We always, I mean, we know that's to be so true because our lives, so many people tell us that. And we know this. We ask God to use us. We ask him. We know that we have a call on our lives. We know that God is using us. And we know that people, they look at our marriage. They look at us like we were talking about before the show about working together as husband and wife. They look at that. They look at our businesses. They look at, oh God, you guys are traveling around the world. You guys are together 24 hours, seven days a week. But we want to be. And we are, I believe that we are what God called us to be so that people can see that marriage does work. Hey man, it's nothing new under the sun. Priscilla and Aquila did it. Priscilla and Aquila. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were temp makers and temp makers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Paul will come around and he'll be like, man. So let's stop playing, man. We know already it is written. Right. Let's just enjoy it. See what I'm saying? Because at the end of the day, what we're doing, we're trying to live by God's word for real. Right. Not to just be a scene of men. We're doing this for God. And we need to understand though, we are that open book for a lot of people that will never pick it up. That's right. They'll never pick it up. They'll never watch a YouTube video, but they're watching you. That's exactly right. And so one thing I'm always aware, see the thing about my wife and I that Christians need to definitely get ahold of is that we actually fear God. You dig? Am I talking about being scared of him? The time I revered him. I'm talking about revering him and to respect him and fear him. Why? Because I had a physical father, right? I knew when I could laugh and joke around and play with my dad like that. But I knew when to reverence him. I knew when it was father's son time. And we need to have that same relationship with God. Yeah, you can be friends with him. I talk, I chop it up with God all the time. But I know that moment. I know that time when I need to go to him in reverence and in honor and respect as my heavenly father. And when you do that, you have that healthy reverence and fear for God, you won't play with him. I knew not to play with my earthly father. How much more am I gonna know not to play with God? God can take me out in an instant. He can take the lungs, the air out of my lungs in a second. So that's what people need to understand now is don't play with God. You're not guaranteed. Look at what's going on with COVID. People who were literally here last year or a couple of months ago are not here today because of thousands of people gone of a hidden virus that we don't even know where. It comes from what it looks like. We can't see it and when it's leaving. That's the hand of God keeping you here. Why would you play with that? Why would you play with him? And so we need to get to a point to where we reverence God completely. And see, we're at a point, now God is not playing with us. You either in or you're out. But he says that you need the hot, no cold. Right. And you look warm, I'll spit you out. Yeah, I think that's Revelation 3.16. So the thing you gotta understand, man, is I understand where you're coming from. I love the passion that you're speaking with and I definitely know that God is in the midst. You know what I mean? That's so important that we get the message out there. You know what I'm saying? In a way to where we can appeal to the youth, that's the most important part, right? That's the most important part. Because, hey, we've done, hey, we fought a good fight. You understand what I'm saying? Right, right, right. We still fight. That's right. Yeah. But the thing is, we fought a good fight and we're getting older. Right, absolutely. The only way we keep this thing going for generations to come is by making sure that we understand how to appeal to our youth. I'm being real. I mean, to the kids, I'm being real. And teach them how to find this for themselves. And at the end of the day, we're not gonna always be here. But the part you said a while ago is the living it part in front of it. That part is important. If you can show them by your walk, by your chess conversations, by the way you show love toward others. That's how they'll see it. You think about the apostle Paul who was this murderer, this executioner of Christians, right? And you had the disciples, some of the disciples were even scared to be around him. Peter and them were scared to be around him because of his reputation of who he used to be. But it took a period of time for them to understand his transformation. That God, that Jesus did indeed call him on the road to Damascus and they said, it took time for them to see this transformation in his life. And that's what people need to understand. And that's what they need to know that young people are looking at your consistency. Are you that same cat all the time? Are you just that on that Sunday morning sitting in the pew? And for me and my wife, that's a responsibility. It's more than just a call. It's a responsibility to know people are looking and I can't let God down. It's not about putting up the show. It's about, I can't let God down because if I let him down and they see a crack in the wall with us, then that vulnerability that we let the enemy come in, then that could lose that person. That could lose that young couple that's looking to us for hope. And so even in business, we have to be of integrity. From how we do our business, how we conduct business, everything has to be integral. Why? Because we do this for him. I look at what you're doing and how you're doing it as a family unit, as a husband and wife with your children around. You're setting that example for them. How does a man treat his wife while on the job, while doing what they're doing together? Your daughter is looking at that. Yeah, dope. You know what I'm saying? 20 years from now, when she, when you walking her down the aisle, 15 years from now, when you walking her down the aisle, she's looking at the example of her father and then how her mother was able to receive that. You're that Bible for her. You're teaching her marriage. She's being taught King to marriage before she ever cracks open the Bible and reads about it. That's why it's so vital with my wife and I. And we take it seriously because I don't want to get before God and like, okay, somebody else's blood on my hands because I dropped the ball or my wife dropped the ball. And then there are two, my parents been married 58 years. And that doesn't mean everything was great. My parents in the late 80s and 90s now, we thank God for that. But dad, coming from that time when we were talking about the racism and Jim Crow and all of that, had a lot of anger. Had a lot of pent up anger and frustration and he would get off work. And when we, I grew up with cattle form. And people look at me today and like, are you serious? Are you sure? Yeah, of course. They used to call us the Bonanza of Lyndon, Texas. You guys had all them cattle, but my daddy would do a 10 hour job, come home. And if we didn't have activities after school, you better be ready cause we're going to go feed the cows. Yeah, make sure those cows are fed, make sure that we got hay. We're getting up on Saturday morning, it's getting hay and all that. So I grew up from that. But then dad would be a little, any little thing sometime would upset him. What's wrong? Well, I had to understand where he'd come from. And the generation he came from and I'm watching them how they interacted with one another. It'd be argument sometimes. And it'd be uncomfortable at times. And my husband and I talk about this all the time with our family and our parents. We did not want what our parents had. We wanted to do better than that. We have wonderful parents. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying anything against them. But we saw some things that they could have done better, you know, the communication. I am so much about marriages. And he said that to you earlier, I am about marriages because you growing up, we saw a form of it. Yeah, you know what you're saying is so true, but you gotta realize also when, even when you do what you're doing and you feel like it's the best, your kids are gonna say the same thing about you. And you do strive to make your children better than you. And your parents wanted to see you have more and do better than them. And they tell you that. And they probably try to do better than their parents for you. Right, right. So look at what their parents had to come from. Yes, of course. So it even gets deeper, you know. And I cringe at the fact of a lot of times we are hard on our parents and what they done to us. That's something we get caught up in. But it's something that we really gotta be careful with because where they came from and what they experienced was something else, man. And as you keep going back. Right. You know what you run into? Right. It's gonna get worse and worse. Every generation going back that way from what our people experienced. And that's why I said I don't wanna go back there because again, we have wonderful parents, you know. And you said about the generation, you know, we have a 28 year old. And she watches everything we do. Of course. From business to how we interact. You know, she came in, you know, when he came into our lives, my daughter was eight and a half years old. So she watches everything and she listens to everything. So you're right. We are definitely being watched. And we're the example for them. And we take it as a blessing to be. It is a blessing. But okay. What I wanna ask you is, you said you're all about marriage. You're all about communication and so forth. How important it is it to have a spouse that is in Christ? Is what, or should I say, what should our viewers look for? Because I know that you were previously married and that didn't work out. Right. So what is it about this marriage that that one, you weren't able to do the same? It was waiting. One thing I have to say to us as women, we do not do is learn of who we are. We don't take the time to do that. We were looking for somebody to validate us. We're looking for somebody to complete us. And what we don't do is take the time to learn who we are, what we like, what we don't like, you know, and being true to who we really are. When Lander came into my life, I wasn't looking for a husband at the time. It was devastating for my daughter to go through the separation and then divorce that me and my previous husband went through. And so I took the time for me to learn about me, to heal and to help her through the whole process. I told him I'm not ready to get married. I wanted to get her through school all the way through high school. And so, and at the time, we were 13 years apart in marriage. So he wasn't ready for that. But what I want to say is, you have to know who you are. Nobody completes you, but God. And when you look for what God has for you or when you wait, then he sends you what, I prayed for him. And he prayed for you. And he prayed for me. And after my first marriage was over, it was devastating. But I had to labor and everybody don't do this. And I'm not saying that everybody does this, but I prayed, I labored in that. I stayed with God. I said, I'll wait until I'm ready and you're ready for me. And once I waited, he came out of nowhere. I mean, walking in the church hair long, lower than mine. And he got a lot of hair. And born in the wind, and I'm looking like, who is that? And I didn't think this was going to be my husband, but this was my husband. Well, do you, I mean, you said something about, you know, you didn't look or you didn't, or you didn't, you weren't looking for a husband. But even the first time, was you looking for a husband on the first time? Well, no, I wasn't, but I was younger. I was like 20, 21 years old, 22 years old. And I told my daughter that she was gonna say that, she just went, she's going through a divorce right now. That's what they say. That's the thing. So it lasted 10 years? It lasted 10 years on paper. On paper. On paper. Okay. Yeah, when my daughter was a baby, my husband and I separated. Okay. And we got back together and we separated, we got back together. We finally stopped after we lost a baby. Two babies actually, I was six months pregnant and I had ectopic pregnancy. And then the other one, I ended up birthing. I went through that, you know, almost died. Almost died. How did all of that affect you mentally? Oh my gosh. I thought I wasn't going to make it. I was so depressed. I was so down. I, it was so hard. But you know, with my daughter, I had to push through looking at her and me and her even today, we're very, very close. And she helped me get through it. I mean, she was there when I got sick. You know, and we were coming home from East Texas. And she was, you know, I was on the floor in the bathroom. And at the time, my husband wasn't even at the house. He was somewhere gone, out in the street somewhere. And she's the one to call the ambulance. And if she hadn't to call the ambulance in the time that she did, I wouldn't be here. The doctors told me, they said you had not even a 10% chance of living. And how did that affect her seeing that? Because it's still the small situations that we go through in life like that, as much as, you know, the person was strong during that time. You don't realize how much they put it to the back of their mind and it affects them. That's why some people end up in certain relationships. They react a certain way to certain things. And you're like, why are you like that? But you don't realize it stemmed way back from when that happened. It does, it still affects her. And that's why she watches us a lot. Because she wants to see the real, now she has a relationship with her dad. But she wants to see that real, real relationship, that real marriage because she wants to be married one day. But she's gone back and forth with that because of what she saw with me and my first husband, her and her father. So it did affect her. It affected us tremendously. But again, I waited to get through that because I vowed to God, I don't want to bring what happened in this marriage to the next one and the final one. That's what I was like, God, this is, if you give me another opportunity, this is it. And when I waited, here he is, patience is everything.