âTMª I'll end in AJ's podcast for your Monday âTMª
âTMª Most wonderful show is âTMª
âTMª Keeping up with the Joneses âTMª
- Mr. Jones.
- Mr. Jones.
- Can we talk about your attire for today?
- We can't.
- Let's describe.
For those of us.
- But most people are not gonna see me.
- You're right.
- I know, but I'm sad that they're missing out
on your glorious splendor.
Can you describe the outfit that you're wearing?
- I'm wearing a fuzzy house coat bathrobe thing.
- Yes, you are.
Can we talk about this particular fashion choice?
- Well, here's, okay, so a number of,
I made it a powerful decision.
That it's my day off today.
I have a day off and I didn't want to spend an hour
doing my hair and getting ready.
- Yeah.
- And I want to be warm down here and comfortable
and still feel like it's kind of my day off.
So--
- You're rocking a house robe.
So I'm rocking a house robe and a fluffy ponytail
that I've done nothing to fix.
And I put on a little bit of makeup
but didn't even really do as much with that
because last week I just cried it all off anyway.

- Thanks.

Can you let me into this?
- And I was like, the plan is,
- I love it, darling.
You fit this in our lifestyle.
Episode 238, tell me about your week.
What week is the catch up?
What have we got to catch up on?
- Well, we're in the last couple of weeks
of the kids being in school.
So I feel like every day is a,
make sure this gets returned
we're going to find you $100 and every day is more invitations to end of the year.

So it's like not only we're doing the end of the year class party, but we're
doing one at Pinkerton Park.
Not only are we doing, you know, so there's choir parties and class parties and
trips to the zoo and, you know, all kinds of stuff.
So I'm so glad you handle that.
I don't have headspace for it.
Well, in fairness, Sonia goes through all of it, handles it,
asking what we want to go to and then puts it in the calendar.
I love what she asks you because if she asks me,
I'd be like, don't care, don't care.
Don't care.
Well, she knows that.
You would just say, no, no, no, no, no.
Yeah, we worked right.
So yeah, we have all of that going on.
And then also heading into summer, we're like, we just don't.
We want the summer to feel different.
Well, last summer was horrible.
Yeah.
So this summer, we're now like, OK, we know a little bit more
about what you can and can't do.
And so we booked two thirds of our children on a summer camp.
Yep.
Just the two we like.
The third one we're just like, this is how--
We just don't like her.
No, just kidding.
She's too old.
She's not able to go.
My favorite thing about having--
not my favorite thing about having kids.
One of my favorite things about our kids
is that I've always told each of my kids they're my favorite.
Like I've always told them.
So but their response has always been, I know.
So even though they're running joke,
is, well, you're my favorite and you're my favorite
and you're my favorite, which--
Or you're my favorite brown eyed girl
and you're my favorite white girl.
And you're my favorite.
- Yeah.
- I just tell them that, like you're my favorite.
And I love that all three of them
have come to their own conclusion like, yeah, I know.
- Yeah, I'm confident.
I'm the one.
- So we've got that.
I was impressed.

- I'm so excited about this.
I'm still, I haven't signed them up yet.
I'm still waiting to hear back on two different things
because we signed them up for a camp.
I'm sorry, I still can't go over here in that house.
-Okay. -Who, is it Fossey Bear from the Muppets?
-It is. -It looks like you've skinned him
and are wearing him. -It does.
It's okay. -It's what it looks like.
-I like it. It's what it looks like. -Okay.
-But I'm warm. -It's the Silence of the Lambs Muppet Edition.
-Oh, my gosh. -You are warm.
You are comfortable. -Uh-huh.
So, anyway, we signed the kids up for camp,
and I'm waiting to hear back what if they have to miss one meet one week
because of swim team or whatever.
But yes, we have a swim team in our neighborhood.
How much of this, and this isn't wrong, by the way,
but how much of this is you living vicariously through your children
to reclaim the glory years of your summer spent at swim meets?
Well, I swim for a competition team and we competed in the fall,
so it's not, not just kidding.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah, you got me on a technicality there.
What was I thinking?
There were not summer swim meets.
I think some of it is, my dad's swam, I swam.
You know, just they don't love swimming.
They're all like, yeah.
Yeah.
And they love swimming and they don't participate in any other sports.
That's my contribution.
That probably is.
But no, probably definitely is.
So I was like, I would love them to be doing something that contributes
towards fitness and they love swimming.
And I'd like to see them get better.
Yeah.
I was shocked when you pitched it last night.
I thought you were going to have a hard sale.
So did I.
And they were all like, yeah, go for it.
But yeah.
But they were all like yeah super excited about it. Yeah, sounds like okay easy easy win easy win
So but that also means I get to volunteer and help with the swim team. I'm glad I got that recorded
Yeah, you get to volunteer and help I didn't think you would you know
What if they needed somebody to get in there and actually swim I?
Can swim I can't float and so I think like that's a competitive disadvantage
Like you can flow so like most of your swimming like nature does a lot of it for you
I'm just not naturally buoyant, so I sink, so I have to work twice as hard.
-Is that how that works? -No, it's not.

-It's true. -That's nice.
It's pretty. It's pretty.
It's interesting.
Can I make an unqualified, really probably unkind observation?
-Please. -Who wouldn't want to hear what comes next?
In my experience, not as many people from the UK are swimmers,
or have done extensive swimming as people from North America.
Is that possible?
I don't know.
Maybe you should do some research on Instagram, another poll.
Another poll, a survey.
Although--
How are you going to ask it?

Are you from the UK?

[LAUGHTER]
Oh, yeah, good point.
I think it's just I've seen several people that I love
and are acquainted with.
You've got lots of emails from our friends in the UK.
You look like they're gracefully drowning, that's for me.
So I just wanted to know, is it not like a thing?
Like, how would I possibly know?
Oh, okay.
You lived there, did you?
I didn't serve me, everybody.
I don't like swim teams as part of high school and stuff like that.
I actually, I tried out for our high school swim team.
Okay.
You did big it.
(laughing)
My friend, when I was in high school, Robbie,
he was part of the swim team
and he'd get up at 4 a.m. every morning and go
and he was a great swimmer
and still of course they wanted a swim team.
But he and I were good friends.
So he was like, do you wanna join the swim team?
And I was like, well, I wanna do something with my friend,
Robbie.
So he was like, well, just try out for lunch,
one lunch time.
So I went and swam and the coach was like, yeah.
I don't think this is for you.
I was like, okay, great.
But you know what, you have the build of a swimmer.
You have like the wide shoulders and the narrow head.
- Oh, like where this is going.
Yeah, my narrow hips.
Let's talk more about that one.
(laughing)
- I'm confident we could work on this
and make you into a swimmer.
Do you want to give it a shot?
Or do you want to stick with your video game?
- I think, yeah.
I think God's given me the gift of,
who wanted to swim, he would give me fins.
And he didn't, so he wants me to be good at video games.
- But you do have what I tell us.
So I'm really, really good at video games.
So there's that.
Speaking of video games, I have a new video game.
- You do?
- Yeah, I took a chance.
It wasn't a chance, it was $20.
It was on sale.
The game is called Hob, H-O-B.
And I've finished Zelda and I'm,
they can't bring out the sequel to Zelda fast enough for me.
And so I was just Googling like what's a good gameplay
and so they recommended this game.
In one sense, it's like Zelda in the,
Zelda Breath of the Wild and that you get no,
You just wake up and you're doing something and you don't know who you are, why you're there, or what the point of the game is.
And you just, the whole focus of the game is exploration and discovery, which I love.
There's lots of puzzles, which I also love, but it doesn't have that same open world aspect like in
And the graphics are nowhere near as good.
Well, I mean, they're completely different, distinctive style.
I think they're really good and they're really pretty.
And anyway, I've really enjoyed it.
I'm working on 100% and it took me about a week to finish it.
And it's taking me a lot longer to thoroughly 100% complete it.
But I think the reason I like Breath of the Wild was whenever you
met up against the limitation, it wasn't.
It wasn't because they were trying to trick you is because you
hadn't have an upgrade yet or you didn't have enough stamina.
Whereas this game, there's like built in things you can't do, but
it's not clear why you can't do it.
Is it just I should try harder or do I need to come back later when I
have a power up that I don't yet know.
So I've spent lots of time being frustrated thinking,
surely there must be a way and then realizing, no, there wasn't.
Do you get to make food or ride horses?
Cause those are my two favorite things from Zelda.
No horses.
You do get to ride kind of like a, a cephalopod.
But make food.
You make food in your life.
Like why would that be appealing virtually?
I don't know. I just, I love that.
Like one of my favorite parts of the game is making all the different foods and,
and then riding horses.
Which I like those things in real life.
So maybe that's why, you know?
No, we don't.
Okay. I don't want to play your game.
Okay.
I actually downloaded a new game on my phone called two dots.
I go on and it's about connecting dots.
It's pretty exciting stuff right there.
But I'm now at like level 140 and I can't get past it.
Based on our conversation from last week's episode.
Is this like a de-stressor or is this a hiding?
Well, it was a de-stressor, but now it is a stressor
because I can't beat the levels that I'm on.
And what they're trying to do is upsell you into like,
buy coins to get these kind of, you know,
whatever bombs or upgrades to help you get past the,
and I feel--
- I don't know why you don't go straight
to the Apple Arcade section of the games, the App Store.
- Did I play on my phone?
- Uh huh.
And the Apple Arcade is a curated area for your phone
to download games that have none of those things.
- Oh, I thought it was on the Apple TV.
- No, well it works on Apple TV and on your iPad,
on your Mac and on your phone.
But if you go there, all the games are carefully curated.
There's no upsells, there's no scammy ads,
and there's some great stuff in there.
I would encourage you to go explore that.
- Well, maybe I will.
'Cause I have my puzzle game,
my one where you organize the colors into tubes,
and then this new one that I can't get past,
so now I'm just not playing anymore.
- We'll put links to both of those highly descriptive games
in the show notes as the color
and tubes one and the two dots one.
And so if you want to join in your position.
The puzzle one is the one I keep handing you if I can't get the color and tubes one, isn't it?
No, color and tubes. Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Color and tubes is like the most easiest, most basic.

Yeah, they have to have bright colors and yeah.
Our topic for this week is an interesting one.
Do you want to set up or do you want me to set up?
You can set it up.
We're going to talk about COVID.
I don't know at this point, everyone's got to groan because everyone's talked about COVID.
We were probably all fed up with COVID, but my heart, our heart in talking about COVID
is not that we're going to give you our opinion on COVID or what everybody should be doing.
Rather, I made the, I'm going to say, it was controversial for us.
I made a decision to go get vaccinated.
As I record this, I am fully vaccinated.
I've had two of my shots separated by 21 days.
I'm past the two weeks of my second shot.
So I am officially fully vaccinated, which in and of itself is not that alarming.
We're in a global pandemic.
You know, billions of people have been, well, I think one and a half billion people have
been vaccinated thus far.
So it's not that radical, but it is radical when you consider that historically our viewpoint,
our lifestyle, our response to vaccines has not been one where it would be apparent that
the most logical state would be for me to.
Right. Because we haven't been vaccinating.
None of our kids have been vaccinated.
Well, Abby was partially vaccinated.
We haven't been vaccinated in years.
So typically we've been resistant to vaccination.
And so like you were surprised when I was like,
Hey babe, I'd like to get vaccinated.
Yeah.
And so I wanted to talk, I wanted to talk about that side of things.
So this is not like, and to this day,
AJ is not vaccinated, does not want to get vaccinated.
I am and did want to.
I thought it would be fun for us to talk about how did I arrive here?
What did that feel like?
And also, like, how do we, as a married couple, make decisions
when we disagree about things?
Right.
So there's a lot in here.
But this isn't going to be, hey, you know what you want to do.
You know what you should do.
This is what you should do.
Everybody who doesn't do--
that's not one of those things at all.
OK.
Good.
Good.
Good.
All right, strap yourself in.
This could be a long meandering story.
Okay.
Yay.
Yay for long meandering stories.
The other reason I thought I wanted to talk about this is one of the important things that leaders do for their community.
And I think it's a really important gift that leaders give their communities.
They make their thinking visible.
And so part of the distress I've watched people go through in the last year, people who've come to me privately or people who've emailed us on the podcast
where they're encountering leaders that they know and they trust and the leaders are doing or
saying something that seems contrary to who they know them to be or who they thought they were.
And it throws people into distress like, "But I thought you were this and now you're behaving in
this where you're doing this." And I think part of the gift of leadership, part of the responsibility
of being in leadership is making your thinking visible, especially when you're attempting to
bring clarity out of confusion. So this, everyone has an opinion. If you look to the title of this
podcast and thought I'm going to skip this. I don't blame you. Like we are fatigued from listening
to people's opinions on certain topics. And this is a volatile one. Like,
actually forget COVID vaccinations in general talking about it.
Then through in COVID. Yeah. People are, you know, I've got opinions about whether you need to,
whether it's even real blah, blah, blah. We're not even going to attempt to address those things
because here's why. If you disagree with us, there's probably no way that we can ever convince you.
And also it's not my job to convince you of anything. Right. Set the goodness of God.
It is, it's just my heart to feel less lonely and perhaps communicate the why behind the what.
So if you're, you know, wherever you are on the spectrum, you're probably going to find some
value in AJ's view and in my view. But I wanted to, as a leader, draw out the connecting dots that
made, you know, that made me, not made me, what were the dots behind arriving at the conclusion
that you're going to vaccinate yourself. When historically you've chosen not to.
Yes. So that's what you're going to start with.
That's where I'm going to start. Where are your dots?
Well, there's three big dots. This is the story in three parts because as I reflected upon how I
got here, I realized there was three significant shifts in my thinking that helped me arrive here.
And then as a classic content player, I went away and did all this thinking on my own.
And then one day came to you and was like, "Hey, I'm thinking of getting vaccinated."
After like, you know, months of thinking and thought.
We both do that though. Typically that's, I mean, we both do the, we think internally,
we're neither one of us necessarily external.
I'm not an external.
You are an external processor, for sure.
But I think sometimes things that are like a little bit closer, we're like, well, certainly,
I do maybe more than you, but we'll process for a number of months internally, really
make sure I know what I think and then present.
Which can take both of us by surprise.
Yes.
When you're like, I think we need to move out.
So I'm like, what, where'd this come from?
And you know, right enough, it's been something the Lord's been speaking to you about for
three months.
We're not moving house.
I mean, that's a previous story.
Right.
I mean, but that is, that is typical is, you know, there's thought and then there's prayer
and there's waiting to hear back from the Lord.
Even last week's episode.
A lot of what I was hearing was I was hearing it for the first time. Yeah, I was aware of a lot of
you were saying but in terms of your internal thought process, I was like, this is great, this is
new. I haven't heard this.  Yes. So that is not out of the odds
for us. Yeah. All right. First of all, this isn't even step one, two or three. You know,
I've talked about three shifts. This is preamble. Okay. So to give you an understanding of why
it was perhaps a radical decision, not a radical decision, because like I said, millions of people
have been vaccinated. But for us was a number of years ago, age and I applied to become
permanent residents of the United States, a dream I've held in my heart for years and you too.
We've been in the United States for maybe five, six years at this point.
Yeah.
We're now, we've gone to the length of, you know, hiring an immigration attorney.
We have filled out all the forms.
We've been approved.
There's one sticking point we've gone for interviews.
One sticking point is in order to be granted permanent residency, you need to make sure
your vaccination is protected.
Well, they call it green cards here.
Your green card, yeah.
Yeah.
They also call it permanent residency.
Oh, I thought that was Canadian thing.
That's a permanent resident card.
Okay.
Yeah.
Same thing.
And so, yeah, we ticked all the boxes.
The only outstanding issue was bringing your vaccinations up today.
Right.
We hadn't vaccinated our kids.
You and I were vaccinated as kids for some of the vaccines, but...
Nowhere near the amount that would be now.
It was required.
And we had no documentation.
Even though we tried.
Right.
My mom, I think, sent me the original vaccination card,
but all the ink had faded, so it just looked like an empty book.
Right.
And there's nothing for our ages on the internet.
So we would need to...
All of us.
We would need to be re...
200 and something vaccines or something.
I don't think it was that many.
- It was insane.
- It was a lot.
And so we didn't want to do that for a variety of reasons.
And so to show how serious we were about not doing that,
it put in jeopardy the thing that was really important
to both of us, which was being here.
So we actually went to the excellence of hiring
an attorney who specialized in vaccine exemptions.
- Yeah.
- And we hired this person to help us in our case against,
I don't know what to say against,
but against the United States who was saying,
hey, you need to do this or you will be deported.

And here's all the supplementary evidence
and they granted us it.
- Yes.
- So strong convictions.
- Strong convictions.
Yeah.
- Did you wanna say anything about this story?
- No, I mean, I was just gonna say for me with Abby,
you know, Abby was vaccinated until we moved here
up until the age of a year and a half.
But even from the very first time we took her,
I did not want to vaccinate her.
I didn't know why I didn't want to.
I didn't have a medical like, you know, hadn't done research.
I just didn't feel good about doing vaccinations.
And then when we moved here, we just started getting
some different information and making some different choices.
And so our second two didn't get vaccinated
and we stopped with Abby.
So enough that this is how we live our life.
- Yeah.
So that kind of gives you the backdrop of why this was
a big deal for me to say, hey, I would like to be vaccinated.
So that's the preamble over, like, okay, the context of that.
So historically, not a vaccinated family, historically,
strong views about that.
So then the question is, well, then how on earth
did you end up deciding to get vaccinated?
And the reason for that is these three big shifts
in my thinking.
The first big shift in my thinking came out of that whole
feel your feelings and I'll tell you what you need.
So I don't know if you know, but last year,
there was an opportunity to have lots of feelings
about lots of things.
- I definitely had lots of feelings.
- I had lots of things.
We did a whole podcast on feelings.
If you haven't listened to our series on feelings,
we'll put a link in the show now, but be really helpful.
But the premise of the feelings work that we've been doing
is you feel your feelings,
rather than trying to hide from or run from them.
And you in feeling your feelings,
in giving it to God and talking to others about it,
you discover what you need.
- Yes.
- So there was three big predominant feelings for me last year.
One of the big, big, big feelings I sat with last year was sadness.
Deep sadness.
I mean, there's so many opportunities to be sad in last year.
But I had tremendous sadness in particular,
I had sadness about lots of things,
but in particular, I had lots of sadness
about how my community that I'm a part of responded to COVID.
And my sadness was in a variety of reasons,
but watching people I love, people in my community,
people I'm friends with making choices that to me made zero, zero sense.
Like I couldn't see how you could make those decisions.
Like for me, and that sadness of I don't understand what's happening.
And because it's such an inflammatory topic to even ask the question or to seek to
understand, Hey, why don't you, or why you do this?
Or why don't you do that?
Doesn't produce great fruit.
Like, right.
It just felt volatile.
Everything.
So I'm feeling sad.
I'm feeling fearful.
Like what does it mean that they're making these choices?
What does it mean about me that I'm not making those choices?
I have fear about so much stuff.
I have fear about reports I'm reading.
I have fear about articles that people are emailing.
I have fear about what our then president is saying
on a regular basis.
I have fear about what the data is saying
and what the new data is saying.
I have fear about the choices that my friends are making.
I have fear about--
- Well, and it's making the wrong choices.
ever changing to data. Like it's all the time.
Yeah. So I'm sad. But if you sit with your sadness, it leads you to acceptance.
Yeah. If you sit with your fear, it leads you to faith and to wisdom. But probably like the
fear and the sadness was there, but loneliness was so lonely last year. Because in the sadness
and the fear of not knowing what's going on. Because a lot of it is like, hey, me, our community,
our friends, our family, like we have a core shared understanding, right? Right? Guys, we all have
a shared understanding. Oh, wait, no, we don't because you're doing things and or I'm doing things
are so different. What does it mean? And the loneliness in that is, what does it mean for our
community, for our friendship group, for our life that people we love are making choices that I
I can't make like, well, what does all this mean?
And the loneliness in that.
And, you know, that whole process of working through,
feeling my feelings, avoiding all the traps that come with it.
The traps that come with it are feeling gas lit.
And what I mean by gas lit, not that anybody was gas lighting me,
but in your loneliness where you feel sad and afraid
that you're no longer part of, you're no longer part,
listen to that language, I'm no longer part.
Who's decided that?
- Right.
- I started writing stories about what does this mean
and then you're having to write stories
in the lack of relationship or connection or understanding
or watching decisions.
- And we're all separated as well.
- That's not helping.
- In the midst of that,
trying to make the best decisions that you can.
And I ended up with this tension
and this tension was acceptance that like,
okay, they are not me and I'm not them.
And it's actually okay for every
to make their own decisions
because we're all doing the best we can with what we have
while trying not to fall in the traps
of weaponizing our choices.
It's okay.
Like that's okay.
People get to make their own choices.
But the loneliness of me as Alan as a friend,
Alan as a father, Alan as a leader, Alan as a pastor.
And what I realize is the people I love,
the people I'm called to shepherd are over there,
and I'm over here.
- Yes.
- And I'm feeling lonely about that
because I actually wanna be with my tribe.
I wanna be with my family.
I wanna be with my community.
I want to be to help.
And it's not fair for me to demand
that they come over here and live the way I think
is a better way of living.
And I start thinking about with a missionary mindset.
You know, when you're a missionary,
which I've never been,
except for a couple of short-terms missions trip,
but I would imagine,
I've got friends or missionaries, I've spoken to them.
When you're a missionary,
you're in a foreign land with another culture
that you're trying to reach.
And so Paul said, I became like a Jew,
I became like a gentle,
I became like whoever needs to become
to reach for the gospel.
As a missionary, you're not effective
if you just sit and go, man,
all these people are making decisions I would never make.
- Right, and they can come over here
and come to me when they're ready.
- You go to them and reach them.
And so that came out of all that feelings work.
Like I wanna go and be with my community.
And at the same time, I'm like, I'm a father.
I'm a husband.
How do I protect my family?
in me going to do that, how do I also remain responsible
and wise and care well for my family?
What do I do with that?
So that was really the first shift
of listening to my feelings and thinking,
hey, it doesn't at the end of the day matter
who's right and who's wrong, there's disconnect.
And I don't want disconnect.
I actually wanna go be with the people I love
and care for them.
How do I do that and not put my family at risk?
- Yes.
- Thoughts, comments, as we have an interlude
after the first portion of my thinking.
- Well, I think it needs to be said,
like when in the turmoil of everything that was last year
and that is COVID is, I mean, you do have sort of the two camps.
You know, you have the, well, I suppose you have
a bunch of different camps, but you have the cautious camp,
which you're probably more of the cautious camp.
- Yep.
- You know, COVID is real.
I mean, you know, in that camp, hopefully,
I wish it was real in both camps,
but you know, it doesn't seem to be real in both camps.
But COVID is real and we don't know enough about it.
So let's be super cautious.
And then you seem to have the COVID is not real
and we don't need to be super cautious.
And I would say I'm somewhere in the middle with--
- And there's a spectrum, there's a blend.
I mean, those are two extremes.
All right, so we're not trying to polarize people
and go, which one are you in?
You realize that's a spectrum, a huge spectrum.
- And that's more what I meant then, you know.
But so you have the two outside
and I would say I'm somewhere in the middle with,
I do believe COVID is real, I've had it,
I didn't enjoy having COVID.
And I don't think we have enough information
to be as strongly on either side as some people are.
Does that make sense?
So for me, there's a sadness in actually watching the debate
because what I more see than anything else is unkindness
and people staunchly saying, this is the truth
when I think an actual fact, a year from now,
we're gonna know a whole bunch of different things
that are actually truth
and we're gonna realize neither side was right.
- Yeah, we're coming into this year,
realizing we're gonna live a summer way different
than we did last year.
- Right.
- I have sadness about the stuff my kids missed out on last year
because of the choices that we made,
but it was the best available data that we had at the time.
So you're making a laminate with what you've got.
What I noticed though, and that's a great point that you made
is round about the fall of last year coming into Christmas,
coming into January, it became apparent that,
and it's important to understand that no matter where you are
in the world listening to this, your response to COVID
is largely dependent on what's happening
outside your front door.
- Yeah, like we're-
- We're having a very luxurious theoretical debate
about COVID here. - Sure.
- Because- - We don't live in India.
- We don't live in India.
like 400,000 people a day are getting in their burning bodies in the street because so many
people are dying. Right. Right. Like last I checked at 25 people in Williamson County got COVID yesterday.
Right. Right. Which is largely different. So if you're listening to this in Canada,
right now you're probably under strict lockdown and can't go out. If you're listening to this in
Scotland, that's beginning to ease. So but if you were to come to Franklin, Tennessee and if you were
to drive around probably since fall of last year through to, I started thinking about this January
February, it would be hard to believe that there was a pandemic at work because generally
speaking, most people, you know, but most people you could drive around and it would
look like life was pre pandemic. People are shopping, people are eating indoors at restaurants.
Now where you would see a difference is people would be masks no matter what you feel about
masks when you went grocery shopping because they're mandated by the stores. Yes, there's
There's no mask mandate in the state that we live in and in the city that we live in
or in the what's it called county that we live in.
But individual stores because they're private business is going to band what they want.
So by and large except for when you're in a grocery store, it's hard to believe that
there is a pandemic operating.
Yes.
So there's that because we have lived fairly consistently for a year with our approach
to COVID.
By and large, we haven't been out eating in restaurants.
If we do go out, we're it's outdoors.
If we're ever indoors, we're wearing face masks.
Even when we're here, it's crystal testifying.
In fact, Chris is wearing a face mask right now
as he's filming.
And I just asked him today,
hey, because today CDC guidelines came out saying
you don't need to be wearing a face mask,
if you're vaccinated, also it's a bit weird me wearing
a face mask while I'm doing a podcast.
But I'm trying to say for about a year and a bit,
we, the John's family, have been fairly consistent
about the way that we have lived,
whereas our community perhaps was in the early days
and then that dropped off.
- Sure.
- What else have I grown with all that?
- But I also think everybody has COVID fatigue.
Like at some point in the fall,
we all just kind of went--
- Screw it, we don't care.
- Basically, yes.
- Yeah, no, that is like, that is part one.
I felt really sad.
I felt huge amounts of fear.
I felt really lonely in sitting with all of that.
I like largely discovered what I need,
which is I need to be with my tribe.
Like that's a desire, that desire never faded.
Oh my God, my tribe are making decisions that I can.
How do I reckon, how do I be true to the convictions?
I feel like the Holy Spirit's given me
and care for my family and exercise responsibility
and be with my tribe.
And be with my calling of being a leader.
And it's worth noting of something I'm so grateful for
with grace and our leadership,
which I know is ridiculous because we're part of it.
So it sounds like we're applauding ourselves.
I'm not, you know, our senior leadership team is made up
of way more than just me and you.
- Yes.
- As for other people.
And our decisions are made, you know, beautifully
amongst people with varying degrees of agreement, you know,
like our, like, if you were to poll our senior team
about what we think, there would be differing opinions
and yet we try and bring like,
weigh all that Holy Spirit, what are you saying?
So one of the things I've been so grateful for
is that our church, our church leadership,
we're so gracious as we're trying to figure out what to do,
having a shutdown, being required to shut down,
then being given freedom to open up with limitations,
then being given more freedom to open up,
like how do we do this wisely?
There's been various iterations of Grace Center
in the last year, whether it's been all online,
or I mean, I remember we were allowed to open up,
but you could only have 10 people in the building.
And so we're counting the number of people
we can have on stage as a worship leader,
plus the person who's running the word to go in.
- And filming and the weather.
- You know, to try and serve our community.
Our whole heart this year is how can we best serve our community?
My point though, is one of the things I've been so grateful for
is Grace Center's leadership that in our current incarnation,
we have two services.
Our first service is masks required and social distancing.
And our second service is no mask required,
no social distancing required.
again, to try and serve both ends of the spectrum
in our community.
And what I've loved is that out of the kindness
of Jeff and Becky's heart and out of our leadership team
are just saying, hey, even in our staff,
we understand there's different approaches
about how we wanna live in a COVID era.
And so we're not gonna mandate our staff
come to any service they're uncomfortable with.
And so really for a year, we've been able to exercise
our and practice our faith in the same way
who've been living our life.
And I've been so grateful for that.
And that's, I want to mention that.
That's why I write things down.
Anyway, back in February,
I begin chewing on all these things.
And I, with my feelings and thinking,
how can I go do that and serve my family?
And, and I, like, how can I go serve these people?
And how can I protect my family?
And like, where does that line get crossed?
where I stop doing my job to prioritize my family.
And at Grace Center, we have like God family ministry.
- So actually my family comes first.
- My family comes first and yet like,
you know, it's not just a cold, hard left brain.
I want to be with my people.
I want to serve them.
I want to help them because my people, by the way,
in the same way I'm having all my distress,
they're having distress.
- Right.
- I'm watching my staff and my colleagues
and my loved ones and the people in our church,
the people in our community.
I want to serve them like, how best can I do that?
Around that time, I began reflecting on a decision that we made back in October, which is as a staff,
this is public by the way, so I'm not disclosing anything that's private, but as a staff, we began to watch the toll that the crisis Jeff Dollar was facing.
So our beloved pastors, Jeff and Becky Dollar, went through a horrible season with their family of severe sickness, which sadly turned to death.
and crisis in their family.
And we're watching Jeff and Becky still show up at work,
shoulder all the responsibility of leading a church
and being the primary caregivers for their family.
And as a senior team, we went to Jeff and Becky
and just said, "Guys, we love you.
We're watching the toll this is taking.
Can we as a team take that responsibility of the church
off of you so that you can just focus on your family?"
And in that discussion, naturally,
we talked about what would that look like?
And the discussion came up with like,
Well, actually Alan and Ajay, largely, the teaching responsibility would land on you,
and you don't want to do second service, which we understand, but how would that work?
And we prayed about it and just said, Jeff, we would come and teach second.
It's not like we're going to say, well, first service will teach you, but second service,
we don't agree with the way you were living in COVID. So we're not going to do that.
And that simple example of us choosing something other than our preference or our comfort level,
spoke to me just like it was a no-brainer for us. Of course we're gonna do that for Jeff, for
Jeff's family and for our community. I'm because I ended up doing most of the teaching because you
got sick. Yeah. Was I'm gonna go to the second service and I'm gonna speak and I'm gonna go minister
and it'll be my joy to do it even though it wouldn't be my preference to do it. But I'm in that environment.
I can prioritize other people over my preferences.
And I did that.
And, you know, like in the history of sacrifices,
that's not a huge one,
but it did illustrate to me that actually our priorities
can shift according to the seasons.
- Yes.
- So that's largely shift one, all of that.
Feelings, one of the people in my community
had a care for my family.
Shift number two, you know how we joke about
there's nothing like a healthy dose of experience
to change your theology?
- Yes.
- Like we're usually talking about,
Saul had a great theology that all these Christians were in a front to the God of Israel.
And this Jesus was a false God. And then he meets Jesus. Right.
Theology changes. That's right. Drastically, in fact. Not to be too grandiose. Not comparing
myself to to Paul or what subsequently happens as equivalent revelation. Okay, good. But
in February, I end up in the ER. Do you remember that? I do remember that.
I get a kidney stone.  Don't know. It's a kidney stone. Just
just wake up with searing pain and I'm chewing the carpet.
And I'm like, "Eiji, take me to the ER."
By the time we get to ER,
I am writhing around on the floor,
screaming, literally screaming in a fetal position.
And they rush me in.

- Yes, you said it over and over again actually.
- I am in the most amount of pain ever.
- It was awful.

Important to know that generally speaking,
- It's not that I'm not a fan of pain medication or drugs.
I'm not trying to make myself out to be some, you know.
- But we're not typically, like we don't typically go,
just give me antibiotics or just,
we're typically not naturally minded.
- I don't wanna put things in my body,
except sugar and chocolate.
I just generally don't wanna take drugs.
If I have to be prescribed a drug, I do do my research.
I do look at what are the side effects.
God bless my GP.
She's so patient with me like, well, what about this?
And what about that?
I do like to open up in Google and, you know,
I do, I just like to know what I'm getting myself into.
On that particular day, I did not care.
I did not even know what they were wearing me up with.
I'm just like, mainly that sweet nectar of morphine.
Get me out of this pain.
Like I don't even care just what you got was better
than morphine though.
- Yeah, what I got delighted.
- I got delighted.
I didn't have time to research.
Like, can I read some peer reviewed studies
on, you know, the effectiveness of delodid and, you know,
I'd like to just-- - Side effects.
- I didn't have any desire.
It wasn't I had enough time.
It didn't even enter my cranium.
I was just like, "Make this bad boy stop."
I get out of the hospital.
I end up throwing up because of all the side effects of that.
I'm just so glad it made it stop.
What that experience taught me was
it is fine for me to have an opinion
and a lifestyle choice,
But that lifestyle choice is going to change
when my lifestyle changes.
- Is something critical happens?

I'm not trying to make myself out as a hero, you know,
I do not have a high pain threshold.
I'm just generally speaking, not in much pain in my life.
Like I'm not in any pain, generally speaking.
But when I am in, like, make it stop.
And so it made me think about COVID.
And I made me think about like COVID's interesting
in that it's both highly predictable
and it's both entirely unpredictable.
It's predictable in the sense that we know how it spreads
and we know predictably how people will be infected.
But unpredictably, we don't know what it's gonna do.
So you could have--
- Right, it's not like your common cold
or your common flu where you're like,
these are the flu symptoms.
this is standard for everybody who gets the flu this year, it looks like this.
You're gonna have two people who get it, one who gets it completely asymptomatic,
don't even know they have it.
You could have one person like you who ends up in bed.
Yes.
Or you've got the nightmare scenarios where like I have a friend right now who's got
long term neurological side effects from having COVID.
I know somebody else is on critical life support.
We probably all know somebody who's died from it.
Yes.
And so you get this unpredictable nature of COVID.
Now, here's what's interesting.
What I'm so grateful for is that everyone I know
who's gotten COVID personally has largely had
a very light experience with that.
- People that we're super close to, yes.
- And even put your experience super light.
Sure, it was in convenience.
You're in bed for 14 days at a fever for 13 days
and it sucked, but you bounce back and you wouldn't want it,
but it wasn't the end of the world.
- Right.
- And so most people that I know had a similar experience.
Now the good thing about that is I still got away friends.
- Yeah, yeah.
- The bad thing about that is it just further propagated
to see it's not that bad,
which further propagated a lot of lifestyle choices
where I was like, but you're spreading it even more.
You know, y'all are gonna be more susceptible to getting it
because of the lifestyle choices.
But here's what I was thinking is if I end up getting it,
or my kids end up getting it, let's stick with me, right?

So then I started thinking,
well, if I'm gonna throw caution to the wind after I get it,
what are all my objections to taking something
that will prevent me from being there in the first place?
Does that make sense?
- Yes.
- If I have objections before I get it,
but after I get it, I won't have objections.
- Because you're talking about the whole thing
of like these vaccines are super new,
we don't actually know how they're gonna work
and the side effects and blah, blah,
but you're saying, hey, if I were in critical condition
After getting in, I would be--
Hey, we have a drug that will probably work.
We've seen it work, but we don't know the last
of the fact.
But you'd be like, do it.
So in which case, why wouldn't you
do something that's supposed to be preventative on the front end
that you have the same amount of information?
Yeah, but that was a big shift for me.
OK, I'm sitting here with this.
I want to be with my community, but I also
have got a responsibility to care for myself and for my family.
OK, I just went to a hospital and I had this encounter that
actually overruled my normal way of thinking.
Yeah.
If I'm not going to object on philosophical or medical grounds
to being given a pain relieving or life-saving treatment
before, why am I presenting the objections before,
if it could prevent it from happening?
Because by and large, one of the things that got me fascinated
in vaccines was when we had our first child in America.
When Tia was born, the very first thing
the doctors wanted to do, literally within an hour
of her being born, was give her a hepatitis B vaccine.
Yes.
And I said, there is absolutely no way you're giving my newborn daughter a hepatitis B vaccine.
And they were like, well, no, it's really important.
I'm like, yes, but neither her mother nor her is an intravenous drug user or sexually promiscuous.
So there's literally no need.
There's no way she could have had to be without those things.
Right.
And they sort of explained they're not actually allowed to screen all mothers to find out about their lifestyle.
So they just routinely give every baby.
- Heck no, you're not doing that.
So my objection, I hadn't even gotten to my objections
of what's in it, has it been tested,
have it safe as it, what's the efficacy rates,
what are the side effects, what are the long,
that isn't even my objection, my objection is,
why are you vaccinating my baby
against something she has no chance of getting?
- Right. - Right?
- But I've got a very high chance of getting COVID.
In fact, we laughed about it earlier,
like, mean you have lived exactly the same way
and you still got COVID.
- Yes, wearing masks everywhere,
following all of the CDC guidelines.
- I ended up with COVID. - I got COVID.
- Right, so I'm like, okay, so my, again, a lot of my,
I'm realizing a lot of my discussion
is coming from privilege.
I'm not under threat, so I can afford to say,
"Well, I don't want that and I don't want this
because it's not prevalent."
But again, it is prevalent,
and actually, for me to go fulfill my desire
to go be with my community,
I know I'm putting myself at risk.
Okay, what can I do?
So that hospital visit,
that really shifted some of my thinking.
Of course, you don't know any of this yet,
because I'm just having these conversations in my head.
- Yes.
So okay, what was the third shift then?
- Well, the third shift was, I'm beginning now to think,
well, actually, 'cause this is about February,
the vaccine's been around for a bit
and I'm hearing about it and I'm hearing the success rates.
I'm also watching Israel, who was one of the first nations
to really roll out a vaccination campaign
and I'm watching as vaccine rates go up,
I'm watching infection rates, new cases, deaths go down.
And I'm beginning to think, could the vaccine offer me the relief I'm looking for from phase one of my thinking?
Yes.
How can I do that?
Especially in light of my newfound thinking from phase two.
But I'm presented with two big obstacles.
My two big obstacles are philosophically, I'm opposed to vaccines.
Like, how can I square up that with like the way I've thought?
And then also, I don't know, I've got questions about the health ramifications of taking this vaccine.
Yes.
Ironically, for a conan player,
the philosophical questions were easy to answer
because the philosophical question was,
well, actually part of growing is changing your mind.
Part of being a lifelong learner is learning new things
and being able to adapt and changing your mind.
So that was actually really easy.
I thought that would be the biggest hurdle for me to get over.
But the health questions, I just,
I realized I was largely not uneducated, but unaware.
What I mean by that is I realized I had lots of questions which were easily answered when I actually sat down and identified what my questions were.
I realized I had lots of feelings about taking a vaccine and if I can sat with my feelings, I realized, oh, behind my feelings are what if?
What about this? What about that? Like, what's the health ramifications of taking it?
What is, how effective it is? How do we know how effective it is?
I don't want to take a vaccine that's been rushed through production.
Oh my gosh, there's tons of them.
Which one do I take?
I don't want to put a live virus in my body.
I don't even want to put dead violence, you know.
So I write out all these questions and I just start praying, like, "Holy Spirit, would you help me?"
And I want to go do research.
Now, here's the thing, for whatever reason, I should probably applaud my parents.
Like, ironically, my father was a world leading virologist.
Yes.
So I was raised in an environment that had a reflex to nonsense.
Right? Now, good and bad.
That has good and bad things.
And what I mean by that is my father was an empirical man.
Right.
So he did for a living, he looked at data and he drew conclusions and he would
test and he would evaluate and buy osmosis that leaked into us.
If you talk to my sisters, talk to my siblings, we're all like that.
We're all very, very large on critical thinking.
We're very, very suspicious.
We want to see the data.
We want to go ahead and let it cool.
Yeah.
And, you know, AS served me well in various parts of my career.
It's also held me up, but there's pros and cons to thinking like that.
But one of the things I'm good at is digesting huge amounts of data.
Like I am not afraid to read abstracts and papers and follow bibliographies and find out what was a bit, you know?
So I just start on a quest, which I've been doing for a year.
I start to quest and I realize, okay, well, actually, my first fear of I don't want to be given a virus is there.
I end up getting a Pfizer one, which is an MRI and a so there's no actual virus in there.
There's just a series of instructions that tell your body how to react to certain protein
spikes.
So I was like, okay, so I'm not getting the virus is, you know, in, in the history of
vaccines is a new type of that is traditional vaccines, you know, previous to the COVID
vaccines, do you have viruses live viruses or dead viruses or whatever that mean, that
is and that's part of what my previous concerns have been with them.
Yeah. So I realized, okay, so that's not in there. Okay. Well, that's good.
Because again, a lot of the objections I was hearing is I'm talking about, well,
I don't want to do this. I don't want to do that. And I discover, okay,
the virus is not in there. All right. And I don't want to bore you with all my
findings. Because again, I don't try to sell you on anything. I'm trying to tell
you this is my process. I just wrote down what are my concerns and when and
where I could find answers.
Another one of my concerns is exactly what you said.
This feels new and I realized,
oh, it's not new, it's got 10 years of research,
10 years of backed approach for mRNA.
I don't know the long-term side effects.
You're right, I don't.
So like, what am I gonna do with that one?
Well, I also don't know the long-term side effects of COVID.
And here's where I, let me say this as kindly as I can.
Most of the time that I've talked to a lot of people,
People are making decisions based on what I call "anoch data."
Right?
They think it's data, but it's "anoch data," "anoch-dotal" stories that they're
extrapolating.
And we all do that.
I do that as well.
We all do that.
But we've got to resist that.
And now here's the thing, by the time I was thinking about taking my vaccine, I forget
how many million people had already been given doses in the United States.
So I remember when I spoke to you about taking a vaccine, you're like, "Oh, please don't
do that."
took, you know, the vaccine, she's still in bed with it. That
doesn't move me because I'm like, that's one data point. Let's
go like if that's a consistent reaction or a danger that will
show up in the millions of people that have been vaccinated. Let
me see if that's there. So, you know, I want to distinguish
between anecdotal stories and data points. And then, you know,
is there a correlation? Can I pull that out? So I did that. And
I largely realized, no, I don't know the long term side
effects of that. I also don't know the long term side effects of COVID. And, and so in many ways,
that's where I turn to prayer. I was like, Lord, I've got all this data. I've got all these feelings.
 This is what I think I want to do. But I, you know, don't want to lean
on my own understanding. And all my, all my ways, I want to acknowledge you like, Father, what do you
want to say? And I just journaled with a Lord and had a dialogue. Now I didn't hear the Lord say,
yay, my son, virally go do this. But I just talked and he was so kind and gracious as I explored all
my feelings with him. And in the end I was like, Lord, I'm, as I sit with my feelings,
as I sit with my needs, I think I want to do this, but I want to run this past you. What do you,
what do you feel? And the Lord said to me, it's like, son, if that's what you want to do, I'm
completely fine with that. You've got grace to do that. So I was like, great. And so the next big
thing was like, okay, well, I've done my leg work, I've sat with my feelings, I've processed
stuff, I've done my research, I now need to come to my wife who hitherto doesn't even know I've been
thinking this thing and I sit down with you and go, "Hey, okay, babe. You've got something I want to tell you.
I've got a lot of fear about how you might react." When you're like, "Okay." And I said, "I think I want to
get vaccinated and now over to you because this has been a monomer. Well, I think you're right,
you hadn't shared about it, but I wasn't surprised that you wanted to get vaccinated." Really? The
Lord told you? I was expecting it. Like, I don't remember the Lord saying, "He will want to get
vaccinated. But I wasn't, I wasn't surprised. And to be clear, I
still have all the same concerns we don't it is, I hear you
saying, well, they have 10 years of whatever, but in practice of
using the COVID vaccine, we don't we, you know, we don't know
what the side effects are going to be. And I love on one level that
it is a different kind of vaccine. We're not talking about
live viruses. We're not talking about all the previous things that would bother me,
how they've been grown and so on. We don't need to go into all of that. But
but what did you feel when I sat down with you and said, Hey, this is what I want
to do. Oh, I still didn't want you to do it. And but what did you feel?
Afraid. You saw your fear was present. Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm like, I love you.
And I I'm I'm not even considering getting the vaccine. Yeah.
I don't want our kids to get a vaccine.

Yeah.
So we sat with that though, didn't we?
Like we sat and like, okay, let's talk about that.
Cause that's, that's a big reaction.
Like I would rather you have COVID than, and that was probably out of the
anecdote to experience that you had COVID and you were fine.
And now you have to build immunity.
The vast majority of our community.
Yeah.
And, but also the weird thing for us in the midst of all of this is we almost
never disagree.
Never.
Well, I'm little thing.
Sure.
But like,
The thing bathing habits.
Yeah.
But no, but by and large.
Big lifestyle things.
There's maybe being a handful in our whole life.
Right. And easily navigated, you know, like it's, it's, it's so rare for us.
So for me also, I realized I have fear behind you're over there.
And I'm over here and I'm like, what does that mean?
Yeah.
So, but do you know what that fear was?
What was the fear telling you might happen or is going to happen?
I think I just don't like not being an agreement with you. It's so
See this is why I didn't really work on my makeup
It's so foreign to me for us not to just be flying on the same page with ease
that I was like oh
I don't like the feeling of this at all
So I think it was more that right so but you didn't go to catastrophizing or fortune telling
or, you know, when you sit with your fear and you think,
well, because of that, that means this,
oh God, we're gonna end up divorced, I knew it.
- Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
And also realizing I feel afraid,
and like what I was talking about last, you know,
last podcast, I don't want fear to be the thing
that ever leads my decisions.
So, and you had said, babe, could you go away
and pray about it?
Because typically, when we make decisions together,
If we're not in agreement, we don't move forward
until we have agreement.
- Correct.
- I mean, that is how we do life.
- Yeah, so you could have vetoed that
and I would have moved forward.
You could have come back.
- Correct, and I knew that.
- And said, babe, I don't feel good about it.
- Yeah.
- And I would have dropped it.

- Yeah.
- Who are my biggest supporter,
who hears the voice of the Lord,
and I trust deeply.

- Yeah.
- Because of the way we lead,
which also gets into the whole thing of headship,
which maybe we'll talk on another podcast,
but like we are co-leaders of our family
and you have a peace of God that I don't have
and I have a peace of God that you don't have
and historically it's killed both of us
because there's things I've wanted to move forward
and I know it's the Lord and the Lord spoken to me about it
and you're the hold up or vice versa,
which is more commonly like you've heard from the Lord
and I just haven't heard from the Lord on it yet.
- And I'm waiting again.
And you're waiting again, it can be so frustrating,
but actually in that waiting,
God's doing something in both of us.
- In anything like that, you don't,
it's not hard to honor somebody who always agrees with you.
- Oh no.
- It's so much harder to honor another person's perspective
who doesn't agree with you and still hold them
at the same level of value.
- Or say that you're gonna honor them,
but then punish them for it.
- Right.
- So like, fine, I won't get the vaccine,
but you know what I'll do?
I'll make a joke or I'll make like a passive aggressive comment.
every time someone comes up and says, "Oh, see, they got,
they got vaccinated."
- Right.
- They have a supportive parent.
- Right, right, right.
- That our support is spicy.
- Or whatever.
- Yeah, like, you know, and that's just not something
we're gonna do.
We're not going to punish the other person
because they're not in the same place as us.
- Right.
- So you have fear.
- So have fear.
And you just said.
- We talk a little bit about your fear.
- Hey, can you go away and pray about this?
And so I went away and prayed about it.
And I still had all the same cautious feelings.
So like where you would be, your cautious feelings
would be more about,
Why are people living like this in the middle of the pandemic?
My, my cautious feelings would lean more towards, Oh, dear God,
this vaccine and what is this going to look like? And, you know,
so I'm like, okay, yeah, I can go away and pray about it.
But when I prayed about it, I felt like the Lord said, he will be fine.
Um, and it's actually going to give his heart freedom to be able to start
living again. And so I was like, okay.
So what was that like? Because what's interesting is the Lord's
is not telling you something you don't want to hear. You want to hear anything,
the Lord saying, but you go into the Lord and it's like, he's not going to be fine.
And then the Lord's like, he's going to be fine. Yeah.
And basically the Lord saying, yeah,
but I'm back to my choice of do I live in fear or do I take everything to God and say,
I feel fear. What can you talk to me about this? So again, I don't want to get the vaccine.
And I'm not saying I'm never going to get it. I'm saying at this point where I am,
that's that's not my desire. If at some point the Lord talks to me about it or whatever,
that's a different conversation. But it's also important to note though that you every two months
go and get your antibodies checked and you're still sky high on natural immunity. Yes. And I'm
six months out, I still have enormous amounts of immunity. I still have both the short and
the long term and all that kind of stuff. So you have natural immunity. Yes. And I have
this kind of artificial immunity. Right. I think what I loved most was I wasn't armed
to the teeth with data to convince you. Like if you came back to the hey, I don't want you
to do it. I'd be like, okay. But what your heart needs is as important as coming to me with data.
Yes, but what I mean is like, you know, if you come back, said, I don't want to do it, that's not
killed for Alan Trihord or to convince me.  And actually, I hear the voice of
the, you know, the multitude of counselors, the safety, the wisdom. So Lord, I think I'm hearing
from you, but it doesn't mean I'm right.
And then you're like, Lord, I don't want to move fast in the island and maybe I'm not right.
But if this is you, can you speak to him?
And then I have a dream and be like, yeah, the dream.
Okay, we'll go do it.
Right.
I think we've both placed a high value on not controlling one another.
Right.
And honoring each other when we don't have the same opinion.
Yep.
Yeah, I can think about quite a few things where we're not disagreement.
We have different opinions about things, but we recognize the other person's ability to walk it out.
Yeah, like bathing habits.
Sorry, like bathing habits.
Like bathing habits.
Okay, so you go away.
You talk to the Lord.
Yeah.
You've got some peace.
Yeah.
Then then what happened?
So then I just came in and said to you, I'm, I have peace because we're always looking for peace to guide us.
I have peace for you to go ahead and get the vaccine, which I think you did that day.
sign up to get the vaccine. Yeah, well, yeah, I did. And yeah, I
went and got the vaccine, which is so weird, because I've not had a
vaccine. The last time I remember getting a vaccine was when I was 12
years old and got my BCG. I don't even know what that is. But it
sounds kind of like a wrap, a wrap. Oh, that we what do we call
those the one that leaves the circle? Yeah, what's it for? I
don't remember. I don't have one of those marks. Oh, yeah. Well,
So, you know, as an adult, it was so streamlined.
Like I drove up to Vanderbilt, which is our hospital in Nashville.
I had an appointment and I literally partnered the longest part.
The process was finding a parking spot, walked in.
They were all super organized.
This thing was like military precision just walked in, um, gave them my name,
which they only knew I was coming and I sat down and they said, which side do you
sleep on?
And I said, I sleep on my left.
So they jab me in the right and they said, okay, great.
And I was like, second myself up for it,
'cause I'm not a huge fan of needles either.

But because I'm kind of a hyper contract,
for the next 15 minutes.
- No, even kind of a hyper contract.
- Oh.
- Because I'm kind of a hyper contract,
I was like, "I don't know,
"do I have a fever, do I have a temperature?"
Oh my gosh, there's my arm sore.
I don't know, I just was a hyper alert.
And then, but largely, first dose felt absolutely nothing.
Had a bit of a stiff arm, I wouldn't even say it was sore arm.
I would say that if I had not had a jab that day,
I would have thought that my arm,
maybe I lay on it funny.
Like, you know, so it was a bit stiff
when I did certain things.
Then you have to wait for three weeks.

Same experience, just park, drive in within who I am.
Jab me, go sit for 15 minutes and came home.
And that was a sore arm.
But like somebody Charlie horse me,
like give me a dead arm, punched me in the arm.
That was like that.
That was probably all I noticed.
I did have a weird flush of symptoms for four hours,
do you remember?
I got jabbed on the Saturday by Sunday night
for four hours.
- You were just super tired.
- About six to 10, 'cause I eventually went to bed at 10.
Well, my ears got really hot.
I got flush, my ears were bright red.
Then I got chills.
I felt like I had a fever I didn't,
'cause you better believe I had a death
the moment or at the ready for every symptom.
(laughing)
I kind of felt maybe a little bit queasy,
but again, if I hadn't had a jab, I don't even know if I'd,
is that kind of feeling of like, am I queasy or am I hungry?
I don't really know.
- Right.
- Four hours the next day, I felt great.
So by and large, I got off light.
My sister had a little bit more of an intense experience
than I did.
- Yeah.
And then waited two weeks after that one.
And here was the silver lining that felt great.
I've got, I have not hugged anybody outside of my family in over a year.
And I've got a dear friend who I love being with.
And I went to be with him.
He was also vaccinated.
And for the first time in a year, we just got to give each other a big bear hug.
And I was like, that, that was just...
That's a win.
That was a win.
And beautiful.
But we haven't processed this with the kids.
again, you know, we've talked a lot. We've we've spent a long
time talking to our kids about why as a family, we're choosing
to live the way we are. Like, you know, and that goes to
everything like the jobs we picked, what we do with our money,
we're bringing our kids in at a very loose level about how we
spend our money. But we've talked about our approach to
vaccines, talked about our approach to COVID. So we haven't
really talked to them about being vaccinated. So that'd be an
interesting discussion. We'll just give them a copy of the
podcast and say, listen, this, you'll be fine.
Mummy and daddy don't agree, children.
But we could still love each other.
Yeah, I think that's so important that we talk about, like, it's not my goal to get
you vaccinated. It's not my goal to say, huh?
Yeah, it is, you know, my goal to live as wisely as I can.
Your goal to live as wisely as we can.
And live not controlling one another.
Yeah. Yeah.
Anything else you want to say about that journey?
If you're still with us, well done on staying with us.
This has been long.
This has been long for sure.
Well, here's the thing.
I again, go back to my original reason why I want to share it is there's going to be people who listen.
Who maybe are on the same end of the spectrum as me, but maybe have concerns about getting a vaccine and hearing a leader say I went and did this.
Helps people, but equally, you know, the audience listening who are you around to the spectrum who are appalled by what I'm saying and are like, OK, I'm learning from AJ that actually it's open.
to have loved ones who want to make a choice is different than me.
Yeah. And to be clear, like, I'm not afraid that you got vaccinated.
Right. And I'm not afraid for anything to happen to me because you got vaccinated or anything like that.
I'm choosing not to be vaccinated, but granted, I have immunity from having had COVID.
I just didn't want I was genuinely excited and wanted to post something on Instagram,
but I felt me this is no comment on anybody else who's posted on Instagram.
I felt like me posting something on Instagram, you know, is like tossing a grenade and going,
"Well, I didn't know it was going to explode."
Right, right.
It is inflammatory.
I didn't want to write about it.
And I just thought, you know, people who want to listen are going to listen and hopefully
it's going to be helpful.
And, you know, to be honest, I'm surprised you listened to any of the stuff we say.
So I shouldn't get that.
I mean, it is shocking, actually.
And I mean, I'm in a house coat today.
So I don't even know how you take anything seriously.
But, no.
Well, let's pivot away from that.
Okay.
any questions about that? I mean, questions born from genuine curiosity. Let me just put
that there. Like, if you've got questions where you want to try and prove a point, I don't want
to hear a question. I mean that lovingly, right? And we're not medical experts.
We're not medical. But if you don't want to ask us about our journey or our story, you can do so,
just go to lnag.com/ask would be happy to talk about it if we can. But it's okay. What I said
about don't ask me a question if you're not genuinely curious. Yeah, I think that that's fine,
because I think sometimes, especially in the last year,
it feels like so many questions are actually just argumentative stabbing.
Yeah.
Because we don't actually want to be challenged.
I've got a higher regard for our listeners than that.
Yes, that's true.
But just in case you have a bad day and you fall into passive aggression,
I'll make a point by asking a smartly worded question.
Yes.
Please don't.
Speaking of questions, I've listened to this question for you.
Oh, it's for me.
Well, I'm going to read it and then you can...
I can decide if I want to like do it or do like the pass button and it goes over to you.
- Such a great question. - Okay, all right, I'm ready.
This is from Megan.
- Hi Megan.
- Okay, she says, "Can I start by saying
"I'm so happy you guys are back, us too, thank you."
I thought my podcast app was playing a trick on me.
It's not, we're back, we're for real.
She goes out and says this,
"I met the Holy Spirit in 1994 when I was nine years old
"and John Arnett came to Los Angeles and spoke
"and it changed everything."
I love John.
When I got into my late twenties and realized
that not everyone had encountered the Holy Spirit
way I had, and that revivals are unique seasons that the Lord brings, I have been praying
to experience another revival.
I have read books and interviews about the Toronto blessing.
I have listened multiple times to any podcast or sermon where you've both talked at length
about your experience in Toronto.
I have been to Grey Centre for a more conference.
I've been to Catch-A-Fire Toronto.
I hope twice.
Catch-A-Fire Reykjavik.
I've spent years at Pi-Hop in LA all because I'm desperate for God and His movements.
I am desperate for God to capture my generation the way he did my parents in the 70s.
I want my generation to be known as a generation that seeks the Lord.
Now, the other week I was reading a Rick Joyner book about Azusa Street in the Welsh Revivals,
and the Lord asked me, "Do you want revival or do you want me?"
And that has been knowing me for two weeks.
I want the Lord, but everything I can think of that is a result or manifestation of the
the presence of the Lord now feels like a gift and not the giver.
So after my long-winded explanation, what does it look like to seek the Lord for the
Lord and not a gift?
Or maybe the Lord is inviting me to dig deep into my heart's desire for him.
Since you are my resident experts on the subject, I thought I would ask you since the Lord is
being silent other than continuing to ask the same question back to me.
What does it look like to seek the Lord for himself and not for the gift?
Yes.
I think it looks like, I mean, Megan, you seem like a super passionate person who is living
in pursuit of God.
I think it looks like that and not tying an expectation to what the gift looks like.
What?
The gift of him showing up.
Right.
I think the mistake we can make in the place that we can
miss God is we are saying,
"Lord, I want you, I want you, I want you."
And he shows up and it looks different
than what we wanted.

That's what we know we're looking for,
more the gift than the person who brings the gift, right?
So I think as long as you are pushing into the Lord
and saying, "Lord, I want you, I want all of you."
And I want whatever that looks like.
And anytime you identify that you have an expectation attached to, this is what God
does, does, and this is how God does it.
Just really quickly unhooking from that so that you're still free to receive
him as he comes because in my experience, he never comes the same way.
Like it always does look different.
And it does, if you look throughout revival history, each time that he comes,
there's different emphasis.
There's different things that the Holy Spirit is doing in it.
There are some similarities, but there's also huge differences.
So I think the way that we safeguard our hearts is we keep our hearts focused on
Jesus, focused on the one focused on Jesus.
What do you want to do? Holy spirit.
I welcome you.
Father speak to my heart and then receive.
However, he does that and whatever it looks like, even if we're uncomfortable.
I think one of the most arresting sermons I've ever heard, we were in Japan.
Do you remember?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was me and AJ and John and Carol.
That was very pregnant.
And Roland Baker, we're doing a conference together in Japan.
And Roland spoke a message and it's called,
"Why Revival Won't Love You."

And he was talking about like,
so many Christians are praying for revival,
but you don't want revival, you want Jesus.
'Cause revival can't love you.
Revival can't forgive your sins.
Revival can't heal you.
And it wasn't a negative message, it was a call back
to exactly what you're asking about Meghan.

And having said that, you've been through revival.
And revival is not a panacea.
Revival will not fix everything.
There's people who were in the revival with you
who are now no longer walking with the Lord.
Yes, even though they were in the middle of a legit revival.
So everything you saw.
Yep.
And that shouldn't surprise us because the people of Israel in the Old Testament
had the literal manifestation of God with them day and night.
Pillar of cloud, pillar of fire, saw incredible miracles,
and they still completely missed his heart.
Jesus, people missed the day of visitation with Jesus.
His own disciples who were with him abandoned him.
Yeah.
So like moves of God are great.
But like we have the capacity to miss God when we focus on the outside things instead of the person.
Absolutely. You know, the revelation of Jesus Christ as revealed through the word of God
will do more to sustain you than revival ever will. Yeah. And so keeping your eyes fixed on Jesus,
keeping your eyes, hungering for what is promised in the word, which of course can be manifested
as revival is where it's at. Here's a simple point, like, I have pursued the Lord since my early
twenties, since he gave me this incredible experience with the Holy Spirit, where he put the Holy
Spirit in me in a powerful way, you know, it takes God to pursue God. I've been hungering after God,
and I am living today with fruit I never knew to ask for because I never knew I wanted. Like,
Like as I've abandoned everything else and just pursued the Lord, he's led me into areas
of my life.
I'd never want to go, which is produced fruit.
I never knew I could have didn't know I'd want didn't know was available.
And so the danger in asking God for what you want is you might miss out on what he wants.
And you always want what he wants.
I'm not trying to talk us out of, you know, because it says, you know, the latest of the
Lord would give the desires of your heart.
I'm just saying revival is great and I'm ungrateful and I want it more than anything.
And anytime I think about anything else that's even a passion of mine, it pales into insignificance
of what I want to see, which I believe God wants to give and what we're going to see.
And yet I know that's not going to satisfy.
I'm living drunk with satisfaction today.
Because of the person.
Because of the person of Jesus.
And so I think if you just, I think it's great, Megan, that the fact the Lord is still speaking
to you about this, the Lord never asks you something because he doesn't know the answer.
He's always inviting you to find a new revelation to the question he's asking you.
So I don't know if that helps.
I just love your passion.
Oh my gosh, I love your passion.
Run after it.
And yet you can live in personal revival with the person of Jesus.
So good.
I might have a small confession to make.
I've learned from experience that usually your small confessions lead to larger ones.
So go for it.
Well, I realized at one point when you were talking and a little bit earlier in the podcast
I don't even know what you're talking about at that point
But I I kind of phase out a little bit because I just keep thinking you're just so handsome
And then I get sort of I just like fascinated by your sparkly eyes and your passion
And then I realize I'm not actually paying attention anymore
So I hope I didn't miss anything important
I hope you set up brilliant if you two would like to see the sparkly passion in my eyes
As a member of the podcast you get to watch the podcast and not just listen to it
And you too could be transfixed by the beauty
Yes, and I'm by my and see the house cool fluffy here and house
But but seriously, I was speaking to Chris earlier today. I was talking to Chris
I'm saying, you know, I you know again. We're just thrilled anybody would listen to podcast
So we love that you listen to yes
We love it and yet I have a passion for those of you who listen the podcast to see the podcast I watch the part listen
I understand podcasts are great because you can do the dishes, do gardening, go for a run.
So many of you email me and say, "Hey, I listen to you when I run."
I'm like, "Great, you're ex... I'm getting exercised by proxy."
So I get it.
- Do you think we get points on our... - Absolutely.
- If we could arrange to get those on our watch, that would be great.
So I understand that podcasts fit into a niche of our life,
and nobody's got time to sit down and watch a video.
And if you do, there's plenty more entertainment things to watch than this.

And I find tremendous joy in watching your face in, you know, there's the whole
dynamic you're missing out on.
So membership gets you video access.
In fact, if you would like to see what you're missing, if you go to youtube.com/allonanaj
every week we post, you know, like a four or five minute segment of the video that
we think is a good standalone piece.
You had to see a little bit of the magic.
Get to see AJ and her house coat.
You had to see my dazzling sparkly eyes.
I didn't think about that.

And if they want the show notes, baby, where do they go?
To<EMAIL_ADDRESS>That's it.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for being with us.
We're so excited.
We hope to see you next week.
All right.
Bye bye.


Go to index page.
rle2gif
A program to convert images saved as RLE (Utah raster toolkit) to GIF
format.
Usage:
rle2Gif [-q] [-c #Colors] [-h] RleFile
If no RleFile is given, Rle2Gif will try to read an Rle file from stdin.
Memory required:
Screen.
Options:
- [-q]
- Quiet mode. Defaults off on MSDOS, on under UNIX. Controls printout
of running scan lines. Use -q- to invert.
- [-c #Colors]
- Select size of color map in the output Gif file. #Colors
should be given as the based 2 log of number of colors. Default is 8
which is 256 colors, and which is also the maximum.
- [-h]
- Print one line of command line help, similar to Usage above..
Notes:
As the RLE format allows full 24 bits per pixel (8 per primary color)
Colors must be quantized to the number of colors as set by the [-c]
option, above. This process is quite slow. See the quantize.c file
in the lib directory for the code for this quantization algorithm
(median cut).
Author:
Gershon Elber
Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>


Hello there! Welcome to my page!
I am Elvis Adorkor, a Computer Science student.
Feel free to have a look around!
Hit me up and let's talk tech!
Hello there! My name is Elvis Edem Adorkor. I am from Ghana, West Africa.  I am currently a sophomore studying Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. I have dreams of working at a global tech company as a software engineer. I love programming and solving math problems and everything at the intersection of Computer Science and Mathematics. I am also CRAZY about music. My favorite genres are hiphop, R&B, afrobeats and sometimes rock. J Cole is my favorite artiste and I happen to know the lyrics to almost every one of his songs. I love going to concerts, traveling and hanging out with my friends. I love to have conversations about the tech and music industries, so hit me up and let's talk!
Here is a map showing places I'll love to visit! Click the button below to see them.
Comments


- NAME
- Tcl_Alloc, Tcl_Free, Tcl_Realloc, Tcl_AttemptAlloc, Tcl_AttemptRealloc, ckalloc, ckfree, ckrealloc, attemptckalloc, attemptckrealloc - allocate or free heap memory
- SYNOPSIS
- #include <tcl.h>
- char *
- Tcl_Alloc(size)
- void
- Tcl_Free(ptr)
- char *
- Tcl_Realloc(ptr, size)
- char *
- Tcl_AttemptAlloc(size)
- char *
- Tcl_AttemptRealloc(ptr, size)
- char *
- ckalloc(size)
- void
- ckfree(ptr)
- char *
- ckrealloc(ptr, size)
- char *
- attemptckalloc(size)
- char *
- attemptckrealloc(ptr, size)
- ARGUMENTS
- DESCRIPTION
- KEYWORDS
Tcl_Alloc, Tcl_Free, Tcl_Realloc, Tcl_AttemptAlloc, Tcl_AttemptRealloc, ckalloc, ckfree, ckrealloc, attemptckalloc, attemptckrealloc - allocate or free heap memory
#include <tcl.h>
char *
Tcl_Alloc(size)
void
Tcl_Free(ptr)
char *
Tcl_Realloc(ptr, size)
char *
Tcl_AttemptAlloc(size)
char *
Tcl_AttemptRealloc(ptr, size)
char *
ckalloc(size)
void
ckfree(ptr)
char *
ckrealloc(ptr, size)
char *
attemptckalloc(size)
char *
attemptckrealloc(ptr, size)
- unsigned int size (in)
-
Size in bytes of the memory block to allocate.
- char *ptr (in)
-
Pointer to memory block to free or realloc.
These procedures provide a platform and compiler independent interface
for memory allocation. Programs that need to transfer ownership of
memory blocks between Tcl and other modules should use these routines
rather than the native malloc() and free() routines
provided by the C run-time library.
Tcl_Alloc returns a pointer to a block of at least size
bytes suitably aligned for any use.
Tcl_Free makes the space referred to by ptr available for
further allocation.
Tcl_Realloc changes the size of the block pointed to by
ptr to size bytes and returns a pointer to the new block.
The contents will be unchanged up to the lesser of the new and old
sizes. The returned location may be different from ptr. If
ptr is NULL, this is equivalent to calling Tcl_Alloc with
just the size argument.
Tcl_AttemptAlloc and Tcl_AttemptRealloc are identical in
function to Tcl_Alloc and Tcl_Realloc, except that
Tcl_AttemptAlloc and Tcl_AttemptRealloc will not cause the Tcl
interpreter to panic if the memory allocation fails. If the
allocation fails, these functions will return NULL. Note that on some
platforms, but not all, attempting to allocate a zero-sized block of
memory will also cause these functions to return NULL.
The procedures ckalloc, ckfree, ckrealloc,
attemptckalloc, and attemptckrealloc are implemented
as macros. Normally, they are synonyms for the corresponding
procedures documented on this page. When Tcl and all modules
calling Tcl are compiled with TCL_MEM_DEBUG defined, however,
these macros are redefined to be special debugging versions
of these procedures. To support Tcl's memory debugging within a
module, use the macros rather than direct calls to Tcl_Alloc, etc.
alloc, allocation, free, malloc, memory, realloc, TCL_MEM_DEBUG
Copyright © 1995-1997 Roger E. Critchlow Jr.
Copyright © 1995-1996 Sun Microsystems, Inc.


RT @KentBeck: Don't spend more time discussing a reversible change than it would take to make (& potentially reverse) the change
10/30/2016, 10:48:53 PM
Favs: 0
Retweets: 0
link--- layout: tweet ---
RT @KentBeck: Don't spend more time discussing a reversible change than it would take to make (& potentially reverse) the change
10/30/2016, 10:48:53 PM
Favs: 0
Retweets: 0
link


 Compare
places using tables and maps, download data, and embed charts on your site!{% endblock %} {% block body_id %}homepage{% endblock %} {% block header %}
Census Reporter is an independent project to make it easier for journalists to write stories using information from the U.S. Census bureau. Place profiles and comparison pages provide a friendly interface for navigating data, including visualizations for a more useful first look.
Learn more about the concepts and tables covered by the Census and American Community Survey. We want to help you use this data better, so let us know if there are topics you’d like to see us explain.


Add Hospital
Home
forms basic
Form
Success!
New hospital inserted.
General Information's
Gallery
Employees
Add Hospital
Hospital's Name:
Name Error
Hospital's City:
Name Error
Hospital's Postal Code:
Name Error
Hospital's Address:
Name Error
About Hospital:
Name Error
Upload Pictures:
Add Employee's First Name:
Add Employee's Last Name:
Add Employee's Email:
Add Employee's Date of birth:
Select role:
Choose role
Doctor
Manager
Technician
Upload Picture:
Add More
Previous
Next
Submit


Not your keys ... Not your coins ...
This is a Flare Network / Spark token claim tool for $XRP users that self custody thier keys.
This was inspired by wietse - just thought i would play with a little code.
This page DOES NOT submit or save any information (you can use view source to verify)
Your private key is only used to sign an encrypted transaction BEFORE it is transmitted via secure web socket
Code is the ripple javascript library from https://xrpl.org/get-started.html