Choosing to See the Good: Todd Burke on Integrity and Focus | Men’s Breakfast

I’ve really been looking forward to this. I have ever since Ellis called. My name is Todd Burke. Before we get going, I kind of like to set the stage for the purpose here. I know this is tough because we smelled great food for a half an hour, we just spent the last half an hour eating great food, and this is like your penance to pay for having had the great food. And I don’t want it to be that way, but purpose. Let me start out with one of my faves. I love the book of Philippians. It’s easy to miss. It’s only like five pages, so you got to kind of know where to look in the Bible to find it. But Philippians 4 verse 8, which says, Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. Bless you. But think about the context in which it was written. Paul wrote that while he was in prison in Rome. And we think Timothy might have been involved with scribing or helping write this too, but here’s a guy in prison who’s saying life is good. Hey, look at the good things. And I really think that applies to us right here, right now, today. If every morning you’re waking up and queuing in on the news, or the first thing that when you meet with your friends for coffee, if the first thing is how stupid the gas prices are, may I suggest that you find another hobby? Because it is so much more than that. And there are so many wonderful things happening right now. But I kind of wanted to set the stage with that. A little bit about myself, born and raised in St. Louis, escaped my parents when I was 18. Went to college in Wisconsin, where I played football, rugby, drank all the fresh milk a body could hold, and achieved a GPA of 1.7. I’m not kidding. I mean, honestly, when at the end of my freshman year, my father asked me, son, do you plan on being a caddy for the rest of your life? And I said, no, sir, I get it. Thank you. Moved back from Wisconsin, moved here to Columbia, enrolled at MU on academic probation. Two things that I always knew, I always wanted to be a policeman, and I always wanted to be a fireman. And I did not see those things as mutually exclusive. So in 1983, four credit hours short of a bachelor’s degree in emergency services that I designed and had approved by three faculty members and a dean because I really wasn’t interested in business, or I started out as an electrical engineer. But it sounded good. Anyway, four credit hours short, I got on the Columbia Police Department, and I joined the Boone County Fire District as a volunteer firefighter. Boone County Fire put me through EMT training. Fast forward 22 years, was one of the original members of Missouri Task Force One. I was the rescue team, one of three rescue team managers, got promoted. I was a firefighter for seven years, a lieutenant for four years, a captain for nine years, and a battalion chief for my last two. I’ve seen a lot, and some smiles and some not so smilish. Met my wife, Joan. She was working as a paramedic at the University Ambulance. She and I have been together for 41 years. We just celebrated at our, no, no, that was her birthday, we went to Booneville for. And it’ll be 43 in October. And I’ll take it. Yep. Boy, have I learned a lot from her and her family. And boy, was she different. She grew up on a dairy farm in upstate New York. And I grew up as a spoiled kid in the suburbs of St. Louis County. I’ve learned more from her family. Anyway, I got on the fire department, left the Columbia Police Department, went to Boone County Sheriff. A couple years later, when Ted Boehm was newly elected sheriff, became the department’s field training officer. And had some more incredible experiences. My squad that I was working with, we worked backward rotating shifts. I really wanted to go to paramedic school, which took about two years. And there was no way I was going to be able to do it my schedule. So my squad conspired against me, they went behind my back to the major and said, we know Todd really wants to do this. We are willing to work his schedule if you put him on, you know, a year’s worth of nights so he can get his education out of the way. Then he’s got 1000 clinical hours to do. And the major came to me and told me this. And I was, I was shocked. But he said, Is this what you want to do? I said, Yes, sir. So I got that piece of the puzzle. Can we pause for a second? I know that how did Jesus teach? What did he do a lot in his teachings? What did he tell stories, parables, right? And what is a parable? It’s a short story with some type of mental or spiritual or, you know, focus for teaching. I’m going to be as short as I can, believe me, I’m not going to pin you here forever. But I know I’m kind of bouncing around a little bit. I had a plan, but that went away as soon as I walked through the doors. Met Joan, left, went to the sheriff’s department, had some more great experiences. And then in 1996, became a full time faculty member at the University of Missouri for Law Enforcement Training Institute actually worked there full time as an instructor for almost seven years. That that was the coolest job I’d ever had. And somewhere in the university, there is a brick that has my name on it. I mean, if Paige could have her name on an entire stadium, I get a brick. So my $35,000 a year salary that we were trying to raise a family on. And one of the things after we got married, Joan and I, we talked about what three important things before we had kids. How are we going to manage discipline? How are we going to handle firearms, which was a big part of our life and our training, what we do? And how and when were we going to introduce Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior to our kids? So that was our plan. We seem to agree on it. We jumped in and we decided that daycare wasn’t for us. One of us was going to stay home. And it wasn’t so much a coin toss. But at the time, she was working as a paramedic and a counselor. Joan is currently a full time counselor for emergency services and military personnel. And she is one of four clinicians, four regional clinicians in the state of Missouri. So today, thank God, literally, thank God, we can if you’re a first responder in the military, and you’re having trouble problems, you know, just don’t know what you need, but you need something. All you got to do is find somebody like Joan and say, I need some help. And she takes it from there. And she is responsible from Columbian Boone County, north to both corners of the state line. And there’s one in St. Louis, there’s one in Kansas City, one in Springfield. So she’s and she’s pretty much on 24 seven. So she’s got people calling all she has talked to have our local police officers out of suicide this year since Christmas. So that’s what Joan is doing. She decided it’d be better for her to stay home. So I was supporting the family and through over the next 20 years, when she would be feeling like, you know, I’m not of worth, I’m not a value. And I would say, all I’m doing is making the money, you’re the one that is holding this family together, volunteering, going to school with the kids, and, you know, volunteering at church and some other stuff like that. So life is good. And suddenly, in 2002, if you don’t think God has a sense of humor, make a plan and see what happens. And my plan was rolling along just great. And after taking the first week of vacation that I had taken in seven years, because I didn’t need a vacation, every day was my party. I loved what I did. Life was good. So after a week in Minnesota with family, mom and dad’s 45th wedding anniversary, I get called into my boss’s office. He says, come in, sit down, shut the door. So this is kind of odd. And he slid a piece of paper across his desk to me that basically said, your job position has been eliminated, you have 30 days. If you think the university has been in an interesting place the last few years, in 2002, they cut 10% of their budget. And I was a product of that. So I went back home on that Monday morning about 930. And she said, What’s up, you’re back kind of early. And I absolutely self destructed right there on the kitchen floor, boom, pile of mushy Todd. And she said, What is going on? So we sat on the sofa for the next 20 minutes, I whined and moaned and told her, all of my problems, and we were all going to die and all kinds of things. And I look over and she’s sitting next to me on the sofa with this grin. And I said, Did you not hear what I’m telling you? I said that life is over. And she looked at me and she said, Do you like what you do? I said, I love what I do. And she said, Then why do you have to do it for someone else like the university? PS, pull up your big boy pants. Okay, so and that was kind of our journey. I mean, we’ve been in the emergency services and we’ve been doing stuff since we’ve met in 1985. But we made a direction change and stayed in the teaching mode. Met up with Ellis mentioned a company Stratagos International, who you’ve probably never heard of. Most people can’t even pronounce it. They see it and they go Oh, strategos. Like, well, yeah, if you’re playing the board game, but Stratagos is actually the correct way it’s pronounced in Greek. But never mind, that’s another story. So two guys with a similar life experience that I had known for many years, Mark Warren, who was a tax sergeant with Blue Springs Police, and Vaughn Baker, who was a tax sergeant with Lee Summit Police. They had left their jobs and gone to have you ever heard of surefire? Anybody heard of surefire? They make these high end flashlights. And once you get a military contract, you go 40% over what you were paying the day before. So they became the training institute and they were pulling a an unlicensed trailer with a Dodge van all around the United States offering training programs. So I lose my job, I give them a call, I’d looked into Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, flew out to Virginia for some interviews. Anyway, I was like, I don’t know what I’m doing. I spent eight months as a body armor company representative. And there’s a whole lot of neat stories there. Anyway, they said, why don’t you start the firearms training division for Stratagos International? And I said, okay. And for about the next 10, 12 years, I traveled around the country with a Coleman cooler that had my food in it and an air mattress because we couldn’t afford to stay in a hotel. And I slept in the range buildings and we get up early and you know, take a bath out of the sink if the place had a shower, that was great. But did training like that for a number of years. And with the dream of at some point we’ll grow, we’ll get bigger. If you build it, they will come. And actually about six or seven years ago, I got to stand in front of a hundred guys that I now supervise at through Stratagos International who do not just the military law enforcement firearms stuff. But guys, we were doing church safety and security training before it was cool. Before active shooter was even two words that were put together. And we’re not better than anybody else. But I remember the very first class where Mark and Vaughn and I were standing outside the exit door with a hundred people preparing to receive the training we were going to give them. And we just held hands and gave thanks to God and said, you know, we don’t know what’s going to happen here, but God, we’re going to put it in your hands. We say that a lot, right? Let’s put it in God’s hands. What does that really mean? Especially when you’re scared out of your mind. But there’s a level of faith and belief and trust there. Well, fast forward, I’m here to tell you that that is trust well placed. And I looked at these, and we said a prayer, we got the class started. And then not too long after I was standing in another room addressing all of the firearms, defensive tactics, personal safety, kid care. I mean, you name it. And I’m looking out saying, you know, I have waited literally 20 years to be here to do that. And that is to say, welcome, you’re in a good place. I’ve never worked for a better company because Christ is truly the center of everything that we do. Tithing was just something that I used to do. You know, I remember attending church years ago, and it’s hard to get cops, firefighters, and medics in the church to begin with, but the basket would be passed around. I throw a few bucks in it because that’s what you do in church. And I’m warming a seat. And it got to the point in my life where I was like, I’m doing it wrong. I’m not doing it right. Well, God loves a cheerful giver. I wasn’t that. Absolutely was not. But I can happily report to you that Jonah and I are in a place to where every month before I even see checks, that is set aside and this goes here and this goes there. And tithing is a thing I think is important to build our church and to tend to serve Jesus and to give God back. So where am I at? Are we tracking or am I bouncing around too much? Okay, cool. Okay, life is still good. That’s the moral of the story. So I got to look at 100 guys and say, you know what, this is really cool. And this is a great company. And Christ, it’s all about Jesus Christ and serving him. And I will tell you that as long as you honor that belief system, as long as I don’t care if you fall down, I don’t care if you show up late accidentally, I don’t care if whatever. But if I ever hear you say I can’t in the Burke house, I mean, if you dropped an F bomb, if my two daughters dropped an F bomb, they didn’t. But if they did, that wouldn’t be too bad. I could deal with that. But when you say I can’t, I got a real problem with that. And so let me quickly tell you a couple of things about my daughters. Farley is 28. She, we escaped Columbia, I say that kindly, but we did not want to live in Columbia. And we did not, Columbia Public Schools was not a focus for us. We moved up to Hallsville, Hallsville, Harrisburg, Centralia, we’re all cool with, but we moved in with dad, Joan’s dad, who was a 90 year old World War II veteran with Parkinson’s. And mom died and we moved in to help out. We, by the way, we live in heaven. We live at the dead end of a county road on 50 acres in Boone, rural Boone County. It’s the closest thing to heaven I’ve seen so far. Had a big tree house and everything. But my daughters had a fire pole out of their tree house before any Boone County fire station ever had a fire pole. So moved in with dad, got life going that way. And Farley came home in seventh grade and said, dad, I want to play football. And I said, you mean soccer? She said, no, football, pads, helmet, I want to hit somebody. And I said, I’m remarkably comfortable with that. Because all of my trophies, awards, football stuff from high school and college, that was in a box. I was not going to make my kids live vicariously through me. So off she went, became a wonderful person, got a two year degree. And she is now six years into the fire service. She started out in Fulton, moved to Sedalia, was there for three years. And then through the SWAT medic school that Ellis was telling you about, met two guys from Bloomington, Minnesota, which is on the southern edge of Minneapolis, St. Paul. Boy, do I get some interesting news briefs from her on what’s going on in Minneapolis. She’s up there now. She is driving the backseat of a hundred foot aerial. And I hate her because I never got to do that. But that’s what she’s doing right now. My youngest daughter, Fiona, graduated top of her class, valedictorian, class president. Everybody liked her because she wasn’t a snob and she would help you with your homework, but she would not let you cheat off her test. And she enrolled as a sophomore at MU, thinking about being a veterinarian. And anyway, was getting ready to get her electives and her required stuff out of the way. And she, at the end of her first semester says, Dad, this sucks. I said, what do you mean? She goes, this university is not at all what they purport themselves to be. So we had a long conversation. I said, well, what do you want to do? She said, well, I don’t know, but this ain’t it. I’m wasting my time and your money. I said, well, right on. And she proceeded to find herself mushing dog sleds for an adventure company on a glacier in Alaska during the warmer season and in Colorado during the cold season. And as of last year was the assistant manager of that company. And thank you. I love telling that part of this whole story because people like dog sleds. That’s cool. I’m like, you bet it’s cool. You ought to go do it. It’s absolutely awesome. And she is she just got back from Greece and Ireland where she’s been with 10 days with her best friend. And this coming Friday, I’ll be putting her on a plane to New Zealand where she’s starting her new job with another adventure company. Anyway, those are my two kids. Skip way forward to the end. What’s a moral of the story? Like who is the band? Was it Crosby, Stills and Nash? Teach your children well. And another aside, I got to stand in front of all of the teachers in Hallsville doing their annual active shooter training about a month ago and say, how many of you remember my kids? And about 25 percent put their hands up. And I said, cool, everybody else, excuse me. I’m going to give you an update on what my kids are doing, like I just did to you. And they did their own thing. They followed their own path. They did their own thing. But I looked at the teachers and I said, I want to say a couple of things. I love you and thank you because you had as much to do with my kids going in a positive direction as my my wife and I and my family did. So, you know, a big kudos here. Thank you for that. And life is good in the Burke household. OK, so enough about me in that regard. Let me tell you some more about me in another way. Something that maybe I can share. One of the most powerful weapons that Satan has is discouragement. And we are right in the middle of that now. I mean, and if you own one of these, I these are evil. I guess they may in my business that are necessary evil because I can’t keep up with my customers and people that want to talk to me without this type of electronic device. However, if you’ve heard the term death scroll, that that’s really a thing. You know, you need to put it down. You need to get away. You need to turn it off. And that’s why it was so disappointing. I won’t go off on a tangent now, but Charlie Kirk was taking so many of us in such a positive direction. But I don’t think that the other side, I don’t think Satan knew just what kind of fire he would ignite here if he took Charlie away from us. And it’s encouraging to see people. It’s not about rising up. It’s about standing up. And if I can go way back to where I started talking this morning, people ask, how did you get into the emergency services? How did boy, what you’re doing is so cool, or I like the way that sounds. How did you get there? And I say, I think it was Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, and then Boy Scouts. Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. I really do. And sleeping out in a tent sleeping out in a tent, going on backpacking trips, being able to start a fire, understanding how to keep yourself from becoming hypothermic if you get wet and it’s 50 degrees. That just made sense to me. So when we talk about people, we talk about preppers in a negative way and under the Obama administration, they were really trying to attack us. You cannot put in your own garden on your own property. What are you talking about? Are you high? Yeah, probably. But I just simply want to be able to take care of myself, take care of my family, take care of those around me, which is what churches do. I mean, if you look at the disasters, if you look at what happened to Joplin, FEMA and SEMA were not the first on the scene. It was churches from outside the community that had trucks and trailers and chainsaws and people trained in basic level stuff. Those were the second responders. The first responders are the people that lived there. The second responders was the wave of us coming in from the outside. So being prepared just absolutely makes sense to me. That’s in the physical realm. Okay, so if you don’t know how to open an airway, you need to learn how. If you don’t know how to stop uncontrolled bleeding, you need to know how. If you’re going to use a chainsaw, you need to wear safety equipment. Every one of us put on our seatbelt before we drove here, right? Common sense stuff. The other part is we need to continue and get better at supporting each other emotionally and spiritually. And that’s why I think this morning, thank you. This is such a privilege and an uplifting thing for me is just to simply address that which is lovely, that which is honorable, that which is good. Okay, so if Satan’s tool that he uses more often than not is discouragement, and we don’t recognize when we’re becoming discouraged, that that’s Satan. Satan doesn’t go after the weak. Satan goes after those who are doing really good, and life is good, and you know, you’re teaching, you’re on the job, and you come home Monday morning, and suddenly you don’t have a job anymore, and your wife’s not working, and you got two kids. And what do you do? Well, I’ll tell you what we did. We discovered that the lima beans on the back shelf that had an inch of dust on them, because we don’t like lima beans, that was dinner. And we figured it out. And we had friends and neighbors that wouldn’t say, hey, do you need anything? They would say, hey, what are you doing Friday? We’re having a barbecue. We want you to come over. Simple stuff. Simple Christian kindnesses. So don’t be discouraged. But by the way, how many times in the Bible, anecdotally, how many times does it say, be not afraid, or something along those lines? Numerology is a real thing too. 365 times in the Bible. So every day we can, I don’t know what we do on leap year, I think we all die on leap year, but we can wake up every morning and have reason not to be afraid. Okay, so if you’re not into morning devotionals, or you’re not into studying hard with a pad and pen, my recommendation is wake up every day or evening if you work nights, and as soon as your feet hit the floor, thank you, Jesus. Thank you so much for everything that I have, plus the things that I really don’t need. And what I would say at the end of the 15 week police academy when I was training recruits was, and this actually happened in the Anheuser-Busch auditorium that was the, it’s one of the science buildings at the corner of Rollins and College. I was standing in front of 500 people and their families. I was going to give the defensive tactics award for the high achievement. That was my division. And I said, before I do that, I would just like to talk to the recruits one more time. So you guys can tune out if you will. And I looked down at the first two rows, and I said, congratulations on a most impressive accomplishment. You’re about to walk across the stage. We get to, you get to address us by our surnames. We get to hand you your certificate and all your credentials, shake your hand and wish you the best. I’m going to offer you one more service. If you get to your department and your sergeant or corporal or field training officer, whomever is in the car with you during your probationary period, if they look at you and say, now that you’re through with that academy BS, I’m going to show you how it’s really done. Forget all of that. If that happens, prepare yourself for the diatribe of an idiot. And then please call me. And I will attempt to come to wherever you are and beat that idiot to death with their own ego because they have no idea what they’re talking about. PS, what does it say about three months in an academy training program? If one guy sits down in the car and says, well, forget all of that. Here’s how it’s really done. Their job is to bridge your academy training with what you’re about to see real world on the street as your job. So please do that. And you know what, guys, what is evangelism? My church is the Rocky Fork Fellowship just south of Hallsville. We’re a medium sized church of about 500. Love it there. I’m one of the elders there. Absolutely love it there. And people get hung up on the word about what is evangelism. You know, it’s this big thing. I don’t know if that’s what the pastor is supposed to do. No, that’s what we’re all supposed to do. Evangelism is. Hi, my name is Todd. What’s your name? Mike. Mike, how are you today? Okay. It seemed like you were struggling a little bit. You’re over here by yourself. I just thought I’d come over and say hi and introduce myself. And I’m sorry for putting you on the spot. Guys, evangelism is as simple as that. When they approached me and said, would you consider becoming an elder? My response was, are you out of your mind? I am not the guy for the job. And I went home and I told my wife and daughter that and they both, they were laughing and looking at me. And I said, what’s so funny? And they said, well, yeah. I said, yeah, what? I said, of course, you’re the guy for the job. I said, no, I’m not. So we talked about it like, yep, I can help. We can do this. No way in the world am I going to do that. Okay, here we go. And ran the sinusoidal wave for almost three months. And I had all kinds of excuses. I am not a biblical scholar. I am not this. I am not that. I don’t have this. I don’t have that. And one of our senior ministers who actually helped plant the church 20 years ago said, you know, you keep saying what you aren’t. Have you thought about what you are? Well, I’m a husband. I’m a dad. I’m a Christian. Absolutely. Jesus Christ is my personal Lord and Savior. He goes, stop. What else you need? So maybe my mindset is a little too simple. But I’ll just tell you that my experiences over the years, I mean, I’ve had the privilege of holding someone’s hand as they took their last breath. I’ve had the same privilege of holding someone’s hand as they took their first breath. And you know what? It’s just life. Sometimes we overcomplicate it. And you know, what are the rules? Well, if you hurt someone, say you’re sorry. Look both ways before you cross the street. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. I call them toilet tank books. They’re about this big. You can read them in a minute or two. This one is called Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. So let me kind of wrap things up. Threw a lot of stuff at you here. Shotgun approach. See what sticks. Don’t be discouraged. I mean, it’s easy for me. I know that I’m closer to the end than I am the beginning. And I’m 12 years old in here, but the rest of me is 64. And sometimes that kind of gets in the way. So I take advice from a gentleman named Kerry Farnham, who was one of my coaches. And when he was going through one of the firearms instructor schools, he got a little out of breath. He was having trouble getting up and down from the standing and kneeling position. And I didn’t say anything to him, but I walked behind him and he looked up at me and he smiled and goes, I’m OK. It’s just going to take me a little longer to get through. Get up. And he smiled and I said, right on, coach. But don’t be discouraged, be intentional. OK, and I’ll offer you the same service that I offered the police recruits when I said what I said, which, by the way, made several people in the room, especially command staff and sergeants, made them really mad. And I don’t care, but I will offer you the same advice, and that is if today isn’t the best day you’ve ever had, if you don’t absolutely love what you are doing, give me a call and I’ll meet you. I’ll have coffee with you. I’ll sit down and pump you back up. And you know what? If you’re not in a good place, I’ll tell you that, too. And I’ll say, you know, Quick Trip is currently hiring assistant managers for $52,000 plus a pretty good benefit. So pretty good benefits package. Now, I said that to that graduating recruit class. Actually, I say that to police officers that I’ve known for years. And they look at me and they say, are you trying to tell me that I would quit my job as a cop and go work at Quick Trip? And I said, no, not so much that. But, you know, everything that comes out of your mouth is negative. And every suggestion that I make, you poopoo it and say, well, that won’t work. Maybe it’s time that you think about doing something else because you’re miserable and you’re making everybody around you miserable. P.S. I love you. So have a Coke and a smile. Yeah, absolutely. So thank you for this time that you took to come to this. It was wonderful to meet you ladies. I’m glad you’re here, too. And you know what? Just keep at it. Keep doing it every day. As Admiral McRaven said in his address to a graduating recruit class, Admiral McRaven, the SEAL, you can look it up on YouTube. First thing you do every day, make your bed. Even if that’s the only thing that you do, at least you have accomplished something. So let’s let’s focus on what we can do and not what we can’t do. Let’s focus on what we are, what we’re not. And let’s help turn this country around. Let’s absolutely do that. Thank you. And I love you. Hey, that was so good and appreciate, Todd, you sharing your life with us. I think that’s what’s most important about these men, breakfasts and the guest speakers that come is, yeah, they can give us some good topics and good thoughts. But when somebody just stands up and shares their life, that means so much. And so we’ve all been discouraged. We know what that’s like. Three hundred sixty five times the Bible says, don’t fear. That’s amazing. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a power, love and a sound mind. I think that’s Second Timothy one seven. It’s easy to get discouraged. That was a great reminder that one of the tools in the toolbox of the enemy in your life spiritually is to discourage you. Some of the most successful people I’ve known in life, when you sit down and talk with them, they will unpack the disappointments, the failed business efforts, the brokenness in their life. And so, yeah, we’re going to go through hard things. But if we just keep moving forward, stay positive, don’t have fear, have faith. As he was wrapping up, I just turned on my phone to Romans eight twenty eight. We all know this. And we and we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. And then verse twenty nine is really powerful because verse twenty nine tells us what God’s up to in our life. We know he’s working towards good, but here’s what he’s doing for whom he foreknew. He also predestined. Let’s not make those words too theological. Let’s just read them for what they say. God knows things in advance about what he’s doing in your life. And then the word predestined is just his idea of preplanned. God has predestined. He has preplanned that you would be conformed into the image of his son. So God is up to good things in our lives. We just got to keep moving forward. He wants you to become more like Jesus. He wants you to become more a part of his plans and his purposes. That’s really where the joy is. I’ve been privileged in my life for so many years to get up every morning and get to do a job that I truly love to do. Recently, somebody asked me what I do. I just wrote down we were filling out. I think that was a legacy. We were filling out a little game and I put I’m a people helper, you know, and I get up every morning with that’s the joy of my heart. Just how do I get to help somebody? Hardest thing about ministry is when you give people advice and they won’t follow it. I’ll close with this little joke and I’ll pray. But there was I was at a marriage conference and there was a pastor whose son had come to him and said, Dad, I got this friend and I want to help him and I want to give him some advice. And so his dad told him, you know, tell him this, do this. And so the son went and told his friend, Dad, I told him everything you told me. He was so excited, you know, and then about a week or two passes, he goes in and checks on his friend at some point, comes back to his dad and said, Dad, I’m so frustrated. I told my friend exactly what you told me to do, gave him the advice. He didn’t do any of it. So the dad looked at his son and said, son, welcome to the ministry. Because that is that’s the hardest thing when you give children or grandchildren or friends, they come to you for advice or they don’t come to you for advice. But anyways, and you give them advice and you just can’t get them. You just can’t get them to do it. Don’t be discouraged. Believe that God is good and life is good. Life is good. You may be going through the worst week of your life. Dig deep. Let the spirit of God work in your life to pour out that faith that says God’s good and then just keep going. Lord, thank you for today. Thank you for this breakfast. Thank you for Todd. Bless his life. Thank you for his wonderful experiences and how he shared that with us today. Give us a great day as we go about our Saturday and help us to be in church on Sunday to worship you, Lord, in Jesus name. Amen. Greet somebody. God bless.