Episode #29: Staying Traditional In a World Gone Mad W/ Nate & Megan Richardson

0:04 Now, just a disclaimer on this episode, when I recorded it, me and my wife had just gotten back from attending the football game. So my voice was kind of shot. Now, one of the things I love about doing this podcast is talking to Mormons of all walks of life. This episode is an example of just that I had the opportunity to sit down and have a conversation with Natan Megan. Richardson, Natan, Meghan are devout members of the LDS church who have Side to structure their family and raise their kids in a very traditional, Mormon way, we covered everything from Nate's career as a public educator, to why the decided to home-school their kids, to how they approach dating for their kids. We have fascinating conversations that span the gamut of many, many different topics.

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3:37 So I'm here today with Nate Richardson and his wife Megan Richardson and their baby. Actually this is a first for me. It's having a baby and on the podcast but I've met Nate a couple of times not in person. You reached out to me through email after hearing the podcast a little bit. We had some great discussions and one of the things we both agreed on was that Society seems to be somewhat broken and fraction, you know, just fractionalized it tomorrow and there's some major issues. It's facing us. Now what I didn't realize was that Nate has can speak very uniquely to not only how broken things are, but also So being able to diagnose them and the reason he can speak to this uniquely is that Nate is a dad who by profession is an educator. And because of that, he can kind of see the patterns of, you know, what kids are having problems and put that together based on on what their life experiences and been. So as we as we talked about wanting to talk here and have a conversation, we wanted to dive into to why it is society. Is struggling right now.

4:54 What are those issues that are facing us. So that's that's kind of what we're doing here. I'm glad to be here too. And yeah, I've got my wife, Megan and she'll chimed in now. And then she, like David said, I'm Like you said, I'm an educator. I've worked at different youth treatment centers as well. And I actually teach it one. And so I'm getting when when the kids get kicked out of school, they come to my class. We've also had and I watch them go through their therapy and go through all this and and I see how how it's really an atheist therapy system that doesn't work.

5:37 And how these programs that these kids are. Into are basically not nearly as effective as they could be, if they had a Christian background and all that, and then another side of things that we've seen is the Foster World. We've been foster parents for like six years and we've had a lot of fun times holding hands with the government, trying to deal with kids and so, yeah, I came from a bit of a broken home as well. Well, of the divorce family, all that and basically half of us are these days, I guess of us. But so I saw firsthand how that is not ideal and, and all my kids at these where I work at this treatment center, I'll ask him. My favorite question is, do you come from a like, who in the room?

6:33 Grew lives with their biological parents? And it's basically zero percent right? Every blue moon There's somebody so and then the other thing that that David, we talked about that we might hit on is there's a lot of things actually, but homeschooling we're big into that stuff. And we recognize it's not for everybody and it's not like the only path to salvation but it's something that we're passionate about. So as you've watched this happen and everybody knows but we we live in Utah, right? And so you would think Because of the strong Mormon influence that we would see lesson.

7:14 This has that been your experience? I mean, when you look and see how many problems were dealing with here, how do they relate in comparison to the rest of the world? We have any less problems per capita in California or, or any of those other major population centers? Everybody's got less problems per capita than California. Well, okay, that's a good point that people. Yeah. So actually I work. Most of the clients are shipped over here from California. Oh, are they? So Utah's kind of like a strong hub for treatment for youth? There's a there's a good amount of programs here and States from all around the west and I even have kids from Alaska.

7:58 Every blue moon I'll get a kid from out of the country but, you know, Nevada different states. But so the kids that are from Utah Kind of funny because sometimes, they'll know a little bit of the Mormon culture and all that. And there's a lot of times they'll be from inactive families or they'll just, you know, and you can fire up some of that with them every every now and then. But no, I think it has a lot of problems. You know, you go to, we've got, you know, You've got the this isn't like the state flag. They're trying to change now to get rid of the Beehive. Yeah.

8:44 It's like we just want we just want to be as non-mormon as we can and and in Utah you have this unique problem with the kids growing up. If you grow up like, I'm on a mission to Georgia and the kids there, they'll say, well in school or something like, hey, I'm sorry, I can't, I'm a Mormon, but in Utah. I've, you know, I'd pull that card and it's like, well, guess what? I'm a Mormon. Right. Bottoms Up. You know and I know you were joined the church when you're 18 or something. Yeah. And was not even 18 yet and Utah. Write your know I was I was in Western Idaho. Now, there was a lot of LDS people there right now that much Utah be asleep.

9:27 But there was a fair amount of LDS kids around and so when my wife said because my wife was raised LDS, she was pretty and An active when we met. But she said she wanted to raise kids. Mormon, I didn't have a problem with that. I mean, some of my best designated drivers in high school. Yeah. You know, guys are playing football with their was probably have those guys. Yeah. I'm probably in your best interest to not bad. But what would I What I discovered was is that especially once I got to Utah, is that kids are kids everywhere, right? I mean, sure, but but you would think that, if these kids were being raised with a gospel background.

10:15 So to speak, we would have less of those problems. What I'm beginning to pick up now and see is that that's not necessarily the case, right? I think, as a people were starting to fall into the same demographics, everybody else we're always a couple steps behind, you know, we like to play the neighbor comparison game and well, my neighbor does that. So, I'm a little better than that. I'll just do this and then it goes down. You'll hit alien dialect, right? It's like ringing a little worse and a little worse and a little worse and that's we see what the birth rate to right. Is right. Our birth rate is higher than you know everyone in the United States but it's on its way down, you know. And yeah I it's hard to, you know, you'll get these people do get up at a at a meeting and they'll lecture and say Utah has as this High pornography, this High psychotropics antidepressants and And on the one hand, I'm down with those kind of rebukes.

11:18 But on the other hand it's getting hard to say Utah, statistics equal, Mormon statistics. Rise are so many now that are not, you know, it's like this is a, this is what is it has like the fastest growing State and yeah in right. Yeah, right now I was a happening place to be and I work in developer right on. Yeah I'm answer by profession so a lot of what I do depends on new development, right? And yeah you I think you toss number two right behind Idaho in the boiler. But yeah, no, it's booming and you write the demographics are changing, right? So, and I think, also, I think we have to recognize that even even within quote, you know, historically, Mormon families or historically Utah families.

12:05 They may not necessarily always be active families within the LDS church or some form of Mormonism. It's almost sad because Entire used to have this thing of. Hey we're different in Utah and I am having to take some classes right now and one of them is a required like social justice warrior class that I just punched myself for having to take. It's a hammer to the crotch might be quicker and he said that Expressions hilarious, but I've had to take one of those at BYU for undergraduate. I did. I did studied just about everything under the Sun at BYU and we might talk about that later. I was it some science stuff.

12:50 I hated all the Pro Evolution jargon and I did this other stuff and we also when I was at my time at BYU was when we got into the fostering and so we had a bunch of these kids at our house that that we adopted that we had no clue what to do with because they're totally out of control us. So I say okay and I come from a broken home myself so I said, okay I'm gonna go figure out how to run a family. So I take all these family classes And because like who doesn't want to know how to run a family because nobody knows, right. But it turns out they didn't know either and I was really disappointed that I didn't. But anyway the point is getting at is I had to take another one of these social justice Warrior classes there.

13:35 And but anyway, I both of these classes. This there are some nightmare stories I can tell, From that class, right? Is just what do you call them? There's a rhino's for Republican in name, only because my no Mormon name only or a real Saint in. Its, I know, I don't know, but there's some of these professors that wedge their way into BYU and another eyes. But anyway, this class, I'm taking right now, the lady's not from Utah and she said, I'm gonna have to move to Utah and I, it's crazy over there. There's all these religious People and all this. And I don't want to deal with that and she said, but I moved here and I was so pleasantly surprised that that wasn't the case and they were just all normal people. I'm gone.

14:23 Oh man, we want to be different, but we're no longer, you know, I'd say there's still a remnant of that, but we're so eager. You know, Joel, scows and talks about this. He says, as a people, the history of a being oppressed We're so anxious to fit in. We're done, we're worn out, but then being oppressed, it's like, okay, let's just we want to fit in a crowd now. And that's, you know, if you want to have these lofty goals of exaltation and all this, I'm sorry, that's the only way being weird, is the only way in the Lord said it, right? But lord said you are a peculiar people. Yeah, you are a people that are different. Well, when we strive to be like the rest of the world, just what we're getting here at the world's problems. Absolutely.

15:07 And so And unless we're willing to be weird again and it's something there we go make you too weird again there you go. Yeah something like that. We're going to make a bumper sticker and shirts and we're going to make some money to make Utah Mormon again, maybe a little bit. Yeah that might be a little bit better but but it's an odd thing because I find myself now and I mentioned it on the last podcast, I just did but it's been floating around my head and for a little while here, we almost need to get back to the side. Perhaps we need to be a little bit of a counterculture, right? I think, I mean obviously when you hear the word counterculture, the first thing you think of is like hippies in the park in the Haight-Ashbury smoking dope talking about reaching a higher plane, right?

15:57 But I don't think that's if you if you look back in history there have been plenty of times when there had their has needed to be a counterculture, right? Let's not forget the founding fathers even printed off. Off, you know, use different rooms and say, yeah? Right. Or, you know, the, the early early Christians, that was a counterculture. Yeah. That was a very Christian counterculture, Mariah where they were meeting underground and that sort of stuff because they couldn't meet out out in the open. So I think, I think we have to get used to it. If for Mormons who are traditionalist or fundamentalist, I think we have to get back to this idea of we need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable in Babel.

16:38 You're right, there's so much pressure that it's, it's so much almost, like legal pressure. Now, to be zero religion, you know, it's like the state religion is is atheism. Because if you do anything else, you're in big trouble, and that's something that I've liked that. One of the things that the church has been involved with lately, is with the, with the gay rights stuff. I'm not a we're very conservative family and but In that I heard was, you know, there's the old bake a cake for your gay marriage thing, right? Right. So something that from what I hear that the church has been pushing as let's not discriminate against the individual. Like, if this gay guy wants a birthday cake, I'm going to help him out.

17:25 That's no. But if he wants a cake for his gay wedding, I can buy principal say, that's against my moral convictions to celebrate that and so I don't have to legally do that. But sometimes going to say is, there's there's This politically culturally politically correct culture that just consumes us so much to where we won't even talk about ourselves and that's why we're Sunday only people. Because we're so dang paralyzed, and you've got different different inspired people to get up and say, hey guys, we can't be a Sunday. Only people. Even like, you know, I'm a teacher. It used to be common and it is legal to have a Bible on your desk or to have a picture of Christ on the wall. And like, yeah, I'm not going to shove my Ridge and down your throat but I'm going to be me. And all my students know that I am a devout Christian. And it's not, because I get up and say, hey guys, this is the church, I go to this, is this, and I'll be friendly and answer like, very basic questions, but I know my job is on the line if I if I get detailed.

18:26 So I don't but they just know like oh that's the teacher. That doesn't swear that like yeah I get it sometimes but generally speaking like that's the you know, There's a, but there's what I'm getting at is there's a lot of bit teachers or whatever your profession is, you know, they just won't go there at all. They won't be at all personal or talk about themselves because they're afraid to get in trouble. But we, you know, so it can't be too where we're so afraid that we're paralyzed that. Oh, it's illegal to be religious person, right? You know, let's, let's not have the state religion of atheism.

19:06 Let's say instead of banning God in Banning God everywhere. Let's say we're going to go ahead and do your Christmas party. Do your Hanukkah party, do your all your different religions, you know, allow all the regions to be different. Not just have the atheism going on as the main thing and it's same with States, you know, like if we have all the states that are the same way, there's this big push to make them, you know, every law has to be a federal law. So everybody has to do it, you know, the abortion. Why are they so upset if You've still got states, that can, you can go do your abortion in, right? Let let us have our freedom to be our own people and run away to some state of Refuge or, you know. So these it's hypocritical because a lot of the social justice Warriors and stuff.

19:55 They'll say, if you bring up like, hey man, I know you're in the black lives matter thing. But what about all lives matter? And they specifically say, that's not enough and that's not representing an understanding what's going on. It has to be black Sighs matter or it has to be this specific thing. They've, they're not satisfied with equality for everyone. They want something else so I had just had a comment. You also have to be very quick, I guess to raise a peculiar people in your own home because the older, your kids get. Get the more they're going to want to be just like everybody else.

20:42 And if they're not trained on, hey, we do this. Because this and people out there are going to say this, and you have to be willing to say this, or you are going to face this. And this is what you do to combat this. They're going to immediately think that you're an idiot, right? Like my parents are just insane because everybody else out their functions this way, and yeah. We are different than everybody else, but we're different for a reason. And if you train them from as young as you can, I mean some of our kids, we got seven plus years old right? So you can only train somewhat at that point after they've been in foster care and received other education, otherwise but still if you come in as early as you can and you train them, this is the way we do it because this is the way God wants us to do it. And we invite you to embrace All kinds of people. We're not saying you have to shun other people far from it, that's not our religion, right?

21:46 But we are asking that if you get in this situation in which you feel like the Holy Ghost couldn't be there, you need to leave, you know, and that is perfectly acceptable. And that's okay to be peculiar in that way, right? No, that's that's great stuff. And Look if your kids ever give you guys grief for being weird. Send them to my place for a little while, you know, Lem Lem. Check out the Mormon fundamentalist. They'll be running back here. You guys are so cool. No, it really love being we love having. We look for weird friends as much time can actually excited to go to Joshua Erik Erikson's for the Rosh. Hashanah thing later, we met at one of those things earlier, and it's just really cool group of people that these biblical holiday celebrations Joshua's great people and me him, and his whole family are Nate, I got, excuse me, I got a question for you.

22:48 Your urine kind of the belly of the Beast, right in your work. You have to see everything. You have to go to all those trainings that sort of stuff. What's going on in public education? That's turning kids out the way they are. Now, how are you? I just turned 31. Okay, I'm going to give you an example. when I was a kid growing up and and again, small town Western Idaho We would, we would take our shotguns to school with us, right? We would go play football, right? We would go to football practice. We get done in football, practice and for anyone who's familiar with Western Idaho.

23:31 I'm sure you'll get the reference here, but then we say, let's head out to a Cooter's farm and let's go blasted Ducks. So, nobody knows a shotgun is anymore, but my point is, is that For years, kids were taking rifles and shotguns to school. And there was never an issue. And then somewhere, 19, late 90s. We started seeing school shootings. Now, I'm not asking you to diagnose that specific problem, but we have seen exponentially a growth in issues within public education from your estimate. What do you think's going on there? That's contributing to the that it's got to be how we're not a Christian Nation anymore. You know, like in the Scriptures, it says these people believed in this unknown God, right? Was it?

24:20 Paul or sometimes preaching to the right. And these the curriculums and all this are the proud. I get to be a fly on the wall. Sometimes when the kids are doing therapy, sessions will not like a group therapy session in my classroom. Something and this therapist will just sit there and spew all this random nonsense. It's like where do you get this stuff? Well, it's YouTube videos and point is this is not like a you know, ideally you've got authorized priesthood leadership. That's getting Revelation on how to you know. So without a Christian Society we don't have a family based society. And that's you know the whole the whole point of Christian Living basically is to have you be a family person in my opinion, right? You gotta so so She had, there's, there's nobody cares about Christianity and family and it's like, so we're just wandering around blind.

25:20 It's like, how are we going to get anything, right? It's a wonder that we're still a nation at all, but we still have any coherence. So, let me ask you this, having looked at the problems in immediately Do you think the public education can be saved as it is right now? So, we're doing everything in our power to keep our kids out of public school. What we're gonna head there and just this, I want to dive into this, a little bit. Do you see it being able to be fixed? Megan, I'm gonna answer that for you, okay? And my answer to that is no, because I look at the curriculums that I use and the curriculums, I specifically choose not to use that. I know that the public schools near us do use and part of the problem is Just like Hannah said, on your podcast a while back, we're altering history.

26:12 And when you alter history you alter everything else and and unless you go back and you change the history and the science and the sex, ed for lack of better word, you change all of it. You're doing a complete rewrite of every curve. Rick ulam that is in that school and the odds that that's ever going to happen are pretty near zilch. And so, unless you do an overhaul of everything, they're teaching those kids, I don't think you can because it comes down to, I mean, the fact of the matter is, there's no such thing as A.

27:04 Even kilter. Curriculum, it's either teaching good things or teaching bad things. We have this mindset that we can just be neutral and it's not really true. And so perfectly God-fearing people think that they are teaching in the public schools, neutral curriculum and they don't realize where some of that curriculum is come from. They don't realize the changes that have happened to get to where they are. That curriculum and without going back I mean Saxon Math used to be taught in public schools and it's a perfectly dry math curriculum, but it's a God-fearing math.

27:52 Curriculum, some of this Common Core stuff has all sorts of roots in all of these people. That smart. Yes, very much. So, and without overhauling all love it, which I think is impossible. At this point, you can't save it. So, one of the things that frustrated me and tease me again, is a dad, was this idea that that they would teach my kids? What could what to think, not how. Yes. Right. Very much. So drove me nuts, right? And as a guy who is Big on the early found, you know, the founding fathers of the United States so much. So I moved my family back East so I could be in the middle of it.

28:44 When my kids start coming home and saying, you know, Dad really, I don't know why we have a picture of Washington in our living room. He was nothing but a rich white slave-owner. Uh-huh. Right. And I was like, yeah. And I was like, okay, so these there, they're told what to think. Now I'm a guy that likes True. Even if it's Uncomfortable. Yes the truth. Yeah, right. And I don't think the truth has an agenda. The truth is because it's true. Yeah. Right. And so my biggest gripe has been when, you know, don't don't tell them what to think, teach them how to teach them, how to argue a position both for and against, right?

29:36 And they they inevitably just couldn't do it. So we ended up jerking our kids out of school, right? Our homeschool traditional you online stuff with are the two that we have left, but the kind of conversations that we're having now are vastly different than the kind of conversations that we were having when they were in public school at what point as you guys as parents, did you make the decision? Okay, we're at your current kids out of school. Where do this ourselves? So, before we do that, I just want to say there's I'd say there's two. Sides to why the public school is broken.

30:16 Number one is what Megan said, the curriculums whack and it's lies. Number two, is, the behavior is out of control. These teachers, not allowed to discipline their kids. A teacher is looked down on if they have to kick it out of their class like oh that teacher can't handle their class. No. It's that teacher needs a raise because that teacher is actually holding their kids accountable to some decency. So the kids are going to school. I can I can make Reteach, you know, I know Washington was a good guy, you know? And it's like you can't do in one hour during dinner in the evening. What they do six hours a day to kid? Can't, I can't undo six hours in one hour, so it's inherently, you can't do it.

30:57 But the thing that I think is even harder to undo is the behavior. My kids going to go to school and he's gonna learn from his buddies but it's cool to be the thug life and it's cool to be anti-christian and anti-family and it's cool to be all these other Sketchy things that and, you know, and that is extremely difficult to untrain a kid. Once he's learned those permissive behaviors, right? No, that's that's a good point. So at what point did you guys decide that you wanted to home-school, right? Because that's a big decision, right? It is, I know it was for me and my wife and I'll tell you how I got to my decision. I always said, no, let's not homeschool the kids because I don't want them to because I don't want them to be weird. And then all of a sudden, I found myself Let's homeschool the kids, so they won't be weird, right? Let's keep them closer to home.

31:48 What what was it about homeschooling and attracted you guys, too? Well, I think part of its what Nate said we had kids coming home from the public school that we are having to untrain in the evenings. And we're like, oh my gosh, we spend all of our time on training what they just were taught in school. And we want to spend our evenings, you know, playing games watching movies, going on outings doing fun things, not just fun, training them from everything and or even doing insane amounts of homework, you know, in the evenings as like we want to have Part of our day for us. Not just be school. School, school school, school, all, all the way all the time. Another thing was my son who is currently in fourth grade was in preschool at the time and he has some special needs and the Teacher at the time I had a really hard time with that and I felt like, you know what, I can teach my kids spilling while he's jumping on the Tramp for each letter, that's fine. I feel confident that I can do that and he doesn't have to be told all the time that he's a bad kid because he can't grasp these Concepts because he can't sit still in the class room. So part of it was Meaning our kids where they were at with the special needs that they had.

33:15 And part of it was that I wanted to be able to teach them from the beginning from a Christian basis. And every year, I search for curriculum, some of it, we use the same brand of curriculum. You know, that we use the year before some of it, we find we find new things but I try to with Time teach every single subject through a Christian lens because that's completely different from what they'd be getting at the public school and yet, God should be the center of our lives. And so I never imagined myself homeschooling that wasn't ever something.

34:01 That I felt like was going to be in the cards for us. My mom and my sister are both Public School teachers. They has a sister, that's a public school teacher. ER, we totally, you know, love and support our public school teacher friends and family. He's a private school teacher, you know, but we felt like for the good of our family. It was necessary to teach them from a god-centered basis. Did you guys get pushback from your friends and family when you say, yeah, of course. So yeah I had a let's just say a certain easiest cool person of a certain amount of authority when we were found out that we were homeschooling is we live in a small town. The school was like the center of the town, you know? And I yeah this is what we do.

35:02 He's like oh that's too bad. You know, just really down inflate it and like, yeah. Don't sir Phillip, okay. It wasn't like acting as an official position of denouncing us anything. It's just, it's people think it's so bizarre. And like if you're homeschooling your kids, they're going to turn out to be extremely antisocial uneducated and just you're losing them all these opportunities, they can have in their life. But it's really this weird, you know, President Trump talks about how like oh we're going to be socialist so far. Not careful. It's like we're already pretty much Social, right? That's like we don't even comprehend that. There's an alternate way to do things, you know, other than the Socialist ways.

35:51 And so we're trying to study Outcast, we're the only people in our town well for this and this lot of people picked up and yeah we I guess that is. Anyway, we're going a little better town now and we've got some really blessed with a neighbor that doesn't stuff, but but no. I got reading like probably Jack Monet or something one of these and, and Joel skousen, I would go to his lectures and listen to his weekly briefing and he's just talking about how, like, how are your kids going to learn to listen to their conscience if they're getting all this fire hose from from the state. And so I I dropped the idea to Megan and like, hey, this would be a really great thing for, you know, I think we'd have a lot more success, winning our kids over to God and and to us, Us and to all this good things into loving education, not just Megan learned a lot in school, she's like really smart.

36:50 I just had fun in school and, you know, so it's a sacrifice on, you know, it's not that some schools like the best thing ever because I'm sure if there's like if there's a decent school has God-fearing teachers, it has boundaries, like the community is a strong community that they're not gonna, you know, I've nothing against that maybe with like older kids Elementary kids, especially benefit from homes. Going for the extra bonding, their parents. But so, I was kind of prodding Megan in that direction after I heard that concept introduced me. She's like, that's kind of crazy eventually. She just came to me one day and she's like, Nate. I don't know why I've been resisting this long. This is what we need to do. I was like, whoa, sure about that. Because she's the main, you know, one that has it on while I'm at work, right?

37:37 So I let her kind of take the reins on whether or not we wanted to get into it. And anyway, you had a section here, you sent me some notes and he has section, I'm so sorry. I don't know what's wrong with my voice. Um, you had a section in there called how to teach and in the reason I want to go there is because as I've talked to other people about homeschooling where they've came and they've said, you know, gosh I'd love to get my kids out of public education. But people have been conditioned to think, unless you are a professional educator, you can't do this, right? And so that section there, where it says, how to teach caught my eye, because for you, I'm guessing it was probably a little easier because you're a professional teacher, right?

38:25 That's that's what you are by trade. So, yeah, that that probably wasn't as big of a deal for you, you know. Can I be a teacher so to speak? As it is for say somebody who's Yeah not ever done it. So I want to explore that how you guys teach so Megan and I are both have our two cents on this but my thing that I'm really passionate about is You get the kid reading and you let him read. It's that simple. When you boil it all down, it's get the kid reading. Advise them. Good books to read and, you know, you can discuss that have them write about it, you know, all this, but the heart of it is have them read good books for heaven sakes because, you know, they'll go to the public school and what's in that Library, the public school.

39:18 It's at least three quarters fiction fantasy nonsense and that's what these kids reading day, in and day out. If anything So and you'll get kids will say, you know, I never read a book till I graduate high school and what do you do when you get into? If you're any, if you're ever going to get into a rigorous training like a college or something, not that all college is rigorous, but if you ever going to take learning seriously, You need to know how to read a book and get your own information. And I remember Jaclyn a tells this story about how there's this kid who took a college chemistry class, it was home-schooled, didn't know, dang thing about chemistry, but and he noticed that, oh, all these are people know this, I don't know, dang thing. So he goes home.

40:02 He reads the book, and he shows up, and he gets an A in the class and he's piece of cake. And the professor's. Like, what happened? Because you didn't know dang thing. Is I just read the books. What do you mean? You just read the book? Yeah, this kid knows how to read a book and harvest information out of it says novel idea. And that's another thing is the Home school parents, you don't have to kill yourself over dead, you know. So that's one of the big, one of the big things is get them reading and and point them in the direction of hey, this book like is not this books, kind of trash. Like, how about this book? It's still fun. It's still interesting, but it's actually going to teach you some history or it's actually going to the character actually keeps the law of Chastity, you know?

40:47 Yeah. I also think Obviously, as Nate said, I'm the one that does a lot of the teaching during the day to my kids and a lot of the stuff to be perfectly honest with you. I didn't learn in school. I was valedictorian, but I didn't learn a lot of stuff in school because I follow the curriculum of the school. And so, some of the things that I'm teaching, my kids are things that I didn't learn until it was time. Time to teach them to my kids, the beauty of homeschooling is that you get to learn them right along with them and that's bonding as well. So when I let them know that I'm studying, Galileo, and Copernicus and Thomas, More this semester we're working on Renaissance Minds is my main theme I guess for our semester this year.

41:44 And so I'm studying these people right along with them because Galilei was like, you know, this paragraph and my science book. Upon a Time and goodness knows Thomas More is like nobody even knows who the heck he is. So it's these things that our kids need to know that we didn't learn his parents. The we have to go back and learn with the children. I'm not talking about learning Common Core math with the children. I don't do that either but I'm talking about as you follow their interests and there's nobody better. Sure. To follow your children's interests. Then you because a teacher of 30 kids can't follow the rabbit trails that your son wants to do, you can and I can look and I can say, okay my some really thrives with Hands-On science projects. I am going to carve out this much of my time to do Hands-On science projects with my kid.

42:46 Every other day, they can't do that outside of the public school. They don't know what he's interested in. Even if they do know what he is interested in, they can't always Taylor what they do to that one child. They have to tailor it everybody in the classroom which is not tailoring it at all, right? And so how to teach really is, well, are you bonded with your child? Are you trying to learn along with your child? Because if those two are Through your child, is receiving an amazing education. Whether you got a college degree or not, whether you graduated high school or not, you don't have to frankly, you need to learn and teach them how to learn.

43:30 That's how you teach. And they're going to have more time and space at home to curl up in the corner without 50 girls, distracting them and read a book, you know. And like my Megan, Megan was saying, yo, you cater it to them, you know, we can spend a bulk of our time on this topic. Is it your favorite topic? This subject which you can't do in the, in a traditional school? And I've, you know, I'll say school is not a, it's not a place to learn stuff. It's a It's a it's a dating Fishbowl or it's a you know it's just you go there. They don't do their makeup everyday in Germany. All this like in America were we're like these rock stars every day and like we're not there to learn anything. We're there to, you know, fashion show and to screw around and and it's really hard to focus on actually learning something.

44:27 When you're just under the constant barrage of peer pressure, so at home, we're gonna you're gonna bond with your parents. You're gonna No, and it doesn't have to be complicated, you know. Well let me ask you this one of the major Our critiques of homeschooling that we all here is that hey, your kids are going to be weird because they're not going to get any social interaction. Have you guys dealt with that? So that's one of my favorite things and there's this group called The National homeschool and Research Institute and they, they run the statistics. And It's not statistically correct to say that a homeschooled kid is going to be more of a goofball and we've all known the goofball home school kid. But that's that's not to say that that's the statistics. So there's a couple of ways that I want my kid to be normal and stuff and there's other ways that I don't want to be normal. And one of the really important things is having other kids, when Possible.

45:39 So when you have a large Sibling Group man you're getting so much socialization. You're constantly out punching each other and crying together and forgiving each other and get in trouble together and getting punished together. And you're doing, you're going all through. It's not just during school, and okay, everybody sit in your desk and like okay, I'll go Slough, a class every blue moon, so I can have some time with my friends, but it's The Sibling Group, if a family can have a bunch of kids, you know, a handful kids. That's the ideal laboratory for socializing a kid to make them normal, you know, and and a lot of the, you know, in public school you'll segregate into grades and it.

46:27 So don't talk to the eighth graders because they're like their 8th graders, they're way above me or their way below me. And when you're in school at home you're working more directly with adults. You're with the police in adult. And so you're going to be more apt to look in the built in the eye and Shake someone's hand and and and that's the other thing is, if you're again it's the blind leading the blind, the adult to child ratio at a public school, you know is pretty bad, right? It's like 40 kids in a class. Now, most families don't have 40 kids, you know if they do, they've got a couple sisters to help out.

47:09 Right? Right. But yeah, awesome train of thought but that there's certain things we do want them to you know get an aren't our kids are really are really sweet kids and you know a lot of times you learn those negative things like you know there's there's negative things you learn in positive things and you can Especially when you have some siblings to bounce off of, you know, to socialize these kids, it will work out well and you can, you can expose them to, you know, hey, we're going to watch a movie on, you know, Gandhi or we're going to, you know.

47:56 So yeah, that's a that's important when you have anything. Yeah, I would say, we worry a lot about socialization, but We don't worry enough about the type of socialization in my opinion, so I can tell my kids to go play with a group of friends their age and they usually come home. And there's more of an air of disrespect and there's more of a tendency to use biting sarcasm and things like this. So the kids use all over the place today. If I just go go off and play, if I know the parents of the kids that these guys are playing with if we're going to School groups, which we do, or we're going to museums or things like this, which we also do controlled socialization, I guess they're actually learning how to act like dignified women and decent gentleman.

49:18 Instead of just how people in our society, their age Act, And frankly, you can tell me that my kid needs to be banging and actin cool. All you want as a form of socialization but I'm not going to believe you because I feel like my kids need to act appropriately and they need to be kind to other people and that's not always the typical socialization, sure. Socially awkward feeling that you get a lot of times as your conscience, actually, telling you that's stupid. You don't have to do that, you know, if there's a People jumping around like primates at a dance, like, you don't feel comfortable at that and that go come on. Yeah, this is actually stupid and I'm not going to do it and that's okay.

50:05 You know? And obviously there's that's another thing is, we can, you know, there's there's a lot of cool groups that do any things like this is an actual Dance. Now, the lights are going to be on and the music is going to be decent, and you're going to respect each other. And you're going to be chauffeured and all this. Yeah, explain to me, homeschool groups. What is that? I'm groups of parents that believe, similarly have different philosophies in homeschooling live in the same geographical area that we will get together with and sometimes we'll just get together at a park and the parents will talk while the kids play the park.

50:50 Sometimes will do more structured activities, more like field trips where we actually like I organize one recently was at the kids young looming Farm And they got to learn about how to distill essential oils and stuff like that, you know? So sometimes we'll do more structured activities and sometimes it's just hanging out, but it's with other homeschool families. I guess that we've discovered in the area to socialize away. Gotcha, gotcha. That's it. Most I'd say most well I don't know, I think social reasons like we said there's the academic side and there's the social side to public life and education and I do most wager that most homeschoolers do it for the predominantly the social side.

51:44 You know, they want to give their kids a Cutting Edge education, but even more than that, they want to They want to protect their kids and they want to give them a proper socialization, right? Yeah. So it's really neat to find these little basically underground communities. That, you know, it's like counterculture. Oh, yes. So, yeah, there's a lot of good things that happen there and there's some things that, you know, there's some popular things in the home school world. That that are not as good as others. Yeah. There's a There's a little sometimes, there's some leanings to more fantasy reading. Or I'm not saying don't have fun, and Rita fun book, now, then, but some of the, some of the like nerdy nerdy stuff, we try to tone down on, and so, but, but by and large, the people that I've met homeschool groups are really high caliber people, that I feel confident letting my kids be socialized around them and we'll kind of Know if the kids at Public School date, do you know who they're hanging out with? No, and you have met you like, you have no idea and and are they going to tell you the truth about it? Like, especially, if you're a conservative religious family, which is a minority group and your kid goes to school and most kids have insecurities, they're not just going to come home and say yeah I did this another going to lie about it because they want to save face.

53:15 I know, you know, and really quick. You get a double life. Get your school Persona and your home Persona and that is really unhealthy, you know, for your spirit and everything else. So so what are you guys plans? As far as your kids in college, right? I mean because we can shelter them all, we want K through 12, right? But when they go off to college that's a different ball of wax, right? I think we're particularly responsible for our Children when they're living in our home by then if they want to go and you know, go off the deep end like maybe that's what they need to do. Who knows, but we're going to do our darndest to to Shepherd them and keep them from the wolves.

54:06 And you know, only expose them to situations where we're confident they would Thrive or so it's our it's not as much our stewardship anymore once they're adults and and with how immature Kid is, it's like, kids were never supposed to be, you know, first off because you're supposed to raise your raise and religious communities, which is just not a thing, the 21st century maybe like I've told my wife, when you like, go to those Amish communities and see if they'll let us move in. She's like nah, that you're a, you're a heretic with the Book of Mormon are not going to let you in, but anyway, that's yeah.

54:50 So one of the things that we do with our kids that we liked a lot was because the you School online. Yeah. That frees them up to have some different opportunities and a lot of other kids wouldn't have one is working. Yes, my kids almost have an advantage over a lot of other kids because since it is online, they can do school whenever they want. Right? Yeah. So my kids have gotten a couple of Really cool job. They're really cool opportunities blacksmithing or, you know, just to name one, where he could go and do because you can do school when he gets home. Yes. I mean so he has that.

55:31 Have you guys had any singing you that as far as an advantage? You know. I don't know how old your kids. Well yeah. Yeah. Our oldest is 13, so we haven't quite gotten to that yet, but I do love. We've got kids in dance and karate and piano, and things like that, that We find that it's much easier to do when whatever things flexible, and you can do things, whenever but also, I just want to go back to your previous thought for a second. So Nate and I were both raised in the Church of Jesus Christ.

56:11 He went to BYU, I went to Westminster which, you know, a lot about Westminster. It's the one that was like, recently in the news for having a Graffiti course, all that jazz. Well, they were founded as a college. The whole College was founded to combat Mormonism. So I'm not going to say that my child has to go to a school or a church sponsored school because I feel like I thrived having to be the one to stand up for my beliefs. Now, I'm not necessarily going to recommend my child. Go to Westminster either.

56:52 I don't necessarily believe in everything that they teach you right? And I don't necessarily feel like it's the best environment for a kid to be in. I felt like I was very LED there by the spirit and I would hope that I have taught as you've referenced before my children, how to think, and how to be in tune with the spirit. And if they know how to think for themselves and how to follow the guidance of the Holy Ghost, I think they'll end up exactly where they need to be. If they ignore either of those things I can't speak for it. Not you, gotcha kid is his brain is not to wear. I don't think God intended. Kids, walking make all these complex decisions.

57:35 We throw them into in the in today's society. You know, and sewing complex, like you have a social media account with 200 friends and you've got all these different things that all these different kids are doing and all these different. This kids In the religious community. This this kids this could care less this, you know? And so they're having to negotiate all these different social dynamics and you know it's like do we really expect them to thrive in that situation? I find social media. While it certainly helped me especially with this broadcast and and I'm not I'm not going to say, it doesn't have a time in a place. What I will say is that it is completely ineffective way to communicate with people because We're just not designed to do that, right?

58:36 We're designed to talk like this where I can see your face. You can see my face, we can pick up social cues and we can make decisions Based off of that, right? And so with social media, a lot of times what I would personally what I think is that you get to hide behind your handle or whatever it is and you can say a lot of stupid crap but you don't get the full effect of what it is. You're saying that because you don't see the hurt on somebody's face. Now, I will say this, I think we don't give our kids enough credit sometimes or expect enough out of them, right. If we look back in in just the Revolutionary, Right. George Washington is 16 year old 16 years. Old is voted as Fairfax County Surveyor, all right? And so he's out there.

59:23 Leading Men into the frontier often. I've thought that that one of the reasons our kids are suffering as much as they are now is because we haven't expected enough from now. And I'll say, when it comes to Expecting high expectations of young people, that is definitely an idea lost to our society. It's like, oh I'm under 18. My job in life, is to show up to school and then vegetate in the evenings and weekends. Yeah. And but yeah, and and the thing is, they still have that their children of God who want to do something with her life.

1:00:06 And it goes the wrong way. And basically my one of my things I say is, if you have a kid with a cell phone that kid is dating, whether they'll admit it or not, whether they, you know, they especially if they have social media or internet access that kid is dating now and they're so they're going to want to date, you know, around that age. And so they're going to try to do it but they're not telling their parents about what's going on. They're not You know, asking permission to see this person, they're not getting, you know, their parents advice on this person, there's not two families meeting each other and hey, I recommend this relationship as the parent involvement.

1:00:53 So I think one of the reasons that we have so much teenage delinquency is that, you know, this is how you be a part of this community and we just don't have Community anymore. I think, I think that's a big part of it. I think the idea of community has changed a lot over the years, and the idea of community we have now is okay. We have this town with whole bunch of houses, really close together that have the same government leader. And so we have a community but how many of us actually know, like, 10 people that live within half a mile of us? Like most of us, don't know, all of our neighbors.

1:01:33 We Out because we don't care. Why would we care to? As Christians is one of our duties to go and meet our neighbors. Like most people could care less because their philosophies on life are completely different. So real Community is when you have a group of people have similar philosophy on life. Oh absolutely. But I think the whole idea, I mean, the Mormons left, the United States to create community, T a group of like-minded people who were practicing what they believed together. And we don't see that even if your the church has Wards or branches or whatever, it's still not the same level of community because it's not on every front.

1:02:25 It's not your church and your school and your government are all these like-minded people anymore. you know, I remember there were a few times when I was in the LDS church that I felt like My ward or my, the people I went to church with were really, my come one is where I joined. The LDS church at out in Western Idaho, great farming will farming Community, right? But it was small. So everyone knew who everyone was the others when we move back East, because once you cross the Mississippi Mormons, get a little scarce, right? I mean, yeah, you're just as many out there. I remember when we were in Maryland, we Greater distances between members.

1:03:17 But man, when there was a reward function, we were all there because we, we understood, we had to have each other's backs. Yeah, right. We were it. So I, I agree totally with you that that we don't have that same Society, right? That same idea of community, we have a little bit of it like when we moved into our house right now, There is an anthill of Elders to help us. There's a lot of that was a Delta is amazing, but, you know, other than like this, you really rudimentary things like we're gonna help each other move, or we're not kind of alcohol, our group parties or, you know, not that that's like the worst crime in the book either, but it's something that we subscribe to because it's our communities. Like, okay?

1:04:07 You want us as a community not to not to use alcohol. All right, fine. There's temporary policies that it's okay to I'll sacrifice that one for the sake of community. But but other these like, really basic things, like it's really hard to find. This even in even in your church and all this. It's hard to find people who have similar views other than the very, very Basics. So, how do you guys, how do you suggest you Foster's, that Community, right? Because that's something that I think we we all desire at some level, right?

1:04:54 And fundamentalist Mormons are pretty fractionalized, right? Yeah, you're either in Pendant or your may be part of a group and you don't associate with people from another group. I've seen that before, how is it then? And you can really see it in the LDS church because the type of members you might get an LDS word are going to range dramatically, right? Like we moved around another liberal or yeah, exactly. As I say we moved around enough where I can always spot the same people in different body so it's a great. Yeah, there's the liberal Mormons, there's a A super conservative Mormons, there's you know that guy who bought his testimony last month.

1:05:37 It'll bore Barrett. Again the next stps, the same ten people, right? So it's so they all have those those certain personalities. So it may be just as hard to form that that level of community even within the LDS church as it is for anybody else. So have you guys done? I'll just say the homeschool groups have been a really big Revelation for us and you kind of get lucky so it's like I said it's an underground secret operation. Basically Revolution through exist that hardly anybody knows about but it does exist.

1:06:18 There's this group of people and I'm not saying people who go to public school, don't care about this and that and that they're not amazing people. Like I said earlier, It's not in the cards for everybody, but another thing that's really cool that we've stumbled on is back a couple of years ago. We found the the Stoddard's and the all the cool stuff they do. They're raising the bar groups of this group of handful of people who, you know, who they want to have high dress standards. They want to have high standards in general, they actually care. It's not just them, but there's this really cool, you know? And they have I think we found it through Facebook or something like some, you know.

1:07:06 But these every now and then there's with with technology today we can find groups of people that like you live here on out of there and we'll get together and do something every now and then and hey maybe like my kid's gonna make friends with your kids and you know, from from such children come other children rights. Doesn't feel wrong, but they've been really inspiring group trust that, you know, just a group of people that is not just there, because they have to be that Savon Church. Religion itself is voluntary, but you get what I mean? Like if you stop going to, you know, Church means routes of huge stigma.

1:07:48 And it's a huge thing that, you know, that, like a lot of people have a testimony that they need to go to some kind of church. And so, Do it. That's about where it ends. And yeah. So there's this little groups, I would also say a lot of the groups that we have quote-unquote found our groups that we made or we followed interest in intuition to insert ourselves into. So, So I mean, like rust Barlow is into homeschooling as well.

1:08:33 And when like Nick said, once we got into the Stoddard's work that opens is this whole Pandora's box, right? Of all these cool, little people that go to things like Book of Mormon, evidence conferences, and things like that, and we take our kids, we take our kids to those conferences, the kids that are old enough to understand what's going on. We say, come to the lectures with us and we take I'm out to Dean's house Dean sessions rights, the universal model science and so you involve your entire family in in these things and people get to know you and your family you know and I think that's how it should be. Nate mentioned that we believe the same thing with dating. We're not trying to have our thirteen-year-old date yet but we do discuss like When you date, we want to know the family of the people that you are trying to go on a date with, we don't want you to just pick some random boy and go on a date. Like, we will take the family over to that family's house and get to know them.

1:09:40 And I think as you insert your entire family into these things then you find groups of people that are willing to do the same thing. I had a real problem in our last ward with the way that they Did ministering because I told them you know what Nate is gone. A lot of the day and when he comes home we often have family things that we need to be involved in and so I would like to minister to people who are willing to have my children over when I come over and they're kind of like, oh well we don't really do that and I was like, okay most of the people in this world are like older for one like you don't have anywhere. That you have to be a lot of the time, like maybe you have doctors appointments and things like that. But is it really that hard to find one or two people that I can take my kids over and talk to? I really struggled with the fact that was that hard for them to find somebody that I could take my children with to go, say hello to go because I feel like my children should be learning from the older generation and I should be taking them to hear stories of their grandchildren and stories of when they were little Maybe the baked bread or cookies with them, so that they can have a different perspective than what I can give them the ultimate lie.

1:11:06 There is no group that's going to do things, the way that your family will, so your family is the quintessential group. That's why I'm such a big advocate of trying to have large Sibling Group, which is often not in the cards. It's a health reasons or whatever. It's hard. Alright? And then, there's the social stigma of, you know, of that makes it psychologically for us, we just can't fathom having a big family assassin. You know our culture but I'm sure that's going to tie onto your we're going to talk about till marriage and how it can help do that, too.

1:11:47 Is you create your own little army, you know? And that's that's the you can't rely on any group and I'm very big on You can accomplish about as much as you set your mind to. Now I'll admit that I have high-functioning anxiety and I probably bite off more than I should sometimes. But the fact of the matter is we have 10 children, eight of whom at least have special needs and as a person who has a genetic illness myself, Have cystic fibrosis.

1:12:30 I had to have my own accommodations going all through school and I was frequently hospitalized even when we started Foster parenting, we were like going through the trainings, counting up the respite days, like, okay, how many respite days do we get so that I could go take my two weeks in the hospital and you'd still be okay Nate if you couldn't get all the time off work or if You have so many days built up off work. Do we have enough? Respite days that we can make that work that I could go in patient and get my IV therapies. Like, I am not the I'm going to climb Mount Everest, girl here, and I am at home teaching multiple special needs children every day.

1:13:17 So you don't have to be like this amazing, I have everything put together. I have a Money and great health person because that's not us at all. Really quick thing has to do with that is you're not going to You know, this is this. You're not going to screw up your kids if you, if you School them on your own. I remember my mom, my mom's someone. I look up to a lot. She was wanting a family of 13. I'm her youngest of eight, and she's just this really DieHard.

1:13:57 She loves the Lord her person and she loves her family, and she would sometimes get pulled out of school as a kid to come help. Her little siblings because she was one of the oldest. And her mother would tell her, you know what, you might miss one or two days at school here and there to help the family, but I'd rather you have an educated heart. Then, you know, an Ivy League training around, right? So right. That's that's super fascinating Nate. Now, the one thing you mentioned you're just a few minutes ago that that really caught my attention was this this idea of encouraging people to have bigger families.

1:14:39 Absolutely. And and that's weird in today's society and I'm going to share a quick story with you of when we were adopting, our twins. We had six kids. Now when you talk even still today, that's not unheard of You know, I won't wouldn't say it's normal but it's not very big. It's not out of the Norm Norm, right? And Utah, but we were in the Idaho and I remember, I had taken my family out for dinner, which was me. My wife are for kids and then the twins that we were adopting. Now the Twins were on some oxygen and stuff. So it was, it was a little bit of packing, all right? It was a little bit of, you know, packing them in and out and I'm not Proud of how I responded I could have done a better job, but I remembered that as we were going in another guy in a couple of his buddies were going out and he made the remark of that's just irresponsible and I grabbed him.

1:15:43 And I was a little forceful. And I said, you don't know. Yeah, you don't know me surgery. Shut your pie hole. You don't know, right? How do you, how do you encourage that in the society we live in now, reduced to always having to, you know, people's see our family and the so I can never do that. Your hands full. It's like, it's okay, like, any number of children is hard because it is once you get into the parenting world you're done for your whole world is yeah /. Yeah, no, it's a time for a whole new philosophy to life. But so what? Kind of used to like, you know, so it's just as hard as one, you know, this and this. But but no I we wish there was more of a culture of like more people did that and we ourselves like we hope the Lord blesses us with a bigger family than what we have. Because it's like people say, well, how many dead kids are you going to have?

1:16:43 It's like well can you count the stars in the sky. It's like why are you guys so narrow-minded and focused on the immediate, you know. So why do you feel having a big family? So important it's it's the Lord's way and it's always been the Lord's way. The other way is socialism the other way is the state has to take care of your family because your kids don't know which way is up. They're going to go out and on the Block and they're going to hang out with who knows who and and that these are involved families. If you can make your own little Clan, they can socialize each other. And no, that's a little bit counterintuitive, but I can bear my testimony to how it does work. I've seen, My kids are when our kids first came in our home, it was constant scratching biting like constant stealing lying, and that's changed in a big, big way and we still have time problems, but it's not been me.

1:17:35 And my wife that's been, you know, we harp on them. We do. But, you know, we love them a lot and we harp on him a lot and you need to do that as a parent, but it's also been, we've given them their siblings, you know? To help that. It's like the scripture that says they can't be saved with us and we can't be saved with them. It's like the siblings need each other, you know, excuse me. I think you bring up a great point. At some point, parents, our message gets stale right? I hate to say it, if you were to put it in a in a sports term, at some point, you as coaches, you're going to lose a locker room, right? However, if you have a strong team captain, right? Let's use football.

1:18:26 I promise you at some point. Bill Belichick's. Message for the Patriots, got old, however, when Tom Brady said it it carried more. Wait, why? Because Tom's one of them right now. Interesting might think of the Gospel, you know. Jesus our brother is a movie. That's an interesting thing to. Yeah. When when we start to see our twins Thrive and they were horribly sick when we when we first got, our son had a hole in his heart. Our daughter had a couple feet of intestine. They had to be removed, she didn't eat for the first four months of her life. She was Fed through a PICC line, our son had high blood pressure till he was six.

1:19:10 I mean, just horrible problems. However they perk up quicker than all the doctors had said yeah. And one of the doctors made the comment, I wasn't smart enough to put this shit. I'm sure my wife was but I didn't. He said, one of the reasons I think these kids are starting to thrive now. Is because they are working hard at trying to keep up with the other four. Absolutely. We're getting more stimulus in every way and and I found it odd that the state event at one point one to take the kids away because we already had four kids. And so I think it shows just how upside down our culture is right in this idea of the you know less kids equals like a better quality parenting and I don't think that's it whatsoever.

1:20:04 So we run into this time and time again. So we're trying to raise a good family obviously, but as I mentioned before, we also have some needs and we've had therapy. As in now, social workers and all sorts of people through our home. And one of the comments that we've gotten before, is that we don't have enough quality time to spend with each child because we have 10 children. That's Babylon arithmetic, right there. It is. I have a hard time with that because, although, I may not be sitting there playing games for an hour with each child individually. No.

1:20:51 I Don't have 10 hours of my day to do that. My, you know, putting laundry away with them. Yes, am I doing dishes with them? Yes. Are we cooking cooking dinner together? Yes. Are we schooling together? Yes, aren't you know, are we going on family outings together? Yes, the irony is she spends more time with her kids than most women? Most people do because most people, you know, there's the old joke that you sent him to school and that's the baby, that's the Three babysitter. Yeah, I know. So now you have fun together and yeah when it's and that's another thing is when I went to siblings, enjoy each other's company.

1:21:35 It's the same thing as that person enjoying company with me. Because it's due to me that they have that sibling. You know, obviously it's due to God but I, you know, it's like, we set up this intentional social system to where you're going to get a ton, a ton, a ton of time with your siblings. I am the youngest of eight, but most of my siblings were grown out of the house. By the time I came around and I had my one sibling that I we didn't, we're kind of opposites. We're kind of me and my wife or kind of upsets. But, and so, I was a lot of time I was Trying to get out in the community and find somebody to play with because I was the sports guy. And my brother was the video game guy, and I was the, you know, and it had some negative impacts on my growing up, but if there was like, you know, a handful of kids in my house, I'm sure would have been a lot easier to have a more, you know, structured setting.

1:22:37 And anyway, there is a yeah. So I came from a Biggest family, but I was so far in the tail end and there's this Gap and all this to where I kind of, you know, kind of was like a smaller family in some ways to sure. How do you think we get back to this idea of bigger families being okay? Go back to the Bible. So half of so the first one of the first things we have in the Bible is Adam and Eve. And what were they commanded to do?

1:23:17 They were commanded to multiply and replenish the Earth that commandment has never been rescinded. A lot of people rescind it all the time in their own lives. But God, never says, have one child and be comfortable. That's not in the scriptures. He doesn't say have two children and when it starts to get difficult, you can be done. We have difficult lives, but we're going to keep living the Commandments. Yeah, people will say you know okay it's hard enough. It's time to kind of pull back and yes and no. You got to be personally responsible for am I able to provide?

1:23:57 Am I able to provide their needs temporally spiritually emotionally? But a lot of the time doing God's work is where you're swimming. Yeah, we are want to swim in deep Waters. That's what you're meant to do. So then there's the other half of it which is the biblical plural marriage Doctrine. Right. That's a you know the Catholics esken Catholic guy or there's this little video that played in The Temple visitor's center. It was like this thing called, holy Envy or something that we didn't Envy these other religions for how they do this better than us. And that's okay. And I would say, I have some holy Envy for if there's a situation where you're allowed to do what they did in the Bible.

1:24:41 No. And it's, you know, I don't judge anybody, I do what I do because of the way, I feel about how things are right now, and but I foresee a day and I hope for a day when, when they're 41, when the government won't come down quite so hard. Because that's like the whole reason the church stopped in the first place. And you know, it says you can't build up Zion without the celestial law and DNC on 32 other places, make it very obvious, that's the celestial law. And to a lot of us that's like super weird and but we do foresee it coming back when maybe it's going to take like a World War to knock us on our knees and maybe to knock the US government on its knees and you know, but me and Megan were talking about this on the way over and she's like, I understand this intellectually and doctrinally, like, in my heart, I don't know if I'm ready for that like that's okay.

1:25:36 Like you're not being asked to do that right now by me or by your conscience or you know, your leaders and stuff and like I said, we're we respect people who have different views than we do, but I told Megan, If we weren't living the law of tithing right now. You might understand it on a doctrinal level. But it'll be hard in your heart to give that because you'd say, I don't know how we'd make it if we had ten percent less income and that's what she said about the, you know, social dynamics with a plural marriage because we know from the outside looking in, we hear about a lot of stories of how its Heavenly and consecrating and it brings you to God and Other Stories of how people just couldn't get along sometimes. And so she says in my heart it would be something that I don't know if I could do.

1:26:29 It said well the Thing. You know, if we weren't doing that and then we got instruction to do that. We would see. Now looking back. We're like, how would we survive without tithing? Yeah, we want to know. Oh my gosh. There's no way the God just constantly helps us financially because we got paid tithing. So anyway, so bring back this big families and I think one of the biggest reasons for that, plural, marriage is this thing that God favors is because it does encourage big families, and when you have a Family, you can have that Community, you build your own, you build your own because there's never going to be a community that well, there is, we're going to build Zion, it's going to be great and I'm sure there's some communities out there that I know nothing about that. I my hat's off to him but family, you know, it's like, oh, I'm big into religion.

1:27:30 I'm big into politics and digging this but the biggest thing that we need to be in to his family and if I'm not like extremely politically active and I spend most of my efforts with my family, you know, it's to each person or conscience of where they're called, right. But am I doing something? Good for my country by focusing on family instead of by focusing on getting someone to vote for somebody? I'd say heck. Yeah. That's the exponential way to save the world is to have a family and go big at it. So there's a couple things there, you know. Excuse me. One part you said you know that that the best way you can help Society right now is by having a bigger family, right?

1:28:18 Raising good kids. They're going to go out into society and they're going to contribute I agree with you wholeheartedly I think sometimes we tend to look at Well this will be my calling forever right now. Some point you're going to become grandparents so maybe that more politically active route happens later in life. Right now. There is the if we want to go full scale Doctrine right here and you know you can when you're older person, you can continue to let's say she passes menopause, you know like in God's law like the fault, if that's fully operation. And you can bring another person in your family to continue where I having that posterity, but I get what you're saying with the different phases of life for can do different things, right? The other thing that I would say as well, is that as Mormons? We yearn for Zion, right?

1:29:15 Yes, we want Sania. Well, what son? It's a Godly Society. It is a people who are completely turned to God and in doing that we have this complete turning towards each other. What's the basic fundamental building block of any society so it's those kids, it's the family, right? So it's easier to convert a kid then to raise up a kid, you know, then to change an adult's mind, right. It's familes right. This individuals and spam, those are the individual building blocks. I tend to think that we will have Zion as Ian society when we have Zion fail.

1:29:59 Well, yeah, you which are larger kids and that's one of the things that Nate and I were talking about on the way here to I said, you know, plural marriage might be a Zion principle but if you look at it it's very merciful that as a church we are not being asked to live this right now because if you look at the divorce rates in monogamous marriages right now, it's really crazy. How many people can't handle One more person, and to be asked to take on two or three or more people in your family, just creates a larger Dynamic.

1:30:45 It's not impossible, especially with God's help, but it's a dynamic of all of these people having to get along with each other. And it's something that is a Zion principle because we To know how to get along with these two before we can get along with these five and we're not achieving it yet. Right? You know, when it when things and I think I've said this before on the podcast was, there was a moment when I was living plural marriage, where I remember I looked out and I saw it was so stupid. I was at the grill of all places, right? Which okay, probably for me if you look at my waist line, isn't that uncommon for me to have an affair? The grill.

1:31:30 However, and this one moment and we would on acreage when we were in Idaho. I remember, I looked out and I saw Amber and my other wife out there and they were laughing and giggling, and probably poking fun at me, and all the kids were out there playing. And in that moment, it dawned on me, I had played golf in a year and a half. I didn't care because this is what it was about. So I Think plural marriage is for everybody, right? Because it's going to put you outside of your comfort zone. You have to become selfless, right? For. And you have to be geared to a point at which your family becomes the preeminent concern, your work, and your glory will be to bring to pass their immortality and eternal life and their happiness.

1:32:29 So, There are there is there is in the in that moment a sense of surrendering your own will and say that's a very small, minority is ready to surrender that will because they get absolutely. And that right now you've got mostly, you know, even in the church and everywhere people I don't know I guess this sentence really done a good job at changing the psychology and the philosophy of Everybody family is no longer your life's ambition for everybody, right? I'm going to be a lawyer. I'm going to do this. And I'm going to do that when I grow up, I'm gonna do this.

1:33:10 How about when I grow up? I'm going to be a dad or a mom, right? What happened to that American dream? That's the real American Dream. You can have your family in peace. You can afford, you know, to breathe because there's freedom and all this, you know? And but another thing I want to say is there's also the flip side To where we're seeing a lot of marriages fall apart, unhappy people, and all this and you got to have a righteous people in general, people who are interested in you know doing higher like if you have free time. Yeah it's healthy to do some Recreation but also like I know with me my favorite maybe I shouldn't say this but people in general if if they can learn to enjoy, Some kind of higher cause involvement you know.

1:33:58 But so you got to have a halfway decent people before you're going to mess with this big league stuff. And the other thing I was going to say is it's not just harder harder harder. We're going up the ladder of higher doctrines. It's getting harder, not at all the Lord compensates and I'm maybe I'm I haven't been there and done everything but the Lord compensates when it gets harder with more joy. As you know, The nest. And as we know with, with our challenges that we Face things that we've let go of in life to be able to do something good, the same thing. So let's give an example that might exist in a plural. Marriage family, my wife is a she likes to talk. She likes to talk and she likes to be with adult women and she says man I'm home alone sometimes it's rough because and that's okay to have it rough sometimes and we look for solutions to this because we want her to be happy but sometimes it's me and kids all day. I don't get to talk.

1:34:54 Two adults. It's like gosh, I do marriage fix that problem and then, you know, sometimes it's, you know, so they're harder things that would probably come. But there are also improvements that would strengthen think there's definitely upside to it. Like, I just expressed right? Yeah. But I would say and I would caution. That doesn't come without some sacrifice on, everybody. Oh yeah. If you're expecting to do something Divine without Expecting sacrifice. That's bad. It's not gonna happen, right? Well, I want to go back to something else that you said that you're a few minutes ago there that's struck me. This idea of I want to be a dad or I want to be a mom, right? Where's that aspiration?

1:35:45 That's not there. I mean no and parents. Don't even like, I guess they forget to present that as a no. I told my kids just the other night. Look, you guys. I don't really care what you do for vocation and God doesn't really care what you do for a vocation do something that you might enjoy. Sure. It's honest. But your main aspiration needs to be family life. Why do you think it is that didn today of raising your kid to be? If he's a male a dad or female to be a mom, why is that? Why is that so hard? It's not dignified in our postmodern Society. We have this idea that we are going to liberate all by letting women do all these men jobs and it's okay if you are you know, the CEO in fact that's what you should aspire to, is, to be the CEO.

1:36:50 And what we've done is we've taken woman from her place and tried to fit her. Into men's place in the name of feminism and it doesn't work. It destroys society when you take a mother out of the home. Now, I understand there are some moms that have to work for their family to stay afloat. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about, is when we aspire to have the woman, be the breadwinner all the time and expect her. Her to have a more dignified position than the father.

1:37:30 That's a problem. When we expect her to have a job that forces her to not have a family because she spends too many hours outside of the home to have kids and to raise children. That's a problem because it's breaking down, not just one family, but Society has a large, because we have so many people that have followed this trend, that women need to be this that we've destroyed. Roles of men and women. If you look at television shows, most television shows right now. Demean men, they do the men are portrayed as bumbling idiots, not dads, who are kind and considerate and know how to help their children.

1:38:15 We as a society have destroyed the roles of both mothers and fathers. I think some of that Q goes back to the whole trans issue. Well, absolutely this idea that it can be fluid, right? I think there's severe damage. Being done when you start talking about a woman who aspires to be a mom and then and then you downplay that. All right, or You look at a guy and you say you know he's got toxic masculinity right now. Obviously if you're a man you're beating on your wife and kids. Yeah.

1:39:02 It's pretty toxic, right? But this idea of men naturally usually being a little more aggressive, right? I think I think that's normal. I think that's one of the things that were hurting our kids with now Is that, you know, look, when I grew up most of the guys that I hung out with, we got new a fistfight first, right? I mean, it was, you know, knock knock a dude out. And hey, let's go grab some lunch. Now, we good, right? And, and as we've subverted that a little bit, I think, I think that those, those Tendencies are starting to manifest themselves in more and more violent ways because we've tried to suppress them rather than give them healthy.

1:39:49 I was right, take Kid Karate, take let the boy play football, whatever it is, right? And so in subjective and trying to subdue that natural aggressiveness a little bit, I think we've damaged our kids and I think we've done it with our girls as well, right? We've said something about yeah, it's fine. If you want to be a mom but you should really get your career. Establish first and I think that it's hugely important that we recognize that we have as men and women these natural inherent tendencies, And those can't be subverted, right? You guys got ten kids.

1:40:37 I had six. And now I have grandkids, I promise you you could drop kids on an island and for a while, the girls would segregate with the girls and they would figure out a way to make the island more habitable and easier and dudes with hit each other with sticks and doesn't, yeah, that's just the way it is right or hon and in. So doing that we haven't allowed ourselves to fill the measure of our creation and it's Gordon Peterson talks about how these the more economic freedom Society has the more people self-segregate. Like women don't want to be aged Engineers as much for the ones that do more power to them, right? And men don't want to be nurses as much and for the ones that do more power to them, but we're trying to force people. There's that agenda to force people to be different and you're not cool.

1:41:26 If you're not, if you're traditional gender, your, you know, your must be very sistered as sexist or evil in some way. Absolutely, I think God created. Created everything to have balance, he created men and women to have traditional roles. And when we take those roles and make them Supposedly better and reverse them and change them. Suddenly we get rid of a balance that has to exist for society to survive. You know, you can't just have all males hunting all the time.

1:42:09 It doesn't work. You can't just have all females trying to make things more. Habitable without food, right? You have to have the male and the female working together in society and so when you try to make one of them into the other vice versa, It creates a giant problem. I mean I know just in our family I discipline different than my husband. Sure we discussed discipline measures you know and try to be on the same page as far as things that we feel like our children need. But I am I going to talk to my child differently than my husband's going to talk to my child if the same thing happens when I'm home alone, Force, when he's home alone.

1:42:50 Yes, and that's 100% okay because they need that balance of the Gentle hug and the stern rebuke, right? They need both of those in their lives, to be able to understand and comprehend their own life. I was going to say that this is the great day of true women's Liberation in a lot of ways. I think the biggest way it's not is that women can't choose what husband they want if he's already married, right? That's a that's the that's the extreme irony that that's really anti. Feminism that made that illegal, but so you've got, you know, the woman is of, she's chained down by this time, she has to spend in her home, raising her kids, right? Well, guess what?

1:43:37 The man is also changed down. By this Matt time, he has to spend putting the bread on the table, you know, sometimes both of those are our hard and not what we want to do immediately, but this is a awesome time to be alive because we've got its, I can order a book. Have it shipped to my house for like, under five dollars in under a week you can get, you know, you've got books, you've got audio books, you've got the internet, you've got not to mention in America, great wealth. That give us more free time than any time the history. So the thing is is you can't, you know, it's really backwards to do all the career first and family later stuff. And there's a really I one of my favorite messages that I heard recently was Elder Neil Anderson gave that top called children and he gave those examples where it's like, you need to, you know, like it gives me a story about this guy who is wanted to go to med school and so they're putting off having a family and I remember who's Spencer Campbell or what, Spencer can buy a lot of good things to say about family relationships and he says, He's counseling with this guy is like, how am I going to have a family?

1:44:59 I need to go to med school, then we'll do that stuff. And this, this leader says, why would you? Why would you break God's commandment in order to be a doctor? You can have both. If you're faithful, you can go to med school and have a family and that's when I heard that over the pulpit was like I haven't heard anything that bold in a long time because it's just so It unpopular these days, but really, like a lot of times we see families, what you do like when you retire. Once we've got everything figured out. Once, I've got this Nest Egg, once I've got all this, then we have a family. It's so backwards.

1:45:41 Family is. We're supposed to go on the adventure with families who you're supposed to scrap with your you know you do it together and you know that's and you all learned lessons together, you know? No, we we took on this fostering thing and I was just finishing school. Nate was still in school. He's still in school because he just loves to keep learning, but it was one of these things that everybody was like, well, why are you doing it now? And why do you have to have kids now? And it's like, whoa, why would we not want It's right now. Like of course I'll quit my job as soon as we get kids and they will keep working in fact for a while. He was going to school and working two jobs so that we could have kids and we did it because we felt like that's what we'd been asked to do and it was amazing. How many friends and family were like, but why? Why you guys don't have?

1:46:58 Like a good Nest Egg built up. You guys don't have a decent amount in your savings account yet and we were kind of like, but we feel like we've been told that we need to do foster care in. There's kids that need our help and if we're following the Lord, like will be. All right? And financially, were a lot further ahead than we were when we started, and I feel like a lot of that is because we follow the promptings of the Lord to Have a family when maybe according to the world's standards, we didn't have all the money in the world. But what's come of that is my kids actually have a lot more money since then, a lot of kids their age, right?

1:47:40 Like we took them to the carnival a few weeks ago and we were discussing, you know, how much tickets cost and things like that. And my oldest daughter was very much like, well, I don't want to waste our money. So if I do this, We can do this. And if we go on the day where all the rides are one ticket instead of three or four tickets, then, you know, we'll be able to use our money for other things later. I don't think all children have the same comprehension of scrimping, and saving, and reusing and recycling. Not that we absolutely have to at this point, but it's something that our children have learned to be Thrifty in ways that not every child does.

1:48:27 Does and I think it's a good thing. And the same goes for marriage, you know? I think I didn't have any money when I got married. I'm pretty sure. But, and it's, it's like great if that's a, you know, it's wise to like grow up save money, like maybe for your that adult, or marriage age, or whatever. I for X y&z reasons. I wasn't in that position but we had to move forward with faith and get married. And that's, it's a very unpopular thing, you know, and the other thing I wanted to say is we've talked a lot about being foster parents. This all equally applies to just being a normal parent. We're just a little bit biased because that's been our life experience and there's a lot of great work you can do like hey these are basically refugees that needed somewhere to go and that's great but there's drawbacks to it as well and there's some of these kids that there's some there's some Foster Kids that wouldn't work well in our house because like we don't do well with with drugs.

1:49:32 We don't do well with XYZ that we won't hash it all out here but anyway and there's different constraints on what you can and can't do as a parent when you're when you're working with the government and your parenting. But I just want to say, it's not for everybody and we're not here like telling everyone to go be a foster parent. We're just saying in our world is like we actually dealt with infertility. Long time, which is what got us into it in the first place. And we've been blessed lately to have some, some bio kids as well, due to some medical advances. But I just wanted to say we're not, we're not sitting here saying that, that's what everybody needs to go.

1:50:16 Do like, ideally, the the way to do it is to have your own family and we were talking about, you know, because you can't solve Everybody's problems, we're talking about how to get back to the idea of large families. We talked about having that child as a priority and we talked about plural, marriage. But this other thing is don't wait till you're in. You're almost almost Baron age to start having a family, you know, we got to re-think life to where we're you gotta, you know, so we're that's you got it. The you know, if family are like what you're going to do later after you've accomplished your goals, you're probably not. Can have a very big family now.

1:51:06 I also want to say this is really sensitive topic because I feel like maybe most your listeners or some of them at least are going to say these guys are jerks. Like I don't have a big family and I'm still a good person and like I'm doing my life's calling. We understand that we're just plugging for big families because we feel like if if it's within your realm of possibility Tea and you're interested in doing something for God. That's our number one. Recommendation is go have a family. Look, we are there listening to a Mormon fundamentalist. Yeah, that's that's why the idea of a big family. That's true. Probably in the wrong spot. Well, it's a breath of fresh air to get to be a little different crowd where maybe some of your audience does have, you know, twice as many kids as we do how cool that is, you know, like how much we envy that and how different it is. from what we're used to, because we're like, I said, we're used to basically like Being really careful to not you know scare people and like it's on the other hand.

1:52:07 I scare people all the time. People tell me, I don't know how you can do it being a foster parent like well through the grace of God, and then there's other people that are like, I would love to be a foster parent and I tell them, yeah, well, let me tell you what you're getting yourself into. Would you really enjoy this? She says, foster parent. She also means just a parent in Someone who's interested in bringing children into your home, you know at any phase of your life are you interested in keeping the doors open biologically and whatever other means you have to having a child-centered home you know well yes and no.

1:52:50 Obviously we believe that having a family through any means is Ordained of God, okay, not any means. But whether it's adoption or biological or whatever if you are following those laws to have a family that's great. There are definitely some difficulties inherent in being a foster parent and as you said holding hands of the government while you parent that are a little different than they would be. Or a biological child and you have to be prepared for that. Sure.

1:53:34 Yeah, because they're going to be in your home, all right? I've been through it and then oh yeah, that irritated me and I was like, I thought we were done with the Quartering Act back in Revelation period, right? So no, I get that. Well guys, we've done almost two hours now. So I feel like we've reached a good spot here. I'd love to have you back on that. Something you guys would be interested. In. Yeah, it's not every day. You get to sit around and Chat about your world views from me there. Anything you want to go over now. We didn't get to I guess since one more, well, maybe I'll milk this but since I'm a, i primarily teach science and something that I've been blessed to find as like creation science, right?

1:54:28 And how that's actually really valid science, it's just unpopular and Satan's out to get it and not every creation science idea is is true, but you're going to anyway. That's one of the big reasons that Like ditching school and doing something on your own in your house or private school. Maybe a Christian School that but it's hard to find anywhere is evolution is completely false. I have a strong conviction that it is completely false things can adapt. You know, there's birds beaks going to get longer on this certain Island, okay? Because it's going to, you know, obviously some of that, but species to species and it's it's a really big thing that you I hear about a lot of people who lose their faith in God, they lose, you know. They're, you know, Adam and Eve go out the window. You know, the, you know, it's basically a way to again turn things over to the state because the parents are incapable and the and it's, you know, there's this great think, it's probably more damaging than that, right?

1:55:39 It's damaging whoo-wee. Perceive ourselves to be right if if if if the gospel truth and we are Divine sons of daughters of a Divine, heavenly father that comes with some responsibilities, right? And also comes with this idea of a Divine potential, if we are nothing more than the happenstance of a certain slime with a certain bacteria, they got struck by a certain lightning bolt on a certain day at a certain point. Pond, and we became animals and we're nothing more than evolved animals. Well, we can relinquish some of that responsibility.

1:56:21 These are my animal instincts, right? This is it's not enough to just say God uses Evolution because that's what they'll all say, it BYU, that's what they all say everywhere. If you have someone who has Christian inklings that just say God used Evolution. But that's it's laughable because Evolution was designed as as a way to get God out of the picture, the whole point. Yeah. Absolutely. The whole point and it's so entrenched in our society that no one thinks don't thinks twice about it. It's like the whole concept of schooling your own kids. It's just not in people's vocabulary. There's all these truths that are so far removed from our society that it doesn't cross anybody's mind.

1:57:05 It doesn't cross some of the best people's minds. It's it's like when in the Book of Mormon, when he says, if you find fault with me, I'm sorry, I'm doing my best. Let's I feel like there's so many good people. Today that they just don't know where to go for more truth and more Effectiveness, right? We can heal our homes. We can have kids who are successful. Yeah, there's going to be kids who just want to be crazy, no matter what you do, but by and large like we have some solutions and we didn't get to get into a lot. There's we could go down. There's there's, you know, these best-kept secrets of all these different Social aspects that we could be doing. And and all this, that we're, we're really pleased to be able to, you know, I do.

1:57:58 I do a little blog, it's Richardson studdys.com. I've put a lot of this, a lot of these different topics and I write about them there. She'll, you know, we do whatever we can to get the word out and like, like, we've been saying this our theme throughout this whole Is our family, is our main effort. No, we're not expected to save the world. We're just we focus on your family but it's really. There are like people go around. And they, it's really hopeless because it's like I don't know what to do differently. I've got my family's falling apart. I just don't know what to do, differently. I've tried everything.

1:58:42 I've tried all the antidepressants. I've tried all the extra summer school. I've tried all the Therapists. I've tried you know, taking my kid to the young men's activities or all these different things and you got to dig a little a little deeper, but it's like in the scripture, you know, the New Testament where he has to have the scripture explaining like how am I going to know this? If nobody's here to teach me and so when you find a little nugget you know if something that's good and something that works, then you run with it and and you just collect them as much as you. Can. So anyway, I think I think in the end One other scriptures that I try to live by is the Stripling Warriors said that they didn't doubt because their mothers knew it and they'd been taught in their home enough that they risked their lives, over their belief.

1:59:47 In God, that he would come through for them in whatever manner that meant. They didn't know whether they'd be spared or not, but they had a belief that had been instilled in them in the home and that's what I try to do with. My kids is instill in them. The belief that, as you said, they have a Divine Purpose and a Divine identity and God loves them and cares about them. And even when they can't connect with me and I can't connect with siblings that there is Somebody there to listen to them that cares about what they're doing and who's intimately interested in the details of their lives. And if they can understand that whether or not they understand, Calculus whether or not they understand astronomy.

2:00:38 It's not nearly as important. There's all of these founding fathers and really important people that if you go back and look, I mean Joseph Smith didn't have a ton of Education you know a lot of the people in our history, legitimately didn't have the education. We are mandating our children to have right now, so it's not 100% necessary that they pass every single subject to as high. As the school's want them frankly. In my mind, what is necessary is that we teach them to be good? People that depend upon the Lord for everything and work as if it depends on them but pray and follow the guidance of the spirit as if it all depends on him. And if we do that, They're going to end up. In a much better place than if we spend all of our time. Making sure that every standard of every school year is checked off in the order that the public school wants them to check it off and that they're doing every extracurricular that every kid their age does, that's not nearly as important. 100% the family is is what's most important we've we've advocated some different tricks that help

2:02:10 us like maybe homeschooling or different experiences we've had but really the thing that we encourage people to do most is is to have a family and how you do that is not it's going to all work out in the Lord's. Going to impress you what to do but yeah. and it's It's fun, listening to your podcasts and to getting to meet different people, that have so many cool things to talk about, and it's just lots of fun going off on a bunch of topics. So, we appreciate the opportunity. Well, thank you. I enjoy having everybody here. That's been here so far.

2:02:54 And I've always said, I started this for me because there's a lot of cool people out there yourselves included, that that I can definitely learn from including some from. So, thank you for being here. I'm serious. Do this again. Well to all right, Perfect. All right, everyone, I'll talk to you next time.