So we can actually live simple and God centered lives even today. It's hard,
and yet shouldn't it be easy. Marlon Miller is joining me. He
is a publisher of Plain Values Magazine and Fascinating Backgrounds. I grew up Amish.
We'll talk a bit about that. Won't drove down too far on it,
but there are some things I didn't know about the Amish people. So
we'll get started with the help of renewed dot Healthcare. That's where I went
to go get myself right. It's renewed dot Healthcare, just telling me you
are part of the podcast family. And of course we can't do anything of
value without God, Almighty, Thank you Lord. The Todd Herman Show is
one hundred percent disapproved by big pharma technocrats and tyrants everywhere. No from the
high mountains of Free America. Here's the Emerald City Exile Todd Herman. Today
is today the Lord has made, and these are the time so which God
has decided we shall live. Marlon Miller joins me, claiming Values Magazine.
Good to have you here, brother, Thank you, thank you for having
me Todd. This is great. Yeah, it's a fascinating thing to talk
to you about. Simple life and living, but it wasn't simple. And
how you got started and we'll get to this and the adoption story and how
God's blessed you there, But you grew up the way I thought I wanted
to grow up, Like when I started to look at this, actually not
when I was a teen. Was a teen, no, but as an
adult I look back, going, man, maybe we should move and live
with the Amish. And and I mean there's a fascination with that. I've
been in Pennsylvania and seeing the horse courts or horse carts, say, oh
gosh, I want this. Yeah, And first of all, what was
that like for you growing up that way? Well, so I was born
Amish. You know mom and pop or married Amish. You know, there's
dad was one of fourteen kids, Mom was one of six. I've got
one hundred I don't know, one hundred and ten first cousins or something,
and which is cool. I mean, it's a great you know, it's
a great, huge family. But mom and dad got saved when I was
just a just a baby, I mean a couple of years old, and
then they left the Amish church when I was about five, So you know,
we went through the Mennonite, you know, stage the church and then
have moved on into you know, just just more of a typical, you
know, productant style. So I look at this stuff and I suck at
the you know, small one room classrooms. I see people playing together,
even to some degree, dressing alike. And I look at that and say,
I would have a tendency to idealize something I had now my age now
and the one hundred and ten cousins, man, I don't have that.
We just had our first memory, you know, I'm ashamed to say,
in like thirty years. Yeah, and it was great to have that.
But you used to have the family connections. Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah,
yeah, absolutely, there is that. There are so many fantastic parts
of the the plane lifestyle, you know, the horse and buggy, the
you know, down to the clothes. They are all designed and they're very
thoughtfully thought through. Sorry to be redundant there, but it's all about keeping
the family and the church all tight together. Because if you have a car
like you and I do, we can drive one hundred and fifty to you
know, five hundred miles in a day. When you don't, when you
have a horse and buggy, you're going to stay closer together. Now.
Fifty years ago they were all farmers. That's all changed today. I mean
that's you know, there's only five or ten percent of the Amish communities that
are actually still farming today. Yeah, so yeah, yeah, you know,
it's funny. I had My grandpa used to call cars the magic sin
machines, right, because you could go so far from home so quickly.
Yeah, and there is that. I guess the devil tempesys is we're far
from home. And I could see that, particularly as a kid. I
mean as an adult, if you can't withstand the temptation of a car ride,
you probably you know, not walking with the Lord at all. I
do want to ask you a question about being saved, and we'll talk about
that and then get to plain values in this life that you're living. And
as I'm doing this and recording with Marton, obviously we're in our studio,
we have to keep the doors and windows shut, so it's not always fun
to be locked into studio for five hours a day, particularly when I'm exhaling
stuff. And I got to tell you something about naon it. From time
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back. It's eatingperideals dot com. Use code todd three. You said something
that I guess a few years ago would have surprised me, as you said
a group Amish two three years old, My folks got saved. And my
wife and I watched a documentary lovingly done by some people who had left the
Amish church in their I think mid twenties, so lovingly done, and it
described the need to be saved. And I was surprised by that because man,
I look at the Amish people and in some ways as a model.
Yeah, I think I think a lot of folks have this this misconception that
to grow up and live the Amish lifestyle equates to automatically being right with the
Lord. And they are as sinful as everybody else, obviously. And and
mom and dad pop got saved actually reading the Bible on the couch. The
Holy Spirit basically said, you know, look, you're not gonna earn your
way to heaven. And I think at the core that's where the Amish tend
to struggle a little bit. Uh. They they are, they're on the
legalistic end of things. And and and my heart for the magazine are.
Our desire initially, along with a few other pillars, was to share the
Gospel of grace with the Amish, uh, you know, all around the
country. Yeah, that that's a temptation of earning your way to salvation.
I mean I don't I don't know that it's unique to the Amish. You
think there's other forms of the faith that give into that. Have you completed
a part of that as a man? Do you ever find yourself drawn into
the temptation of I need to earn Oh? Oh yeah, I mean for
real? Oh yeah, that's I mean, that's still born. And I
mean, you know, I was born and bred into that. So it's
easy for me to think in terms of of having to to be you know
good. Yeah, but that's where I come back to the cross and grace
and and and it's not me. I mean, it has nothing to do
with me. So yeah, have when you got to this point, you
publisher of this magazine, and the magazine's done well, Praise God. Do
you ever sit back and go wow, I didn't anticipate any of this,
because sometimes you live. There's been times in my life where I go,
wait, I get this. We we are so there all the time.
I mean, there's there's multiples of stories that I could talk about. I
mean it really comes out of Lisa and I adopting our four children, which
that I mean, that's a whole other story, but yeah, I mean
for sure, sure, Yeah, So we adopted our first one in twenty
twelve, I think, sorry, that was the second one two thousand and
eight, and Bryson came to us after having a few other families and so
it it's been it's been a bumpy road for him, but yeah, he's
doing great today. Lives in a group home. He's twenty point seven and
he's doing twenty point seven. So that's a bit of an autistic joke.
He's on the spectrum. And every time that I would say, hey,
Bryson, you know how old are you? You know that sort of thing,
when folks would ask him, he he never just says twenty one or
you know, fifteen. It's always thirteen point eight or you know, thirteen
point two. What I love it, Yeah, I love that so much.
Yeah, the twenty point seven is a bit of an inside joke.
Sure. And then our two middle children both have Down syndrome. Our daughter
is fourteen and talks all the time and sings all the time. And then
our second son is nonverbal. He's eleven, and boy, he gets his
he gets his point across. He can sign and he's just a fantastic blessing
of partner of the show, Alan soaps and I really need to get a
discussion between you and Joe and Calbell together. John was amazingly successful in digital
marketing and created some of the most famous digital marketing campaigns you'll have ever heard
of. I met him in politics and he emailed me and said, hey,
your emails that you guys are putting out with the R and C are
far far better. They're even good. I can make him great, and
he volunteered a sign of that. We got to know each other that way.
His first son was born neurotypical, and second two kids have autism.
Alan was a lot of structural health challenges. He's been through like eighteen surgeries,
nonverbal. Wow, and he chose to employ his kids. He left
the world of digital marketing largely he wanted to build a place where his kids
could work and be honored and that so he'll get that autism joke and he'll
get that really solid Did you choose to bring on kids who had these challenges.
We basically held our family to come with a very open hand. Our
our our prayer was that that He brings us, you know, the kids
that he wants us to have, and then basically equips us to meet their
needs. Uh So, so, my my dad had a youngest sister that
had Down syndrome, and so I grew up watching Pop across the any room
with a five dollar bill in his pocket and a hug, you know,
waiting to happen to meet any family with a kid with Down syndrome, often
with any special need. Pop just had an amazing heart for that. So
I I think I kind of, you know, got that from him obviously,
because I tend to do the same thing. The older I get,
the more you know, I just want to meet those other families and just
encourage them and just meet the kids and all that. My wife, on
the other hand, did not, and I don't know, I think the
Lord put it in her, you know, directly, because she is just
an amazing gal. And yeah, it's it's fantastic. So when you say
that you wanted the Lord to put these kids in your path, I mean,
how'd that manifest? Did you? When you sought to adopt. But
how that, how did he manifest that for you? Yeah, well so
we when we began our adoption journey, Todd, there were not Now even
today, there are not many families that are willing to open their hand to
kids that have special needs. When you have anything at all, everybody wants
that perfect little baby, right, everybody wants that perfect little baby right out
of hospital. And there are hundreds and thousands of families that are just chomping
at the bit to do that. As soon as you put any special need,
that deep pool of families dries up in a heartbeat. We we were
we were on on the on the table for multiple families in I mean that
there were about twenty five or twenty seven different children that were presented to us
that we said yes to inside the course of a year. And we basically
said, okay, lord, we're gonna say yes. It's your call whether
or not you're gonna match us up with, you know, with those children.
So yeah, I mean, it's it's a it's a it's an up
and down journey. Yeah, but you know, bumpy at times, but
He's he's brought us through and knocked our socks off, and you sustain this
family. Uh, and you care for this family given the magazine. Well
that's so when our daughter was born, she almost passed away a couple of
times in the NICU. She she had a bunch of complications, and I
saw very very quickly that this is going to be expensive. And so my
prayer began to be, Okay, you know, help me, help me
understand, and help me see how you want me to to actually be able
to financially, you know, take care of our family. And so I
was a salesman for a local newspaper and a client of mine said something,
and I went, wait, well that's a that's a good idea. And
so we you know, I mean, I quit my job and I started
a magazine in print, and Praise the Lord will still here today. And
today we reach i don't know, forty fifty thousand Amish homes across the country
every month, you know, talking about the dignity of kids with special needs,
the beauty of adoption, there is no better way. There's no better
manifestation of his adoption of us vertically than an adoption horizontally of another child.
There just is not. That's that's why I think he made the universe is
to put that on display, and you sustain your family, reaching the Amish
people fifty thousand arsen or more of them. And I mean, this isn't
I've read the publication. It's it's not just for the Amish. No.
I mean, so my wife and I pine for sometimes and then we realize
that I can't build a thing. You could come to me and say,
hey, build a stick. I could break it, screwed up getting off
the tree. I'm just I'm not something that I'd have to ask God,
I guess to give me to do. But I look at the simplicity of
the life that you guys are displaying and down to actual schoolhouses, like actually
putting together a schoolhouse. Yeah, and this is something that I think could
Number one rescue a lot of souls because there's that family, there's that being
tight together. Number two make it difficult, more difficult for Satan to distract
and distort and depress because is this simplicity. Number Three, to really have
to pay attention to the common blessings God provides us. I really have to
be grateful for water and food. Yeah, I'm trying to do this thing
every morning of Hey, God, thank you for the coffee, thank you
for this dog who gives me joy, thank you for this food. I'm
really trying to be in that mindset. So when you sustain a family based
upon this magazine, this isn't something that should just be for the Amish people.
That's exactly That's what happened. As as we were publishing for the Amish,
there were folks like yourself that are not in that community that's started to
see it and go, well, dog gone, wait a second, I
want to like, I want to get that. Yeah, and that's exactly
what happened. And you know, out outside of that the Amish community,
now there are multiple, you know, thousands of subscribers that are not you
know, they're Smith's and Jones's and you know everybody else. And so it's
it's been amazing. Yeah, I mean, you know, we we were
able to start a nonprofit, you know, we we able to shovel money
into nearly forty adoptions of kids with Down syndrome from all over the planet.
Wow. And yeah, we've just been able to play a role in connecting
those kids that need that hope because a lot of kids that are overseas that
are stuck in those you know, those really tough orphanages. A lot of
people don't know. But if if you are five and six and seven years
old and you're not adopted out of those you know, those places, oftentimes
those kids get transferred into adult mental institutions and they die inside a year.
Ninety percent are dead inside a year. Well, I mean, down syndrome
is such an interesting thing God does with Down syndrome kids. And sometimes I
look at the Lord Jesus saying, hey, remember the least of these,
the poor are always gonna be with us. Solicia with these are always gonna
be with us. And I got to believe the Lord is paying close attention
to how we help or don't help the least of these. My friend Jana,
who is very consistent viewer listener to the cast, I've lost track of
how many kids she adopted. I think it's I think it might be fourteen.
Overall, many of them have moved on to the Lord. Her daughter
Stacey has Down center and she's a pro war I'll tell you you'll recognize this
as a father down sin theer kids. I used to be in the war
Room ministry, the PERR ministry, and my life has changed, and I
missed my sisters, mostly sisters. In the war room Wednesday nights, there
was a lady who came in. Her husband's had met a woman online and
boy, she really loved him, and so he needed to leave this marriage
because this lady on the internet loved him and she came in broken hearted and
for a couple of pro sessions, and we were all really trying to pray
eloquently and bring scripture into it and you know, use our human words to
help God, because God needed help right and it came turned time per station
to pray. Stacey said, God, tell her husband to stop being mean.
There is I'm so not surprised. There is a an amazing christ likeness
in kids with Down syndrome. There is nobody. You will not find anybody
with more joy, with more purity, with more innocence. They do not
have a mask to put on. They don't know how Our kids will walk
into a store and they're given hugs to everybody. They people just brighten up.
When when Adelaide and Bennett walk around, they just draw people in and
at times they will actually scare people. But Bennett loves nothing more than to
walk up to someone and just and just touch their shoulder, just you know,
just rub their back and they it has just it's been fantastic. Yeah,
so yeah, fantastic. Your Lord Jesus said that you have to become
like a child, come childlike to really to really walk talk with him,
and we'll talk more about this. I want to talk about the setup and
how you live, and the schoolroom and some of the stories as you've met
other people. I know you've been exposed to some stories of other people,
and I have this I need somehow to kind of forgive myself in a way.
When I was talking to this audience, and it's been three years that
I was talking with you about pharma and what farma does to people, and
here I was going home eating iberprofen and I've apologized to you for that.
It didn't occur to me how utterly hypocritical I was being. And I did
this all because of my training regimen and the things I'm trying to achieve and
fitness as an older man. And I convinced myself, look, it's worth
the risk and ethic back to my dad who probably helped kill himself with iberprofen,
and the wine didn't help. The depression didn't help, his refusal to
treat his thiroid didn't help. The overeating didn't help, but he was always
in pain and always eating iyberprofen. So I had taken omega three's before.
Never in my life did I ever ever think that omega threes could replace iyberprofin.
So when Native path Crow came along and I tried it in two or
three days, I remember calling Jen from the sales that Radio America who syndicates
our weekend show, and said, Okay, I gotta have another call with
these guys. I don't get it, like this shouldn't be this powerful,
but I don't need iberprofin. So we got the team on this said,
hey, A, we're really glad to hear that. B We're not surprised.
The omega threes you've been taking are not as absorbable as this, not
as bioavailable. Krill is not a fish, it's a crustacean. Also,
these come from the Arctic waters, so pure waters, without the heavy metals
things that can harm you. So we are not surprised, we're thrilled.
The reason I want to forgive myself is I never went to my dad.
I didn't have the knowledge to say, Dad, why are you snacking an
iberprofen In addition to inflammation, it masks the information iyberprofen. It causes inflammation.
It is eating away your gut, aligning to your guts, and therefore
particles that don't belong in your bloodstream are getting in there, so joint pain
heart issues Like iyberprofen, you want to destroy your heart, keep snacking on
iboprofen or your kid. These are your liver, so you don't need it.
Please go to nativepathcrill dot com slash tod and see what specialist they're offering
you today. They're always doing something. Often the more you buy, the
more money you get off. I can't stop taking this stuff. I won't
stop taking it, and in fact, on the big workout days, I
double down on It's nativepathcrill dot com, slash todd. So we joined together
on the admiration and that this you said it well, that there christ like,
the down centered people are christ Like, And we'll talk further about that.
But God equipped you as a newspaper salesperson. Say you've been around the
publishing industry, you spotted a good idea, you knew how to execute,
he equipped you in all these ways, but you're also building a community.
I mean, you guys have a school. We yeah, we do,
there are This is obviously much you know, it's part of a much bigger
story. But but our our three little kids. So I didn't quite get
to Miles, our youngest. That's totally fine. So our home studies were
done, we were we were all set right, and all of a sudden,
Lisa's started to think and feel like the Lord was kind of preparing her
and us as a family to adopt again. And I said, well,
babe, I'll I'll go to China. That's where she thought, you know
that that he was calling us. I said, hey, I'll go to
China if he if he calls us to go to China. And I tacked
on a quick little phrase at the end, and I said something to the
effect of, but if he really wants us to adopt again, it'd be
it'd be super cool if he would just bring him to our door. Right
two two weeks later, literally two week old, Miles was physically brought to
our door. And he brought Miles to your door. His birth family,
his birth family. He has something called mosaic down syndrome, and they were
they just really struggled with the possibilities of what that diagnosis means. Now,
now I'll back up, we had never heard of mosaic Down syndrome. What
that basically means is that there is a fraction of the body that has tries
to be twenty one. So our two other kids that have Down syndrome have
it in every cell. Miles only has it in about fifteen or twenty percent
of his body. So all that being said, our with our oldest son,
I'll go back to the school with our oldest son and the struggles that
have been you know, to put it gently, kind of foisted upon him
with all the trauma. Littles really need to be able to learn and grow
how to do life with kids that are neurotypical and emotionally solid and sound.
And so we tried public school. That was a train wreck. You know,
Lisa has homeschool, she has her master's in education, she's been homeschooling
our kids all the way you know, through. But but we we really
felt that there was something more, and so we bought the bones of an
eighteen fifty one room school house. We trucked it up from Cincinnati, you
know, a couple I don't know, four hours away and headed on the
back of a semi We are nearly done building this thing, and it is
just I mean, the Lord has has just knocked our socks off all over
again. So it's it's it's gonna be fantastic. We're gonna have We already
have our teacher lined up, everything's ready to go the board, the policies
are set, and we are now at the place. In fact, Lisa
just told me this morning that she's now starting to take applications. We are
going to basically have room for about twelve to fourteen children total with our three
and you know, included, and it's gonna be a really, really good
thing. It's only gonna be a couple days a week. We're still going
to homeschool, but it's gonna be this beautiful uh you know, mish mash
Uh, it's gonna be great. And this is gonna be special needs kids.
Actually said, you're gonna write, right, are our three kids?
You know obviously you have special needs, but but the goal is to not
have it be just kids with special needs. We we want to have because
okay, I got a back up I'm sorry. There is something special that
happens when your kids, or your grandkids, or or any chance you get
to put a child with a child that is different from him or herself.
You know, somebody with Down syndrome, somebody with pinabifitous rubert palsy. That
child makes the other children better and vice versa. There's more empathy, there's
more. They just learn so much and that's what you want to do.
Yeah, I love them. So I can hear in my mind people watching
and they are listening to this saying, oh, it's so neat for you
that God speaks to you. And I've had moments and I've shared them on
the cast where God has plainly and clearly spoken to me plainly and clearly,
and I've shared enough of those that I won't take your time up to share
them. There are other people who say, well, God's never given me
the big task. I remember when it became clear to me that I wasn't
going to be able to stay in local radio and at a very successful God
to give me a very successful morning show market dominant for many years. And
then the speech codes came. And I remember when the first speech codes arrived,
I said at the time. Look, I'm willing to not say fake
news because I don't say it, so no, biggie. But eventually you're
going to come around with something. You're going to tell me I can't say
something, and I'm going to quit. And their point of view is no,
no, it's these things. He said, No, that's not the
way speech codes work. Once someone gets blood in the water and they go,
oh, look, I get to control what other people say. There's
blood in the water. And so when it came about that, they told
me you can't say the election was rigged or stolen. Okay, Well I
quit and on the spot done and went home and told my wife, Hey,
by the way, you know that five year contract, all that guaranteed
money. I said no to that, and they're going to pay me.
And they had to pay me out six months. They chose to end the
show in three months, which made sense. And I remember almost panicking mar
when I was driving. I remember exactly where I was in the road,
and I said to the Lord, I don't know how to do a podcast
with God at the center. I don't know how to do this, like
to actually do a godly podcast. And he didn't call me a fool,
But he said, why are you making this hard? Satan is the world's
first politician, He's the first dividing force. He's doing intersectional politics. I
sent you to DC. You saw that you worked in Silicon Valley, you
saw that you worked in entertainment in Hollywood. You saw that you get this.
Please don't make this complicated. I prepped you for this. So I
was given this assignment, and I read a book called Experiencing God that God's
not going to give you the big assignment until you finish home with the last
one. But I can see and just visualize people listening and hearing this or
watching it saying I never got my big assignment. So how does A how
does God speak to you? And Lisa and B what do you say to
people are saying, Hey, dude, I don't I don't have a big
assignment from God. Oh man, you know, I think I think for
me, the only time that I really heard really clearly from him was way
way way early on, and he basically said, and I think this was
maybe, you know, maybe a year in or so, you know,
after we had run our test and kind of saw that this thing had a
little bit of room to run. And and I remember so clearly he said,
he said, I'm going to give you a voice. What are you
going to do with it? That's the same words that That's what I remember
hearing so clearly. And and I remember I told Lisa, I said,
Babe, we have to figure out what we care about the most. What
what are we going to put in this magazine? And and Todd. We
talk about a vast array of you know, many many different aspects of life.
In fact, some of our readers have said, marvel, what in
the world what is Plain Values really about? Because we talk about, you
know, grief and loss. We talk about uh, you know Joel Salaton,
the granddad of the homesteading movement, as a friend, and he writes
every month about homesteading and soil and just all kinds of great stuff. And
there's many many other things. You know. We put stories of adoptions,
We talk about all kinds of ministries. We talk about a lot of different
stuff. And when you really boil it down, we want to encourage people,
like you said early on that that living a faith centered simple life in
twenty twenty four is still possible. We have chickens and goats and pigs.
We have a flock of you know, little lambs right now. We do
a lot of so called farming. I am, by no means a farmer.
I'm just not, but I love it. And Lisa we so she
started our whole animal journey because of the children, because she wanted to get
some therapy animals. You know, pigs are fantastic, you know, for
kids. And so today on our little twelve acres, you know, we
have a bunch of you know, hooves and feet, and you know,
there's a whole flock of chickens and everything else. But the point is there's
something really really special about going back. Everybody's talking about progress. Well that
to go back to the way that the Lord designed us to garden and to
farm. There are so there's so many good parts because you're just in touch
with life. Yes, that's it. You're touching life. You're touching dirt.
Like I don't know a lot of people watching and listening to this,
I'm asking you a question, for real, when's the last time you put
your hands in dirt? Right? When is the last time you drank water
from a stream? I mean I can remember the last time. It was
last summer, last time I drank water from a stream and it was,
you know, coming out well filtered. We could see it was going to
be safe, and man, the joy of doing that. We watch a
TV show called a homestead Rescue and I love that show. I love the
family and they just seem to have it all nailed. They go into these
home sets that are suffering, they help them. And by the way,
they get a lot of help. Not everyone has a construction crew falling around,
and I love they kind of added to the TV show, you know,
the family. We wish have helped from a construction crew of two hundred
people and a bunch of money from a cable network, but they actually do
homestead and homesteading to me means that you don't necessarily need the outside world,
that you are self sustaining right, that you produce your own power, your
own food. I mean the evil of property tax being what it is,
you have to pay that. But so you have you guys write about homesteading.
We do, Yeah, we do. It has been an amazing blessing.
You know, we live in the middle of of you know, the
biggest Amish settlement on the planet. You know. We we have a valley
where We are probably one of two families that are not amish inside our little
circle of maybe ten or so neighbors. And so as as we have grown
are my next door neighbor, Ivan is a big homesteader as well, and
so the two of our families have have really collaborated well, and we we
now butcher all of our meat birds. We have butchered our, you know,
our hogs the last couple of years. And as we've done it,
Todd a bunch of the other neighbor families have started to say, hey,
well, well I want to like, I want to learn how to do
that, and they will do their own meat birds. And then we all
go house to house to house and we just have a kill night. That
sounds kind of, you know, kind of fun, but if you've not
killed an animal, that's what it is. It's killing an animal. Death
is so totally part of life. And and that's in a in a in
a crude way. Animals are here for us to eat and and and you
you don't want to eat them alive, obviously, And so right my daughter's
a vegan. That breaks our heart to hear those things, and that's her
choice she makes, and I support that. And you're not preventing the death
of an animal, You're choosing how it dies. Right. Uh. And
in the case I assume you guys do this city humane sense, I mean,
right quickly, absolutely. And I hope it never gets fun. I
hope killed night's never fun. No, no, And it is because of
the neighborhood and the friendships and the joys of being together and and there there
is something special. The pandemic, Oh my goodness, I made it taught
us so much about where our food comes from and where it doesn't come from
and all this and that, and to be able to know that the chicken
that you're eating is is you know, on it's on grass. That Salaton
wrote a book called The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs. It is absolutely the best
book he's ever written. And and and the and the guts of it is
really very simple. When you put a hog on concrete inside a barn and
it never sees the light of day, you are stripping it of its pigness
that God built into that pig. They are built and designed to go root
around and tear around in the woods and run and play and have fun.
They are smarter than snot Yeah, And and they you do the same thing
with a chicken. When you have eighty thousand birds in a big in a
big chicken barn, and they are literally jammed in there, they never get
to, you know, eat a bug and grass. You're stripping it of
its God given everything right. And so to be able to give that animal
dignity and and and a chance to live the way that it was intended to
live, there's a big fulfillment that comes out of that. It's a joy.
And boy, I went through a period of time where I was a
vegetarian and it was because I saw people butchering hogs in ways it should never
be done. And I'm talking about torturing them. I'm talking about enjoying inflicting
pain. And that's not okay with any living being to enjoy inflicting pain.
I grew up hunting. Some of my dearest friends are hunters. And still
I know this. When my friends take a life that they go and they
reflect upon, Wow, you just took everything that thing ever had or ever
will have. That's heavy. And I get the community thing, and I
love it. I love what I'm hearing. So but you think this is
achievable for more people. You think more people could homestead. I do.
I think it's I don't think it's as hard as people think it is.
Really, I don't think it is. So what do you start with?
Fruit? Trees? Berries? Like where he starts, do something? Okay,
I mean, you know, if it's simply a tomato plant on a
patio, do something, just start and and I've heard it over and over
and over, people say, you know, they got a couple, you
know, they got a couple of laying hands, and all of a sudden,
you know, they're pinching each other and they get to you know,
crack open that egg, and they're like, well, this came out of
our backyard, right, and so it just kind of shoots them down that,
you know, that that little wormhole and they can't get out and so
all of a sudden. Now now I'm not saying that that finding a piece
of land is easy or inexpensive. I know that it is, but it's
it's so it's so worth it and if we more did it, and this
is I mean, this can you know my podcast says a lot of political
content in addition to the word of God. It's it's what we talk about
you talked about the pandemic. I would refer to it as a lockdown.
I don't think the flu caused any of this. This to me was a
political decision. There was a lot to it. It was pre planned.
I'm all of that view. And yes, we learned a lot, such
as if you're waiting for the great handed government to come and feed you,
you are signing up for ruin sorely, right, yeah, And you know
if you are outside of that world, like in North Idaho, we locked
down for about two weeks and then we're like, oh, we're done with
this. So things went back to normal. But being self sustaining isn't because
you are now saying, Dear Lord, help us with our chickens, help
us with our hawks. You know, we've had a drought. Gosh,
how are we going to water our animals. We've had a feed disruption.
How are we going to feed our animals? So I think it brings us
back to needing God, which is a far different thing from God is convenient
on Sunday mornings, right, yeah, right, And so I'm glad to
know you think more people can do this. I'll wrap this up by getting
back to the discussion of your in this community and near this community. And
I find that very very interesting, given that the publication reaches so many a
much people. So we'll wrap that up in a second. If you're hearing
this on Thursday and or watching it on the twenty sixth of June, it's
dropped in a day where tonight you might have and I can't say for sure,
but you might have a chance to get into the free live webinar that
my friend Zach Abraham is putting on Friendly Brothers on the show every Friday.
Chief Investment offs are Bulwark Capital Management, and let me say this way that
he talks about inflation as a silent killer, silent assassin of retirement accounts.
Let me give you this picture that you have stored water, okay, and
it's well done. It's taken out of your well. You've stored it,
but you left just a little bit of oxygen in the container, just a
little bit, not much, but you didn't completely get all the oxygen out.
No big deal. For a week, maybe a month, you try
to access and drink that water. Let's say a year from now, it's
gonna be futrid and gross. You're not gonna be able to drink it.
It's gonna be bad for you. You might be able to pour it on
your lawn. It's a silent assassin. If you don't clean, like if
you're canning something and you do not properly sterilize the container, you can be
giving yourself m and you can be killing your family. Your retirement portfolio may
look great on paper right now, on a screen right now, but here's
the question. How many of the stocks, how many what you own,
are going to be eaten by inflation? That's the question. There are inflationary
assets you should own and that can balance what's coming with this silent assassin.
Zach will go through these options. How they do it at Bulwark Capital Management,
how they use active management of every portfolio which can reduce risk and volatility.
What that is all like. But you have to register today. It's
at three thirty Pacific today Thursday, the twenty sixth of June. Go to
Know your Risk radio dot com. That's know Know your Risk Radio dot com
and register Buller Capital Managements and Investment Advisor representative of Treeck Financial LLC and sec
Register Investment Advisor. Investments involved risk you could lose money, and past performance
does not necessarily guarantee future results. Image of you, Marlin, in your
family and God has blessed you and helping people homestead and live simply and learn
about grief and overcoming grief. All of this God centered. And what have
you learned? What has God shown you? As you are no longer Amish?
But she write to an Amish community and anyone can subscribe to Planned by
his magazine. There's a link in the show notes. I think you should
subscribe. What have you learns? What has God taught you now that you
are around the Amish people, but not necessarily of the Amish people. Well,
number one, it's a great question. I think I would. I
think I would answer it this way. We all need each other in more
ways than what we can imagine. And I think one thing that has kind
of, you know, just like cream, rises to the top. The
story that has come back to that over and over again is when that there
was a friend who lost his wife about forty years old or so, she
passed away of cancer, and they had just had a little girl with Down
syndrome. She was two years old. And the back you know, the
back farm neighbor, Uh said to their mutual guy friends. Hey, let's
go hang out on his porch every Wednesday morning, seven o'clock. Let's go
sit on his porch and just and just be there. Like it wasn't really
a Bible study, It wasn't really a business mastermind of well, I got
this problem, you know, how, how would you guys deal with it?
It was just being there and sometimes they talked and other times they didn't.
And two years later, the friend who started porch time, his little
daughter nine years old, passed away from her special need. And those same
guys who went and sat on his porch. Wow, Todd, We Lisa
and I have have gone through some some deep water. And and this might
sound like I'm a bit of a jerk, but I don't have time for
shallow people. I just and that's something that I got to be careful of.
And and and I know I'm extraly sinful, but I want to talk
about stuff that matters. I want to talk about real stuff. You know
what, I don't care about your mask. We're all broken, right,
We're all broken. Let's admit it. Let's just talk about it. Let's
be real. And if you're amish or not, I don't. I don't
care. It just doesn't matter. And I think there are so many there's
so many hurting people everywhere. Yeah and yeah, like we're designed to do
this, to talk, you know, to talk for real, and I
love it. So you're welcome to the community. That's exactly right, right,
right, And you're welcome to this community in the evangelical community, and
you know you talk about those deep waters. I'm very much like you.
I have almost an allergic reaction to small talk. Right. If I'm in
a group of people, I'm stating there and it turns to small talk issues.
I get it. Some people, that's how some people learn it.
So some people relate, and I can become very judgmental, and I try
not to do that, but I almost start itching. Yeah, And I
don't have that switch, right, I don't. And this is one of
the reasons there's a terrible quote networker in business, because I want to know
you, right, and and I don't. Yeah, we can talk about
your business for a little bit, but when I say, hey, how's
your family, No, it's good, man, it's all good. We're
solid. No you're not. Yeah, No, you're lying, and you're
not willing to go and actually say hey, let's have a relationship. And
I'll tell you, no, these are challenges. So when you see the
challenges that your children have, you know, Down syndrome and autism, they're
I want to say this, I imagine that they're unique by type, but
perhaps not by category, like we all have challenges. Yeah, are there's
truly truly that bizarre that we can't understand him? No, No, not
at all. I mean are our son who is nonverbal? Benny is the
sweetest little fart you ever met, and he gets his point across. I
mean he you know, he can sign yeah, and he does communicate in
his own way. And Adelaide will sing her heart out all day, but
she struggles in other ways. And and Miles, I mean like our little
guy, he's he's just an incredible, you little blessing. And so yeah,
we're all. We're all, you know, messed up and broken in
some way. I think I think children with Down syndrome are this amazing little
photo or this little insight into what God wants us. I'm not saying that
he wants us to be like them in every way, because they're stubborn and
and and sinful as we are they They just have They just have a way
of being so real and so authentic in so many ways so quickly. It's
it's it's a huge blessing. Yeah. I mean the prodigal son, he
goes rushing to the boy right and embraces him. And that's what God wants
to do, is we come home and we finally take the knee and finally
decide to submit to God. If I haven't made that decision yet, know
that the Lord has his arms open to you. You simply need to accept
him as your Lord and savior and he will change you. And it doesn't
mean your problems are older. You're going to have problems in this world,
but he will change you and you become more like him. Appreciate you coming
on and thank you, my brother playing Value magazine link in the show notes.
This is the Todd Herman Shaw. Please go, be well, be
strong, be kind, and please make every effort to walk in the life
of Christ.