Episode 12

There we go, the Reds have officially tied the game up at the bottom, top of the 3rd inning in Philadelphia. Game 2, Will Benson, our guy who was scoring, Tyler Stephenson, and that makes it a 1-1 ball game. This is game 2, the Reds have already won game 1. Alright, we're going to play baseball. What's your iPad? Where's your iPad? Why aren't you using it? Why don't you use your iPad, bro? Why don't you use your iPad? Be nice! Are you ready yet? Are you ready? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Loft Sheet Podcast. I'm Nazari Pangelo. And I'm Cole Bissett. And, you know, last episode, Cole, you did your own little thing. It was your turn to do your own little thing, and you decided to bring a guest on, Mr. Zachary Elrod. We greatly appreciate his contribution to the podcast. Cole, would you like just a little insight into your experience, you know, doing a podcast with a new guest, without me? Did you enjoy it, dislike it, somewhere in the middle, or did you do it with a very Well, not having you here was actually a breath of fresh air. It was like I had a chance to go wild. I had no restrictions. No, I didn't. It was new. Definitely interesting to kind of just run the show by myself. Wasn't used to that. I did more of an interview style with Zach last time we had a guest, my girlfriend, and we just kind of just talked. Didn't really, we did what we normally did. Talked about quotes, and didn't really ask her any personal questions, and so I kind of wanted to flip the script, and so I decided to just go on and ask Zach personal questions about his faith life, and he was actually really informative and was really good to have a podcast with. I enjoyed talking to him. I enjoyed spending time with him. He had nothing but higher guards for our podcast, so I can't complain about him, because he was great, and he really was a good guest. I enjoyed having him on. Zach, if you're listening to this, I enjoyed having him on, and we hope to get more guests in the future. Like I said, I don't know how many episodes ago this was, if any of you would like to be on our show, just email us. All our contact info is on Instagram, and our save story. So go check that out. We'd love to have more guests. It's my personal favorite thing to do, because it's kind of something new. We get the chance to take a turn and not have it be about us for once. We have a chance to talk to somebody else than it would be about them, and it's always better for us to get knowledge from an outside source rather than just ourselves. We can only talk about so much. It would be interesting to do what you did with Zach with each other more in the episode, to ask questions instead of each of us just talking. It would be an interesting way to turn it a little bit, if we can think of anything. Just a little bit of a, you know, light bulb, I guess, moment in the middle of the podcast. Yeah. Anyways, just completely dropped my mic. Cool, take it away. It's going to sound really bad here for a second. Hold up. All right, there we go. Thanks, yeah. Anyways, so, you know, we have Easter over the weekend. Nothing greater than Easter, the single greatest event of all time. Literally, single greatest victory, single greatest achievement, whatever in the world you want to call it. The single greatest thing of all time. He is risen. Yeah. He's risen, guys. And I think I was at St. Timothy's Church in Union, Kentucky with my girlfriend, and I was telling her during the homily, I was like, I could come home to a brick wall right now. Like the priest was just talking about the way that God had won this battle, how Jesus had won this battle, and how he had overcome Good Friday, his death, and how it looked so bleak, but no, it's won, it's over, and now it's celebration, we are victorious. And it was one of those moments where I was like, dang, I could do anything right now. I was so pumped up, the blood and the adrenaline was just flowing from this homily because I was just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we did it, yeah! I was so pumped up, literally standing in the back of the church, I was freaking out right now, I'm like, I can do this right now, I'm looking over and I'm like, come on, let's go! It was a very, very, I was so fired up. I could envision this. I could see you sitting in the pew, just shaking, I could see the heat coming out of your ears, like you're ready to go. I was so pumped, I was like, dang, whatever we gotta do, let's go do it, babe. And then it reminded me a little bit right now, my dad asked me, like we were talking at the dinner table with all of us, he asked me like, what is the end time like, when Jesus comes back? And I was kind of like, Jesus is coming back in this moment that I was thinking about, like this fire, like yeah! Like Jesus comes back to just end it forever, like devil, all getting sent to hell, like he's coming down with all of his angels ready to just, boom! I was just pumped up, all this adrenaline going through me from this, probably from my dad's question, I'm like, yeah! Seems like you still have that adrenaline. Pumped up, baby, I mean, that's what you should get you, like, I think it was, I think it was Father Mike that I was listening to, said that, you know, we have the 40 days preparation period. Clarification. Schmitt? Yes, Father Mike Schmitt, sorry. Yeah. Good clarification. Anyways, he was talking about, we have the 40 days of preparation, and then we have our 50 days of celebration of Easter afterwards, right? So you have like, oh, the preparation, the time is very tough. Yeah, it's not over. It's still going. But then you get the celebration part, that gets you even more pumped up. You're like, every time you get to go to Mass, and you have like this new celebration of the risen, like at St. Francis here at the University of Alabama, like, you haven't gone, have you gone to the church yet? What are you talking about? Have you gone to the church yet? Here? Yeah, here. Yeah, I've been to the church here. Have you seen, no, have you seen what they've, like, done? Like, they added the decoration, like, some flowers. Oh, yeah, I haven't been to the church until last time, because I was at, I went to church at St. Margaret. Yeah, but they have, like, this, there's some flowers up there, this new, like, picture, where they read the readings, and then they have, like, he is risen, like, in the middle on the altar, and it's just, like, very celebration-like, and it just gets you even more pumped, like, the preparation is, like, preparation first, like the passion, you're like, dang, he's just died, but then the celebration comes right after, when you read the resurrection, mmm, all these just good juices flowing right now, so pumped. I remember, did I say this in the last podcast, when we were sitting at church the other day, and it was just you and me, and it was packed, like, everything was packed, but you and I sat in a corner on the dang window, so, and Nazariah leaned over to me, and he's just, like, how can you not believe, like, how can somebody not believe, and he's just, like, that's just, like, it's un, like, the kind of concept I can grasp in my mind, and I sat there and thought about the rest of the Mass, and I was, like, man, I feel the exact same way, I'm, like, sitting there for the rest of the Mass, and even through the Triduum this week, I was, like, I mean, I couldn't make Good Friday Mass, because on the way home, I had an hour and a half traffic delay, so I had to go back road, and then I got out slow, too, so I didn't add on, and so I listened to a live stream of it, and the entire time, I'm just sitting there, like, just, like, oh, it's building, I can feel the fire going, it's coming, it's coming, it's coming, and then I, once it was over, I know it's supposed to be a solemn silence, but I have learned that my solemn silence is the exact opposite of silence, and so I turned on Praise and Worship, and I was just sitting in my car, just singing, like, my lungs out, and I mean, there were a couple of tears coming down my face, I was just, like, and it was, like, complete and utter joy, and I, like, there's no words to express it, I just knew that, like, during that time, that God loved me that weekend, and I could just feel it, like, I could feel His presence, and it was just really, really awesome, not that God doesn't love you every day, because He does, but I just, I felt His presence in that moment, and this weekend is always a good renewal of just, like, it just feels like you're being nourished, like, oh, you're getting this, you've been famished, you're out, you kind of just have, just been on a routine, and then finally you get the turtle woman that comes around, and then Easter comes around, and it's like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, he's risen, and it's just, like, no words, like, all words, literally out of your mouth, he defied death, he broke something that everybody thought was unbreakable, you die, you die, there's nothing you can do about it. I think it's so, I was talking to my girlfriend about this as well, like, the mystery of the resurrection, like, I was talking, I was like, I can fully picture and imagine in my brain, like, the passion, because we know what happened, like, with, you know, the scourging at the pillar, or, like, the nailing of the cross, or the carrying of the cross and the falling, like, I can picture that in my brain, right, like, you can picture, like, the bleeding and all of that, can you really picture the resurrection? No. Like, I'm sitting there trying to imagine, I'm like, Katelyn, I cannot imagine this, like, this is just, like, it's so, you can't even fathom it, like, how does it work, like, was it like, oh, like, Jesus is in the ground, showing, like, a hand, like, this is the ground, right, and you're like, what, do you, like, rise up out of the ground? Like, I'm just sitting there trying to imagine, I'm like, dude, it's like, you can't even imagine it, like, that crazy of a thing that happened, and then, that's probably, like, going back to how can you not believe, like, it's a mystery of the resurrection, how do you know that it happened, because there's only one person who's ever done it before, and he's not even fully a person, he's God, and a person, so, it's like a whole different mystery. And even the soldiers didn't even realize it happened, I mean, they're greeted with angels at the tomb, and, I mean, nobody knew, and he just appeared later on, and he's just like, hey, guys, I'm alive, nice to see you guys, but, did I tell you I went to the Tenebrae? Do you know what the Tenebrae is? I do not. It's on the Good Friday tour, so I didn't go to Good Friday, but I did go to the Tenebrae after, well, I tried my best to attend Good Friday, virtually, it was interesting, but I went to the Tenebrae, which is at 7 o'clock, and so what it's kind of, the Good Friday is more of the veneration of the cross, and then you get to the Tenebrae at 7, which is more just like his death, and so, you start off, and I go to a, it's a Benedictine monastery, so they do a lot of Gregorian chants, and so, they chanted a bunch of readings, basically leading up to his crucifixion, and then, there's a candle, there are like seven candles, and for, after each reading, they extinguish a candle, and move on to the next, extinguish a candle, extinguish a candle, extinguish a candle, so they have the last one. Once they got to the last candle, I've never been in this. My mom has, and she gave me the look, like I was about to be scared out of my mind. Sure enough, I was scared out of my mind. All the lights in the church shut off, completely, without warning. Like, I am, it is literally pitch black, except for one light. Like, you can't see anything. When I say, this church can go completely dark, it can go completely dark. Like, it was, you could not see a single thing, and then all of a sudden, there's just this loud banging noise coming from a thousand places across the church, and it's like wood hitting together, and it's all over the church. Like, it sounds like it's surrounding you, and all the monks are over there with wooden paddles, hitting them back and forth, to symbolize the earthquake after it was crucified. So, when the lights shut off, boom, it's like, there, Jesus just bowed his head, and the earth shattered, and it was to symbolize that. And then, my mom pointed out, she was probably like, I can't imagine how much fun the monks have doing that every year, I just didn't write. Because it's like their time to act as kids for a minute. But, it was really, it was interesting. I'm not a big fan of the Gregorian chant, just personally, because it's just not as entertaining to me, for some reason. But, I really kind of thought that that was a neat experience, having, like, everything go completely dark. So, let's enter into the mystery, you know, of the Passion even more, and enter into Silent Saturday for a moment, okay? We have, you know, in the perspective, in the eyes of the disciples, right? Jesus, this man you've been following for three years, who had claimed to be, you know, the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior of the world, Savior of sheer people, he dies, right? You think, this guy's unstoppable, he's not gonna die, he's gonna lead us to a promised land, right? And then what happens, he finally gets arrested, and put to death in the most gruesome way possible. What in the world are the apostles supposed to do now? Like, what in the world are you gonna think, if that happens to you? Say that you, let's see, let's see, let's make an analogy here. Did you and Evan have a thought with discipleship on this too? Yes. Okay, I thought so, because this is sounding like exactly what we were talking about. But, it's, like, what are you supposed to do when the man you've been following for three years of your life, and you left your old life, as, you know, the fishermen did, or Matthew the tax collector did, or all the other ones left their lives in different types of ways. What are you supposed to do when the leader of your new life dies? Think about that. Five seconds. Everyone just think about what in the world would happen if the leader of your life, that you followed every single moment of your life, not just, like, your boss. Like, you followed this dude through everything. You lived with him, you ate with him, slept near him, like, in the same area. Say that with me. But, you followed this dude every single day, and he just got this criminalized, in a criminal way, killed. What happens? I think, well, I think I would go back to the same, doing the same thing that I had done before, just like they had done. As Evan, our Bible site, we talked about this, the leader told us that the disciples, some of them, went back to fishing. Just a few days later, they're already back in the boat, fishing. Alright? Think about that. Jesus had all this impact in his life. These guys got to follow him, and yet they went back to fishing. They went back to fishing. Very, very interesting. It's interesting to me, because I don't know what I would have done in that situation. And, you know this, because I'm going to make a comparison that's going to be really strange. But, just roll with it, and let me fill up. Roll tide. Okay, roll tide. But, do you remember me watching The 100? I'm sure you did. Yes. So, I've watched all seven seasons of The 100, in a very unhealthy amount of time. But, the last season really caught my attention, and for those of you that are going to watch The 100, I'm sorry, skip through, for just like five minutes, because I'm going to talk about it. So, they get to this new world, okay? They're in this new world. And, they find these people on it, who kind of greet them with open arms. But, there's something really off about them. And so, what it is, I'm not trying to compare this to Jesus, but kind of am. You'll understand. But, these people are called the Primes. They're like the leaders of this place. They have this black blood that symbolizes like royal blood. And, what it is, is the people who have that black blood have memory chips in their neck of the people that died before them. So, they have eternal life, essentially. These people did. The Primes did. But, what they don't realize is that people give up their own memory chips, and they lose their entire old self. Like, they lose their kids. People are offering their kids memory chips and bodies to these Primes to use to continue their eternal life. So, they offer their own bodies for other people to continue using. Okay. So, they're sacrificing themselves so that they might live. And, they didn't even know that. They didn't know that. They were told that their mind was going to be in the hard drive. It was completely deleted. They were gone from life. And, their body was still there, but somebody else was buried in it. Okay. And so, but what I was getting to is, eventually, towards the end of the season, all the Primes die. And, these people are left without the belief, because they never figured out the truth. They were still in the belief that everything was still there. The Primes were their gods, essentially. And, they all died. And, yet they still believed. They had like 20 or 30 of them that still believed and were very true about it. And, it was creepy, kind of, in a sense, how the way they acted towards them, because they really kind of worshipped them like crazy. But, it was admirable. Because, it was like, would I have done that? Like, if I was the disciples, if Jesus died, would I have done that? And, I thought about it. Like, I haven't voiced this to anybody, but I thought about that for weeks. Like, it's been on my mind, and I really had to just ponder it. Because, I put myself in that situation, and I was like, really? I wonder, like, would I really have done that? Like, a lot of those people ended up dying for their belief, even after the Primes died. Because, they still believed, and still, even though it was a false belief, they still believed. And, it was just like, man, what would I have done in that sense? And, it was just admirable of me to see them do that. And, so, I don't know, I just thought about it that way, and it was really interesting. One of the things about The 100 I actually really appreciated was that moral dilemma. Because, it's really good, like, those moral dilemmas, and that one just shook me. So, it took me a while to get through Season 7, because after that episode, I stopped watching for a week. Yeah, because, I mean, if the person that's supposed to redeem has the Primes work, Whereas, Jesus is supposed to, when the disciples stop following him, he just dies. How are you supposed to follow someone who's dead? That's kind of not exactly how it works. Yeah. How are you supposed to follow someone that is dead? Well, that is why the Resurrection is not only, like, a great mystery, and not only a great victory, It pushes our faith even more, because Jesus isn't dead. We're not following a dead person. I mean, even the Jews believe that Jesus lived and died, they just don't believe in the Resurrection. That's why the Resurrection is such a life-changing event. Universal, universally changing event, because of what it did. And the disciples, were their lives changed by Jesus living on earth? Yes. Were they changed by his death? Of course. But the most important part of their lives was his Resurrection, and him coming back and showing himself to them. Because that is what started their evangelization, on their own. You know, keeping what Jesus taught, and taking that to other people. That's when, you know, you could say, they started. Because obviously they had their moments when Jesus was alive, but this is when they had to go out and do it. Because of the Resurrection, you know. Which is, it's crazy to think that, as we talked about, like, how do you not believe? Like, the disciples went back to their old lives before the Resurrection. Something had to happen between after the Good Friday, and when they changed once again, to go on and be what we see in the Acts of the Apostles, and all, you know, Paul's letters. Everything we see in the creation, well, not creation, but the continuation of Christ's Church. It's where you get the essence of the Holy Spirit. One of the coolest stories out there, where they all kind of got the ability to speak in tongues, and proclaim the will to the world. And it was like, this is going to be your gift. Take it, and go for it. It's like, just like Jesus tells us, He's telling us, it's why we're given talent. Jesus is saying, this is what I give you, I'm asking you to use it, and I'm asking you to use it well. Okay, now what does that mean? It means, it's kind of leading into the quote, honestly. And so, I kind of want to go ahead and just say the quote before I get into this. I'm sorry if we just talk about passion for 20 minutes, but it makes a lot of sense, because it's Easter. And we have, there's really no excuse to why we wouldn't talk about passion. So, sorry if you're hating on us for that, but we don't care. Okay, the quote is, Okay, that's fine. Marcus Aurelius, funny enough, believed the Roman Emperor. I don't know if he ever made it to... At least, he's a Roman person. He was really a... I know he is a Roman person. He was really popular, I don't know if he ever made it. Are we sure this is even a real person? This might just be from a Shakespearean play. No, Marcus Aurelius is definitely a real person. He's really popular in history. I think he split and was one of the generals. Okay, give me your phone, and you continue with where you're going. Okay. But, what I was going to say is, God gives you talent. God gives you blessings. He gives you opportunities. And, what do we do? We sometimes fail to take them. And so, I want to relate this to the quote, because a man... Sorry if I keep forgetting it. A man's worth is no greater than his ambition, right? If you're not going to be ambitious about the things God gives you, then what is your worth? Your worth is, of course, being loved by God. But, how do you express your love back to him? What's your worth? How are you showing your worth to God if you don't use exactly what he gave you? He is a Roman Emperor. He was a Roman Emperor? He did split at one point. Under 200. What? In the 160 to 180 era. Maybe, not that far after Jesus, actually. I always thought he was a Roman person. Well, I would cheat, you know. I wasn't sure. Marcus Aurelius. Take it away. But, yeah. I mean, Jesus is just telling us, Please, use what I gave you. Use it well. Because, I'm giving my love to you. And, this is kind of your chance to show that you're giving your love back to me. He's like, I gave you free will. So, use the will the way it's supposed to be missed. And, that does not happen all the time. I think some of this quote is wrong because we all have worth, whether we like it or not. Even if we don't have ambitions, we all have worth. Because, we're given worth by God. But, I would say our quality of person comes from our ambitions. How we, because, I mean, we're given blessings and if we fail to pursue them, what are we doing to ourselves? We are doing ourselves a very great disservice if we don't. And, I just think that's just wrong. But, yeah, that's just my opening remarks. You got anything? Yeah. As you said, I don't know if it's exactly fully correct in what it is saying. That a man's worth is no greater than his ambitions. I don't know how long we talked about this in English class. I forget if it was my sophomore or senior year. We had the same teacher. My man's both. Brian's both of mine. Goat. But, I had him in my sophomore year and senior year. And, I can't remember which one it was that we talked about this quote. But, we talked about it a lot. Like, a lot. A lot. A lot. So, he's doing fireworks on a YouTube channel. On podcast. I'm sorry. But, Cole just had fireworks go on the screen. I'm not really sure. What did these effects look? Two thumbs up? What did that do? Well, that is fireworks. What do the regular thumbs up do? He's become distracted. Oh, shoot. What about heart? That do anything? Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. Anyway, we talked about this in English class for a long, long, long time. A long time. If Bolt is listening, he would know exactly what I'm talking about. He might even be teaching this at this moment as we speak. Maybe not as we speak, considering it's 7 o'clock at night. But, it is 8 o'clock. 8 o'clock there, actually. 8 o'clock there. You should know better. I do know better. I was just thinking about this. Yeah. Your brain should be refreshed. Anyway. Anyways. And, you know, our English class talk was interesting because we had different viewpoints. It wasn't all, you know, Christian slash Catholic perspective. So, it was interesting to hear how different people took this quote and that some people do believe this quote is completely true and that we are no greater than our ambitions and we are no greater than our successes and what we do in life. And, while I do disagree with that, obviously, I know our worth is a lot more than that. I do believe that our ambitions do play a big part in our lives, as you said, because they are a blessing from God. You know, like, if you really enjoy helping people and your ambition is to help people, as in a nurse, a doctor, or a non-profit organization, donations, whatever it may be that you like to help people, and you're just like, I don't like pursuing that ambition. I can feel it in myself for a long time. Well, to be honest, I feel like, although you still have your worth in Christ, you know, your worth as a person is a little bit flawed at that point. If you are just completely disregarding your ambition to love and to be of service. But, overall, we all have different ambitions in life, in our past, and how God wants us to serve Him. And that can be, you know, we are called to serve God and serve people, and we all are called to serve, you know, people in different ways, whether it be, maybe you are a great chef, and you can create incredible food for people. That is an incredible service, and as two teenage boys, we greatly appreciate great chef work, because we love food. But some people, it may be entertainment through movies, through podcasts, through television, in any way. Your ambition could be to entertain. There are so many different ways to do this, and what are you doing? You're providing service. You're providing service to God because you are using your ambitions. You're providing service to people because you are doing it to help them in some way and bring them some sense of joy or happiness. And, you know, although it may seem like a silly thing as making food, you are ultimately, if you are doing it in the proper way, in a non-sinful way, that you are following the will of God and giving it up for Him and glorifying Him through it. Yes, no, I completely agree. I wanted to define ambition for you. I don't know if I have anything to say on the definition, but I just wanted to define it. I didn't know if you would have anything to say on it. So, there are two definitions. I'll go ahead and say both. They're from the Oxford Languages Dictionary. A strong... Let me start over. A strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work. An example, her ambition was to become a pilot. Next is desire and determination to achieve success. Life offers few opportunities for young people with ambition. Interesting. It's interesting. Some of the similar words are aspiration, intention, goal, aim, objective, object, purpose, intent, plan, scheme, mission, calling, vocation. Ooh, I like vocation. A strong feeling of suitability for a particular career or occupation. Because our vocation is to God, no matter where we are in our lives. And I wonder if you can say a man's worth is no greater than his vocation. Mmm. Mmm. Yes. I wonder if you could switch those words out. Could you? Because, sure. This is our podcast. We run it how we want. This is our rule. You can change it if you want. Yeah, but I wonder if that would make it correct or not. Right? Because I feel like you can't take, I feel like you can't use the word worth. Should we, should we like, should we like change the, figure out a way to change this quote to make it correct if you're going to think about it? A man's worth is no greater than his vocation. Because we all have worth under God, right? What about what could you change worth to? A man's purpose is no greater than his vocation. That's good. That's good. Because our purpose is to God. Ah. Ah. Ah. And as our vocation is to God. Beautiful. Beautiful man. Okay. I like that here. So we're going to, we're going to refine this quote and his vocation. See, I love the word vocation. It sounds so, because it's like vacation. And so it's a happy word. A man's purpose is no greater than his vocation. Solid. See Marcus Aurelius, we're smarter than you. Probably not, but we try our best. Maybe, maybe I'll be an emperor one day. Maybe. I don't know. Oh man. Go back to her own time. Hey. Technically we're all going to get, we'd all be martyred at that point. So, we could die. I think Marcus Aurelius was during the persecution. Eh, probably. Yeah, because then who ended it? Was it Nero? No, no, no, no. It did not. Constantine. Constantine legalized Christianity. Yeah, Constantine. Mom, that's all you right there. That's a fine line, baby. But yeah, a man's purpose, because our purpose is towards God. That's our goal, essentially. But you can also generalize it to job, life. But it really is no greater than our vocation. Our purpose, what we're called to do, can be no greater than our determination to do what we're called to do. Boom. That saved my day. What do you think vocation slash purpose is, sir? My vocation and slash purpose. Okay. My vocation, I believe. You're individualistic vocation. Not like, in general, like, oh, you're a Christian and you want to serve God. Like, I have that. You're a personal, individualized vocation. Okay, so the reason I came to college, especially as a mechanical engineer, specifically as a mechanical engineer, and maybe in law, we'll see. If I get ambitious. See what I did there? Yeah, okay. But the reason I did mechanical engineering, because if I, like, I had many options not to do this, but I wanted to take the safe bet that I would graduate college with a half-decent job that pays well in order to raise a family. Because I really love, I wanted to be a dad at one point in my life. Like, I really do. And there would be no greater feeling for me than raising a kid and just being a part of their life so much to the point that my actions are going to become their actions. They're going to do what I do because, like, I'm their leader. I'm their dad. And that's really intriguing to me. And it's very attractive. It's an attractive aspect about my future that I wanted to refine by making sure I could guarantee stability with it, at least on the financial side. So that's one vocation that I believe is family life. I want to be a dad. And then, of course, here's the generalized one. Like you said, I want to be a good Christian. I want to be called to love God. And my other vocation I think we're actually living up right now. Again, it's more on the Christian side. But my vocations in life are God, family, and love all around. Relationships, family, God. Because, wait, and then, yeah, your relationships with others around you, your family, and God. Now that's in the backwards order. God, family, relationships. There we go. Sorry. And so God comes first no matter what. God comes first. And then you lead your family there. You lead your wife. You lead your kids. You lead your whatever. There's an aunt, uncle, daughter, deaf child. Anyway, you're God. And then friendships. You want to lead them to God as well. And so I believe one of my callings is to help lead others to God. And I'm not saying that in a practical manner of any sort. I don't even believe that sometimes myself should be allowed to lead other people to God because I feel like I'm flawed. I'm a human. But I truly believe that that's one of my vocations. And so that's why I was so thrilled when we started this podcast. That's probably why all week I'm trying to talk about it so much is because I'm so pumped to get the word out to people because I really do genuinely care for other people's souls. And I want them to hear the Christian message because I know they're not going to get it from other places. And if we can give it to them on a more day-to-day life, like we call it kids. We're like on the same level as them. If we can give it to them from a more relatable perspective that they can understand, then by all means. Maybe this is one of my callings. Maybe I'm called to do this. And so that's why I really enjoy it as well. What about you? What's your vocation, Nazario? Since you wanted to get all deep on me, I'll throw it back on you. You wanted interviews. So if you have real personal questions, throw them out there. I've got to dive deep into your heart. Go for it. What is my vocation? Well, I think literally from as far as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a husband and be a dad. As you have already talked about. I don't know. I just always have. That's always been an exciting thing for me. And having a little mini-Nazario. I'm like, that's something. Bye. I just have to leave. But also having a wife is awesome as well. And someone that is your spiritual partner, your physical partner, your loving partner in every way. That you can have a partner. What in the world is that? I don't know if you guys heard that or not. Something weird just came to our heads then. Anyways. But, yeah. I just always have had that vocation. And that is a great vocation and a great purpose. If you have God as a number one, obviously, it's your purpose and your vocation to serve. And then you have your wife and your family as number two. That's going to lead you to a lot of good. And for me, there's always been other things that have pushed my ambitions. But at the end of the day, those have always been the top two things. And that's what leads to a lot of good in your life. If you can do it for those two reasons right there and give yourself sacrificially. Then life is going to be pretty solid. Now, it might have its lows. It might have its times that aren't very fun, I guess is the word. But, you know, it's going to be the most purpose-filled. If you're serving in that way. But, other ways. I want to get into other ways. I've always felt that public speaking was a way for me. And I love sports. So, I know I'm going to use sports in some way. My passion for sports is otherworldly, dude. It's unbelievable. Trust me. The amount of sports that I consume is unbelievable. And it just doesn't get old to me at all. And I just love every minute of it. That I don't understand how it couldn't be a vocation for myself. Because I don't know what I would do without sports. I genuinely don't. Like, they're so a part of my life. And it's not just something that, like, I have to do. Like, I genuinely enjoy every single second of sports in my life. And I know that I can use it to glorify God in some way. Whether it be, you know, if I'm playing and bettering my body in that way. And giving all glory to God through my play. Whether it's through my speaking. Showing, like, using the gift of public speaking that he's given me. Or using the platform. That's the most exciting thing for me. Is that if I'm able to build my platform as a sports broadcaster. As I want to do. Then that is an even bigger amount of people that I can reach. Either through the podcast or, you know, through as Tim Tebow does. Which I love the Tim Tebow Foundation. He has a Tim Tebow Foundation that he uses for incredible things. Or just talking. Like, having. If you're a big sports person, you earn a lot of respect from people. They just. You just do in this world. And if you have that respect, they're going to listen to what you say. And if I'm able to use that platform. To, you know, show the love of God through myself. Allowing God to use me to show his love to other people. Then I don't see any greater way for myself to do that. And, you know, I don't know exactly how he's going to do it. I have no clue where in the world it's going to go. I mean, I really felt led to the University of Alabama for a lot of ways. And I've never had any regrets about coming here, to be honest. I mean, it stinks sometimes that my girlfriend's six and a half hours away. And my parents are eight hours away. And my brothers, too. I love those little dudes. And my older brother. That dude, they're not even little anymore. It's unbelievable. 17 and 15. That's absurd. But, anyway. But I've never been sitting here, like, saying I wish I would have gone here. Like, no. I knew literally the minute that I came onto campus. Like, this is where I want to go. And that's part of the ambition. Like, you have that ambition. And you're like, this is where I really want to go. He has those ambitions for a reason. So, I don't know exactly where it's going to lead. But I know the ambitions that he's given me. And I have no idea exactly how my purpose and vocation is going to work out. But I know what's in the heart, what's in the intentions behind all of it. And it's going to work out in some way. You know? Like, he's going to figure it out. And, you know, we're his tools. We're his instruments. And one of the things, my favorite thing to do in the morning is, you know, just wake up and be like, all right. I offer myself completely to you. Do whatever you need. Like, seriously. When you're so, like, anyone who really feels consumed, like, with the love of God and wants to share it, as you talked about earlier, you just want yourself to be used in whatever way God needs to reach other people. And you're just sitting there like, man, just any way you can use me. Just do it. Like, fine. If you want me to go to the Philippines and be a missionary or, like, talk on a podcast for three, four hours a day, like, do whatever it is. You know? Because you want to reach people that much. And it's truly a blessing. And the biggest blessing of it is, like, knowing the fact that, you know, we're not perfect at all and our path can be so bad, but still love to consume everyone so much. And you realize that when you look back, you're like, dang, it doesn't matter that all those things happened. I can show people that it doesn't matter what happened. They can still be loved in this way, and they can still be overflowing with this love because it's so great. And you want everyone to experience that love and to be most important. Well, not most important, but an incredible part about it is to be free from all of that and to just let go of everything and just allow yourself to be loved, which is an incredibly hard thing for people to do these days. I don't know if it's always been like that, but people allowing themselves to be loved, it's a whole thing. And I'm not sure exactly why that is. Yeah, it seems like that would be the easy part. You feel like the hard part would be to love others, and the easy part would be to let others love you. Yeah, I don't know if that's always been a thing, but I really can see it, that people have a hard time allowing other people to love them. Yeah, I thought about that too, and it's true. At least definitely more recently, and I have no reason why. I feel like one of our purposes and one of our vocations in life is to be loved. Yeah. Whether that be by God, whether that be by our family, whether it be by a future spouse or any other way that you can be loved in a true loving sense. We want real love, obviously. Maybe it's because there's so much fake love going around. People are looking for love either in the wrong places, or they don't know what love is and whether this is it, or they're scared because of the past, because they don't know if someone is really trying to love them. I'm not sure what the reasoning is, but it's very interesting that people have a hard time accepting love. I mean, I'm sure that I've had moments too, where I've had a hard time accepting love as well, but something's definitely going on. Yeah, I agree. I don't know how the conversation got there, but it did. I mean, it all laid back, again, to this quote, and I think we can copyright this one. Seriously. Because technically Marcus Aurelius' quote was wrong, and we edited it and made it better. And technically we changed enough of it. Like, let me see how many markers are there. One, two, three. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35. 35 letters. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. We changed 15 out of the 35. What percentage of that quote did we change? We changed three-sevenths of it. Three-sevenths? Yeah, three-sevenths. Is that over 38%? That's over 33%, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Yeah, it'd be. Yeah, so that's enough. That'd be enough, right? Surely that'd be enough. Well, we just changed over 33% of the quote, so we could save a lot of money. Sure. Where are you going with that? I don't know. I'm just saying we should totally use it. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're on YouTube, we need donations so we can make a banner of this quote. I'm just kidding. But seriously, we should actually put the quote back there. Yeah, we should have a banner in our house just to put it in the background. A man's purpose is no greater than his vocation. Oh, yeah. Mic drop. But, yeah. I guess that's all I've got to say about the quote. I think we kind of touched it. We're going to transfer out of this really quickly. I'm just going to briefly talk about what's going on with the Live Sheet Podcast in the current moments and then in the episode. Sorry we did not get to a Shepherd of the Week segment because we are 45 minutes into this episode and this probably is going to go down as one of our longest episodes besides maybe the first one that we've ever released. So, we just got hot today. She's up next. Oh, baby. So, what's going on? We have bracelets that have been ordered. They look just like this if you are on the visual YouTube. I'm giving it. Hold up. I'm sorry. I'll bring it to you. There is a little bit of black ink on the top. That's not on there. I don't know where these were ordered from, but they did start to bleed out. I don't know if the other ones will. I'm hoping not. But I ordered 100 of them, and so we're just going to give them out. The plan was to post it on Instagram and kind of try to spread our message to other people and have people share. In order to get one, you had to share my story and then like it and then message me. But I don't know if a lot of people are going to do that, and if they don't, if a lot of people don't do that, we're just going to hand them out at different places. For instance, one weekend, I might go to St. Bernard. I'm probably going to send like 20 back for Rosario. I know some of your friends have actually messaged us. Don't know who they are, so I can't tell you. But there are a couple people from Kentucky. If you're from Kentucky, I'll send like, say, 20 back for Rosario. I'll probably take 20 to the Advent Catholic Center. So if you are an Advent Catholic student, we'll leave them resting out there somewhere for some of you guys to grab when they come in. And then I'll probably bring some to St. Bernard Mass on Sunday when school's out, or if I can get the principal to let me hand out some of the students there. I might just hand them out during school. But we shall see. We shall see. So yeah, those are out. So that's an exciting announcement. We also plan to do, I plan, I think we talked about it, to do one giveaway over the summer with like a t-shirt. So it's... Or give away a PlayStation 5. Yeah, we are rich and can afford that. Just kidding. Yeah, this is a zero. We have no money. We have no earnings at the moment because we are not very following. But we're getting there. We're a non-profit organization, maybe. Yeah, so we are currently a non-profit organization. But yeah, we're trying to do a giveaway this summer. So I think we're going to include a t-shirt in there, one sticker, maybe another wristband, and I don't know if we'll do anything else. But there'll be three on there. I'm trying to come up with a cool t-shirt design. I've been thinking about it for a while. Customized PlayStation 5 washing bucket? I know it would be. But actually, this gave me an idea. So I was trying to figure out what quote I would put on the back of my shirt because I don't want our logo on the top left. We made our quote. We made our quote. Yeah, a man's purpose is no greater than his vocation. What would we say, CBNP? Sure. Or do we just say LSPA? But anyway, yeah, that's going on, guys. So please, at the end of the summer, we're going to try to do podcasts while he's in Kentucky and I'm in Alabama. I found an app. Don't know if it'll be a good app. We're going to try it. We're going to get it done. Don't worry. There's no need to worry. Yeah. It'll be done. And we're also going to try to record two episodes this week to stay ahead. So we won't have any issues with that anymore since we've had issues with that coming up and us not being here. So we're going to try not to have that happen again. The solo episodes are fun, but they are very strange, very odd. You don't get these deep questions. You don't get these deep connections. Yeah. But the romance doesn't exist. I mean, I'm talking to a wall in a podcast like that if I was on the show. Thankfully, I had somebody talk to him. You decided to be lonely. I mean, you read a book. It was good, though. It was a good podcast. Pretty good. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Yep. So that's all, guys. We are very glad you tuned in. Please try to stay up to date with us. We have it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, Samsung, iHeartRadio, Amazon Podcasts. There's a lot of very random things that it's on. Whatever you're posting uploads to it. Like, I looked today, and it was like 30 different places. I was like, it's everywhere. So you can find it somewhere, I promise. But please give it a listen. Share. Like. Yes, share, like. We are trying to reach people, and we'd love to be able to do that. And we are seeing a little bit of growth. It's time to get along, little by little. A little bit surely, maybe. Let's keep it up. Thank you, guys, for tuning in. God bless. We shall see you next time. Y'all have a good weekend. Thanks. He has rhythm. Woo! Yay. You gave me a good opportunity for a thumbnail in the beginning. In the beginning? When you were like, yeah!