Welcome to the God's goodness podcast, where our mission is to encourage as well as highlight
God's goodness and modern-day miracles.
We are your hosts, Josh and Jelly Hankins.
Today we have with us a special couple.
We had the husband on a few weeks ago, and now we have the whole couple with us to enhance
their story even more.
We have the wife with us, so we're going to introduce you to Sherry and Randy Henderson.
We know them from church, and if you know them, you would be blessed by them as well.
So we're going to have Sherry open us with a new wean prayer, and then we'll get into
it.
So thank you for being here.
Thank you for having us.
Thank you so much for this opportunity to make you famous for telling our stories and
for just blessing and glorifying you.
Father, may you be glorified in this, and we love you in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for the opportunity to introduce you to Sherry.
I think it was important because perhaps some of the stuff had to be left out from when
Randy was on, so he didn't reveal things that you weren't ready for him to reveal without
you.
So now we can hear the whole scoop.
I think it's a great place to start.
There are things we disagree upon.
A few.
He has his version, and I have mine.
But I do remember to this day seeing her for the very first time, we went to the artist's
first day, she was sitting across the room from me, and the sun came through the windows
and her hair glowed.
And that was just like a vision of loveliness.
And I was like, man, that is the girl for me.
And I wouldn't let her go.
She kept trying.
I started before him, and he took a quarter off to raise some more money to continue school,
and he started in my class.
So that was kind of God ordained.
Yep.
Kind of not kind of, but yeah, God ordained.
So I thought he was a nice guy.
I didn't think anything else, but yeah, some things happened, and he got my phone number,
and he kept calling me and kept asking me out, and when are we going to go out?
When are we going to go out?
I said, we're not.
I was living my dream.
I was going to art school.
I was focused.
I wasn't interested in dating.
And I was interested in partying.
Yeah, yeah, and I wasn't.
But Sherry didn't have time for that.
I don't know what I'm talking about.
So you sound like, Sherry sounds like my roommate in college.
She was from Tokyo, and she was goody too.
She'd be in the library and always studying.
She'd call me from the library and tell me, I'm here.
You know, don't worry about me.
And the one time she called, and I said, Mochi mochi, I go to Sonbaka, and she says, how
do you do with me?
Anyway, and I was her crazy American roommate back in the day.
So isn't it amazing how God changes this?
Yes, yes it is.
I think God would not the same.
Yes.
I was only a social drinker.
My problem was I was just a very, very social person.
Oh boy.
So I was always socially drinking.
And I wasn't interested in that.
I grew up in an alcoholic home, and I wasn't even going to entertain dating anyone in that
realm.
So I didn't really know that about him at the time, but I did learn it.
And I actually did agree to go out with him just to keep him going.
Just for a little bit.
Yeah.
That's fair.
I can see that.
And we did, and really the rest was history.
The big thing, and I think I mentioned it when I was on, is that she gave me her Bible.
So I can't go out with you, and she gave me her Bible, which I saw her reading, and I
knew it meant something to her.
So that meant a lot that she would do that for me.
And then we talked about her offering to take me to church, and I agreed just so I could
be with her.
And then God set me up and pow, here I am.
The whole service was about knowing God better.
The songs, the sermon, there was a word that was given about knowing God better.
Yeah, that's what I shared.
He shot up out of the seat, and I was like, that's me.
Hey, that's me.
Yeah, because they called it out.
Yeah.
Because there's somebody here.
Somebody here who wants to know Jesus better.
And that's exactly what I was thinking in my head when I went there, like, I got to
know this Jesus guy better.
See what this is all about.
And yeah, I knew it was me.
So there it was.
I was fairly young in the Lord too.
I mean, I was in my early 20s.
I got saved at 17s.
I wasn't walking the Lord that long, but I definitely knew what I wanted in a partner.
And it wasn't a partier.
It wasn't a partier.
No, absolutely not.
But I could make her laugh.
Yeah, definitely.
He definitely made me laugh.
But the Lord is just so good because he took that away from him.
Did you tell that?
I did not share that part of the story at all.
So yeah, so I had to bring you guys back so I could hear the whole scoop.
I was saved in the beginning of May and I turned 21.
So all my drinking was from my preteen years into my early 20s.
And I would I wanted to go to the local little pub and have a drink for my 21st birthday.
And when 21st birthday came, I was saved.
Now it didn't seem like it was that big of a deal anymore.
So I didn't do that.
And I had I had gone through beer and whiskey and wine and I was back to just wine.
And back then in the 80s, wine coolers were very big.
So I was drinking wine coolers.
And it had been a few months over the summer where I didn't have much at all.
And then my parents had a wine and cheese party for New Year's.
So I said, oh, I'll have a glass of wine.
And back then there was a wine called Elmopio Moscato.
And it was a sweet white wine.
And it would be like drinking Kool-Aid.
I mean, it was it was that sweet.
And I said, I'll have a little glass just for the fun of it.
And I took one sip and it tasted like vinegar.
I hate vinegar.
So that was the last drink I ever had.
So it would be January 1 of my 21st year of life.
So it's been many years since I've had a drink.
That's incredible.
I can it would taste like vinegar when you knew for a fact it tasted like.
Yeah.
And that's what so when you're expecting one thing and you get something else.
So yeah, so God just removed the desire.
I can be in a room with everybody drinking and there's just no desire.
So we've been in plenty of situations like that.
My brothers always liked it when they were in from out of town.
If they wanted to go out someplace to a club and hear somebody play music and that kind
of we go to jazz clubs and blues clubs and that bring Randy along because well, they
knew he wasn't drink so somebody could drive, you know.
So and that was fine with me because I'd get in for free because that pay for it get me
in so it worked.
It's a good deal.
Yeah.
So it's been over 30 years since I've had a drink.
And eventually it just didn't want to be in that scene.
Yeah.
There were better things for him.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Called kids.
Kids came along.
We got married, started a family.
We were both working and when I got pregnant with our first after she was born, I quit
my job and we bought this house.
Awesome.
And it was tight.
In the same month?
It was tight.
And you knew that you wanted to live here considering all the stairs.
Yeah.
Well, nobody else wanted this house because of all the stairs up front.
So nobody got up to the house.
They would have gotten up to the house.
They would have been gone because it's beautiful inside.
Absolutely.
Absolutely it is.
Yeah.
We live in an old Pittsburgh house from the 20s and it's got lots of woodwork.
It's got stained glass windows, French doors between the entryway and the living room,
archway between the living room and the dining room.
So it was a beautiful house.
But yeah, there's 20-some steps in front and people would drive up, see the steps and
drive away.
So it sat on the market for three years.
I just look at it as a nightmare.
In my profession, you know, somebody's injured here and you've got to get a stair chair to
get them out.
I'm sweating just thinking about all that work.
I would go into getting someone out of here.
Yeah.
Well, the goal was to put a driveway out back and we did finally acquire the property behind
us so that we can do that.
So hopefully it'll be a driveway.
So when I'm really old and you need to come and get me out of this place, you can wheel
me out the back driveway.
That'd be perfect.
Thank you for being so considerate.
No problem at all.
Glad we could help you out.
Good looking out.
Thank you for that.
So back to what you were led to share about.
So God has done a lot of things in our lives and when we got this house, we were a young
couple and we had two incomes when we applied for the house and got the loan for the house.
And then again, a week after we got the house, we had a baby and then my wife's like, I
can't leave this baby.
And I'm like, all right, well, we'll make it work.
And we looked at what daycare would cost us and it would pretty much be her entire salary
anyway.
Yeah, that's how we were.
Three out of four weeks would have gone to daycare.
I'm like, that's stupid.
Yeah.
So she decided, well, we'll just stay home and I'll just work a little extra harder.
We pinched pennies.
Yeah.
Very, very pinched.
Yeah, we get that.
So funny thing happened, nothing was, did we have all three kids when the furnace went?
I think so.
I think Joshua was a baby or was it Rachel?
It was the girls.
Yeah.
So we had two children.
So we'd have been in the house for about three or four years at that point in time.
A big old gas furnace down there and Sherry was concerned because she smelled gas.
So she had a furnace guy come out and he's like, well, your furnace is pretty much shot
as what he told us.
And we're like, well, what's the cost of replacing that?
This was in the 80s.
So when I say like $2,500, it doesn't sound like a lot these days, but back then that
was.
That's a lot.
A Mount Everest.
So we're like, well, we need a furnace.
So we signed the paperwork and off they went.
So at the time we were at a little church down the road and my wife found out that they had
a benevolence fund.
So she asked if they could help us and they took it, you know, the board has to go over
those things, but they said that they could, we could help you, but we can only give you
$500.
But there's a guy from our church that does furnaces, commercial furnaces.
So check with him.
Maybe he can help out.
So we talked with him and he's like, we can get a furnace for cost for you.
I'll see what it would run.
And then we'll just bring a couple guys over and we'll put it in one Saturday.
And they're like, well, okay, that's that would work for us.
Let me, let me call the people that were supposed to give us a furnace.
So I called the company that was here that was going to put the furnace in for $2,500.
And it had been about three weeks.
And when I called them, they're like, we didn't put that in already.
And I was like, no, nobody's been back.
Nobody's been here.
We usually have them in within a week.
You sure you don't have it in this?
I know we don't have a furnace in there because that's the same old one.
Nobody came and put a furnace in my house.
I wouldn't know this.
They were stunned that nobody had put it in you.
And we know that it was because God had other plans.
So sure enough, they're like, oh yeah, we didn't put that in.
I said, well, can we have our deposit back because we don't want you to put it in.
So they did.
They gave us our $200 back and the guy from church called us back and he's like, we can
put it in, but it's the furnace is going to cost you $500.
And we're like, huh, how about that?
We just happened to have 500 from the Netherlands that we can pay for the furnace.
That'd be great.
And he says, there'll be some fittings and some extra things like some, some ductwork
probably to fit it in place.
But, but that'll, that'll, it would cost you after that.
I'm like, okay, that'd be fine.
So we proceeded and he ordered the furnace.
They came up him and Jock and just two of them, right?
I think so.
It was Dick and Jock.
They came and they, and I was down there helping them, sharing made them lunch and we, we put
a furnace in our house for $500.
And then the fittings, he said it's about 75 bucks for all the fittings.
I was like, okay, that's great.
That's fantastic.
And we go to church Sunday, which was the day after we put the furnace in and friends
of ours, they knew of our plate and they were like, you know, we just wanted to help you
guys out a little bit.
We, you know, we heard negative furnace and, but we can't do much, but we can give you
$75.
I'm like, what about that?
Well, how about that?
So between the two donations, we wound up with a free furnace in our house.
This cost us lunch to feed them.
Which we would have done for anybody in our house.
But the exact amount.
The exact amount.
It wasn't like an extra 10 bucks on one way or the other.
It was the exact amount.
That's incredible.
I love it.
It's just, yeah, just crazy how God does that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
And people answering the Holy Spirit, you know, when they tell, you know, he tells you
to move, you should move.
Because you don't know the impact it can make.
Yeah.
We'd like to drag our feet and get in Jesus like, well, we can walk through the door or
we could go around the block again.
You want to go around the block again?
We can go around the block again.
I've spent many times walking around the block with.
We all have.
Yeah.
And he is way too gentle to drag us through the door.
Even if we beg him to.
It's like, Jesus, I'm having a struggle.
We drag me in.
No, no, I'm here to walk away.
And you're ready.
Yeah.
So that was one of the really big ones in our life.
And the next one comes years and years later.
And I was working in the IT field and the IT security was a new thing and it would change
every six months.
It would change.
It was becoming very stressful and I was looking for a way out and I was sitting at
my desk.
I just had a conversation with a vendor and I hung up the phone and the Lord, you got
to get me out of here.
I can't do this anymore.
I don't know where I'm going to go.
I don't know what I'm going to do, but you got to get me out of here.
This was at three o'clock in the afternoon at four o'clock.
I got called into the president's office by the general manager and I went in and the
vice president was there and they started talking about how valuable employee I was
and all the things that I had done.
I'd been with the company for 10 years at this point in time.
And I'm thinking, huh, this sounds interesting.
You know, we've grown to the point where we don't really need your position anymore.
So we're going to eliminate your position.
And I'm thinking, huh, how about that?
It's like they're letting me leave Egypt and they're giving me gold to go.
So I had to force myself to not smile because this probably was supposed to be shocking
to me.
And I wanted.
And I'm wanted.
Yeah.
Disturbing.
Yeah.
And I was like, boy, if you guys want to talk to me, we could have worked this all out ahead
of time, you know.
But they were very cordial about it and there was no hard feelings on there.
So I was able to have a severance package when I left there and.
And unemployment.
And unemployment to boot.
So we're like, we got it made.
Yeah.
And then he had some opportunities to make money with a few friends.
We had a friend who had a handyman business.
So he was working with him and then someone else who had a computer business and then
the church.
And so he had a few kind of side jobs that he could, that he could work on.
And those were kind of filling in the gap.
And then the guy who our friends who had the handyman business, he didn't like painting.
So he would give all those customers to Randy and Randy loves to paint.
Yeah.
So after the first job where he was doing some remodeling in the kitchen and I painted
the rest of the house, what he was doing, the remodeling work and then I painted the
kitchen and he's like, wow, you paint really nice.
I was like, well, yeah, I'm an artist.
I like to paint.
Pain is fun.
Pain is good.
So we paint a lot of stuff for him.
And eventually when somebody called him for just painting, yeah, he would, he would say,
well, call this guy because he would do it cheaper than I would charge you to do it.
So people started to call me for painting.
And then some more people would call me for painting and more of you called him.
So it just slowly built over the first couple of years.
And then anytime when it would slow down.
So we were at an opportunity where we, we were painting a house over on neighborhood
here and my niece at the time didn't have any work and she's a decent painter.
So I brought her onto the job.
So with the extra person helping, we got done early and I'm thinking, well, I don't have
any more job schedule.
This is running through my head and I'm cleaning up and I'm gathering my things together and
thinking, dang, what am I going to do?
And I picked up my step ladder and I picked up my toolbox and I started walking out
to the sidewalk.
I'm like, I don't have any more work.
So I don't know what we're going to do here.
I take two steps onto the sidewalk, a car pulls up on the street and stops at the sidewalk
and a window roll does this.
Hey, did you just paint that house there?
And I'm like, uh, yeah, yeah, I did.
Would you mind stopping over at our house?
My wife wants our house painted.
And I'm thinking, huh, how about that?
How about that?
So sure enough, we, you know, we talked to that person and then one thing happens and
another thing happens.
And then anytime that there would be a point where things would slow down, I would obviously
be concerned because, you know, that's our sole source of income.
My wife was homeschooling at the time and we still had one kid here, two kids were in
college.
Well, at that point, you were still working at the church and with Jim and with Joe, but
those things started to slow down.
The more work he got painting, the more that slowed down, that just kind of fizzled out.
And I had prayed, I was homeschooling our last child and we would have devotions in
the morning and I would pray, we would pray together.
And I said, Lord, if this truly is your will for us to have our own business, please show
us by putting jobs on the calendar.
And he did exactly that.
I would have days where I'd be like, I'd be concerned, you know, because there's nothing
on the calendar.
And then my phone would start ringing and there were days where I'd literally get like four
or five phone calls and so I'd have all these jobs to go look at and do the work.
And I would come home and say, were you praying this morning?
As a matter of fact, I was dear.
And so the power of a praying life is very important if you want to do anything.
I'm pretty sure that's somewhere in the Bible.
I think so.
You think so?
I think so.
Yeah.
She would keep us going.
And yeah, eventually as Jim's computer shop didn't need me, I had plenty of work to do
myself and other things would come about and other things.
And God just provided opportunity after opportunity.
He was never like Jim or Joe or the church when they needed him.
He said, well, I can't.
It would just like organically just slow down.
Yeah, as Lord built our business, those other things just slowed down.
So it was obvious that it was His will that we have our own business.
And today we have wonderful reputation.
He has a reputation of being meticulous and doing fantastic work.
So is it exterior or interior or both?
It's mostly interior anymore.
We used to do exteriors, but we have plenty of interior work and we do some light remodeling.
We like to do tile work and we like to do cabinet installs for kitchens and things like
that.
It's definitely grown.
My son-in-law is a very craftsman style person that he works with us.
So.
And we own a couple of properties.
We have a couple of rentals.
They provided those things.
They provided that.
Yeah, definitely.
Crazy how you came to this house 30 years ago, a week later having a baby and a single
income.
What you have been blessed with now through good stewardship, through honest communication
with each other because that couldn't have happened without it.
And with obviously the Lord's blessing on every single thing.
Like he's definitely shown his favor.
And you guys have definitely stepped in the right direction every time it seems.
Yeah, I mean with his guidance.
Yeah.
That's great.
And the big thing in all of these stories that we're relating to is God's goodness in
fellowship because we did fellowship with a body of believers and we were part of a
congregation.
We are members of that congregation.
And then, you know, the benevolence was there for us when they found out that we needed
it, having good friends when they found out that we were in need, they were able to help
us out.
So it looked like she wanted to say something.
I didn't want to step on her toes.
And being at South Hill Assembly and them knowing that I was starting to do work with
the one gentleman there, Joe Burke, who was the leader of the men's ministry.
They're like, what can you help us do things because they heard that I was helping Joe.
So yeah, I can help you guys do things.
So that's when I would get all the small jobs from the church because they had just, they
had a handyman, but he went away, he moved away so they didn't have anybody on staff
anymore that could do little repair jobs.
So I would do lots of little repair jobs for them.
So I had my dad growing up, my dad had a duplex and a five unit apartment building.
So I built a lot of things with my dad.
So I did have some background in these things.
It wasn't like I was a computer guy and an artist that just decided, oh, I can build things.
I can build things.
So there was some experience there that we had and it was a much more fulfilling work.
The IT field was great.
I met a lot of nice people.
I learned a lot.
God taught me things that, you know, when you learn something at any job, they can't
take that away from you.
So anybody that listens to this, if you can learn something at a job, do it because you
can take that and go somewhere else with it.
You know, so I learned customer service.
I learned, I learned computer work.
I learned how to build websites.
So when we started our own business, I knew how to build a website for our business.
So that was not a big deal.
I knew how to work the computers.
So at our house, we could keep the computers up and running.
It was God ordained all the way through.
And when you look back from where we've come, like you were saying or Josh, from where we've
come to where we are now, I mean, it's fairly obvious where God was taking us to.
And point of fellowshiping with people is that you know people and then people know
you.
And if, I mean, in my early painting days, there were a lot of people from the church
that when they found out, oh, Randy, who I know from church paints, well, that's better
than getting somebody else.
I don't know to come to my house because I know this guy.
So a lot of people would trust me to come into their home and paint for them.
So the business continued to grow and to grow and to grow.
So we'll say where we are now, he's provided a couple of properties.
We have an Airbnb now that we use.
My wife manages that.
We have those.
It's got good ratings too.
It does.
I hear.
Jesus, superhost.
Superhost.
I've seen the pictures.
It's a gorgeous Airbnb.
It's like a retro kind of thing.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
It's fun.
Absolutely lovely.
Yeah.
Thank you.
That's a lot of fun.
But through all of that, it was very important that we were part of a body of believers and
that we attended someplace, went someplace.
We would not be where we are today without the body of Christ.
That's just the bottom line.
Yeah.
Just the bottom line.
Yeah.
So many times we run into Christians that are dissuaded because of a church and they
believe that they're fine by themselves.
You know, we're in the Bible to say you have to go to church.
Nowhere in the Bible.
Like, it does say that you need to be with body of believers.
It does say you need to have fellowship with other people.
You know, iron sharpens iron.
And when I fall, then there's 150 people to help pick me back up.
Right?
It does say that if one person suffers, you all suffer.
And if one person is doing well, you all give them praise.
Right?
It does say that.
So I don't understand that what churches some people go to that they get hurt so bad
that they decide they don't need people because God created us for relationships.
Not just with him, but with each other.
Right?
And we often miscount that we are one of the greater gifts he's given to each other.
Right?
It's not just him.
It's not just the Spirit.
It's not just Jesus, but each other.
We're the greatest gifts that he's given each other.
Like, we're awesome gifts.
Yeah.
He thinks we're awesome.
He thinks we're to die for.
And of course we're gifts for each other.
Right.
Yeah.
And if you're listening to this and you have been hurt by somebody to church and you left
that church because of that hurt, that isn't a reason to walk away from Christ.
Christ didn't hurt you.
The person did and a lot of Christians that are well intended do stupid things.
I mean, we're just people.
We're just people.
Yeah.
We're people, we're fallible.
Hurt people, hurt people.
Yeah.
So get back in that church.
Do things.
For any church.
Any church.
If it's not clicking, go to a different one.
There's a lot out there.
Go to the one where you feel like the Holy Spirit is there with you.
Yeah.
That's very important.
If you go one and you're scared, if you go to one and you don't know, don't keep going.
Go to the one when you know you know.
Yeah.
That's the one.
Yeah.
So we've developed a really close group of friends and we don't all go to the same church
anymore.
You know, they, everybody changes from time to time.
They feel led to go somewhere else to do other things.
And we have a really good core group of friends that, that we do a lot of things with.
There's a particular group that we call the boat crew.
And we ran a houseboat with how many other couples now?
There's six couples.
There's six couples together for a whole week on a houseboat.
And it is the most fun you've ever had in your entire life.
I didn't know I've had a lot of fun.
I did too up until this point.
And then I was like, holy cow, this is even more fun.
It was just a really great time.
The first time we did it and we're planning the fourth trip now.
So and we've rented, we just found out today that it's booked the Black Pearl as the name
of the boat will be on this year.
So we got some piratey things happen.
Of course it is.
But we're all Christians.
We at one point all went to church at the same, you know, together.
Same place.
Since then, most of us have dispersed, but we all know each other and love each other.
We take turns making dinner.
We have devotions, whoever cooks dinner is in charge of devotions that night.
And the first year we told our stories, how we met.
So sometimes we change it up and we laugh a lot.
We laugh a lot.
Play a lot of games.
So where do you take the houseboat?
Now, I'm curious.
You go to a lake or whatever.
It is a very, very large lake.
It's right on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee, Dale Hollow Lake.
I think it's got 170 miles of coastline around the lake.
So it's a big lake.
A significant.
Yeah.
I mean, you can see across it.
It's not that big.
So there's lots of out, lots of coves and inlets that you can pull the boat into and
you just drive and you pull up onto the shore and you tie off and then you just have fun.
So you float around.
But a year and a half or so ago, my mom passed away and it was a tough time.
And when she passed, my sister-in-law's family is very involved with our family.
They were all in Florida on vacation and my brother and sister-in-law were supposed to
be there too.
They decided not to go.
And I think the two days into the trip is when my mom passed away.
But it was a tough time.
And you might have to talk some more about this.
We were sitting in their kitchen trying to plan the funeral, the luncheon, and usually
Kathy's family would step in and take care of that and not have, we wouldn't have to
worry about it at all.
Yeah.
When her mom passed, our whole family pitched in and we did all the things they needed done.
Right.
But of course they were away.
So that wasn't possible.
I think I called Kayla and I think she was out of town.
I didn't reach her.
She was a, considered the family life director at that point.
So I thought, well, maybe I could reach out to her.
We can get some help rallied at the church.
In the meantime, I think Pastor Pete called you, right?
Yeah.
Called Randy.
And he said, hey, what do you need?
And so he told Pastor Pete and then Randy called Shanie.
Shanie's the head of the boat crew.
She's the one that makes it happen.
If it wasn't for Shanie, we would not have a boat crew.
Right.
So thank you, Shanie.
I can see that.
Yeah.
So when you picked up the phone, answered the phone and said, it's about time you called.
What do you need?
Shanie took care of everything.
We ordered the food from Ginegal.
Had that catered and she organized everything.
She picked up the food.
She organized the help.
She just took care of everything.
Organized meals.
We didn't have to work.
Extra meals.
Yeah.
Organized extra meals for during the funeral and after the funeral.
She had to, when Pete announced it at church and he said that, see Shanie and she'll organize
this.
Shanie had to tell people, we have too many people to help.
So we don't need anymore.
So many people came.
Yeah.
It was very moving and very much a witness to our family and friends who came to the
funeral.
A lot of people were asking, are those the caterers helpers or the facilities helpers?
And we're like, no, they're from our church.
They're all from our church.
They're our family.
Church family.
Yeah.
So that was just such a significant moving experience to have them rally around us the
way they did.
A great testimony of how God's people are supposed to be with each other.
Absolutely.
It really was.
And why fellowship is important.
One of the facets of why fellowship is important.
Not the only reason.
You don't need to have horrible things happen for it to happen.
Nothing bad has happened since I've been to meet with you.
Like nothing that I know of that's been bad to happen in my life, but I'm having a blast
with Randy.
And so, you know, you can have fun with fellowship too.
That's just really good.
Not just in the bad times.
I encourage you that there's a lot of fun and good times and just having a fellow believer
to talk to.
And when you're struggling, if you have issues that they may actually have gone through and
can help you through.
When I was in the military, a lot of guys had PTSD.
And it was hard for them to talk about some of the things they'd seen, some of the things
they'd done, some of the things, the experiences that they had done.
And I had heard a story from one of them and it would talk basically about how a man with
PTSD, a soldier felt like he was in the bottom of a hole and he couldn't get himself out.
And it's really easy for us to say, Hey, you know, God can get you out of a hole.
But that's not the case when you can't see anything, right?
And so the story goes that another soldier jumps in the hole with him and he says, What
are you doing here?
Crazy.
You're going to get stuck too.
And the guy says, I've been in this hole before I know how to get out.
And so, you know, it really reaches that story about PTSD, but that's also fellowship.
Right?
This is I've been where you are and I know how to get out.
It's okay if I'm here with you.
You shouldn't be alone.
And I think that speaks volumes to what a good church body looks like in a lot of people
have been hurt by that we've mentioned before.
And I know that we're in a good place where we are because I felt that as soon as I went
there that there's a Holy Spirit very strong in the church.
And so I'm very, very glad to have met Randy.
I couldn't avoid him.
He basically threw himself at me the first day I was in the church to greet me and he's
invited me to, if not 100%, 99.7% of every function that is offered to men at the church.
And I really appreciate that I've told him in his podcast a couple of weeks ago that
that's never happened.
I've never been in a church that focused on men's ministry.
Never.
And when they did, they did like one thing a year that was $275, you know, and you guys
can do this for, there was no point.
There was no fellowship.
It felt more like a chore.
It felt more like, well, if I'm going to go on vacation, I'm going to go with my family.
Right?
It didn't, I don't understand it.
And Randy's very welcoming and very wonderful person.
I know the first Wednesday night class that my wife was in was with Randy's wife.
And so I didn't even know they were together.
And then when I, I was like, I'm mad.
I was like, I don't know what she sees in him because he's a goofball.
And she seems, she seems like she's got it really all together.
Right?
I don't.
And the more you did, the more I see you guys interact and talk, you guys are so perfect
for each other.
Right?
And certainly it's hard to see it, but together it's plain as day.
I just love that about the dynamic of you two that literally when I met you had no idea.
Right?
You were so different from the goofiness that he puts on the table.
But when you're together, you're with him in his goofiness.
You don't stop him.
You're not smacking him.
You know, you allow him to be him.
And that is such a lovely, encouraging thing to see.
I just love you guys.
When she's smacking me, it's, it's usually what people aren't looking.
So, so you're going to get it when we leave.
Yeah.
Yeah, I will.
You know, it's funny because one of the reasons I married him was because he made me laugh.
And then we had kids and life is, you know, I mean, life can get very serious raising
other human beings, you know, these beautiful little babies.
And he would joke because that's his nature.
And I would just say, would you please be serious?
Please be serious for a moment, but it's a struggle.
It's a struggle for him to be serious.
I've been doing really good.
This whole podcast, I've been pretty good.
Yes.
You know, he actually shared with me the other night that he said, the thing that you left
most about him was a sense of humor.
And the thing that annoyed you the most about him was a sense of humor.
It's true.
It's very true.
Yes.
It's very true.
Yep.
There you go.
That's a two-inch sword right there.
It is.
But at the end of the day, I'd rather laugh than cry.
Absolutely.
Good choice.
So our takeaway, our, I guess, PowerPoint as Pastor Pete would say.
What's PowerPoint?
How important the body of Christ is and scripture we would like to share as Hebrews 10, 24 and
25, it says, and let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.
Not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one
another and then all the more as you see the day approaching, being part of a body is just
so, so important.
And we're called to not give up meeting together.
Yeah.
It's, we're designed for it.
We are.
Absolutely.
Thank you guys so much.
I love you guys so much.
Oh, we like you guys a little bit too.
We love you too.
I'm so blessed that my first small group at the church was with you.
And we did wellness revelation for those of you who haven't heard of it.
You know, they have all these things for weight loss and you know, it's like, do this, do
that, but they don't, in that group, they don't show it on you.
They don't say you should do this, you should do this because everybody's different.
And so in that little group, you go through the, oh, you've put in the work, but then
you get, God reveals what's best for you and your body and your family.
So it's a really great group.
Do you want to share anything more about that?
Maybe I'll save that.
Okay.
So I was just blessed by that.
And it's like another level.
So if that sounds interesting to you, you can look that up.
So they got apps and videos and devotions and they got activities to meet together throughout
the year.
So anyway, so it's a blessing to me.
So.
Yeah.
It was funny that like I met Josh and you met Sherry and the four of us didn't.
Know that we connected.
Yeah.
Got so good how he leaves everything together.
He's got a better sense of humor than Randy and I.
So you know, he was giggling when he was dealing it.
This out guys.
Hey Gabriel, look at this.
Yeah, I love it.
Thank you guys.
I was blessed to have you in the class.
It was just such a blessing to meet you and to work with you.
Thank you.
So with that, thank you listener for listening.
We hope you've been blessed and could take something away from this.
And if the Holy Spirit brought someone to your mind, we hope that you can pass it along
to them because it can be an encouragement to them as well.
And also I'd like to share that we have a fundraising campaign to help us pay for the
audio expenses.
So if you go to ginsengoo.com and look up God's goodness podcast, you can make a donation
there and we'd greatly appreciate the help.
And with that, we'll talk to you next time.