The Dan Scott Show Podcast

Dan Scott Show, Radio Episode 81 - Redd Martin (7-21-24)

As our Summer Replay Series continues, we check in again with Redd Martin of "Sunday Dinner With A Twist." After over 30 rehab stops, multiple arrests and suicide attempts, and eight friends who died of substance abuse, Redd surrendered his life to Jesus. And now he is back on the streets, serving the homeless population of Greenville, SC. Check it out!

Duration:: 54m
Broadcast on:: 21 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

The following program is a presentation of Grand Slam Ministries. Hi again everybody and welcome to this week's edition of The Dan Scott Show. This is episode 81. We are so glad to have you with us. Each and every time we get together it is presented by our 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Grand Slam Ministries. Hope and pray that you've had a great week to this point. We'll try not to mess it up and maybe by the time this is all said and done, we'll learn something that we did not know and I always make sure that I point out that usually starts here in the host chair because as many people who know me will tell you there are quite a few things that I don't know. I do know that we are in our summer replace series and trying to give you an opportunity to either catch up on some interviews that maybe you heard before and would love to hear again in more depth and detail or maybe you missed it the first time around. Whatever the scenario is, this is what we do during a portion of the summer and this week we're going back to March and replaying the interview that we did with Red Martin from Sunday dinner with a twist in Greenville, South Carolina, a wonderful nonprofit organization that feeds the homeless on a weekly basis. Just the fact that Red Martin is around to do this kind of work for the Lord is a miracle in and of itself and as we revisit this interview you're going to understand why. Red Martin is our guest this week on our summer replace series. We'll take a break come back and get into the interview after you hear something about Grand Slam Ministries. Here at Grand Slam Ministries, our goal is to share the love of Jesus Christ through multiple platforms while at the same time executing our core missions of mentorship and helping children in need. The primary way we can effectively do all of those things is through the Dan Scott Show, our weekly Christian radio show that airs in multiple markets around the nation and the world. We are asking you to partner with us to not only sustain what we are currently doing but to grow both our on-air, online presence and our ability to fund those core missions. Can you spare as little as $25 per month? How about $10 per month? If we can get 200 partners to join us at each of those small sustainable levels, we can begin to accomplish everything we believe God has called us to do. So can you help us today with a donation of either $25 or $10 per month? Please go to www.grand slamministries.org for your donation to get more information or to ask questions. That's grand slamministries.org and thank you for supporting the Dan Scott Show and Grand Slam Ministries. Follow us on social media, search Grand Slam Ministries on Facebook and Grand Slam for God on Twitter. And don't forget Dan's personal and public figure sites on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You're listening to the Dan Scott Show presented by Grand Slam Ministries. Episode 81 of the Dan Scott Show as we continue in our summer replay series. Just a reminder that everything we've done is archived at the website Danscottshow.org. You can go to the affiliates and archives page. You can find out what stations we're on, when the show airs live on Saturdays and Sundays on a particular station. And then everything is archived there as well. There's also some bonus SoundCloud material, Danscottshow.org. And as always, we would love to hear from you. Dan@danscotshow.org is the email address, and we're going to talk more about that in the final segment of the show. But I want to jump right into our revisiting the interview with Red Martin. You know, I'm a sports guy. I'm a sports broadcaster and we deal a lot in statistics. Red Martin Statline, 32 rehab facilities, eight psychiatric hospitals, six times in jail, five suicide attempts and eight friends who died from substance abuse. And yet he is here by the grace of God serving Jesus Christ with a ministry in Greenville, South Carolina called Sunday dinner with a twist. You're going to hear all about all of this and much more in this week's interview with Red Martin. Well, my name is John Red Martin and I go by Red Martin. And so today who I am is a man who has built a relationship with God, a man who has not ever had one until I met my wife in 2016. And my wife is a big part of who I am today. I met her while I was homeless living on the streets. And she took me, I guess she took me in and she just changed my whole world and taught me about grandma's love. And we're going to talk about the journey that led you to the streets. And then as we're going to see, as we love to do on this show, the redemptive power and grace of Jesus Christ, because he has made a major life turn around 180 degrees, hasn't he? Yes, sir. I tell people all the time that if somebody wrote a book about my life today, they would sell it way short because there's no way anybody could write a life like I have today. Well, you know, it's funny. You and I have a mutual friend in Steve Duggan. And I was talking with him yesterday and he just flat out told me he said 15 years ago, if you'd have told me that Red would be doing what he's doing now, he said, I wouldn't have believed you. And I would imagine from what I've heard, there are quite a few people who would have had the same same response. Yeah, a whole lot of people. So let's give people an idea. And I want to go back to how you got there. But prior to coming off the streets in 2016 and developing that relationship with Jesus Christ, what was your life like? What were you doing at the time? Well, I was I suffered from mental health, a mental health issue. And I also, to deal with that mental health, I used alcohol and drugs since I was 13 to combat that mental health. And your how old now? I'm 56. Okay. Yes, sir. And I grew up in, do you want me to just go ahead and tell you? Just go. Okay. So I grew up in, I was born in Key West, Florida. And I was a little freckleface little kid, never felt like I fit in anywhere. And I just had a like an in pending doom on my life. And at the age of seven was the first thing that turned me away from God is when my little brother drowned. And my dad tried to save him. He fell in the water and hit his head. And my dad tried to save him. And I blame God and I, you know, I blame myself for some reason. And this is just my perception that I thought my parents had blamed me as well because my dad was an alcoholic. And he, after my little brother died, he became abusive physically and emotionally and just he was he was a good man. And he was my hero, but he was always drinking. So I only saw the part of drinking. I only saw that part in him. And so when my little brother died, we moved to Key West, Florida. I mean, we moved from Key West, Florida to Columbia, South Carolina. And when we moved to Columbia, we moved down by my grandparents. And then my dad found work in Sumter, South Carolina. And that's where me and Steve Duggan became friends. And so I'm going through life really just thinking everybody's blaming me, me not feeling like I fit in anywhere. And at the age of 11, I was molested by a babysitter. And I went and told my parents that I was molested. And I thought they were sending me back to her, just not caring what happened to me. But after working through life and working on some things, I found out that my parents never sent me back. I was going back because I was a little 11 year old boy enjoying what was happening to me at that time. And so after that, the guy thing was completely out the window. At the age of 13, I took a drink of alcohol. And I could have took a drink way earlier than that. I needed one way earlier than that. But when I took that drink at 13, it took all those insecurities on the inside and just took them away. And I could numb myself. So when I started numbming myself, I found out two interesting things at that time. If I could drink, I wouldn't feel. And then I found out at that time that if I put a mask on and I can make you laugh, you wouldn't know how I felt inside. Because if you knew really how I felt inside, you wouldn't want to hang around a guy like me. And I tell people either I had to drink or put the mask on. And at the age of 14, I woke up one morning, me and my dad, like I said, he was my hero, even though he was who he was. He was my hero. I woke up that morning. He told me he never felt this good a day in his life. And then two hours later, he had a massive heart attack and died. And so here I am at 14 years old, my hero is gone. I don't feel like I fit in. So I just started running at that point and going to places where I thought people felt like I did. Right. So let me stop you here for just a minute, because I want to go back to something you said a moment ago, when your brother drowned and you said you felt responsible. What made you feel responsible for that? Were people blaming you? Or is that something you put on yourself? Explain that to me a little bit. Well, at a young age, I remember probably since I was five or six years old that I, you know, like I said, I didn't feed in. So I felt like it should have been me. It shouldn't have been my little brother. It should have been me. Because I was the person, my brother and sister got all the good attention because they were good kids. And I got all the bad attention because that's who I was. I was a bad little kid. And that was the only attention I felt like I was getting. So I just ended up being bad. And I just felt like, I just felt like it was my fault. And it should have been me instead of somebody else. That's an awful lot to put on yourself at such a young age. Yes, sir. And even when my dad died, I even said it then after that morning when I was told I ran away for that night. And that's all I talked about to a friend of mine was it should have been me. It shouldn't have been my daddy. We are visiting with John Red Martin. He is known primarily as red on this week's edition of the dance Scott show. So that happens at 14 years old. Your dad passes away. You were already on a, we'll call it a path of destruction, maybe it just started the walk on that path. What did that moment do to you? When my dad died, you know, God took my hero away. And then I had nothing else. I had nobody else after that. That's just my perception. Now my mother is a loving woman. And she did everything in her power to steer me the white way. But my mind was already fixed that God didn't love me. I didn't love me. And nobody else did either. And I didn't really deserve their love anyways. So you're taking your first drink at 13. This happens at 14. Yes, sir. What were the next steps? How quickly did you go down that path? I went pretty fast because, like I said, I started hanging around people who I felt like felt like me. So I started hanging in out in those places where you just drink alone and you drink, you know, you just drink to not feel right. And so I go through high school and I'm the class crime. And, you know, like I said, I found out at an early age, if everybody could see, I could make somebody laugh, you wouldn't see me cry. And so that mass was put on a daily basis because I figured if you really knew how I felt, you wouldn't want to hang around me. And that was one of the key things in my life. So I did a lot of things that you would want to hang around because I was the fun guy. What was there? Nobody in your life, best friend or anybody in your family that you could confide to that you could share how you felt? No, you know, my dad was the type of man where he would tell you, you don't cry. You're a man, you don't cry. And we grew up in that kind of phrase. Men don't cry. And so I had nobody. Yeah, I think that's one of the greatest tragedies that has taken place in the lives of a lot of men of a certain age and generation. And I think you and I are in that age that that's what we were taught that that you don't cry, you don't show emotions, whatever you're feeling, you just compress it inside and you go on about and do what you're supposed to do quote unquote as a man. And I think that we have seen far too many examples of men who have taken that pain and turned it into exactly what you're talking about with your life, trying to find some way to deal with it because we didn't feel like we were supposed to talk about it. Right. And, you know, I always felt like I was burdened people. If I if I told somebody about it, it was a burden. It was like, here's all my problems. Somebody should fix it. And that would be too much of a burden for you to fix me, help me. So all through high school, you're you're drinking and you're masking all of your pain with with being the class clown man, this sounds so familiar to me. When did when did drugs start to come into the picture? Well, I took my first job at the age of 16, it was around 16, 17. It was I was a street farmer, a suitable representative. And yes. So I took that job and I was introduced to a lot at that time. And so I did the marijuana stuff here and there. I didn't like it the way it made me feel. I liked the alcohol. I loved the alcohol the way that made me feel. But I didn't too much like the marijuana. But so around 17 was my first drug. And then I graduated high school. I went to five years of high school. And it was a funny thing because my niece, she graduated from Clemson. And she looked at my transcripts one day and saw that I was 246 out of 257. And she said, I'm correct. Their mother, other 11 people must have been really dumb. And I said, no, baby, they just didn't apply to itself like your career. And that was the first time I knew my mom could throw a shoe. Yeah. So and as we know, mothers can be deadly accurate with those things too, can't they? Yeah, she she was pretty good at that. But so, you know, after I graduate, my mother told me, you know, she she was straight up. She always told me the truth. And she said, you can do one or three things. You can go you can get a job. And she said, you're lazy. So you're not really going to get a job. And she said, you can either go to college. And she said, she just told me straight out, she said, you're too dumb for that. Or you can go into service. And so I went straight into the Navy. That's what my dad was in. And like I said, that was still my hero. Even though when I at 14, when he died, I was mad and angry at him for leaving me. Yeah, but he was still I still had that he was still my hero. And so I went into service and nothing ever changed in the service. I was still the same person. I did the same things I was doing in the streets. And after two years, they asked me to leave. And so I left and at that time, and I'll tell you a couple of little stories like that'll end up showing people God's love at the end. When I was in the service, I had a I got a young lady pregnant. And when I got out, I went to jail and I got out of jail. And my mother told me that we went to court. My mother told me that the girl had gotten married. And I need to give up the rights to my daughter, because that was a good man. And he was raising my daughter. And I would never be a good father. And so at that moment, I gave up the rights to my daughter. And that was another excuse that I could drink more. After that, you know, here I am. I'm a piece of junk. I couldn't stay in the service. I'm not I'm not a good daddy. I had to give it the rights to my father, my daughter. So now I can really drink and escape. And at the age of 24, I think it was 24 years old, I was introduced to crack cocaine. And crack cocaine took me down a road that I never thought I'd go down. And it was a dark, dark road. I want to explore that road in just a moment. But I hear you talking about your mother and the things that she told you. Did she think that she was telling you these things out of love? Was she doing it out of out of anger? I mean, what was your relationship with your mother like? Because just just listening to it read, it doesn't sound like she was she was being very loving toward you. Well, and in all actuality, I thought she was loving me more than anybody ever could love me because she was actually the only person telling me the truth. Because at that time, I couldn't I couldn't have been a good father doing the things I was doing. And I wasn't going to be good in college or I wasn't going to get a good job. And so I kind of looked at it as she was just telling me the truth, what I needed to hear. And then that turned into her being my biggest enabler at the end. And then which maybe we can go down that road as well, but where did crack cocaine take you? It took me to a lot of treatment centers, jails and to the home being homeless. I never like I tell people all the time about mental health and drugs and alcohol. You know, I couldn't when I was five or six years old, the teacher asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I never said I wanted to be an alcoholic drug addict suffering from mental health. And crack cocaine took me to those places that I never thought I'd go. And it it it didn't make me do it, but I did things while long that I never thought I would do. Because I can't I come from a good family. My mother taught me good values. My father taught me good values when I was little. And I never thought that I would do those things that I did. Are you willing in the line? I was going to ask, are you willing to share some of those things? Yes, sir. Um, see, when I when I got on crack, I'll give you one instance that I've tried to work through through some amends. My nieces and nephews woke up one Christmas with nothing under the tree because their uncle stole all their Christmas presents the night before just get him some crack. Wow. And that's stuff I don't I don't feel good about it. But I've tried to work through it by making amends at the end. And I hope they can forgive me for those things. But I will tell you, I don't do those things when I'm not on drugs and alcohol. Where were you at your lowest? Um, my lowest point that I can remember is I was homeless down in Myrtle Beach and Steve found out he got in touch with me and said, hey, why don't you come live with me? And I went and lived with him. And I'm sitting, I'm at Soxley High School. He got me a job as a teacher's aide with the handicapped children. The kids went down syndrome and all that stuff. And that was the best job I ever had. But the only thing about it is I took me with it and nothing in my life changed. The kids were making me feel like I was the best thing in the world. But inside, I didn't feel that way. So I never changed the drinking and I never, I stopped using for a little bit, but not not the whole time I was at Soxley. March 23rd of 2000, I was staying in a pool house of a gentleman in Myrtle Beach. And I had lost the job at Soxley. And I drank for like two weeks before that. Just drank straight and trying to numb myself out. And on March 23rd of 2000, I went in that man's house and stole the gun. And I started walking down, I walked all the way from Surfside to Sinema Twins Park. And I sat in that park. And the whole time before that, I was walking down the beach, just crying, asking God to help me. Because I knew when I stole that gun that one or two things were going to happen. Either guy was going to help me or I was going to shoot myself. And so I went down to Sinema Twins Park. It was about six o'clock in the morning. And I sat down on that bench and I cried. And I put the gun to my head and I tried to pull the trigger. And I was, and I don't know what it was, but I had the gun and I was trying to pull it and it wouldn't go off. So I was getting even angry at God. Because here I am, I want to kill myself and you won't allow me to do it. And so I put the gun down and I'm crying. And I like to describe it as my tears were coming off my face. And they were hitting the ground and it sounded like bombs were going off. So I didn't even realize if God was sending me a message and I don't even really, don't even really know if I wanted to hear the message at that time. Because I had reached a point in my life where I just wanted to die. And I had tried numerous times before that to try to kill myself. And this time I was really going to do it. And then I put the gun in my mouth, same thing happened. And the next thing I know is I put the gun to my chest. It went off. And I ended up in the Antist Care Unit at the Grand Stranding Memorial Hospital. At that morning, it was March 23rd. My mother was at the house. They called her and said, "Hey, your son just shot himself. We think you need to get up here." And she said, "Well, what you want me to do about it?" And hung the phone up. And for the next 56 days in the hospital, I finally really knew what loneliness was. I thought I knew loneliness, but when nobody ever showed up, no friends, no family, nobody showed up for those 56 days, I finally felt loneliness. And what that turned into was anger. And I was mad at everybody. I was mad at all my friends. I was mad at God. I was mad at it. And I never looked at me. I looked at why y'all didn't come. Here I am at my lowest point and nobody showed up. Well, as we know, and the reason you're on this show is I was going to say God showed up, but God was always there. But we're going to get to your recognition of that here in just a little bit. We are visiting with Red Martin. He is the guy. If you're familiar with Greenville, South Carolina, he does what's called Sunday dinner with a twist. And we're going to talk about that because it's a great outreach for the homeless in our area here in the upset of South Carolina. But just continue the story. So 56 days in the hospital, nobody comes to see you. So you've got all these other issues. And now you're dealing with this anger that is misplaced, but was real at the same time. So what happened then? So when I got out of the hospital, they sent me to Greenville, South Carolina. And that's what I moved up here. And so that was in 2000. And I started going to alcoholic synonymous. And so I'm sitting in a meeting 90 days in. And this old man is he's a chair in the meeting, and he calls on me. And he says, do you want to share? And I said, yeah. And I started sharing and I started crying. And I said, Sterling, the only thing missing in my life today is a pistol. And from that morning on, that old man loved me more than anybody that I could ever imagine. He loved me when people told him not to love me anymore. Because I would go, I would go in the rooms and he would talk about God. And I'd see God working in their life. But I never thought, I deserve God's love like that. I never thought he was working in my life. So for the next six years, I was in and out, in and out, in and up in homeless, being homeless, ended up in treatment centers. And I started in about 2005, I started getting a low belief that God might be working in my life. Things started getting better. I'm getting some things happening good in my life. And then my mom was up here in Seneca. And I had over a year sobriety at that time. And my mom was in Seneca at a baseball tournament. I have a little nephew who was playing in the Dixie Youth World Series, the state championship. And then I was able to go over and talk to her. And I asked her, me and her were by herself, I was sitting at the pool with her. And I said, mom, why didn't you come? Why didn't you come on that morning? I said, and she said, well, let me ask you this. She said, do you know what it's like when your phone rings and your heart drops? Because I didn't know if it was you calling for another 500, another 1000. I didn't know if it was the drug dealer saying, if you don't bring us some money that we're going to kill you, son. I didn't know if it was the police at a hospital calling. So she said when she knew where I was at for those 50 sitting days, she'd find the answer phone. And I felt like crap. I was hurt. But me and her got through it. And I'm thinking we're going to build this relationship from then on out. Two weeks later, she goes to Grand Prairie, Texas. The team is out there at World Series. She comes down to elevator and has a massive heart attack and dies. And so there goes that God thing completely out the window. Now you done took my mama. And here I am, I was just getting that relationship with her. And I felt good about it. And now she's gone. And when that happened, that anger I talked back about before it multiplied. And I was mad at everything and everybody. And so I couldn't, I couldn't get it sober because I was, I just wanted to die. I didn't feel like I deserved to be here. You know, my mom was a great grandmother. She was a great mother. She should be here. Why couldn't it be me? Because I'm worthless. So I lived like that until 2016 when I met my wife in and out, in and out. And that day I met my wife, I was, it was April 24, 2016. I was working at the Greenville Drive homeless. I was driving a 50cc moped. And I was working in the team store. And she walks in the store. And we immediately become friends. And I didn't have anything apart to piss in. And, and matter of fact, she would buy me food and bring it down to me during days. She would come see me. And so I'm sitting in the team store, we're becoming friends. She's looking for a jacket that we were supposed to have. I knew we was never getting the jacket in. But I kept telling her we may get it in tomorrow. So, so she was working at the concession stand at the time. And so after a couple, couple weeks go by, I'm still, I don't have her phone number. And I'm still trying to think how I'm going to get her phone number. And so one day I'm going up to the kiosk to work in the kiosk. And I saw her and I called her over. I said, Hey, if we had that jacket in the kiosk, I'll call you and let you know when you can come get it. Well, I said, I need your number to do that. And when I, she gave me the number, we even called over to each other since. And not too long after that. I just knew that God put her in my life for a reason, because she was a phenomenal woman. She, she loved me like nothing. And we were only friends at first. And then I got, got my nerves up one day and I said, You know what, I think I love you. And she said, I think I love you too. And then from then on, you know, for the first year that we were together, I tried to push her away because I still had that mentality of I don't deserve this. Right. Visiting with Red Martin, here on this week's edition of the Dan Scott show. So there's, there's a positive relationship, obviously, you know, with with Cassandra, who has, has become your wife. But the most important relationship is the one with, with Jesus Christ. So when, when, when did, when did you throw all of these other things away? When did your relationship with Christ happen? When did it become real? Okay. Well, I was starting to call me over one night and he said, Hey, you're going to have to work these steps. And you're going to have to get through this program and work these steps in your lives. And so I, I was ready because I didn't want to lose my wife. And he said, he said, if I didn't, I'd probably lose everything again. And I didn't want to lose her. So I started working the steps. And when I got to step one, it was easy. My life was unmanageable. And when I drank, it became unmanageable. And I could believe that, but the step two part where it says came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. Well, I had been sitting in meetings wanting to kill myself and kill other people. So I said, God's never going to restore me to sanity. And he broke it down. And he told me that that was not what the step meant, what the step meant was that, oh, my wife's walking in the door now. So, but the step meant that if I took a drink after admitting that I was powerless over that drink, that's the insanity that we're talking about. Right. He said, we're going to get to the God thing next. And so he knew I still had a hangover about God, not what him God want, not want anything to do with me. And he calls me over the next day. And he sits me down. And he says, hey, this piece of paper, I want you to write down how many times you've been to jail, how many times you've been just like at your hospital, how many times you honestly try to commit suicide and how many treatment centers. So in the bottom of the piece of paper, he had me write down how many friends and family members do I know have died of this disease of alcoholism and drug addiction. So my numbers were 32 treatment centers, eight psychiatric hospitals, six times in jail, and five times I honestly tried to commit suicide. And on the bottom of the piece of paper, I had eight. And so I wrote it down. And I was just going to slide the piece of paper back over to him. And something came over over me. And I get chills when I talk about it. But I went to slide the piece paper back over. And something said, pick it up, read it. And I picked it up and read it. And I started crying. I couldn't stop crying. I'm balling my eyes out. And I realized that God had been there every single time, because I should have been number nine a long time ago. And when I saw that on paper, there was no denying God anymore. There was it was on paper, and I could see it. And since that day, you know, even though I have some hard days, sometimes because I do suffer from a mental illness, and I do not have the drugs and alcohol to deal with that mental illness. I have hard times, but I realized that God is going to fix it. And my wife taught me that that love of God through her grandmother. And that's, that's where I built this relationship with God. And I started building that relationship. And it's a God of my understanding. And it's me and him get mad at each other. We laugh together. We cry together. And it's kind of like my relationship with my wife. It's, you know, she gets mad at me. I get mad at God. And at the end, both of them are right. Happy, happy wife, happy life, right? Yeah. Happy God, happy life. Yeah, there you go. All right, so we've got six or seven minutes left. I know there's so much more detail we could go into. But but I wanted people to get the gist of your story here. So God has done this miraculous work in your life. He has kept you from your own hand five times and all of these other vices that you've had. And now you have become known for what I mentioned a moment ago here in the Upstate of South Carolina Sunday dinner with a twist. Tell our list, tell our listeners about that, what it is, how it came about and who you're serving. Well, my wife, me and my wife, you know, she, she's a loving person. And she, she knew about my story and we decided to go help some guys at the turning point and give them some food because they were new and they didn't have anything. So we're out there sitting in the car after giving the guy some food. And she says, well, they're living in a hotel. How do they eat? And I said, well, they cook everything on the grills because they didn't have stoves in the room. And she said, wow, what they're missing is grandma's kitchen, grandma's cooking. Every Sunday you go to grandma's house, no matter what she was going through, grandma always had Sunday dinner. So we put that concept in my life story together. And we made it Sunday dinner with a twist. And we go out every Sunday and we cook them a home cook Sunday dinner. And my wife, she, she's an amazing woman. I mean, y'all should be talking to her instead. But she, she goes in and she cooks in our kitchen. Our kitchen is no bigger than a jail cell. And she goes in there and makes meals for over 200 people. And so we do this every Sunday. And we also have like a church, Northfield's church, they help us on the third Sunday. And then Heidi and Aki Henry of harvest kitchen has now recently, because we started six years ago, they have recently started letting us use their kitchen on Sunday because they're closed. So my wife is able to go down there with them and Grace Church comes out and cooks a meal for us every once in a while. And so we're getting more cooking in the kitchen now, in a commercial kitchen. And you say that there are every Sunday, there were 200 homeless people that you feed? Yes, sir. We, we started off with 75 and now we're up to 200. And we go out and feed them every Sunday. We have fed over 53,000 plates in the six years that we started. We keep account. And because I always said, told my wife when we started, I'm gonna catch McDonald's one day. I like that. I was listening that reference alone. And some people will get that. I like that red. That's good. Do you get a chance to have people or yourself or somebody share the gospel with them? Yes, sir. And that's, that's one thing that we do different. We feel that Jesus wants us to love everybody. And if we love them, we hug on them and we, we love them and we listen to them. We can get the love of Jesus to them easier than going out and preaching at them and telling them they can't eat until they have them learn a Bible verse. So we go out and when they want to pray, we pray. But we, we kind of, we have two slogans in one of them's love with no stipulations. No matter what you're going through in your life, we're going to love you. And each one of the homeless people that we hand a plate to, they also get my number and they call when they need something and we try to get them into treatment centers. And during the week, I get them their clothes washed and get them some food during the week and taking the doctor's appointments and stuff like that. So yeah, we try to do it that way. And they know the Bible more than we do. Yeah, I'm sure a lot, a lot of people do. A lot of people do. It's just, it's just taking the head knowledge and turning it into, to heart knowledge. How do you pay for all this stuff? Because it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not cheap. No, no, it's, it's not. And we have some donations. We, we're looking for monthly donators that way we can put it in our budget that we know we're going to get this every month. And so that's what we're looking for. And then, you know, my wife is a big God person. And I'm a big warrior. I worry about everything. And she'll tell me don't worry. But like, I'll watch her cook and I'll say, honey, we're not going to have enough green beans. And she'll say, stay out the kitchen. I got this. And then we have too many green beans. And it's like, God just fixes everything for us. And he's, man, he's, it's an amazing thing that how we see on a daily basis, God's love for us and love for others. So read of people want to find out more about Sunday dinner with a twist. If they want to donate to help your mission, how can they do so? They can go on Sunday dinner with a twist.org. And we have a donation button there. And then can I tell one more story? You can tell as many as you want. Well, I told you this story about my little girl. And I wanted to tell you how much God truly shows me. He loves me. So we're out feeding one day. And we run across a young lady. She's under a bridge. She comes out and I hand her a plate. And she's just scuffing the food down with her hands. She's not even using those utensils. And I said, are you okay? And she said the rats to eat the food off her chest the night before. And that she was real hungry. And her and her boyfriend were there. And I took her boyfriend to the side. And my wife took her to the side. And my wife comes over to me after we get back. And she says, Hey, she's five and a half months pregnant. And both me and my wife started talking. And we said, no, we're going, she's not going back under that bridge. So we put her up in a motel for a month and a half. We made sure she ate every day new clothes, made sure she was clean. And my wife would take her to her daughter's appointments and get all her medicine for. And then on September 17 2020, she called and asked if we were going to help with the baby. And we said, yeah, we've got everything we y'all need for the baby to come home with you. And then the next day, I was going to Sumter to feed where I grew up. And my wife called and said, hey, you need to turn around and meet me at the hospital. We got papers assigned because the young lady and the baby and the boyfriend all tested positive for drugs. And if we didn't sign to be kinship caregivers, they were going to put them in foster care. So me and my wife go up there and we brought Sam home that Sunday night and Sam has been with us since he was born and he's three years old now. And what I think God did, and we're in the adoption process right now for him, what I think God did was he allowed me to go through everything that I went through in life. And he told me at the age of 53, he's got a sense of humor that it's okay to be a daddy now. And he gave me the opportunity to be a daddy to not only Cassandra's kids that she had in the previous marriage, but now I'm a father to the baby Sam. And that's truly God's love for somebody like me. And so I can't deny it anymore. You know, God has opened the door for some amazing interviews in the year and a half or so we've been doing this show. I don't know that there's been one more powerful in total than Red Martin's story. And I just thank Red again for his willingness to come on the show, share that story, be vulnerable and for the work that he's doing with the homeless community in the Greenville, South Carolina area. If you follow him on social media, particularly Facebook, Red Martin, R E D D Martin, I don't care if you're in this area or not, you need to either follow this guy or become friends with him because the work that he does and the things that he shares on his Facebook profile, it's just phenomenal what God is doing through he and his wife Cassandra. We'll take a break. We'll come back and we'll close out the show by talking about some of the things that are going on with the dance got show and Grand Slam Ministries and how you can be involved. We'll do that right after this. Every day there are children who leave school on Friday and eat little and sometimes nothing until they come back to school on Monday. It happens in every community, including yours. Many of these children live in circumstances that deprive them of basic needs necessary for a quality life. At Grand Slam Ministries, we want to change that. We want to invest in our children, giving them hope for the future. That investment includes necessities such as food, clothing, school supplies, and a safe environment to play, to study, to live. Please visit our website Grand Slam Ministries dot org to find out more about our ministry and how you can help. We're just getting started. Will you come alongside us for the children's sake? Again, that's Grand Slam Ministries dot org. Like what you hear? Have a question or comment? Maybe a guest suggestion. Drop us an email and let us know. Dan@danscotchow.org and now back to the Dan Scott show presented by Grand Slam Ministries. Final segment of our show today. This has been episode 81 of the Dan Scott show and our thanks again to Red Martin. Hope that if this is the first time that you've heard that interview, we're in our summer replay series. If this is the first time that you heard it, that it had the impact on you that it had on me when we were recording that interview because the whole premise of what we do here above and beyond anything else is to show that God is still on the throne in the midst of everything else that's going on. And we know that we have a world in chaos and we're seeing it play out on national television each and every day, seeing it in our neighborhoods each and every day. God is still on the throne and He is still working in people's lives and the saving grace of Jesus Christ is as powerful today as it's ever been. Red Martin's story, I think, kind of encapsulates all of that. So, hope you enjoyed that. Share this episode with your friends and family and and just let's all sit back and marvel at and praise God for what He's doing. In our final couple of minutes here, I just want to catch you up on some things I've mentioned in passing a couple of times in the last, I don't know, two or three weeks that we have an opportunity at the end of the year in November to get Lee Strobel in for a fundraiser, which could be a game changer for Grand Slam Ministries. You know, we are in our infancy. God is providing what we need as we need it. I have plans that I'm praying about and if they are aligned with God's will, getting a fundraiser with Lee Strobel as the headliner could be just an absolute game changer and skyrocket us to where we want to go. If God does not want Lee Strobel here, then obviously I'm not going to try to make it happen. Lee has agreed to do it. He has, as you might expect, a pretty hefty price tag for doing these kind of things and we need to be able to meet that price knowing that it's not going to have a detrimental effect on the rest of the evening and the fundraising. Originally, I had set a date for the end of June. My father passed on June the 11th and that kind of threw everything into chaos. So I've extended the deadline to making the final decision to the end of this month of July. And in total, it's going to be with travel cost and everything else probably around $18,000 just to get Lee Strobel here. I want to get half of that money raised ahead of time and we're about $5,000 short of that halfway figure. So I'm asking you above and beyond anything else to pray for God's will to be done in this, because if it's not God's will for this to happen, I'm certainly not going to try to push it. I have made that mistake before. It is not pretty. If it is his will, then he's going to open the door. He may use you as one of the conduits. I don't know, but I'm just asking for prayers because by the end of this month, by July 31st, we have to make a decision one way or the other as to whether this is going to happen. And then if it's not, pivot and see where it is that God is leading us. If you would like to help where that's concerned or just in a general way, help what we're doing, you can go to grand slam ministries.org, which is a page at Dan Scott show.org. And there's a donate tab at the top, painless process. You can choose to donate one time or monthly. It'll ask you if you want to give a a supporting fee to Zefi, our platform, and it'll give you three options, or there's a bar at the bottom where you can custom custom set that option to donate to them all the way down to zero. So that's completely up to you. Danscottshow.org, grand slam ministries.org. Or if the old fashioned way is the way you'd like to help us, you can do that as well by sending a check made out to grand slam ministries. P.O. Box 35 central South Carolina 2 9 6 3 0. But again, more than anything else, I'm just asking for your prayers that we make the right decision moving forward, the decision that needs to be made by the end of this month. Listen, thank you for your attention. We'll be back with you again next week. I pray that you have a great week ahead. And until then, I'm Dan Scott saying God bless you and so long, everybody. Thank you for listening to this week's Danscott show. And here it again, catch up on past shows or find out more about grand slam ministries. Please visit our website, Danscottshow.org. And while they're carefully consider making gift to help us in our mission to share the love of Jesus Christ. That's the Danscottshow.org. (upbeat music)