The Unexpected Cosmology Podcast

361 This Is How You Can Help Support The Unexpected Cosmology (with Rebecca Gould and Pamela Glasgow)

Ministry and Widow Fund: https://gofund.me/14513e19 Website: The Unexpected Cosmology Link: https://theunexpectedcosmology.com/ Archives page: https://theunexpectedcosmology.com/ar... Patreon Support: https://www.patreon.com/noeljoshuahad... Contact: noelhadley@yahoo.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheUnexpecte...

Duration:: 24m
Broadcast on:: 26 Jun 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Shalom, everybody, and welcome. As you can see, I have Pamela and Rebecca in front of me. This is probably the first time. I think it's the first time that many of you are getting to meet Rebecca in person. Rebecca has been with me for two years now, officially, really three years with Tuck. And it was last Friday. For those of you who come to our Sabbath group on Fridays before I go live with the Torah portions, it kind of just came out. I was talking to an individual on there, and it kind of just spilled out that there's-- I don't know, maybe a couple weeks left. There was a week to two weeks left before I had to make some drastic decisions and maybe even close shop on the unexpected cosmology. Every single month, the support has been-- I shouldn't say drawing up, but it's beginning harder and harder and harder to bring it in. And it takes a lot of effort, of course. And, I mean, a part of me, you kind of just want to be like, well, maybe I should just give up close shop, and that's it. The problem is is that if the unexpected cosmology folds, and if I close up, and I have to go get a different job elsewhere, and of course, my wife and I discuss this-- I've said this publicly many times-- that we're not-- both can be working anymore. They're just not going to happen. One of us is going to stay home with the children. One of us is going to work. But the problem is is that if the unexpected cosmology if I step away from it, then a lot of the people are going to be affected. Now, I've talked about this, again, many times, that we're supporting Rebecca here. The first time I brought her on, we're supporting her, she is dependent on ministry supporters, financial supporters, for her to continue. This is a-- I call it a widow's ministry. Now, neither Pamela nor Rebecca are widows, but as far as I'm concerned, 50 qualifications of that. And if it were up to me, I would bring on 10, 15, just older women widows in need of work. And I hope I'm not putting you two on the spot. I'm sorry to do this. You guys understand. No, it doesn't bother me at all. I am so grateful for everything that you've done, and I love being a part of this ministry. And I am an open book. I know Pam is too. It doesn't bother me. You can talk about it all you want. Well, it was looking really grim just last Friday. We're closing up at the end of the month. We've got five or so days left of this month. And I was still $5,000 short, which means I couldn't even feed my own family. And that's why I was saying it was about a week away from going off, getting another job. That's it, into the era. For the longest time-- I've done this now for several years, and I did it purely out of the joy of doing it. I loved every minute of it. I would just give presentation after presentation of research and research, asking nothing in return. A couple of years ago, Rebecca contacted me. And now, she had been in the community for three years, total, a year before that. She contacted me, was in dire need of assistance. And she gave me her story. And I was like, well, I really want to help you. I don't know how I can help you. But then I came up with the idea, well, what if I give you a job? In order to give you a job, I have to create work. So why don't we start a bookstore? Why don't we start selling books and coming up with new books every single month? And that's how the whole operation started. Rebecca has built this up from the ground floor up. And Rebecca, you can comment on this as much as you want when you jump in. I'm under the impression that it wasn't until about last December, so about seven or eight months ago, where I was actually breaking even. Because I was investing every single month on my end to build a pay, Rebecca, we were not breaking even. Finally, we broke even. I'm like, this is good. So now she is being supported here in the Tuck ministry. We've created this system. It's working. And I was starting to look at bringing on other individuals. I have Pamela here. I wish-- I'm sorry to put you on the spot, Pamela. If you're up to me right now, I would bring in Pamela full time, too. I want to be a ministry to these women. And I want to bring her on. Fortunately, I don't have the money for that. And in January, I kind of got thrust into this full time, where I had to make the decision either I'm going off and getting another job or this is going to work. So that's where we're at right now. We were in a dire situation as of last Friday. We were 5,000 behind. In our small group, our wonderful Friday night small group, some-- let me just show you guys. Some people jumped in the fundraiser here. Now, this is just a public page. So some are anonymous. Some are-- their names are there. But I think we made probably-- it's not showing now. But it's probably a couple thousand made up since last Friday, just from that small group of individuals who are like, we want to help. We want to sacrifice. We want to make this possible. You can see what we need up there still this month. The mistake I made was adding to my fundraiser from the month before. So it's looking like I'm asking for $10,000. Actually, I know I'm asking for $5,000 a month. And so you can see we're still $3,000 from the goal. Anyways, I want to hand this over to Rebecca. And we could tag team back and forth and just have a conversation. But Rebecca, I want to hear from you and what your thoughts are on this. Well, we are in dire straits. People think that asking for $5,000 a month is a lot. And what does Noel need $5,000 a month for? But what people don't realize is that the money is like a river. It flows in and it flows right back out. We really don't hang on to any of it. I mean, as soon as it comes in, it goes out and expenses. And the only one making money here is our printer. They're making loads and loads and loads of money off of us. But the profit margin is very, very tight. Noel gets approximately $5, sometimes a little less. Sometimes it's $4 to $6, I would say, per book that we sell. And then there's also royalties that we pay. Like Pam and Noel, when they work on a project and Noel publishes one of Pam's books, he provides the editing services, which are my services. I work with her closely on it. And we split the profit, the store, and the author. So sometimes it's even less than $5 per person. But Pam is dependent on the money that she earns from doing these books. And she's been such a blessing to this community with her paleo-hebrew translations. I can't imagine this community folding and going down. I just-- I hope people understand that every little bit helps. If all you can donate is $5, that $5 helps. Because if 100 people donate $5, well, that's $500 towards the ministry that we didn't have before. So even little bits help. And no one's getting rich off this. Noel certainly is, and I'm not-- Pam and I both need repairs on our house. And I know Noel is actually doing repairs right now on his house. And he's doing himself. This ministry is so important. For many of us, it's the only thing that we've got for fellowship. A blessed man over in the Philippines. He's faithful to come by. He rarely misses. And it's because we're his only true spiritual fellowship. He has friends. He's got lots of friends. But he can't talk to them about the sort of things that we discuss here. And I just believe this ministry is so important that we need to do just everything that we can to keep it afloat. And I have a feeling that this is just a test. Yaw is just saying, well, you need to really cling to me and depend on me. And I believe that we are going to pull through. But it is very, very tight. Right now, we have no store funds whatsoever. Well, $11 in the store. And this is typical. There's quite a few times a month that the store runs out of money. And we have to wait. And Yaw always provides. It always does come in so that I can fill the next orders. But right now, we are suffering. And we do need everyone's help. If you can donate anything, it would be appreciated. Now, I'll point out really quickly here, too. This is the way it works for those of you who are unsure. We do have a Patreon sign up. And a lot of people, they look at this and go, OK, you know, it's making an X amount of dollars per month. Actually, that's not true at all. But let me just-- we'll break this down and show you. But so there's different options. You can sign up for $5 a month, $15 a month. And it might just point out that if everybody who just tuned in to my tour of portions, my weekly tour of portions, every household, if they were to pay $10 a month, just $10 a month, that's $2 per tour of portions video. And that doesn't include all the other content I come out with. That right there would cover our entire ministry base. It would just cover the whole thing. And we-- just $10. But what I tend to find is that those who-- there are many people being sacrificial to all ends, right? But we tend to find that there are, you know, a handful of people who are just giving a huge, enormous amount to keep this afloat. And I'm very, very, very thankful for that. But what I would love to see is, you know, more individuals who are willing to just be like, OK, instead of going on again, that Starbucks drink, here's $10 for the month, you know? So anyways, we have-- you can sign up for $5, $15, $30, $50, $70, $100, $150, it goes on up. And the idea is that every single month, we can't do a coupon back for the same amount of money of your investments in which you can go to the store. We are, of course, a small-time book publisher. We're putting out all sorts of different books. I'll bring on Pamela here, and she'll talk about her paleo translations, which is one of them. And you can take that same amount, same money, and put that in every single month. You give us $50, you give us $70, you get $50, $70 back, you put it towards books, we send them to you. So the way this breaks down is that, you know, Rebecca, maybe you could, you know, hope with this. How much-- if somebody is giving $50, and then they take $50 back in a coupon, what does that go towards? When you ask what it goes towards, you mean what, as far as the ministry? Yeah, like break it down, OK? So somebody buys $50 in books. How much of that is for printing? You know, how much-- Oh, well, you know, 50-- well, most of the books are-- let's say a $45 book. The printing costs on that could be anywhere up to $25. And then there's shipping on top of that. And it's minimum six bucks to ship a book. So-- And then we have to pay different individuals as well. I mean, salary comes out of that. You know, we have to pay our vendor-- any other vendors, like, if you ordered Don's products, of course, we have to pay for those. So-- and then royal cheese. Those are paid every month to whatever author sold the book. And we have several authors that we pay royal cheese to. And so this is what Rebecca you were talking about earlier about. It's basically like-- like, you describe it as-- It's a river. It just flows in. And it-- as fast as it flows in, it goes right back out in expenses. You know, it just does. That's just what happens. So-- and we're literally-- we're on a shoestring right now. We're kind of living week to week. I'm running the store literally week to week right now. So Pamela, maybe you could just jump in and talk about your paleotranslations and what we're doing here at the unexpected cosmology with that. All right, so we've lost Pamela. She's still there-- she's still with us in voice. But we've lost her visual. Pamela, can you tell us about your history here with the unexpected cosmology and your-- what you're doing with the paleo? All right. Well, I hope everyone can understand the difference that the unexpected cosmology has made to me for me. In terms of publication, I don't know that I would have gotten published. I mean, I could probably do Amazon or something like that. But the fact is that most publishing companies will not touch me. They won't touch my translations because they would say, you know, we're not sure about your credibility. You don't have a degree. You don't-- you're not established. We're not sure about your credibility. And then they would think about my profitability. We just don't know if we can make enough profit. We don't know if there's enough of an interest in what you're doing. So they would look at those two things. And, you know, I've been a root route where I tried to get published, you know. And it's a hard process. When I first started doing the paleo, you know, I was doing it for myself. I wanted to know what was being said in Scripture, you know. Because when I realized that Yaha'u'llaha's instructions for righteous living were true and applicable for my life, then I realized, you know, I needed to know-- I needed to know what was being said. And I just, you know, I had reached the point in my life that I didn't know if I, you know, who can you trust? You're at that point where you're like, who can you trust? When you realize you inherited lies, you're like, who can I trust? So I started going into the paleo Hebrew, and I started with the Psalms because I intended putting them to music because most of you know that I have a music degree. And I was actually a church musician in a former life. And I wanted to put them to music. I've scripted to music before, but I wanted to put some of the translations. So I started, you know, doing these translations. And I shared them. I never expected, you know, anyone to even show any interest. And no Joshua Hasley, you know, he said, hey, these are-- I really like these. These are awesome. Can I publish them on my website? So we started, I think it was like every week, wasn't it? No, all it was like once a week I would give him a Psalm to put on the website. And then he said, you know, you want to think about putting this into a book. So you can see that where the process that was actually Noel was investing, you know, he was like-- he invested space from his website. He invested-- he started this publishing company. And he went to a lot of experience to get those books up. You know, the Psalms and these four Torah books that we've published, Noel is invested in those. He's invested in me. He actually believed in what I was doing. And I can't tell you, you know, the debt that I owe. And the fact that these paleo translations have come about is due to Noel's involvement. And then as it was stated earlier, Rebecca, she is very much a part of the process. She and I, we've been-- you know, we've been doing books since the first one. We've been doing these books together. And we work together, I think, very well. She's wonderful. She's so talented. She puts together this beautiful product. And I feel like there's more to do. You know, I want to finish the Torah, the five books of the Torah, but there's more to do. There's more writing, more translating this on my heart. And there's more to do. And when you're helping the unexpected cosmons, you're not just, you're not just, you know, giving money. Yes, you are supporting Noel and his family. And I can't even tell-- I can't even begin to tell you all the people that Noel has helped in terms of, you know, helping them financially. I know he's, you know, he's helped. He's helped a lot of people. They ran into difficulties. You know, I was one of them. And so he's always been generous. He and his wife are just-- they have this wonderful spirit of hospitality. And they just have this generosity to them. And they've helped so many people. And it was through the unexpected cosmology that these books got published, that we have more to do. And so you're not just supporting the present. When you're helping the unexpected cosmons, you're not just supporting the present moment. You're also supporting the future. The future of trying to-- you know, I have the sense of urgency that, you know, trying to get these translations done. Trying to get these into people's hands. You know, not everyone can-- you know, has the time to learn how to read the paleo. So it's like, I'm trying to put it into the hands of people who-- we're trying to put it into the hands of these people who don't have the time, they have the desire, but they don't have the time to actually dig into the words and find out what's really being said in the words. And so, you know, I feel like people need to know. People need to know what's being said and what the requirements, you know, for righteous living is. And so I have the sense of urgency, almost like, you know, I feel like, you know, I'm like a running out of time. And so, you're not just investing in the present moment as in helping to meet the needs of the ministry at the moment, you're also helping in the future. And when you help a ministry, as I said, you're not just helping in that moment. You're helping all the people that this ministry will touch, that this will be credited to you, you know, by Yaha Waha, that you helped bring about these, that you brought the message. And it's not a-- you know, it's the message, you know, that he loves us and there's a plan and that he wants a relationship with us, you know, but we need to do our part too. And so I have the sense of urgency, not just that we-- that the unexpected cosmology needs help in the moment, but they also need your investment for the future so that these things that we have on our heart, that we want to bring to people and share with people that we will be able to offer that. And, you know, that's what's like now, that's what I-- and I hope that you will think about supporting it. You know, if you-- if it's just a little bit, you know, remember the widow's mind, she didn't have much to share, but she shared it. The widow of Zarifath, she didn't have much. She had enough to make one cake of, you know, she had just a little bit to make a flower cake in it. And she shared it with someone who was bringing y'all to the people. So if you could share, what you can share will be appreciated. Your prayers are so appreciated because we need those because we're-- I know for myself, I fight, you know, I fight this urge, you know, because the enemy keeps telling us, you know, just quit, just give up. Who do you think you are? Nobody appreciates you, just quit. And so we're fighting these things. We're fighting the enemy. We're fighting on a spiritual level. We're fighting in the physical. And so help us keep up the fight, you know. Your support in your prayers, your words of encouragement, not just the financial. Yes, we need that, but we need the others. We need it all because, you know, we're at a crisis. We want to continue. It's not like, you know, a company out there, what you kind of, you know, they say, you know, 75% off. Joanne's is going out of business, 75% off. That's not how it'll happen. It'll just-- it'll be gone. It'll just be gone. You'll wonder, well, why has that noel published any videos? It'll just-- it'll be gone and you'll wonder why. And so I want to urge you to support the unexpected-- cosmology-- in however, whatever capacity you are able to do, please, please do help us.