Archive.fm

The Todd Herman Show

Yes, We CAN live Simple, God-Centered Lives Even Today. Marlin Miller, Publisher of Plain Values Magazine joins Ep-1685

It seems an unachievable dream to live simply, as it used to be, say, in the way of the Amish. I had an opportunity to speak with a very interesting man. His name is Marlon Miller. He's a publisher of Plain Values Magazine. Marlon grew up Amish and he's made a life out of sharing the gospel with the Amish.  But, he's also used his Amish upbringing to create a simple life, not just for him, but for a lot of people. He and his wife adopted four kids who each have some form of developmental challenge. He told me about his decision to create a community based upon these simple plain values. I also asked him, why would the Amish need to have the gospel shared with them?

What does God’s Word say? 
PROVERBS 15:16-17
16 Better a little with the fear of the Lord    than great wealth with turmoil.
17 Better a small serving of vegetables with love    than a fattened calf with hatred.

Alan’s Soaps
https://alanssoaps.com/TODD
Use coupon code ‘TODD’ to save an additional 10% off the bundle price.

Bioptimizers
https://bioptimizers.com/todd
Use promo code TODD for 10% off your order. Sharpen your edge and reach your potential with Mushroom Breakthrough by Bioptimizers.

Bonefrog
https://bonefrogcoffee.com/todd
Use code TODD at checkout to receive 10% off your first purchase and 15% on subscriptions.

Bulwark Capital 
Bulwark Capital Management (bulwarkcapitalmgmt.com)
Sign up today for Zach’s free webinar TODAY at 3pm at KnowYourRiskRadio.com.  

EdenPURE
https://edenpuredeals.com
Use code TODD3 to save $200 on the Thunderstorm Air Purifier 3-pack.

GreenHaven Interactive
https://greenhaveninteractive.com
Get more customers onine showing up more with Google!

Native Path
https://nativepathkrill.com/todd
Get an ocean of benefits from Antarctic Krill from Native Path.
  
Renue Healthcare
https://renue.healthcare/todd
Your journey to a better life starts at Renue Healthcare.  Visit renue.healthcare/Todd

Duration:
47m
Broadcast on:
27 Jun 2024
Audio Format:
mp3
Buenos dias world from the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. I'm Marko Wint. And I'm Rick Schwartz. And we're your host for season three of Amazing Wildlife, a show from iHeartRadio Ruby Studio and the global conservation organization behind the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Listen as we dive into the efforts here in San Diego and spotlight the heroes working worldwide to care for the species you know and love. Listen to Amazing Wildlife on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's the easiest choice you can make? Window instead of middle seat? Picking a vendor who sends a great gift basket, outsourcing business tasks you hate. What about selling with Shopify? Whether you're selling a little or a lot, Shopify helps you do your thing. However you ch-ching, Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage to the first real life store stage, all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage? Shopify is there to help you grow, whether you're selling scented soap or offering outdoor outfits, Shopify helps you sell, wherever and whatever you're selling. Shopify's got you covered. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/try. Go to Shopify.com/try now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com/try. So we can actually live simple and God-centered lives even today. It's hard and yet shouldn't it be easy? Marlon Miller is joining me. He is a publisher of Plain Values magazine and fascinating backgrounds, a group Amish. We'll talk a bit about that. Won't drill down too far on it, but there's some things I didn't know about the Amish people. So we'll get started with the help of renew.healthcare. That's where I went to go get myself, right? It's renew.healthcare. Just tell me you're part of the podcast family. And of course, we can't do anything of value without God Almighty. Thank you, Lord. The Todd Herman Show is 100% disapproved by Big Pharma technocrats and tyrants everywhere. Now, from the high mountains of free America, here's the Emerald City Exile. Todd Herman. (upbeat music) Today is the day the Lord has made and these are the times in which God has decided we shall live. Marlon Miller joins me, Plain Values magazine. Good to have you here, brother. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Todd. This is great. Yeah, it's a fascinating thing to talk to you about simple life and living, but it wasn't simple on how you got started and we'll get to this and the adoption story and how God's blessed you there, but you grew up the way I thought I wanted to grow up. Like when I started to look at this stuff, not when I was a teen, when I was a teen, no. But as an adult, I looked back going, man, maybe we should move and live with the Amish. And I mean, there's a fascination with it. I've been in Pennsylvania and seen the horse carts. Or horse carts like, oh gosh, I want this. And first of all, what was that like for you growing up that way? Well, so I was born Amish, you know, mom and pop were married Amish, you know, there's, dad was one of 14 kids, mom was one of six. I've got 100, I don't know, 110 first cousins or something. And which is cool. I mean, it's a great, you know, it's a great, huge family. But mom and dad got saved when I was just a baby. I mean, a couple of years old. And then they left the Amish church when I was about five. So, you know, we went through the Mennonite stage, the church, and then have moved on into, you know, just more of a typical, you know, Protestant style. So I look at this stuff and I look at the, you know, small one room classrooms, I see people playing together, even to some degree, dressing alike. And I look at that and say, I would have a tendency to idealize something. I had now at my age now. And the 110 cousins, man, I don't have that. We just had our first family, I'm ashamed to say I'm like 30 years. And it was great to have that. But do you still have the family connections? Oh, yeah, absolutely. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Absolutely. There is, there are so many fantastic parts of the plain lifestyle, you know, the horse and buggy. The, you know, down to the clothes, they are all designed and they're very thoughtfully thought through. Sorry to be redundant there, but it's all about keeping the family and the church all tight together. Because if you have a car, like you and I do, we can drive 150, you know, 500 miles in a day. When you don't, when you have a horse and buggy, you're gonna stay closer together. Now 50 years ago, they were all farmers. That's all changed today. I mean, that's, you know, there's only five or 10% of the Amish communities that are actually still farming today. - Yeah. - So, yeah. - Yeah, you know, it's funny. I had my grandpa used to call cars the magic sin machines. Right? - Yep. - You could go so far from home, so quickly. - Yeah. - And there is that, I guess, the devil tempest is where far from home and I could see that particularly as a kid, I mean, as an adult, if you can't withstand the temptation of a car ride, you're probably, you know, not walking with the Lord at all. I do wanna ask you a question about being saved and we'll talk about that and then get to plain values and this life that you're living. And as I'm doing this and recording with Martin, obviously we're in our studio. We have to keep the doors and windows shut. So, it's not always fun to be locked into a studio for five hours a day, particularly when I'm exhaling stuff and I gotta tell you something about Niana from time to time, she will light these candles over there and they are so annoying. I mean, they're Christian candles. And she's coming in and like, right now, she's eating a fish burger. Let's just stick in the place up and then... So, we use the Eden Pure device, EdenPirdeals.com, the OXI Leaf 2 Thunderstorm. And it smells like there was a thunderstorm in here. That's because you're smelling the ozone particles. Ozone particles are magical. They can go through and put the sandwich down. Thank you, Niana. They bond to the bad smelling molecules and they negate them. They take them out of the air. It's not an air filter, right? Air filters, you have to replace for a couple hundred bucks a year. That's renting a device, it's not owning one. It's an air purifier. By the way, one of the things it purifies in the air is viruses. You can have whole home coverage three of these devices at a $200 savings. Go to EdenPirdeals.com, use code Todd3. And by the way, if you're a pet owner, they give you a pet stench guarantee. If it doesn't do away with the stink from your wet dog or your cat litter boxes, get your money back. It's EdenPirdeals.com, use code Todd3. You said something that I guess a few years ago would surprise me as you said. A group Amish, two or three years old. My folks got saved. And my wife and I watched a documentary, "Lovingly Done" by some people who had left the Amish church in there, I think mid-20s. So lovingly done. And it described the need to be saved. And I was surprised by that because, man, I look at the Amish people in some ways as a model. - Yeah, I think a lot of folks have this misconception that to grow up and live the Amish lifestyle equates to automatically being right with the Lord. And they are as sinful as everybody else, obviously. And mom and dad, Pop got saved actually reading the Bible on the couch. The Holy Spirit basically said, "Look, you're not gonna earn your way to heaven." And I think at the core, that's where the Amish tend to struggle a little bit. They are on the legalistic end of things. And my heart for the magazine, our desire initially, along with a few other pillars, was to share the gospel of grace with the Amish all around the country. - Yeah, that's a temptation of earning your way to salvation. I mean, I don't know that it's unique to the Amish. I think there's other forms of the faith that give into that. Have you completed a part of that as a man? Do you ever find yourself drawn into the temptation of any to earn? - Oh, yeah, I mean, for real. Oh, yeah, that's, I mean, that's still born in, I mean, I was born and bred into that. So it's easy for me to think in terms of having to be good, but that's where I come back to the cross in grace, and it's not me. I mean, it has nothing to do with me, so. - Yeah, when you got to this point, in the publisher of this magazine, and the magazine's done well, praise God, do you ever sit back and go, "Wow, I didn't anticipate any of this." 'Cause sometimes you live, in times in my life where I go, "Wait, I get this." What are you talking about? - We are so there all the time. I mean, there's multiples of stories that I could talk about. I mean, it really comes out of Lisa and I adopting our four children, which that, I mean, that's a whole other story, but yeah, I mean, for sure. - Sure, sure. - Yeah, so we adopted our first one in 2012, I think, or sorry, that was the second one, 2008. And Bryson came to us after having a few other families, and so it's been a bumpy road for him. But yeah, he's doing great today, he lives in a group home, he's 20.7, and he's doing great. - 20.7, I guess, 20.7. So that's a bit of an autistic joke. He's on the spectrum. And every time that I would say, "Hey Bryson, you know, how old are you?" You know, that sort of thing, when folks would ask him, he never just says 21, or, you know, 15, it's always 13.8, or, you know, 13.2, whatever. - I love it, yeah, I love that so much. - Yeah, the 20.7 is a bit of an inside joke. - Sure. - And then our two middle children both have Down Syndrome. Our daughter is 14, and talks all the time, and sings all the time. And then our second son is non-verbal, he's 11, and boy, he gets his point across. He can sign, and he's just a fantastic blessing. - We have a partner at the show, Alan Soaps, and I really need to get a discussion between you and John Caldwell together. John was amazingly successful in digital marketing, and created some of the most famous digital marketing campaigns you'll have ever heard of. I met him in politics, and he emailed me and said, "Hey, your emails that you guys are putting out with the RNC are far, far better. They're even good. I can make them great." And he volunteered his time on that. We got to know each other that way. His first son was born neurotypical, and second two kids have autism. Alan was a lot of structural health challenges. He's been through like 18 surgeries, non-verbal. - Wow. - And he chose to employ his kids. He left the world of digital marketing largely. He wanted to build a place where his kids could work and be honored, and so he'll get that autism joke. He'll get that really solid. - Did you choose to bring on kids who have these challenges? - We basically held our family to come with a very open hand. Our prayer was that he brings us, the kids that he wants us to have, and then basically equips us to meet their needs. So my dad had a youngest sister that had Down Syndrome, and so I grew up watching Pop cross the any room with a $5 real in his pocket, and a hug waiting to happen to meet any family with a kid with Down Syndrome, often with any special need. Pop just had an amazing heart for that. So I think I kind of got that from him, obviously, because I tend to do the same thing. The older I get, the more I just want to meet those other families and just encourage them and just meet the kids and all that. My wife, on the other hand, did not. And I don't know, I think the Lord put it in her directly, because she is just an amazing gal. And yeah, it's fantastic. - When you say that you wanted the Lord to put these kids in your path, I mean, how'd that manifest? Did you-- - Oh my. - When you sought to adopt, but how did he manifest that for you? - Yeah, well, so when we began our adoption journey, Todd, there were not. Now, even today, there are not many families that are willing to open their hand to kids that have special needs. When you have anything at all, everybody wants that perfect little baby, right? Everybody wants that perfect little baby, right out of the hospital. And there are hundreds and thousands of families that are just chomping at the bit to do that. As soon as you put any special need, that deep pool of families dries up in a heartbeat. We were on the table for multiple families in, I mean, there were about 25 or 27 different children that were presented to us, that we said yes to inside the course of a year. And we basically said, okay, Lord, we're gonna say yes. It's your call whether or not you're gonna match us up with those children. So, yeah, I mean, it's an up and down journey, but, you know, bumpy at times, but he's brought us through and knocked our socks off. - And you sustained this family and you care for this family given the magazine? - Well, that's, so when our daughter was born, she almost passed away a couple of times in the NICU. She had a bunch of complications and I saw very, very quickly that this is gonna be expensive. And so my prayer began to be, okay, you know, help me, help me understand and help me see how you want me to actually be able to financially, you know, take care of our family. And so I was a salesman for a local newspaper and a client of mine said something and I went, "Wait, whoa, that's a good idea." And so we, you know, I mean, I quit my job and I started a magazine in print and praise the Lord, we're so here today. And today we reach, I don't know, 40, 50,000 Amish homes across the country every month, you know, talking about the dignity of kids with special needs, the beauty of adoption, there is no better way, there's no better manifestation of his adoption of us vertically than an adoption horizontally of another child. There just is not, that's why I think he made the universe is to put that on display. And you sustain your family reaching the Amish people, 50,000 or more of them. And I mean, this isn't, I've read the publication, it's not just for the Amish. - No. - I mean, so my wife and I pine for sometimes and then we realized that I can't build a thing. You could come to me and say, "Hey, build a stick." I could break it, screw it up getting off the tree. I'm just, I'm not something that I'd have to ask God to give me to do, but I look at the simplicity of the life that you guys are displaying and down to actual schoolhouses, like actually putting together a schoolhouse. - Yeah. - And this is something that I think could number one, rescue a lot of souls because there's that family, there's that being tight together. Number two, make it difficult, more difficult for Satan to distract and distort and depress because there's this simplicity. Number three, to really have to pay attention to the common blessings God provides us, I really have to be grateful for water and food. I'm trying to do this thing every morning of, "Hey God, thank you for the coffee. Thank you for this dog who gives me joy. Thank you for this food." I'm really trying to be in that mindset. So when you sustain a family based upon this magazine, this isn't something that should just be for the Amish people. That's exactly, that's what happened. As we were publishing for the Amish, there were folks like yourself that are not in that community that started to see it and go, "Well, dog, go on, wait a second. I wanna, like I wanna get that." And that's exactly what happened. And outside of that, the Amish community now, there are multiple, thousands of subscribers that are not, you know, they're Smiths and Joneses and everybody else. And so it's been amazing. Yeah, I mean, we were able to start a nonprofit. You know, we've been able to shovel money into nearly 40 adoptions of Kids with Down Syndrome from all over the planet. Wow. And yeah, we've just been able to play a role in connecting those kids that need that hope because a lot of kids that are overseas that are stuck in those, you know, those really tough orphanages, a lot of people don't know, but if you are five and six and seven years old and you're not adopted out of those, you know, those places, oftentimes those kids get transferred into adult mental institutions and they die inside a year. 90% are dead inside a year. Well, I mean, Down Syndrome is such an interesting thing God does with Down Syndrome kids. And sometimes I look at the Lord, Jesus, saying, "Hey, remember the least of these, the poor are always gonna be with us. The least of these are always gonna be with us." And I gotta believe the Lord is paying close attention to how we help or don't help police to these. My friend, Janna, who is a very consistent viewer, dashed listener to the cast. I've lost track of how many kids she adopted. I think it's, I think it might be 14 overall. Many of them have moved on to the Lord. Mm-hmm. Her daughter, Stacey, has Down Syndrome. She's a purr war, I'll tell you, you'll recognize this as a father of Down Syndrome kids. I used to be in the war room ministry, the paramilitary and my life has changed and I miss my sisters, mostly sisters in the war room Wednesday night. There was a lady who came in. Her husbands had met a woman online and boy, she really loved him. And so he needed to leave this marriage because this lady on the internet loved him. And she came in brokenhearted and for a couple of power sessions. And we were all really trying to pray eloquently and bring scripture into it and, you know, use our human words to help God 'cause God needed help. Right. And it came turn time for Stacey to pray. Stacey said, "God, tell her husband to stop being mean." There is, I'm so not surprised. There is a, an amazing Christ likeness in Kids with Down Syndrome. There is nobody, you will not find anybody with more joy, with more purity, with more innocence. They do not have a mask to put on. They don't know how. Our kids will walk into a store and they're given hugs to everybody. They people just brighten up. When Adelaide and Bennett walk around, they just draw people in. And at times they will actually scare people. Bennett loves nothing more than to walk up to someone and just touch their shoulder, just, you know, just rub their back and they, it has just, it's been fantastic. - Yeah. - So, it's been fantastic. - The Lord Jesus said that you have to become like a child. Come child like to really, to really walk with him. And we'll talk more about this. I wanna talk about the setup and how you live and the school room and some of the stories that as you've met other people, right? I know you've been exposed to some stories of other people. And I have this need somehow to kind of forgive myself in a way. When I was talking to this audience, and it's been three years that I was talking with you about pharma and what pharma does to people. And here I was going home eating ibuprofen. And I've apologized to you for that. It didn't occur to me how utterly hypocritical I was being. And I did this all because of my training regimen and the things I'm trying to achieve in fitness is an older man. And I convinced myself, look, it's worth the risk. And I think back to my dad who probably helped kill himself with ibuprofen. And the wine didn't help. The depression didn't help. His refusal to treat his thyroid didn't help. The overeating didn't help. But he was always in pain and always eating ibuprofen. So I had taken omega threes before, never in my life. Did I ever, ever think that omega threes could replace ibuprofen. So when Native Path Crow came along and I tried it in two or three days, I remember calling Jen from the sales that Radioamerico syndicates our weekend show and said, okay, I gotta have another call with these guys. I don't get it. This shouldn't be this powerful. But I don't need ibuprofen. So we got the team on this and hey, A, we're really glad to hear that. B, we're not surprised. The omega threes you've been taking are not as absorbable as this, not as bioavailable. Cril is not a fish, it's a crustacean. Also these come from the arctic waters. So pure waters without the heavy metals, things that can harm you. So we are not surprised, we're thrilled. The reason I want to forgive myself is I never went to my dad, I didn't have the knowledge to say, Dad, why are you snacking an ibuprofen? In addition to inflammation, it masks the inflammation, ibuprofen, it causes inflammation. It is eating away your gut, the lining to your gut, and therefore particles that don't belong in your bloodstream are getting in there. So joint pain, heart issues, like ibuprofen, you want to destroy your heart, keep snacking on ibuprofen or your kidneys or your liver. So you don't need it. Please go to nativepathcryl.com/todd and see what specials they're offering you today. They're always doing something. Often the more you buy, the more money you get off. I can't stop taking this stuff. I won't stop taking it. And in fact, on these big workout days, I doubled down on it. nativepathcryl.com/todd. So we joined together on the admiration and that this, you said it well, that they're Christ-like, Down Center people are Christ-like. And we'll talk further about that. But God equipped you as a newspaper salesperson, so you've been around the publishing industry. You spotted a good idea. You knew how to execute. He equipped you in all these ways. But you're also building a community. I mean, you guys have a school. Yeah, we do. There are, this is obviously much, it's a part of a much bigger story, but our three little kids, so I didn't quite get to miles, our youngest. - Oh, it's great. - It's totally fine. So our home studies were done. We were all set, right? And all of a sudden, Lisa started to think and feel like the Lord was kind of preparing her and us as a family to adopt again. And I said, well, babe, I'll go to China. That's where she thought that he was calling us. I said, hey, I'll go to China if he calls us to go to China. And I tacked on a quick little phrase at the end, and I said something to the effect of, but if he really wants us to adopt again, it'd be super cool if he would just bring him to our door. - Right, two weeks later, literally two-week-old miles was physically brought to our door. - Who brought miles to your door? - His birth family, his birth family. He has something called Mosaic Down Syndrome, and they were, they just really struggled with the possibilities of what that diagnosis means. Now, I'll back up. We had never heard of Mosaic Down Syndrome. What that basically means is that there is a fraction of the body that has trisomy 21. So our two other kids that have Down Syndrome have it in every cell. Miles only has it in about 15 or 20% of his body. So all that being said, with our oldest son, I'll go back to the school, with our oldest son and the struggles that have been, to put a gently kind of foisted upon him with all the trauma. Our three littles really need to be able to learn and grow, how to do life with kids that are neurotypical and emotionally solid and sound. And so we tried public school, that was a train wreck. Lisa has homeschooled, she has her master's in education, she's been homeschooling her kids all the way through, but we really felt that there was something more. And so we bought the bones of an 1850 one-room schoolhouse. We trucked it up from Cincinnati a couple, I don't know, four hours away and had it on the back of a semi. We are nearly done building this thing. And it is just, I mean, the Lord has just knocked our socks off all over again. So it's gonna be fantastic. We're gonna have, we already have our teacher lined up, everything's ready to go, the board, the policies are set. And we are now at the place. In fact, Lisa just told me this morning that she's now starting to take applications. We are going to basically have room for about 12 to 14 children, total with our three included. And it's gonna be a really, really good thing. It's only gonna be a couple days a week, we're still gonna homeschool, but it's gonna be this beautiful, you know, mishmash. - Wow. - It's gonna be great. - And this is gonna be special news, kids. - Actually-- - Or we said you're gonna-- - Right, our three kids, you know, obviously-- - Yeah. - You know, have special needs. But the goal is to not have it be just kids with special needs. We wanna have, because, okay, I gotta back up, I'm sorry. There is something special that happens when your kids or your grandkids or any chance you get to put a child with a child that is different from him or herself. You know, somebody with Down Syndrome, somebody with Spina Bifidis, Rubal Palsy, that child makes the other children better and vice versa, there's more empathy, there's more-- - Yeah. - They just learn so much. - Yeah. - And that's what we wanna do. - Yeah, I love that. - So, I can hear, in my mind, people watching and they're listening to this saying, oh, it's so neat for you that God speaks to you. And I've had moments, and I've shared them on the cast, where God has plainly and clearly spoken to me, plainly and clearly, and I've shared enough of those that I won't take your time up to share them. There are other people who say, well, God's never given me the big task. I remember when it became clear to me that I wasn't gonna be able to stay in local radio, and I had a very successful, God had given me a very successful morning show, market dominant for many years, and then the speech codes came. And I remember when the first speech codes arrived, I said at the time, look, I'm willing to not say fake news, 'cause I don't say it, so no biggie. But eventually, you're going to come around with something you're gonna tell me, I can't say something and I'm gonna quit. And their point of view is, no, no, it's just these things. They said, no, that's not the way speech codes work. Once someone gets blood in the water and they go, oh, look, I get to control what other people say, there's blood in the water. And so when it came about that they told me, you can't say the election was rigged or stolen. Okay, well, I quit. And on the spot, done, and went home and told my wife, hey, by the way, you know that five year contract, all that guaranteed money, I said no to that. And they had to pay me out six months. They chose to end the show in three months, which made sense. And I remember almost panicking, Marlon, I was driving, I remember exactly where it was in the road, and I said to the Lord, I don't know how to do a podcast with God at the center, I don't know how to do this, like to actually do a Godly podcast. And he didn't call me a fool, but he said, why are you making this hard? Satan is the world's first politician. He's the first dividing force. He's doing intersectional politics. I sent you to DC. You saw that. You worked in Silicon Valley. You saw that. You worked in entertainment in Hollywood. You saw that. You get this. Please don't make this complicated. I prepped you for this. So I was given this assignment, and I read a book called Experiencing God that God's not gonna give you the big assignment until you finish on with the last one. But I can see and just visualize people listening and hearing this or watching it, saying, I never got my big assignment. So how does A, how does God speak to you and Lisa? And B, what do you say to people who are saying, "Hey, dude, I don't know, I have a big assignment from God." Oh man, you know, I think for me, the only time that I really heard really clearly from him was way, way, way early on. And he basically said, and I think this was maybe, you know, maybe a year in or so, you know, after we had run our test and we kind of saw that this thing had a little bit of room to run. And I remember so clearly, he said, he said, "I am gonna give you a voice. "What are you gonna do with it?" - That's those words. - That's what I remember hearing so clearly. And I remember, I told Lisa, I said, "Babe, we have to figure out what we care about the most. "What are we gonna put in this magazine?" And Todd, we talk about a vast array of, you know, many, many different aspects of life. In fact, some of our readers have said, "Marlon, the what in the world? "What is plain values really about?" Because we talk about, you know, grief and loss. We talk about, you know, Joel Salton, the granddad of the homesteading movement as a friend. And he writes every month about homesteading and soil and just all kinds of great stuff. And there's many, many other things that, you know, we put stories of adoptions. We talk about all kinds of ministries. We talk about a lot of different stuff. And when you really boil it down, we wanna encourage people, like you said, early on, that living a faith-centered, simple life, in 2024 is still possible. We have chickens and goats and pigs. We have a flock of, you know, little lambs right now. We do a lot of so-called farming. I am by no means a farmer, I'm just not. But I love it. And Lisa, we, so she started our whole animal journey because of the children, because she wanted to get some therapy animals. You know, pigs are fantastic for, you know, for kids. And so today on our little 12 acres, you know, we have a bunch of, you know, hooves and feet. And, you know, there's a whole flock of chickens and everything else. But the point is, there's something really, really special about going back. Everybody's talking about progress. Well, to go back to the way that the Lord designed us to garden and to farm, there's so many good parts because you're just in touch with life. - Yes, that's it. You're touching life, you're touching dirt. Like, I don't know, a lot of people watching and listening to this, I'm asking you a question, for real. When's the last time you put your hands in dirt? Right, when is the last time you drank water from a stream? I mean, I could remember the last time it was last summer. Last time I drank water from a stream. And it was, you know, coming out well filtered, we could see it was gonna be safe. And man, the joy of doing that. When is the S-World from the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance? I'm Marco Wint. - And I'm Rick Schwartz. And we're your host for season three of Amazing Wildlife, a show from iHeartRadio Ruby Studio and the global conservation organization behind the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. - Listen as we dive into the efforts here in San Diego and spotlight the heroes working worldwide to care for the species you know and love. - Listen to Amazing Wildlife on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - We watch a TV show called A Homestead Rescue. And I love that show. I love the family. And they just seem to have it all nailed. They go into these homesteads that are suffering. They help them. And by the way, they get a lot of help. And not everyone has a construction crew falling around. And I love they kind of added into the TV show. The family was some help from a construction crew of 200 people and a bunch of money from a cable network. But they actually do homestead. And homesteading to me means that you don't necessarily need the outside world, that you are self-sustaining, that you produce your own power, your own food. I mean, the evil of property tax being what it is. You have to pay that. But so you have, you guys write about homesteading. - We do, yeah, we do. It has been an amazing blessing. You know, we live in the middle of, you know, the biggest Amish settlement on the planet. You know, we have a valley where we are probably one of two families that are not Amish inside our little circle of maybe 10 or so neighbors. And so as we have grown, our, my next door neighbor, Ivan, is a big homesteader as well. And so the two of our families have really collaborated well. And we now butcher all of our meatbirds. We have butchered our hogs the last couple of years. And as we've done it, Todd, a bunch of the other neighbor families have started to say, "Hey, wait, wait, wait." I wanna, like, I wanna learn how to do that. And they will do their own meatbirds. And then we all go house to house to house. And we just have a kill night. That sounds kind of, you know, kind of funky. - But if you've not, if you've not killed an animal, that's what it is. It's killing an animal. - Death is so totally part of life. And that's in a crude way, animals are here for us to eat and you don't wanna eat them alive, obviously. - Right, my daughter's a vegan that breaks her heart to hear those things. And that's her choice she makes. And I support that. And you're not preventing the death of an animal. You're choosing how it dies. - Right. - And in the case, I assume you guys do the city humane sense. I mean, it's quick. - Absolutely. - And I hope it never gets fun. Hope kill night's never fun. - No, no, and it is because of the neighborhood and the friendships and the joys of being together. And there is something special. The pandemic, oh my goodness, I mean, it taught us so much about where our food comes from and where it doesn't come from and all this and that. And to be able to know that the chicken that you're eating is, you know, on, it's on grass, that Salatin wrote a book called The Marvelous Piggness of Pigs. It is absolutely the best book he's ever written. And the guts of it is really very simple. When you put a hog on concrete inside a barn and it never sees the light of day, you are stripping it of its piggness that God built into that pig. They are built and designed to go root around and tear around in the woods and run and play and have fun. They are smarter than snot. And you do the same thing with a chicken. When you have 80,000 birds in a big chicken barn and they are literally jammed in there. They never get to eat a bug and grass. You're stripping it of its God given everything. And so to be able to give that animal dignity and a chance to live the way that it was intended to live, there's a big fulfillment that comes out of that. It's a joy. - And boy, I went through a period of time where I was a vegetarian and it was because I saw people butchering hogs in ways that should never be done. And I'm talking about torching them. I'm talking about enjoying inflicting pain. And that's not okay with any living being to enjoy inflicting pain. I grew up hunting some of my dearest friends or hunters and still I know this when my friends take a life that they go and they reflect upon. Wow, you just took everything that thing ever had or ever will have. That's heavy and I get the community thing and I love it. I love what I'm hearing. - So, but you think this is achievable for more people? You think more people could homestead? - I do, I think it's as hard as people think it is. I don't think it is. - So what do you start with? Fruit trees, berries, like where he starts. - Do something. - Okay. - I mean, you know, if it's simply a tomato plant on a patio, do something, just start. And I've heard it over and over and over. People say, you know, they got a couple laying hands and all of a sudden, you know, they're pinching each other and they get to crack open that egg and they're like, "Well, this came out of our backyard." And so it just kind of shoots them down that, you know, that little wormhole and they can't get out. And so all of a sudden, now I'm not saying that finding a piece of land is easy or inexpensive. I know that it is, but it's so worth it. - And if we more did it, and this is, I mean, this can, my podcast says a lot of political content, I mean, in addition to the word of God, it's what we talk about. You talked about the pandemic, I would refer to it as the lockdown. I don't think the flu caused any of this. This, to me, was a political decision. There was a lot to it. It was pre-planned. I'm all of that view. And yes, we learned a lot, such as, if you're waiting for the great hand of government to come and feed you, you are signing up for ruin. - Soarly. - You, right? - Yeah. - And, you know, if you are outside of that world, like in North Idaho, we'd lockdown for about two weeks. And then we're like, yeah, we're done with this. So things went back to normal. But being self-sustaining isn't, because you are now saying, dear Lord, help us with our chickens, help us with our hogs. You know, we've had a drought. Gosh, how are we gonna water our animals? We've had a feed disruption. How are we gonna feed our animals? So I think it brings us back to needing God, which is a far different thing from, God is convenient on Sunday mornings, right? - Yeah. - Right? And so I'm glad to know you think more people can do this. I'll wrap this up by getting back to the discussion of you're in this community and near this community. And I find it very, very interesting, given that the publication reaches so many Amish people. So we'll wrap that up in a second. If you're hearing this on Thursday, and are watching it on the 26th of June, it's dropped in a day where tonight, you might have. And I can't say for sure, but you might have a chance to get into the free live webinar that my friend Zach Abraham is putting on, friend of the brothers on the show over Friday, Chief Investment Officer of Bullwork Capital Management. And let me say this way that he talks about inflation as a silent assessment of retirement accounts. Let me give you this picture. That you have stored water, okay? And it's well done. It's taken out of your well. You've stored it. But you left just a little bit of oxygen in the container. Just a little bit, not much, but you didn't completely get all the oxygen out. No big deal for a week, maybe a month. You try to access and drink that water, let's say a year from now, it's gonna be putrid and gross. You're not gonna be able to drink it. It's gonna be bad for you. You might be able to pour it on your lawn. It's a silent assessment. If you don't clean, like if you're canning something and you do not properly sterilize the container, you can be giving yourself a salmonella. You can be killing your family. Your retirement portfolio may look great on paper right now, on a screen right now. But here's the question. How many of the stocks, how many of what you own, are going to be eaten by inflation? That's the question. There are inflationary assets you should own and that can balance what's coming with this silent assessment. Zach will go through these options, how they do it at bulwark capital management, how they use active management of every portfolio which can reduce risk and volatility, what that is all like. But you have to register today. It's at 3.30 Pacific today, Thursday the 26th of June. Go to knowyourriskradio.com. That's K-N-O-W, knowyourriskradio.com and register. For capital management and investment advisor, representative of Trek Financial LLC and SCC registered investment advisor, investments involved risk, you could lose money and past performance does not necessarily guarantee future results. So at this image of you Marlon, you're your family and how God has blessed you and helping people homestead and live simply and learn about grief and overcoming grief, all of this God centered. And what have you learned? What has God shown you as you are no longer Amish? But you write to an Amish community and anyone can subscribe to Plan Guys magazine. There's a link in the show notes, I think you should subscribe. What have you learned? What has God taught you now that you are around the Amish people but not necessarily of the Amish people? - Well, number one, it's a great question. I think I would answer it this way. We all need each other in more ways than what we can imagine. And I think one thing that has kind of, just like cream rises to the top, the story that has come back to that over and over again is when there was a friend who lost his wife about 40 years old or so she passed away of cancer and they had just had a little girl with Down syndrome. She was two years old and the back farm neighbor said to their mutual guy friends, "Hey, let's go hang out on his porch." Everyone say morning, seven o'clock, let's go sit on his porch and just be there. Like it wasn't really a Bible study, it wasn't really a business mastermind of, well, I got this problem. You know, how would you guys deal with it? It was just being there and sometimes they talked and other times they didn't. And two years later, the friend who started porch time, his little daughter, nine years old, passed away from her special need and those same guys went and sat on his porch. - Wow. - Todd, Lisa and I have gone through some deep water and this might sound like I'm a bit of a jerk but I don't have time for shallow people. I just, and that's something that I gotta be careful of and I know I'm extremely sinful. But I wanna talk about stuff that matters. I wanna talk about real stuff. You know what, I don't care about your mask. We're all broken, right? We're all broken. - Yeah. - Let's admit it. Let's just talk about it, let's be real. And if you're amish or not, I don't care. It just doesn't matter. And I think there are so many, there are so many hurting people everywhere. And yeah, like we're designed to do this, to talk, you know, to talk for real and I love it. - So you're welcoming the community? - That's exactly right. - Right, right. And you're welcoming to this community and the evangelical community and you know, you talk about those deep waters. I'm very much like you. I have almost an allergic reaction to small talk, right? If I'm in a group of people and it turns to small talk issues, I get it, some people, that's how some people learn. It's how some people relate and I can become very judgmental and I try not to do that, but I almost start itching. And I don't have that switch, right? I don't, and this is one of the reasons I was a terrible quote, networker in business because I want to know you, right? And I don't, yeah, we can talk about your business for a little bit, but when I say hey, how's your family? You know it's good, man, it's all good. We're solid, no, you're not. - Yeah. - No, you're lying and you're not willing to go and actually say, hey, let's have a relationship and I'll tell you, you know, these are our challenges. - Yeah. - So when you see the challenges that your children have, you know, Down syndrome and autism, they're, I want to say this, I imagine that they're unique by type but perhaps not by category, like we all have challenges. - Yeah. - Are there's truly, truly that bizarre that we can't understand him? - No, no, not at all. I mean, our son who is non-verbal, Benny is the sweetest little fart you ever met and he gets his point across. I mean, he, you know, he, he, he, he can sign and he does communicate in his own way and Adelaide will sing her heart out all day but she struggles in other ways. And, and Miles, I mean, like our little guy, he's, he's just an incredible, you know, little blessing. And so yeah, we're all, we're all, you know, messed up and broken in some way. I think, I think children with Down syndrome are this amazing little photo or this little insight into what God wants us. I'm not saying that he wants us to be like them in every way because they're stubborn and, and, and sinful as we are. They, they just have, they just have a way of being so real and so authentic in so many ways. So quickly, it's, it's, it's a huge blessing. - Yeah, I mean, the product of a son. He goes rushing to the boy, right? And embraces him and that's what God wants to do is we come home and we are finally take the knee and finally decide to submit to God. If you haven't made that decision yet, know that the Lord has his arms open to you. You simply need to accept him as your Lord and savior and he will change you. And it doesn't mean your problems are over. You're going to have problems in this world but he will change you and become more like him. - Appreciate you coming on, thank you, my brother. - Values magazine, link in the show notes. This is the Todd Herman show, please go be well, be strong, be kind and please make every effort to walk in the light of Christ. - Buenos dias world from the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, I'm Marco Wentz. - And I'm Rick Schwartz. And we're your host for season three of Amazing Wildlife, a show from iHeartRadio Ruby Studio and the global conservation organization behind the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. - Listen as we dive into the efforts here in San Diego and spotlight the heroes working worldwide to care for the species you know and love. - Listen to Amazing Wildlife on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.