← The Collage Podcast
The Collage Podcast
Episode 57- Ireland, Brooklyn and Cole
00:43:10
Volunteers visiting Feed My Sheep during their holiday break from college talk to Jeff about their motivations for serving and their experience.
Loading summary
Transcript77 lines
- [00:00]
Jeff
Foreign to the Collage Podcast. And thank you for making us a part of your day. If you enjoy the podcast, please like rate and subscribe. Hey, we want to welcome you to another edition of the Collage Podcast. So today, little bit different because we don't just have one person sitting here, we have got three other people with me and we're going to kind of talk. It is when we are recording this. I don't know when you're listening to this, but when we were recording it, it is kind of the Christmas break season for college student time. That wonderful time back in our lives. Bobby, remember this when you got like a month off for Christmas, it was like marvelous. And you got to do all kind of crazy stuff. We won't go there, don't worry. Okay, so. But we have got some guests here. I'll let them introduce themselves that have come here over their Christmas break. And we're at Feed My Sheep here in Temple Texas. Again, this is a little place that does a lot of. A lot of varied things up here, but a lot of the people that we work with here are homeless. And so that's kind of what we do. Do the lunch and we do showers and we do laundry. We have an addiction, a lot of different stuff. But they have chosen to come over their Christmas break time and spend several days up here working. So thought it'd be interesting maybe, maybe not to have a discussion of what they were expecting, what they saw, what they think, etc. So I'm going to let them introduce themselves and we'll go from there.
- [01:44]
Cole
My name's Cole. I'm a sophomore from Texas Tech. Majors, ranch management. And I grew up here, Belton, Temple, kind of same thing.
- [01:59]
Jeff
Is that it? What? No, that's it. And then I won't embarrass him. Cole and I have known each other. I. I've known Cole for a long time. His family, we've known each other, his dad and I. Not that it matters any out there, whatever, but his dad and I have been to Bolivia together. We found. Did he tell you about the insect that we found in Bolivia that was unidentified? He did not.
- [02:24]
Cole
I don't think so.
- [02:25]
Jeff
Okay, I will tell you that this is truth. Okay. There is an insect that was unidentified that I brought a picture of to the A. M. What is an insect person called? Hold on, I know this word. Whatever insect, Dr. Person is called, we've sent a picture to them because the insect. And I'm not lying to you, your dad can tell you it was sort of lack Of a better term, if you combined a grasshopper. Like what? We see a grasshopper. So the front half of it looked like a grasshopper, like that. And then the back half of it was a scorpion. So if you put a grasshopper and a scorpion together in one insect, that's what it was. It was under these bricks. Your dad and I built a church out there in Bolivia, and so we put these bricks together. That was a long time ago. I forgot. I'll get a picture for you. This legit? Okay, so there's Cole.
- [03:22]
Brooklyn
My name is Brooklyn. I'm a freshman at Texas Tech with a biology pre med major. And I have been in Belton basically my whole life.
- [03:32]
Jeff
Have you really? Okay, so let me ask you. Okay. You had a lot of places that you could go, choose to serve, and then maybe not the obvious answer. Well, because we just showed up here. Why did y'all come up here to serve?
- [03:49]
Cole
Well, I've done it a couple times a few years ago and came and did the food service, I think. And I don't know, I figured, let's do something useful if we're gonna. If we're gonna do something, let's actually make a bit of a difference or try to.
- [04:08]
Jeff
Okay, fair enough. Anybody else? Yeah.
- [04:12]
Emily
I think growing up in this community, there's a lot of things that you don't see. So I think opening our eyes to something that was different, something that we don't see every day, because especially living in Stevenville, we don't see a lot of people that are homeless or going through struggles like people here are going through. So I think it was a good eye opening experience for us to help serve the community and see something not fair.
- [04:32]
Jeff
Like, so for all of y'all who are out there, don't know, like Temple and Belton, they're two separate communities. Okay? I mean, so like Belton is Belton and Temple is Temple. They're two separate towns. They're very close in relationship to each other, but very different. And then even Temple itself, like, so how temples kind of divided is you have East Temple, which we are on East Temple. That's the side we are on. It is that generally speaking, economically less fortunate people and then the West Temple kind of morphs into Belton, which I can't figure this out at all because you have Temple school or you have Belton schools in Temple city limits, and you're like, what in the world? I don't understand all this. But so it is very easy. Like, if you lived in Belton your whole life and it wouldn't even be your fault to not really know the magnitude of how big the issue of something that's going on. Not even, let's say, seven miles from where you lived. Because they're just. They're. They're that isolated or insulated from each other. And so you would never necessarily get to see it. No offense to Stephenville. I've been there, and golly. And they have issue. Very different issues. They have. They have some of the same issues, some of the struggles in the addiction world. Stephenville's getting ate up with the same as we are. And so. But you could go and not really see this topic at hand, be it Lubbock, where Texas Tech is. You get two miles off of the campus, you're in it face to face. Like that town turns rough real quick. You start looking at apartments. My son went to Tech. He graduated from Tech. But you look at apartments in Lubbock, and you're like, huh, this one is one mile for campus, and it's 1200amonth. I don't know. I'm picking a number. Oh, and this one's two miles from campus, and it's 600amonth. And you're like, oh, I want the two. And then you go, look, and you go, oh, that explains it real quick. So you came here and you knew that you were going to be working in a deal. Cole had a little bit of perspective. He'd been here before. A lot of people here, believe it or not, we're in a modern society. We're in 2024, okay? A lot of the people that we have worked with the last two days do not have a place to live inside a house. They live outside and sleep on the street. Which seems absolutely unbelievable to me. Like, when I went to Bolivia with Cole's dad, you would halfway expect it. You're like, oh, we're going to Bolivia. Maybe everybody doesn't live inside out there. We're inside a modern, civilized town. And still people have nowhere to go. Kind of baffling to me. So when you thought, hey, I'm going to come work with people that are homeless, what did you expect?
- [07:49]
Emily
I went to the University of Houston my first year.
- [07:52]
Jeff
Did you?
- [07:53]
Emily
So I've seen a lot of that just being there for a full year. But I think I was expecting. I don't know, I was expecting to, like, feel bad for people, but I feel like I've gotten to, like, know these people and, like, how they live. And, like, I. I still feel for them, but, like, I can Resonate with them more as people rather than like, something else.
- [08:18]
Jeff
Fair. Good. Anybody else? What were you thinking? And then we'll look at how was it? But what would you expect? And you're like, I'm going to go work with homeless people.
- [08:30]
Brooklyn
I've worked at a couple other organizations here through school and just, like, clubs, and it's pretty similar. I feel like here also, it's more intimate with the people. Like, there are more relationships between the volunteers and the people that are helping. And I think that's really nice.
- [08:47]
Jeff
Very nice.
- [08:48]
Cole
You're not just. You're not just handing stuff out. You know, you're actually spending time with the people and you know their names and you.
- [08:59]
Jeff
That's right.
- [08:59]
Cole
Their stories and all that stuff.
- [09:01]
Jeff
And then for everybody out there, like, when you're listening to Cole, the answer is, yes, he does own a horse. So Cole is, like, got his own horse. So if you're ever out there, just look him up. Like, he'd be glad to take people out on horse rides, trail rides and such like that. Is that correct?
- [09:19]
Cole
Yeah.
- [09:22]
Jeff
He does own a horse. I'm just messing with him because, like, you don't want. That would be awesome if somebody called you up. Hey, I heard you on the podcast. Can I come, like, ride around on your horse? Why in the world would somebody do that? Would be really weird. So. But whatever. Okay, so what we're going to do, we're going to kind of talk about that. I'm going to ask you a really hard question that's really possibly difficult, but when you looked around and you. You met some of our people and you kind of see this and you go, ah, there's people don't have a house. What do you think the number one struggle or problem that people that you came across here would have? What are the thing you think that they are missing the most? I guess it's more my question. If you looked and go, man, this is the thing they need the most. Okay. And I'm using the term thing pretty loosely, but what do you think? And. And this is just. You're just guessing. Okay.
- [10:23]
Cole
I think everybody has hard times, but not everybody has people to help you through those hard times.
- [10:32]
Jeff
Good. What do you think?
- [10:36]
Brooklyn
What's the question?
- [10:38]
Jeff
I don't remember. I say a lot of words. I can't remember. It's okay. What if you looked at the people that you've come in contact with and you would say the sentence, which. I'm not saying we do this on people who come in contact, but you would say, man, what they really need is this. What do you think that you would. Just the feeling of what they really need in this.
- [11:01]
Brooklyn
I think just support.
- [11:02]
Jeff
Okay.
- [11:03]
Brooklyn
That's just whether that's helping them, like, mentally, like, having, like, counseling sessions or just giving them food or clothing, I think it could go either way.
- [11:12]
Jeff
Yeah. Fair. Support. Agreed. Yeah.
- [11:16]
Emily
To kind of go off, like, support. Like, I think people do need support and they do need help, but I think also a sense of, like, community that's, like, greater than, like, the people that they're around every day. Like, it's really, like, here, like, they have a community of people, but I think, like, a greater community of more people to help them would be really beneficial to, like, their needs and, like, how they can progress and, like, become better.
- [11:37]
Jeff
Okay, good. Okay. And then we're going to circle back to that, because. Ready? I will say I agree wholeheartedly with what y'all said, you know, and. And so. But for y'all, okay, because you know this. You can answer this question 100% correct, because it is about you. One of life's biggest difficult times, or learning times, not necessarily difficult, is you go off to college. Your freshman year in college, your first semester of your freshman year in college. A lack of a better term. It's a booger. Like, it's. It's difficult because of several factors. You may have gone off to college, like, Temple is a ways away from Lubbock. I mean, and that's a long, bad drive, okay? But it's your support system as you knew it. You're separated from it. Your parents, which you're sort of separated, but your parents are not. You're not under the same roof anymore, probably, maybe. I can't say. So your supports, a lot of the same friends that you've known for a long time, they're different schools. You still communicate with them, but they're not there. You're living possibly with somebody you don't even really know. And then sometimes your experience, you don't even really like because you can get a bad roommate, and you're like, oh, son of a gun, man. What are you killing me? Okay? But that you don't know the game. You're in an unfamiliar town. You don't really have any family support. You don't really know, I'm going to Lubbock, and I know I have class on Monday. From this time to this time, I don't even know how this thing operates. So I ask you, okay, when you went off to college, okay, that first little Bit like the first month, because then you get your feet underneath you decent first month. What's the thing you needed the most?
- [13:42]
Cole
You need to find a little community or a little group.
- [13:45]
Jeff
Okay, that's right. See, your parents and everybody would be like, cole, you gotta. You gotta. Even though you don't want to, you want to stay in your room because you don't really know what's going. You got to go find and plug. Just really make an effort to find community. Okay? Find a place to plug in and find a way to get involved. And then here in this area, we would say, hey, you know, good way to go find a church that you can go and get involved in the college ministry, because that's an easy way to get plugged in really quick. So you would say, support community. What do you think the number one thing you needed? Okay.
- [14:24]
Brooklyn
Not only support, just leaving the room.
- [14:27]
Jeff
Ah, okay.
- [14:28]
Brooklyn
It's easy to just sit by yourself or in silence with your roommate and just watch tv. Just even. Just going outside.
- [14:36]
Jeff
And why is that easy?
- [14:40]
Brooklyn
Because you don't have to do anything hard.
- [14:42]
Jeff
That's right.
- [14:43]
Brooklyn
It's convenience, what you're used to.
- [14:46]
Jeff
Just sit and the next thing, one day turns into another and another, and then next thing, you realize in college, you could watch it. Like, you could watch after you get a liberal, you watch those freshmen that are just holed up in the room, and you're like, they ain't gonna make it. I mean, because then that's just this cycle then they don't know anybody. Nobody knows them. They don't have involvement. They're not plugged in, and they feel very lonely. And it just spirals and spirals. It spirals easy. So it takes a little bit of effort to go find that. Let me ask you, how would this have felt if you had. I'll pick on a church or what? You, man, you put yourself out there and you go to the college ministry on a Sunday night and you're. Know anybody? I'm. This is awkward. I don't really want to be here because I'm by myself. And you get treated really like junk. Somebody's really rude to you, or maybe you don't know the rules completely and you get a soft drink and you're not supposed to drink something yet, or you don't know the games and everybody knows all the cool little college games, but you don't. And you instantly feel like I'm the outsider here and they really don't want me. You think you'd go back, think you'd come out of your room again. Be tough. Be tough. You know, and that's. I'm not picking on you, but it's tough. And you have put myself out there. And look, I just wanted to be help. See, nobody wants me around. What do you think? Freshman year?
- [16:23]
Emily
I mean, I think the biggest thing for me was you have to find your people. You have to find the people that you want to spend your time with, the people that are going to better you and the people that are going to make you into the person that you want to be, not the person that you are.
- [16:34]
Jeff
Yeah. Oh, there's such depth in that sentence, too. The. The person that you want. Like, okay, perception of ourself. We're going to look at that and all of this stuff. So then all of us, we said, what's interesting is. And this is. I will say it about me, I'll say it about y'all. We're very different. Like, we've had very different lives than many of the people that we serve here. That's just fact. I mean, and so upbringings and culture and economics, just different. No better, no worse, just different. What I find absolutely intriguing. And y'all. Didn't. Did we even know what we were going to talk about? Okay, but what's interesting to me didn't even know. We're not going in a direction. The thing y'all just said, I would say, is what the people that come here need. And then y'all, who are very different, the thing when you went out on your own that you needed the most, they're the same support and community and belonging and caring and just people to treat other people decently. It's what we need. And then. So, like, I would say this, and then maybe you would have. Now, a point of reference is the number one thing we provide here is community, belonging and caring. Our byproducts are, yeah, we're going to give out plenty of gloves today, and we'll give out scarves and we'll serve a meal. But the number one thing we do is provide belonging and caring for individual people. And then in that little concept, there's this crazy thing that every. It's. It's crazy for all y'all out there. And then everybody in here, sit down. This is going to surprise you. Every single person who is homeless, every single person who is not homeless, they have this thing that's called a name, and they are a person. They have individual worth, okay? And sometimes we forget that, and you look at somebody who doesn't have a House. Ah, look at that homeless person. And you blanket them into this big deal. And nobody likes to be blanketed into general statements here. Names will get spoken over and over and over because I'm one biblically that believes that God divinely made every single person and intricately wove them together, and they are a masterpiece. And the name that we were given wasn't chosen by our parents. They were given to us by God. And our parents just put that on us. We were named, we were by name. God called us and said, this is Jeff, you know, and I will never make another one just like him. And this is a gift to the, to the world. Even though I don't think that, you know, we. We look at ourselves and we don't believe that. So we would say community is the thing that we would do. That I believe. And even what we're doing here is this understanding of individual people and their worth is how we will change this world forever. We're not going to change it by making sure everybody has a pair of gloves. That's good. Everybody needs that. We're going to change it because we care about individual people that deeply that we cannot fathom that they would not have these things and we would not be able to sleep because this person I know is without. That's how it changes. You know, out of caring relationship, like family, you know, we would go, oh, my, my kids, man, they could make me frustrated to no end at different times. Some of their decision making was good, some of it was not as good. But never, ever, ever would I allow them to go without what they needed. Why? I may be frustrated, but I care about them. And I couldn't fathom that they wouldn't have all that they needed. And even more so, I kind of think that's what we do here. And so out of that, I'm kind of interested out of that that you. You saw. And like, so in it, what I do like is we didn't coach up any. You said, hey, it's really neat that y'all try to take time in relationships and to spend time with people and get to know them. It matters and people matter, and that's what we do. Let me ask you on you whole other side, have you ever found yourself in a situation or a moment in your life? Like I said, tell me about a time in your life that you really felt completely alone and isolated and like you were ostracized. Maybe it was a sixth grader and you walked into this room and everybody looked at you for whatever reason. And you remember that and you go, oh, right. It felt terrible when I.
- [21:59]
Cole
My freshman year up at college was pretty rough because, I mean, There were probably 10 people that were from my hometown that were up there, so I wasn't really alone. But it was hard, like seeing everybody else doing good in school and, you know, everybody else found their groups but you, you're struggling and you can't get good grades. You. But you can't like, talk to anybody about it or ask them how they're doing.
- [22:33]
Jeff
So. Good. Yep. To give you a sort of consol, not consolation like that, I under. So I did the train wreck of a freshman semester all in love with a girl still in temple, like this long time ago, whatever, you know, thought I was in love, whatever. And we broke up like two weeks in because, you know, whatever. So all alone, I'm in long ways off terrible grades. I started premed, but then I didn't realize because I wanted to make the money of a doctor, but I didn't really understand all the work and the study that went in to doing that. Flunking everything. Can't really call my parents and tell, hey, having a real hard time because I'm flunking everything, you know, because everybody be like, suck it up and study. Think I am. And then I sat in the room lonely, and everywhere I looked, it seemed like everybody was involved and happy but me. And then the parties or whatever, you know, didn't know anybody to, like, people are going out and you're not, you know, and. And have nowhere to go and talk to. And then if you do, it's like a whiny little baby and everybody's like, suck it up. Do better. Just do this, this and this, and you'll be just fine. And that's not exactly what you want to hear, you know, so for sure on that one, you're like, ah, that feeling of just life, it really stinks for me. And everywhere I look, it seems like everybody else has got it figured out but me. Okay, tell me moment that you thought this kind of stinks. What do you think? Lonely.
- [24:30]
Brooklyn
Mine probably had to have been a couple years ago in high school.
- [24:33]
Jeff
Okay.
- [24:35]
Brooklyn
It was kind of like a best friend fight thing. So we stopped being friends. And everyone in the friend group kind of went to, like, hang out with her mostly. And I think it was just not like, obviously I have four siblings, so I'm not alone, but just like going to school and feeling like an outsider at the lunch table.
- [24:56]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [24:57]
Brooklyn
That was just probably the hardest part.
- [24:59]
Jeff
Agreed. Like, and. And like so, like that I'm an old man. Like, it breaks my every. All of us have been there. That feeling of, huh, all of these sitting over there and you get to sit over here and then you gotta act like it's not awkward and you're like, oh, I'll talk to so and so. Yeah, hey, we're best buddies now. But it hurts, you know? Tell me.
- [25:27]
Emily
Sorry. Before I went to college, my freshman year, I had a boyfriend and he tried to take his own life, which was a really heavy thing for me. And I felt like no one was feeling what I was feeling. And it was just really sad time for me because, like, you never want anyone to do that. You never want anyone to feel that way. So, like, you take that burden onto yourself. So I just felt really alone and like the way I was feeling and the way I was still caring about everything.
- [25:53]
Jeff
Legit.
- [25:54]
Emily
Yeah.
- [25:55]
Jeff
Okay. Like that. And then feelings of, I wish I could help but there's nothing I can do. Or then in that one, because that's huge. Of what did I do wrong? You, you beat yourself up and going, man, I should have done. Insert here more. Less whatever the thing I should have done. And then it's something and terribly lonely and no. And then, and then people. Well, in all of these very different, very different scenarios, but people that are, let's just be nice and say they're well intending, like they, they mean well, you know, but they don't really seem to care or to get the magnitude of what's going on. Like, let's pretend I'm not your parents. But if I was your parent and you came to me and you go, hey, me and Susie had a fight today and I'm really having a hard time and I don't want to go to school today or whatever because people are going to be mean to me. And if I said there's going to be a lot harder things come along in life, just get on with it, you'll be just fine. How would that make you feel?
- [27:16]
Brooklyn
Frustrated.
- [27:16]
Jeff
Yeah, that's right. And it would be a wrong answer for me like that. But you're going, I came to you and, and I don't really know how to say these words, really don't know how to say the words of, man, I am hurting really badly and I don't even if so let out of this in life, what's kind of crazy. If I knew the answers and if I knew how to fix myself, don't you think I'd do it? Like, I mean, like that People in college used to just do the. Figure out what would make you happy. If I knew that, don't you think I would do it? Like, am I that ignorant that if I knew these things could fix me? And. And I. I'm coming to you because I don't even know how to say truly what I am feeling or what I'm going through. And you go. And then people give meaning, answers that are, well or like in here. Let's just pretend, because we don't even have to pretend that if somebody comes here, yes, they come here because we do provide food and they need to eat today. That's truth. You think that's all they got on their plate? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And we come at them with, you don't understand. If you just do this, this and this, you'd be a better person. They got so much on the. Like we now can see. So then what I would tell y'all what goes on here. You would hopefully leave and go. The difference is when you all leave, you're going to choose where you're going to go eat. Like, a lot of my people, they don't choose where they're going to eat. They're going to come and eat here. That's not what keeps you all. The commonality. The commonality is you can understand the hurt now of what it feels like to be alone and without community. Okay? And then that is what joins us together. Because I would say that as people created by God, we were designed, and you can look at ourselves, to live in community and togetherness. We have families. That's. That's the model that we were given. We have families that are support and they're there to catch us. Like Jeff would have been, not that he's not an absolute train wreck, would have been a catastrophic train wreck if it wasn't for my family and my support system that kept me going in those times that I couldn't. I didn't notice that was going on or didn't really appreciate, but I wouldn't have survived my college experience if it wasn't for my parents, you know, pulling me through support system that didn't let me fall through the cracks because. And there was always a place to go, you know, semester was really horrible. And all I gotta do is just make it because we used to have to go after things. If I can just make it to Thanksgiving, I'm going to go home and I'll be around all my buddies and I'll be with my family and then I'll be all Right. And then I just make it to Christmas, and then I'll have a month that I can be back in community, and then I'll go do it. Can you imagine trying to live a life that you really don't even have that support of any form at all? Tough. It's tough. And then. So then out of that, a. Not a good response, but a response could be, I just quit. I ain't gonna do this life thing because it's too hard. And our people would use a different. Nobody gives a crap whether I do or don't. What difference does it make? Everywhere I look, you know, everybody else has got it figured out. I'm the only idiot who doesn't know how this thing works, which isn't true. Okay, so out of this. So then we're good on that. Kind of neat. So hopefully out of this experience, you did see that we're not that different. The same hurts, the same things that we have, I guarantee. Well, I know for a fact, you know, people that have struggled with somebody that they love, that have taken their own lives, okay, they're still struggling with it. I'm not going to do it because I'm not going to embarrass somebody. They're going to come through the line and eat today. They're there that have still had that struggle, that have been all alone, that have done this, that have failed at this, that have not been successful here. And then so many of our people, they lost their family support system, maybe not even by choices of their own, by choices that their parents made. And TPS said, guess what? You're no longer going to stay here because it's not right for you, because your parents have this issue. And here you go. And this is family supports. Oh, nope. That one only lasts for six months. Oh, you're out of this one. You're in this one. You're in this one. You're in this one. You're in this one. And then you start realizing, maybe I'm all alone. So I would say community is what we served. And so then in it not, we're not more. This is good. Like, it's a good thing. And it's a pleasing thing because community is something we all can provide. It is doable. I mean, we can. I can't solve the homeless issue today, but I can make people feel like they belong and that they are cared about. I can do that. You know, so we can do that. So let me ask. So that people out there that are like, God, like, why do you think somebody should even come and give up time. Y'all could be doing ten jillion other different things, but why should somebody even take time out of their schedule to come up here and serve other people? Anybody?
- [33:32]
Emily
Well, I think Feed My Sheep specifically has a really beautiful message, like, showing that, like, vulnerability is rewarded. So, like, when these people are coming here and they're getting help and they're getting what they need and they're trying to get their lives back on track, like, it's really great to see, as someone who doesn't see that every day and who doesn't get to, like, experience watching the good in the world because the world is so messed up these days. There's so many things that happen, but I think it's really rewarding, like, not only, like, for the people that you're helping, but for yourself.
- [33:58]
Jeff
Okay, good. Anybody else? What do you think? Why should somebody come up here? All right, that's it. We are speaking of this place, but anywhere in general. But, like, why should somebody give up their time to serve others?
- [34:11]
Brooklyn
I mean, what we'd probably be doing is just sitting at home anyway. So at least you're putting your time to something good, to helping people, to doing good in the world in general.
- [34:24]
Jeff
Yeah. Good. I agree. Cole? Anything?
- [34:28]
Cole
I think that we've had the privilege of having the support in community that have helped us through our hard times. So we. We ought to give some of that out to people that haven't.
- [34:42]
Jeff
I agree. So, last question, and this is just for me, this is nothing to do, what we're talking about. I'm just kind of curious for a young person. When you look at the world right now as a whole. Okay, when you look at the world, do you think it's good? Do you think it's bad? Are you encouraged? Are you discouraged? Tell me about the world as a whole. I'm just curious because, like old men, when you look at 20 year old people, y'all are the hope. Y'all are the ones like. So tell me, when you look at the world, is it a good world in your eyes or is it a bad world? Are you discouraged? Are you encouraged? And why do you think it's good? Why do you think it's bad, whichever one you're at? So tell me, what do you think?
- [35:29]
Cole
I'm discouraged. I would say. Yeah, I think people are just starting to worry more. More and more about themselves. And if everybody just starts worrying about themselves, I feel like that's not going to be a very beneficial world.
- [35:45]
Jeff
I'd agree. And we can Have a whole other topic. Like we have a whole other discussion on that. And I won't go down this tirade. I'm not going to switch gears. I am of the belief, your age and your generation, like so your group would call themselves the most connected generation the world has ever seen because you in ways you are okay, so I'm not going to go down this road in that you can look on your phone and you could say, well, Jeff, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I've got friends that are in pick a country. I got friends in Africa or South America or Europe or all over the United States. And I have 1500 Instagram fall. I don't even know whatever all this stuff. Okay. I'm got a lot of friends. But then I would also say for y'all, at your age, you are so isolated rather than you really look at the picture of interaction. Like this is interaction that we're made for, is face to face, one to one. So I would go, oh, it's terribly sad to watch Yalls age. And I could be wrong on that. But like that. That we're getting more concerned about ourselves and our world. The orbit around our own world is getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and we're worried about one person. Tell me, encourage, discourage, good, bad.
- [37:14]
Brooklyn
I think it's a mix of good.
- [37:16]
Jeff
Okay.
- [37:16]
Brooklyn
I mean there's always going to be people who are going to be selfish and not care for others. But I mean feed my sheep and other organizations here are proof that there is good in the world. There are good people that put people out that are struggling.
- [37:30]
Jeff
Good answer. Okay. And yours is good answer as well. Like it's your answer. So they're both. But yes, there's things to look at that you're going. There's much to be encouraged about. Good. Okay, tell me.
- [37:44]
Emily
I mean, yes, I think we live in an imperfect world and imperfect society, but I think it is encouraging to see that we are ever evolving and we're moving into new things. We're building technology, we're building the economy. We're doing all these things that give young people like us hope for what's to come in our 20 years. Like, we have however many years we have left and like we can do so many things in that time. And I think that's really encouraging for me personally.
- [38:09]
Jeff
Oh, I agree, like, and I think the not encouraging thing, but it's not scary either. I think your generation, the world is going to change at such an exponential pace that we've never even seen before. Like I couldn't even speculate what your world will look like 10 years from now, 20 years from now. Like it's going to change in so many different ways. Technology and all these different things. I can't even fathom what all y'all are going to get to the experience. It's. I mean what do they say? Knowledge. It took it what like learning. I think our ability, like what we knew, it doubled. Like, I think it took us like 200 years, something like that to double what the capacity of what all the world knew. It's like 200 and something years. I think now it doubles. Is it every two days or every three days? Technology, medical field. I think it took hundreds of years for technology to double. And I think it's at some pace of like every week medical knowledge doubles. Like what they knew. Like they know twice as much in next week. And there's stuff that we're. Don't quote me on, but it's some astronomical pace like that knowledge is coming and we've got tools that are out there. Whole other discussion that we may not be ready for just yet. I'm not sure we understand truly all the AI capabilities. And then maybe in the medical world I'm looking at. I didn't even know this mirror microbes. If you looked at any of that stuff, this is something a whole other. This has come out. So I. We're not going to get it. But it's a. The scientific world is saying it might be the most single dangerous thing that the modern medicine is even looking into ever. But they're learning how to duplicate microbes. It something. It's somehow it's going crispr. Huh.
- [40:17]
Brooklyn
Like crispr.
- [40:18]
Jeff
I don't know. What is that? What is crispr?
- [40:20]
Brooklyn
Like genetically modifying genes and stuff.
- [40:23]
Jeff
This I don't like look at the. And explain this to me. But it's. They're calling it mirror microbes. And then like somehow you. I don't know, they can duplicate the make. I don't understand it. But like all these Nobel prize winning scientists are now on this big advocate that we need to stop that path at all. Like it is the single grace. Yeah. I don't know. So don't know what it is. So. But all that, so all of that to come to this is. I really appreciate y'all being here. I like our discussion and I would agree with all. Well, I wouldn't disagree with you because you're right. Okay. The world we live in is a very complicated place. There's no doubt about that. Okay. But I would also say the world we live in and how we were made is very simple. We were made to live in community and be around people that care about us and that treat us well. That's how we were made. And God said it at the beginning, it is not good for you to be alone. And I would say that is sentence goes, whether you live in a house or whether you don't live in a house. It's not good to be alone. We're made to be with others who care about us. So I appreciate it. It's good to see y'all. I'm not going to embarrass Cole. I knew him long, long, long, long time ago. It's good to see him as a grown man and what he's doing up there. It's good to have y'all here. So all of y'all out there, we would tell you this, that we say every week we do everything we do here at Feed My Sheep simply because we believe people matter. It's that simple. And not because I say it, not because it's cool on a brochure. We say that because God said it himself. People matter. And so we will keep doing that. And then I would tell you, if you were listening to this, it's easy to recognize that other people matter. I will tell you this. You are a person. And if you acknowledge the fact you are a person, then I will say the next sentence. You matter. You matter out there, and you deserve community. So hope you have a great day today. And we are done. Not too bad. Easy, easy. So hope you all have a great day. And later. Done. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Collage Podcast, a production of redcord Media. For more information on this and other podcasts, please visit redcord media.org.