Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E273: We Stepped Out of The Boat and Never Looked Back: Our Love Story | E273 Lila Rose Show

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E273: We Stepped Out of The Boat and Never Looked Back: Our Love Story | E273 Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  The deck feels very stacked against a lot of men today.
• 0:02
  We as men need to take risk and commit to see what the Lord
• 0:05
  wants to do for us, and it's not always going to be easy.
• 0:07
  Getting out of the boat when the Lord calls you, He'll never.
• 0:09
  Let you down? What was the thing that most
• 0:11
  attracted you to Daniel? Yeah, last weekend, a lot.
• 0:14
  There were three weddings from my matchmaking posts.
• 0:17
  There are 20 marriages. Your Instagram matchmaking
• 0:19
  posts. I'll try talking about it.
• 0:20
  I'm going to cry. There's so many moments where
• 0:22
  the Lord is going to ask you to do something and it might feel
• 0:25
  so ridiculous. And to see the fruit that Jesus
• 0:27
  had in mind for a simple Instagram post.
• 0:34
  I'm always so inspired when I meet a married couple who have
• 0:37
  fully abandoned themselves, their marriage, their kids,
• 0:40
  their careers, their purpose to God's calling.
• 0:43
  Today on the show, I sit down with my very dear friends, Emily
• 0:46
  and Daniel Hussem. Emily and Daniel not only have
• 0:49
  their own incredible love story and personal faith journeys, but
• 0:52
  as a couple they founded Sacred Spark, which I'm proud to be an
• 0:56
  advisor for, and you'll learn more about it in this episode.
• 0:59
  Did you know that over 60% of the people listening to this
• 1:02
  channel are not yet subscribed? The quickest and easiest and
• 1:05
  cheapest way that you can support our channel is to hit
• 1:08
  that subscribe button and leave this video alike.
• 1:11
  Thank you so much for being a part of the mission of this
• 1:13
  show. Also, I'd love for you to join
• 1:16
  our Patreon community. You'll get ad free episodes as
• 1:19
  well as 30% off all of our beautiful new merch.
• 1:22
  When you become a paid patron, that's patreon.com/lila Roche
• 1:25
  Show. Thank you so much for your
• 1:27
  support, Daniel and Emily. So great to see you guys.
• 1:30
  Thanks. So much for.
• 1:31
  Having us, it's such a delight to be here.
• 1:33
  I know I wish Joe was here. I'm like, this should be a this
• 1:36
  should be a double date podcast right now.
• 1:38
  I would. Love, I would love that.
• 1:40
  I know your listeners have heard from me a couple of times, but
• 1:43
  Daniel hasn't been on the podcast before, which is kind of
• 1:45
  like. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
• 1:47
  So excited to be here. Yes, I'm so excited about this.
• 1:50
  I want to hear we're going to talk about your love story,
• 1:52
  which I love your love story. I think a lot of people love
• 1:55
  your love story who know Emily and who've gotten to follow it a
• 1:58
  little bit. But getting to hear from Daniel
• 1:59
  is very exciting and I'm really proud of what you guys are
• 2:02
  building. Thanks.
• 2:03
  Sacred Spark is amazing and I'm so excited about what it's going
• 2:07
  to do in the world and already is.
• 2:08
  So how how are you guys doing? We're doing great.
• 2:11
  The first thing I want to say I felt called to this is to thank
• 2:14
  you. This year you've given so much.
• 2:16
  And you and I were talking before we sat down and I was
• 2:18
  crying about how beautifully brave you've been this year.
• 2:22
  You've always been beautifully brave.
• 2:23
  So much has come out of your one, yes, as a teenage girl, but
• 2:27
  this year, you've put your heart on the line again and again and
• 2:32
  again for the cause, for the Kingdom.
• 2:35
  And I speak for all your listeners, right, who want to
• 2:39
  thank you. You're so brave, you're so
• 2:42
  convicted, you're so loving, and you sacrifice so much.
• 2:46
  I'll cry again. And I know this might be an odd
• 2:48
  way to start a podcast, but someone has to say it.
• 2:52
  You make so many sacrifices that nobody sees and I'm so grateful
• 2:58
  this year. I don't know when this will
• 2:59
  post, but this year I've gotten a front row seat in many
• 3:01
  different ways to watch you either online debate someone at
• 3:05
  Yale or in this, these beautiful moments in person, watching
• 3:08
  these events where you just inspire and convict and
• 3:12
  encourage. And it's a gift.
• 3:14
  It truly is a gift. I feel like I'm so blessed to
• 3:17
  live at the same time as Lila Rose.
• 3:19
  Like truly what I really mean that with all of my heart.
• 3:23
  And I just wanted to start this podcast by saying thank you for
• 3:27
  all of your sacrifices this year.
• 3:30
  Oh my gosh, thank you, Emily, you're making me cry and that
• 3:33
  you've got such a gift of encouragement and knowing you
• 3:35
  are out there and Daniel as your is your man, as your husband.
• 3:40
  But it does give me so much encouragement in the deepest
• 3:42
  meaning of that word because I see you being brave.
• 3:45
  I see you being faithful to your role as wife and mom and then
• 3:49
  also ministry. And it gives me it gives me the
• 3:53
  strength to see your example. So that means the world to me
• 3:56
  make me tears already tears this interview.
• 4:01
  But thank you friend. That means so much.
• 4:04
  Yes. So how are we?
• 4:06
  We're doing great. We are in a roller coaster of a
• 4:09
  lot of different things since we launched Shake with Spark.
• 4:11
  But yeah, just this year has been incredibly busy, but
• 4:14
  incredibly just beautiful and fruitful with what the Lord's
• 4:18
  doing, you know, in our lives and the lives of others.
• 4:20
  And it's just been, yeah. A blessing.
• 4:24
  All right, so for those who are meeting you guys for the first
• 4:26
  time, Emily is a favorite. But you have three beautiful
• 4:29
  children. You have this really wild love
• 4:31
  story that's very much Emily's faith that just as a a through
• 4:36
  line and of course your faith. I want to hear the love story.
• 4:40
  And then I want to hear the transition into family life and
• 4:42
  what you're building as a family because that's also really
• 4:44
  unique, how intentional you are and the risks that you're taking
• 4:47
  as a family because you left your day job not too long ago to
• 4:51
  do these crazy Kingdom building projects with Emily.
• 4:54
  So yeah, let's hear the love story.
• 4:57
  And you're an international like we heard you're an
• 4:59
  international. You're not a you mean, are you
• 5:01
  an American now or OK, Proud, proudly American.
• 5:04
  You're going to. Speak to all the Dutch listeners
• 5:06
  out there. Yeah, exactly.
• 5:07
  Not born and raised here though. Not born and raised.
• 5:09
  So I came. Well, yeah, I met Emily in 2013
• 5:13
  in the Netherlands, so I'm Dutch.
• 5:14
  So we got a Natal and spot them. But I'll start Newman to this
• 5:16
  phone. So if I talk Dutch, I'm sure
• 5:18
  nobody will understand. Yeah.
• 5:20
  Sure, there's Dutch listeners out there, Yeah.
• 5:21
  Exactly. So I'll stick to the English.
• 5:23
  But yeah, I met Emily in 2013 at an event.
• 5:25
  So she was playing music and speaking at an event in the
• 5:29
  Netherlands of all places. And I was tasked with picking
• 5:33
  her up from the airport and showing her around because I was
• 5:35
  also, they asked me to give some testimonial at this event as
• 5:38
  well. So it's kind of part of the
• 5:39
  event. But the, the story was that at
• 5:42
  that time, I was in my undergrad and doing an internship at my
• 5:45
  father's firm. And the, the, the the individual
• 5:48
  that organized that event that had Emily come out, he knew my
• 5:51
  dad and said, Hey, I'm bringing out this, this girl Emily, she
• 5:53
  had never been out of the US before.
• 5:55
  Can you? Is that your first
• 5:56
  international? Trip support for that trip.
• 5:58
  Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah.
• 6:00
  Wow. To meet my future, yeah.
• 6:01
  Yeah, she'd never been out of the US Yeah.
• 6:03
  And say, so they asked like, do you have somebody to show her
• 6:06
  around for a day? Just to like, have her show some
• 6:08
  of Europe before this event starts?
• 6:10
  And so the day before, there was a Wednesday.
• 6:12
  I remember having lunch with my dad.
• 6:14
  And he said, tomorrow you're going to pick this girl up from
• 6:15
  the airport and you're going to show her around.
• 6:17
  And I'm like, I had like 3 weeks left to finish up to write my
• 6:20
  thesis. And it was such a busy time.
• 6:21
  I don't think so. And then he said, well, you're
• 6:24
  going to, you know, you're going to go and do this.
• 6:26
  Exactly. And then I pulled up at the
• 6:28
  airport and I saw her. I was like, I actually this
• 6:29
  might not be so bad. And then.
• 6:32
  Yeah. I'd been travelling for 30 hours
• 6:34
  and looked like a wreck. It was great.
• 6:36
  It was exactly how everyone woman wants to meet her future
• 6:39
  husband after traveling for 30 hours and just being like oh
• 6:43
  messy. It's great.
• 6:44
  Yeah. No, it's beautiful.
• 6:45
  And then we, yeah, we hung out for four days that she was here.
• 6:48
  So I showed that first day. I showed her around Europe.
• 6:51
  So I live in the southern part of the Netherlands, close to
• 6:54
  both the Belgium and the German border.
• 6:56
  And so I took her on that first day to a spot where you can be
• 7:00
  in all three countries at the same time, because all three
• 7:02
  countries intersect at this bottom part of the Netherlands.
• 7:05
  And so I took her to Germany, Belgium and Holland in one day
• 7:08
  and so. Saying Europe, Aladdin showing
• 7:10
  her the world, Yeah. Exactly.
• 7:12
  Yeah. So it was beautiful.
• 7:13
  And then, yeah, over the course of those days, you know, my
• 7:18
  heart stirred. Obviously yours as well.
• 7:19
  But like, wow, there's really something here that I, I had
• 7:22
  never experienced before. Like to see somebody obviously
• 7:24
  for a beauty, but also like her true inner beauty.
• 7:27
  So growing up in the Netherlands, the faith is so
• 7:30
  sparse, right? Like I grew up in everywhere
• 7:33
  from my elementary school all the way up to grad school, never
• 7:35
  having another student that I knew that went to church, never
• 7:39
  once met somebody else that went to church.
• 7:41
  And so it was very. No faith of any kind.
• 7:44
  No faith of any kind. Just yeah.
• 7:45
  I mean, it was a Christian. It's a Christian country.
• 7:47
  But nobody practices their faith, right?
• 7:49
  So nobody actually goes to go to church.
• 7:50
  Nobody prays, nobody. None of it.
• 7:53
  We. Don't want to speak with too
• 7:54
  broad of a brush. Some people, but yeah, it's the
• 7:57
  people that I encounter, I guess the people that I encountered at
• 7:59
  my school and the people that I hung out with.
• 8:01
  And so, yeah, it was very hard. Like having the faith be
• 8:05
  something of my own versus something that was just
• 8:08
  instilled upon me by my family, right.
• 8:10
  So my my family, my dad's a convert through the faith, my
• 8:12
  mom, you know, very Catholic and really raised us very Catholic.
• 8:17
  But again, without community, it's so incredibly difficult.
• 8:20
  And so, yeah, meeting Emily and and seeing, you know, the beauty
• 8:24
  of the faith like alive in her was like just like nothing I've
• 8:29
  ever experienced before. Like seeing that.
• 8:31
  And that's really, you know, the, yeah, I think how God like
• 8:34
  stirred this up to, you know, get us to where we are today,
• 8:37
  but like the whole long distance dating for the years and, you
• 8:39
  know, all that stuff. So.
• 8:41
  You were how many days the first day touring around and then how
• 8:44
  long were you there for? I was there for four days.
• 8:46
  So only four days. What a quick.
• 8:47
  Trip to do your first international trip to the
• 8:49
  Netherlands. A high day.
• 8:50
  Teacher at the time so I took the my paid.
• 8:52
  Time the side gate. Yes, this was like a side thing.
• 8:55
  I wasn't a full time speaker at the time.
• 8:56
  I was a high school teacher for teenage girls, which was a dream
• 8:59
  and beautiful part of my life. But yeah, so I had to get back
• 9:02
  to work. So it was 4 days and we just
• 9:05
  chatted and we spent, you know, the meal times together.
• 9:08
  And when we left, it was like, oh man, the Lord was like,
• 9:11
  really? Moving.
• 9:12
  So what happened when you left? You're like, hey, can I see you
• 9:15
  again? Yes, in California.
• 9:16
  Exactly. So that the event ended on a
• 9:18
  Sunday afternoon. And then I asked her that
• 9:21
  because then there was a little bit of downtime and she would
• 9:23
  fly out again. I would drop her off again
• 9:25
  Monday morning at the airport. And so we did a little trip
• 9:27
  where we just hung out, just got to know each other, you know,
• 9:31
  again, outside of this event that we were both at.
• 9:33
  And she was obviously working that event and so forth, but
• 9:36
  just really having a time. Yeah.
• 9:39
  To to really connect. And then we felt that
• 9:42
  connection. So once he left, yeah, I just
• 9:45
  knew like I, I wanted to pursue her.
• 9:46
  I didn't know what that would look like.
• 9:47
  I didn't know how that would work.
• 9:49
  There's, you know, when you think about that, somebody lives
• 9:51
  across the ocean, you met them for four days.
• 9:52
  You're like, what could this ever be?
• 9:54
  It's. No way this is.
• 9:55
  Ridiculous. But with anything, you just you
• 9:58
  know, you, you really I, I so felt that call to say like, I
• 10:01
  don't know what's going to happen.
• 10:02
  I don't know how we'll do it, but I just want to give this a
• 10:05
  try. And I feel called to pursue her.
• 10:07
  And so I wrote her a message when she was on the plane as he
• 10:09
  received once he landed stateside again to say, Hey, I
• 10:12
  just, you know, I really feel a strong desire in my heart to
• 10:15
  pursue you. And I don't know what this will
• 10:16
  look like. And I feel, you know, crazy for
• 10:19
  even saying or even, you know, like, how would this ever work?
• 10:22
  And, and I don't know how it'll work.
• 10:23
  I just know that I want to try and I want to, you know, I
• 10:26
  pursue you if you're open to it. And she said that she was open
• 10:29
  to it. And so.
• 10:31
  Yeah. Here we are many, many, many
• 10:35
  years later. And beautiful babies later.
• 10:36
  So I've got to ask, though, you said this at this event that
• 10:40
  Emily came to. First international trip, meets
• 10:43
  your husband. God's Providence is all over it.
• 10:46
  But you said that you were giving your testimony.
• 10:48
  Yeah. Exactly what testimony were you
• 10:50
  giving at this event? So at that time, so I was 22 at
• 10:53
  the time. And so throughout my own
• 10:55
  upbringing, again in the Netherlands, my faith had always
• 10:58
  wandered just because it was. So it was something I felt that
• 11:01
  I had to do just to be loyal to my parents, you know, for a
• 11:05
  longest period of time. So my faith wasn't my own.
• 11:07
  And so as time progressed and I went through my teens and this
• 11:11
  really, you know, rebellious period of just, you know,
• 11:14
  shameful behavior, just things that were of the world, you
• 11:17
  know, at that time, the legal drinking age was 16 years old in
• 11:20
  the Netherlands. You could, you know, drugs you
• 11:22
  could get at 18 years old. Like these were, these were all
• 11:25
  things that were legal, you know, drugs.
• 11:27
  Are illegal. They're illegal to smoke
• 11:29
  marijuana at the time. At 18 years old you can go to
• 11:31
  these coffee shops is what they call them.
• 11:33
  At their high school Proms, the students would all drink with
• 11:35
  the teachers together like everybody would drink together.
• 11:38
  And that was just a normal way of life.
• 11:39
  And that's was, you know, again, by law, that was all legal, you
• 11:44
  know? And so, yeah, so throughout my
• 11:46
  youth, I was very much because I didn't have actual community
• 11:49
  around myself. I had a beautiful family,
• 11:50
  obviously, but something to make my own.
• 11:52
  It's people to connect with. And I would wander in my faith
• 11:56
  and not really have any faith or just have it be very
• 11:58
  superficial. As time would progress on
• 12:02
  onward, the Lord actually kept talking my, my heart, my mom and
• 12:05
  my dad kept praying for me, you know, relentlessly, you know,
• 12:09
  and so slowly but surely I got to see the faith like through my
• 12:12
  own eyes versus their eyes, you know, and really get to
• 12:14
  experience faith for what it is and what the Lord wants to do in
• 12:18
  my own life and what he has done for me.
• 12:20
  And you know, those aspects. So at that event, this then was
• 12:24
  Fast forward three years from when I started my own conversion
• 12:27
  process and that really got kick started by me coming to the
• 12:30
  States, to a Steubenville conference.
• 12:31
  I don't know if you're familiar with those, but.
• 12:33
  Yes, amazing. Yeah, they brought this very
• 12:35
  small group of us, of us Dutch teenagers to come to the US to
• 12:39
  see like what the faith could be like, to see like other people
• 12:42
  of your same age experience the faith, something we'd never seen
• 12:45
  before. Because there's like 5 or 6
• 12:47
  people at my church that were even my age at the time.
• 12:49
  They didn't go to my school or anything like that.
• 12:51
  So they brought us over and we, we got to see thousands of, of
• 12:54
  teenagers at the time when I was 16, living their faith, you
• 12:58
  know, And yeah, it was, it was a that that was really the start.
• 13:03
  And so then the years that followed, my faith just became
• 13:06
  more and more my own and more and more true and and and and
• 13:09
  yeah, deeper and deeper and deeper from there because I had
• 13:12
  all the foundations in the upbringing and the teaching, but
• 13:14
  I never applied it, you know, for my own life, really.
• 13:17
  What's so amazing about what you're saying is just the power,
• 13:19
  like in your own story, the witness to the power of
• 13:22
  community, like you said, because you didn't have like the
• 13:25
  fact that you had no Catholic friends.
• 13:27
  It was just your family. And it was coming to the US and
• 13:29
  being surrounded by a bunch of Steubenville kids, which by the
• 13:31
  way, a big shout out to what they've been doing so faithfully
• 13:33
  with their conferences that you saw the faith lived by other
• 13:37
  people. And all of a sudden you thought
• 13:38
  maybe this could be, maybe this is true and this is something
• 13:41
  that I want. Exactly.
• 13:42
  And you see people just living the faith like normal everyday
• 13:45
  people, you know, and that's I'd, I'd only experienced God
• 13:48
  blessing like grandma's praying the rosaries in church.
• 13:50
  And I thought that's what the faith is, you know, but not like
• 13:53
  people just being my own age, having fun, you know, doing
• 13:56
  things that teenagers do just in a great beautiful way.
• 14:01
  And, and but having the Lord be the center of that and being the
• 14:03
  center of that joy and being the center of that, you know, that
• 14:06
  love and hospitality and all the things that we had had
• 14:08
  experienced on that trip. Yeah, it was eye opening.
• 14:12
  But it's just so beautiful. And for me, really like
• 14:14
  community is huge, you know, just because it was so lacking
• 14:17
  for me growing up and seeing the real fruits that that bears, you
• 14:21
  know, like the people you surround yourself with, like
• 14:23
  those are the people that influence you most obviously.
• 14:26
  And you want that to be ideally something generated towards the
• 14:29
  Lord, you know? So when you met each other, did
• 14:31
  you guys have a lot of dating experience before meeting one
• 14:34
  another? Not very much.
• 14:36
  I would have been in the place where, you know, I wanted to
• 14:38
  find a man who loved his Catholic faith because I was
• 14:41
  devoted Catholic. So I still AM.
• 14:43
  And, you know, I got to the place where I was like, oh, I'll
• 14:45
  never meet a good Catholic man. So let's just like, we'll, we'll
• 14:49
  accept whatever, like whatever, whatever faith he has doesn't
• 14:52
  have, like I'll just, you know, date, go on dates with whoever.
• 14:55
  So I was open in that way. But in my deepest heart of, of
• 14:58
  hearts, I had that desire for a man who shared in what I loved
• 15:02
  the most. So we had had like relationships
• 15:04
  and, you know, like things like that, but nothing that was just
• 15:08
  like, wow. As serious.
• 15:09
  Yeah, devoted Catholic man. So I was, you know, I guess I
• 15:14
  could say when I met Daniel too, just hearing his testimony and
• 15:17
  sharing all those things like his, his story of faith was
• 15:20
  really beautiful to me too, because at the time I was like,
• 15:22
  oh, I don't know where that all, you know, good Catholic men are,
• 15:25
  you know. Yeah, yeah, same for me.
• 15:27
  I mean, because nobody I knew even went to church.
• 15:30
  So the the girls that I would date, they didn't have any
• 15:32
  faith. But I knew again, in my heart
• 15:34
  that this is what I long for though.
• 15:36
  Like getting to that point of like, my face is really becoming
• 15:38
  my own and I want somebody to share that with.
• 15:41
  And so that's when I met Emily. Like, it was just, it was like
• 15:44
  night and day, you know, like hearing her pray, hearing her,
• 15:48
  you know, just the way that she carried herself, just, you know,
• 15:52
  all of that was just, you know. He loves you, Emily.
• 15:54
  Very. Good.
• 15:57
  One, I love that. So what made you as you guys are
• 15:59
  now doing this long distance literally as how far away
• 16:02
  physically is Netherlands to me from California, 6000 miles.
• 16:06
  So it's like 2 continents kind of in an ocean basically.
• 16:09
  Yeah, which is crazy. Did you, was there a sense that
• 16:12
  either of you had of, OK, if we do get married, we're going to
• 16:15
  do California or if we, I mean, was there ever a question of
• 16:18
  we're going to live in Europe versus America?
• 16:20
  Like how did you make those decisions?
• 16:22
  Any couple that has done long distance, I feel like this is
• 16:24
  true for most long distance couples.
• 16:26
  There's one place that really makes sense.
• 16:29
  And any long distance person who's doing long distance right
• 16:32
  now or has done long distance, that they feel that in their
• 16:36
  heart. Like, yes, there was just a
• 16:38
  place that made sense for us as we discerned it, as we prayed.
• 16:42
  Daniel coming to America just made sense and there's no really
• 16:45
  way to describe it other than that.
• 16:47
  Yeah, it was a combination of things, right?
• 16:50
  So I think it made sense because I, I spoke the language, right?
• 16:53
  Like Dutch is a very difficult language, you know, to learn and
• 16:56
  to speak, even though Emily did a great job, like she
• 16:58
  understands that. That's really.
• 16:59
  A lot of Dutch. But.
• 17:00
  That's so impressive. You learned that for Daniel.
• 17:02
  I studied when we were dating, I had a book, Dutch with Ease, and
• 17:05
  I studied and studied and studied.
• 17:06
  It's harder to keep studying it with the children, but I
• 17:09
  understand a lot of what people are saying when they're talking
• 17:11
  with one another. Yeah, yeah.
• 17:13
  But, and also as a kid, I lived in the States for two years.
• 17:16
  And so my dad's firm, they open up an office in stateside in New
• 17:20
  Jersey of all places. So from the age of 9 to 11, my
• 17:23
  whole family moved to New Jersey and they put me in school here
• 17:26
  for 4th and 5th grade. And so I got kind of introduced
• 17:29
  to the American culture of the American way of life.
• 17:30
  And that's also where I picked up the English as a as a kid
• 17:33
  already and so. In English when he was 9.
• 17:36
  I always tell people it's too bad he doesn't have a New Jersey
• 17:38
  accent. Learn English in New Jersey.
• 17:41
  Yeah, exactly. Which was very, very fruitful
• 17:43
  for me going back to the to the Netherlands again, because not a
• 17:46
  lot of people speak Dutch. So you have to learn, you know,
• 17:48
  German and French and English. But to have a good solid basis
• 17:51
  of English, all the education is in English after the fact.
• 17:55
  But yeah, so with that being said, like it just made more
• 17:58
  sense for me to come to the US just because my schooling and
• 18:02
  stuff was all in English. My the the I was looking for
• 18:06
  tech companies to work at California was obviously, you
• 18:08
  know, there's a huge opportunity there.
• 18:10
  We had a lot of great connections.
• 18:12
  And so it just naturally makes made sense.
• 18:15
  What was the hardest thing, besides being long distance when
• 18:19
  you were discerning marriage and then preparing for marriage?
• 18:23
  If you're willing to share. Oh yeah.
• 18:24
  For sure. And maybe there are different
• 18:27
  things for each of you, I don't know.
• 18:29
  Is it the same thing do you think?
• 18:31
  I have to change separate rooms. And have you answer separately?
• 18:34
  Just long distance is very challenging for a lot of
• 18:36
  different reasons. I encourage everyone to be open
• 18:38
  to it because long distance will work for the right person.
• 18:42
  A lot of people have dumpster fire long distance stories
• 18:44
  because it wasn't the right person and there was just a lot
• 18:46
  of tension. But for us, long distance was
• 18:49
  really challenging. Planning a wedding long distance
• 18:52
  was had its own challenges, but just you really, once you meet
• 18:57
  really the the person I feel God is calling you to marry, you
• 19:00
  want to be together in the same place.
• 19:02
  And so there can be a lot of friction with one another.
• 19:05
  You're fighting about this or that or whatever.
• 19:06
  But ultimately, if you look underneath and peel back all the
• 19:09
  layers, it's just we want to be in the same place and we miss
• 19:12
  each other. And that's a very big challenge
• 19:14
  when you want to begin your life and build it together.
• 19:17
  So I feel like there was a lot of friction that we had to
• 19:21
  overcome and it always came back to the.
• 19:22
  Communications, yes. Communication I'm not
• 19:25
  understanding. You're feeling loved.
• 19:27
  I mean, it's probably hard to feel loved by the other person
• 19:29
  when you're like across an ocean on.
• 19:30
  FaceTime calls all the time. You're just communicating.
• 19:34
  All you can do is talk. You can't say let's just go to
• 19:36
  the movies, let's just let it. Stand and walk down to the beach
• 19:39
  or whatever it might be just. Breathe together, all you can
• 19:42
  do. Skype existed back in the day,
• 19:43
  so we use Skype a lot. All we can do is Skype call each
• 19:46
  other and that was really challenging because so many of
• 19:49
  the miscommunications and understandings, we were also
• 19:52
  learning about our different cultures.
• 19:54
  And how? Americans communicate generally
• 19:57
  and Dutch people communicate generally.
• 19:59
  Like learning how to communicate well-being raised in different
• 20:04
  countries was really challenging.
• 20:05
  It's still challenging to this. Yeah, there's still things now.
• 20:08
  I mean, there's, there's so many examples.
• 20:10
  A part of it was also my, a lot of it, I think had to do with my
• 20:14
  own ignorance and like, like me growing up, like communication
• 20:18
  was not a big part of what I did.
• 20:19
  I really felt like as a guy, like you kind of keep your
• 20:22
  emotions inside. You don't really display your
• 20:24
  emotions. You don't any insecurities or
• 20:25
  things that you have, you just keep them in, you know, like,
• 20:27
  and you just keep up this persona of like, I have it all
• 20:30
  together and I can make it happen and I'll do all these
• 20:32
  things. And so when I met Emily, you
• 20:34
  know, in my previous relationships, even like if
• 20:36
  something didn't work out or something got where I felt like,
• 20:40
  oh, I have to be vulnerable. I would just shut down.
• 20:42
  I would just end it and I would pull up these walls and that was
• 20:45
  the end of it. But with Emily, like I wanted
• 20:48
  you just to be with her, you know, and so she slowly peeled
• 20:51
  back these layers of my own self, you know, God bless you,
• 20:55
  baby. But like, but for me to be able
• 20:57
  to express myself. And that's why I think the Lord
• 20:59
  really had this plan of long distance for us that forced me
• 21:02
  to like learn how to communicate, which was such.
• 21:05
  It's just, it's an important part of any marriage, you know,
• 21:08
  but really like have that be something that we could flush
• 21:10
  out and like work on before we would even get to a marriage,
• 21:14
  you know, and, and really have that be something so that we can
• 21:18
  have just open conversation that I can be vulnerable and I can
• 21:21
  talk about things that I normally wouldn't share about
• 21:25
  any of those things. Instead of pulling up these
• 21:26
  walls, just being open and talking through things because
• 21:30
  that's all that we could do was just talk through things.
• 21:33
  Marriage is a lot of just talking.
• 21:35
  Through things. So it was a wonderful practice.
• 21:38
  I tell people, be not afraid of long distance because the
• 21:41
  practice of communication really serves your marriage so well.
• 21:45
  And that was a lot of the tension and difficulty that we
• 21:47
  have has borne a lot of fruit in our marriage because we got to
• 21:50
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  That's cozyearth.com. What's been the best tool in
• 23:46
  marriage now? And maybe it started in dating
• 23:49
  for you guys for communication. What's like a tool you
• 23:52
  recommend? I mean, now you are we're going
• 23:54
  to get to your incredible ministry, but it's helping
• 23:57
  people have better relationships ultimately.
• 24:00
  And that relationship of marriage, which is this
• 24:02
  incredible vocation. What what's served you guys the
• 24:05
  best for communication and especially with different
• 24:08
  temperaments, different countries, different cultures?
• 24:11
  Yeah, I think the practical tools that we would implement, I
• 24:13
  know we did like we would have these like weekly check
• 24:17
  insurance that we would do where we would, you know, we'd have
• 24:19
  this book without these guys. And I know what the name of the
• 24:21
  book is, but where we would intentionally sit down and like
• 24:26
  forcefully, like talk through things that might have been
• 24:28
  unsaid or things that happened that week that, you know, were
• 24:32
  hurtful or something that I was carrying on to or holding on to
• 24:34
  that I shouldn't, that I wanted to, you know, talk to her about
• 24:38
  and so forth. So there were, yeah, there was
• 24:40
  some guidebook for communication that we used.
• 24:43
  And I felt that was helpful because for me, like any, any
• 24:45
  tool was helpful, you know what I mean?
• 24:46
  Just in order to learn like, how should I express myself and how
• 24:49
  can I be vulnerable? And.
• 24:53
  Yeah. Yeah, for me, it was really
• 24:56
  observing and learning from people who communicate well in
• 24:59
  my life, watching people who really know how to express
• 25:03
  themselves well, know how to have hard conversations,
• 25:06
  observing their communication skills and trying to apply those
• 25:11
  to my own life. How what can I learn from this
• 25:12
  person? What can, how can I apply what I
• 25:15
  think they do so well in relationships, in life, into my
• 25:20
  own life and let it bear fruit in my own life.
• 25:22
  So mine was just a lot of observation.
• 25:25
  Oh gosh. Has helped to help me a lot be a
• 25:27
  better communicator. Of your parents, I mean, you're
• 25:29
  both from families. Your parents are both stayed
• 25:32
  together, which is such a blessing.
• 25:33
  I've gotten to meet your lovely parents.
• 25:35
  I don't think I've met your parents.
• 25:37
  No, they're over in the Netherlands.
• 25:39
  So they they come every other year they would try to come out
• 25:42
  to this. She's been married how many
• 25:43
  years? You've been married 45 years.
• 25:44
  And my parents just celebrated 40.
• 25:46
  Beautiful. Yeah, which is amazing.
• 25:47
  That's probably a bit of an imprint for you or a blueprint,
• 25:50
  I should say. Yeah.
• 25:51
  Of was there, was there a sort of a process that you guys went
• 25:55
  through of identifying your parents marriages and what you
• 25:59
  wanted to emulate and what you felt like this is something in
• 26:01
  area that we would do differently?
• 26:03
  Yeah, yeah, there were definitely, I remember having
• 26:06
  tangible conversation just about my own upbringing in the
• 26:09
  Netherlands with my own family dynamics.
• 26:11
  And a lot of things were really good.
• 26:12
  Some things weren't that great, you know, And So what what are
• 26:15
  the things that we want to bring into our marriage, you know, and
• 26:19
  like really being very tangible, very open and very honest about
• 26:23
  those things. And like, these are rules that
• 26:24
  we set in place in our households that we don't raise
• 26:27
  our voices, that we don't yell, that we don't like argue in
• 26:30
  front of the kids. Like all of these different
• 26:32
  things were something that we practically put into place like
• 26:34
  very early on. Yeah, I mean, my, my parents are
• 26:37
  the best. I love them so much.
• 26:40
  My dad is so devoted to my mother.
• 26:42
  My. Dad, I've even observed that in
• 26:44
  the limited interactions I've had.
• 26:46
  Very sweet. My mother and it's been such a
• 26:49
  gift for my life. I could try talking about that
• 26:51
  too. Such a gift for my life.
• 26:53
  My mom is a cancer survivor. My dad and her have just loved
• 26:57
  each other so well. My dad recently has had open
• 27:00
  heart surgery. Our dad's actually had open
• 27:02
  heart surgery in the same week, which was quite something.
• 27:06
  And to see their love and devotion for each other inspired
• 27:08
  me in my life to want to choose a man who adores me and, you
• 27:13
  know, honors me just as much in that way.
• 27:16
  My family, I come from a family of artists and our family is
• 27:19
  very much loose, like anything goes in terms of just like love
• 27:24
  and hospitality and just, you know, just like this openness.
• 27:29
  And Dutch culture is, I would say, more rigid.
• 27:32
  And so like marrying those two things from our households,
• 27:37
  whether that be American and Dutch culture or the way our
• 27:39
  families operate has been a bit challenging as well, I would
• 27:43
  say. But man, the foundation of our
• 27:44
  parents in marriage, their devotion to each other, truly in
• 27:48
  sickness and in health, richer for poorer, Oh my gosh, they
• 27:53
  have shown what it means to choose and choose and choose one
• 27:57
  another again. And it's truly a gift not just
• 27:59
  to us, their children, but it inspires so many people in our
• 28:03
  churches and in our communities and things like that.
• 28:06
  The love his parents have for each other and the love my
• 28:08
  parents have for each other. Truly something I don't take for
• 28:10
  granted at all. At all.
• 28:13
  Yeah, now it was huge. I mean, for us again, growing up
• 28:16
  in the Netherlands, like I come a family, I come from a family
• 28:18
  of six kids. And so in the Netherlands, if
• 28:21
  you have more than two kids already, because people like
• 28:24
  what, what are, what are you guys doing?
• 28:25
  You know, and then 3456, you know, in our town, like people
• 28:29
  would know, like, oh, these are the, you know, the Haslam kids
• 28:31
  and they're, you know, they, they have all these kids and
• 28:33
  what's going on there and like all the stuff.
• 28:35
  But my parents were just just faithful, you know, and they
• 28:37
  loved each other. And.
• 28:40
  Yeah. And so the really the beauty of
• 28:42
  family, you know, and the beauty that comes from that.
• 28:44
  And it's a, it was a huge blessing for me growing up in
• 28:47
  such a big family and having all my siblings around and then and
• 28:51
  just having that love, you know, that love for each other, that
• 28:54
  love and the for the faith. Yeah.
• 28:57
  And now, you know, putting all those pieces, those different
• 29:00
  pieces into our own marriage, into our own family and taking,
• 29:03
  you know, the good in order to, you know, try to make it great,
• 29:07
  you know, for our own family. And really?
• 29:09
  Go from there. Did people say that about your
• 29:11
  family? Like look at the the roses with
• 29:13
  all the kids. We were unusually large, but I
• 29:16
  got 4 kids because my I'm on a vape.
• 29:18
  So yeah. And we weren't raised Catholic
• 29:21
  or anything. We were in this evangelical
• 29:23
  church and the the the the next biggest family was 4 kids.
• 29:27
  So people would see you and go. Yeah, not in a good way,
• 29:30
  unfortunately. My mom, I think, got a lot of
• 29:34
  like, unpleasant comments. Well meaning, well-intentioned.
• 29:37
  Unpleasant, though. Yeah, because it's unusual.
• 29:39
  I mean, it sounds like in the Netherlands it's beyond unusual.
• 29:42
  Like it's like you're not only the biggest family in the
• 29:44
  parish, but the biggest family anywhere.
• 29:46
  Yeah, there's a My Mama tell the story of like once, once we had
• 29:50
  my youngest brother Joey, who was the 6th child.
• 29:53
  She was at the grocery store in our town and the people didn't
• 29:56
  notice she was standing in front of her and she could hear the
• 29:58
  people talking literally about her standing behind her in line,
• 30:01
  like, oh, did you hear like they had another kid and like the
• 30:03
  thing and what are they doing? And like, this is crazy.
• 30:05
  And and it's and she just turned around and said, like, guys,
• 30:09
  like, what are we doing? Yeah.
• 30:11
  And so. What did they say?
• 30:12
  Yeah, I well, that's culture is very much the people who
• 30:14
  instantly like shut down and they'll be like, oh, I'm sorry,
• 30:16
  you know, but yeah, just calling people out on it, you know, as
• 30:20
  you can. But obviously people are always
• 30:22
  going to have opinions and you know.
• 30:24
  You can't, you know, you can't make everybody happy.
• 30:27
  Yeah. Did you not about make people?
• 30:29
  Did you? I just found this out recently.
• 30:31
  I don't know if you told me or someone else that your dad was
• 30:33
  in Back to the Future. Yes, he was.
• 30:35
  My I did not know that until just recently.
• 30:38
  I feel like I'm like the last person to discover that.
• 30:40
  Some people do. My dad is the greatest.
• 30:43
  I've already sung his. I think my brother Paul might
• 30:45
  have told me that. I don't remember but.
• 30:46
  So wonderful. Just the most loving gentleman
• 30:50
  and he played one of the greatest bullies of all time.
• 30:53
  Which is so funny because he's such a nice guy, Your dad.
• 30:56
  But he learned how to be the greatest bully of all time
• 30:58
  because he was bullied most of his life, really as a child, he
• 31:01
  was a very sick child. He talks about this online, He's
• 31:04
  very open about it. He was very sick child with
• 31:06
  asthma. He spent a lot of time in the
• 31:08
  hospital and he was bullied for years relentlessly.
• 31:12
  And so he took all of that experience.
• 31:14
  And the reason he is so memorable as a bully is because
• 31:17
  he he captured all that was done to him in this role.
• 31:21
  And that's why isn't that sad? He made a beautiful documentary
• 31:25
  about his experience being the character and being, you know, a
• 31:29
  persona for people and not really a real person.
• 31:32
  So it's cool when people get to meet him as a real person, as
• 31:35
  the wonderful. Sweetest guy ever.
• 31:38
  Man, that he is right. Is is truly, you know, for
• 31:42
  people to hold both of those two things together.
• 31:44
  The character that he was most memorable for, he's worked in
• 31:46
  the entertainment industry for my whole entire life, is pretty
• 31:49
  incredible. Well, what's incredible about
• 31:52
  that is that part of the story. But then that he's this
• 31:55
  faithful, loving father and husband and he's successful in
• 31:59
  the entertainment industry. What a model.
• 32:02
  Daniel, did you when did you find out or did you had you seen
• 32:05
  Back to the Future? I'm just curious if that was
• 32:06
  like ever? When did that enter into even
• 32:09
  your awareness? Yeah, exactly so.
• 32:11
  Watch Back to the Future in the Netherlands.
• 32:14
  Yeah, well, they did. Yeah, something because my
• 32:15
  brother-in-law is actually the biggest one of the, you know,
• 32:18
  when he found out, he was like over the moon.
• 32:20
  But for me, like growing up like, he's like.
• 32:22
  Marry her now. No, I had seen, I, I think I had
• 32:27
  seen like one of them, one of the Back to the Future movies as
• 32:29
  a kid. But it wasn't like for me, like
• 32:31
  it wasn't that big of a thing. But the the organizer who ran
• 32:35
  that event, when Emily was there, he told my parents like,
• 32:37
  hey, do you know Emily? Dad?
• 32:39
  Is this this figure that a lot of people know from?
• 32:42
  The back to the snow. Jesus right?
• 32:44
  What's the name or no? What?
• 32:45
  Buff buff. Sorry.
• 32:48
  What's? The name?
• 32:49
  What is the name? Yeah, exactly.
• 32:56
  I'm. Like why I know this?
• 33:00
  It's just your dad. It's not my dad, it was the
• 33:02
  character. It's the character, yeah, but he
• 33:04
  plays that. But.
• 33:05
  He the documentary is really beautiful.
• 33:07
  It's called Humbly super Famous and in it he shares a lot of
• 33:10
  really heart wrenching stories about when he should have been
• 33:13
  treated as a person but people only saw him for the character.
• 33:16
  I will just. Speak very meaning after the
• 33:19
  movie came. Out for the many years I'm Lee
• 33:22
  super famous in it he he really documents his journey and the
• 33:25
  most heart wrenching thing is when his mom died.
• 33:29
  He talks about this in the documentary.
• 33:31
  She had just died. I'll cry talking about it.
• 33:33
  And the nurse comes in and my dad's mom is laying there and
• 33:39
  she's passed away and she's meeting the Lord.
• 33:41
  And he starts just like saying Back to the Future quotes and
• 33:45
  just like asking about the movies.
• 33:48
  And my dad's dead mother is laying there.
• 33:51
  The nurse. And he documents it so
• 33:54
  beautifully in the documentary is like how many moments he
• 33:56
  stood there and he just wanted to be seen as a person,
• 33:59
  especially when your dead mother is laying there and people just
• 34:03
  saw him for his character. And that's something that really
• 34:06
  he's wrestled with and we've wrestled with as a family for
• 34:08
  our whole entire lives. But he's just the best.
• 34:11
  And he and Daniel are such close friends, which is a really sweet
• 34:14
  part of marriage, too. I really wanted to marry a man
• 34:17
  that gets along with my dad and his friends with my dad.
• 34:20
  And they love each other a lot, which is a really, really sweet
• 34:22
  gift. How did you ask for Emily's
• 34:24
  hand? So because.
• 34:26
  You are so far away. Yeah.
• 34:28
  So at the time, so once once we got engaged, I got into grad
• 34:31
  school and I did my final internship and thesis for a
• 34:35
  company out here in California. So I came here for about 7
• 34:38
  months and during that time, because obviously we wanted to
• 34:41
  be close to each other, we were still dating.
• 34:42
  And then Tom and I, so Emily's dad, we would always go on bike
• 34:46
  rides. So him and I, yeah, we were, you
• 34:49
  know, like best buds, you know, like we would just, yeah, spend
• 34:52
  all this time because I come from such a big family, such a
• 34:54
  tight knit family. And being over here, Emily's
• 34:56
  family is the same way. Like they're very tight knit and
• 34:58
  very loving on each other. And so, yeah, him and I just got
• 35:02
  along really in a really special relationship.
• 35:05
  Like, like, like, like, like my own father, you know, like a
• 35:08
  father figure. And so we would always go on
• 35:10
  bike rides together. We would always, him and I would
• 35:13
  in the mornings, we would sit together in the back and sit for
• 35:15
  hours. And they would have to come get
• 35:16
  us. And it was just like, yeah,
• 35:19
  like, really, really great. But yeah, we were on a bike
• 35:21
  ride. And then we we would always have
• 35:23
  this tradition to go to like a lunch spot when we do these
• 35:26
  rides every week. And then at that time he, I
• 35:29
  think he already saw it coming obviously as well because, you
• 35:31
  know, we were so close, but asked for her hand.
• 35:34
  And yeah, he just stood up and kissed me on the cheek and give
• 35:37
  me a big hug and, you know, just welcome me in so.
• 35:42
  So sweet give you a kiss in the restaurant.
• 35:45
  In the restaurant, Yeah. Oh, man.
• 35:46
  No, for sure. Like he's just, you know, like
• 35:50
  family is so important, you know, and, and for him to see
• 35:53
  like my heart for, for Emily's heart and like, yeah, just just
• 35:58
  beautiful. And I, I feel so fortunate, so,
• 36:00
  so blessed to be part, you know, but to be married to Emily, but
• 36:06
  to be connected to her whole family, you know, it's just just
• 36:09
  a beautiful family. It's really always striving to
• 36:12
  take care of each other and, and, and grow closer to God, you
• 36:15
  know, and that's really the heart of it, you know, and, and
• 36:17
  Tom's a leader of that, you know, And so it's.
• 36:19
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• 36:20
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• 37:40
  Were you surprised when he asked you, Emily?
• 37:42
  No. You saw it, you knew?
• 37:43
  Yeah. In the discernment process, I
• 37:45
  mean, he moved here to do the internship because we were
• 37:48
  really getting more serious. So it wasn't so much of a
• 37:53
  surprise. I was surprised on the day he
• 37:55
  proposed at the Getty Museum, which I love.
• 37:57
  Yeah, great. He proposed at the Getty Center,
• 37:59
  which was really lovely. So I was surprised that like on
• 38:02
  the day of. But it was something in the
• 38:04
  discernment we had been talking about a lot because both of us
• 38:06
  went in and saying we're not going to date across the world
• 38:09
  just because we feel like that. It's really a marriage minded
• 38:12
  focused discernment process. Dating was for us.
• 38:15
  Were you nervous, Daniel? I was super nervous for sure.
• 38:19
  Just like, not nervous to ask her, but like nervous.
• 38:23
  I remember in that moment of like, I, I knew that she would
• 38:27
  say yes, you know what I mean? Of course.
• 38:28
  But just, it's such a thing of like, I want to spend the rest
• 38:31
  of my life with you, you know what I mean?
• 38:33
  And like, it's, it's a huge moment, you know, and, and to,
• 38:36
  to also, you go through engagement from there on, right?
• 38:38
  You're not married just yet. But yeah, it was a, it was a
• 38:42
  beautiful moment and it's kick started.
• 38:45
  Obviously the engagement, which was a difficult engagement that
• 38:47
  we had after that, just because I, the internship ended, I went
• 38:50
  back home again. Then we had to go through the
• 38:52
  whole K1 visa process for me to come back.
• 38:55
  And so with planning the wedding and being again, the 6000 miles
• 38:58
  apart again was difficult. But the underlying route of all
• 39:03
  of it was just this steady stream of like peace.
• 39:06
  And I had felt in my heart just like whatever it is, like the
• 39:09
  Lord's taking care of us and all that we need to do is just keep
• 39:12
  returning to him and he'll, he'll keep leading us.
• 39:15
  And as long as we can do that, it'll, it'll be great.
• 39:18
  Oh, yeah, And the visa process was just trust in the Lord.
• 39:20
  Like there's so many door needs to open.
• 39:23
  There were so many doors that needed to open, so many things
• 39:26
  that had to fall in line in order for us to get the visa and
• 39:29
  move forward. And we just kept praying.
• 39:31
  Lord Jesus, show us the way. We trust you.
• 39:33
  If you want to keep opening these doors, we'll keep walking
• 39:36
  through them. And he did, and he came on his
• 39:40
  visa. It was great.
• 39:41
  The process though, man, it was something.
• 39:43
  They made you work for that totally on multiple levels.
• 39:47
  I, I just take so much courage to, I mean, for a 22 year old
• 39:51
  young man raised in a country that was not very cultivating of
• 39:55
  the faith, right? To pursue a woman 6000 miles
• 40:00
  away at 22 years old. And it wasn't like you were some
• 40:03
  like, you know, I just like the pursuit like you just like we're
• 40:05
  the type. They're just like, I like to go
• 40:07
  do crazy challenging, like romantic pursuits.
• 40:09
  No, you were just like a good dude trying to live your faith.
• 40:12
  Emily shows up. So you take that courageous leap
• 40:15
  of even pursuing her, then you move out here.
• 40:18
  To do this internship also takes courage.
• 40:20
  Then you ask her to marry you. Now you're going to be a now
• 40:23
  you're going to be a provider in Southern California.
• 40:28
  I mean, I think a lot of guys today, they're really wrestling
• 40:31
  with the idea of can I be a provider?
• 40:33
  Can I be a husband and a father? It's so hard.
• 40:36
  There's a lot of there's. The deck feels very stacked
• 40:38
  against a lot of men today. Yeah, and I think if I look back
• 40:42
  at my own self before, you know, those years of like my, my teens
• 40:46
  going into like my early 20s, like the biggest challenge I
• 40:50
  would see for myself is like having a lack of commitments and
• 40:53
  like a complacency. You know what I mean?
• 40:55
  Like I never wanted to, not never, but I had such a
• 40:57
  difficult time committing to anything because I didn't want
• 40:59
  to if, if I, if I wasn't in control, like it was too risky
• 41:04
  because then I might get rejected or I might get turned
• 41:06
  down or I'm it might not work out the way I wanted to work
• 41:08
  out. And so I'd rather not even go
• 41:10
  down the route, like really without my faith, that's how I
• 41:14
  live. Like, if it didn't work out or
• 41:15
  doesn't, I would just cut it off and move on, you know?
• 41:18
  And so the faith to me has really been this awakening of
• 41:22
  like we as men need to, you know, I'm talking to myself now,
• 41:26
  like we need to step up and we need to, you know, go out and be
• 41:30
  vulnerable, but like take risk and do pursuit and commit, you
• 41:35
  know, and, and really see it through to see what the Lord
• 41:38
  wants to do for us. And it's not always going to be
• 41:40
  easy. A lot of times it's not easy at
• 41:41
  all, you know, but they're the reward if you want to call it
• 41:44
  that. But even the journey itself,
• 41:46
  like just drew me so much closer to our Lord.
• 41:50
  Like with Emma and I dating obviously drew us very close to
• 41:52
  each other. But even like the journey of
• 41:54
  like the Lord inviting me into this and leaving my family
• 41:57
  behind and not knowing what, what you know these next two
• 42:01
  years or what the rest of my life would look like.
• 42:04
  But just being on that journey with him and taking that risk, I
• 42:08
  feel he, he, he, he would never let me down.
• 42:11
  Like I would be the one that would let him down, but he would
• 42:13
  never let me down, you know, And so it's for me was always a
• 42:16
  process of like, OK, I, I, it's, if this doesn't work out, it's
• 42:20
  because of me, you know, it's not because of him.
• 42:23
  And that doesn't mean like, you know, like I, I can control
• 42:25
  every outcome. Obviously I'm in control, but
• 42:28
  just like having this pure trust in my own heart, trust to
• 42:32
  commit, trust to pursue and really to like to step out of
• 42:35
  the boat, you know, and take the risk, take the plunge and seeing
• 42:38
  what happens. And yeah, that's something I, I
• 42:42
  think I should have done a lot earlier than just to wait until
• 42:45
  my early 20s to, to start having that kind of a mindset of, you
• 42:50
  know, like with the Lord, anything is possible.
• 42:52
  You know, it's not that there you always get the result that
• 42:55
  you want because that's not how it works.
• 42:56
  But the journey is always good and yeah, just just stepping up
• 43:01
  a lot more and pursuing. And so if it wasn't for the
• 43:03
  Lord, I would have never wanted to pursue her in the 1st place.
• 43:06
  You know what I mean? Because I would have thought
• 43:07
  this would never work out. Why would this girl live in
• 43:09
  California? Like how there's just too many
• 43:12
  things, you know, there's, there's so many tiny bits that
• 43:14
  all had to line up perfectly for this to work.
• 43:17
  And it, you know, this is a story that I could have never
• 43:19
  have written my own, you know, ourselves, there's so many
• 43:22
  pieces to this that the Lord's hand is so clearly in this
• 43:26
  because I couldn't have done this on my own, and we could
• 43:29
  have done this on her own. So just always trying to keep
• 43:32
  the Lord at the center of our relationships and of our
• 43:34
  relationship. And that's really what brought
• 43:36
  us here. The risk taking, yeah.
• 43:40
  Getting out of the boat. It's easy to be in the boat.
• 43:43
  A lot like you pointed to a lot of the men you know, afraid to
• 43:46
  take risks. Getting out of the boat.
• 43:47
  When the Lord calls you, he'll never let you down.
• 43:51
  What was the thing that most attracted you to Daniel?
• 43:54
  He is the opposite of lazy. He's a very hard worker.
• 43:58
  When he sets his mind to something, he really commits.
• 44:02
  There's a great grit there. There's a great perseverance
• 44:04
  there in his faith, in his studies.
• 44:07
  When we met, he was studying, he was getting his master's,
• 44:09
  working really, really hard, taking a long train rides, like
• 44:13
  going through all these papers. And I thought, that's a man who
• 44:16
  commits to something and follows through.
• 44:20
  It's one thing to commit to something.
• 44:21
  You can commit to a marriage and then decide you're not going to
• 44:23
  follow through. When you when he commits to
• 44:25
  something, there's a big time follow through there.
• 44:28
  And I love that about him, always did.
• 44:30
  He showed it to me so early on and it continues to this day.
• 44:34
  Did you have any idea when you first were getting married
• 44:37
  because you came out here and you took a job in marketing
• 44:40
  tech, Tech marketing or? Yeah, look at a business
• 44:43
  strategy and. So you had a I joke about our
• 44:47
  husbands anyway, and you had a normal job like my husband has a
• 44:50
  more normal job. We were doing all these like, I
• 44:53
  don't know how to describe what we do, but it's not your
• 44:55
  typical, it's not your typical job.
• 44:56
  So did you when you were getting married and starting your life
• 45:00
  here. And it's hard to live in
• 45:02
  Southern California, you know, where we're extremely blessed to
• 45:05
  live here. But it's hard economically,
• 45:07
  obviously financially. It's also challenging just
• 45:09
  culturally to like, make sure you're being intentional about
• 45:11
  who you surround yourself and your kids with.
• 45:14
  You can still make a beautiful life here, of course.
• 45:16
  But did you have a sense when you got married that you would
• 45:19
  end up starting not just helping Emily with her ministry, but
• 45:22
  that you would end up starting ministries and businesses
• 45:25
  together and you would leave your otherwise normal job?
• 45:29
  Yeah, Once we got married, I don't think that was something
• 45:31
  that we had like mapped out or like, oh, this is the thing that
• 45:34
  we're going to do. Like we had started off, I
• 45:36
  started working at this great job in, you know, Laguna Beach,
• 45:40
  CA. It was a really a dream.
• 45:42
  You know, it was a great job that provided great for us as
• 45:45
  well that allowed Emily to really have the freedom to, to
• 45:49
  do what God was putting on her heart to do and to start her
• 45:52
  ministry and to start sharing our line and to, to do all the
• 45:55
  retreats and events and conferences and all the stuff
• 45:57
  that she would do. Write my books and throughout
• 45:59
  the years. Yeah, write all of your books.
• 46:00
  Yeah. And just not be constrained of
• 46:03
  like, oh, I have to. I, I know just she was just
• 46:06
  free. I feel like to to just follow
• 46:08
  what the Lord was putting on her heart.
• 46:09
  And me being able to provide and take care of us was a huge
• 46:14
  blessing, you know, And so we, we never thought like, oh, now
• 46:17
  let's see what we can do together or what these things
• 46:19
  are. Has it always been a national, a
• 46:22
  natural progression of what we feel the Lord was calling us to
• 46:25
  as a family, as a couple? Yeah.
• 46:28
  And so that story began with, you know, obviously Emily
• 46:31
  starting her YouTube channel and doing, you know, all of her
• 46:34
  ministry things. And as that progressed over
• 46:36
  time, I felt the Lord asking me specifically, you know, am I
• 46:42
  just doing it? You know, just the job that I
• 46:44
  work was great and I and I love the people and I love the we
• 46:47
  work for big enterprise companies and it was great.
• 46:50
  But in the end of the day, it was always just about, you know,
• 46:54
  you work just to make money, you know what I mean?
• 46:55
  And that was always the end goal.
• 46:56
  Like how can we make our clients more money?
• 46:59
  How can we, you know, obviously provide the company that we work
• 47:02
  for more money? And that was always the end
• 47:03
  goal. But I felt a lot like, what if
• 47:05
  we can do something that isn't just about the money, but really
• 47:08
  can help build up the church in a way as well.
• 47:10
  And that's, you know, where I went through like a six month
• 47:14
  discernment process of like, Lord, what are you inviting us
• 47:17
  into like, and what would this look like living in Southern
• 47:19
  California? But really felt that call like
• 47:21
  through our prayer life, like through our individual prayer
• 47:24
  lives and our prayer lives together of the Lord inviting us
• 47:27
  into that. And so once we were at the point
• 47:30
  of like, OK, we're going to go and take this plunge.
• 47:32
  We had these ideas. I remember like we had this, OK,
• 47:35
  we're going to make YouTube videos.
• 47:36
  We're do these things together. And the Lord just took a
• 47:39
  completely different path of what he had in store.
• 47:41
  And that has worked out way better than something that we,
• 47:44
  we could, you know, try to come up with ourselves so.
• 47:50
  I love hearing about this. I think it's also really
• 47:53
  fascinating for people who might feel a sense of call or question
• 47:56
  mark about how they're either whether they're married or not,
• 47:59
  just about their work, right, Because how we work is, I
• 48:02
  believe God has a specific purpose for our work, our
• 48:06
  talents. There is calling.
• 48:07
  And then, you know, there's a vocational element, a calling
• 48:09
  element about work. So you, you quit your job, you,
• 48:13
  you discern for six months. Emily's doing her beautiful
• 48:16
  speaking, her ministry, her writing, saying she's traveling,
• 48:19
  You know, I know with some limitations.
• 48:21
  Obviously your kids, you're doing a certain level of travel.
• 48:25
  How many were you? How you were doing like once a
• 48:27
  month? Yes, back then, so we had our
• 48:30
  first son three years into our marriage.
• 48:33
  So this discernment process was happening like in 2020 during
• 48:36
  the pandemic. We had two babies at the time.
• 48:39
  And during the pandemic, I wasn't traveling at all.
• 48:41
  And then after that I was like once a month, maybe twice a
• 48:43
  month. So when you're doing 6 months of
• 48:45
  discernment, what is that process?
• 48:46
  If you can share, you're just learning quitting your job,
• 48:49
  which is providing for your family.
• 48:51
  I mean, obviously Emily is making some income with her
• 48:53
  work, but you're you've got the kind of stable job here and
• 48:57
  you're thinking about just quitting and making YouTube
• 49:00
  videos. I mean, now we're going to get,
• 49:02
  we're going to talk about the companies you're running now,
• 49:05
  especially the latest one, which I'm extremely excited about.
• 49:07
  But yeah, how does 1 discern that?
• 49:11
  How did you discern that? Yeah, so I had a spiritual
• 49:14
  director that I would talk to, you know, and so again through
• 49:17
  my own individual paralyzed us pairing together, but then also
• 49:20
  talking to other individuals that are in the business that
• 49:22
  were even people that were not of the faith or just business
• 49:25
  minded individuals, but also like a spiritual director to
• 49:27
  really talk through that. Like this is what I'm thinking
• 49:30
  about doing. This is where I feel God is
• 49:31
  calling me into, but also to hold up like a reality check,
• 49:34
  you know what I mean? Like, OK, like you might have
• 49:36
  these ideas of like, yeah, let's just make videos and do and
• 49:39
  it'll all work out. But like, realistically, how is
• 49:41
  this going going to work? And how are we going to provide
• 49:44
  for our kids and do all these different things?
• 49:47
  And so the discernment process was one.
• 49:50
  Yeah, really just a very intentional prayer and, and, and
• 49:53
  praying through it rigorously. Like, not just like having it be
• 49:56
  an afterthought, but having it be like the, a, a priority focus
• 50:01
  of my prayer to meditate on that and to really pray through Lord,
• 50:04
  if this is what you're calling me into, make it known to me
• 50:07
  because you know, I, I don't want to make a mistake for this,
• 50:10
  you know what I mean? But I also want to be faithful
• 50:12
  for what you're calling me into. And I feel that you're calling
• 50:14
  me into this, even though in the beginning part of me wasn't
• 50:17
  like, Oh yeah, let's go and do this.
• 50:18
  It's like this job is great base, base great.
• 50:21
  We're in Laguna Beach, CA Like it's like it's a dream really,
• 50:24
  you know, but to be faithful to what I felt he was putting on my
• 50:30
  heart. But it was again, always the
• 50:33
  same as in our relationship. There was this underlying stream
• 50:36
  of like, I see, I see like a river, you know, of this like
• 50:38
  peace, you know, I mean, like I would feel peace in it.
• 50:40
  And so I felt I my prayer is always like, even when we're
• 50:44
  dating, Lord, if it's not of you, like take it away and make
• 50:46
  it known and, and like close the door and take it away from me
• 50:49
  and take this desire or take this feeling away from here.
• 50:52
  Take this what I feel that you've put on my heart, make it
• 50:54
  known. And so praying intentionally
• 50:56
  with those types of prayers for me personally always gave me
• 51:00
  peace because I know the Lord won't lead me astray and so long
• 51:03
  as I stay close to him and as long as my prayer life, prayer
• 51:06
  life is one that's active and really in an honest pursuit of
• 51:10
  him. I I can't make the wrong
• 51:12
  decision. You know, I can't, you know,
• 51:15
  really be led by peace in my heart of this decision.
• 51:19
  And it wasn't giving me anxiety because from the outside
• 51:21
  perspective, I would talk to people or my friends are like,
• 51:24
  dude, are you serious? Like, why?
• 51:26
  Like, why are you quitting your job?
• 51:27
  Yeah, Like, why would you do that?
• 51:28
  There's so many unknowns. I mean most wives are like
• 51:30
  please don't quit your job. But you're not no, but I think
• 51:34
  we also. Create a free spirit, Yeah.
• 51:36
  But exactly, but Emily is very much and her family, like, you
• 51:38
  know, they're very much just like, you know, go getting in
• 51:41
  the sense of like you can be, you know, like.
• 51:44
  Yeah, most of my family members are self-employed.
• 51:46
  Whatever the passion they had, they figured out a way to have
• 51:49
  it pay the bills and and do that, which, you know, was this
• 51:52
  kind of spirit that I was raised in.
• 51:54
  Yeah. And then looking at the
• 51:55
  finances, you could talk a little bit about that where you
• 51:58
  know, we've had a finance meeting on the 1st of every
• 52:00
  month since the first month we got married.
• 52:03
  I I do think being surrounded by entrepreneurs helps you be more
• 52:07
  comfortable with being an entrepreneur.
• 52:09
  If you don't have entrepreneurs around you, it's like jumping
• 52:12
  off a Cliff. Why would you ever do that?
• 52:14
  It's terrifying, but you see other people making it work and
• 52:16
  you're like, I think I can figure this out.
• 52:18
  But anyways, you're saying you're you do financial means?
• 52:20
  You have to look at the finances you.
• 52:22
  Do your budget. The job we do, the budget, we
• 52:25
  have a family budget meeting just the two of us, the 1st of
• 52:27
  every month. He keeps us on track.
• 52:29
  We know just everything in finances.
• 52:31
  It's an important part of marriage.
• 52:33
  It's an important part of raising a family.
• 52:34
  And so looking at that of, OK, what are the bills?
• 52:37
  What are the bills that we need to pay?
• 52:39
  How could we pay this if you quit your job?
• 52:41
  Looking at all those realistic, logistical things is really
• 52:45
  scary. But it's also that, okay, the
• 52:47
  Lord says, He will provide enough for us to live.
• 52:49
  So let's take the leap. Yeah.
• 52:51
  And I was very fortunate as well with that job that I had, the
• 52:56
  boss that I worked for, we were also very close.
• 52:58
  And he was, he said, hey, like obviously I, I had discussed
• 53:03
  this with him and he said, you know, I'm fine with you.
• 53:06
  You know, even if you make the decision and six months in and
• 53:08
  then if you want to come back, I'll take you right back.
• 53:10
  You know, So it was, it was beautiful.
• 53:13
  So that was a good security. Yeah, so that was also that gave
• 53:16
  me also like extra comfort again.
• 53:18
  But my prayer throughout that six month was really that story
• 53:22
  of the Lord asking me to step out of the boat and him holding
• 53:25
  out his hand and just say walk towards me.
• 53:28
  But the water is rough and the boat is rocking, you know, and
• 53:31
  you're like, all right, really, you know, and, and, and then
• 53:34
  it's then it's that time again, like, do you commit, you know,
• 53:37
  to what I feel that he's really inviting me into.
• 53:40
  And we all have our own free will, right?
• 53:42
  Like, nobody's forcing me to do this.
• 53:44
  But that's the beauty of it, of like being called into that.
• 53:47
  And then, yeah, following through and and and seeing what
• 53:51
  happens and where he wants to take it.
• 53:53
  The Lord saying to both of us, will you follow me until the
• 53:56
  end? Whatever I ask of you, will you
• 53:59
  follow me? Will you say yes?
• 54:01
  And we get to respond. We can say no or we can say yes,
• 54:04
  but the yes has borne a lot more fruit than have we said no.
• 54:07
  Did the vision for Sacred Spark compel you to quit?
• 54:11
  Or what was more, that you felt like the Lord was guiding you to
• 54:14
  do work with Emily? You weren't 100% sure what it
• 54:17
  would look like in three years, In five years.
• 54:19
  You knew some, you know, immediate ideas, but you were
• 54:21
  just kind of taking this leap of faith.
• 54:23
  Yeah, so at that time, Sacred Spark wasn't even a thing yet.
• 54:26
  And so the radar, exactly. And so we started 7/14 Media,
• 54:31
  which is our own media company. And so the biggest crux of that,
• 54:34
  those three things, like we have some of the self books that
• 54:37
  Emily self published that we distribute all throughout the US
• 54:40
  and then there's some formational digital resources.
• 54:43
  But then the biggest thing is this kids TV show that we
• 54:45
  created. And that's been a huge, you
• 54:47
  know, blessing to a lot of people, but to us as well.
• 54:51
  Yeah. Creating this that that was
• 54:52
  really the first thing that we under took together of like
• 54:55
  completely from scratch. Markham Yeah.
• 54:56
  This kids show where we thought we we saw this need for our own
• 55:00
  children to make, you know, great content that's uplifting
• 55:04
  and rooted in faith. Like with what the world was
• 55:06
  offering, especially even to kids and so forth.
• 55:08
  We wanted to put an alternative in place.
• 55:10
  And we thought again, like, why not just do it?
• 55:14
  You know what I mean? Why, why can't we just create
• 55:16
  this? And so we did.
• 55:17
  And Mark from Season 4 just released a couple months ago,
• 55:22
  and it's been greatly received and streams on various platforms
• 55:25
  and so forth. And that's been, yeah, just a
• 55:26
  huge project that we undertook, Yeah, and a huge blessing as
• 55:30
  well. It's an inspired version of
• 55:32
  Blippy. Right.
• 55:33
  Yeah, A. Catholic version and it's and
• 55:35
  it's more low stem. I feel like Blippy is so like
• 55:39
  like I I don't let my I would not, you know, but Marko, my
• 55:42
  kids have watched it. They're like, this is like fun.
• 55:44
  There's this priest in this. You're like doing these fun like
• 55:46
  faith-based explorations. So he brings them through
• 55:49
  Advent. He just teaches them about the
• 55:50
  faith in a very yeah, low stem, just relaxed way.
• 55:54
  Yeah, but fun and engaging and entertaining, you know, but
• 55:56
  something for kids where they can just get reintroduce them to
• 56:00
  the riches and the depth of the Catholic faith by going on these
• 56:03
  learning adventures from, you know, from a airplane pilot to a
• 56:06
  police officer to the fire station to like, you know, all
• 56:09
  over, which has been really fun to to create and to creatively
• 56:14
  like think through that how that works.
• 56:15
  And then obviously the the distribution of that show from
• 56:18
  the business. I don't care.
• 56:18
  How can you then? We've learned a lot over the
• 56:21
  years, yeah. So we made Markham as the first
• 56:23
  project, and then I made my first matchmaking post, and
• 56:26
  that's where Sacred Spark. So match the matchmaking post
• 56:28
  was after Markham. Yes.
• 56:29
  So what? So, so yeah, the matchmaking
• 56:32
  posts which are have their own legendary status now on
• 56:34
  Instagram. And and it is it is crazy that
• 56:38
  because I remember when I, I think I saw your first one or I
• 56:40
  don't remember which one, it was one of the early ones and I was
• 56:42
  like, clearly the Lord. I know with a lot of your social
• 56:45
  media posting, it is inspired. You're not just hitting the algo
• 56:50
  to make sure you show up in people's feeds everyday.
• 56:52
  You know, you're really discerning and you are willing
• 56:55
  to sacrifice engagement, follower count and likes for
• 56:58
  whatever God wants you to do. Like you're going to just show
• 57:00
  up and do what you think God asks you to do.
• 57:03
  And so tell me how tell us how, how God asked you.
• 57:07
  You had a sense of God calling you to do the matchmaking post
• 57:10
  and then how this eventually leads to, of course, Sacred
• 57:12
  Spark. Thank you for saying that.
• 57:14
  It is true. Social media has.
• 57:16
  It's never been, oh, look at me. Look at what I'm doing.
• 57:19
  It's always been Jesus, what do you want me to do with this?
• 57:21
  What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do?
• 57:23
  And there came a day where he said really clearly in prayer, I
• 57:27
  want you to make a matchmaking post.
• 57:28
  And I had never seen someone do this before.
• 57:30
  No. One had.
• 57:31
  Now it's a thing I had. You were the first.
• 57:34
  I had never seen it before and there's so many moments where
• 57:37
  Jesus has called me to something and I just say to him, Jesus
• 57:40
  this feels so silly. It feels so silly.
• 57:42
  Not why but this feels so silly. But yes I really love Jesus and
• 57:48
  I want to say yes and everything even the silliest thing like
• 57:51
  match making post. So I remember where I was
• 57:53
  sitting where I posted my first one.
• 57:55
  It said this is match making post.
• 57:57
  In the caption, it said, if you're single and you want to
• 57:59
  comment about yourself, go for it.
• 58:01
  Say what you're looking for. And this had come out of a very
• 58:04
  many, many years of watching singles struggle to connect with
• 58:07
  each other. I have so many amazing single
• 58:09
  friends struggling to find a great person.
• 58:11
  And I thought, what if I could use this quote UN quote
• 58:14
  platform? I hate calling it that, but what
• 58:16
  if I could use this platform to serve singles and connect people
• 58:20
  and create great relationships? So it exploded.
• 58:24
  In the first two days there were 6500 entries on this one post.
• 58:30
  All my so many friends were calling me Thousand 6006 1/2.
• 58:33
  Weighing in with who they were to try to maybe meet somebody
• 58:37
  amazing. Eight people would comment.
• 58:40
  I thought people are going to write this is ridiculous.
• 58:43
  Or beard. I don't want to put my.
• 58:44
  Information out. Yes, and people were calling me.
• 58:47
  I had a news outlet reach out to me friends just saying this is
• 58:52
  the like the thing heard around the world.
• 58:54
  I heard what you did and I thought I I just felt so silly.
• 58:58
  Fast forward it was. It's just been an amazing
• 59:00
  journey of making these posts right?
• 59:03
  How many have you done now of the matchmaking posts?
• 59:05
  I don't. Know not yeah I mean it's not
• 59:07
  even like you're doing them every day but you donate and
• 59:10
  there's been how. Many listen to the movements of
• 59:12
  the Spirit and when the Lord says make another one in prayer,
• 59:15
  make another one in prayer. Father David Michael Moses, who
• 59:18
  many people know the best. He did a collapse.
• 59:21
  He. Reached out to me and he said
• 59:22
  hey and I didn't know him at the time and now we're close
• 59:24
  friends. He said, hey, I've heard there's
• 59:27
  grapefruit that's being borne out of these.
• 59:28
  Like, what if we did a collaboration last weekend?
• 59:31
  My friend Jerome got married to a girl he met on Father David
• 59:35
  Michael Moses. And my collaboration, Wait, that
• 59:38
  was a recent one, right? No this.
• 59:40
  Was in. We don't.
• 59:41
  Too. OK.
• 59:41
  So we did one in 2024. That way to keep track.
• 59:45
  Of them, no, the the the. My first one, I think, was in
• 59:47
  2023 to Father Michael. Father Michael, Father David
• 59:51
  Michael was 2024. OK.
• 59:53
  And so he and I have collaborated twice.
• 59:55
  Last weekend alone, there were three weddings.
• 59:58
  From my matchmaking posts, there are 20.
• 1:00:01
  I can't I it's hard to keep track.
• 1:00:03
  Now. There are 20 marriages that have
• 1:00:06
  come in. Your Instagram matchmaking post.
• 1:00:08
  I'll cry talking about it. I'm going to cry.
• 1:00:11
  Because there's so many moments and I just want your listeners
• 1:00:14
  to hear that. Like there's so many moments
• 1:00:17
  where the Lord is going to ask you to do something and it might
• 1:00:19
  feel so ridiculous and it might feel in your heart, well, Jesus,
• 1:00:24
  why? You know, maybe it's one of you
• 1:00:26
  out there and the Lord says volunteer for this or bring a
• 1:00:29
  meal to this family or pay for the person behind use groceries.
• 1:00:32
  And it might feel like this is so silly.
• 1:00:34
  And to see the fruit that Jesus had in mind for a simple
• 1:00:38
  Instagram post, it's just unbelievable.
• 1:00:40
  These couples, they say we got engaged, we met on your post.
• 1:00:43
  I get messages all the time. I have a Manila envelope full of
• 1:00:47
  save the dates that people send me when they met on my matching
• 1:00:50
  you post that I hope to show my great grandchildren if I live
• 1:00:51
  that long. And it's just this Manila
• 1:00:54
  envelope full of this is what happens when you say yes to
• 1:00:58
  Jesus in whatever way he asks you to.
• 1:01:01
  So last weekend there were three marriages.
• 1:01:03
  There's a couple expecting a baby, all because I was like,
• 1:01:06
  well, let's see what happens. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:09
  Praise God so. Supportive.
• 1:01:12
  Laura asked me to do this. He's like, all right, yeah.
• 1:01:14
  Let's see what happens. You're like.
• 1:01:15
  I'm using our wedding picture again.
• 1:01:19
  Gorgeous, gorgeous wedding pictures to.
• 1:01:21
  Alyssa Voss, she was wonderful on our wedding day 10 years ago.
• 1:01:25
  That's where Sacred Spark began, because the trouble of singles
• 1:01:29
  to connect. And then Daniel can speak to
• 1:01:31
  that. But we saw there's a problem
• 1:01:33
  here of, you know, having places for singles to connect.
• 1:01:37
  And one of the most beautiful things was people writing about
• 1:01:39
  their brother or their sister or their friend.
• 1:01:42
  Last weekend, a girl, a girl got married from a matchmaking post
• 1:01:45
  and her friend had said, I want to comment about you.
• 1:01:48
  And she said, OK, I'm not going to comment about myself, but
• 1:01:50
  feel free to talk about me and say that I have this friend and
• 1:01:53
  she found this girl's future husband and they got married
• 1:01:55
  last weekend. Did she?
• 1:01:56
  So I I just got asked, did she? She posted a I mean because you
• 1:02:00
  can't post. A picture just comment for me
• 1:02:02
  she. Said she's like yeah, 5-6 and
• 1:02:05
  blonde and really sweet. I mean what is?
• 1:02:07
  What do people talk about their passion?
• 1:02:08
  Yeah, whatever. I don't know the gal's name.
• 1:02:10
  There's some couples that love me sharing their story and
• 1:02:13
  they're willing to go like me to post about them.
• 1:02:14
  And there's someone that want to remain private.
• 1:02:16
  And I honor all of that. This couple was private.
• 1:02:19
  But the friend had just said, my friend Vivian, she's 30, She
• 1:02:23
  lives in Wisconsin. We'll make up a story.
• 1:02:25
  And she's looking for a great guy.
• 1:02:26
  You know, she's open to relocating anywhere in the US
• 1:02:29
  And she just wants to see what could happen.
• 1:02:31
  And then this man who she's now married to messages a friend to
• 1:02:33
  say Vivian sounds awesome. Can you connect the two of us?
• 1:02:36
  And the amount of marriages that come have come from that.
• 1:02:39
  From the matchmaking posts, Wow is probably at least half of
• 1:02:43
  people setting two people up because they had the gust.
• 1:02:46
  Of the matchmaking compilation so.
• 1:02:48
  I'm going to find help find you a great person.
• 1:02:50
  Which is something so unique about sacred spark, which I
• 1:02:53
  could not love more. I like it like makes me just
• 1:02:56
  smile thinking about it. I I will say we're going to do a
• 1:02:58
  demo, right, guys? We're going to do and we were
• 1:03:00
  doing it today and I was I'm on my matchmaker profile for an
• 1:03:03
  unnamed lovely lady. And anyways, I was, it's just so
• 1:03:08
  fun to be on the dating app for as a matchmaker trying to find,
• 1:03:12
  you know, couples together. Yes, it's really the tradition
• 1:03:17
  of setting two people up brought into the digital age because so
• 1:03:20
  often it was we're a couple and we know this great single gal
• 1:03:23
  and that couple knows this great guy.
• 1:03:24
  So let's set the two of them up together.
• 1:03:26
  Bringing that matchmaker feature into the digital age is just a
• 1:03:29
  way we can bring that tradition into this digital era.
• 1:03:33
  Yeah, like, really blending technology and tradition
• 1:03:35
  together, you know, And So what we see now, like with the app
• 1:03:39
  and with the matchmaking feature, what it will allow you
• 1:03:41
  to do, right, is that you, as a, you know, a married person can
• 1:03:45
  help out your single friend. Because we also know that some
• 1:03:47
  people are just tired of dating apps.
• 1:03:48
  They don't want to be on dating apps.
• 1:03:50
  And So what you can do even is as a matchmaker, you can sign up
• 1:03:53
  first, create a matchmaker account, invite a single to join
• 1:03:56
  the platform, and then you as the matchmaker just take the
• 1:03:59
  whole thing from there. And so the single can just see
• 1:04:01
  what you as the matchmaker or initiating the likes that you're
• 1:04:05
  initiating on their behalf. And they just receive these
• 1:04:07
  curated hand picked likes by the people that know them and love
• 1:04:09
  them best and then end up seeing those, you know, ideally turn
• 1:04:13
  into matches if they're obviously reciprocated from the
• 1:04:15
  other side. And they don't have to do
• 1:04:17
  anything. They just have somebody else to
• 1:04:18
  community relations to support them and help them on that
• 1:04:21
  journey. Yeah.
• 1:04:23
  And connect them together. And you as matchmakers can
• 1:04:25
  obviously you as a matchmaker can talk to another singles
• 1:04:28
  matchmaker as well. So the matchmakers together can
• 1:04:31
  communicate and say, hey, this is my friend and this is what
• 1:04:33
  they're looking for. And this is what you're saying.
• 1:04:35
  Do you think that the singlet you're matchmaking for would be
• 1:04:38
  a good fit? And then the matchmakers can
• 1:04:39
  both and those or put those two individuals together and they
• 1:04:43
  can go from there. Yeah, it's just so much more of
• 1:04:45
  an intentional space. The matchmaking posts were
• 1:04:47
  wonderful for what they were, but there were so many issues.
• 1:04:50
  People couldn't message each other if they weren't following
• 1:04:52
  each other. There were so many, you know,
• 1:04:54
  it's it's been amazing for what it's been.
• 1:04:56
  But to create a more intentional space for those matchmakers if
• 1:04:59
  people choose, you don't have to have a matchmaker if you don't
• 1:05:01
  want to, but that more intentional space where you know
• 1:05:05
  that if you can connect, you can talk with people and things like
• 1:05:08
  that. It's been a joy to hear people's
• 1:05:11
  match figure stories already. Secrets Park is brand new and
• 1:05:13
  just to hear. Three weeks from Yeah, for three
• 1:05:15
  weeks in from the. Launch and it's match for a
• 1:05:17
  friend, Yeah, And it's been yeah.
• 1:05:19
  I've got to brag on you guys for a minute.
• 1:05:21
  You have 10,000 users already in three weeks, which is insane.
• 1:05:26
  Yeah, that's insane. And I think by it's going to
• 1:05:29
  grow by leaps and bounds because this is such a it's, well,
• 1:05:32
  there's also the human way that you do it because there are
• 1:05:34
  other dating apps out there, of course.
• 1:05:36
  Many. But you've been extremely
• 1:05:38
  intentional about how you design Sacred Spark, not just with the
• 1:05:40
  matchmaker component, but with how you're designing the
• 1:05:43
  profiles and the interaction. Can you speak to that?
• 1:05:45
  Yeah. So what what we saw with the
• 1:05:48
  obviously the research that we did, all the ministry that Emily
• 1:05:50
  has done, but also the focus groups that we did with singles,
• 1:05:53
  the interviews, all these different things, is that the
• 1:05:55
  secular dating apps, first and foremost, faith is most often
• 1:05:59
  the afterthought, right? It's not the priority.
• 1:06:00
  So just starting with that and having faith be the priority and
• 1:06:03
  the starting point. But then also like typically
• 1:06:07
  it's all I'm dating is very superficial because you're just,
• 1:06:10
  you know, scanning through things and judging people on a
• 1:06:12
  picture and making a decision if this is potentially a good fit
• 1:06:15
  for me, yes or no. And so we wanted to put
• 1:06:17
  intentional things inside of the app that more so focuses on the
• 1:06:21
  entire person. And so instead of seeing
• 1:06:24
  everybody's profile pictures, all that runs for the
• 1:06:26
  introductionary videos, we asked them to record an audio intro as
• 1:06:31
  part of the onboarding process. And then we encourage them as
• 1:06:33
  well to record an introductionary video that's
• 1:06:36
  recorded from within the app itself.
• 1:06:39
  So that also helps with potential, you know, people like
• 1:06:44
  scammers or whatever it might be.
• 1:06:45
  That is all recorded exactly inside of the app itself to AIAI
• 1:06:49
  that exactly, yeah. From that component, but having
• 1:06:51
  it be, you know, a place for people to more slow down and be
• 1:06:54
  intentional as they're going through this.
• 1:06:56
  And so then once you initiate a match and the and the match gets
• 1:06:59
  reciprocated and you both match, then you see the rest of their
• 1:07:02
  profile pictures and so forth as well.
• 1:07:04
  And so we want to combine both the like the physical
• 1:07:06
  attraction, which is extremely important, and obviously the
• 1:07:10
  like the inner being and the character of a person and have
• 1:07:12
  those beyond equal quote, UN quote playing field, so to
• 1:07:15
  speak, instead of just just focusing on the outer, which
• 1:07:18
  again, the outer is extremely important, but we want to be
• 1:07:20
  more balanced and looking at, you know, the, the, the
• 1:07:23
  individual as a whole. Totally, because it's not the
• 1:07:25
  outer of a person that makes a marriage last.
• 1:07:28
  It's so much of what's in here. So yeah, I get to matchmaker for
• 1:07:31
  a friend and these sweet guys. What I've encouraged people to
• 1:07:34
  do is make a video. There's one guy in his wood
• 1:07:36
  workshop and he's like, I'm well, I'm in.
• 1:07:39
  I don't think his name was well, but I'm well, I'm in my wood
• 1:07:41
  workshop and these are all the things that I love to do.
• 1:07:43
  So just bringing that humanity, everyone is the image and
• 1:07:47
  likeness of God. So how can we in one small way
• 1:07:50
  make that come to life in a dating app?
• 1:07:53
  The audio introductions are amazing.
• 1:07:54
  Some people are just showing their personality through jokes.
• 1:07:57
  I said whatever movie line, singing a guy singing a song in
• 1:08:01
  his video, and it's just sweet. You can highlight your
• 1:08:04
  personality in any ways and the right person for you is the girl
• 1:08:07
  who's going to be like, look at this guy in his wood workshop.
• 1:08:09
  He seems so sweet. And then you could hit it off.
• 1:08:12
  I love the idea of using audio because it's not as and I know
• 1:08:16
  you also welcome video, but you allow the audio because it's
• 1:08:19
  maybe less scary for people who are feel camera shy.
• 1:08:22
  And I do think the someone's voice has such a, it can be so
• 1:08:27
  compelling and can be so attractive or also maybe not
• 1:08:31
  attractive, like, oh, it just doesn't.
• 1:08:33
  They might look really beautiful in a picture, but then the voice
• 1:08:35
  you're like, I don't feel as connective with this voice or
• 1:08:38
  someone on the picture. You might have like swiped it
• 1:08:40
  even. And then you hear this voice,
• 1:08:41
  you're like, I feel this sense of connection.
• 1:08:44
  It is more human. Exactly, and that's really the
• 1:08:46
  what we're trying to highlight is making, you know, online
• 1:08:48
  dating more intentional, personal and human, you know,
• 1:08:50
  and that's exactly like you said, if you see a picture and
• 1:08:53
  you read a short bio text, you can interpret that 1000
• 1:08:56
  different ways when we were long distant dating.
• 1:08:58
  And that, you know, like to to look at her text is like, how
• 1:09:01
  should I interpret this text? You know what I mean?
• 1:09:02
  Like is the tone like all like how somebody talks, how they
• 1:09:06
  carry themselves. All those different things make
• 1:09:08
  such a huge difference. And just to make it more human
• 1:09:11
  and personal, just to hear an audio introduction instead of
• 1:09:14
  just reading a line of text on a on a screen, you know?
• 1:09:17
  Yeah. So that's those are, you know,
• 1:09:19
  some of the things that we're implementing here to make it
• 1:09:21
  come alive more and make it more rich and, and more human in that
• 1:09:23
  way. Yeah, and it's for some people,
• 1:09:25
  it's challenges them to like step out of their comfort zone.
• 1:09:28
  Secret Spark, we wanted it to be a different thing.
• 1:09:31
  We wanted it to help people get out of their comfort zones.
• 1:09:33
  And a lot of the gals that I've talked about it with in their
• 1:09:35
  own sacred spark, they say, I don't know what I should do for
• 1:09:37
  my audio introduction. And I say just like you're
• 1:09:39
  introducing yourself at a party, at any moment you should be able
• 1:09:42
  to say, hey, I'm Emily. I was raised in Los Angeles.
• 1:09:45
  And really just present yourself and put your best foot forward
• 1:09:48
  just in the most encouraging, wonderful, authentic way.
• 1:09:51
  Just be yourself and have fun with it.
• 1:09:53
  Yeah, I think the other big thing to highlight is that Take
• 1:09:56
  a Spark is all about online connections for offline
• 1:09:58
  relationships, right? So it's even odd to call it
• 1:10:01
  quote UN quote, a dating app because you don't actually date
• 1:10:03
  on an app, right? Like you date in real life.
• 1:10:05
  And so our whole point is just like helping singles create
• 1:10:09
  meaningful connections that are, you know, rooted in faith to
• 1:10:12
  then, you know, take it from there and obviously like go into
• 1:10:14
  real life and connect in person. And you know, that's where you
• 1:10:17
  that's where the dating actually takes place.
• 1:10:20
  So there's a lot of, I feel there's an increase in dating
• 1:10:23
  apps today, but there's an increase in more niche dating
• 1:10:28
  apps today. People don't want to do.
• 1:10:30
  They're fleeing the big apps because they are not finding
• 1:10:34
  actually what they're looking for, which is what most people
• 1:10:37
  are looking for, not all, which is real life relationships and
• 1:10:40
  marriage. And they're wanting to find a
• 1:10:43
  tool that can actually help them accomplish that.
• 1:10:45
  As opposed to we're just going to keep you keep you on the app
• 1:10:48
  swiping because a lot of these apps like a Tinder as an
• 1:10:50
  example, it is it is actually better for the app to not have
• 1:10:54
  you get married. They want to make you a lifelong
• 1:10:57
  client, right? And unfortunately, a lot of
• 1:10:58
  people are life, you know, lifelong, I don't know, can't
• 1:11:00
  speak to their whole life, but there are just ongoing clients
• 1:11:03
  of that app. So I, I guess what was you were
• 1:11:06
  doing the matchmaking post? I'm curious, what was the moment
• 1:11:09
  that you thought, OK, we need Sacred Spark.
• 1:11:12
  I think we've needed it for a long time.
• 1:11:14
  And how do you see Sacred Spark playing in the larger sort of
• 1:11:18
  industry of these evolving, ever evolving apps?
• 1:11:22
  Yeah. So the the first part of that
• 1:11:23
  question is like, when did we know that we needed it just
• 1:11:26
  because we saw like these Instagram posts were, you know,
• 1:11:28
  great at what they did. But again, you can't filter, you
• 1:11:31
  can't actually go through all the comments, even though
• 1:11:33
  there's 6 1/2 thousand people who commented in the first 48
• 1:11:35
  hours. I'm the only one who can.
• 1:11:37
  Exactly only the author of the post can go actually through all
• 1:11:40
  6000 and more. But the as you as the individual
• 1:11:43
  you can see you can go through the 1st 100 and then Instagram
• 1:11:46
  will reset yourself. Yeah, like mess comments and
• 1:11:48
  gets really messy It's. Hard to actually look at.
• 1:11:51
  All the actually go through all those exactly.
• 1:11:53
  And so again, and then there's comments and then nested
• 1:11:55
  comments. And so it gets very messy very
• 1:11:57
  quickly. And so we thought, OK, how where
• 1:11:58
  can we and people were some people are not comfortable just
• 1:12:01
  sharing publicly online these things.
• 1:12:03
  So how can we create a more dedicated space forcing us to
• 1:12:06
  really connect with one another and have this, you know, this
• 1:12:10
  opportunity to connect around, you know, the faith as having it
• 1:12:12
  be the core component. So that's where we knew like,
• 1:12:15
  OK, And then that's that's where we felt this nudge of the lore,
• 1:12:18
  like as this next progression of the matchmaking post.
• 1:12:20
  OK. You know, leaning into that,
• 1:12:22
  Yeah. He looked at me that time.
• 1:12:24
  He said, what if we made a more intentional space?
• 1:12:27
  I said tell me more. What do you mean?
• 1:12:29
  By that and it all kind of goes from there and that's been since
• 1:12:32
  he quit his job you know we look at each other and say what if we
• 1:12:37
  did this and it really hopefully is and then you.
• 1:12:39
  Just kind of take the next step and see what got what doors got
• 1:12:42
  at. 100% and so this has been like sacred spark to like to
• 1:12:45
  launching 3 weeks ago. This has been 1314 months in the
• 1:12:49
  making, you know, of really a lot of things like, you know,
• 1:12:52
  having this idea is one thing, but then how do you execute and
• 1:12:55
  how do you, you know, go about that?
• 1:12:56
  I mean it's. It's a complex app because it's
• 1:12:59
  a social networking app on steroids because I mean, you can
• 1:13:03
  I guess make maybe vibe code like a dating app, but you have
• 1:13:05
  this matchmaking component now you're uploading audio, you're
• 1:13:09
  uploading video. So this is a little.
• 1:13:11
  More complex technical complexity that comes with it,
• 1:13:14
  but we like throughout those months like God would introduce
• 1:13:17
  these people into our lives that would randomly reach out to us.
• 1:13:19
  Oh man, we're, you know, very re established business individuals
• 1:13:22
  say, Hey, like, what are you guys working?
• 1:13:23
  Or, or how can I, you know, just like, tell me what you're doing?
• 1:13:26
  And then we would share and they're like, Oh, actually, I
• 1:13:27
  know this guy or let's, I want to introduce you to this
• 1:13:29
  gentleman. And so the ball, just like God
• 1:13:31
  really put these people in our in our lives, like in this path
• 1:13:35
  of sacred spark, because there's been so many times throughout
• 1:13:37
  these, these fourteen months that we said like this is too
• 1:13:40
  much, like it's too complicated. There's too many things, it's
• 1:13:43
  too much money. Is it there?
• 1:13:44
  There's too much risk. There's there's a lot of things
• 1:13:46
  that there as well, even though we feel the Lord calling us into
• 1:13:48
  this, that there's also, it's not like, oh, the Lord calls
• 1:13:52
  into it. So now it's just we're, we're
• 1:13:53
  going down a slide and everybody's, you know, you know,
• 1:13:55
  we're like. Cheering the whole time.
• 1:13:57
  That's not the case, you know, and so.
• 1:13:59
  I think that's, I think people, maybe some people who might feel
• 1:14:02
  a sense of call or people who are in it and it's hard may not
• 1:14:06
  realize that the hard and the unknowns and the navigating in
• 1:14:10
  the middle of the questions and the long hours that is all part
• 1:14:13
  of the. 100%. It's not that God calls you to
• 1:14:17
  something and then it's all daisies and roses and everything
• 1:14:20
  is seamless and there's no issues or even crises.
• 1:14:23
  You can have crises and you're doing God's call because that's
• 1:14:27
  part of what he allows for your own sanctification.
• 1:14:29
  And also he then he can show up. God shows up in that and you see
• 1:14:33
  his incredible providential hand.
• 1:14:35
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, I would even say it's,
• 1:14:37
  it's, it's, it's more of that what you just said.
• 1:14:40
  Then like, you know, the, the happy go cheer, like
• 1:14:42
  everything's great because I feel every time the God calls us
• 1:14:46
  into these things, they're not easy paths, you know what I
• 1:14:48
  mean? Like the dating, the dating in
• 1:14:50
  particular, that whole category is very difficult just because
• 1:14:52
  there's so many components that all need to match up and all
• 1:14:55
  need to fall into place for this to be even remotely successful.
• 1:14:59
  And so, yeah, it's challenging. But if you look at to go back to
• 1:15:03
  your question, like the overarching right.
• 1:15:05
  So what we see is that people don't want, people don't want a
• 1:15:09
  little bit of a lot. They want a lot of a little bit.
• 1:15:10
  And So what I mean by that is if you look at these general dating
• 1:15:13
  apps, they cater to everybody. It doesn't matter what you're
• 1:15:17
  into. It doesn't matter like any,
• 1:15:19
  anything and anyone, these big general dating apps, you can go
• 1:15:22
  on there and you can set a filter and you can, you know,
• 1:15:24
  find somebody. But what we see is that people
• 1:15:25
  just want a little bit of a lot. And that lot, it is like they
• 1:15:29
  want the faith component. Like that's what we see, right?
• 1:15:32
  Like for the individuals, the, the, the Catholic singles and so
• 1:15:34
  forth, faith is the, is the center of what they want to date
• 1:15:38
  around, like have that be at the center of a relationship.
• 1:15:41
  And so starting with those components.
• 1:15:42
  And that's why we see niche dating apps in general being a
• 1:15:45
  lot more successful because people are there for a specific
• 1:15:47
  reason and a specific intention. And this is created specifically
• 1:15:50
  for them instead of for everybody.
• 1:15:52
  And you can just pick and choose your thing.
• 1:15:54
  That kind of works, but it doesn't really fulfill like the
• 1:15:57
  core need of what you know you're looking for.
• 1:15:59
  Yeah, to create a dedicated space is a beautiful thing, and
• 1:16:05
  yes it is. It has involved many hidden
• 1:16:07
  sacrifices. You, as I shared in the
• 1:16:10
  beginning of this time together, you make many hidden sacrifices.
• 1:16:13
  And I think saying yes to Jesus always involves an incredible
• 1:16:18
  amount of hidden sacrifices, and that's a beautiful thing.
• 1:16:21
  There's so many moments where we looked at each other and we
• 1:16:24
  thought we shouldn't keep doing this.
• 1:16:26
  Yeah, we should. Just because it's hard.
• 1:16:29
  It's hard, Yeah. And you know the hours that he's
• 1:16:33
  put in and just there's. Paying, right?
• 1:16:35
  I mean, it's, it's a new business.
• 1:16:37
  That's not. I mean, your launch has been
• 1:16:39
  incredible. So Congrats.
• 1:16:41
  It really has been. I mean, from what I the the
• 1:16:44
  limited information I have, but it has been truly incredible.
• 1:16:47
  So you're already succeeding. But even then, like getting an
• 1:16:50
  app to get meet critical mass and a startup that is a slog no
• 1:16:56
  matter how you frame it. And it's like, what do they say?
• 1:16:59
  95% of startups fail or whatever you're like, that was for the
• 1:17:02
  entrepreneur. Did you know, don't feel bad if
• 1:17:04
  you fail because 95% of your like, no, I'm going to
• 1:17:06
  definitely feel bad if I fail. And we can't fail.
• 1:17:09
  We got to succeed so. Totally huge failure.
• 1:17:13
  One of an important moment was when our pastor gave a homily
• 1:17:16
  about Saint Sarah and creating the missions all up California
• 1:17:20
  and how there will always be people in his group, the
• 1:17:23
  missionaries, who would say we need to go back to what we know,
• 1:17:26
  we need to go back to safety, We know there's food there, we know
• 1:17:30
  what it's like. And I felt like that so many
• 1:17:32
  times. Yes.
• 1:17:34
  Back-to-back or to the to the previous mission where they were
• 1:17:37
  right. And I just felt that so much in
• 1:17:39
  my heart so many times. I told him we have to go back to
• 1:17:42
  what we know, to what's not a huge risk and to just to not to
• 1:17:48
  comfort, but to something that feels less risky.
• 1:17:50
  And he was always that, that saying always forward, never
• 1:17:54
  back, always forward, always forward, never back.
• 1:17:56
  And he really kept leading the charge on that to get us to
• 1:18:00
  these chairs right here to say to me, always forward, never
• 1:18:03
  back. If the Lord calls us forward and
• 1:18:05
  we're going to keep putting 1 foot in front of the other.
• 1:18:08
  It's the mission of Saint Sarah because what he did is he
• 1:18:11
  brought the spiritual good to the people, but he also met
• 1:18:13
  their physical, emotional, vocational needs.
• 1:18:16
  It's the whole picture of the human person.
• 1:18:18
  And I think that's what the dating app is doing.
• 1:18:20
  What Sacred Sparks mission is, yes, it's sacred.
• 1:18:23
  Bring together, you know, strengthen people's faith
• 1:18:26
  through marriage. But marriage is about the whole
• 1:18:29
  person. It's about the physical needs.
• 1:18:31
  It's about the emotional needs. It's about the future of, you
• 1:18:34
  know, everything. You can't have a country without
• 1:18:36
  children and family. No, for sure, and that's the
• 1:18:39
  whole in the mission of fake sparks to help, you know, help
• 1:18:41
  build up church one relationship at a time.
• 1:18:43
  That's really the like the foundational thing of what we're
• 1:18:45
  trying to do. But then also like with again,
• 1:18:49
  the quote UN quote normal dating apps or if you want, you know,
• 1:18:51
  like the sector dating apps, right, the whole point is again,
• 1:18:53
  to keep people on an app because that's how an app makes money
• 1:18:55
  then as well, right? And you look at Tinder and Hinge
• 1:18:58
  are all part of Match group, right?
• 1:18:59
  And so they have this ordeal where they purchase these other
• 1:19:02
  dating apps. And then if you don't like one
• 1:19:04
  dating app, you just go to another.
• 1:19:05
  And then if you want shorter, you know, short term
• 1:19:07
  relationships or hookups, you go here.
• 1:19:08
  If you want a longer term, you go here.
• 1:19:10
  And they just rotate you through this circuit of apps.
• 1:19:12
  You, even though you get off of one app, you just go on to the
• 1:19:14
  next one. And so for us, the whole goal is
• 1:19:17
  again, is to connect people. But once you connect on Sacred
• 1:19:20
  Spark, that's not where it ends. It's where it starts, right?
• 1:19:22
  Because the end goal is a Sacramento marriage.
• 1:19:25
  That's that's what we're going for here.
• 1:19:26
  And so how do you get to that part?
• 1:19:28
  Sacred Spark on the app is just that component of let's bring
• 1:19:32
  singles together to connect to having them start on that
• 1:19:35
  journey. But and this is the other part
• 1:19:37
  of Sacred Spark is this whole formational piece.
• 1:19:39
  And so, you know, you can talk about like dating one O 1.
• 1:19:42
  But what we see is like the dating culture, Shaker Spark's
• 1:19:45
  not going to change the dating culture on its own.
• 1:19:46
  Just being this app. It's this, you know, these
• 1:19:49
  formational things that has have so long been missing in the
• 1:19:52
  Church of like, how do people actually tangibly date and how
• 1:19:56
  do you communicate? How do you set boundaries in a
• 1:19:59
  relationship? How do you ask somebody out?
• 1:20:01
  How do you hold a conversation? All these very tangible,
• 1:20:04
  practical things, but having those be rooted, you know,
• 1:20:07
  around prayer and faith and having God be at the center of
• 1:20:09
  that. How do you tangibly do those
• 1:20:11
  things? And so for me growing up in the
• 1:20:13
  Netherlands, I mean, there was there was hardly, you know,
• 1:20:15
  anything at all. But even here, like, what are
• 1:20:18
  tangible formational resources for singles that that you can
• 1:20:21
  name? Like I I couldn't name any I.
• 1:20:23
  Can't think of one. No, I mean, that's why we're
• 1:20:25
  occasionally on the show do our these dating episodes and we've
• 1:20:27
  talked about doing a dedicated dating show, which we may do in
• 1:20:30
  the future, but we occasionally do it and there's it's sort of a
• 1:20:34
  wasteland out there. I mean, you've done courses for
• 1:20:36
  engagement which are amazing relationships, but to have
• 1:20:40
  dedicated dating support? Yeah, information on that
• 1:20:43
  journey and so. I don't know.
• 1:20:45
  Part exactly that's what part of sacred spark each other exactly
• 1:20:48
  that's what we're doing is is this first formation of resource
• 1:20:51
  that we created called dating 101 and that's just like because
• 1:20:54
  we in order for us to help really change the dating culture
• 1:20:57
  for good, like we need to also change like how people are
• 1:21:00
  interacting on these apps, how people are are, you know
• 1:21:03
  communicating how people are setting these all all of these
• 1:21:06
  different components. And so that's where we see like
• 1:21:09
  the real fruit will come from, as well as like providing
• 1:21:11
  formational resources for single first, like how, how should one
• 1:21:15
  date according, you know, to to to our faith and like all those
• 1:21:18
  components, but then also these additional resources of now that
• 1:21:22
  you've started to date, like how do you discern this next step of
• 1:21:25
  then going towards engagement? And then once engagement, how do
• 1:21:27
  you discern next towards marriage and like helping
• 1:21:30
  maximize the success of these connections and relationships
• 1:21:33
  that will form on circuit spark of and then measuring that
• 1:21:36
  success in like what actually ends up going to a Sacramento
• 1:21:39
  marriage? What do you think are the
• 1:21:41
  biggest things that women get wrong in dating and then that
• 1:21:45
  men get wrong in dating? That if this was something that
• 1:21:48
  they could resolve, it would just help facilitate many more
• 1:21:51
  happy marriages because people would be able to date more with
• 1:21:54
  more ease and meet each other and fall in love.
• 1:21:56
  Yeah. So what be the woman's issue and
• 1:21:58
  what be the men's? Actually, I'm gonna ask you to
• 1:21:59
  each do each other. What do you think is the woman's
• 1:22:01
  issue? Yeah.
• 1:22:02
  Danielle, what do you think of the men's?
• 1:22:04
  Yeah, great question. I would say from the woman's
• 1:22:05
  perspective, and I think being more letting know that you are
• 1:22:10
  open to pursuit and being more intentional by making that known
• 1:22:14
  by little things that make a big impact to a guy.
• 1:22:17
  Like for a guy, again, the guy has to go out and do the
• 1:22:20
  pursuit, obviously, but it helps so much from a guy's perspective
• 1:22:24
  if you get a little bit of feedback to make it a little bit
• 1:22:26
  easier. And also to get rid of some of
• 1:22:28
  this quote UN quote fear of rejection that every guy
• 1:22:30
  obviously has as well. To know.
• 1:22:32
  Like being more quote flirty, you know, by holding longer eye
• 1:22:36
  contact by, you know, making it, doing a tap on the on the
• 1:22:40
  shoulder or touching an arm or something that lets you know, or
• 1:22:44
  even sometimes saying like, Oh, I really enjoy this.
• 1:22:46
  I would love for you to Take Me Out again or whatever it might
• 1:22:48
  be like being more open, I think, or more open to pursuit
• 1:22:52
  and making known that you're open to pursuit from, from, from
• 1:22:54
  a guy's perspective. That would have helped me so
• 1:22:56
  much, You know, like, just just as a like being more at ease.
• 1:23:00
  So that's what I would encourage the women, I guess this.
• 1:23:01
  WhatsApp etiquette look like? Would you say I love your
• 1:23:04
  profile? Like what it went to the gals do
• 1:23:07
  at Sacred Spark when you like. On Instagram, I asked the women
• 1:23:10
  what is a great conversation starter that you would love for
• 1:23:12
  men to ask you? So there were some great
• 1:23:14
  responses and a lot of women just said, if you like I, I can
• 1:23:18
  tell that you read my profile and you asks about something
• 1:23:20
  that I shared. I would just love to talk about
• 1:23:22
  myself so many times. There's so many problems.
• 1:23:25
  We could go deep into it. And if you start your dating
• 1:23:27
  show, I'm sure you will. But so many women say I went on
• 1:23:31
  a date with a guy and he never asked me one question about my
• 1:23:33
  life. So many women say that to me.
• 1:23:35
  He said how is that possible? They say I don't know.
• 1:23:37
  But we walked away and he just talked about himself.
• 1:23:39
  The whole time well, I I've actually told this story, we
• 1:23:42
  haven't raised the dating the latest dating panel my husband
• 1:23:45
  and again, he's like the consummate man in my view, like
• 1:23:48
  the man's man. He's just he's he's amazing, but
• 1:23:51
  but I was asking him. I think a lot of girls don't
• 1:23:53
  realize this. I was asking him a lot of
• 1:23:55
  questions, almost like an interview and he was like very
• 1:23:59
  chill about it, sweet, smiling, you know, but he was fielding
• 1:24:02
  and he did ask me a couple questions, but he let me ask my
• 1:24:06
  questions and he had great answers and it was still a great
• 1:24:08
  conversation. But I remember afterwards like,
• 1:24:10
  oh, he didn't was he not interested in me?
• 1:24:12
  What was he was trying to be like?
• 1:24:14
  Respectful of me and let. Me, yeah.
• 1:24:15
  And listen and and have that. So I think it's also the posture
• 1:24:19
  of the women is are we especially if they're more
• 1:24:22
  outgoing woman, are they allowing the man to fill space
• 1:24:25
  and bring up, you know, ask a question or some men, they don't
• 1:24:27
  feel it's respectful. Like think about girls, tell me
• 1:24:30
  everything. How's your heart?
• 1:24:31
  How are you feeling? Like, how did you have for
• 1:24:33
  breakfast this morning? Like, we want to know right.
• 1:24:35
  When we, you and I talk, we're like, go deep men.
• 1:24:38
  They're like, hey, good to see you.
• 1:24:39
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:24:40
  It's a nice day. Yeah.
• 1:24:41
  You know, not that they aren't deep people, but they're not
• 1:24:43
  going to go deep so quickly. So I wonder if a lot of that is
• 1:24:46
  like a culture difference because of of the sexes being so
• 1:24:50
  different. Yeah, that's.
• 1:24:52
  A really good point. I love that that was your first
• 1:24:54
  date. Where you asking him all the?
• 1:24:55
  Questions. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:56
  Then he jokes he's like, you were interviewing me.
• 1:24:58
  I was like, I was interviewing you.
• 1:25:00
  I mean, I and I don't. I wouldn't like say that is how
• 1:25:03
  women should approach dating. I think Joe and I have our
• 1:25:07
  unique elements of our story. And I was 28 when I first met
• 1:25:10
  him. He was.
• 1:25:11
  He's three years older, almost four years older.
• 1:25:13
  So. But I I just it, it was our
• 1:25:16
  story and it was the way it went down and it was awesome.
• 1:25:19
  Like we. Yeah.
• 1:25:21
  And it was it was beautiful and I love that he could hold all of
• 1:25:26
  me like he was. He was not intimidated at all.
• 1:25:30
  I think he's, he, he, I, I could tell he liked me and I, I, you
• 1:25:33
  know, I think he did love me. And he, you know, he loves me
• 1:25:36
  now. But he was very drawn to me.
• 1:25:38
  But he was not, he could, he could hold my intensity.
• 1:25:42
  And I think that is something that makes me feel at rest with
• 1:25:44
  him because he can hold my intensity.
• 1:25:46
  Yeah, but, but, but, but the, but the asking of the questions
• 1:25:50
  or the answering of them. I feel like on the first date,
• 1:25:52
  it's so early. It's so early to tell.
• 1:25:54
  Because here's the thing, if you go out with him on the first
• 1:25:56
  date and he's not like asking me a bunch of questions, but then
• 1:25:58
  he asks you on another one, it's clear he's he's, he's going to
• 1:26:02
  get to the questions. Joe knows everything about me
• 1:26:04
  now everybody he's asking me questions.
• 1:26:05
  How are you doing? How's it like we, we're
• 1:26:07
  constantly communicating. But he like, it's almost like
• 1:26:09
  he, he, he allowed me to know him more before he was going to
• 1:26:13
  Plumb my heart like and really understand my like, like, like
• 1:26:16
  probe my heart, if that makes sense.
• 1:26:18
  You speak so beautifully to the first state.
• 1:26:20
  Be who you are. You are who you are.
• 1:26:23
  You're still that woman. I'm an interviewer, not.
• 1:26:27
  Just like you talk about holding your intensity, you're a
• 1:26:29
  passionate woman who cares so much about so many things.
• 1:26:32
  And you know, you, you label it as holding your intensity,
• 1:26:36
  right? You worry yourself on that first
• 1:26:38
  date. And Joe was the man who received
• 1:26:40
  all that and said, I love you for all that you are.
• 1:26:42
  I'm going to commit my entire life to you.
• 1:26:44
  And I meet so many people who are nervous about being their
• 1:26:47
  authentic self on the first date or talking about things that
• 1:26:49
  matter. I heard a woman say one time she
• 1:26:51
  said, I was adopted. So every first date I would say
• 1:26:55
  it's on my heart to adopt, right?
• 1:26:56
  And she would just say that from the beginning as something that
• 1:26:59
  really mattered to her. So that authenticity on the
• 1:27:01
  first date that you speak to with Joe has just, it is who you
• 1:27:05
  are. He was who he does and here you
• 1:27:06
  are married. How many years?
• 1:27:08
  Seven years and it's not a performance.
• 1:27:09
  I think it's the other thing is like the first states, not a
• 1:27:11
  performance. But anyways, you guys are you
• 1:27:13
  are the experts here. So, so you're saying for the
• 1:27:15
  women, the women are requesting that the men ask more questions?
• 1:27:20
  They like that which I which I love.
• 1:27:22
  I've heard that before too. Yeah, they say some gals of
• 1:27:25
  course, again, we're we're brand new here, but some gals say I
• 1:27:28
  match with a man and he doesn't take the initiative to start the
• 1:27:31
  conversation and I would love for him too.
• 1:27:33
  So that's my encouragement to men, is to start the
• 1:27:34
  conversation. But it sounds like what you're
• 1:27:37
  saying, Danielle, is don't be afraid as a woman to start the.
• 1:27:40
  Conversation. Yeah, yeah, you can as well.
• 1:27:41
  And so I think it's just this blend, you know what I mean, of
• 1:27:45
  being just open and, and comfortable.
• 1:27:47
  I think so many times as well, specifically with like Catholic
• 1:27:50
  dating, like so many people come with this intense and this
• 1:27:53
  intensity of like, OK, this is this going to go towards
• 1:27:55
  marriage from the first date? You know what I mean?
• 1:27:56
  Which it also isn't. You're just the first date is
• 1:27:59
  just the getting to know somebody.
• 1:28:00
  And it's great if you have these specific things that you want to
• 1:28:03
  bring up that are really on your heart.
• 1:28:04
  But I think also a lot of dating, there can be a lot so
• 1:28:08
  much pressure on just going on a date.
• 1:28:10
  You know, like a date is just a chance to just hang out with
• 1:28:13
  somebody and just get to know them versus, you know, going
• 1:28:18
  down this rabbit hole of all these other question, all these
• 1:28:20
  other things, which are great and they will come up at other
• 1:28:22
  dates. But just having it be more of a
• 1:28:23
  place of as you start dating, like just ease into it, you know
• 1:28:27
  what I mean? Like just like have a
• 1:28:28
  conversation, see before you get into all these things, see if
• 1:28:31
  you like the person first, you know, before then going into all
• 1:28:34
  these other things. So.
• 1:28:36
  In a culture of instantaneous everything, dating is more
• 1:28:38
  challenging than ever because we've been rewired.
• 1:28:40
  If I want to know something about a subject, I can just look
• 1:28:43
  up on Google and I will know everything about that subject,
• 1:28:47
  whatever it is, in an instant. And that's not people.
• 1:28:51
  People aren't that way. So, you know, in my
• 1:28:52
  conversations with women, I say you got to give it time.
• 1:28:56
  The getting to know a person is like really the blooming of a
• 1:29:00
  flower. Learning to trust someone is
• 1:29:02
  really like the blooming of a flower.
• 1:29:04
  You open a little bit and a little bit and a little bit more
• 1:29:07
  as that person, that man shows you that he's a safe place for
• 1:29:10
  your heart. That pursuit is there.
• 1:29:13
  It really is a slow, beautiful thing which stands in stark
• 1:29:18
  contrast to our culture, which is right now everything needs to
• 1:29:21
  happen. Chop, chop, chop.
• 1:29:24
  Well, and I think the the girls who are marriage minded, which
• 1:29:27
  is good. I tell ladies like be marriage
• 1:29:28
  minded, but if they're in that first state and they're marriage
• 1:29:30
  minded and they're like, I want to have five kids and I don't
• 1:29:33
  know, but whatever they're doing, the guy's like, you don't
• 1:29:36
  even know me. I'm just like checking box mail
• 1:29:38
  and I guess I'm attractive enough for you and you just like
• 1:29:41
  so now you're just like, now you're just like I'm your
• 1:29:42
  husband now, but you don't know me.
• 1:29:44
  So how you don't Even so you don't love me and I don't know
• 1:29:47
  you and how can I love you? So it's almost for the man a
• 1:29:50
  turn off then that intensity, even though he she does
• 1:29:54
  appreciate her intentionality of being marriage minded.
• 1:29:56
  If she's like going in there, like just like.
• 1:29:58
  Checklisting, yeah. Checklisting him, he's like
• 1:30:01
  you're. It's the female version of
• 1:30:03
  objectifying the man. Yeah, yeah, No, I totally agree
• 1:30:06
  with that. And that's maybe from my
• 1:30:07
  perspective as a man. Yeah, exactly like easing in
• 1:30:09
  that and 1st getting to know the person and then these things
• 1:30:12
  like Emily said will naturally start to flourish, you know, or
• 1:30:15
  open up. And and then maybe things do
• 1:30:17
  come across that you determine, oh, this actually might not be a
• 1:30:20
  good fit, you know, and then you would go your different ways.
• 1:30:22
  But instead of trying to figure it all out on a first date or
• 1:30:25
  even before a first date, because that's the thing with a
• 1:30:27
  dating app as well, you can set these filters, right?
• 1:30:30
  And people a lot of times will use these filters on a dating
• 1:30:33
  app to build a boyfriend build, you know, build a like a build a
• 1:30:36
  barrel almost, but you just fill in the boxes and you're like,
• 1:30:38
  OK, I want it. I want it to look like this and
• 1:30:40
  be like this and have this color.
• 1:30:42
  Put the stuffing in. Exactly, Yeah.
• 1:30:44
  Yeah, all these things and like click, you know, click find and
• 1:30:47
  here they come, you know, and I can look through them.
• 1:30:49
  And so also with what we're doing with Sparks, like trying
• 1:30:52
  to be a lot more intentional, like not having them set as many
• 1:30:55
  filters that you can set at the same time, but also not being
• 1:30:57
  able to filter on things that are, you know, like on the color
• 1:31:02
  of some of, of a female's hair or their eye color or other
• 1:31:05
  apps. That you filter.
• 1:31:07
  On body type like we don't do any of those different things
• 1:31:10
  we. Want you to?
• 1:31:10
  Be that's good. I know how can because I think
• 1:31:13
  about that. How can I mean, not that God
• 1:31:15
  would never answer that prayer like I want a blonde woman, but
• 1:31:18
  you want a what like she might lose her hair.
• 1:31:21
  I mean just doesn't doesn't make sense right.
• 1:31:23
  The man has to be 6/2. Like, yes, why?
• 1:31:26
  We want people to be open, and I talk about that with women at
• 1:31:29
  length too. And men, be open to the
• 1:31:32
  possibility that the man God has for you might not look like he
• 1:31:35
  thought he would. I've met women who said, a woman
• 1:31:39
  messaged me. She said, I heard your your
• 1:31:41
  dating talk about being really open.
• 1:31:42
  So I was open and I went on a date with a bald guy and I never
• 1:31:46
  would have gone on a date with a bald guy.
• 1:31:47
  Just wasn't my thing. And I'm marrying that bald guy
• 1:31:50
  in three weeks and he's so happy.
• 1:31:52
  He's unbelievable. So I just encourage that
• 1:31:55
  openness to people in so many different ways.
• 1:31:58
  And we want people to be open to that way too.
• 1:32:00
  God might have some something totally different for you in
• 1:32:03
  mind, a person in another country, right?
• 1:32:06
  A person that looks completely different than what you thought.
• 1:32:10
  But when you open your heart to say I'm going to go on a first
• 1:32:14
  date with this person and I'm not accepting a marriage
• 1:32:16
  proposal. I just want to see this person's
• 1:32:18
  heart and see them for who they are.
• 1:32:20
  It is a beautiful thing and it makes a huge difference.
• 1:32:24
  Don't write off for superficial reasons.
• 1:32:26
  I mean, it's one thing if you're like I have zero, I have like
• 1:32:29
  negative below negative attraction.
• 1:32:30
  But of course, but like if they're, if they're just, if
• 1:32:33
  it's like, well, I don't know if I'm attracted, you don't know.
• 1:32:35
  A woman said to me once when I talked about openness and
• 1:32:37
  dating. She said you try kissing a man
• 1:32:39
  with bad oral hygiene and I said I'm not.
• 1:32:42
  Encouraging you. Thanks.
• 1:32:44
  On dates with people who don't take care of themselves, when I
• 1:32:47
  say be open, it's not like forget everything and don't
• 1:32:49
  exercise and don't take care of yourself.
• 1:32:52
  It is simply that be open to his height, right?
• 1:32:56
  If he is over 6 feet tall, it's not going to make a difference
• 1:33:00
  in your marriage. So many of you women say, oh, I
• 1:33:03
  want him to play music, right? When I'm on the the operating
• 1:33:07
  table, you're having my babies be born, which we've talked
• 1:33:10
  about on the show. Daniel's height, whether he
• 1:33:13
  sings or not, all these different things, they don't
• 1:33:16
  matter, right? And so this, this what we've
• 1:33:19
  seen is a tunnel vision of it has to be this height that they
• 1:33:23
  have to sing or whatever it is. Or they need this career.
• 1:33:26
  I've seen that too. You.
• 1:33:27
  Could really miss out on an amazing individual because when
• 1:33:33
  the going gets going, the heart of a person that you may have
• 1:33:36
  overlooked could make the greatest marriage in history.
• 1:33:40
  A person who's so devoted and incredible and an amazing spouse
• 1:33:45
  with integrity beyond all telling.
• 1:33:47
  Yeah. So those are some of the things
• 1:33:48
  in the app as well where we don't let you filter on exactly
• 1:33:51
  that profession. You can't just say I just want
• 1:33:52
  to look at, you know, people have a certain profession and
• 1:33:54
  those are the ones that I would potentially be interested in,
• 1:33:57
  like having that be not be a part of the app that you can do.
• 1:34:00
  And that's also the part of the matchmakers as well, because
• 1:34:03
  somebody who's in the single themselves, they might have a
• 1:34:05
  completely not completely different look on things, but a
• 1:34:09
  matchmaker, somebody who's not quote, UN quote in the hot seat,
• 1:34:11
  if you want to call it that. They might look at that and see,
• 1:34:13
  Hey, I know your heart, I know, you know, these might be
• 1:34:16
  individuals that I would suggest for you to connect with, you
• 1:34:19
  know, and like blending those two different things where the
• 1:34:21
  single themselves can go through and set certain filters that are
• 1:34:24
  very important. And I'll see the attractive
• 1:34:26
  actually matters, the inner, the the whole thing matters like as
• 1:34:29
  a whole, you know, but looking at it as a whole is what we're,
• 1:34:32
  you know, trying to emphasize. And because that's how Christ
• 1:34:34
  looks at us. Like he doesn't look at me and
• 1:34:35
  says, tell you, I just like this piece.
• 1:34:37
  Like he likes my heart. Like in my heart is my being,
• 1:34:41
  you know, like my soul, like all these things and, and all those
• 1:34:44
  things fit together, right? Like we we are obviously a
• 1:34:47
  person, flesh and blood and we have to take care of ourselves
• 1:34:50
  and 100%. But yeah, not like separating
• 1:34:53
  those, but putting those two together.
• 1:34:55
  How has the response been? Yeah, it's been amazing.
• 1:34:59
  I have a friend. She just went on her third date
• 1:35:01
  with the guy she met on Sacred Spark.
• 1:35:02
  They are having a ball together. Where?
• 1:35:04
  What can you share the diocese? They're in Arizona.
• 1:35:07
  Wow. So just to know personal people
• 1:35:09
  who are hitting it off 3 dates. In less than three weeks since.
• 1:35:12
  Launch Yeah, there's a that's pretty good.
• 1:35:14
  The response has been really beautiful.
• 1:35:16
  A lot of when you have personal friends hitting it off on
• 1:35:20
  something you know you worked so hard to create, it's really
• 1:35:23
  special. Are you gonna are you gonna do
• 1:35:25
  that do like a ticker once you start to get the numbers in of
• 1:35:28
  like marriages and. Stuff.
• 1:35:29
  Yeah, Yeah. So we have. 100 marriages, 100
• 1:35:31
  and whatever. What will be really interesting,
• 1:35:33
  obviously now we're three weeks in, you know what I mean?
• 1:35:35
  It's great to hear these stories of people that are already gone
• 1:35:37
  on date multiple days. We have someone DMD us on
• 1:35:40
  interim saying their 5th date or something like that and like in
• 1:35:42
  a super short period of time. And it'll be really interesting
• 1:35:45
  to see in the coming months and like in the next year, like, OK,
• 1:35:48
  how many of these connections then turn into dating
• 1:35:50
  relationships, into engagements and intermarriages, hopefully.
• 1:35:54
  So that's going to be the real treat to see the.
• 1:35:57
  More connections can be made when we get more people on the
• 1:35:59
  app. That's the way an app, a dating
• 1:36:00
  app works, right? You just need people who are
• 1:36:03
  open intentional on the app. So the more we grow, as we're
• 1:36:06
  brand new, the more we grow, the more people hear about it, the
• 1:36:08
  more people go on, the more possible connections can be
• 1:36:11
  made. And yeah, we should make a
• 1:36:12
  ticker. It would be really sweet.
• 1:36:14
  Oh my goodness, I want to see that.
• 1:36:15
  How can people? Download Sacred Spark and I
• 1:36:18
  think everyone listening, if you're single, download it.
• 1:36:20
  If you know someone who is single, you can still download
• 1:36:24
  it because you can be a matchmaker and then you can send
• 1:36:27
  them an invite to download it too.
• 1:36:28
  And you might have that friend who's like, I don't want to do
• 1:36:30
  apps. I don't want to do apps.
• 1:36:32
  I have so many, I've had so many of those friends.
• 1:36:34
  I don't want apps. And you're like, OK, I
• 1:36:35
  understand. We totally understand.
• 1:36:37
  But I'm going to do it with you, and I'm not just going to set up
• 1:36:40
  your profile for you. I'm literally going to be on the
• 1:36:42
  app with you holding your hand on the app.
• 1:36:44
  Yes. Not me personally, guys,
• 1:36:46
  although I would do it for all of you if I could.
• 1:36:47
  But find your sister, your friend, your brother, whoever.
• 1:36:51
  And they will be your matchmaker.
• 1:36:52
  Yeah, so. Matchmaker for those brothers
• 1:36:54
  and cousins, those guy friends and those guy cousins say I'll
• 1:36:57
  be your matchmaker, Connor, just give me your phone and we'll
• 1:37:00
  we'll do it together and have that support.
• 1:37:02
  Yeah, yeah. So it's available both on the
• 1:37:04
  Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.
• 1:37:05
  So on iOS and on Android. Yeah.
• 1:37:09
  And the the thing has been amazing, right?
• 1:37:10
  And but, but so he's saying as well, like in the tagline on the
• 1:37:12
  App Store, it says like, it's not your typical dating app.
• 1:37:14
  And so that's what people also need to know if they are very
• 1:37:16
  much used to these secular dating apps where you can just
• 1:37:19
  blast through accounts. And like, that's not what this
• 1:37:22
  is. Like we want it to be a
• 1:37:24
  different intentional way of dating and to slow people down
• 1:37:27
  and look at the whole person and have it be focusing on Christ.
• 1:37:30
  So if that's what you're looking for, then this is your spot.
• 1:37:32
  And yeah, go, go and check it out.
• 1:37:35
  I'm so excited for what you're building.
• 1:37:37
  Thank you. I'm so grateful for both of you
• 1:37:39
  answering the call to for each other to be married and have
• 1:37:42
  your beautiful family and the ministries that you're doing.
• 1:37:44
  There's so many different elements from Markham to all of
• 1:37:47
  your writing and you're speaking, you're singing all of
• 1:37:50
  that ministry now. Sacred Spark the courses dating
• 1:37:54
  101 thank you. Yeah, praise God, it's all for
• 1:37:58
  his glory. That's what we do it for.
• 1:38:00
  So. Forever and ever and Amen.
• 1:38:02
  And if this episode can inspire one person to just say yes to
• 1:38:05
  whatever God is calling them to. And the littlest ways and the
• 1:38:07
  biggest ways, all you listening out there.
• 1:38:10
  I just want you to when the Lord invites you into something that
• 1:38:13
  might feel terrifying, just get out of the boat.
• 1:38:16
  When you put that first foot out on the water, Can you imagine
• 1:38:19
  when Jesus called him out of the boat and he puts his first foot
• 1:38:22
  on the water? The water probably took his
• 1:38:23
  breath away and it felt very cold.
• 1:38:25
  But then you get used to the water as you get out and just
• 1:38:28
  take those steps forward. Man, the Lord is so, so
• 1:38:32
  faithful. If we could all believe it more,
• 1:38:35
  man, it would be a good thing. Amen.
• 1:38:37
  Can we close? Can you guys pray for people
• 1:38:41
  listening, especially if there's any singles, either people
• 1:38:44
  listening or for the people that are listening, the people that
• 1:38:47
  they know? Because every one of us, like, I
• 1:38:50
  want everyone to think for a moment of someone that they know
• 1:38:53
  who has a hope for marriage. Or maybe they should have a hope
• 1:38:57
  for marriage, but it's been blunted because of their own
• 1:38:59
  disappointments or whatever it is.
• 1:39:01
  We all know somebody. Yeah, absolutely, Lord, we thank
• 1:39:09
  you and we praise you. Lord, we just invite you into
• 1:39:13
  these conversations. We invite you into the hearts of
• 1:39:15
  everybody listening to this conversation.
• 1:39:17
  Lord, we're grateful for your presence.
• 1:39:21
  And we pray for all the singles or we pray for them to know how
• 1:39:24
  seen they are, how loved they are, how beautiful they are, and
• 1:39:29
  how much you care for them. And that you were walking with
• 1:39:33
  them every step of the way. Even though it might feel hard,
• 1:39:35
  even though it might feel long, way longer than they might, you
• 1:39:37
  know, wanted or anticipated or their expectation that they had,
• 1:39:42
  Lord, but that they know that this time is good because you're
• 1:39:46
  in it, Lord, and you have not let them down and you've not
• 1:39:48
  abandoned them. Lord, help them feel peace, help
• 1:39:51
  them feel loved, and give them encouragement, encouragement to
• 1:39:55
  keep going down this road and this path with you, Lord, where
• 1:39:58
  you want to lead them. And and inspire them.
• 1:40:04
  Lord Jesus, I ask for a greater sense that of how we can support
• 1:40:11
  our singles. So many singles feel forgotten
• 1:40:15
  in their churches or overlook Lord and I ask that you send
• 1:40:19
  revival of the ways that we can help singles connect with one
• 1:40:22
  another, not even in a dating sense, but Lord and community to
• 1:40:26
  help them connect with one another in this time of their
• 1:40:30
  lives, in this day. Lord Jesus, that we would
• 1:40:34
  support singles, love them, see them for their value and their
• 1:40:39
  worth as they are. I ask that you give us all a
• 1:40:45
  spirit of knowledge of how to love one another in our
• 1:40:50
  different vocations, in our different seasons.
• 1:40:52
  That we would be people who have open hearts to tough
• 1:40:55
  conversations, to beautiful conversations, to conversations
• 1:40:59
  where single or not, people just need to be heard and seen right
• 1:41:04
  where they are. Help us to be people who see and
• 1:41:08
  hear people right where they are.
• 1:41:10
  As you did Lord so many times you showed us in the gospels
• 1:41:14
  where you would just see and hear and love.
• 1:41:18
  Help us Lord, to be people who see and hear and love.
• 1:41:25
  In Jesus name we pray, Amen. Thank you, Daniel and Emily.
• 1:41:29
  Thank you. Thank you.
• 1:41:31
  Thank you so much. You're a blessing.
• 1:41:33
  And we talked about Sacred Spark.
• 1:41:35
  Where can people find your work too, Emily?
• 1:41:37
  And I think that's where you find your work too, because you
• 1:41:40
  work with Emily. Or is there another website?
• 1:41:42
  No, you can, yeah. I mean you can look at
• 1:41:44
  sacredspark.com or Sacred Spark dot app that has all that stuff
• 1:41:47
  but Emily has over books. Yeah, if you search people who
• 1:41:51
  might have wanted to see the kids show Markham, if you Google
• 1:41:54
  search Markham, everything will come right up.
• 1:41:56
  And then Emily Wilson, if you Google Emily Wilson Ministries,
• 1:41:59
  I'll come right up to. And anything I share, anybody
• 1:42:02
  can dive into. Amazing.
• 1:42:04
  Thank you so much. Thank you.
• 1:42:05
  Beautiful. Thanks so much for listening to
• 1:42:07
  this episode of the Lila Rose Show.
• 1:42:09
  I hope you enjoyed it. I always do.
• 1:42:11
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• 1:42:13
  that subscribe button already and go over to our Patreon to
• 1:42:16
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• 1:42:18
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• 1:42:21
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• 1:42:24
  entire world. EWTN is reaching millions of
• 1:42:27
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• 1:42:30
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• 1:42:34
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