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Raising Kids Who Walk by Faith · The On The Rise Podcast

• FDL Christina Vaupel Audio: Welcome to the Faith Driven Leader Podcast. My name is Nick Stromwall, your host. I'm here with Christina Voppel. Welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. Yeah, excited to jump into your story. I know we've been connected now for a few weeks. So I'll kick things off, reading your bio, and then we'll jump into some questions. So Christina, along her, along with her husband Brian, and her two daughters are coaches with families to discover their God given purpose and move in one direction. You're a licensed purpose factor facilitator. You help families trade busyness and chaos for clarity so they can lead well at home, steward their finances, raise the next generation to help shape their communities. Their own family is active in ministry, three kids, missions, homeschooling, the military, and business. For faith-driven leaders who are succeeding at work but feeling pulled apart at home, they offer practical, encouraging tools for leading a family on purpose. Really cool. What what did I leave out there? I think that that pretty much covers everything that we are currently doing. our our oldest daughter right now is actually in Asia working with orphans. So they're just all over the place. Yeah, world travelers. It's been awesome. Okay, so I heard son in the military, one daughter overseas. how did you train kids to be so well rounded? so I think it helps having two internationally adopted kiddos. And we just never gave the bio one a choice of, you know, like, hey, so our biological daughter's the oldest. And for her, it was your siblings are coming from other countries and you're you're not gonna have a choice. You're gonna have to learn to travel, you're gonna have to learn to be flexible, and you're just gonna go with the flow and learn to hear where the Lord's got you. So wow. Okay, so you're homeschooling and you just mentioned maybe your youngest. Through graduation more recently? Yeah. So she actually just finished up her final high school assessment this morning. So I get that it's middle of October. It's a really weird time to graduate, but this could was her path and her choice. And she said, Nope, if I can get this all done and be graduated in what would normally be the beginning of her junior year. she's like, then I've got time to work. And then she's actually gonna do a gap year program with an organization called the World Race. So she will leave next August. and go on a nine month trip around the world visiting six different countries and helping work with orphans and with displaced people groups, refugees for one thing or another. yeah, let's double click on that. Cause I recently read a book and so I have my oldest is 14, so freshman, but it's we're strongly considering the gap year program. How did you land on the world race? So actually she landed on it. so all my kids have done mission trips. All both my girls have been to El Salvador multiple times and then my son did a mission trip to Atlanta working with the Dream Center out there. I think it's now called Frontline Ministries, but was a counterpart to Matthew Barnett's Dream Center out in Los Angeles. And so when the youngest went this last summer to El Salvador, she got this really strong calling into missions during a prayer service. And came home and said, Hey mom, we've got to figure out how I can get this done sooner rather than later. I really feel like I'm supposed to be in missions. And I was like, Great, what's that gonna look like? So I put her into investigator mode and said, find out the different things that you could do, whether that's going down to El Salvador, is it joining a mission program somewhere? And she landed on the world race because they have a team of 20 youth, young people, ages 17 to 20, that they send out every year. For what's called a gap year program. So they go out for nine months. the World Race also has another program that's a full year. So for those who are ages twenty to thirty, you can join a full year program and be gone for a whole year. So those programs do nine different countries. she'll be on a gap year, so they only do six. That's amazing. Sorry. I know it sounds really odd, and I'm just one of the odd parents I think with having a son in the military and Girls who are traveling internationally, because my oldest is in the Philippines right now. And other parents just look at me and they're like, Aren't you worried about your kids? I'm like, they're not mine, they're his. I was blessed and given the responsibility to raise them. I have lots of different principles that that encompass my philosophy on raising kids and just making them really reliant on the Lord and then knowing when it's their turn to fly the coop, so to speak. they're They're all gonna wind up boomeranging at some point. so they leave and they go out and do his stuff for a while and they come back and then they figure out where they're supposed to launch. But I think that's our responsibility as parents today is to really help our kids understand where the Lord has them and to learn to be in the world without being of the world, so that they can really make the best impact possible. I think there's a lot of listeners with young kids that are probably kind of like going this, like t tell me more, Christina. How how do you help your kids? rely on the Lord and how do you how do you give them vision to kind of make some of those decisions on their own, maybe with with your guidance, but I'm hearing the words like, I'm going to unleash my kids. They're not mine, they're his. So tell us more about that. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, we're all created by the father, right? And we all have a specific purpose. So if we understand that about ourselves, why wouldn't we understand that about our own children? So he gifts them to us for a while because he sees the adults he wants them to grow up to be. And therefore that means there's a certain set of circumstances, a certain set of experiences that they need to go through that are gonna help mold them into becoming those adults. So my philosophies were first of all, they're his, they're not mine. I just have the responsibility of making sure that they survive to where they're supposed to survive to, right? To do whatever the impact is that he has for them. I also believe that I was raising adults who happened to be going through childhood. So I never taught my never treated my kids like they were three or four or five. other people would say I'm crazy, but they started doing laundry at four years old. They started loading and unloading the dishwasher at three. Like there's things that they can do even when they're little that teach them how to take responsibility and how to do things. I've been learning from John Maxwell for a really long time. And one of the things that he taught his children was he wasn't going to pay them to do chores because from the moment they were born or adopted, they already owed him for nine months of room and board. So I I like that philosophy. And chores were just part of being in the family, but I did want to train them to use their brains. And so he always taught his children that he would pay them for grades and pay them for reading. So every time they read a book, He'd have them do a book report and tell him what they learned, what they loved, and then he'd pay them for that. So I did the same thing with my khettos. And I always had a book that I wanted them to read, and then they could choose a book in between of their own. So whether it was a fictional novel, maybe it was a sci-fi, maybe it was an adventure book or a comic book or something like that. Even those have storylines. And so they still had to give me the things that they learned and the things that they loved on those. But I would pay them to read and I'd pay them for grades. so that they were learning to make good decisions, learning from other people's experiences and being able to move forward. when it came to decision making, I started little with them, pick your outfit. It really didn't matter. When they were doing their own laundry at four and five years old, it didn't matter if they came out in something wrinkled. They had picked it and that was their independence and they got to deal with the consequences of if it was wrinkled or spotted or, whatever, because that would help them learn what they needed to do better the next time. But they'd also dress the way that they wanted to dress or what they were comfortable in. So that helped them make decisions as they moved into the future. Our son is one of those very athletic young men. He was adopted from Ethiopia. And anytime you put a ball in his hands, he can master a game usually within 10 to 15 minutes. But he's always learning along the way. So when it came to sports, he did lacrosse when he was little, he did fencing for a little while. And then when he got to high school, he was like, Hey mom, I want to play football. We live in Texas. football is the second largest religion in the the state. So everything revolves around football. And I was like, okay. All right, we're gonna do this. So, you know, we did it through high school, and he actually had an offer to play football at a school out in West Texas. And had the week leading up to finals for graduation from high school, he did a total left hand turn and said, I'm gonna go into the military. And I was like, Okay, could you sit down and explain this to me and just tell me how you landed on we're gonna switch from playing college football and going to school to go to the military? And so he sat down and mapped it all out for me. It was about a two-hour conversation. And I said, This is great. my only request is that I've got some friends that were military themselves during wartime, and this was back in 2023. So everything was looking a little sketchy on what was happening on the world stage, right? And I was like, I just want you to talk to them and make sure that you really understand some of the things that could happen or do happen when you're deployed. And then after you've had those conversations with them, if you're still like, yep, this is what I'm gonna do, I'm a hundred percent for it. You go for it, you do what you're gonna do, and we'll be there to support you every step of the way. So he did that and he was good. for my oldest daughter, she is gifted in music as well as being really gifted with people. So when she was graduating high school. Because she's a musician, my husband and I had the opportunity opportunity to send her to a rock and roll camp out in Los Angeles with stars like Melissa Etheridge and Ori Anthe. And her actual graduation day was the same day she was playing with Melissa Etheridge. And so when they did their QI time QA time time, QA time after playing with Melissa, She sat down and said, Hey Melissa, I just have one question for you. I've had some people telling me you need to go to school, get a music degree, other people telling me just go get into the industry. You've been doing this for 40 years, you have a high level of success. What do you recommend for someone who's literally graduating from high school today? And because this was post-COVID, it was 2022, it was okay, what's gonna happen? And so Melissa told her, Yeah, I I went to school to get my music education degree for three months. And she said, literally no one was teaching me anything I didn't already know. And so she Melissa told her, Hey, I made the decision to just get a day job that pays the bills and then go write music and get into every gig that I could find, whether it was at the bars or at a wedding or local pub or whatever, every evening that she could get out and play. And so my daughter was like, Sweet, I don't have to go to college to fulfill my dreams and do the things that the Lord's called me to. So she got a day job, ironically, in the multifamily housing industry as a leasing agent, became one of the top agents in DFW for the company she was working for, and went after it, has recorded two albums. And then just a couple of months ago, the property that she was working at was part of a portfolio that was being sold. And She was like, I don't know what to do, what's gonna happen when we get bought out, we're gonna have to interview again and we're we don't know who the company is gonna be that we're working for and all the usual concerns that people have in an industry when any company gets bought out or merges or you know, those types of things happen. And I said, look, just go to the Lord about it. Ask him, what are you supposed to do? And so she did and she happened to see a documentary on this children's home in the Philippines that was started by a pastor from Germany about thirty years ago. And she said, Mom, I really think I'm supposed to go and help them out for a bit. I was like, Okay, well send an email and you know, get the information, whatever, and just see if if it's something that you can do on your own. And so she did that back in like June, and we were gone for a little bit in July with trips to go see our son and And we got home, it was probably another week and a half after we got home. She comes into me and goes, Mom, I got an email. And I like, That's great. I think you get 300 a day. I don't like what's the big deal? And she said, no, no, no. I got I got one from the children's home. And I that's awesome. What'd they say? And she said, They'd love to have me. I was like, Awesome. That's great. So, what does it look like for you to go over? Like, what time frame? How long can you go for? What's the cost gonna be? All of those things. And She said, Well, it's this much to stay over there, which was less than a thousand dollars to stay for three months. Her plane ticket, I think, was right about a thousand dollars to fly round trip over and back. And she's like, Yeah, I'm gonna go over and I'm just gonna love on the babies for three months. And I was like, Okay. And as soon as she made the decision, two days later, the properties came off the market. The whole portfolio came off the market and the company chose to keep it. So here everybody else was like, okay, and she's like, I Probably should let my boss know right away. And I was like, Yeah, I probably wouldn't wait till two weeks before. just go ahead and let her know. Hey, I made a decision and I've got this opportunity and I'm gonna go after it. And so she left, literally, she she left September 20th. She landed in the Philippines the first day of fall, and she will land back in the Dallas area the first day of winter. So she has gone for a season helping out in the Philippines. And when she got there, because she's also a purpose factor facilitator. she was going through her orientation and somehow it came up that she was raised in a Maxwell leadership home and is a purpose factor coach and facilitator. And they said, wait a second, you walk me through this. Literally, they had been praying for someone to work with their volunteers and staff to understand their individual purpose and how it fit with the purpose of the ministry to care for these kettos in the Philippines. And they said, We were praying for you this morning, and here you are. You showed up. So they shifted what she is doing. So she works with the babies a couple of days a week and then she trains the the volunteers and staff the other three days a week in understanding their purpose so that they can spot it and spot those characteristics in the children that they work with as they get older to be able to help them launch into adult life. So everyone, just a quick word before we jump back into this episode. I'm Zach, the CEO of Rise 48 Equity, and I want to take a moment to share a little bit about what we do and why we do it, because I think it's going to resonate with a lot of you who are listening to this series. At Rise48, we're a real estate investment company, but the way that we think about our work goes beyond just improving properties and generating returns. We genuinely believe that when you invest in a community, you have a responsibility to invest in the people who live there too. That looks like hiring community managers who are present and engaged with residents. It looks like hosting Monthly events for our residents to build an actual community. It looks like our team showing up together to volunteer and partner with nonprofits in the areas where we operate. For those of us who are faith-driven, I think there's also a deeper question underneath every investment decision. And it's not just what's the return, it's what is my capital actually building? Those two things should and can coexist together. At Rise 48, we built a model where strong returns and strong communities go hand in hand. If that's the kind of investment that you've been looking for. We'd love to connect with you and tell you about what we're building. You can learn more at rise48equity.com and we'll get you right back to the episode. our listeners are just got goosebumps the way that I did because I I think that's the one it's that's a clear moment where it's like an answer to prayer number one but it's also you've equipped your daughter to learn how to listen to the voice of the Lord and be open to leading and here was a a prime example of she made the decision in faith and then her employers didn't change. So she could have stayed working where she did. She could have. Yeah. But she still took that step of faith. What do you how do you think she made that decision to do something radical in some senses? Yeah. when she had something safe. And I I guess I'm asking you for two reasons. One, yeah, speak into your daughter, but then speak into the listener who has that same moment of I don't know what to do. I think I should do this, but I hear the voice of the Lord telling me to do this. Yeah. So I phrased it to her as look for the clarity, right? because she's a a purpose factor facilitator and coach, she knows her purpose. She knows that it's to work with conviction to help other people in healing the hurts that they've experienced. So for her, it was lean into that purpose and see where the the Lord leads you. And every open door, if you try to walk through every open door, if it's not for you. And you're seeking earnestly for what the Lord has for you, he will slam a door shut for you. he's gonna give you a clear yes or no. If it's something that he is gonna use in your life, whether it's an experience that he's allowing you to go through because it's gonna help mold you as a person to help someone else down the road, whatever it might be, then he's gonna leave that door open and allow it to continue. So I think for her it was a combination of me guiding her. And her also seeing our own experiences. So I'll rewind her real quick 30 years give you a glimpse into the past. as a junior in college, I was studying education, and at that time in the mid nineties, middle school certifications didn't exist anywhere around the country. You were either certified K through nine or you were certified eight through twelve for high school secondary education. And the middle school was a a unique one because a lot of departmentalized middle schools in Christian education were starting to pop up around the world. So for me, in order to get certified in the state of Illinois where I was going to school, as a middle school teacher in Christian education, I had to student teach in a departmentalized Christian middle school. There weren't any in the area that I was in. The closest one was Minneapolis. And none of our faculty advisors were allowed to go more than two hours to supervise student teachers. So I just started praying about it. And I literally woke up one morning and I don't know if it was the audible voice of God, but to me it was, that was Hong Kong. And I was like, right. That doesn't mean a whole lot in my world because at the time I didn't know a whole lot about China or anything that was happening over there. But I went into my field experienced director and said, Hey, is there an opportunity to go student teaching in Hong Kong? And she was like, Well, actually, we have a full pre-K through twelfth grade fully departmentalized school over there. It has about 2,500 students in it. Let me check and see what I can do. This was November. So I had to wait through the Thanksgiving holidays, through the Christmas holidays, through the Chinese New Year holidays, all of that. I finally got a call mid February and she said, Hey, come sign your contract. You're headed over to China to go student teaching. And I was like, okay. And literally I remember hanging up the phone with her and going, God, how are you paying for this? And I walked through the next next semester and at the end of semester, as I was looking at my senior year, I got a call from the financial aid department that said, Hey, you're actually gonna graduate early, like as soon as you're done with your student teaching, because you've got too many credits. So we're gonna take all of your scholarships and apply them to two quarters instead of three, because we were on a trimester system at the time. And so everything that needed to be paid for was fully paid for. My visas were paid for, my passport was paid for, my immunizations were paid for, my plane tickets, and then the school over there paid for everything while we were there except our food and our utility bill. So it was crazy. But my kids grew up hearing that story. So when my daughter has this similar experience, she's like, Guess I'm gonna walk through the store and see what happens. go for it. See where God leads you. people not just hearing l living walking by faith and hear you know living by faith, but actually hearing that story of your college, you know, t student teaching. Okay, Lord, Hong Kong. Okay, you make you make the request known and then there's an opportunity, but it's a it's a waiting season. It's not like an overnight answer or an email you get an hour later. And then it's like, okay, you've opened this door. How are you gonna pay for it? And you bring that to the Lord, and every every season is another testing in some ways of not only your faith, but hey, if you open this door, Lord, how are you gonna open or walk through the next the next season? And yet as a faith-driven leader, you know, I think we all want to walk by faith and not by sight, but it's hard to do that. How do you coach families to do that? So I think the What I've seen the biggest challenge with the waiting season is, is there's something coming, right? If the Lord's put a desire in your heart or a vision in your in your heart of here's where your family's supposed to be headed. It might be things in business, it might be how you raise your family, it might be, you know, other things ahead, whatever it is. It's understanding that there's a timeline for it. And until those things actually come to fruition, there's still something that's sitting in front of you that he has for you to do now. And whether it's something for you to sew into or something for you to glean from, there's that next thing to do while you're waiting for all of this to come to fruition. So it's almost like the best analogy I have is it's kind of like planting a peach tree in the backyard, right? That first year the tree is just growing and there's no fruit produced. And it's gotta go through the winter. And it's gotta go through spring and through summer again. And the second year, you're gonna get the flowers and the buds and those types of things. Maybe really tiny fruit, and you're like, I've got something, but yet you've got to go through the summer and go through the fall and the winter and another spring. And then that third summer, finally you start to see fruit that's like actual fruit. Like, hey, there's maybe enough here that we can use this for making jam or making a peach cobbler or something. And you know that that tending to it, the weeding it, the caring for it, the watering, all of those things is starting to bring fruit for what's happening. And then as that tree gets older and more mature, then you're able to glean more from it after you've sewed a lot into it. That makes all sense. okay, so going back into your story a little bit, I know that for a season you really liked hosting people. you know, I think I read a story about hosting sixty people. in a smaller apartment. Yes. Learned a lot about community and community building. Then you worked for apartment life. Walk us through a little bit in that season of your life. Yeah, so we had actually just come out of a three year season of being separated for a while. every time we adopted internationally, my husband got laid off a few months later, not because of the adoption, just that's what was happening in his field. And so that led to us being separated. so when we adopt our youngest from China, it was okay. Three months later he gets laid off. I had been home with the kiddos because she was technically on a special needs list. So I was caring for her and making sure that she was getting the development and the therapy therapies and that that she needed. But once he got laid off, we were like, we have to have some sort of income. So it was race to find a job. And my job came first, which was teaching and it was teaching on a reservation about two hours from where we lived in the Albuquerque area. So fast forward three years and we had finally gotten back together and I looked at them and said, we better figure out why the Lord allowed us to go through this season and have three very unique kids and two very different backgrounds. There has to be a purpose to all this because we were learning through it the whole time. As we did that, we then started developing community. We got to know our neighbors above us and below us because when you're living in apartments, those neighbors are significantly closer. Than they were when you were living in a house and you can hear what's happening on the other side of the mall. good bed in a different. And so as we were building community there, it was, you know, this is really good for people. A lot of people, even though we live so close together, felt very isolated. They thought, I'm the only ones going through this experience or that experience. Maybe it was a divorce, maybe it was medical stuff, maybe it was job layoffs or challenges with kiddos or whatever the situation may have been. And in building the community and inviting people in, we do dinner on Monday nights. And I always pick Mondays because Mondays can be Mondays. and so with a Monday night, it made it easier. I'd make the main dish, I'd send out a text message to everybody and say, Hey, you know, let me how many are coming. And then what are you bringing? Desserts, sides, drinks, and then here's how many to prepare for. So We all got to know each other really well through that season. We supported each other through that season. And that was, you know, just a a beautiful time of community building because we gave or it gave us opportunities to share our faith with other people that may have been struggling in their own. we owned a house still in New Mexico and here we were living in apartments, and I was paying exactly the same for my apartment that was 1200 square feet as I was for the mortgage that was for a 2600 square foot house. and that's a challenge to walk through because most people are like, Why are you doing this? I'm like, I don't know, God's using it for something. And he did. He used our home to be able to house a family that needed to get back on their feet after both of them going through job struggles. once we sold it. Then he used our time in the apartments to be able to bring cl people into community and We just we loved being around those folks. So when apartment life came to us and said, Hey, would you be interested in joining us? We were like, Let's find out what this is, because we didn't know anything about it. And then you know, as they showed us, here's what they were doing, we were like, this is something that we've been doing on our own and they need the reminder that anyone can do this at any time in life. It doesn't have to be, you know, young singles out of college or young married couples fresh out of college. It can be anyone. whether it's younger couples, older couples, they've got a lot of older couples now too, because that's a growing community in that fifty-five plus with moving back into apartment communities and and having to figure out what does life look like for them. So for our listeners that don't have a context for apartment life, how would you describe what it is and kind of got to hear little bits and pieces, but un unpack a little bit more because I think it's a really cool potential partner for some of our listeners and also just a great ministry great ministry. Yeah. So apartment life is a fantastic ministry that's been around for almost 30 years now. And what they do is they kind of intentionally plant a couple or a team of two or a family into an apartment community to care for the residents and staff that are that are living in that community. So each team will get a budget based on the size of the community and how many events they want to have. To be able to do anywhere between two and five events on a monthly basis. Those events, some are larger, could be up to 150 people or even 300. During the summers, we'd do barbecues that were 300 people. During Thanksgiving, we'd always have a big Thanksgiving dinner that was easily 125 to 150 people that we were feeding Thanksgiving dinner to. And then we'd have other events that were like we'd have a crafternoon or We do game night or karaoke night, something like that, where we might only have, 15 or 20 people that would come in, but you're creating that community and in developing those relationships with those individuals, whether it's in the small setting or it's in the the larger group setting for the big dinners, we had opportunity to get to know them and then through that be able to share the gospel message, which was huge because a lot of times you've got people that wind up in apartment communities, not for the greatest reasons. They've been through some sort of a massive change in life, whether it's a job layoff, it's a divorce, it's you know, ours was moving states and just the time that we happened to move to the DFW area from New Mexico, the bidding wars were started, the housing market was going crazy, lots of growth was happening, and I just had been through enough in three years. I refused to participate in any of the the competitive. stuff. So I was like, we'll just wait, we'll set it out. And here the Lord was gonna use it for our for our good, for his glory, being able to move forward. We had lots of times where we'd be sitting around the pool middle of the summer at ten or eleven o'clock at night and somebody'd be like, Wow, I never thought I'd be talking about faith around the pool having barbecue or doing s'mores or whatever. And being able to do that. And I remember vividly having a couple of different maintenance guys that happen to live on property. That would spend those late nights with us because they knew it was a safe space. Go, do y'all realize that we're actually having church? And that took all, some people back because they're like, church, you keep thinking it's gotta be in a building on a Sunday morning. And we're like, no, church is anytime you gather with other people to share love, to share food, and basically become an X2 community, right? Where you're you're sharing fellowship time. And giving opportunities to share the gospel message. Yeah. What's so sweet. okay, so let's pivot a little bit here. Sure. You've you've studied families like you know, some of the most famous ones, Rockefellers, Vanderbilt's families that have built lots of wealth, but maybe didn't pass it down for a shared purpose. When you're working with families, what do faith driven families get wrong most often about legacy? I think the thing they get wrong the most often is they see that their kids have a purpose, but instead of focusing on the family purpose and understanding that the Lord brought you and your spouse together and you got married not just because you thought the other one was cute or fun to be around, but because there was an actual commonality, whether it was a common vision or a common goal or something that you felt you could do together much more effectively, then you could do it separately. We see our kids and and a lot of times we go, well yeah, I'm gonna help raise this one into whatever their purpose is, failing to realize that they're actually supposed to be a part of our purpose because the Lord has gifted them to be able to uplift and enrich what we already have going as a couple. Now, do they have their own giftings in that? Yeah, absolutely. And you know, especially when they get married, then they get to decide with their spouse, hey where are we going to participate and where do we feel the Lord leading us in moving forward? And so in that if the children choose to to go out or are encouraged to go out on their own, then it's well, we're developing this great legacy in our finances, but what's going to be the purpose of it later? Like do we know what our kids are going to do with it and do they have a common vision? That we have for where that can be used and how that can be used for the Lord's glory, not just for this temporary time. And I I think that's where the struggle has become is we've gotten so focused on the individual purpose in the world that we're not realizing there's a bigger legacy that can be left. And I don't know how many of your viewers are movie buffs. I don't necessarily consider myself a movie buff, but we are part of Angel Guild, and so. We get a lot of of feedback and when I think of Legacy, probably the best one and it's coming out here soon is at Thanksgiving is gonna be released the story Hershey, the movie. And it is the story of Milton and Kitty Hershey and how they not only developed the chocolate company and how that has grown to be if not the top chocolate company around the world, one of the top chocolate companies around the world, but they died without children. And they built the company during the Industrial Revolution, post Civil War in the United States. And they saw this great need for someone to help care for, especially the orphaned boys. So they built a school. And in building the school, they were caring for those boys, making sure that they had an education, making sure that they had a housing situation that was safe for them, that they had food on the table every day and could grow and mature in what the Lord had given for them to do as individuals. A lot of times those boys would grow up and then join the company, do internships at Hershey or, learn skills, that type of thing in Pennsylvania where they were at. And other times they would branch out into other areas for companies. But Kitty passed away fairly early. And Milton, when he passed away at the age of 88, he gifted all of his stock, his entire fortune to the Hershey Foundation, which is what ran the schools. And so it's incredible how his legacy has continued through the lives of all of these children. Sorry, that have gone through the schools and really been able to grow and learn and develop in these very safe places where that would not have been there otherwise. And to think it was a couple that never had any children of their own that was able to build it. So inspiring. when people do extraordinary things without even the desire to be seen, but just they they do the right thing even if no one's watching. Like that's the true definition of courage. Absolutely just makes me think, like, as a faith-driven leader, what if God's calling you, listener, to do something great like the Hershey's? or even the simple thing like Christina and Brian, what they're doing with their three kids. to give a vision for the next generation to learn how to walk by faith. And if you were going to speak you know, a coaching word to our listener who maybe this podcast is maybe one of the first things that's inspired them. Maybe they've heard a message or a sermon or a podcast and they want to take start taking steps to walk by faith and to really bring God into their business. What would be some of the things you'd recommend to them? And tell us more about your coaching and how people can can get to know you more. Yeah. So the first thing I'd recommend is get to know yourself really well. Like really well. for us, our first step was to do every single personality assessment we could find and then put it all together. Now, since then, since we did that process 12 years ago, we've partnered with a couple that started the purpose company. And they actually have an assessment that takes about six of the nine that we used and puts them all together into one assessment that's 20 minutes, it's about 140 questions and gives you 46 pages of your results. So you know everything from how you're led well, how you lead well, what frustrates you, what fulfills you, where your blind spots are, how you show up in relationships, and just a really good understanding of your nature and your nurture working together. So I would start there. And I'd start there because that's what we did. We had been through three years and I thought, I know myself really good. I'm like, the armchair psychologist. I love to sit and listen to people and hear their stories. I'm like, I can pinpoint you. but at the same time, I needed to make sure I knew who I was, who God had created me to be, and then who had He created to be me to be with my husband. And when we figured out who we were together and the things that were closest to our heart to really move forward. That's when we could start going, okay, these are the things that we're set to be. Because the biggest struggle for people today is identity. And we always look at our strengths and our weaknesses. It's one of those things that comes up in interview questions. It's one of those things we're always asked about of, you know, are actually working in your weaknesses? And the reality is when we don't see ourselves the way that God sees us, God only sees our strengths because He designed us for our strengths. He designed us to do some very specific things. That's where Jeremiah 29, 11, right? For I know the plans that I have for you and their plans to prosper you and to give you hope and a future. yeah. And then Ephesians 2:10, where God's mer workmanship created in his image to do the good things that he has set aside for us to do in advance. So when we look at those two things and we understand who he created us to be, he created our strengths in us. So that we can do those things and do them really well for his glory. What we perceive to be our weaknesses are actually somebody else's strengths. Just because we are not supposed to do them doesn't mean they're weakness. It means we're not supposed to do them. So if we try to do something that's in our weakness area, we actually take a blessing away from somebody else for being able to do what that is. So understanding yourself really well, knowing your identity and the things that you're supposed to do. understanding your purpose, that gives you what I call a filter. And I I hope a lot of your listeners still remember the old overhead projector where our teachers, even in kindergarten, would put an outline up on the screen and say, okay, this is a circle. And then they'd put something underneath it that was like a square. Does this fit? Nope, doesn't fit. Okay. That's not supposed to be there then. They put a triangle underneath it. Nope, doesn't fit. Okay. Don't do it. We're still dealing with a circle. Let's put an oval under it. well that's close. Maybe Nope, it's not a circle. So put it away, right? You're only looking for the circle. Well, that filter, that clarity and that purpose gives you your filter to know exactly what you're supposed to do. It's not that it's close, it's this is what you're supposed to do. So it gives you the filter to say yes to the things you're supposed to do, but no to all the things that aren't for you that are actually designed for someone else to do. Yeah, it's really good. Man, good rubber. So they can if they want to call you. Yeah. Yeah, if they want to get in touch with us. so our company is blend without breaking, all one word dot com. And the information's on there. If you're interested in learning more about who you are and getting that assessment done, just click on start your journey. And we offer those for forty-seven dollars individually. so you pay for every member of your family that wants to do that. But we also include a a Complimentary debrief with it so that you'll set up a time with us where we'll go through and help you understand your results a little bit better, a little more clearly. And then we do workshops with families that are interested in learning how they really come together well and how that blending happens. because we believe that my hand, my husband and I, who came from very different backgrounds. He is a farm boy from Northern Illinois. I'm a city girl from all over the place. We had to blend right away. So that we didn't wind up breaking when we did go through all of those challenges during that three years of separation and having new kiddos and young kiddos in our family. Wow. Yeah. Man, this has been good. Thank you so much for joining us. and thank you for having me. Yeah, love to potentially have you on again. I know that you've got some books in the hopper. Anything you want to share about those before before we end? I do. So I always get asked to we started out the conversation about how I raised those kiddos and so I'm working on a book on it because I've got kids that are literally traveling the world and when people ask me, Aren't you worried about it? I'm like, No, I I'm not. And so what are the the principles and the philosophy that I used? that's what my book is on. Hopefully it'll help other moms and other parents to understand that, you know, you are doing exactly what you're supposed to do, even the bad days. Or what you perceive to be the bad days, God is using that to mold your children into who he needs them to be moving forward. my son, when he finished up basic training for the military, said, Thanks, Mom, you got me ready for my drill instructors. And I was like, You're welcome. Like, I'm not sure how to take that, right? But I knew okay. He was ready for whatever it was and knew who he was and and that he was exactly where he was supposed to be. So it's been great. Amazing. Thanks for your time. It was great, great conversation. Absolutely. Thank you so much. All right.