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Ep. 80 - A Midwestern Furlough: Life Amongst the White People w/ Missionary Kid Ian
82 Plays3 years ago
This week, we’re joined by missionary kid and lifelong Hong Kong resident, Ian! Ian’s family moved to Hong Kong when he was only two years old, and he’s spent most of his life there. Many of us that grew up in the church remember missionary families visiting periodically to raise support. Ian has lived on the other side of that equation, and he shares some hilarious stories about visiting small town America as a kid!
But first, we’re excited to welcome back creator and Casey’s wife April Gloria, who joins us to discuss another amazing example of purity culture literature, “Marriable: Taking the Desperate Out of Dating” by Hayley and Michael DiMarco! As you might expect, it’s filled with great advice, like “don’t marry your best friend unless you’re gay,” and “nice guys really do finish last.” Bring a notepad, because you’re going to need it! Follow April Gloria on Instagram and Twitter @_aprilgloria, and if you’re not in our Discord server, yet, you can find a link on our Instagram page!
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Transcript
Cultural Allegiance and Identity
00:00:00
Speaker
Is there a pledge of allegiance to Hong Kong?
00:00:04
Speaker
or to China? And no, not really. That's because America is God's chosen nation. So it makes sense that they wouldn't have. It seemed like I would go into like churches and like, I remember going to like this pastor's office. He had like a life, life, life size cut out of like George W. Bush, like dressed up, dressed as Uncle Sam, dressed as Uncle.
00:00:36
Speaker
Did he make you pledge allegiance to that? No, he did not.
Host Introductions and Nostalgic Stories
00:01:00
Speaker
Hey everybody, we're back with another episode of Growing Up Christian. I'm Sam. I'm Casey. And I'm April, back again with some stellar dating advice. Third time, this is the third, third time not counting being a guest. Right. You're officially, even though you're married to one of the hosts, you're officially a friend of the show. Oh, perfect. I feel really honored.
00:01:27
Speaker
It's not because not because of any reason just you know, you guys think I'm very cool. The coolest. So this weekend I was this past weekend I was at a show that
00:01:41
Speaker
was very meaningful to me. I was this, the New Found Glory Sticks and Stones 20 year anniversary tour. They were doing like this five day like festival across, I don't know, a few different states, but they came to my area, it was like an outdoor festival. And I've talked about that album a little bit, but that was like one of those, I bought it when I was like 13 and I used to like, I have like super vivid memories of, I would like volunteer to mow my parents lawn.
00:02:10
Speaker
at that age because we had a riding lawnmower and I would just like put it, we had a big yard too. So I would just like put that in and just listen to it non-stop, like back to back all the time. And I got it. If Spotify, you know Spotify gives you your like yearly recap. Yeah. Like I would have loved to have known what my like recap would have been on that album. But
00:02:36
Speaker
So they play the entire album front to back and that's also weird feeling when you're at like a twenty year anniversary tour for something like that feels like officially fucking old but I ran into like a bunch of people throughout the day that I knew and
Listener Feedback and Concert Memories
00:02:51
Speaker
One of the guys I ran into, we were talking, and he mentioned listening to the podcast and stuff, and he was like, man, it's been cool. I really like listening to it. One of the reasons I really like listening to it is I disagree with just about everything you say.
00:03:10
Speaker
but it was funny to be here. You in particular? Yeah, oh yeah, me in particular. Just coming from like a more lefty point of view, I guess, is more what it comes down to. But what I liked about it is that he finds it entertaining even when he finds it disagreeable. And I think that is what I find to be probably one of the better compliments we've got. Like you don't even have to agree with us to like listening to it. And I appreciate that more than you know.
00:03:38
Speaker
Yeah, shout out to my fellow milk toast conservatives. Yeah. It was cool. It was fun to run into people. I don't go to shows much these days. So especially it wasn't just a show. It was like, it started at three, you know, it was like, there's like nine bands or something like that on it. So whoa.
00:03:59
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, it was cool. A lot of them have been bands for a long next. Newfound Glory has been around forever, so they just asked a bunch of bands that they like to do the tour. So Piebald was up on it. I don't know if you guys knew Piebald, but they know the name. They've been around for fucking forever. Bayside, Four Years Strong. Oh, yeah, I know who they are. Heavy hitters. It was a really fun time. Yeah, that's like my the the emo high school days, all those bands. Yep. Yeah.
00:04:29
Speaker
That sounds like fun. Yeah.
April's Dating Book Journey
00:04:31
Speaker
So April is back again to talk about another really cool book. So the past two times that you've been on for an intro, we've talked about a book called Dateable. Yep. And it's just a bunch of great dating advice.
00:04:49
Speaker
from a couple of people who are fluent in, you know, relationship science. Yeah. Oh, they have all down and particularly of the James Dobson dating theory. Yeah, but it's for it's for teens. So it's cool. Yeah. They have cool things to say. Yeah.
00:05:10
Speaker
Um, so yeah, the dateable book, I actually have to have, I have to state an update from the last time that I was on here. Cause last time I said that my parents bought that book for me, the dateable book, but I was looking in my diaries from high school because that's a normal thing to do. And I found that I actually bought the book for myself. So I inflicted this, uh, you know, upon myself. So sorry, parents.
00:05:37
Speaker
You sought wisdom. They trained up a child in the way that she should go. Yeah, exactly. Did you learn about this book? If you can recall, did you learn about this book and think and hear here's some positive reviews and think that you needed to buy it or were you at a bookstore? OK, I mean, you already have it.
00:05:57
Speaker
Oh, we had a bookstore you saw and you're like, Oh, I think I need it was number two. Okay, it was the latter. I was on a college for a weekend trip to Houghton College in New York. One of my friends went with me, she ended up actually going there. But I went there and Christian college. Yes, it's a Christian college actually did not have a address code, which I thought was interesting.
00:06:20
Speaker
Whoa, those little pieces of shit. I know. My mom was like, maybe because it's so cold up there, they don't need to have a dress code. Like, oh my gosh. You can put a collar under your sweater. Come on. Exactly. But yeah, I saw it. I wrote that in my diary too. I wrote everything down because.
00:06:37
Speaker
I just did that. And I wrote that's amazing. Yeah. I wrote it. How much did I write? I was just like, I found this book in the bookstore called datable and stuff. And it seemed really good. I started reading it in the store. And then later I went online and I ordered it from some online bookstore and
00:06:57
Speaker
Then I read it. However, I think I'd said before, but if anyone missed it, I had, I used to write really long lists of what I wanted in a future partner. And after the book, I was like, you know, I don't think I'm going to write really long lists anymore because there's no person that can live up to the fantasy person you have in your head. So I'm just going to have Jesus be a Christian and, uh, something I forget what else it was like three things. I'm like, Oh, wow. So emotional maturity.
00:07:26
Speaker
in one area of my life when I was 15, I guess. You definitely flew very close to incel territory there, though. You could have taken that and gone completely the other direction. Yeah, I could have. Nobody will live up to this. I guess I'm marrying Jesus. Yeah. It's funny to ask. I was going to ask what it's been like for you, Casey, knowing that you can't live up to her former fantasies about Jesus. Oh, my gosh. No.
00:07:56
Speaker
Well, you know, you just got to rewrite the list. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I've looked at my former lists, and I don't know, I think I did pretty well, actually. Yeah. And for the things you didn't, you know, it's like taking the stickers off the Rubik's Cube. Yeah. It can make it work. A solid, like, what, 65 out of 100?
00:08:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. I think that's probably about right. If you're going to write a hundred things down of what you want, I mean, I'd say 40 is pretty good, given- Well, some days, somebody ought to break that list out and say- Yeah, that'd be fun. Some of the things are kind of, I don't know.
00:08:37
Speaker
kind of weird, very specific. Number one on the list had to be like, has a passion for the Lord or something like that, right? It was like on fire for God, missions minded, because I was fresh off on mission trip. There was that whole thing. Was there anything about facial hair? Did you want a mustache, a goatee? What was your- I would say no facial hair.
00:09:02
Speaker
Oh, sweet. You did look Casey. Good job. Yeah. Yeah, I liked I didn't like anyone who looked like a lot older than me. I wanted like around my age. So no one I knew had beards when they were 15. So Casey still looks around your age when you when you were that age. So that's also a win.
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, one day they're going to think that he's my child or something. It's like a little chubby cherub. It doesn't help that you put him in the little seat in the carriage every time you go grocery shopping. If you stop doing that, maybe. Just asking for it.
00:09:41
Speaker
If I sat in that seat, you'd have to call the fire department to get my eyes out of it. Like a Jaws of Life that to crack those bitches out. You have to get one of those seat and a half chairs.
Critique of the Book 'Marriable'
00:09:54
Speaker
Oh, I thought you used the ones with the little car in the front and he just. Oh, wow. You're talking about the seat. He just toned it through the grocery store. Oh my gosh.
00:10:07
Speaker
Okay, so in comparison to datable, tell us what this book is and what's different about it. All right, so this book is called Marriable, you know, the companion to datable. So this is kind of like the datable book, but for people who are searching for a marriage partner,
00:10:26
Speaker
And it says the subtitle is taking the desperate out of dating. I find that this is so weird because like datable was about finding a marriage partner. Well, maybe this is for people who dated but didn't read that book and they now they want to get married. So you have to read this book. I think it's for both. Well, the datable book, the whole premise of the datable book is it's not going to last. So don't bother. Yeah.
00:10:53
Speaker
which is weird that I got that other mindset out of it because I'm a natural pessimist. So it could just be like, oh, why bother? But I don't know. Hormones were stronger than that, I guess. But yeah, so it's called Maribel. It's by Hailey DeMarco and Michael DeMarco. So the same
00:11:12
Speaker
lady author as dateable, but it's with her husband this time. Yeah, so whoever the other dude was, he got pushed out of the sequel. They recast him as, what, Dustin? Is that what your name is? Justin. Justin. Yeah. Do you think he was vying and he came out with the courts to try to get some residuals from Marable after they cut him out?
00:11:40
Speaker
Oh, I don't know. I would love to think that that's true. Yes. He does. So they're squabbling over the pennies they made from their horrible dating book.
00:11:50
Speaker
They got a couple from me. So congrats. Her husband realized that they were having an emotional affair after reading datable and was an emotional affair. They read that, they read that quippy back and forth from the intro to the datable book. And he's like, Hey, wait, there's a lot of heat here. These changes are on fire. One thing about this book is that it was written in 2005, two years after datable and
00:12:17
Speaker
the graphics in here, you can tell that the internet was just becoming a thing. So it has like, if you're not watching, I'm not watching the video, but dildo on the front cover. Oh, that's a phone, but okay, do what you want with it.
00:12:33
Speaker
It's cordless. Don't lose your grip. We need to take a picture of that from a distance so everyone, and I can, we can put on the Instagram, so everyone can know why it looks like a good builder with a fat set of balls. I do like a YouTube, like a YouTuber thumbnail thing and just be like, yeah, there we go. I've never seen a book before. And now who's staring at it?
00:12:56
Speaker
It's a girl. She's desperately awaiting her suitors call, and it's never coming. No, and if he doesn't call, you're not allowed to call him. And by never coming, you mean? It goes for both of them. That's a successful Christian marriage, if you ask me. Oh, my word.
00:13:18
Speaker
Oh, yeah. So the inside of the book looks kind of like a web page surfer or web. I don't know. I don't know what I'm trying to say. Surf in the World Wide Web. There's like a search bar at the top and there's a picture of a cursor over one of the chapters and they all are underlying like their links. Oh, yeah. It looks like not like a late 90s, early 2000s Internet Explorer.
00:13:43
Speaker
Yes, exactly. Yes. In the two years between datable and mariable, do you feel that the author, the primary author grew? I think so, but not in a good way. It seems like they took some of the stuff from the datable book and just amped it up a little bit. They're double dipping, really. Yes.
00:14:10
Speaker
datable was supposed to be for teenagers. And I think this one is more supposed to be for like full adults that are looking for a marriage partner. Was this pre, um, is this like pre Tinder and stuff? Or do they get, uh, well, there's a chapter called online dating, not just online dating was that online dating was mostly act. I think in that time, do you said 2005? I feel like online dating was actually about,
00:14:38
Speaker
Online dating. I feel like it was more in the app era that people were like, I'd like to just find someone to have sex with. Yeah, this was still unlike you were saying eHarmony commercials on TV and stuff. Yeah. I think eHarmony started out as a Christian thing. Oh, I wouldn't be surprised. We'll have to look into that, but I'm pretty sure. Yeah. What's our first section that you've prepared for us?
00:15:02
Speaker
So our first section is so going with the Internet theme, this entire book, the chapters seem very clickbaity. I don't know what the book version of clickbait would be, but the chapter is called Don't Marry Your Best Friend Unless You're Gay. And that is... I don't like to be supporting homosexual marriages.
00:15:28
Speaker
is going to say that's clickbait for Christians. Yeah, they're just like, gay? Why is what is the word gay doing in here? I think they could have I don't I don't I think the way that that came off is probably different than they intended.
00:15:42
Speaker
It is because I read that chapter first. I'm like, what is this? And so I know everyone reading it is going to be like, well, it doesn't mention anything about like gayness at all in there. It doesn't say anything about about that. It's just why you shouldn't consider your spouse your best friend or why you shouldn't be like best friend has to be the same sex. I'm guessing it obviously is where they're going. You can throw away your best friends who can't throw away your marriage.
00:16:10
Speaker
Pretty much, yeah. You don't have to and you can actually throw away your marriage too. That's the thing, it's just so weird. And then it has these really, I need to, I'll read it, but there's sweeping generalizations of what men's friendships and women's friendships look like. Oh, I'm excited about this. These are good. Oh yeah, okay.
00:16:29
Speaker
Nothing makes me want to marry my best friend more than sweeping generalizations, so let's go. Yeah, it's amazing. Okay, male bonding. Attendance is 100% of the grade. At the core of man-to-man relationships is a simple question. Did both guys show up? When guys have other guys as best friends, they're defined by the number and types of activities they participate in. This means that if you're a guy, your best friends historically have been those who've done things with you
00:16:58
Speaker
like sports, blowing things up, making noises with your bodies, doing semi-illegal things with automobiles and snapping towels at each other in the locker room. Oh my God. Figuring another guy from the airport and helping him move is a telltale sign of a budding best friend.
00:17:12
Speaker
And during these activities, the guys have the option of hardly speaking without any danger of offending the other guy. That's part one. I don't think any of that is true for me, but I guess that needs them gay. So I'm outing myself, I guess.
00:17:28
Speaker
We'll get to stuff in part two or in the next next excerpt, but I was thinking the same thing about Casey too, because I don't know, it's just not true of all dudes. Like I've known guys- Well, men don't have meaningful relationships, you know? That's what that's saying. Yeah. On an emotional level at all, because men don't talk about feelings. Right.
00:17:49
Speaker
She learned everything that she knows about men from like watching like 2000 sitcoms. Yeah. Right. The girl with the dumb ape scratching and farting. Right. Exactly.
Generational Friendship Dynamics
00:18:00
Speaker
It's like everything that person knows about men is from like one episode of The Simpsons and looking at what Homer's like and you're like, oh, OK.
00:18:09
Speaker
I don't all I know is that all the relationships I've ever had were built on actual conversations and getting to know those people. It's like I think that's normal. That's like the way that it should be to make have a close relationship.
00:18:24
Speaker
They're saying that like, oh guys don't need close relationships. They just need to sit in the same room in front of a TV. That's it. So dumb. No one does if you're sitting in the same room for hours and not saying anything to each other except for like grunting and farting. You're right. That's weird. Probably you should you need to talk to somebody like professionally and deal with that doesn't make any sense. No one's really like that.
00:18:47
Speaker
Yeah, it just perpetuates the whole thing like, oh, dudes don't show feeling. It's like a disservice to guys to reduce them to that. Yeah, now Justin might be that.
00:19:00
Speaker
Yeah, maybe he is. I don't know. Justin might be a troglodyte turd with no brain cells. Maybe this is a passive-aggressive hit at him from the chick's husband. Yeah. She's like, I'm really sick of you sitting next to you on the couch and not talking to me and just farting on my thigh. Yeah.
00:19:21
Speaker
Okay, here's the here's the female friend grading class participation and book reports. Here we go. Girls on the other hand will quantify their best friends not for the activities they do together, but rather by the following formula, take the sum and sheer numbers of words, hopes, fears and tears exchanged with one another and multiply by the frequency of contact. This phenomenon is known scientifically as get ready for this non stop us talk us lot of us.
00:19:49
Speaker
Oh my god. Oh, that's clever. That's cringe. Yeah, when it comes to words, make no mistake, girls want quality and quantity. But if they must, they'll be grudgingly settled for just quantity. So a guy's key in on the activity or simply being in the presence of their friend to establish best buddyhood. Girls care less about where they are with their gal pal.
00:20:11
Speaker
and focus on the quality of sharing and quantity of conversation. I was never a chatty person when I was younger. The quality spoke to me a lot. I eventually got to a place where I could tell my best friends things that I was thinking.
00:20:32
Speaker
which is a whole other thing, but it was kind of just like, I don't know. It's, I don't even know. Let's just not, I mean, maybe some ladies are like that. They just want to yak all day and about nothing. I could see this being more about, it seems like they're talking about like boom or age people and how they interact with other genders. Like it, that makes it sound like, yeah, it just makes it sound like they'll,
00:20:58
Speaker
Again, everything they're going to talk about obviously is going to be based on ridiculous stereotypes. Maybe there's some people that follow that and whatever. If you do that and you're happy, that's fine. But it's a little weird to just be like, well, this is how girls are. They just talk.
00:21:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's true that people older than the next generation up, they don't really have a lot of friends and aren't very good at making friends. That's a sweeping generalization in itself. I know not everybody's like that, but a lot of people in my orbit when I look at them, it's like they get together for casual things where they make small talk and a lot of like, boy, we're getting a lot of rain this year and blah, blah, blah.
00:21:47
Speaker
Well, did you see this? Did you see that on TV? Blah, blah, blah. And but they don't have a lot of like long lasting meaningful friendships where they really invest in each other. And I think that was more the model up until like, I don't know, the last few decades. It was like you don't need friends. You have a family now and your family is the only thing that you can really be interested in. And that's it.
00:22:09
Speaker
Yeah. You feel like when they talk to you that they're not really interested in you. They're just interested in having you see them talking to you or something. We're out. We're having fun. We're talking. Yeah. We're giggling a little bit.
00:22:26
Speaker
Yeah. And if you don't seem very interested, they're just like, what's wrong? Why aren't you talking? There's nothing to talk about. Well, you should talk anyway. Yeah. I guess it's hard to parse out because if we're talking about boomers, we're talking about obviously, like you said, in generalizations. But yeah, I think there are truths to that. Like, I think a lot of people our age would say similarly that their parents aren't out.
00:22:55
Speaker
They're not going out, hanging out, doing stuff all the time. They don't have a wide group of friends. They might have a couple they go out with frequently for a time, but then maybe that kind of fizzles out or shifts. Most of their interactions, if you're talking about our circle, is probably through church. Like, oh, let's do maybe a dinner or something like that. They might watch a game together.
00:23:18
Speaker
I think that there are, yeah, it does feel like there are some differences in the way that like boomers have friendships and what those are like, as opposed to what it's like for millennials. But also, I'm wondering if in like 20 to 30 years, I'm going to be in the same boat.
00:23:35
Speaker
Yeah, I was gonna say we sound very like, Oh, the older people don't understand us and stuff that sounds like, like, when I was like, whoopsie, seven, eight, nine, 10. And we were doing like home trip, like, my, my parents had like, and they're, those are still, they're good friends. They don't live as close to them anymore. Cause we moved when I was 13. But yeah, like we had a good, we had a real group of friends. My parents would like, they'd really, they'd get together, they'd go out, they'd
00:24:00
Speaker
You know, like it was we were all really close. Yeah. And those are still my parents close friends. So that's good. I do. I mean, like maybe like maybe they're somewhat of an exception. But I don't know the type of I feel like the types of it might just be Internet generation people. Things maybe change a little bit. But it does feel like the types of hanging out in the way that people hang out, it feels a little bit different. But that also might just have to do with
00:24:29
Speaker
so many like being being older church folk versus people that we know who almost all left and have a different way of hanging out.
00:24:42
Speaker
Also, I want to say my parents had some good friends growing up. They happened to all be in the military, so they ended up moving away every time. That kind of sucked. They did have friends and we would be friends with their kids and everything, which was really fun. I wonder if part of the friendship, being able to access a deeper level with people
00:25:05
Speaker
with people our age and these days is because of the internet, it's easier for some people, including myself, to share with people, maybe, I don't know, not overshare, but like it's easier to open up to people when you're texting back and forth, rather than just like sitting down face to face being like, here's all my problems.
00:25:22
Speaker
Yeah, and there's a lot more like cultural support for talking about what's going on in your life and stuff whereas before there wasn't really a platform for it and it wasn't necessarily like encouraged a lot of times right especially if you were in the church and like there's a Stoicism that you're supposed to have you're supposed to be the leader of your family if you're a male and this as a spiritual leader if you're really having difficulties or not connecting with things on a spiritual level like that you do have to
00:25:52
Speaker
navigate not wanting to talk about that with the shin that might come with that in a church setting. So I think even those settings set you up for having to put on a false sense of stoicism as well. Yeah, mental health is a big one too.
00:26:08
Speaker
Like if you're like, Oh, I'm struggling with this. They're just like, Oh, well, Oh, you're fine. You know, you're not, you're not depressed. Come on. Like, what do you have to be sad about? Like that's kind of a big thing, but like people, I mean, my, my mom and my family's really great about that. Like there are real big proponents of getting the help that you need and like medications and stuff. But I feel like I've seen like people in other circles that are just like, if you take medicine for something, then there's, it's like a big thing. Like, Oh, we don't take medicine for stuff. Like we just, we deal with it.
00:26:38
Speaker
you know you're fine and all this stuff and so that can make it hard to talk to people about things if you know that's what they're gonna think about it. It's hard makes it more hard to open up to them. Yeah, definitely. All right, let's let's let's hit on we're already like 27 minutes into this thing and we've gotten through like a tiny section.
Controversial Relationship Advice
00:26:56
Speaker
Okay, so with the next one is the well the next two are basically just two parts of the same chapter because it was that Ridiculous chapter this can't end here. Well, this is now a This is a we're now in a book study together and we do a series like a book series. Yeah Okay, this one's called Nice guys really do finish last wait. Hold up the picture that guy real quick. Oh
00:27:25
Speaker
It's a guy, it looks like a news boy. He's wearing a news boy cap. And he says, extra, extra. I finished in last place. And that, that, that basket he's holding is full of pop vinyl figurines. Oh my gosh. Unopened. Can't open them. Don't open. They'll lose, they'll lose a little bit. Oh my gosh. That's my 401k.
00:27:49
Speaker
That's your retirement plan. Mine was Beanie Babies, so I'm fucked. I was thinking about Beanie Babies, too. All right, so this chapter is about Reddit. I mean, you know, you didn't hear me say that.
00:28:04
Speaker
Okay. It's about Reddit or it's not. It's about Reddit. Redditors. Taking a shot at Redditors. Taking a shot at them. Because they're kind of awful. Or maybe four channels. This might be the one point of overlap that we have with this person is that Reddit sucks. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. If you can't delete the comments, don't look. That's my policy.
00:28:27
Speaker
Okay, so this is about All right, we found the first guys voted off on dating shows were the nice guys for centuries nice guys have been saying I just need to treat her like crap and then she'll like me Okay, blah blah blah blah we might investigate the following Hypothesis she doesn't dislike you because you're nice. She dislikes you because you're too transparent
00:28:50
Speaker
The problem with the nice guy isn't that he's too nice. It's that he's too fast in giving up his emotions in his heart. For men to have emotions is okay, and even normal, but to readily express them is a more feminine trait. Whether this comes from social programming or divine design, it is now the status quo.
00:29:08
Speaker
Because of this, women tend to set the emotional tone and rate of emotional disclosure in relationships. If the man is more emotional than the woman, she feels off balance. She feels like a lesbian. Oh my gosh. It feels like overkill because she isn't that emotional yet. When the nice guy takes over the emotional speed control, he can seem rather girly.
00:29:28
Speaker
all right um this there's one there's one little thing that really speaks for itself yeah it does it does oh actually no i'm gonna read the next yeah oh that's okay that's the precursor to the real the real part of this okay so that's the only part okay it's about saying i love you all right
00:29:49
Speaker
If he were to say, I love you too soon, before she's ready, then he would risk appearing like the nice guy, too emotionally involved too soon. As she moved the emotional meter further and further along the continuum, the conscientious male
00:30:03
Speaker
monitors her levels and performs the delicate dance that allows them to be always leading her emotionally, yet only to the extent that she is already there. The big double standard for guys to accept is this. Guys says I love you before girl is ready, turn off. Girl says I love you before guys ready, still in the game. Guys, you can rescue your almost loved one with this response.
00:30:25
Speaker
Never say it back if she's the first one to say it. If you think you're never going to feel it, you need to use this opportunity to let her know. But if you do love her somewhere along the line, you miss the signs of her love. You'll need to recreate the event so you can say it first, showing that you're able to read and lead her emotionally. Things will be awkward, but be patient. You need to emotionally manipulate this poor girl.
00:30:54
Speaker
uh cover your tracks with we've got something special here let's keep it going cover your lies and regroup that's part one holy shit all right so the first part is basically like what the first part you read was basically about like you should kind of be an asshole even though they didn't phrase it yeah don't don't be too emotional because that's girly girls don't like it's it's funny because they say girls thrive on
00:31:23
Speaker
Giving emotionally getting emotionally from their friends, but then they're like don't the guy don't give her anything emotionally ever Then but then they flip it and they say that you need to be the first one to do that like yeah It's they that's what's the same thing that happened the date of a book is they're like go up on one stereotype and then they and the next section they're like but also and they're literally saying the opposite of what they said three paragraphs earlier it's like
00:31:50
Speaker
Be emotionally unavailable. Don't give into those emotions. But if she says, I love you first, you need to make her forget that that even happened. Gaslight the shit out of that bitch and then tell her you love her and make her think it was you the whole time that came up with that strategy. It's crazy telling the guys you must be in control if she thinks that she's in control. No, you show her that you are in control and you let out emotions when you want to. You give her a snippet. Give her a little crumb of a feeling.
00:32:19
Speaker
like every three weeks but only if she doesn't give you anything first you be the one to do it yeah it's like chain her up in your basement uh you know feed her when she's starving to death and not when she asks for it and then when you do it when you do it she'll say thank you and and then you know that she'll appreciate you and once she finally develops full-blown Stockholm syndrome you know that you're ready for marriage
00:32:44
Speaker
Yes, exactly. Thanks for the summary of this book. You know what this is? This is like it's like they took they rewrote the game with like a Christian tilt. You ever heard of that book? Unfortunately, basically, it's a book that says treat girls like crap and they'll like you. Yeah, it's like a pickup artist how to sort of thing is what it's intended to be. I remember some guys in my dorm were really into it. Not at Liberty, but at Hillsdale. Yeah. And
00:33:14
Speaker
It was like an older movie, right? No, no, no, this is a book. It's also a movie, but well, it's probably in quote self help book how to get girls by being a douche. It was a lot of that. It was like, hey, you need to make her seem feel like you're out of her league even if you're not like and you do that by being cold and dismissive and like treating her poorly and stuff. And that'll make her want you and she'll. Yeah.
00:33:42
Speaker
Okay, and they were convinced man the guys in the room next to me were like convinced and one guy had actually like gotten a girlfriend I don't know if he did any of the stuff that was in the book, but he was like an acolyte of this book And I think it was really popular like in that era like that 2000s era thing wasn't that when like nagging was a thing and
00:34:04
Speaker
Oh my gosh, my favorite thing. Yeah, I do not respond to that at all. No, you don't. I can riff back and forth a little bit, but if a dude, I mean, I've had people try that on me and it doesn't work. That's the fastest way to get me to never talk to you again. I don't even recall what negging is.
00:34:28
Speaker
Basically just being mean to someone in hopes that they'll be like, Oh, I want his approval. Let me pull your hair and poke you in the back of the head in class with a pencil. It'd be like, it'd be something like you're, you're making an offhanded rude comment or something like that. It'd be like, you know, you're not the prettiest person in your friend group, but you're all right. The Helga Pataki approach. It's like, Oh, you're kind of a slut, but you know, you're all right to hang out with.
00:34:53
Speaker
What did you say? You're kind of a slut, but you're fine to hang out with. What did you say, Sam? I missed a reference. I said the Helga, I think the Helga Pataki approach from Hey Arnold. Oh my gosh. Yeah, exactly. Now that could be turned into income, so maybe all these people should open a website for that. You want that guy's attention? Call him football head.
00:35:24
Speaker
The game was also a 1997 thriller with Michael Douglas and that's what I thought you were talking about when you said the game. I don't think I've seen it. That's probably the better game. Stick with that game, avoid the game in paperback. Don't give the book a second glance.
00:35:41
Speaker
Please. It is. I mean, it's weird because it's like there's there's like pieces in there that are kind of it's like a misinterpretation of things that are kind of true. Like if you just puke all of your feelings all over someone that you don't really have that emotional connection with yet, it's probably probably it might scare them off. It can't be weird. I've had people overshare the first time you meet them and you're like, whoa, bud. Yeah.
00:36:11
Speaker
Maybe wait until our second date. Do like romantic attraction and stuff aside. Like there was always that kid in youth group too, that just like he would just like throw up like whatever.
Youth Group and Relationship Dynamics
00:36:23
Speaker
I don't know. It was like, uh, usually in the form of a prayer request when everyone got to say their piece. Yeah. I mean, I get that on the internet too, like her on Twitch or like, if I'm trapped behind a booth at a Comic Con, like.
00:36:37
Speaker
They'll just come up and tell me the whole thing. I'm like, wait, what's your name? I don't know you. It's a little uncomfy. People at Comic-Cons like to list off their medications within the first few minutes of meeting them.
00:36:50
Speaker
Yeah, we're not good friends yet. I don't know. It's a little off-putting at times. They call it trauma dumping. Trauma dumping. There we go. That's a great term for it. There's that, and everybody's got a friend or is a friend that
00:37:11
Speaker
gets very attached way too quickly like you know there's a point at which like you can really hit it off with someone you shouldn't be telling them you love them no like that's that's a lot to throw on site right and there's definitely more going on there if you're doing that like
00:37:29
Speaker
Is that an attempt to like lock somebody in or, you know, anxious attachment style? Maybe like they're just like, I want to keep them. And they just like do it all the wrong way. Yeah. I mean, dropping the album early can definitely be. I think that person might be on their way out. And let's see if I can pull it back in with this. They're not going to be too off put by it. Yeah. Yeah.
00:37:55
Speaker
It's more about like misinterpreting the other person's signs than it is like some sort of bird like mating dance that you have to fluff your plumage and leader into the trees, you know, and get her approval. Yeah. OK, this the last like little segment, it's like it can continue this conversation because it's related to the bad guy thing. It's like this this chap, this little excerpt in black. It's in black. So that means, you know, it's edgy and serious.
00:38:25
Speaker
Something naughty this way comes. Something naughty. Okay, it says the initial attraction of the bad boy and the text is in red, so you know.
00:38:35
Speaker
Okay, the bad boy that girls squirm over typically seems to have a well-defined personality. He has a style all his own. He has a suave confidence that might almost seem like arrogance to some, but at least he knows who he is and what he wants. He's a man's man. Firm, silent, confident. He doesn't smile a lot like a schoolgirl. He doesn't get overly excited or giddy. He doesn't have a bunch of girlfriends who consider him just one of the girls. He has a typically male
00:39:01
Speaker
He has the typically male characteristics that draw the attention of the female. This is like a nature documentary. The female. When he picks her up for a date, he isn't standing at attention like a lovestruck schoolboy. He's calm and casual, in control. If he offers flowers, they almost look like an afterthought. Not a bouquet he spent hours searching for. His understated actions make the female
00:39:24
Speaker
think perhaps he's had so much experience dating that this isn't anything new. That must mean a lot of girls like him, and therefore he must be quite a catch. Follow the female logic? Girls yearn for the bad boy because he seems to know more than he's letting on. He doesn't gush over her. He clearly likes her, but he's holding something back, and that's intriguing. He isn't afraid to ask her out or take her hand or to lead the way.
00:39:45
Speaker
In her estimation, he's a real man, and what's most important is that he makes her feel like a real woman. Why? Because he has no female characteristics that compete with her own. Instead, he seems to need her to bring the female traits to the relationship. It's a perfect union, each falling in where the other's lacking. Is that a sex reference? The man with no name, and you can be like the doubting damsel in distress.
00:40:15
Speaker
Yeah, like, like you said with the things that might seem good, like it's it is good to have confidence. It's not good to like overwhelm somebody with like not love bomb them right away. But like to seem cold and distant and not care like not. Oh, I just got these flowers for you. Who cares?
00:40:34
Speaker
They don't even know where we're from. Like, oh, I would not feel special going out with somebody like that. I would love to have somebody like like Casey would know like what my favorite flower is and pick up a bouquet of like certain flowers that he knows. I don't know. It's just I don't know. Maybe it's being married for like 12 years that I'm just like, what is this? Why would anybody want this? But I know people date those people. I don't know.
00:41:00
Speaker
it's just it's so extreme it's very extreme yeah it's like oh let me go and find the flowers that i know this person hates so i can uh yeah make her feel like shit and then she'll be like oh he doesn't care about me i should love him like you like this whole thing is setting up an awful toxic kind of relationship that is just vying for his approval and he's never giving it except in small teeny doses okay i'll hold your hand but i'm gonna i'm gonna smirk while i do it
00:41:28
Speaker
He pins her cressage on real casual like and stabs her in the chest with it. He doesn't even put the flowers on her wrist. He just hands it to her. Here you go. Yeah. And then, and then, oh, that compliments each other perfectly or wherever they feel like that's the holes you're feeling. No pun intended. Cause that can't happen before marriage, but that section says to me, I feel the holes.
00:41:58
Speaker
That section to me, you could condense all of that down into, I wish Justin made me feel like a real woman. Yeah. It's an insane book. There's more in the series too, isn't there? Isn't there more of these? Well, Hailey has written multiple books and I think I told, I don't remember if we looked through the titles last time, but she's written one called
00:42:25
Speaker
The dirt on sex. The dirt on breaking up. Mean girls. Mean girls all grown up surviving caddy and conniving women. The gospel unplugged. And there's another one called like Too Sexy or something. Like a lot of her books have like a gal looking torso on the front, which is so weird because it's like, don't dress too sexy. Here's a book with a lady's torso on the front.
00:42:53
Speaker
This one has a very male looking torso on the front, but that's just it, right? I feel like she's probably got a book in the in the works. That's like how to become a correspondent for One America News Network. Oh, my gosh. So, yeah, there's a lot of books. It's like, well, the torsos are almost like, oh, this is these are all the clothes that you can't wear. But yeah, she's written a lot.
00:43:20
Speaker
I have one called, uh, I found these on, I did not give money to the authors. I bought these on thrift books. So they're secondhand. I got this one, the variable one and one called the datable rules, but I didn't know much about it. And it's basically just like a workbook for the datable book. Let's do it. Yeah. I haven't looked through that one much yet, but this one, I was just like, I looked at the chapters. I'm just like, don't marry your bet. What?
00:43:46
Speaker
And there's another chapter called how being best friends or no how being just friends is a waste of time. So basically, if you're not looking for marriage, don't talk to anybody.
00:43:56
Speaker
She really is a great way of making relationships seem like cold, sterile, and unappealing. It's like a business transaction, like in the 50s or something. A handshake deal. Next, she's going to be telling the ladies to pop some Xanax while they do housework.
00:44:18
Speaker
Well, thank you, April, for sharing your findings with us. We appreciate it. Yeah, it's always fun. I definitely want to get the next section of this. I can't stop here. Yeah. I'll find some other gems, possibly maybe dig into the diaries. We could do that in case anyone wants to
00:44:40
Speaker
know what teenage me was like. Spoiler alert, not great. So now's a good time to introduce our guest
Guest Ian's Missionary Background
00:44:53
Speaker
for this week, Ian, which he's just going by Ian to protect some people close to him and their work and stuff like that. But Ian actually reached out to us
00:45:07
Speaker
as a listener, he grew up as a missionary kid in Hong Kong. His parents have worked over there since he was like two years old. They've done a number of different things. They did more traditional missionary work and stuff like that. They've moved on since then to help him with human trafficking victims and their children. It sounds like they've done some really cool stuff.
00:45:32
Speaker
Ian came on to talk about like the unique experience of being the child of a missionary, you know, that occasionally has to come back to the US and give speeches at churches and try to gather support and stay with people in their houses. And just like all of the things that, you know, you probably saw missionaries in your church do and go through. This is an inside look at what it was like to be the kid in that situation. It was
00:46:02
Speaker
a ton of fun talking to him. Yeah, he was great. He originally reached out and him and I just got to talking and he put out a couple of experiences he had and we did touch on those in the podcast. And as soon as I read those stories, I was like, this is perfect. This is exactly the kind of stuff that we like to talk about here.
00:46:25
Speaker
he has some wicked funny stories it's almost hard to believe that they're true but they were as a missionary it's fun because he had he did grow up in hong kong so like his almost all of his experience in the u.s was just coming over here with his family trying to raise support he's very much more he's very much part of
00:46:45
Speaker
you know, the Hong Kong culture and what the way of life is out there. And it's not quite the same as it is out here, especially when you're going through the South raising money at Southern Baptist churches and things like that versus, you know, Southern Baptist, not really being a thing in Hong Kong. So even despite being missionaries that are supported by that, like his experience with that was very limited in kind of just those few times
00:47:14
Speaker
He was over here with his family. Yeah, so it's a fun conversation, and I think you're going to really enjoy it. Before we break to the episode, I just wanted to say thanks to everybody who's in the Discord. We've gotten some new people recently. It's actually been popping off in there lately. Yeah. It's been some funny conversations back and forth about some of the things going on.
00:47:38
Speaker
you know, some more serious things and people talking about some of the stuff that they're struggling with, with family and different stuff like that. If you're not in the Discord, you should join. It's a cool place to hang out with like-minded people and there's no cost or anything associated with it. If you want to join up, you can find a link in any of our social media pages. But yeah, come on over, join the conversation. And as always, if you're enjoying the show,
00:48:05
Speaker
it helps out a lot and really gets eyes on the show if you leave us a five star review on apple podcast or spotify wherever you listen to the show we would really appreciate a review thanks everybody who's done that we got a we got a stack now which is pretty cool.
00:48:25
Speaker
Yeah. And yeah, so look for the Discord link in our social media pages, leave us a review, share with friends, and enjoy our conversation with Ian. Hey everybody, we're back with our guest, Ian. Ian, thanks so much for joining us again. Yeah, good to be here again.
00:48:47
Speaker
Yeah, for anyone listening, again, is because we had literally just started recording and had to jump out and redo this. So anyway, why don't you go ahead and just kick us off by telling us a little bit about yourself, the way you grew up, where you grew up, that whole world, because I'm very much looking forward to hearing. Yeah, so I was born in the US in about like
00:49:12
Speaker
in a small town in Illinois, came to Hong Kong when I was about two years old, been here ever since. Yeah, so my parents are missionaries, Baptist missionaries to Hong Kong. And yeah, I can't remember what denomination did you guys grow up in? Baptist. Yeah. Well, I was looking non-denominational, but... I wonder what's going to happen, right? Yeah, exactly.
00:49:39
Speaker
We had a swimming pool. Like a non-denominational is essentially Southern Baptist minus like the culture. Okay. Yeah. No, it's funny cause like you go there and then it's like, um,
00:49:51
Speaker
I would have to go back like about every four years and my parents would visit all these different supporting churches. And there's a lot of First Baptists around here. Never a Second Baptist either. Everybody's the first. It's like the world's greatest cup of coffee sort of thing. Yeah. Did you guys mostly, did you spend a lot of time in the Bible belt when you would come back to visit?
00:50:17
Speaker
So I mean, my parents are from my, so my dad's from Michigan and then my mom's originally from the Philippines, but they moved to the US when she was like 14. So, and they're in like the Illinois area. So mostly around like the, mostly around the Midwest area. Yeah. What was their connection to Hong Kong and how did you guys end up picking there?
00:50:42
Speaker
So originally they wanted to do Mexico City, but I actually had really bad asthma growing up. So there was missionaries from there saying, no, it's too polluted. Don't go there.
00:50:57
Speaker
I think that another missionary in their organization did a presentation about Hong Kong, and no one really wanted to go, so they're like, oh, we should go there, I guess. And it's close to the Philippines, so my mom has been there by herself. Yeah, yeah. Why do you think people didn't want to go to Hong Kong? I feel like growing up there, I mean, you would come across missionaries who would go everywhere.
00:51:21
Speaker
Hong Kong never, or China, was never something that people seemed resistant to. Was it language barrier stuff? I know that people say that, you know, that's a harder language to learn if you are European or whatever. I think a lot of people wanted to go to China, but not Hong Kong. Okay. There's a lot more missionaries in Hong Kong, because I think there's like those famous millionaires, I can't even remember their names.
00:51:45
Speaker
They went to China and, you know, I guess it just seems more exotic. I feel like there's like two types of like missionaries, ones that want to go like really exotic and like, you know, do the pygmies in Africa, that type of thing. Yeah. The other ones want to go to like France and convert the Catholic. You know, that's so true.
00:52:07
Speaker
So there's like two and Hong Kong is kind of in between because like it's like a lot more modern than a lot of parts of China but it's still not that comfortable for someone who just wants to go where people speak English. Yeah dude the language barrier is always so I don't actually know if I've talked about this on the podcast but my wife and I always when we were in our evangelical heyday
00:52:30
Speaker
Uh, talked about being mission for, um, and we did. Yeah. Yeah. And we had this idea that we go to Cambodia. I don't know how we settled there. I just, I wrote a paper on it in college and was like, Oh, wow, this is really.
00:52:45
Speaker
their history was, I mean, their history is wild. I don't remember a lot of it off the top of my head. This was like probably 12, 13, it was like 12 or 13 years ago I wrote this paper, but I just remember feeling like, oh wow, this place seems like it could use, you know, white person help. So I figured that'd be a great place for me to go. But we were always, you know, we weren't kind of in that mode of let's just go and,
00:53:13
Speaker
convert people in that way like we had this idea of wanting to actually do good somewhere where you could like where you could use your resources to help it wasn't just like uh here's a bible hope you don't die of Ebola or like that um but yeah i just but that's i think the exotic nature of it as you said uh was appealing right like for me as someone i'm like oh i should go somewhere
00:53:36
Speaker
where I could feel like when I told people I'd feel special. And there was this narcissism attached and I think that has to be the case for a lot of people. No, definitely. I think that for a lot of people, it's like, oh, if you go to a place that God is calling you for a more special purpose.
00:53:58
Speaker
You're the one you chose to reach the people who have never been reached in history. Yeah. I know it is. It's like a special calling. It's the Christian body count. Not how many people you slept with, but how many people you saved. People would ask us for our number. People would ask us for our body count when we would go. Of course they would.
00:54:25
Speaker
Definitely a thing their weight. They're looking for that ROI dude. They want to know if their money's going the right place Okay, so if we spent yeah, you gave us if we gave you $200 this year and you save 30 souls if we up it to 400, you know, you can You know my family's only eaten Kentucky fried chicken twice a week now to support you So I hope you're using it wisely
00:54:55
Speaker
that was something that was one thing I wanted to ask you guys like because you know there's a lot of people like and I feel like it's just I feel like it's because like a lot of people just feel like everywhere besides the US sucks you know what I mean but like there's I sometimes I go to like I would go to mission different churches and I would see
00:55:17
Speaker
boards of where their missionaries were like where these people are giving their money to and these people don't have a lot of money and it's like doing people to Australia like you know that like you know that like you're giving the people like you know like in a very
00:55:37
Speaker
different way than you're thinking, you know what I mean? Yeah, well, my church was big on missions. And I know we had, we had some families that we supported that went to like, you know, they lived in the bush in Papua New Guinea and like translated the Bible, like basically helped them create a written language so they could translate the Bible and all that.
00:55:57
Speaker
It's pretty impressive and then we had some that like I remember we had one family that was to they went to the Netherlands and they had been there forever and like they would show up and they were they were super weird like very socially out of sync with everybody like to the point where you look at him and you talk to him and you're like
00:56:20
Speaker
you guys aren't interacting with a lot of people over there. One of their kids played the accordion and the other one played the recorder. Of course. The kids would have to get up there and perform and they looked so uncomfortable. This is the only time I've ever heard an accordion and a recorder duet. Those two instruments don't compliment each other very well, do they? They don't compliment themselves very well.
00:56:49
Speaker
There's only one person who successfully played the accordion and drawn the attention of millions, and that's Weird Al Yankov. Otherwise, put your accordion down. Oh, yeah, we we had this we had to sing to definitely go into all these different churches and teach. And then like it was always under the pretext. They're like, why don't you teach us a song? You know what I mean? And then like as if people are going to remember it. You know, so that was always fun.
00:57:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's like this, like you guys coming there and singing a song in Chinese was like the biggest cultural experience for most of these people outside of like eating a microwave pizza at the local Chinese buffet. Going to a hibachi restaurant and seeing them make that little volcano out of the onions, like ooh. Do you have forks? I don't know what to do with these sticks.
00:57:46
Speaker
And that would weird me out. Actually, I loved going to Chinese buffets in the US because it was unlimited ice cream. They had those ice cream machines. And I was like, yeah, let's go get some Chinese. Yeah, it didn't taste like Chinese, but I got unlimited ice cream and fried cheese sticks.
00:58:07
Speaker
Chinese buffets are so funny because it's like, it doesn't matter what little town you're in. You can go to a Chinese buffet and you can count on it having like a couple of things. There's going to be like a really pale, bleak looking pizza. There's going to be onion rings. There's going to be ice cream for sure. There's definitely some pasta with red sauce on it. Yeah.
00:58:34
Speaker
No, and then they're like, and then it would be like a town of like 2000 people with like that type of Chinese buffet and people would be like, I bet you're really missing a taste of home. Let me take you to like the most authentic Chinese restaurant. Like, I'm like, yeah.
00:58:51
Speaker
That's so funny. Okay. So I imagine like you guys come there, you have to perform and stuff like that. You had to get some weird questions from the people at the church. I still remember this one. This one always sticks out. Like, so I was like, because by the time I was like 15, I wasn't really, I was kind of staying back when my parents would go home, but like,
00:59:17
Speaker
so like from the when I was like 6 10 and like 14 like yeah I would go to like all these churches man we would squeeze in like maybe in in three months we would squeeze in maybe like 30 different churches so we were going to like a church in uh like a different church on sunday a different church on wednesday night and a different church on saturday night
00:59:41
Speaker
I had never, in Hong Kong we just do Sundays, so I didn't know that you guys went to church like three times a week, which was really weird. Don't tell those people, they'd be very disappointed to know that their money's not getting them at least three services a week. I thought I was paying for eight church services a week!
00:59:58
Speaker
they were but I still remember there was this one one church and the woman like went to my parents and like they were like so do you let your children play with the natives oh my god that was that was funny uh you know we would just get different things like do you guys have cars over there you know in Hong Kong like in Hong Kong yeah you know which is like I think we have the highest like percentage of like uh
01:00:28
Speaker
of luxury cars like in the world. Like, you know, like, yeah, we do like.
01:00:34
Speaker
like even I'm in an area right now which isn't like that well off but like neck like down the street there's like a McLaren dealership and stuff like that like Hong Kong people most don't have cars but the people who have cars like they're expensive yeah and people don't have cars because it's like because the public transportation is so good yeah that
Life in Hong Kong and Cultural Observations
01:00:55
Speaker
like you don't you don't need it like we have like yeah we have buses we have like trains it's actually way more inconvenient to have cars because like
01:01:03
Speaker
There's nowhere to park and gas is super expensive. So it's like, yeah, like you just don't need it. My company has some distributors in China. And one of the guys that went over there and worked with server, I actually went over there a few years back. I went to Beijing and then to Shanghai.
01:01:21
Speaker
Okay. One of the distributors said that he paid a person full time just to like drive the car around and park it in different places. Cause it was, it was cheaper than paying for parking. Yeah. Like, and then trying to get the car to you and all that stuff, which I thought that was wild. So different, you know.
01:01:41
Speaker
Yeah, there's like, especially Hong Kong, Hong Kong has so little space, like it's a small place in general, but then 70% of it is country park, so only 30% of it is even livable. So everyone is like really on top of each other. And like, I think to rent a car parking like space per month in Hong Kong, even like
01:02:03
Speaker
I think it costs about 3,500 Hong Kong, which divide that by about eight. So that's about, uh, yeah, maybe two, but 300, $350 US dollars per month, but no, 450, 450. Yeah, man. Yeah. Just a park. Yeah. Just the park. And it would be about 3 million to buy the spot. Three minutes. So divide that by eight.
01:02:28
Speaker
So that's like, yeah. And even, but you get to see growing up in China, didn't really help my math skills.
01:02:37
Speaker
I thought Chinese people were great at math. You didn't think they would have expected you to pick up something in their school system. Or were you homeschooling? Yeah, I know. But no, I was. Thankfully not. Thankfully not. Yeah. We actually did have a bunch of missionaries that want actually homeschooling here is illegal. OK. Oh, you can not homeschool, which thank God for me, because I think otherwise I would have been.
01:03:00
Speaker
But yeah, but we had a couple missionaries who tried to come but like they had like five kids or six kids and like they wanted to homeschool them and then Yeah, but then they couldn't so like they didn't decided not to They figured that their kids education was more important than the souls of the Chinese people
01:03:22
Speaker
They actually went to Canada to serve Chinese people there. That's a good second choice. That's like someone who lives in Boston going to Chinatown to serve Chinese people there. It's like, oh, I just really like Chinese people, I think. As long as I can serve them anywhere. At that point, it's like you're stalking Chinese people.
01:03:50
Speaker
Okay, this one from being like calling to a fetish Would when you guys first moved there was because Hong Kong was still under British control what in the late 90s? Yeah, 2000s till 97 97 were you guys there when it when they switched over? Yeah, so we moved in 95 95. Okay, so right at the tail end
01:04:17
Speaker
Yeah, right, the tail end. People thought it would be a bigger change than it was because after the British left and the Chinese government took over, there's still a 50-year agreement where you still are. Technically, right now we're not our own country. We're a special administrative region.
01:04:38
Speaker
So we have our own government, our own constitution, everything. So that was guaranteed us with from China for about 50 years. So until 47. But so there wasn't a huge change in 97. But then actually, the last few years, it's more like it's instead of waiting for 47, they're kind of gradually
01:05:00
Speaker
you know doing it so there's a lot more change now than there was like back then yeah a couple years ago there was like some pretty gnarly protests going on around yeah big big protests uh right before actually like the pandemic kind of killed it yeah the pandemic kind of killed the protest yeah
01:05:17
Speaker
because like we couldn't gather and stuff like that yeah they didn't kill protests here apparently which is funny it's like the height of the it was great because we had all the i mean the height of the pandemic was also like the culmination not i don't know if the culmination but like when black lives matter protests were at their peak it was like mid pandemic too and
01:05:37
Speaker
That was a big controversy for some people because generally the people who were protesting and who were on that side of the fence were like more on the, they were the more liberal or left side of things. And those were the champions of stay home, do nothing, save lives. And now it's like, ah, come on. Now you've just put it to the weird predicament where
01:05:58
Speaker
Yeah, we're trying to save lives. He trying to save lives here. You know, so just protest wear a mask. Don't get too close. So for us, it's funny because like the protesters weren't scared of the government. But people out here are very scared in terms of like health and stuff like that. Like they're very conscious because we had SARS. So right, you know, like and that that was like much a much higher death rate than than covid.
01:06:24
Speaker
So I think even in the last 20 years, not everyone does it, but if people were sick, it's not uncommon to wear a mask when you're sick, just out of courtesy for other people. But people here go to the hospital for everything. There was a cop who got hit in the face. There was a news story. He got hit in the face with some lady's titty. She used her titty to aim in the face, and he went to the hospital for it.
01:06:53
Speaker
it's just that's kind of the thing out here like people go to the hospital for everything so this this corona people got really like really scared yeah yeah yeah dude that's great i mean well people go here the problem is our health care system is such a fucking failure
01:07:09
Speaker
Everyone goes to the ER like so if you actually have to go to the ER You're gonna be in a line because someone who doesn't have health insurance also has like have they're having trouble breathing or something they go to the ER and then It's such it's in such shambles that the ER is one of the worst experiences Medical experience. No, that's one of the reasons I would never move back to the US is like health care is is ridiculous like I broke my I broke my hand and
01:07:38
Speaker
Uh, about a year ago, I went for like, I had like an X-ray, a CT scan. I had surgery. I had like 10 follow-up appointments, stuff like that. And I think I ended up paying about $150 US dollar. Sounds like socialism to me. Yeah. I mean, I didn't like it. I didn't like it. Yeah. We got it all figured out. An expensive premium.
01:08:06
Speaker
That's so wild. It's hard to hear stuff like that. It's funny because when people around here hear that, it doesn't even compute. They're just like, no, that doesn't work. It's working. There's other reasons it's being covered. I would much rather have to decide between buying a house or leaving my kids an inheritance and maybe going in when I'm having a heart attack.
01:08:31
Speaker
Yeah. I was always curious like how many churches would support you guys at one given time? Do you have any idea what that number looks like? It would probably be around like, I think it depends like because I know there's some missionaries who like their home churches are kind of like, you know, very like mega churches or like
01:08:54
Speaker
So like they, they only have a couple, but like we, like, you know, we're going to all these like midwestern first Baptist. So we had to like, kind of spread it, you know, spread it around. So we, I think I would like coronavirus. Exactly. It would be maybe about 50 at one time, 50 churches and like 20 individuals. Oh, okay. So we have a lot of people to visit. Like, yeah, we had a lot of individual. Did you have to have dinner at all those individual homes?
01:09:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, definitely stay with them. Have dinner with them. Yeah, I mean, a lot of them were. Yeah, you must have got pretty used to being around just complete strangers. Was that weird? Or were you used to it? Or were you like, did you like it? What was your feeling about like, just going all around and staying at random people's houses and
01:09:41
Speaker
I mean, for the most part, it was fine. I mean, it was for me, it kind of all blended together. Like, oh, you know, it's the same thing. Like, you know, you you get especially like when you go to all these different churches and the people who invite you to stay with them or have dinner with them are usually the same kind of people. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like that's like, let me get the missionaries. I need them to taste my casserole.
01:10:11
Speaker
Okay, here's a question for you. So you're in the US, you're going around and lobbying people and stuff like that and they're having you over for dinner. Did you ever end up going to somebody's house? That was just disgusting.
01:10:25
Speaker
well yeah okay so like i i think i told you guys this already on the uh on uh on instagram but yeah like maybe i could go into a little bit more detail on that definitely whenever you said on the instagram only went to me casey doesn't know any of this and neither do the okay okay
01:10:44
Speaker
so uh like so there was this there was this couple so we go into their house i mean their house isn't you know it's whatever it's not it's not that nice but like we go in there and like there's just something off about this couple like the woman looks like she's in her 50s and the guy is young the guy is like 25 and like you know there's like this elephant in the room that like no one wants to talk about like you don't want to mention it because like you know it's
01:11:11
Speaker
Are you the mom? Did you know for a fact that they were a couple? Or was there a question about that? No, they were a couple. When you were there, did you know at the time, when you first walked in, were you like, oh, this looks like a nice single mom with her son who still lives at home? Or were you like, did you know walking to that door, you were walking to a couple's house? No, we knew because a lot of
01:11:37
Speaker
It was like, so the pastor would like, ask the congregation like the week before, like who wants to host these people. And then, and then they'd be like, Oh, so you're staying. And so like, they gave a little rundown. Oh, you're staying with this husband and wife, whatever. Uh, so yeah, we go there and, uh, yeah, the age disparity is like shocking. Like it's like, it's not even like, and she wasn't either like a good like 55. She was like, she looked every bit of 55. Yeah. So.
01:12:06
Speaker
And then he was like, he was 25 and like, it was just so, and so we go in there and no one wants to say anything. And then, and then they, we kind of ate in silence for a couple of minutes. And then they're like, you must be wondering about like, what this is. And we're like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
01:12:26
Speaker
I don't know what you're talking about but yeah so anyway so and then they're like so and then they launch into the story which I'm sure they've told a thousand times and I think in their mind they say this story to make it sound better but it just sounds way more creepy so
01:12:44
Speaker
Like to someone who's not a Christian, it sounds way more creepy. So this guy goes, he's right after college, he goes and stays with his friend because he has nowhere to stay. And his friend is living with, moving back home from Christian college with his single mom.
01:13:02
Speaker
And so he goes to this friend's house. He stays there. And he said, one day he asked God, God, I really want a wife. And let me know what qualities you want me to have in a wife. So God said proximity.
01:13:23
Speaker
So he makes this list and like, and as he was like, and then he was in his room praying and then all of a sudden he hears time for dinner. Oh my God. He hears time for dinner. He thinks he's like, wait, and he looks at everything and she ticks off every box on his leg. He doesn't know that. He can't know that. That's awful.
01:13:51
Speaker
I don't know how long into staying with them this was. I hope it was like longer than like a week. The first night, he's like, God, give me a sign and here's time for dinner. He's like, that's it. Thank you. Thank you. You came through like a champ, God.
01:14:09
Speaker
I guess I don't know until he's like and then it just kind of and then he was like it just kind of happened from there so I don't know was he like hitting on his mom in front of his friend like I don't get like I feel like I would want to know more about you know how you navigated that yeah but uh I can say you can say for certain that that guy is not his friend anymore
01:14:32
Speaker
He was the best man at his wedding, dude. Are you kidding? I would just love to know what the real story is there. Like, how did this happen? He walked by... Because you know that's not what happened. Like, did they have a pregnancy scare or what?
01:14:45
Speaker
yeah that was the first thing that i thought of she went to i don't know man it's you know it had to be weird like she was she was she was out of pregnancy scare territory so he he felt like he needed what i mean yeah just surprisingly the sun was not there at dinner
01:15:07
Speaker
Okay, they definitely fucked on a casserole that's for good order if he makes his friend calling dad now
01:15:18
Speaker
Everyone in the house is calling him daddy. There should be like a book of just like the weirdest like dating and courtship stories in all of Christendom because you run into those stories like from time to time where you know somebody like that like will tell you how they met or how they ended up getting married and stuff and you're just like outside of this little bubble. This would seem insane.
01:15:47
Speaker
inside that bubble it's I guarantee everyone who went to that church was just like yeah I yeah how's it going brother like they don't like none of them like it no for sure I mean like like he's like just out of youth group in his yeah
01:16:04
Speaker
scary. So like, I think the older I get, the less I like staying at someone's house. But even as a kid, I really didn't enjoy staying at somebody's house. Like, was it uncomfortable when you had to go stay with these couples and families and stuff? Was it ever like
01:16:26
Speaker
Was there any in particular that you just hated that you didn't want to stay with? There was one that I loved and I hated because it was in upstate New York. I still remember. It was in upstate New York. There was this couple, the older couple, really in the middle of nowhere. And it was kind of freaky to me because I grew up in a very major city and they're out in the middle of nowhere.
01:16:55
Speaker
And like, I had never been in a place that's like so quiet, that silence has a sound. You know what I mean? Like that hum. And then like, it was like a super old house and she had like a massive like doll collection. And it was in the guest room. So I'm staying in the guest room and like that house would always creep me out.
01:17:18
Speaker
They're all pointed at you. They're all staring at the bed. Complete seance circle around it. Was there a pentagram on the floor? I don't know. I didn't even look. But yeah, that was that was the scariest house, but they had eight TVs and stuff. So that was fun to ride. You know, like it's funny because you go to like some different houses and then it's like, you know, some are better than others.
01:17:45
Speaker
you know what i mean it's like some have video games somehow some have video games some you can't watch uh yeah some some you can have play video games some you can't watch cartoons like it's you know was there any that had like real weird rules that they tried to enforce on you guys
01:18:02
Speaker
uh nothing nothing too weird that like i can remember i did have like a couple like churches and like camps and stuff like that like there were some weird rules in there i think i told uh i think i i mentioned it on uh on the instagram message but uh i think when we were talking i still remember i went to one of those like uh church camps um
01:18:26
Speaker
And, and they had a, and at the beginning of camp, they made us do like, they must all go around a flagpole, which was the fascination with the flag has always been weird to me. But, uh, Oh, people don't love the, uh, Hong Kong flag where you're from. They don't, they're not all about it. It doesn't fly in churches. It does not. Yeah. Oh, oh, fourth of July services were always a trip to yes.
American Church Culture
01:18:50
Speaker
Fourth of July services are always a trip. But anyway, so, so we gather around the flag one day and then they're like.
01:18:56
Speaker
Oh, um, like let's do the pledge of allegiance. And I didn't put my hand up cause I don't know the pledge of allegiance. You know, I was about 10 and then they're like, do the pledge of allegiance. And then I'm like, I knew to put my hand over my heart, but I didn't, I didn't say the words cause I don't know the words. And then they didn't believe me. And so they put me in a room and said, you can't do any activities and you can't eat until you learn the pledge of allegiance. So I had to go to my camp counselor and repeat it until I was like able to like do anything. That's so cold.
01:19:39
Speaker
You know it now, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, go. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Amen. George Washington's looking down from heaven right now with a smile on his face. Is there a pledge of allegiance to Hong Kong?
01:19:52
Speaker
Well, you know what serves you right.
01:20:11
Speaker
that's because uh that's because america is uh god's chosen nation so it makes sense that they wouldn't have for you it it seemed like like i would go into like churches and like i remember going to like this pastor's office he had like a life uh life life-size cutout of like george w bush like dressed up like dress as uncle sam dress as uncle
01:20:29
Speaker
Or to China? No, not really.
01:20:38
Speaker
Did he make you pledge allegiance to that? No, he did not. He makes everybody take a picture with it. Yeah. Oh my God. It was weird because like people's like have hymnals and stuff like that. Like in the back of the hymnal is like, you know, the battle hymn of the Republic and stuff like that. And I'm like, what is this?
01:21:01
Speaker
it's so different so when you're in dude so in hong kong china uh church is uh what was the church experience like there like what kind of church were you part of like how would you how would you describe it so at the beginning for like uh the first 13 years my parents were trying to reach you know chinese people so they they learned uh they learned the language so both my parents
01:21:29
Speaker
My dad can preach in Chinese and then Cantonese. So we speak Cantonese here. It's different than Mandarin.
01:21:39
Speaker
but yeah so they're fluent in Cantonese so we were doing Chinese churches for a while but then after that we kind of moved on to like because we have a lot of like domestic workers here like helpers so almost every any middle class any middle class family and above in Hong Kong have has a help because yeah
01:22:03
Speaker
like any with a kid, anyone with a kid who's like even lower, lower middle class and above. We have people in public housing estates like government sponsored housing estates that have helped.
01:22:14
Speaker
Like it's not, it's not, because it's not expensive. We only, cause they live with you. And I think their minimum wage is about 3,500 Hong Kong. So the cost of your parking, so 450 bucks. And they get food and shelter, like in the place to live. They get shelter. They get food. They're on the road for food. If they say the place of allegiance. They have to, uh,
01:22:41
Speaker
No, they get like leftovers. I mean, it's just such a different cultural establishment. That's so funny. Some people are obviously some employers are better than others. Some, you know, share the food. Some, you know, it's like, oh, here's 20 bucks. Go buy instant noodles. You know what I mean? Like it's it really it's really the luck of the draw on who you get as an employer. OK.
01:23:11
Speaker
But yeah so most of them are Filipino and Indonesian and my mom's from the Philippines so they started more gearing towards them because yeah and then afterwards then they started doing a lot more with them and like refugees and asylum seekers and we because we have a lot of like refugees and asylum seekers in Hong Kong too.
01:23:36
Speaker
from what regions? Mostly like Pakistan and India. We have a lot from like Pakistan, India, Africa, that kind of thing.
01:23:47
Speaker
OK, that's it. I feel like it's what's the perception of people seeking asylum in Hawke? Because it's obviously a mixed bag anywhere you go. But like here, it's kind of a clear divide. There's people in the middle for sure. But it's very much like if they're coming, there's people who do not like the idea of us taking in people, especially the Middle East. Right. Oh, how do you vet them? How do you make sure they're not a terrorist? How do you?
01:24:13
Speaker
There's a lot of racism involved. Yeah, like we don't have like terrorists and stuff here. I mean, like I would say the local people, they don't, because we do also have a lot of ethnic minorities in Hong Kong, right? There's a lot of like Filipinos, Nepalese, Indians, Pakistanis, that type of thing. And like, but who are here legally and like work and stuff.
01:24:33
Speaker
And I don't really feel like Chinese people really even like know the difference that much. It's more just like, oh, they wouldn't like, besides like, they're just not Chinese. But like, people out here aren't outwardly racist, but you know, they're just
01:24:49
Speaker
they kind of keep to themselves. You know what I mean? Like they're not going to like, they're not walking down the street like get out of our country. But you know, they're, they're just like, eh, I don't want to sit next to you on the train. That was kind of the impression I got like in Beijing and Shanghai when I went there too, was that it was, it was, it was that kind of an attitude where like people just sort of kept to their
01:25:13
Speaker
their social circle in their group and stuff like that and i don't know that you have pockets of different nationalities in there. I think like american is like is america is like so different i feel like that's most of the world like from where i've been like i feel like america like you it's really like you try to talk to people that like.
01:25:34
Speaker
you don't know like a law you know what I mean like like going into like a store I remember hating like going into stores and stuff like that like because it's like the the shop assistant's like talking to you the entire time and it's like I don't know you like like you know
01:25:52
Speaker
kind of it's kind of straight like because here the only way that they would do that is like if they're trying to tell you like they're trying to sell you something but like in the u.s like you walk down the street and people are just like hi you know like that doesn't have a regional thing too man because i like well the people will do that everywhere but like i i hate when people do that i don't want if i'm not i don't
01:26:14
Speaker
Look, just because we're both looking at baked beans in the grocery store doesn't mean I want to have a conversation with you about what we're both looking at. So I lived in Virginia for a while and I was blown away by how many people thought it was just appropriate to have a full conversation with you about whatever they decided they wanted to talk about.
01:26:36
Speaker
And I just was like, what is happening? You get the occasional, someone would throw out a little one-liner joke that they thought was funny, and you just have to go, ha ha, yeah, yeah, and do that. But when I was in Virginia, it was like, oh, this is a conversation now. They're pulling you into their world, and you don't have a choice. Or being an asshole. You would be perceived as an asshole for being like, yeah, you're the weird one. And then you move on.
01:27:02
Speaker
Oh wow, that guy's a dick. What, because I don't want to talk to a complete stranger and my kid's in the car with the windows up and it's 90 degrees out? Come on, I gotta get back out to my kid before they die. Yeah, why you hotboxing your kid?
01:27:18
Speaker
Yeah, but it's weird. Like you would never have a conversation in a grocery store here with just someone like looking at the same thing as you. Like that would just never happen. Yeah. So when you, okay, you're the first, you said six, 10 and 14 were like the times that you were here. So I assume when you were six, maybe even 10, uh, the churches you would visit, would you, you would be swept away to Sunday school or did you stay in the services with your parents? My, so my dad would obviously, you know, do a sermon and like,
01:27:46
Speaker
you know the same sermon for like 50 times so I would I would remember yeah and then uh my dad my mom would do Sunday school uh for the course yeah yeah so I would I would be also leading Sunday school uh with uh you know like um we had our little you know did you ever have like when missionaries would come to your church do they ever have like kind of like a like a flannel board with like all their different like
01:28:16
Speaker
different like little knickknacks and stuff like that like on there. Yeah, they would have those they would usually bring some like trinkets and stuff with them to show and then they usually have like a slideshow that they would go through with pictures of where they were stationed and stuff.
01:28:31
Speaker
Yeah. So, so we wouldn't have that. So I would like kind of like that table outside with all like the knickknacks and all, I would kind of like man that table, you know, like, Oh, what's this? You know, Oh, this is for this, you know, yada, yada, yada. So that would kind of be tea out of this. And you're like, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
01:28:50
Speaker
But like, so I wouldn't really like that. That's why I was so with you guys. Like, that's why I messaged you in the first place. Cause like, I didn't actually really like talk to that many people. Cause especially you're just there for like a day. You know what I mean? You're not really like making any connections with people or like really talking to them.
01:29:08
Speaker
Uh, but if it depends on also if the church had like a gym or a basketball hoop, cause then I would just do that. Yeah. Yeah. But what is, but I would see one thing I wanted to ask you guys is I see all the lines at all. Like in the basketball court, there always be all these Awana lines. Yeah. What was the Awana?
01:29:30
Speaker
So, Awana was like this. It was basically like a youth group curriculum, almost. For a youth group, it was like, when you were old enough to no longer do Awana, you could probably hit middle school youth group, right? That went to like sixth grade or something like that, Casey, do you think? Awana went clear up to high school. What? There was like different sections in it. If you were in Awana as a high schooler, you were a big fucking nerd. I was in it. But you know, I'm a better person than Sam.
01:30:00
Speaker
Well, I mean, that's true. Because I was home churched, bitch. We want to do that. I tried. I tried to play force. Here's the thing. Awana was for kids with friends. That was like a fucking rebel. But when I was it, you damn well better know that when I was in high school, I volunteered to help him because I cared about the youth, the next generation. I wanted to help. He had a heart for children. I did. I had a heart. I don't.
01:30:30
Speaker
Yeah, Awana was like that. It was just kind of like this organized Sunday school youth group sort of program. So they had like specific games that they played on, you know, the nights where they would do Awana. So that's what all the lines on the gym floor were for. Yeah, because I was wondering, because like, I was like, what sport is this? Like, you know, because the lines weren't making any sense.
01:30:52
Speaker
Christianity was a sport it would be But that reminds me of one last thing I I remember I wanted to mention before like in terms of sports I remember in that Christian camp that I had gone to They I was looking back at the photos and I realized that they put all the non like white kids in the same cabin. What? Oh shit
01:31:16
Speaker
So there were only there were only three black kids in the whole thing me and a Mexican kid and that was our cabin and every other cabin was like white so I I remember we like we had like intermural basketball thing and That plan backfired
01:31:44
Speaker
That's amazing. Where was this camp at? It was in the middle of Illinois. It's just like a very like, you know, like, like, like maybe 20 churches in the area, you know, all fun other kids there, you know.
01:31:57
Speaker
That type of thing. I think some of that is like it's less like blatant prejudice and more just like those people are. You guys don't get along. Yeah, you guys don't get along. Yeah, that's what it seems like. Well, they might feel weird if they are the only black kid amongst a bunch of white kids. So let's just put them all in one room together. And it's like, yeah, we tried that. It was called segregation and people didn't appreciate it.
01:32:26
Speaker
so okay so what I'm curious like so you went to China as you as a young kid your dad's a preacher like what's the course of Christianity and faith and stuff like that for you personally like are you still a Christian did you ever get real devout
01:32:45
Speaker
I was never super devout I mean it was just kind of weird because like especially like when I was growing up it was like I you know my parents were especially at the beginning like a very like you know they grew up like
01:33:01
Speaker
in, you know, in Midwestern U.S., every, I mean, my mom went high school and then everything around them was like a youth group. All their friends were from youth group and they went to like a small Christian college, you know, they went to a small Christian college and like everyone there was super Christian. So like they came with kind of that mentality with me. But then when I would go outside, like no one was really Christian and I felt like everyone was kind of like normal.
01:33:31
Speaker
Uh, and then like, so like, I would go home and like, you know, do, you know, I couldn't watch, you know, TV, I couldn't watch Harry Potter. I couldn't do, you know, uh, you know, all the, all the normal things I'm sure you guys, uh, you know, had going on too. But then like.
01:33:47
Speaker
uh but then outside it was like oh like no one else is like and even Christians here like and I think a lot of Christians around the world like unless they were like specifically like converted by American missionaries are pretty
01:34:03
Speaker
Like there are a lot more chill about stuff like that. Like even people in my church, like how can you not watch Harry Potter? They would try to like gift my parents like bottles of wine, you know, during the, you know, like things like that. And like, so at the beginning it was kind of weird, but, and so I would be pretty embarrassed actually most of the time. Like there's a place called Mong Kok and at one point it was like the most populated area in the world. It's like per square meter.
01:34:33
Speaker
and like my parents would kind of do like uh like on Easter they would like with the church they would go and like do plays in like the middle of like the road and I'd just be like you know I would be I would like walk in front of them and like
Christianity Across Cultures
01:34:48
Speaker
kind of look and pretend like I wasn't with them and like pretend I was just watching the show, you know like it was it was kind of it was it was a little embarrassing like I used to be embarrassed about but I still believed in the back of my head like even when I was a teenager I got very
01:35:06
Speaker
you know like I got kicked out of school I was pretty rebellious and things like that but like in the back of my head it was always like I'll come back later you know like it's there Christianity is still like I don't really follow it but like I never really questioned if it was true and like one day I'll just one day I'll just go back
01:35:28
Speaker
because you're like this is the only world I know as far as what truth is and how the world works and what reality is and whether or not as a kid you just want to do your thing and get some kids are belly some kids aren't but yeah I mean even when I was in youth group the kids who are off like you know smoking weed or drinking in the parking lot or something like that they all would have been like yeah of course I believe but like
01:35:49
Speaker
Yeah, because there isn't really another alternative. I mean, I guess you definitely had, like you were saying, you had a bit more exposure to, maybe not exposure is a word, but there's probably less Christian influence where you were than there even is here. In a public education setting here, you'll find plenty of kids who are like, yeah, I'm Christian.
01:36:08
Speaker
some people, variations to different degrees of commitment. But when you were in school, were there other Christians at all? Or did you not know other Christian kids? So until I was like, I didn't know at church, but
01:36:26
Speaker
Especially when they moved into like more like dealing with like that kind of stuff like helpers asylum seekers Prostitute like human trafficking that type of stuff like there were no kids, you know Because there wasn't really families around but like in school actually so until I was about 15 I went to a Christian school
01:36:45
Speaker
but like it wasn't like a Christian school like in because in America like if you go to a Christian school like your family is Christian here I it was a church it was a school originally started for like missionary kids but then like 20 years later there were like almost no missionary kids in Hong Kong so like they kind of opened it up to like regular people
01:37:05
Speaker
And I would say like maybe 10% of kids, their parents were in the ministry, maybe 50% like were Christian, but they weren't like, they were like, I go to church on Sunday, whatever Christians. And 50% were just like, hey, this is a good school. I'll send my kids here. This is a good school in English with an American curriculum, whatever.
01:37:29
Speaker
it was actually super expensive but like my parents because we were missionaries we got like a massive discount so that's why i got to go there um yeah so that's why i was there uh like maybe the christian influence wasn't still in place at the school but the discount structure was still so it all worked yeah it was it was still a christian like i mean we had bible class we had chapel but like also like but also like we had bible class we had chapel but also 70 percent of the kids didn't give a shit
01:37:59
Speaker
You know, like Catholic schools in the US. Yeah, exactly. Like it's all there. But and the teachers all have to be Christian. Like there was a big there was a big thing in Hong Kong, the newspaper a while ago, because, you know, they a teacher got fired for being gay, which in the rest of Hong Kong is like, what the fuck? But, you know, like, yeah, so that
01:38:23
Speaker
So they were still pretty Christian and that's in all the cool ways. Yeah. All the ways that matter. I think what you pointed out about the cultural difference in Christianity there versus like people who are converted by American. Very interesting because
01:38:41
Speaker
American Christians have this idea, generally, when they get into missions, that they're trying, they're, honestly, they're trying to push against any other cultural issues. They, like, they don't, there's a lack of understanding around the idea that their Christianity is very culturally embedded. It's very culturally embedded and also what I've realized lately, it's very new.
01:39:04
Speaker
Because in a lot of the world where like there are a lot of countries in the world where like the population is like mainly Christian but they came from like kind of more like a either like a Catholic or an Orthodox or Presbyterian from the UK like but and like that version of Christianity is like what 2,000 years of Christianity was before like American Christianity kind of spread their version like to the in the last like 200 years. It's our biggest export.
01:39:31
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So you said like your parents worked with refugees, asylum seekers, you mentioned human trafficking and stuff like that. That's kind of what they're doing now. So right now, and I don't know how plugged into some of that stuff that you are, but like, among people who have left Christianity, you know, it's a big thing here, right? And there's kind of like this general consensus that like,
01:39:59
Speaker
missions in general like as a whole missions in general is is a bad thing that is like it's like cultural colonialism and it just like it's it's viewed in a very negative sense like pretty much from every angle here. Yeah. And like
01:40:17
Speaker
you being on the ground there. I mean, what's your perception of it? Like, I would imagine there's a gulf between like what we think missionaries are doing in other countries and then some of this because I mean, like the some of the stuff you're saying that your parents did. I mean, it, by all accounts, sounds like great things.
01:40:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I would say like, I'm much more happy with what, what they're doing now. Like I would say when it was like, when they were doing like, kind of like Chinese ministry was all like, the main purpose is to save souls. It's a save souls, nothing else, you know, like giving tracks out like on the street, like that type of thing. Like we're just trying to save souls. I feel like now it's, it's a lot more of a holistic approach of like,
01:40:59
Speaker
you know, like giving out food packs to, you know, struggling families and refugees. What they're planning to do now is like, go back to the Philippines and open a, like an orphanage for the children of like sex traffic victims and prostitutes and that type of thing. Like, which I feel like right now is a good work. Yes, I mean, at the end of the day, the main goal is still what it is. You know what I mean? But at the same time, like,
01:41:29
Speaker
I do feel like they are doing good work in making a difference. I would say a lot of missionaries are just there to like, you know, pump their numbers up, get that body count up. But yeah, I feel like I feel like my parents are doing, especially now doing much more fulfilling work. And what I think like
01:41:49
Speaker
mission work kind of should be, you know, instead of like going to a country and painting a school where people there know how to paint better. Yeah, it is. Especially, I feel like, you know, as we've been talking, thinking about going to Hong Kong. So I know, I shouldn't say I know, my understanding is
01:42:12
Speaker
growing up in evangelicalism in the way that they would talk about China. You'd always get those people who are like, it's illegal to be a Christian in China. And then you have those people with smuggled Bibles. And it's really scary. And it's like this underground thing. And you're almost like a secret agent. And it's really sexy and cool. But so that's maybe why you were saying people like going to China versus Hong Kong. Is there any sort of like real resistance to Christianity in Hong Kong? Are they generally more neutral towards it? What's the feeling?
01:42:40
Speaker
In Hong Kong, no. In Hong Kong, it's completely open. China is actually, it is a different story. Like China is like, like in a church, like you have like Catholic churches and stuff like that. And like, they will like, they will have like someone from the government like sitting in the back, like making sure you don't say anything, you know. Against the government or? Yeah, like just against the government in general. It's not like they don't want you to give your life to Christ.
01:43:09
Speaker
you know like they're looking more for like it's like they want your soul you know like it's weird because americans act like they hate that but that's literally what they do in this fucking country dude they're like no yeah we gave our soul to our country and jesus like as long as it's tied they're fine exactly that's so funny to me they're like but like yeah that's not the chinese government give your soul to the american government not the chinese yeah
01:43:34
Speaker
Yeah, Americans make it sound like, oh, the communist government is like, we don't want you to believe that Jesus Christ was risen. But I feel like at the end of the day, they're just like, hey, don't tell people that the Chinese government is evil. Don't shit on communism, which is hard. I know. That's the hardest thing to do as a Christian.
01:43:59
Speaker
Yeah, I don't really, the American Christian obsession with communism always boggles my mind because it's like, it sounds pretty much like what Jesus wanted to do, but you know, I could be wrong. I'm also, I would do feel like for anyone listening, I should probably make it a little bit clear. I'm not some Chinese government apologist. I think they do some really fucked up things.
01:44:20
Speaker
No, no, they definitely did. But like, it's just like, it's fucked up in a different way. But like, it's not fucked up in that same way. You know what I mean? Like, and yeah, they do have like, like, like, occasionally my dad would go and preach in like, house churches and underground churches there. You know what I mean? Like, so there is like, you know, some truth to it. But yeah, like, it's not the easiest place in the world to be a Christian. But yeah.
01:44:49
Speaker
If, yeah, that's so interesting to me. I don't, I guess I don't know what to say about it. Like the idea of an underground church and like navigating through it and preaching a message and hoping that no one gets arrested or something. I mean, of course I think that's awful. Like I think, but it's, it's hard to, cause as a kid, you would hear about that and you would think a lot about how like,
01:45:11
Speaker
Let my entire life is wrapped up in this. But at the end of the day, I'm like, it's also hard to maybe there's such a high level of surveillance and control. But it seems like here where honestly, a lot of being a Christian is it's so much pageantry and making a spectacle of yourself or. Yeah.
01:45:28
Speaker
putting yourself out there for the sake of shining that light, being that city on a hill or something like that versus just meeting together for the sake of yourselves and then edifying yourselves in whatever way you feel aligns with your Christian faith. I don't know. I think that's what's hard for me to think about. Is there that level of surveillance where you couldn't have five families just doing church every Sunday?
01:45:58
Speaker
and then going about their business or is that a problem? Or maybe you don't know. I don't know. I don't know too much about China. It's so different.
01:46:11
Speaker
Yeah, then when we where we are here. Yeah. And to be honest, like, I haven't really like, like, I grew up that way. Like, but like, when I was 15, when I got kicked out of that Christian school, like, I also stopped. I didn't really, I mean, at that point, like, I started working. And so and.
01:46:29
Speaker
And I started working from the time I was like 16 and I ended up just getting my GED. So like, and at that point I had also stopped going to church. So I haven't really been after the age of like 15, 16, like I haven't really been in like a Christian circle besides my parents.
01:46:46
Speaker
like they're the only really like everyone else I know outside and like all my friends I still have the same friends since I was like 16 and like we they still don't really know the extent of it and I feel like no one that I know really knows the extent of like the religiousness of like how I and the way I grew up
01:47:05
Speaker
like it's always been weird for me like there's no one really out like that understands that like I feel like if I like that's why I like listening to you guys because it's like you know uh it's kind of like a glimpse it's for me it's like a career like let's say a Korean kid is like uh adopted into the US and like no no Korean kid
01:47:28
Speaker
not adopted like let's say like a Korean kid like his parents moved to like Missouri when he's like five like you still have elements of that Korean culture like in yourself right but then at the same time when no one around you is kind of like that anymore you kind of like are on the outside like looking in even though you understand everything but you're not uh huge it's
01:47:49
Speaker
It was a huge part of you earlier. It's not a huge part of you right now. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's not like you could just walk back in and plug yourself into a group of people who have been doing that their entire lives. Like there's, there's a, a golf there. Yeah. So, so I would say like, until I was like 15 and 16, like I really like, I had to do like, you know, I'd be in church, like we would go, we wouldn't have service three times a day, but we would go to like three different churches in one day. You know, I would, we would, uh,
01:48:18
Speaker
I would do devotions in the morning with my parents on Sundays. They would put on a Ravi Zacharias sermon. You know what I mean? Yeah, Ravi. I recently found out about what happened with that dude. Yeah. He fell from grace, but he was dead, so it didn't hurt.
01:48:41
Speaker
Yeah, it didn't have the same feeling it would have if he got to actually be held accountable in some way, which was a little weird to fight. Yeah, that was a weird one. But he was making my family too, man. I grew up here and not necessarily myself personally hearing his things, but he was a household name for sure. Yeah.
01:49:04
Speaker
No yeah so anyway like I never really like um especially after that like I wasn't like after the age of 16 I was never really in a Christian community I tried to go to like like and I feel like really like no one out here like yeah understands kind of the the level of religiousness is when I grew up the only one so so I before this uh I used to be a for about three years because I grew up I worked in bars and stuff I was a bartender
Drinking Culture and Wild Stories
01:49:34
Speaker
and then I went to school for business, and then after that I became a sales rep for an alcohol distributor. So I would go around to different bars and try to have them buy the brands that I was importing into Hong Kong.
01:49:49
Speaker
and um I was talking I went to like this this like shitty little dive bar on some island off the coast of Hong Kong and there was this guy getting drunk there at like two in the morning no two in the afternoon sorry kind of like to stave off the chicks kind of dude and then I was like and then and then he was like so what do your parents do and we were the only two there so I'm like yeah my parents are missionaries and it's like
01:50:12
Speaker
Yeah, man, I get it. I'm like, yeah, do you like that? Like, and then he's like, and then he's like, actually, uh, my brother spoke at Billy Graham's funeral. So I get it. I'm like, okay, you get it. Like, that's why you're drinking. Yeah, exactly. He's like, yeah. So, yeah. Did you talk to him for a little bit? Like, did you actually have a connection? Like real, like really good. I tried, but he was really drunk. Yeah. It was really early.
01:50:41
Speaker
Okay, so on the topic of alcohol, when I was there, the local distributors and stuff kind of took us out and like whined us and dined us every night and I'm not like a big drinker at all.
01:50:58
Speaker
And holy smokes, those people could, I mean, they could drink. Like the native Chinese people that we were with, they were awesome. But like, man, they. Sorry, you cut out, you cut out there for me.
01:51:11
Speaker
Oh, they could just, they were, they could drink. I mean, they were serious drinkers and they drank this stuff called, I don't know what it is. I think it was like some sort of rice wine. What did you say? Baiju. Baiju. That is some rough stuff. What kind of alcohol is it? It's rice. It's rice, rice alcohol. It's much more popular in China than it is in Hong Kong.
01:51:35
Speaker
OK, but, uh, yeah, that that stuff is fucking potent. And and the bottle that comes in looks like a cleaning solution, but it's going to crossbones on it and shit. Right. It literally looks like the bottle looks like it's fucking disgusting. Plastic. It's a plastic bottle. Yeah. Plastic bottle. I brought several bottles of at home and my favorite game for a while until I ran out was to like trick people into trying it. It would just be like, oh, my God, what is that?
01:52:08
Speaker
You can't really compare it to like, if you're going to compare it to any alcohol here, like that you've had ever clear. Is it clear Brown? Is it clear? That's a clear. I've never had like vodka, but you say it's kind of like ever clear. Yeah.
01:52:23
Speaker
No, I would. I would like to try this stuff. It would be more like a moonshine type thing. OK. Yeah. Yeah. It smells like sour gummy. It smells like rotten gummy worms to me. Yeah. No, it's it's but I like even like I when I go to like I've gone to a Chinese restaurant like I got like a cocktail of it. Like I couldn't I can't finish it. Like it's it's disgusting. Pretty rough.
01:52:52
Speaker
nasty they uh have you passed out in the booth in the corner of the of the uh where you're eating case i didn't drink a ton of it like i like i said i'm not i'm not a big drinker but everybody who did drink a lot of it got real sweaty
01:53:07
Speaker
yeah i feel like if it's like you know you're used to certain alcohols like what the average is probably 40 right but then you if they're coming in with something that's like you know over 50 and you're like yeah and you drink it like normal and all of a sudden everyone else is crazy fucked up and everyone who's giving it to you this is regular stuff what's going on dude but people in china people in china drink more than chinese people in hong kong drink like they go wild i worked in a bar one time
01:53:37
Speaker
Where like a group of like 50 year old like Chinese guys Mainland Chinese guys were drinking and like it was like a free flow brunch kind of thing and like so all you could drink for like three hours and like
01:53:50
Speaker
they don't have that here. That's for God's sake. They don't they don't do that. No, you can't. It's in my state. Happy hour is even illegal. You can't discount drinks ever in my state. Yeah, it's also weird because like you can't I know you can't buy people out here like buy bottles of liquor for the table. Like I guess you can't do that out there either.
01:54:09
Speaker
but now wine, you can buy a bottle of wine at like a 300% markup and that's about it. Yeah. You can buy like three bottles of whiskey for your table of six and like, no, no big deal here. But yeah. So there were, there were these five Changi mainland guys and then they, they went and then they got super drunk. Four of them ran away from the bill and left their one friend who was like too drunk to stand like that.
01:54:33
Speaker
And like, we wake him up, he stands up on his table and takes his shit on the chair. Like, it was... And passed out like, there next to his shit. Did he wait? I guess he still had the pay the bill when he woke up? Did they call the police? What do you do in a situation like that? So he got on, so he got on all fours, and like, a server had to wipe his ass.
01:55:03
Speaker
Someone went to throw away the chair. Oh, you guys tip in Hong Kong? No, we don't. We don't tip. Oh, shit. It's not a difficult tip. Anyway, so we took his wallet from his thing, paid the bill with his credit card while he was passed out there, put it back, put it back in his thing and like kind of like, and we're just like, not our property, not our problem. So we kind of carried him outside and left him on the street like next step.
01:55:30
Speaker
thank you for your business please never come back and this was like it was it was a bar that was sponsored it was like owned by Armani like the the clothing brand so it was it was like a nice like rooftop bar yeah that's one of those Bilderberg parties yeah yeah but they did shit in your mouth
01:56:20
Speaker
Do you remember like, do you remember how like, how you used to like, what did you guys used to think of like, when missionaries would like come to your churches and stuff like that? Like, what would you guys like?
01:56:27
Speaker
now you're talking like an evangelical it's coming back it's all coming back to you
01:56:31
Speaker
Oh, man. We didn't have a lot come to my church. Okay, I have two missionary stories. I think I've shared one of them, but one of them was like, this is when my wife and I were really thinking about wanting to be missionaries and we were in a church. This is when I was still in Virginia at Liberty University. And so we kind of like took on, we were in contact with the missionaries that our church supported. And Casey's cracking up, cracking up. Just keep thinking about that.
01:57:01
Speaker
you think it's so funny is it really that it's like it's funny that you think it's that funny because it's so on brand for me at that time alright I'll keep telling my story despite the fact that Casey's as red-faced as you can possibly
01:57:21
Speaker
All right. So we're, we're the ones like kind of contact and the missionary family, as we keep in touch, it was monsoon season. They didn't have the support they needed to like really like prepare for like the monsoon and they could lose everything if they weren't ready for that, that season. And we're like, Oh, cool. Like, you know what? Why don't we just like approach our church and say, why don't we do, um, like just ask for like a, like a, as you call them love offerings, right? I don't know that term, but.
Missionary Challenges and Experiences
01:57:56
Speaker
So we bring it to them, we're like, this is their situation. They're really struggling to get the finances they need to not really lose everything if they get hit by a monsoon and aren't like weatherproofed or whatever. I wish I could remember more of the details, but the response I got was, I don't know, if we do that, then we kind of have to like,
01:58:18
Speaker
then we kind of have to do that for everybody if they ask, right? Then anyone can just ask and you're like, okay, it's hard for me to understand why that's a problem as a, you know, a Christian church, right? Shouldn't people be able to go to the church and ask for help?
01:58:33
Speaker
yeah well they so they shut it down we came back to them a few weeks later we're like i mean is there literally anything like we can do uh and they're just like how you know we really can't so they shut the whole thing down and then that was that was honestly the beginning of my i think um
01:58:50
Speaker
I think I'm kind of done with the evangelical church kind of shit. Because like, that wasn't a new, like, even though that was a specific experience, like with that, it just kind of fit the mold of what I was starting to experience on a bigger level. But my other experience was, and I'm going to be as vague as possible, because I don't, it was, I don't know, I don't want, how do I talk about this without,
01:59:16
Speaker
They come back to me in some way. I don't know whatever fuck it There was these people who came who moved back to my area that were missionaries I don't remember where but I had I was part of I bet him at church Whatever and it was clear that he was all about leveraging that I was a missionary stuff to like pick up chicks That was his MO
01:59:39
Speaker
It was so fucking annoying. It was constant. You couldn't have a conversation with cute girls around without him being like, oh yeah, I know this. And then he'd stay stuff in a different language. Back in the mission field. Back in the field. Oh, we used to do this. Oh, we had to use drink our own piss sometimes. He didn't say that.
02:00:00
Speaker
It was anything you think of to like make his life seem wild. Yeah. And then as soon as they're like, where was he a missionary to? I don't I honestly don't remember. And I'm wearing like Cleveland. Yeah, actually, I think it might have been. I think I'd rather live in it. But yeah, I just it was if you were alone with him, he would be more or less fine. But in a group, it was like very. Yeah.
02:00:28
Speaker
I'm I was a missionary. It's like, oh, my God, dude, we get it. You saved souls for a living. I feel like my church did a lot of missionary stuff. And and then like several people that I knew ended up being missionaries, like after they graduated school, there was actually there was a missionary school in Jackson, Michigan, which was about an hour south of where I lived. And several of my friends were there.
02:00:56
Speaker
yep yeah i'm outside of detroit in ant arbor do you know where uh cast city is oh yeah i can't think of exactly where do you know where karo is karo cast city like bad act that type of
02:01:12
Speaker
like near bad acts. Yeah, that's like what West? Oh, no, that's up in the thumb. That's that's no man's land up there. Yeah, that's that's where my that's where my dad's from. Yeah, that I was like a little south of there closer to Ann Arbor. Okay, so closer to civilization that
02:01:32
Speaker
Yeah. Right. That is a, there's not much up there. That's. Anyway, sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you with your story. It's just, uh, I was just wondering.
02:01:43
Speaker
Well, we had like a lot of missionaries come through and they pledge support to quite a few different ones. I don't know how many at any given time, but we had the little board with all the pins. And it is funny. It's like you were saying, like there were people like we had a family that lived in Papua New Guinea.
02:02:04
Speaker
and translated the Bible into a language for a tribe and stuff. And then as soon as they were done, they like lived in the US for two years and then went to a different tribe over there and did it again. That's wild. I mean, you can't, as much as you want, you can have your issues with trying to convert people to your religion all you want. You can't knock the commitment and drive that people have to be able to learn a language enough to translate the entire Bible into it.
02:02:32
Speaker
That's insane. And it's a language that is completely useless in any other context. Yeah, yeah. There's like a three square mile area in Papua New Guinea where people speak this language and that's it. Yeah, it's unbelievable. No, and New Guinea is a wild place, man. It's a wild place.
02:02:53
Speaker
Yeah, I was just watching a thing about them yesterday or the day before about there's a city there like the capital city, there's like one of the most dangerous cities in the world, apparently. Yeah. And but so those people would come back once in a while and they would like the guy that the dad would preach and the kids would hang out with us, you know, and do Sunday school stuff and everything. And we always liked it when they came because they had
02:03:28
Speaker
I think they did. Yeah. But they were fun when they came back. Although I did one time, the dad was given his his slideshow, you know, on the overhead showing pictures of over there and stuff. And he showed this one. There was some of that. Yeah. Yeah. And they had to kind of apologize for it beforehand, you know, because obviously those people are wrong.
02:03:42
Speaker
actual life experience and like could tell, you know, they always brought some cool stuff with them and they were nice people.
02:03:58
Speaker
Yeah.
02:04:02
Speaker
They need to follow God's plan and wear a Super Bowl shirt with the wrong team on it. They were showing this slideshow and they get to this one slide. They're talking about how lost these people are out in the jungle. They show this slide and it's this guy and he's got a stick and his face is covered in blood.
02:04:33
Speaker
And they're like, you know, I mean, the natives, the people there, you know, it's kind of a traditional belief that like, if you have a headache or something like that, like you have a spirit that's tormenting you, and you need to like, open up your head and get it out. Who knows if it's true. That's what they showed on the overdo. But this picture goes up on the screen of this guy's face just covered in blood. And I'm just like staring at it being like, I don't feel good.
02:05:01
Speaker
I feel good. I start seeing the little spots, you know, and stuff. And then like, pretty soon, I pretty soon you had your own demon, they had to drill into your forehead and take out. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Almost did an exorcism. But I woke up and I have like, passed out and like fallen into my friend Jesse's mom's lap. And they're like shaking me. And the old ladies all thought I had a seizure. Wow, like, so you actually passed out.
02:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I passed out twice during similar things. Once was during the missionary slideshow and then once was at Liberty when they were describing abortions. Are you sure you weren't slain in the spirit? If so, I've legitimately been slain twice.
02:05:49
Speaker
had like those people who are really interesting and then there was like the other ones that like would they went to a first world country in like Europe or something and they were always weird and very socially awkward and like it was obvious that they went over there
02:06:10
Speaker
to like isolate their kids or something like that like they were super weird and just like i don't know it was it was such a distinct difference and that was like the people who went to the the netherlands like when they came back they were so strange and their kids would get up there and play the accordion and the recorder and stuff
02:06:28
Speaker
they would go through their slideshow talking about how lost the people of the netherlands are and stuff and then like this is sunday night so it's a 6 pm service it takes them an hour to do their performances and their slideshows and stuff and then the dad gets back up on stage where we're like checked out ready to go home and stuff and he goes how old are you at this point
02:06:49
Speaker
oh boy they came a couple of different times i was probably like maybe like 10 13 at this point i would say okay and the dad's like you know it's 7 10 and the dad's like well uh just wouldn't be right if you if you all came to church and you didn't hear a sermon so let me share a few thoughts with you and we're just like no
02:07:14
Speaker
He talked another like 40 minutes, just like killed us. This is unrelated, but I visited a church once, a friend's church. I was in high school. I was visiting a friend of mine whose family also went to church. So I went to, and they had this homeschooled family doing special music and it was the mom, the dad, and maybe their 12 or 13 year old son. They did a rap that their son wrote and it was,
02:07:45
Speaker
Wait, was it good? No. The mom was fucking killing it. The mom slam dunked the shit out of that rat. And that kid grew up- Her feature was fire. Did they do it over a beat or just-
02:08:02
Speaker
did it they did i don't look i don't know what beat they sampled but it might have just been the uh the electric drum kit that they maybe you know the night before but it was no it was it was horrifying like it was i mean it was amazing in the sense that my friends and i were able to have something to laugh about for the rest of this wait so so the kid didn't rap like no the kid did the kid the mom and his dad they all wrapped it was like it was yeah
02:08:32
Speaker
It was what you think. It's like that, like that. God. What's that? Like, there was a video that was going around, maybe Christian nightmares posted, but just that like typical, like hip hop, the hippity hoppity kind of like, Oh, what is happening? I don't want it. We hope devil, devil, will you stop? It was a full, probably three minutes and they all had a bar, a couple of bars, you know, they spit bars.
02:09:01
Speaker
Sounds great. Anyway, not related to visions, but. No, but but thank you. But I got saved. So it's as good. Man, I don't feel like there's a wrong. I don't feel like there's a wrong of time for that story. I feel like that. I kind of forgot about it until just now.
02:09:22
Speaker
Well, okay. So in closing, I'm always curious when somebody's gone like to a lot of different places in the U S what was your favorite place?
Spiritual Exploration and Personal Growth
02:09:31
Speaker
What was your least favorite place to go when you were here? Um, the, I mean, obviously like, so I think my favorite place was like good Denny's or an Applebee's around 11 PM.
02:09:45
Speaker
Oh, I thought you meant, okay. In terms of what? Like in terms of like a place, like state or city or, you know, part of the country. I mean, there were not very many, not very many cities at all. It was more definitely towns. Um, I mean, obviously like close to my family where I had my cousins and stuff, but like I, because so my parents, like before they moved, like they're sending church was.
02:10:13
Speaker
in Chicago so the Chicago churches were always nice because we had one black church in Chicago so that was always fun like because like my mom is very like my mom is very like expressive so she got to do her like she got to shout out amen during the sermon like she got to raise her hands and stuff like that
02:10:34
Speaker
Those are always fun. Uh, there was one church, my least favorite, it was, so there was this one church where like, and they're not going to hear this cause like, I don't think they're, I think they're still on like windows 98. Like, like, so we had like a regular, like we, you know, we do the slideshow and stuff and like a little video type thing. And like, so we always did like, we would come for the morning service where like my dad would do the, uh,
02:11:03
Speaker
my dad would do the sermon. And then in the evening is when we kind of do like our presentation type of thing. And like, and we go in the middle and they're like, can we see your presentation first? And then like, we didn't like, and so we played the presentation and they're like, oh, you can't play this. It's like, why? Cause your background music has drums and like guitars and drums and stuff. So you can't play this.
02:11:26
Speaker
yeah so uh so what we ended up having to do is like by this time i had seen our presentation like 40 times so like all the narration and all the testimonies like i did like on the mic like word for word and my brother played the guitar that was and like
02:11:43
Speaker
And it was all like, it was like a Chinese girl, like giving a testimony and then like a Pakistani guy. And I had to do like the accents too. I mean, I didn't have to, but you know, but he got to keep it interesting. Yeah. I got to keep it interesting. So like, yeah, that church was, that church was rough. And like we, uh, like all the other, and we like had to, like, they weren't, my parents didn't pretend, but like,
02:12:07
Speaker
You know, my parents would use the NIV and in that church, like, you know, he read only out of the King James, like that type of, that type of thing. So there must have been some like.
02:12:17
Speaker
pandering going on like oh yeah I mean like every church kind of has their own thing of how they kind of want you to act so you got a guy having a little bag listen today you're wearing suspenders okay suspenders yeah so so they were like don't my parents were like don't lie like so if someone says oh James only
02:12:38
Speaker
Are you King James? Only you don't say yes. However, I'm going to be preaching of the King James, even though, and if they ask, I'll say that I don't always, but you know, hopefully they don't. That's everything.
02:12:50
Speaker
All right. I have one more question, too. Do you talk to your parents about, like, your thoughts on it? Like, does it do you guys really connect or talk about what your experience was? Or do they is that come up at all? Not my experience. I mean, we talk about that kind of more where I am now, like, because I mean, like, for a while, I was like, you know, like, I was like, fuck this, you know, like, but I feel like, like,
02:13:18
Speaker
it kind of changed for me a little bit so I went to I went to university in India actually for about five years and when I was there I was kind of like alone and so I didn't start going back to church but I did like I did start like during the week like especially like I used to like go to because I like going to like Catholic churches and stuff like that because like they're always open like not for service just like to sit there and
02:13:47
Speaker
But like and I felt like a sense of peace and I feel like but I also feel the same like I went to visit like in India where the Dalai Lama's temple is and like I've been to Moss and stuff like that and I feel like I like I get a certain amount of peace for that but and so I'm uh and so I talked to it so at least like and so I I would say that I'm much more like open to that kind of I'm not like by any means like evangelical or anything but
02:14:16
Speaker
and so like we talk about that and like they're just happy that like I have any spirituality at all because like you know previously I didn't so he's on the right track yeah exactly he's just one or two steps away you know what I mean like but uh yeah I mean
02:14:33
Speaker
like I feel like yeah where I am now is probably that I actually would not like I like going to like Orthodox churches because they don't actually preach they just like pray and like read the Bible and stuff like that and like kind of do like things and I feel like traditions and like ceremonies and stuff are good for human beings in general it kind of like grounds you into like kind of like a
02:14:57
Speaker
you know a routine and stuff like that and like just like so that's yeah so we talk about stuff like that uh but yeah and so they're just happy that like i'm even interested at all
02:15:08
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's cool that you are even able to like broach those subjects. One of the recurring themes here is the degree to which people can and cannot have reasonable conversation with their parents as they've transitioned into adulthood. And obviously, obviously depends on, you know, the approach that parents aren't always easy. I mean, like, you know, if you, yeah, anyone from any of my parents supporting churches are listening to this,
02:15:37
Speaker
They didn't do anything wrong. It was my own, it was my own, it was my own thing. Please support them, they're doing a great job. It's just, you know, it wasn't them. It wasn't them. You were allowed to make your own decisions in life. Yeah. But you know, there are, that's the only thing I was a little bit trepidatious to do this. It was like, because like, oh, they didn't raise their child, right? I can't like support them, you know, that type of thing.
02:16:06
Speaker
Well, chances are they have one or two, whoever's listening that's upset has one or two kids that have left the church too or whether or not they've told them about it. We're talking to you Kurt Cameron.
02:16:21
Speaker
So, Kirk Cameron, did you guys ever see the way of the master? I know what the way of the master is, but I don't think I can sit down and watch it. Yeah, like my church did a kind of like a deep series through that. Please watch that. That's where that classic banana clip comes from. Banana thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's all I know for you. You thought Kirk Cameron's crazy, dude. The other dude is...
02:16:49
Speaker
oh yeah what's his name again uh rain comfort yeah yeah that guy's he's out there behold the atheist nightmare it's long cylindrical kind of soft i feel the impulse to stroke it
02:17:10
Speaker
with no concept of effect. I feel like you might have watched that once or twice. He falls asleep to that every night. Yeah. It's also funny how he has absolutely zero concept of the idea that banana has not been around since the beginning. Yeah. It is a genetically modified human invention. I guarantee you, Ray Comfort,
02:17:34
Speaker
reads a lot of blogs about lizard people running the government. I think that's a safe bet. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't surprise you. Well, Ian, it's been great talking to you, man. I'm glad we got to get together. Yeah, fun talking to you guys too, man. Awesome. Well, thanks everybody for listening and we will talk to you next time.