Transcription
Once again, we are back, uh, on Council Culture, where it's not about canceling one another, it's about counseling one another. A safe space for men to emote, to be vulnerable, uh, so we can feel together, reveal together, so we can all heal together. Uh, and I'm joined once again by my brother. Man, I love this brother so much. As I say, highest class of civilization, man. There, there's a certain type of people, man, that just got an energy that it's like you're just drawn to, and you just want to see them continue to win, and you feel comfortable in their, in their presence. And that's my brother, Pastor Troy. Right?
Yes, my brother. Man, you know, there's a rapper named Pastor Troy. I do, you know, I'm saying? If he ever mess up, we're going to switch his bag to. But y'all both lit. I, we lit up fire, man. Man, and you got such a, a powerful energy, man. You, you always got a smile on your face, man. You always talk about, you know, your family. You always talk about you, you know, as the CEO, uh, and president of the Los Angeles Mission, first black man to ever have this position, 87 years in, 87 years. Uh, and even what you've done in really the short amount of time that you've been there, since 2020, correct? You got, you got the, the job in the middle of a pandemic.
I tell everybody, I felt like Obama being handed something, man, and then they try to snatch it back. I was like, Lord, wait a minute. When I got in the office, they would hit me with a pandemic. Then they told me, you can't have nobody in the building. Wow. Like, you can't even help the homeless. Now, you got to understand, the mission survives on people being in the building, right? Right. Like, and they were like, you can't bring nobody in here, and you're going to have to figure life out. And I had, at the time, almost a million-dollar budget. Now, our budget is around 21 million or something, almost 22 million. Wow. Doubled it, and in, in three years. And, um, and, and because of the work, and we needed the people, we were laying off people. The building was falling apart. I remember you had to actually redo the whole build. It was your responsibility to fix a building that was falling apart.
That's exactly right. With no money. With no money. Fix the building. No money. And by the way, no anything. You don't have no people in the building. Fix the building and do all. It was like, Mission Impossible. But what's impossible with man is impossible. LA Mission Impossible. But what's impossible with man is possible with God. Come on, man. And I took it to the Lord in prayer, and he gave me vision, and he gave me strategy, and he surrounded me with people, and we were able to wrestle that demon down to the mat and really begin to change the culture and the conversation through wise counsel, through inviting people in to give their input into the place, to change the way we started to do business.
And so, uh, Mission Without Walls was birthed. And we decided we was going to go into the highway, the midst of the mission. We changed the mission of the mission. And we really, 'cause we started saying that your mission is my mission, but we're never going out on a mission. And I was like, okay, well, this doesn't make sense. And so when school shut down too, that meant that, you know, children that were used to getting a meal while from school weren't eating. And we needed to respond to that. And so we created Mission Without Walls. And underneath Mission Without Walls are initiatives that we. And one of our first initiatives was, first, it was dignity by design, because we said, okay, look, if we can't do anything in the building, then we need to assess this facility, and we need to make a determination of when we can come back. Are we coming back with giving people dignity? So I started walking and praying over the building and walking the building. And what I saw was not dignity. And I cried and weeped, and I said, God, I need your favor. I need to be able to do something. And he said, he wanted me to take care of his house. And I kept saying, I'm going to take care of the mission. He said, no, I said, take care of my house. And so the first thing that we did was revamped the chapel and made it a place of worship with dignity. And so we begin to worship God in there. And me and my ministry team and prayer team, we would come in there, and we just be praying over the building for more clarity in terms of what he wanted to tackle.
And then he said, now, dignity by design. 'Cause I walked the floor and I was like, and you know, somebody who, um, had served some time, um, in the county jail, um, when I was homeless, I served time. And I, you know, minor stuff, but I actually served time. The county ain't no joke. County ain't no joke. And, um, and so I, I was like, well, these little bitty mattresses, like little green mattresses, and all that. People ain't sleeping on that. And so I said, well, we just gutted this place. And we had a whole media thing. Feel institutional. No, because I think people, that's not dignity. And so we revamped all the living quarters now. And they're on the men and women's side. They got pillow top. They coming in, man. They got glass spaces, TVs. They got, um, privacy booths where they can handle their business in privacy with dignity. Um, we have programs that are coming off the chain, man. Employment programs, partnerships, helping people really get, um, an opportunity to come through a process. And this year, I just launched our first accredited, um, biblical courses, um, in conjunction with Global University. And so now people can matriculate through a whole biblical course curriculum and end up with a career in ministry if they so desire. We also launched a partnership with Cisco. Our Cisco Academy is launching, uh, where people can get jobs in IT.
You talking about the corporation, not the dude from Drew Hill and the Thong Song? Not that. Oh, yeah. No, yeah. The Cisco, Cisco Corporation. And then, you know, getting ready to launch some other things with some other corporations in workforce. But we started doing these initiatives. And one of the things we wanted to do is deal with food insecurity because, you know, a part of the process is understanding, if you want to eradicate homelessness, you also got to deal with the things that are systemic to it, right? And how and connected to it. And because really, poverty is at the root of homelessness. And when people have poverty in their lives and they don't have the ability to come out, they end up and fall. And this is what COVID taught us because people that were on the fringes, working in the culinary field, working in the restaurants, all that, they suffered greatly, right? And working in hospitality, for example, those things got shut down as well. And those families and those people that were depending on that source of income, they fell into homelessness. So the numbers increased. And it was a different type of person that was homeless. And so we can no longer say that homeless was a drug addict or the people that were suffering from mental illness. It was the hard, everyday workers down that were sleeping on the streets and coming in shelters and needed a way of escaping. So we needed to develop a solution to have an impact and move the people that were being impacted out as quickly as possible, um, through rapid rehousing, skill development, retraining opportunities. And so the mission came to begin, alongside many of our partners, to really create these opportunities and these training thing, um, apparatuses. And then Race to Feed took off. Now we're doing close to 2 million meal boxes of meals, um, a year. Year. We started off, yeah, 600,000 our first year. Now we have close to 2 million, and it just continues to grow. And so one box, she feeds a, um, a family of six for a week. Wow. And it's healthy food, too, right? And so people can cook their own meals. And it's like, it's really fire, man. I love it, man. All of these amazing programs. And again, it started from your vision.
Started from my vision, man. You know, when God gives you a vision, because, you know, in, and the word of God came to Zerubbabel, and he gave him a vision. And back, and it talks about that he had first given him a burden. And you can't have a vision without a burden, right? Like, so you get a burden first for something, then God gives you a vision. And I think I have a burden for the people and the plight that they have. And that's why the Bible talks about how, um, compassion moved Jesus. It's really saying, you know what? He had a burden for the plight. And so compassion moved him to respond with grace and dignity and, and to give them the, the virtue to them from himself. And that's what I literally do. I go home sometimes exhausted, but I literally dispense virtue every day. And I go back to replenish myself because people need the virtue of God. And God flows through me. His virtue flows through me, so I can become healing to the nations and help people through not just words, but the activity and the programming, from the creativity. You know, I started, I said in the last segment, that God gave me his brain, and he has, he gave me his mind on every matter that I deal with. And, and the way to create. And how Solomon has for God's wisdom. And that's exactly what he's giving me. That's all I ask for, um, is for me to have his mind and his heart and his wisdom on matters. He's my counselor. He, he shows me what to do. And he uses my full gift and talents, true, but he gives it to me. And I carry out to the script what he gives to me, um, to give to the people. Um, and I give my full self. I don't hold back on anything. When I give, I give all of me. Um, and, and I'm just designed that way because I want people to see that it's possible for them to be loved and they're cared for, that they do matter, they have value. And we want to create platforms for to do it. And that's why people with lived experience have been brought to the table.
When we lost our music, um, when we launched our, um, Music Matters initiative. Yeah. And I was telling you about that. I was literally at a Maverick City concert, and I was sitting on the couple, one of the front row. Somebody had blessed me with tickets. And the concert was in Orange County. And, you know, they gave you this Q&A time, right? Um, and you get to talk to them. And I said, I'm going to be the last one up on the microphone, man. And I got the video. I'm going to send it to you, man, so you can see this video. And I, I call him out, not in a negative way. I was just like, you know what? Y'all in Orange County blessing us. We had great worship, and it's fire. But the people in Skid Row, we need to hear this worship too. When y'all going to come bless us? And so their manager got with me and my people and all that, and they said, we'll get with you. And it fast forward, it went by, you know, a year, almost two years. And then they were dropping their album with Kirk Franklin. And somehow it just came together. And we reached out to my people. We, and the next thing I know, we had Kirk Franklin, Maverick City Music, and in this shutdown, blocks of Skid Row, and had all these vendors and markets. And, uh, and God did that thing. I was like, wow, this is crazy. It just blew up so fast. And now it's the whole thing. 'Cause Music Matters has become an initiative that we're using to really use arts to transform homelessness in our communities. And that's what you and I were talking about. And we getting ready to throw down on our second event, Get Music Matters, presented by Nick Cannon and Friends. Yes.
It's so much. I mean, again, I, I love Maverick City. I love Kirk. So, you, you're inaugural started off in such a big way. But to your point, man, I mean, to be able to build something. We've been down there. I've been down there for years. But even the things that you do, the, the people do need it, and they love it, embrace it. So, yeah, we got all these music festivals like Coachella and Rolling Loud and Bonnaroo and Made in America. But imagine a festival right there in the heart of Skid Row. That's what I'm talking about. And I mean, like you said, where it's needed. It's, it's so much inspiration. It's so much. So we building it. We putting it together. I'm loving being a part of it. And whatever we need to do, I, I'm, as we manifest, as we speak into existence, be one of the biggest. That's going to be one of the biggest. And I mean, it's, it's so important as we talk about, you know, all of the amazing programs that you've built. But as we see, that's, that's just a start. It's just a start. We need so much more. And I want to ask you this, like, 'cause I, real, real solutions in the sense, 'cause we, we're going to fix this homelessness problem. Because as we know, you know, uh, the word says, or specifically Jesus said, you know, when I was hungry, you know, did you feed me? He's going to ask questions. Yeah. When I was, when, when I was homeless, did you give me shelter? He's going to ask questions. You know, uh, and as we do this work, knowing that the answer to this question should be yes, and we should, it's a call to action. It's, it's people accepting the assignment. Because as we can see, homelessness is on the rise. It's on the rise. We see it. You know, it's, it's spilled out of Skid Row. We see it when we step outside our nice houses. We, we see people, you know, standing with the signs. And like you said, it's not, it's not the, the typical homeless people that we have known to know, whether, like you said, mental illness, drug addicted. It's families. That's exactly right. It's people living in, it's tent cities, right? People living out of cars. Um, what are the real solutions? Because our feel-good solutions are amazing, and the donations are amazing, and, um, the volunteer work. But who do we hold accountable for this homelessness problem? Because I mean, as Tupac said, so, uh, so very poignantly and powerfully, uh, when, you know, there's no reason that people should be having, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of mansions, and there's people that are starving outside.
Yeah. We hold ourselves accountable. Mmm. So no specific institutions, no organizations, government, none of that stuff. I think we are our brother's keeper. I think we, as a society, hold ourselves accountable to the change that we want to see. I think, you know, you know, tithing is a principle that is a real principle that has teaching principles on it. And so in the church, we teach tithing because it's a God-given principle, how to give. And parity, it doesn't matter how much you give, but if you give this percentage, you're equal to somebody who gives a larger amount. But at the same, God loves cheerful. But it's at the same position. So if I'm a millionaire, if I give a million dollars and I give 10%, if I get a million dollars and I give 10% of that million, or if I get $100, I give 10%, both gave equally. Yeah. And our time and our energy is like that too, in the kingdom. And so when we give for where we are. So remember the parables that God gave to us in the word of God, they're teaching parables that teach us about principles of how we serve. To the one man that had one talent, he had to do this. To another man that had two talents, he had to do this, and so forth, and so forth. They had to give in equal proportion to what they were blessed with. And sometimes what happens in our society, we have imbalance. And I'll say, sometimes we have real imbalance in our society. When you have athletes, and I understand they earn it, and they back it, I get it. But when you have athletes, you know, getting contracts for 750 million plus, right? And then we want to talk about how do we solve something? And you go to these corporations that are giving this money to people, it becomes about merchandising. It's, it's about marketing. And it's about us on our own human greed. And so that's why I say humankind has to hold itself accountable to the atrocities of poverty and homelessness. And as long as we have greed, as long as we have these things that we don't want to see our brothers as ourselves as our brothers' keeper, then we're always going to have it. And that's why the Bible talks about poverty and the poor should always be among us because the human condition allows it. And so until we change the way we are as humanity, then you're not going to be able to solve it totally. We might be able to do it in ecosystems that we can get like-minded people comprised with the same heart and the same drive to do it. And it's not about looking at what people bring to the table and what they don't bring to the table, but when they come, bring their full authentic self, yeah, um, to help solve the issues. And I think that's what really is required. Because we can point to government, but is it all government? We can point, because when we drive out as our homes and stuff, how do we think about the people that we see? You know, it used to be six degrees. I think Will Smith or somebody made some movie, talk about six degrees of separation, where really it's one degree now. You just have one degree of separation from the issues that's facing you when you come outside of your home, right? And we either going to do something about it or we not. And it's not just about one vote, it's about the activity of getting involved, be a part of the solution. It might just be coming to serve on a day that give service. It might be, you know what, I'mma sacrifice something for one day to do this. And how much would it really cost you if you sacrifice one meal to invest that one meal that you sacrifice into services like at the places like at the LA Mission, or somewhere in your community?
Absolutely. Well, this is the thing, because again, not only are you offering solutions, but you're on the front lines. That's right. So you see the, the true issues firsthand. And, you know, I've been told, or, and again, 'cause I honestly don't know, that they feel like to maybe even help solve, uh, the homeless issue, that we need to dive and focus on the mental health issue. Because the majority of the people, uh, that are homeless are experiencing mental illness. Now, as a brother who not only literally was on Skid Row himself, and, and having, you know, you said, you know, drug-induced psychosis and things of that nature, how important, and then you, I'm sure you see it every day as the CEO, and you, and you're there at the mission, how important is it for us to focus on not just delivering food and clothing, or not just, um, you know, donating money, but offering true solutions in the space of mental wellness?
I think it's extremely important. I think that the numbers, so the number of people that are mentally ill are staggering in the community of homelessness. But not everybody, or not the majority of people, are mentally ill that are homeless. And so, but what happens is, is that those that are mentally ill are the highest utilizers of the system. And so that creates the imbalance in resources where they can be targeted somewhere else. So you got to free that part up. Interesting. So you got to free that part up so that those resources are being used by the lowest amount of people in terms of percentage wise, they're using the higher volume of resources. And so, and then what's happening now is that, uh, mental illness is becoming more pervasive in the homeless space. And the reason why is because homelessness, itself, is a condition that exasperates mental illness. So somebody that is, you know, underdiagnosed with a mood disorder like depression or anxiety, for example, if they ended up in the street, that can escalate and become something worse because they're being misdiagnosed. Right? Right. And so they enter this space, and we're not using the, the level of therapeutic environments, like, you know, talk culture, right, right, to create these spaces where they can actually process differently and get them, get the help that they need. Exactly. And so we leave them in these situations, and that's when it's exacerbation. That's when it is. Exactly.
And the art is a perfect way to give inspiration, right? And that's why Music Matters is going to be so important because when you think about creativity, and how we as human beings are creatives in itself, because remember, we made in the image of God. Now, God has creative power, meaning that he can call something that's not into being. He can call it, even if it doesn't exist, God can make it exist. That's creative power. He's the only living entity that has that. But he gives us his likeness. And so that means that we have now creative ability. What that means is that now we have the ability to create from anything that's created. So anything we see, anything we think, we can do, we can achieve. God says this to us as human, as a human race, in Genesis, look at man, he knows who he is. Now, there's nothing going to be impossible for him. So anything we conceive, we can achieve. And I think that if that's true, then why have we not conceived a solution for homelessness? Right? And the reason why we, we forget what God says in Genesis when they're building the tower. He says, now that they have agreement, because they agree and they have unity, they can achieve anything. And the reason why I think we can't solve homelessness is because we don't agree what the solution is, right? And so when we have so much disagreement on what the solution is, nobody can agree on anything, and therefore we can't get nothing done. Everybody think they got a solution over here. This is the solution. This is the solution. This is the solution. But nobody's coming to say, you know what, maybe all of it is a part of the process, and we need to start here, or you, there's no individual solution for homelessness. There's no real individual. Everybody will get up and say, I have a solution for homelessness. But it's impossible if five people in the room that you're saying it to don't agree with you.
But to you, even said something earlier, I mean, again, it's just hard for me to fathom, 'cause there's so much money that the top 3%, you think about that. I mean, like, even like, and we hear about what Bill Gates is donating, we hear about what, you know, all of these people who have these. But the amount of money, I, I forgot this, I wish I had this statistic, but it's like the amount of money that it would take to eradicate homelessness completely is very achievable. We, we earn it in one political cycle. Right now, in this election cycle, literally people who are running for office to say they, to run for what they want to solve, they raise more money trying to get elected. Think about this for a minute. They raise billions, right, of dollars, billions of dollars, just to get their name on the ballot to run for office to solve things that they said they going to solve. And the people that invest, invest in that candidate, or not investing in other solutions. They rather invest in a candidate. So the money it costs to fund a political campaign could actually eradicate home. It can be knocked off, man. That's what I'm telling here in America.
But that's the thing to me. It's like people are making billions. That's exactly right. You could get rid of homelessness. You could get rid of, you know, uh, people starving. You can get rid of so many, so many problems. But what at its core do you believe is, because even when we talked about mental health, you said that is one issue. But what is the core issue that, to me, creates homelessness? Poverty. Just poverty. And what, like, I, so you say, is it the, the class system? Of there has to be somebody on the bottom? 100% in America. Classism is really the key. But when you look at it across the world, we don't see. Like in third world countries, you go, if you travel and you go to a third world country, poverty is here. You see people living in tents. Now, you don't call that homelessness, but you see that that's how they live. That's their living condition. But they're in a hut, they're in a tent, just like people that walk in the street here, they're living in tents, right? But this, but it's extended from poverty, right? And, and classism. There'll be the really rich and the really poor. That's true classism. But we're headed here in the United States. We're really headed. Middle class, rich man. Right now, we got to work three or four jobs just to live comfortably in a middle-class space. Right? You got to have three or four checks, three or four, five checks coming in just to keep it going. Right? And that shouldn't be that way. Definitely should. You know, when you have to, people, you and me, everybody. People are like, oh, you got all this. No, I'm working hard. Fact. You know what I'm saying? I'm working really hard. And I'm not just working at one thing. I'm working at multiple things 'cause I can't let one ball drop. I got to have something else going 'cause I have all this stuff going on. And sometimes I got to create something over here to keep this one thing going that I'm trying to start. This is the thing. That's the, the reality of what we dealing with. And then I click on TVs and I go to the game, and I love it. Basketball now, but homeboy is paid like a grip, and then he's getting endorsements and all that. And, and so, but then drive out into communities, and we got people sleeping on our streets. So we have this imbalance. Feed our people. We have an imbalance in our community. And, and people who are privileged are not at the table. So we got to get them to the table. We have to get them to the table. And it's not about just saying, giving your money. It's about, we need strategy. We need investments. We need influence.
I was about to say, just influence in general. Exactly. Influence can probably do more than money. Because if you have the right influence, then you're inspiring others to do the good work that needs to be done. You know, Staples, now it's Crypto.com, but used to be Staples. And I remember having a conversation with them, and I was like, you know what? This is going to make no sense outside, yeah, you know, outside of your backyard. And, you know, let's, let's have a real conversation about how we can make an investment. There's homeless people outside this billion-dollar entity. Well, you can put, you can slap your name, because it's about marketing, it's about merchandising, it's about, how can I get my brand out? And I'm willing to pay for that. You know, many millions of people are going to come to a basketball game through in a year, or watch a basketball game, or do that. And so my brand on this building is going to matter. And people, and they, in their mind, think people going to think, oh, let me go spend my money here, right? Right. And because of the branding that we all do, and this is how society is. But what if we just said, let me take a fraction of that, a fraction of it, and invest it in some qualitative programs that have proven track records? Right? I invite Corporate America right now to come in and invest in places like the Los Angeles Mission, because we can really use help right now. I'm building a Work Source Center right now, and it's all on faith, brother. But I got a couple of corporate sponsors. I need more capital dollars to build it out. But it's going to be one of a kind, where we partnering with, and we're creating real career track jobs. You know, we're looking at CVS right now, Target, UPS, some others that are trying to come in and support us, Cisco being another. And we, and we have room for more. But we got to build this place where people can do that. That's surrounding in the community, that's living this, the single room occupancy dwellings, people that are coming ready to graduate out of the shelters that are in the surrounding area. We got to create viable solutions because we can't really build housing without an economic solution. And you can't build community without a full community. We know how to build community. I, I, like humankind is such a trip. They'll go to a rural area out in the Inland Empire, out in the valley, somewhere out in the desert, for goodness sake, and they'll build housing. And they're going to surround that housing with a grocery market, a cleaners, they're going to make sure that it's some kind of economic value around that, entertainment, all that exists. You build housing in the Skid Row community, you build affordable housing in the, in the poor areas, all you build is housing. They got to get their food from a liquor store. This doesn't make sense to me. You're not trying to build real community. Yeah. You just building housing. And we know what that looks like. It's called, and Gardens, it's called slums, like whatever you want to call it across America, it's the projects. You understand what I'm saying? It's the projects. And eventually, you're going to have people just, you know, imploding on themselves because they don't have it out. You don't have an economic viable system around this housing. And so how can you say right now, we're building hundreds of units in Skid Row, and I asked the other day, why are you building all this housing? We don't have a grocery market. Right. Where the cleaners at? Is there, is there a process of, is it a process of gentrification? Is it a process of, like, I mean, because even as it, you know, when they were attempting to grow downtown and kind of make it an entertainment complex, no. When you talk about gentrification, okay, if you cross blocks, so I'm just talking about the Skid Row community. You cross over a few blocks, you and Broadway, they're rehabbing all these apartments and they're turning these lofts and creating all that. They got markets, they got theaters over there. But right in the spaces, you can literally walk a couple of blocks right and see that. And now, but they don't want the people that's living in Skid Row to come shop at the Ralphs that's in the gentrified place, right? That's a problem. And so this doesn't make no sense to me. Right, right. In our own communities, we got a sense of redlining. And it ain't the level of, you know, like people trying to purchase, but it is this, here's this line that you can't cross. And it's only for the privilege to come over here. If you come over here, you got to stay here. Do you know that the Skid Row grid used to be longer than what it is? The city shrunk it and made it more compressed. But it used to be longer. And over time, it shrunk. And we sold ourselves to the system, meaning that we gave up our inventory and some of our housing stock. And so we need affordable housing stock to be competitive for federal grants at the, at the federal level. And so we started selling off our housing stock to these developers, low-income housing. And now that's why you have to, to build it back in. That's the reason we have to do it. We used to have a lot of affordable housing, but we got rid of it. We made all these, you know, unaffordable housing, right, opportunities where people can't afford to live in. And we created no sense of community. So for me, when we talk about solutions, we need to think about it from, yeah, housing is needed, obviously. But you can't really build housing without an economic and community solution attached to it to rid poverty. You have to, or otherwise, you're just going to create the projects. Yeah. Yeah.
Now, that in itself is a real feat and a real mission. Um, speaking of solutions, as we wrap this session up, you spoke on one of your solutions when you became the CEO of the mission, which I found powerful. You said, you know, "One, God said, take care of my house." But the power of prayer, one, how it helped your life personally in your journey, uh, and two, literally how you changed the mission by just praying. Can you talk on what you believe the power of prayer and how prayer actually changes things?
I think, I think prayer is cathartic. I, I think that prayer allows us to communicate in a free space and to talk to our creator and to come in contact. Yesterday, we did something when we meditated, and when we meditate, that we were getting in tune with ourselves, right? And we anchored ourselves back to the earth, and not just that, but our breath, and we anchored ourselves back to each other in that space. And it was a short period of time, but that's really what prayer does. It recenters us back to our creator. It gives us a space where we can breathe and relax and meditate on him and seek a higher purpose for ourselves and get in touch with our humanity. I think a lot of people prayed and meditated in their lives regularly, they'll have a more sense of purpose and a more sense of community and belonging to it. And so for me, prayer helps me to focus. It helps me to hear the voice of God. And this is not me talking all the time. I think prayer also incorporates this sense of meditation and relaxing and settling to the space to develop an ear that listens and be attuned to what you're hearing, and to be able to hear your own breath and connect to yourself into the energy that's flowing freely from you and center yourself into that. That's an important piece of prayer. And, and I do it every day. I practice it as a part of my lifestyle. Uh, because I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't have no crazy lifestyle, I don't do any of that. And so I love to exercise, and I love to be in my prayer closet, which is my gym. And when I come out, I remember the other day, yesterday, as a matter of fact, I came out of working, and somebody said, and I got on the Zoom, and he said, man, you look good, you glowing. I was like, oh, I just came out of this gym, uh, because I'm in there talking to the Lord. I'm exercising. I'm quiet. I always end myself in meditation, and I'm quiet before him. I'm centered. And I really am so in tune when I come out of that environment, and I bring that back to the mission. And so we start every meeting with prayer. We anchor ourselves in the moment. Um, we forgive ourselves when we, when we step out of line with one another, right? Um, and prayer helps us center. One of our board members today, I was in a board meeting, and boy, we was iron sharpens iron, sparks was flying. And, uh, and, and he says, well, you know what? We all in love. He said, but I just feel like right now, we're going to pray. And so we just centered ourselves in the moment, and we prayed about it, and we stepped out of that place in love. And, yeah, we had a few disagreements in the space of how to get somewhere, but we agreed at the core piece that we needed to get there. The how-to is what we were kind of in, not in alignment with. But we left out in focus. We left out in alignment. And I think if humankind does that more, more, then we can start to come up to solve some of these issues that we're seeing that's so pervasive in our society. Homelessness, obviously being one of them. But we're not going to solve it, brother, if people don't want to really change. Yeah. We got to be willing to change a little bit, just a little.
Well, it starts here. You know, we're going to change them, man. Start the conversation. And everything that we're putting together. So again, man, I appreciate your time. I appreciate everything that you do for the community. Thank you, brother. Uh, your story is so inspiring. I'm sure you inspired and enlightened so many in this session. Um, so we got to keep doing this, man. I'm excited about our future. I'm excited about what you've already done at the mission and on Skid Row. And like I said, such a powerful story from Skid Row to the CEO. Pastor Troy. Yes, sir. Council Culture. Like, subscribe, comment. We'll highlight on the next one.