With my dad one day and I had my rebellious streak and I asked my stepdad Is it Ok if I don't go into the family business. I smiled and said You know Andrew I will support you anything I do that's also to be happy I want you to I want you to fulfill God's calling on your life and so I started to pursue a path in personal training you know some stuff that honestly and probably shouldn't of have been to but I was afraid to do what God called me to do right and it wasn't so I was 22 years old I started to take this thing seriously started to take my own and accepting the Lord into my life for me you know you're not are not from my family just a family thing that they handed down you have to actually so it was mine and I decided I had been living my life in a selfish manner for too long and I wanted to do something for someone else I don't know what that would like and God really started to. Open my eyes and break my heart for different people group and it was actually the homeless so I started doing some on my own out of that and God provided a whole ministry for my wife and I did lead and to be a part of and we got to do that for about 4 or 5 years and then I was at where was that snows in San Jose California step in the bad Great My dad was passing a church and we got to get out of that church it was amazing and it was a great experience and from there we moved on to be you pastors up in the Sacramento area and we continued that ministry in God started to break my heart towards teenagers in an entirely different generation and different people group and that's been great and. About about a year or so ago the senior pastor of Destiny Church in Rockland Pastor Greg Farrington he asked his pastoral staff to dream big God sized dreams to let there be no limit on it money is not a factor you know space is not a factor yeah and so what would you do for God If you could do anything so I've never been tasked before that was never an assignment given to me and so I really started praying in going in and going after it and God spoke clearly to me about about the demographic of special needs families children a special needs. It was something that was so out of left field because I knew nothing about this and I was hoping God would say something about the homeless because I knew something about that in and it was just something that he was want me to rely on him for and to learn from him in other people and so this is been a growth process for the last year that I've just been able to learn from people that are wiser more knowledgeable than me and well seasoned and versed in this entire new ministry that I'm a part of press pause for just a 2nd I just wanted to I just wrote down some words as I was listening to you 1st of all family what an amazing gift and heritage and not everybody comes from a family that but But what a blessing that your dad said hey I'm going to love you and support you and whatever and you know you want your journey and then 2nd of all you mentioned a wife and I don't really know her but I imagine she's awesome and she married you so that's pretty cool thing to have a partner ministry and you talk about a journey kind of go on. Home with ministry student ministry and then even geography moving from San Jose to here so I just want to make the point that just hearing your story already in Europe relatively young guy that there's a journey in life it's not instantaneous it's not like a microwave you don't just like pressure fingers and boom it's right it's over years that God shapes us and then to. The things I have in the past are great variants of truth in advertising I just pass to Greg love Destiny Church what God's doing there but for him to say to you just what is a god sized dream what would if if you really had the heart of God and money was an issue in buildings and all that stuff and so the fact that you really pressed in on that and he invited you to that and you took him up on it I love that and then I love love love I want to I want to hear specifics I love that you felt like the Lord gave you a specific word like you gave you a vision he gave you a picture even then when you got that picture like there was a people group that you saw a special needs. You didn't like how it all automatic it's still a journey so it's been a year Tell me about destiny heroes what is the ministry today and what's happening in this last year since you began to have this dream so literally when God gave this to me like like we've established I knew nothing my my knowledge of it was very elementary and so I started to surround myself with people that that knew and that I could learn from and so on a weekly basis I thought I was going back to school and I was just learning vocabulary and up in the days and don'ts what to say and what not to say and so I just started to learn and through the process the steps started to become clear what needed to happen trainings and indifferent events and things that it was just an outline of things that I wanted to see happen but the target came from. The entire statistic of a good 90 percent of these marriages it was chosen a special needs end in divorce and you just said again so if you're married and you end up having a special needs child and help me for just define special needs are we talking physical emotional mental what is about all we've got but so some special need area for a family has a special needs child did you say 80 to 90 percent end in divorce and 8 percent then why worse and it's it's primarily going to be a single mother raising it to go siblings and the child with special needs you know and so it's it's amazing to it was amazing to me to think if I am obedient to God I could bring that percentage down and I could make that a lower number. So they kind of just went off of that and I wanted to bust the families and I wanted to bless the children and the thing that I I wasn't planning on being so broad. It was actually my volunteers and me and this is a ministry that as I lead it and as it grows I'm getting more blessing than I ever thought possible from these little ones and these families and from their smiles there was just such a pity and there's such a there's just such a specific divine appointment over each and every one of their lives and it's it's really really special and it's a good way to put it a love that and I have to be honest I have many many bad habits one of which is I recommend books so many years ago I read a book called wounded healer by a man named Henry now and again he was a Catholic priest he was a Harvard professor he went to live in a community of folks who had struggled with mental handicaps and back in those days they would say they were mentally retarded so in mental handicaps and he lived in that community what he was shocked by after a year of caring for somebody is how much he personally had been ministered to and glass and he said you know I help people with cooking and changing clothes and stuff they transformed my soul and so I hear you saying you are you and your volunteers are actually the ones who are getting blasted and ministered to by walking with these families I'm sure of that sure and by the way if you've ever in the listening audience you've ever taken a missions trip you've gone somewhere thinking you're going to help some missionary or some people somewhere you know when you came back on the trip you were the one who received you know it's awesome So tell me a little bit about like I don't know if people in our community know you're in plaster county like are there a lot of families with special needs children and and what are the needs like are there a lot of families with special needs children and what are the needs of these families so right now there are an awful lot of these families and there's an entire community and it's entire group and so that's that's the demographic that we are aiming towards And unfortunately this demographic has been a lot of times pushed aside you know forgotten in. They're going to set towards the back of a line because a lot of people don't know how to how to deal with them like I said it's a hard thing because of the church but even in the church I mean the church maybe not welcome yes maybe push to the back yeah maybe maybe sometimes us to leave and that's that's when you look at it you know on the surface level that's easy to do you don't want to interrupt the service or something like that but that's. Ultimately help with Jesus would do and so to the least of them is who we're going after in and in everything that we do we want to do it as unto the Lord and so we have targeted these families targeted this community and one of the greatest needs that we wanted to fill was like I said that he did 90 percent percentile of the divorce rate I wanted to start to take a walk you know and so I wanted to give an opportunity for these parents to start to have their lives back have a piece of them that they have sacrificed for all these years to raise their children and I'm not a parent but I know how much my parents of sacrifice for me and how much they've given for my brother and I and we're we're both you know typical and functional but they've given their lives for us yes and so how much more for a parent with a special needs child who has extra needs have simply so and spend it's been a process but we've essentially developed a respite night and it's an outreach that parents can bring their children their children with special needs and their typical siblings to our community center and we will serve them in any and every way so they drop their kids off. And they sign them in with our with our trained volunteers we have trained staff that it's there to meet them at the door and after they send their child in they get to pick from a row of gift cards they get cards they want and they can just go out on a date they can go I don't know some of them say I don't need any gift cards I just want to go to the grocery store some of them there have been stories of of moms they literally just drop off their child and they go in this in their car in the parking lot right a parking lot I just need space they just they just want to sit there and we had we had a mom that. Literally grabbed a Starbucks gift card and she went Starbucks and she just sat. She is crying you know and she's not used to that. Things that are so normal for us and that are part of everyday life are are far reaching for them they're unattainable and so we get to give them a piece of their life back that's truly special So the good thing is we're on radio right now so people can't see the tears that are blowing up and I think about somebody who says what I just really need I just need to sit in a parking lot my car you know it's going to go to Starbucks or I don't have the gift card just just give me some time so you do this heroes you know read the paper in front of you do this here and just special needs a rest at night how often does this happen so so yeah the entire ministry we we kicked it off as the dream of the special needs initiative in America down we named it destiny heroes destiny heroes and so destiny is the official title of our special needs been destry And right now we're doing it by monthly and we started it in the 1st quarter of the year in our next event is going to be on August 9th and right you know we started with about 20 families at our very 1st respite while and that was an amazing number of like it was like This is crazy and our 2nd rest when I happened we were up to 36 and John this 3rd one has been opened we opened registration for 2 weeks from already up to 50 families and there is a massive explosion of people that are getting word of this seeing the quality that we're bringing because it's not just we're throwing something together and we're yeah we're saying hey you can come if you want there is there is train volunteers there's a registration process that this is this is a sought after place to be yeah and to have 50 families over half of those families are brand new families that have never been a part of this before and so we're 10 weeks into the registration for August 9th and we're already waitlisted it's just got God's hands over this and in an amazing way this is not this is not normal. These are these are God size figures these are God such numbers I want to point out a couple things 1st of all if you're a business person listening I want you to notice that the one of the 1st dots that Andrew mentioned was the 80 to 90 percent divorce rate and if we're going to move the needle on things like that we need to pay attention to metrics metrics are important it helps us to judge where we start from and where we end up and so launching this destiny heroes ministry and seeing that you've gone from 20 to 36 and now 50 on the list. I love love love what you're doing and you have a trained staff you are working with volunteers to provide a loving supportive environment for the special needs children as as well as their siblings if they desire so my question for you is get this awesome community center you've got this church that's that's helping to support the launch of this ministry What do you need to find in the listening audience and I go like that is what I would like to be involved in and what what do I need how can they help so right now the main thing that we need the primary thing that we need is volunteers Ok experience volunteers is such a commodity for us because when a family comes in when they sign up automatically we paired their children with a volunteer on a one to one basis and so if we don't have enough volunteers that's right can't serve all these answers yeah so that's why we have to start a wait list because the amount of volunteers now we have had you know 70 some some odd volunteers come out to our events but as it grows that's not going to be enough right and so slowly we are growing our capacity of volunteers and so if you're wanting to get involved with this you can go to love our city dot com love our city dot com love our city dot com and you can you can sign up as a volunteer you can you can do an application as a volunteer and we'll go through the whole process with you if you want to do that . You can you can go that way or you can also. Give us an e-mail Dan with you know it's special needs at love our city dot com special needs special needs at love our city dot com Yes and. Immediately get you a list of things that you would need to do to volunteer to be a part of our nights to see our ministry to start to get involved Ok so and I love so much of what you're saying but one of the main things I want to communicate to our audience is people ask how going to be the hands and feet of Jesus and there are all kinds of needs in our community here's one you may not have known this may be a group of people that you've never seen you've never really heard their voice should never experience a reality but I hope you've heard and you talk about the fact that by monthly basis what what they're doing at Destiny heroes through love our city dot com as a way to get information they're just being present and they're they're loving on the special needs children and their siblings so let me just ask this you talk about experience volunteers somebody who may be listening may have experience working with special needs children and obviously they would be where you'd be delighted to have them help what happens if I'm listening to what we're talking about I'm going like. Yeah my heart's moved I would love to help by just the idea of a single mom sitting in her car crying and going to Starbucks just given her a couple hours of freedom. Touched by that but I've got 0 experience you know if I have 0 experience can I still be used to be helpful and if so how to present yes you can still be a volunteer you can still be a part of the night they experience volunteers when a family signs. Their child up for our event. There's a there's a registration form that talks about all of the child's hands their disabilities their likes their dislikes you know those things are all transferred in and we go through a rigorous process of preparing people up based on their child with the experience of the volunteer and so it's a it's a wonder 5 basis and we pair the ones with ones the fives the fives and everything in between and if you say I'm a volunteer with no experience my heart is moved by this there's still a lot for you to do and you don't have to be for afraid that you're going to you know come into our building and be paired up with somebody who's extremely fragile and has a lot of high risk special needs and stuff like that but there are there are the siblings that we spend time with and that's that's still a one to one basis and just spending time with those sibling to arts and crafts and I going to go carts with them you know planes and basketball Those are all things that we need volunteers for even something as simple as handing out stuff at registration or being in the snack bar you know our inflatables there are volunteers everywhere and we also have everything you know from security in our medical tent So yes if you rub bones here there is absolutely a place for you regardless of your experience and I love the fact that you mentioned floatable security tent. Go carts So again we're talking with Andrew Allan Andrew is from Destiny Church in Rockland they have a ministry called Destiny heroes all the ministry happens at the Destiny community center and you have never been by the way to Destin a community center I just encourage you I think the Lord is all over that community center that there's outreach ministries happening there's arts and various ministries and serving the community and I just love the vision of that ministry you can go also to love our city dot com love our city dot com You can send an e-mail to special needs of our city dot com so. And we've got little time left let's just talk just a little bit more about dreaming I know this is all happening last year you've been kind of developing this but if we're having the same conversation I don't know let's say 3 years from now from the same conversation 3 years from now can you like the road burst the vision in your heart at the very beginning and you've gotten trained and educated and all that and God's put together a team 3 years from now just just dream for us a little bit dreams from God size dreams about 3 more years from now yeah well. God never done with us as you know and here was something on the horizon he was and something else to do and we're if we're not growing daily we're dying gradually and so if we're not growing daily we're dying gradually Yeah Ok folks you can take that and put that on your you know the growing daily absolutely so it's the type of thing that 3 yes or no we have plans we have things that we're going to expand into we're we're not going to do this by monthly we're not going to do this corridor this is going to be a monthly outreach that we're going to be doing we're going to have respite nights every single month and let me say if you do respite not monthly your pool of volunteers is going to have to grow not simply massively exponentially Ok so it's it's. It's going to be a monthly rest and I think we're looking for and we're also looking to start to expand and to Sundays and that dream was kind of put in because of a father that I had a conversation with he's that. And he has an 18 year old child with special needs and he says my wife and I love church we love it but we can't we can't go because there's nowhere that we can take our son you know and we want to be a part of the service and this church is amazing we have great things about it about destiny but there's no way you can get involved and I just sit there and I took my head sideways and I said this isn't this isn't right this isn't