a HOLE in his HEART...

My dad's in prison and will probably be in prison till the day he dies like all of the hurt that my family has gone Through the struggles that I've been through like. I'm pretty excited today. Sam's coming over from Montana I met Sam from YouTube. He reached out actually via I think Instagram and said hey We're huge fans of the channel. We're gonna be in town today Do you want to come like can we come shoot bows with you? And I was like This is perfect. We're actually headed to the Archery Range in an hour He's like great and then his whole squad showed up We made a YouTube video about it, and I just kind of got to know Sam Fast forward we stayed in touch. He put a couple bulls on the ground and We actually white-tail hunted a couple times together in Montana And I got to know him and know a story and I was like Man, this guy's really impactful in the world like we need more Sam Fernandez's and he's a pastor. He's been a youth pastor He played college ball, and then just a couple years ago. He had a huge health scare I think he's got a hole in his heart, and it's like not It's like day to day sometimes and so Anytime he's in town. We just try to drop everything and hang out from Sam's coming over today to to probably work out She's in bows and maybe podcast and I want you guys get to know Sam better. I didn't want to be like a Pastor I wanted to be something else and God has shown me and taught me like I've called you to Bring the gospel to to bring discipleship to the Florence community to find the kids like you who needed Direction to needed love to need support to make it in their life and so like nothing I feel like the only easy day was yesterday, right? That's a People say a lot. I feel like that's what my life is is like I'll carry the precious cargo I will spend that time and energy in order to make somebody feel like that that God cares about them that they are loved Straight six like a straight six by six. Yeah, like a straight six by six. I like straight six by six It's the owner just started there. What brand of bow is that? It's a Matthews. Gotcha. This is Matthew shape 33 It's been a long shot last night 134 yard shot last night. Oh crap. Okay got a driver on there, dude And you got some sort of bridge lock stabilizer thing. Oh, yeah Okay, I Watched you Shoot your buck Via a decoy this year like a real three like 3d decoy. Yeah, I I was in a saddle 100 and something yards away. Yeah, maybe even less Microadjust sites are louder than yeah, not micro just things and so it's just a little extra. I'm gonna steal that play That's a good play. It's uh All the guys at the shop give me so much crap for it I don't know how much it actually helps but it will listen today the audio will tell okay So then you got bars you got how long a bar is that 15? I would want I want the 18 or 20 though. You will hot with that. Yeah, okay Okay, all day all day. I will take the longer stay with you see my video where I shot with no bars Yeah, uh, that was like 20 yards away, right? And I haven't replied to any comment, but like if you like see you don't need bars. It's like, uh Have you ever hunted in the wind? Yeah, you want I want wait, man I want why I want to weigh that bow down right and it's always windy here. Yeah, so I shouldn't archery league Sam's a pastor Sam loves the Lord Sam is expanding the kingdom of God. He is at a non-denom church Yep in Florence. Yes, what's this called? It's Florence Carlton Community Church And when you're not preaching the good word and being at the church all week as your full-time job You also decided to be a part-time bow technician at straight six archery. Yep. Shout-out straight six every Tuesday Evening by the airport and it's always windy. Yeah, like so much wind. Yeah show up. There are no bars So yeah, good luck like people are like, oh I cuz I have a 30 inch carbon bar on my other But I can you can run it in sure, but then I have like, you know a million this on them Are those all one ounces? Those are it's a three ounce to three ounces. Okay, so six six ounces in the back. That's less I run more than I think all right, so yeah means Sam or like bow hunting bros. We're gonna bro out I mean we might talk about the Lord a little bit We'll talk about our family a little bit But I'm not gonna ask him how he feels or how that made him feel right like that's not really my strength Dan was hunting in Montana. He was trying out all the new camos because he was just left sicka and He put on Pneuma, which was what I was currently wearing I was like I Happen to know the photographer who's helped Pneuma get started. You know, what's with the first photographer for new? No, his name is Kenton. Okay, so it was before Pneuma got sold It was the startup just starting up and so he like I did a bunch of like pictures and stuff And so he gave me a bunch of camo and it was a Christian company at the time like Pneuma mean spirit It was talking about the Holy Spirit like Holy Spirit there's Bible verses printed in the print and stuff like that So anyways, you had Pneuma camo. I was like, oh, that's so cool. Like how you liking the camo? It's good and you were like I'm trying to bow hunt in Montana during rifle season and I was like come to the Bitterroot and hunt with me because it's Archery only area. Yeah, and you don't have to wear your hunters orange out and you were like out mule deer hunting in Eastern Montana somewhere so I was like and you were like, okay, yeah, I will and I was like wait really he like okay, it was it was kind of just like a I Put it out there, but I did not think he would either respond or like say that he was coming Surprise, so he didn't make it that year. But the next year he was like he hit me up on Instagram was like Hey, do you still like? have that offer to hunt again and I was like, yeah, so he came down. It was like negative 10 degrees For sitting in a tree stand. We did not we saw like four deer. Well, he like saw four deer Just it was a tough hunt. So but Yeah, the I'll never forget. I the first interaction. I was like, hey, would you come down? He's like, yeah, absolutely I was like, I didn't think that was gonna happen. So Yeah, no, I Speaking of whitetail, yeah, I have some presents for you Obviously in Montana, you can't run cellular during season but Okay, and it's still The gray area on NC like I've talked to multiple you figure that out. Yeah, just don't break rules Yeah, but these are all ready to go You just turn them off and walk away and then Do we need to lock them? Yeah, okay, so I have locks So these are all different. These are all new stealth ones So they're all like pretty much no SD card that anyone can steal. Yeah, and it all so I like that Yeah, these do have live view. So if I want to know what's going on right now you can But they're all locked and loaded, oh this one this is an older one so it does have an SD card So that will probably gets stole. Well, we'll lock it. I'll hide it pretty high. And yeah, this one And so each one has a different name to it so that I can see the command app and I'll get my login You can see what's going on next level next level we Can't talk too much about where we go. No, but at the end of the day It's really good hunting as far as just the time of year. Yeah the deer activity and You told me 120 is a good buck. Yeah, and then I end up seeing a 160 plus deer and I lost my mind I was in a saddle and I literally remember being like Hugging the tree because I was like, there's no way I can shoot this deer right now. Who's that 70? He never got any closer. Thank God like because I think I would have missed Yeah, I was I buck fevered on that deer. Yeah, he's not dead yet. Is he's not I know it's a different feeling. Um, I May have seen that deer earlier in the year. Yeah, but it was just through the trees about 70 80 yards Yeah, super aggressive deer chased away two bucks. Yep. That's him the crap out of these two does I gotta look at his antlers for like a half second. Okay. Oh, that's a shooter and That was the two days before you got there I think it's him because he rolls in and he's like making him scrape after scrape and then he was trying to break a tree in half and then he sees a deer run by and like just Just sprint like that's so aggressive. Yeah, the most aggressive deer. Yep And this five-point bull comes 19 yards. My dad shoots him in the heart while I'm sitting there holding his quiver watching and That's my that was my dad's first animal with a bow and his first elk I'm just six years old watching this and I'm immediately Addicted elk hunting for the rest of my life. This is pour over. This is murdered out cocaine you Not yet Riley's got a couple ideas Mmm, all right, we have some questions for you So in January 2023 I was admitted to the emergency room because I had heart attack like symptoms Insurance has paid $200,000 our out-of-pocket expense has for the last two years drained our savings. Yeah every year My heart rate was almost 200 for a half an hour without me like exercise or anything like that. It's an atrial septal defect Basically a hole between chambers of the heart that can leak blood oxygenated blood with Non-oxygenated blood as soon as I started to get back into exercising again I'll get dizzy and start to lose my vision if I push myself like over a hundred Beats per minute I would go back to the hospital They do some more tests, you know, the stress test everything like that on the treadmill and they would say it hurts Healthy the amounts going out. So they sent me to the Mayo Clinic down in Arizona I went four times before they came back and said actually it's not an ASD. It's a POF which is 25% of the population in the at least the United States are born with them. It's a hole that You have as a child that closes up usually within the first few weeks of being born mind didn't close all the way Most people don't have issues with them unless they're a certain size Mine wasn't big enough to operate on at least the doctor said that you know, he's operated on a few my size But they were professional hockey player Girls basketball college basketball player and and they like a marathon athlete and said I'd it's I think it's below half the size of what he usually operates on and so he did not want to Do heart surgery. They did all these other like brain tests to see if the arteries in my brain were causing the dizziness And everything like that everything came back completely normal and But every time that I exercise from then until now if I Get my heart rate up, especially if I'm weightlifting or if I'm like changing levels I have to be careful because I can like blackout when we talk about faith and how it strengthens people like it's really easy when you're able to have a mindset of like I got this like it's no problem and Then when you realize like I don't have this like I don't know what's wrong I can't just continue to do what I do it it makes us truly then rely on our faith like when God says to to fear not to to don't worry about your life as far as what you eat and where you wear this clothing and and He takes care of the the grass of the field and the birds and sparrows like well He's not much more care for you like Being able to truly believe that even though this is bad. This is scary God says he's got me and I don't need to be stressed out and full of anxiety and there was a lot of days of that, but I'm still a father. I have four kids like you got to show up for him every single day like it Having that like really scary moment like made me like I don't know it made me like dig in more like I need to to be about My family I need to be about like living out my faith more than than ever before and it kind of I don't know Jump started me out of like feeling sorry for myself like oh, this is bad. This is terrible You know why do these bad things keep happening to me? It was more like doesn't matter if they do or they don't like whatever happens you have got to be able to to dig and Rely on the knowing that God has got you the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want When you know how much a shepherd is willing to do for his flock Like we have a God who's willing to do that for us God. Who's like I'm gonna take care of you I'm gonna I'm gonna take you to a place that you can have everything you need you have the water I'm gonna make you rest like That gives ultimate peace what's that you think I hear I think that this is the best place to be shooting And the Sun is your friends Struggle breeds greatness The difficulty that the last few years have brought Have made me a better husband a better father a better pastor and just a better man I invest my time into things that are Our worthwhile like my children Spending more quality time with them. I have a specific like Plan of like you have to do something every day for your exercise or else It's super easy to lose like if you know regular Sam before this happened like, you know, if I didn't work out for two or three days like and then get back into it It wasn't a big deal Now it's like if I take a day off like I Immediately feel it. So it's like you got to do something whether it's you know, a very short 15 to 20 minute Power I call it 20 minutes of power like It makes me focus on The things that are important more. It just makes me be able to keep my focus on the big picture and And the little things don't matter. All right, so we've shot both by the way, Sam's good shot and then We're gonna go take care of some outcoming fitness needs because we got to get locked in. We're got you know, how many days? Do you know where you're going opening day I do yeah, okay You can be like a 21 minute maybe a 21 minute emom. It makes sense. So, okay good Appreciate everything Even more like being able to just going to hike with my kids or go hunting being able to work out like before I used to Get a little you know Upset or pouty about being injured or not at full capacity now it's like Hey, I can at least do this much and I appreciate being able to move and work out that much more because of it Sharing it with other people the best my tie and I was hit planet fitness on Mondays and Push each other and it just like having someone to work out with I think Like everyone should have the discipline to draw on their own That's usually not the case, especially for me like having someone else be like, hey, do you want to go to the gym today? always gives me that extra boost to In drive to get get to the gym seeing someone else just like me has a couple kids Add careers and different things and have those things kind of go and pass and have to kind of renavigate life Has always been a huge inspiration for me and I thank you because you have made me a better person just by watching you tinker with bows Hunt elk admit when you're wrong when you mess up like and I have just appreciated the just this the small Start of our relationship till where it is right now where you know when you call me and ask me how I'm doing Like the day after Christmas, you know, it's like hey Dan Staton's calling me and checking in on me like has made me like just Really appreciate what our tree has done. It's a special special community that we're fortunate to be a part of You didn't die. I didn't die. Yeah holding your heart. I did have to take a pause there I've saw that longer break. I still completed it before the minute. Yeah, dude, you're an animal. Um, thanks for coming guys This is my friend Sam Fernandez. He loves the Lord. He's in he's he's like a pastor. He's he's growing the kingdom Hit him up on Instagram it's at Sam does what he wants sliding those dams if you got any questions spiritually or about archery He also works a straight six part-time and it's just a good friend of mine. We'll be white tail hunting in November and Maybe we shoot bows together one or two more times separations in the preparation. Thanks for watching We'll catch on the next one a city on a hill cannot be hidden and neither can these guns