Family Legacy in Christ

Hello, this is Matt Slick from the Matt Slick Live Podcast, where I defend the Christian faith and lay out our foundations of the truth of God's Word. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network.

This is the Truth Network. Kingdom Pursuits, where you hear from ordinary people instilled with an extraordinary passion. Together we explore the stories of men and women who take what they love and let God turn their passion into kingdom pursuits.

Now live from the Truth Booth, your host, Robbie Dilmore. Well, I can honestly say I can't remember a show that I was more excited about. I really can't because, you know, if you listen to that intro, which I remember writing years ago, that people have an extraordinary passion to live for the kingdom. And sometimes, you know, if we live long enough, we get a chance to see what happened when somebody had an extraordinary passion for the kingdom, and then what happens with their legacy? And so, if I can do this, we all, the people all in this room, had a dear friend named Vinny Menino that was very much a part of our lives on the masculine journey, but also he was on Christian Car Guy Theater at times, and just one of my best friends.

So how cool. If you knew Vinny, he, family was everything to him. I mean, would you agree, Al? Oh, absolutely. Family, and he would talk about it without stop.

No commas, no periods, and it's after sentence. So he had an extraordinary passion for family, and I think that's a big part of discipleship, that we come from our families in so many different ways. And so I have with us today Paul Menino, which is Vinny's grandson, who happens to be planning a church, right, Paul?

Yeah, that is correct. I am both Vinny's actual grandson, and I am planning a church too. So you can see how his extraordinary passion, and you knowing your grandfather even better than we did, he had an extraordinary passion for family and for God. Absolutely.

Yeah. And those are the two most important things to him. You know, towards the end of his life, it's a funny thing, I grew up, he wasn't a follower of Jesus. I got to watch that transformation as an older person, and it kind of gives me hope that, you know, old dogs can learn new tricks.

But yeah, it was a thrill to be able to watch that as a young man, and then carry it into being whatever I am now. And so one of the things that I will always carry around in my soul about Vinny Menino was the day, and Sam and Al and I were all there this day. We were sitting around the table, and Vinny was very concerned.

He is a Korean War veteran, and he really struggled with forgiving himself for a lot that went on in that war, things that I really couldn't even picture. And I was trying to help Vinny with that, and I was trying to help him to get forgiveness. And I was actually trying to get him to think about his pastor. And so what I said to him in the meeting that day, and this was before a show, I said, well, Vinny, who's the closest person to God that you know?

And with complete and absolute conviction like I have never seen in my life, he said, it's me. True. Yeah.

Because I thought he would say his pastor, then I could say, well, his pastor would tell you that, you know, but as the point is, is that from his standpoint, he completely was that. Right, Paul? Yeah. It's funny. We were literally just talking about this in the lobby while you were finishing up the other show.

And you know, I listened to at least, I guess, one episode of The Masculine Journey. He must have said the same thing. And I know that seems weird for a person to say, but I sat back and thought about it. I'm like, wow.

For him to believe that he's that close to Jesus, not because of what he's done, but because the intimacy of his relationship with him. I don't know. I found it quirkily inspirational. Well, the beauty of Vinny is, I'm sure you would agree, Al, is when you ask him, you weren't going to get the poser answer.

No. He owned everything he said. He did. And that was completely authentic.

It couldn't have been more authentic. And honestly, if I was really honest with myself, who do I think is the closest to Jesus? Because I know I'm his favorite, right? And since he said that, I've watched. And I'm pretty convinced that most believers think exactly like Vinny thought, that they're the closest. Don't you think so, Al?

Oh, absolutely. And one thing, and I'm going to segue back to Paul for a minute. One thing that he would do is he would talk about his sins to me, and he would talk about the things he'd done, and then something would happen and you would come up. And it's like, there was a redemption that of all his sins, somebody that was descended from him was taking a legacy to God.

And he goes, but Paulie, he spreads the gospel. Yeah, you know, a lot of people don't know this. At one point, it was an awkward thing, so I didn't really like to talk about it. But you know, my dad, I have since reconciled with my dad.

And that's been a great thing. But when I was a kid, I didn't want his last name. And then I had a stepdad for a while and I didn't want his last name. And so when I got to high school, I had a choice of what my name could be. And I wanted to be my grandpa's name.

So even though technically, I guess I shouldn't be Paul Menino, I should be other things. Like I wanted to carry his name forward. And so it's kind of cool, you know, even in this room that, you know, my wife has his name, my daughter has his name. And you know, I don't know, look, there is more to it than whatever my grandpa thought. I mean, I just am happy that I am sharing Jesus with my life. And that, you know, he got to see it, but he actually valued it because he had a relationship with Jesus himself.

It's different, right? And you say, well, my grandson's a preacher. But if you're not a believer yourself, what does that mean to you? But when Jesus is everything to you, then all of a sudden you realize that that's such a huge thing. And I think more than anything, that's what makes me thankful is that he understood the significance of what I was building my life around. And Sam is, for those of you who've never listened to Sam before, I hope that's nobody, but he's over a ministry called Good Heart Ministries, which happens to be the mother or father ministry of masculine journey, however you want to say that. So Good Heart Ministries is actually who Al is. And I don't know that I have ever experienced a human being that lived from their heart more than Vinny Menino. Oh, I would agree wholeheartedly.

My favorite thing about Vinny was we would talk about the radio show in the conference room and I'd ask it, these are the questions that I ask of Vinny, and he'd tell me what the answer was going to be. And then you get in here and it'd be completely a different direction, you know, because it's hard to do. Not only a different answer.

That was completely out of left field. Yeah. You know, so it was like, hmm, what are we going to do with that now, you know? But it was always from the heart, it was always spirit-led, I think, you know, for the most part. And it was kind of, it kept us on our toes.

It was a lot of fun. Yeah. I mean, because here you had a guy, from my perspective, you know, he had been a Catholic all his life. And so, and that Catholicism had burned in certain parts of his theology that, you know, I called him a Catholic because, you know, he went to a Methodist church, but he was Catholic. And believe me, the Catholic part never got completely separated from the Methodist. So his theology was really different. Oh, it was. However, his relationship could not be more real.

Yeah. And for me, you know, I grew up Catholic as well. So I could always be a bridge to my grandpa, because I grew up Catholic, and I was an altar boy. And I remember being in college, and, you know, I had given my life to Christ, and I was serving in Young Life and some other ministries. And he was like, Oh, Paulie, I got to get you involved with the Knights of Columbus.

And I'm like, Grandpa, I'm not Catholic, like, I'm pretty sure they won't take me. And so it was kind of a funny thing. But yeah, it was, you're right. But I also saw the beauty in some of the things that he had been taught, you know. He had, because, you know, there are certain things, you know, that had to do with the Stations of the Cross and whatever, and his prayer life, that, you know, he'd taken that, and it was absolutely beautiful to behold.

And where else would you get that perspective? Intimacy, consistent devotion. So much fun. We have Al Henley back from the Mastellan Journey, and Sam Main, as well as Paul Menino, and actually his great-granddaughter, we might hear from here in a minute or two, who knows what may come around the corner. But yes, I do have a riddle, and in Vinny's honor, it has to do with donuts. So stay tuned. We've got stuff to give away.

You're listening to The Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Now, welcome back to this phenomenally special episode of Kingdom Pursuits, where we are so blessed to have with us not only Vinny Menino's heritage, so to speak, his grandson Paul, but we also have his granddaughter, great-granddaughter, Evie, and Vinny had several of those, as well as his daughter-in-law, Mary Kate, his great-granddaughter-in-law. How would that work? It's confusing. Granddaughter-in-law, I think? Granddaughter-in-law. He would have just called her his granddaughter. I know that. That I would have known.

So very fun. Evie, what would you call your grandfather? What did you call him?

Wait, whoops. Grandpa Cutie. I called him Grandpa Cutie. He called him Grandpa Cutie. Why did she call him Grandpa Cutie, Paul?

Well, Grandpa, Vinny, as you would know him, strong New York accent, so I'm just going to impersonate him the best I can. He's like, oh, how's Cutie Pie doing? Oh, oh, my little Cutie Pie. And so when we were little, or when Evie was really little, she would say, are we going to see Grandpa Cutie? Because he called her Cutie Pie, so that was her name. I get it.

I get it. So Evie, did you, are you ever the benefactor of a Vinny donut? When he come to your house, did he bring donuts?

No, not really. Oh, well, just for those of us who knew him, he never went anywhere that he didn't carry donuts. It was just his thing. And his particular brand of donuts was always Krispy, I mean, excuse me, it wasn't Krispy Kreme in spite of the fact he lived here, it was Dunkin Donuts, I suppose, from his New York background. Anyway. America runs on Dunkin.

It does. And from his standpoint, you did not want to work at Dunkin Donuts when Vinny showed up. He would go through the donuts like, this one's not fresh.

I need a fresh, not the ones you did last night. So speaking of donuts, you knew we were going to do this, right? You're going to like this, Al. You're going to like this a lot.

So speaking of donuts, I don't want to glaze over, I donut want to glaze over the fact that I liked Vinny a whole lot. Come on, you liked that, didn't you? I love that. You missed this stuff, didn't you?

I do. There you go. If you stop eating donuts, you will leave three years longer. That's what I heard.

But it's just three more years that you're going to want a donut. So, you know, what's the use? You know what I'm saying? Sean?

I hope you do. So here you go. Here's a real question for you, poser. Maybe Evie can get this one. What kind of donut can fly?

What kind of donut can fly? You think you know that one, Paul? Al, anybody jump in? Sean? No, I don't know. Here it comes.

You're going to groan. Al thinks he knows. The one that Vinny said wasn't fresh was flying. Oh yeah, that's true.

That's true. But it was also Vinny would usually put one of these in the package when he got them. He would always have jelly donuts if Vinny was along and he liked the ones with the raspberry jelly. But he would also have one that flew, which is a plain donut. Oh.

I'm sitting here going through every kind of donut in my mind. Yeah, I love that anyway. Yeah, we do have a Bible riddle.

We do. I promise you. So you can call in and win today. All you have to do is call at 866-344-TRUTH and tell us which book in the Bible did the people go dough nuts in order to get out of there? Which book in the Bible, and Sam probably knows this, did the people go dough nuts in order to get out of there?

866-348-7884. And if you can guess that, Sean, tell them what they'll win. All right, if you're able to get that correct, then you will win a book from the Truth Treasure Chest, I guess is what we're calling it, right? Kingdom Pursuits Prize Vault. There we go. It's the Truth Treasure Chest. Close enough. Both of them contain books that are just unbelievable. So the Truth Treasure Kingdom Pursuits Prize Vault. How fun is that?

866-348-7884. In which book of the Bible did the people go dough nuts in order to get out of there? So while we have Evie and Mary Kate, so Evie, do you have a favorite memory of your grandfather, great-grandfather, Grandpa Cutie? I liked when we, the part where you said, Danny, where we gave him all the doughnuts and he just like ate all of them, like the same in one serving.

It was kind of funny. So our last visit with my grandpa, we were able to visit him and we asked him, what can we smuggle in to the, you know, the nursing home? And he said, oh, if you could get me some black coffee and a cruller, oh. And so we were like, a cruller, I think a cruller is a type of doughnut.

I really didn't know this. I'm not a big doughnut guy, but so we were like, we got online, we investigated, we found a place pretty close to the place. And then when we went, Evie, tell him what happened when he got the doughnuts and the coffee. When he got them, he ate a lot of doughnuts and he was drinking the coffee even though it was very hot, but he didn't say it was hot.

He just said it was fun, but he could, I could tell it wasn't, it was very hot. And the interesting thing, and you know about this better than I do, Paul, is Vinny was, he was a chef. I mean, he owned a restaurant and so food was a big part of his life. Food was a big part of all of our lives.

You know, I grew up, I mean, just as a perspective. So he had worked in an Italian restaurant in Long Island for a long time. And then he had worked in a seafood market for a long time. I remember being a little kid and going to the seafood market. And what little kid goes up to the counter and says, give me some of that squid salad.

But that's what I wanted. That's what I grew up on. And so then he comes down south, we actually start an Italian restaurant in Mocksville. And my grandpa was the head chef for my, a lot of my childhood. He was the chef of the restaurant that my parents owned. Well that I, you know, I didn't, did you know that Al? Did you know he worked in seafood? I had no idea about the seafood. But you know how he was about calamari? Like if you went anywhere with him, like at a nice restaurant, he was gonna try the calamari. But now I get it. He was a squid guy.

He was, and he would tell you, so I'll summon my grandpa for a second. It's not squid, Robbie. It's conch. It's a totally different thing.

They call it squid, but it's actually a conch. Look it up. That's true. I think. I don't know. A lot of things my grandpa said were facts.

I'm not sure they're facts. I'm just gonna go ahead and leave that out there. Well, those of us who knew him knew that and loved that about him. And you know, certainly he left a cool legacy. And so I'm interested, Mary Kate, since we have you here, what's your favorite grandfather in law story?

He had a name for Evie. He also used to call me an old bag because the running joke was any time Paul talked to him, he would always ask what color is Mary Kate's hair this week. And it's always a running joke, like he would guess because my hair is usually really crazy colors, but he would always call me an old bag. And it was just funny thing that we had between us where clearly I don't think I'm an old bag yet. You are not. But he actually made me a T-shirt that says old bag.

And it was a funny joke. But I think for me, my favorite memory really isn't regarding me. It's really being able to watch his relationship to Paul and to Evie. He was always just extremely kind to me. And I just loved him dearly. But just to see the special bond that him and Paul had, you don't get to see that very often between a grandson and a grandfather and I mean, I miss him terribly, but they did. I mean, I think we all kind of had our own special.

Yeah. And I can't help but think that, you know, for those of us who listen to the masculine journey regularly, they know that one of the love languages that Gary Chapman missed out on is the love language of picking at each other, right? He didn't pick on you if he didn't like you.

Because if he didn't like you, he didn't talk to you. That's true. That is true. I had never, you just made an observation that I, wow, he didn't. No.

No. But you know, unfortunately, Dennis wanted to be here. He couldn't be here. But he called Dennis whack job.

All the time. That's fair. I mean, it was just, you know, he would, he would come up with something that was, you know, that's what it was. What it was. At first, Dennis was offended. And then, and then then it was like, I don't know what he means by that. I'm like, it's like a term of endearment.

Just go with it. You're the whack job. You know, it's just like, that's what he did. And you know, he, that was him. That was just that was who he was. But it was a matter of intimacy. Oh, yeah.

Right. He would get to know you. And then he would, there would be one thing that you did that was just made you a whack job. And you were the whack job, or you were the old bag, or you I was the wheel man. And when we would leave the show, we'd get in the truck and he'd say, give me a day. I'm like, where do you want to go? And he goes, anywhere, anyway. Let's go to Vegas. Let's go to New York. He would too.

He would. And so that kind of passion now as you're looking at, at planning this church, Paul, tell us about that. So I don't know how to, I try not to pick on the people that I'm trying to start a church for.

I would say that's transition. But at the same time, we are trying to reach people in the community that we are in. And so when we get back from the break, I'd love to share a little bit about the community that we're in up in Pennsylvania.

And, but we're really trying to reach college students, young adults, people who really don't have a background in church, which is kind of possible when you don't live in the Bible Belt. I mean, I know in the Bible Belt, there are people as well. But up in Pennsylvania, we really see a lot of people who just have no frame of reference. So we're in Pennsylvania specifically.

We're in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, which is a rural community where you've got people on horses and buggies that are around, but you also have modern kind of colliding. Do they have squid? You got to go to Philly for that. You got to go to Philly for that.

It's conch, but it could be squid. So when we come back, wow, we need some Riddler's. So we got one, maybe 866-348-7884. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Welcome back to Kingdom Pursuits, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build the kingdom. And we do have a very special show for you today with Paul Menino and Evie and Mary Kate Menino, as well as Al Henley, my old friend from Mask on Journey Radio, and Sam Main.

It's kind of cool for the three of us to be back. We've spent a lot of time in the studio with Vinny, and to know him was to love him. And my wife was his wheel man when Al wasn't. And I should say, he was going blind at the end. And so he would try to tell her where to go, how he couldn't see. And she would be like, shut up, Vinny.

You don't know where you're going. She appreciated that. Or he appreciated that, I'm sure. Well, they had one of those relationships like he had with everybody.

Just a very... They were close and all those things happened. Well, I got to tell you about Amy Cabo's show. It's coming up at one o'clock today, talking about a very serious topic. Amy, you guys are talking divorce today on your show. Yes, we're talking divorce, hopefully, at the last week for us.

Because if it's going to happen, we'd like to do it as peacefully as possible. So we're going to discuss how to prepare the children, whether or not the couple should attend therapy. Now, I don't know anything about divorce. I've never experienced it, but I know how to come close to one, how it is to come close to it. And I can suggest different options, there is different options, i.e.

God. And also, you know, you don't have to be married for it to be like a bad divorce and also be a voice for the children and what their experience is like and what's the impact on the lives of others as well. Yeah, there's a whole lot of stuff there. And you have an attorney that's going to be with you today? Yes, my first attorney guest.

There you go. But I know him, maybe somebody else is an attorney, I don't know, but he's an attorney for the purposes of being an attorney. You've saved all the attorney jokes for your show, that's all. Anyway, today, one o'clock, Amy Cabo and Boris on The Cure, so you know, you get both in the same package and an attorney.

What a time to call in. So thank you, Amy, I appreciate you so much. God bless. Thank you, Robbie. God bless you too.

Bye bye. Well, when we left our hero, Paul, he was talking about his community there in Pennsylvania in a town that I actually had never heard of. Most people haven't if they haven't been there. So it's called Kutztown. And again, that's the Pennsylvania Dutch influence.

The Dutch is German, by the way, if you've ever watched The Office, Dwight Schrute, that whole deal. It's kind of like squid is actually conch. Yeah, kind of like that.

Yeah. But so the influence there is heavenly German farming type group. And we're pretty close to Lancaster County, which is where they have, you know, the Amish and that. We have Mennonites. And so they're kind of more like liberal Amish, for lack of a better term.

Extremely religious people. And that's interesting that God would have you there coming out of the Catholic, right? So yeah.

Yeah. So we're in a total mishmash in our community, because if I say religion, if I say God to a person, the average person in Kutztown, they're thinking Mennonites, they're maybe thinking the Catholic Church down the street, because of course, we're in the Northeast. So of course, there's going to be Catholics, or maybe some of the mainline denominations, maybe that, you know, they're not thinking about the gospel.

That would be the thing that they're not thinking about. And so for me, in the town that we're in, being able to share the gospel with people, we've been saying this over time, the name of our church is going to be Beacon Church. And the thought for us is, we just don't want to make it hard for people to hear about Jesus.

And I think sometimes some of the traditions in church and some of the things that the way that even we talk about God alienate people from the start, because we assume that they already know what we're talking about. And so for me, yeah, I was a Catholic trying to figure out Protestant land. I became a Christian when I was 16 years old.

I went to West Forsyth High School, I'm a Titan, go Chris Paul. But someone shared Jesus with me, and it happened to be a college student from Wake Forest. And I didn't even realize at the time that that part of my testimony would play so heavily into the rest of my life, but I've been doing ministry for 20, 25 years now. And I believe, one, that God can reach anybody, because if he could reach me, he could reach anybody. He could reach my grandpa.

Whoa. I mean, honestly. He came to faith when he was 70. I don't think people realize that. He was baptized at 77. Like, don't tell me what God can't do.

And he reached me. But then also to see when a college student is on fire for Jesus, that they're a force to be reckoned with, because somebody reached me. And so for us, our heart is for, we're a normal small town, 8,000 people, but then we also have a 10,000 student public university right in our town. It's bigger than the town we're in, so when they show up, the town instantly flips and becomes a college town. It's pretty wild.

We've lived there for the last six years, and there's really not something that we feel would be a great way for college students to connect really readily with the gospel. And so that's where we're going with it. That is so beautiful. Well, Mary Kate, I know you like Paul said, you guys have been in ministry for a number of years. She's an old bag. Yeah. Yeah.

According to Vinny. Of a variety of ages. I mean, I started out with young children. We did together in children's ministry, middle school, high school, college. So together we've done quite a bit, and I just, I know if we've done it before, we can do it again. And a lot of people have asked us that, well, how do you think you're going to make this work? I was like, well, one, we have the faith that it's going to work, and two, like we just kind of came out of a whole six years of life where we had a huge impact with college students. I don't know why we would ever doubt that we couldn't do it again. So for us, I mean, we're very excited.

I mean, it's a little scary, I think, jumping off that edge, but we're doing it as a family and we're just very excited for what. So where did you meet Paul? That's an interesting question.

When did I first ever meet him? Yeah. Oh, gosh. Go ahead.

It's funny. Well, there's a four year age gap between us. And so freshman high school, freshman college, but later on down the line, we put the timeline together. And really the first time he ever saw me was sitting in a pew in like 1996. I was sitting in the front row and he said he always remembered me as being the really tall sad girl. Oh, really?

I was going through quite a bit. But you know, that was when we first, I maybe think I saw him, but I'm 15. I'm oblivious, right? But again, so she's a high school student at the time.

I'm a college student. We happened to go to the same church. Yeah. And this church was where?

Wilmington, North Carolina. It's actually the church we got married at. Really?

Yeah. So, you know, over the years, our paths kept crossing. He ended up being a student teacher at my high school. You know, when you're 18 and you don't have any rules, I definitely hit on him. It didn't go anywhere.

You know, I mean, for the best, it didn't go anywhere. But like, he would just show up in random places in my life around Wilmington. And then we didn't see each other for a really long time. And I started attending the church that he was working at.

I didn't know it at the time, but I got re-involved in church and I wanted to help out with the youth group and he was the youth pastor and we met for coffee in 2003 and the rest is history. So, Al, if you're like me, this is the first time you met Mary Kate? Yes.

Would you describe her as the sad girl? No. Now, isn't that a beautiful thing?

Oh, that's amazing. You know, but I've heard so many stories. It's like Paul was saying earlier, we know people's lives, we just don't know what they look like. Right.

Right. I mean, we've heard about their family for years and years and this, you know, was as I told Paul. This is Vinny's arrows, man. They're going forth. You've got a legacy wherever you're at and those family, you know, you spoke into them whether you called them cutie pie or old bag, you know, it's all coming together. So we got one more segment of Kingdom Pursuits, Al Henley, Mary Kate, Paul Menino, and Sam Maine, so stay tuned.

Welcome back to Kingdom Pursuits, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build the kingdom. And today we're so blessed, really, really, really blessed to have with us Paul Menino, Vinny Menino's grandson. For you longtime listeners, you would remember Vinny on the masculine journey. He played Guido Gasket on Christian Car Guy Theater. Typecast there?

Yeah, absolutely. He was typecast. And if you ever listen to my Mother's Day episodes, he used to be the one that I played the Godfather theme and he would go, Hey, yo, respect your mother. I've heard that before and I love it.

I love it. So, you know, it was just one of those things that we were so blessed to have. Somebody that had lived such a life, right, someone different from anybody's life that I ever had met. You know, he grew up in Manhattan. He certainly had been involved with things that I never, ever know much about. But Al, it was just, it was an adventure to ride with him.

Well, oh, the stories in the music. But he was a kid when the Hindenburg went down and they saw it from the backyard, didn't know what that was. He was walking in downtown Manhattan when the plane flew in to the, what's the... Yeah, Lindbergh when he flew over the Pacific.

No, no, no. There was a plane. The Atlantic. No, I want to say Eiffel Tower.

That's not what it is. The Empire State Building. A plane flew into the Empire State Building. He was downtown. He watched it happen.

He goes, that's going to be a mess. There you go. But he was just, you know, you would get all the stories. So we never knew whether the stories were completely true or what exactly was what was going on. But it was still, you know, it was Vinny.

Yeah. And whether they were true or not, they were great stories. I mean, just to hear, he was a great storyteller. I'd like to think that that's something that I inherited from him is just the ability to tell a story.

I try to keep most of mine true. But yeah, I mean, he his ability to tell a story and keep an audience. It's Yeah, it is. It's like the movie Big Fish.

I don't know you guys big with the movie clips on the other. But you know, that's the movie about a guy probably about my age who's his father's dying. And, you know, he has all these stories, this amazing life of all these things. And they almost seem like is this real or is this myth like I can't quite figure it out. I just felt that way about the stories my grandpa tell but at the end of the day, what was real was the way that he loved us what was real was the way he served people later on in life.

I think sometimes maybe we just myth a lot mythologize our past in order to tell to kind of tell a story. And yeah, well, the story that I remember consistently from Vinny was that he would talk about his uncle, Angelo, Angelo, right. And he was Angelo's favorite. In other words, what what Vinny experienced was grace, like what it really meant to be loved and accepted to be who you were more than he got it from his father.

Yeah. Um, and because his father was a hard man, yeah. And so it was almost like a study in fatherhood to talk to Vinny at any length. Because you could see how God had provided this father for him over here in Angelo.

And and and it helped build up Vinny's self esteem. But then clearly nobody knows because do you know how old he was? How old my grandpa was? Yeah. No, nobody just always was because he used to tell me his birthday was this and that and then it wouldn't be you know, say, which birth certificate are you talking about?

I got two. That's exactly what he said, on all sorts of occasions. So that was kind of, you know, the idea. But yet, you know, somebody, obviously, it poured into his life, this sense of, you've got what it takes Vinny. And in those stories from Angelo, you felt that? Yeah, you know, and I think maybe having experienced that himself with Papa Angelo, that's what they called him. Like, maybe that's how he saw it in me. This is the part where I'm gonna have a hard time talking, but, you know, the lady she just said, you know, at the one o'clock show that, you know, she doesn't have a lot of experience with divorce.

Well, I do. As a kid, you know, I didn't get to know my dad, and then my stepdad was kind of a monster. And so, for me, there was just no chance I was ever going to get that fatherly love.

If my grandpa didn't step in. And so he became for me that, you know, honorary dad, you know, he was way more than a grandpa to me. Because really, all throughout my life, you know, getting me through high school, getting me through college, being a young man trying to figure things out, you know, even being a young married.

And Mary Kate and I, we butted heads early on, as all marriages do. And to have somebody in your corner who says, you can do it, I got you. And it wasn't just anybody in your corner, like, because when Vinny said, you know, you knew that was a man that was talking to you didn't have any question. This guy had all kinds of masculine. This was a man that was telling you, you can do this. It was exuding after him. Just like when anyone sees me, they're like, man, look at that guy. He's a real man. I'm just kidding, by the way.

But my grandpa had that. I think the word would be gravitas, right? And yeah, it did mean a lot. But believe me, he's a big softy too. Oh, his heart was big. So man, what a joy to have you on Mary Kate, Al, have you back. I can't tell you what it means. Good to see you, buddy.

It was. And Paul, man, I can't tell you how glad I am. You contacted us, you know, again, we're so grateful for you listening today. And because without you, you know, you guys meant so much to Vinny. Believe me, the fact that he had an opportunity to share life with the Truth Network was a great thing to him. So the legacy moves on. Our arrows go forward. Thanks again. This is the Truth Network.