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Now, The Devil's Nightmare. Welcome back to another episode of It's Time to Man Up. This is a special show today. Sometimes I say every show is special, but we're going to talk about kidney transplants and how you can support it, how you can learn more about it. With me today, Randy Simpkins.
Randy, welcome to the Man Up show. Thank you, Nikita. It's a huge honor to be here with you today. Right away, I just want to kind of out of the gate for our listeners. We've got a lot we can dive into here that we're going to talk about. You're down in the Carrollton, Georgia area, correct?
That's right. Of course, you're pastoring a church down there. How long have you been down there? How long have you been engaged in pastoring? Well, I've been a pastor here at Old Camp Church in Carrollton for about two months. This was my home church when I felt the call into the ministry about nine years ago. I was blessed to pastor a church in Bowden, Georgia for eight years. A few months ago, my home church reached out to see if I felt led to come back here as senior pastor. It was a very tough decision because it's two wonderful congregations, but when the Lord calls, you have to be obedient. I've been here two months and it's been wonderful. I've talked to you, of course, I've met a lot of pastors over the years.
I'd say a handful that are actually sometimes pastoring in the church they grew up in. I'm like, is that awkward? Did you anticipate or expect that?
What about for you? Was it kind of like, I don't know? I thought it would be awkward. To be honest, I thought it would be awkward to be a pastor, period. I never dreamed that I would be proclaiming the gospel vocationally.
I'm a business person at nature and an entrepreneur. The peace of the Holy Spirit just came upon me. I had others to say, you should consider doing this more often.
That's sort of how it started. It was interesting to come back and preach at the same church where I spent most of my younger adult life. But it's been a blessing.
Your story, of course, it reminds me of many. In a gazillion years I wouldn't have dreamed I'm doing what I'm doing. Somebody had said to me growing up, hey, you're going to be an evangelist one day. Yeah, right. Or in ministry or traveling the world and preaching about Jesus.
It would have looked like they had a third eye or something. So pretty fascinating. How many stories that I hear, it's the last thing on your mind. So you were a marketplace guy. What were you doing out in the marketplace? Well, at one time, younger in my life, I was an entrepreneur. I owned several businesses, about eight at one time, mainly construction and real estate development. Construction is sort of how I got my foot in the door, and I still do that.
I'm bivocational. I still have a construction company with my two youngest boys, and my dad and I were utility contractors together. So everything else sort of spun off of that as we got into putting in utilities.
Then we started developing subdivisions commercially and sort of grew from there. So that was my background. And then something happened about 25 years ago that totally changed my perspective on life. And I'll mention that in a few minutes if I have the opportunity to.
My two year old son disappeared and was missing for a period of time. And that really, really changed my priorities in life. Yeah. I mean, just you mentioning that for our listeners out there. You know, let me just if you missed what he just my two year old son disappeared. Now, you're going to think, OK, hang on a minute. There's more to that story.
And there is. And we will get to that in a couple of minutes. But, you know, you mentioned you were in business with your two youngest boys or you are. Just take a minute. Tell us about your family and we'll circle back around to that disappearance.
Yeah. So I've been married for 33 years as of last week and to my beautiful bride, Crystal. And we have three boys there. I call them boys. They're 31, 29. And Joe, my youngest will be 27 in August. And my two youngest work with me. And my oldest works in the same industry and locally here in Carrollton. So we get where we're all together quite a bit. As a matter of fact, all three boys are building homes on our farm.
And so we're all on the same 80 acres together. And so what a blessing that is to be able to be together as a family. Yeah, I mean, they have. Right. Which is not, you know, not necessarily typical or common. Right. But but yeah. But to have that opportunity is is is pretty is a blessing. A huge blessing. Right. So it is. Well, and congratulations on 33 years, by the way, that, you know, in today's world is is a milestone. Thank you. Yeah, that's that's amazing.
Of course. And, you know, you and I met just just a while back. We was actually up in Sevierville, Tennessee, at an autograph signing.
Right. And and so we met. We talked and you were able to share some of your story. You fooled me on that last day. Hey, what I'm saying, he fooled me. Like he had this big ginormous like Nanook of the North beard on day one.
On day two, he came back and he started talking to me like like we were best friends. And I'm trying to figure out connected dots and figure out who this guy is like. Oh, by the way, I shaved my beard off.
I'm like, oh, hello. There you go. So but and you were sharing with me a film you were working on. We're going to dive deeper into that to end the weight and and the weight foundation. But, you know, you were saying even off air kind of how really how all that came about was circling back around to your two year old disappearing.
Let's let's talk about that. I think we caught some people's attention and share that story. OK, so what happened is in 2022, I was appointed as the Appalachian Trail chaplain by the Methodist Church. And so I was taking a six month sabbatical started January 1st of 2022 to hike the Appalachian Trail and to minister along the way.
And I was so excited about that. And so I started January 1st. And as I was traveling along, having a great time at social media presence, getting to minister to people through YouTube as well as the hikers and about 100 miles in about three weeks in. I was in North Carolina and a blizzard came in.
So it pushed everybody off trail. So I came home for a couple of weeks while I was home. I got jury duty and and then I was appointed to a jury. And then some things at work and church started changing around and it became apparent that I was not going to be able to go back on trail.
I was very disappointed about that because God had opened all these doors and I was wondering, God, why did you open these doors and then close them? And but I had been asked to serve as a clergy on on a three day retreat called Walk to Emmaus. And I went on this retreat back nine years ago. And it's really when God affirmed my calling into the ministry when I went on the retreat.
That's what they call a pilgrim, a participant. But I've gone back and served 20 plus times as a clergy since then. And so I had turned that opportunity down because I was going to be gone for six months. But when those doors closed and I found myself back home, the lady that was running that particular weekend called me again to see if I could do it since I was available.
And so I accepted. Well, the first morning, it's a Thursday night through a Sunday night. And the first morning, Friday morning, about five o'clock in the morning, I went into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee.
I'm an early riser and typically there's no one else up that early. And but this time I heard something in the kitchen and I couldn't it was a lady's voice, but I couldn't make out what she was saying. But she elevated her voice a little bit because she was upset. And I heard her say, we've got to pray we can find somebody that's O positive, that's willing to give up a body part.
But how do you ask somebody for a body part? Well, the Lord laid it on my heart right then, Nikita. This is why I brought you home. And so I stepped around the corner and I said, I'm O positive.
How can I help? And she said, who are you? And I said, well, I'm Crystal's husband. Well, that led to me finding out about her husband who had less than a year to live at that point and was just being put on the transplant wait list. His kidneys had failed and and he was in dire situation. Unfortunately, there's one hundred thousand plus people on the kidney transplant wait list. It's typically an eight year wait.
Most people's life expectancy is significantly less than that. So I started this process of learning about kidney donation and what you know, what I needed to do. And I found out because I had had a blood transfusion, he had had a blood transfusion.
The odds of us matching were around one in ten thousand. And so but they told me we could do this process called a paired exchange where I could put him down as the potential recipient. And then I could donate to whoever I matched to if I was qualified, if I was able to helpfully donate, safely donate. And then he would go to the top of the transplant list.
I agreed to do that. Well, lo and behold, after a couple of months of testing and I had to drop about 15 pounds, they tested us and the doctor said, we have never seen this before. It's like two lottery winners winning with the same numbers. But it is as if you've had his kidney in your body for the last 54 years. And so I met this gentleman for the first time a week before the surgery.
That was September 30th of twenty two. It went fantastically. He goes to the gym every day or several times a week and he works.
He does great. We stay in touch. I have a new brother for life. A few weeks after the surgery, there were so many miracles associated with that story. I had an opportunity to share with a men's group at a church locally here in Carrollton. And as I shared, I told them how much it changed me to be able to be a vessel through which God worked.
And I would do it again 100 times if I could. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. When your eyesight is at stake, it pays to travel to one of the world's leading eye surgeons. Dr. Johnny Gaten is an author, speaker, Christian leader and a committed family man. He is also a pioneering cataract and glaucoma surgeon. That's why I chose him for my eye surgery.
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You can give monthly, annually or one time. God bless you for making a difference around the world. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com After that meeting, a couple of gentlemen came up to me and they said, you seem completely fine.
I said, well, I have to be careful for a few more weeks, but I feel great. And they said, how can I do that? How could I donate a kidney? A week or two later, I spoke at a local Kiwanis, shared my testimony again and the same thing happened.
A lady approached me and said, how could I do that? And I was just sort of blown away by that. And I got to thinking, I know there's 100,000 people in this country that would do the same thing I did if they knew how incredibly great the need is and how relatively easy the process is to donate a kidney.
But how do you inform people in an inspirational way that notifies everyone, that gets the word out to everyone? And then it hit me. Fifteen years ago, when my two-year-old son disappeared and was missing for eight hours, he was found in a swamp about a mile and a half away.
And my entire community came out and helped find him. I was a workaholic dad back then. And I had a very, very shallow superficial relationship with the Lord. I was not a good husband.
I was not a good father. I just didn't realize that I wasn't until that happened. And all of my priorities changed from that point forward.
Eight years after that, some filmmakers were coming into our town in Carrollton to do a movie. And I was county commissioner at that time. And they asked me, how did you get into politics?
You don't seem like a politician. I said, thank you. And I told them about what our community did to help my son and to help my family that day and how it impacted me. About a year later, they came back to me and they said, we can't get the story out of our minds. We feel like there's a powerful message for fathers there. We want to share your story. And we were hesitant at first because that was a dark time for us.
And I was not a good father. But we prayed about it and realized that we have testimonies. And God gives us those testimonies. And they're not ours to keep to ourselves if others can learn from that.
Exactly what Paul did in Galatians chapter 1, sharing his testimony to the churches in Galatia in order to help them. So we agreed to do it. And they filmed it as it happened, where it happened, on our farm. And the name of the movie is The Way Home.
And Dean Cain, Superman lore, he played me in the movie. And so we've had tens of millions of people to see that movie. So many people, even 15 years later, were reaching out to us to thank us for sharing our story, how it's impacted them. And I realized if that movie could have that much of an impact, what if we did another movie, made it bigger, put it in theaters across the country. And I reached out to, and this was only 15 months ago, I reached out to Dean Cain to see if he would consider it. I reached out to the director of that movie that we did 15 years ago.
And they jumped all over it. Dean's response was, so if I understand you correctly, you want to make a movie whose sole purpose is to save 100,000 lives. No one's ever done anything like that before. I'm all in. So Dean is not only starring in it, but he's co-producing it.
He's on our board of directors of our nonprofit. So we've set up a 501c3 called End the Wait. And our goal is to produce, what we're going to do is produce this movie that will be in theaters across the country. If we can do that, when we do that, 100 million people see the movie. If one out of every thousand says, I can do that too, then we will effectively eliminate the need for kidneys. The transplant wait list will be gone and that will impact generations.
And Nikita, we have already seen proof of concept. We just word of mouth of what we're doing. We've had dozens of people to volunteer to donate kidneys. And we've already had three people that have received kidneys and their lives have been saved.
So that's what we're doing and it's been incredible. Okay, so let's pause right there for just a moment. One, I want our listeners to be able to just kind of digest what you just said to really kind of ponder what you just said. I mean there's so much there and questions that are just rolling through my head.
Let me first back up just for a moment and take a minute and share. Your two-year-old goes missing, has disappeared. What were those eight hours like, Randy?
Just take a minute and highlight what those eight hours were like between the time you realized he went missing and the time you found him. It took about 15 seconds for me to think worst case scenario. And anyone who's lost a child for just a few seconds. And if you have a child, you probably lost them for a few moments at some point.
And you get your heart in your throat immediately. So we experienced that for eight hours. Guilt. I was responsible for watching him and I went into the house for just a minute. He was riding his tricycle in the driveway and I came back out and he was gone and the search began. And so I was responsible for him being missing. So it was devastating.
And it lasted. There was one point about four hours into the ordeal where I found myself out in the woods by myself. And I just buried my face in the pine straw and I just envisioned all of these things in his life that I was going to miss out on. I lost faith.
I played high school football, getting married, having a baby. I just pictured a tombstone with his name on it. And I just cried out to God, please don't take my son. But it was hours later before he was found. He was found in the swamp about a mile and a half away from the house. But he was okay.
He was okay and survived the ordeal. You make a movie out of it. Where can people go view that movie? If you have a smart TV, you can watch it. It's on Amazon Prime.
Even now, it's still, it's had longevity. You can watch it on Netflix, Amazon Prime. You can watch it for free on, I forget, Tubi, Popcorn Flicks.
You can just put in The Way Home. There's a few The Way Homes, but this is the one starring Dean Cain. Lionsgate released it. It's not just based on the true story.
It was filmed as it happened where it happened. Okay. Okay. Wow.
Phenomenal. So that has, it's amazing how God will use things, take things and use things. I'm reminded of Romans 8, 28, right?
He'll use things for good for those who love him. And even looking at your website, endtheweight.net, so mark that down. Those of you out there in listening land, mark that down, endtheweight.net. 100,000 people need a kidney transplant, 3,000 new patients added to the wait list each month. 5,000 will die yearly and every 14 minutes, someone is added to the kidney transplant list. And so you've had many, many, many folks step up and your goal is, your goal is to save 100,000 lives, right? It's inspiring people to consider a kidney donation.
Now let me ask you this before we get some more into that just real quick. So, because you mentioned, you know, so you donated one of yours and you've got a brother for life. And what are some of the, like post-surgery, like some of the precautions? Okay, you're less one kidney, right? So just real quick, what are a couple of the precautions there? I can't take NSAIDs, so I have to take Tylenol instead of Ibuprofen for the rest of my life, that's it.
Okay. A few, you know, very, very rarely there'll be minor complications. My bladder had a little bit of trouble waking up, so that, you know, that was a few hours.
But bottom line is I gave up a few weeks of my life so that my new brother could have the rest of his. It was, you know, I was back at the gym seven days after my surgery. Now I wasn't supposed to be, and I got lightheaded. I got lightheaded just doing calf raises, but I had to be careful for a few months.
Just like if you ever have your appendix taken out or gallbladder, it's not that much of an intrusive surgery. And my numbers all went back within six months, everything was functioning normally. After six weeks, other than my weightlifting restrictions, I could not tell you that anything had ever happened to me. I'm in the best shape of my life now.
That's amazing, that's amazing. I know one in ten people worldwide, right, are affected by chronic kidney disease. And so you guys are raising money. I was down there to Carrollton recently and helping out with a fundraiser.
Will you do more fundraisers in the future? How can they get involved? What can people do? We've got a lot of listeners, what can they do?
So many ways. First and foremost, and we've seen this, the power of prayer. We really appreciate people praying about this, helping spread the word. Like you mentioned, the key to our website has a store on it.
And so people can go on the store and buy a t-shirt, a candle, a hat. And people will just be more aware of the brand and what we're doing. There's a donate button on there. We've had people to donate anywhere from $5 to $15,000 to help the cause. And so we're creating an awareness way before the movie comes out, just so people know that the movie's coming. And we're taking the proceeds from the movie, putting it back into the nonprofit. We also have investors that are helping on a for-profit side help the movie get made. So if there's anyone that's interested in learning about that, we've put together a very handsome investment package. It helps us make the movie that much faster. And like you said, 13 people buy every day waiting on a kidney.
So time is of the essence. So we're anticipating about a $5 million budget for the movie. With the tax incentives we're getting from the state of Georgia and some other things, we're probably halfway there. And so we're hoping to raise all the funds that we need to make the movie by the end of this year.
And that we're in production at the end of 24, early 25. So donations are appreciated. Prayers are appreciated. There's an email on our website, info at In the Wait, or Randy at In the Wait. And I'd be more than happy to give any more information about the investment site to anyone that's interested. But fundraisers, the one that you're involved with in Carrollton is an example of that. We have people that will reach out and say, hey, we want to do a fundraiser. We appreciate that. And we will support that. So I will be more than happy to go to a fundraiser in Minneapolis, if there were one there, and share our story and what we're doing to help spread the word.
Because you don't know the ripple effect of what you do. We did a small one in Kennesaw, Georgia, in the fall. It was our first one. And we had about 80 people there. We raised about $25,000. But the thing that was so amazing is we had five people out of those 80 who stepped forward and said, I want to donate a kidney. We had two people there that were on the transplant wait list. And they were sitting at the table with these other people.
And they had no idea. And once they found out the personal aspect of the story, they said, I want to do this. And so it's been amazing how people are stepping up. And so we welcome, we ultimately, we will establish clubs all over the country where people can start their own club. They can identify someone in their community that needs a kidney and help them find that kidney and help create an awareness.
So word of mouth, tell people to go support in the wait. And the most amazing thing and what we're seeing is and what we hope happens is that this creates a revival of a sense of selflessness in a country that now is so divided. And donating a kidney, being involved with that financially or as a donor or whatever, you get such a sense when you give, when you're a servant and you're doing something for someone else, you are blessed. And as we realize that more and more, we become less divided and more unified as a country.
And that's what we ultimately hope happens as a result of all of this. So pretty amazing, pretty amazing vision that you guys have and just honored to be a part of it myself and glad I could have you on the show today, Randy, to just get your story out. And for more people, here's, hey, you want to be a part of an amazing story? You probably know somebody who's been on kidney dialysis.
It's not a fun, not a fun thing to have to do. But here's an opportunity, whether it's, as he said, whether it's donating financially, supporting it that way, through your prayers, getting involved, being led to donate a kidney. You just heard Randy's story and he's got a new brother for life and the opportunity to inherit in a way, I guess you'd say, a new brother or sister as well. And so, you know, to learn more, I want you to go to EndTheWeight.net, EndTheWeight.net. And any other websites?
Is that the main one, Randy? That's it. That's the website. And you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, EndTheWeightMovie on Instagram, and we welcome you. And you can sign up, go on that website and sign up to stay updated on EndTheWeightNews and I'm sure you'll get stories on other phenomenal stories of other lives that have been saved through kidney donations, kidney transplants, and follow along as they're raising the funds and producing this movie and getting the movie out there, right?
That's right. All right. Well, Randy Simpkins, appreciate you, appreciate your heart, appreciate your story. Old Camp Church pastoring down in Carrollton, Georgia, and I want you to keep Randy and keep EndTheWeight in your prayers and just see how the Lord might lead you in how to be involved. And so, go out today.
Here's my challenge to you as hopefully you've been challenged by Randy's story. Go out today and just live a God-filled and have a God-blessed day. This podcast is made possible by the grace of God and your faithful prayers, support, and generous gifts.
May God bless you for your continual contributions. Go to Koloff.net and donate today. If you are enjoying the Man Up Show, would you help us spread the word? Tell your family, tell your friends, tell your neighbors to download, subscribe, and leave a comment. Hi, Nikita Koloff.
Be sure to check out the Man Up Show, now available on television, broadcast, and podcast. Go to MorningStarTV.com or the Truth Radio Network. Check out your local listings or better yet, download the Truth Network app today. Nikita Koloff here.
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