A Messianic Rabbi and the Pope: From Division to Dialogue with Marty Waldman and Nic Lesmeister

We got a call from the Vatican in his studies, he knew something about Messianic Jews, but never met one. Never met any.

Okay.

And so here we are. He’s now hearing four Jewish men share a testimony how he came to Yeshua and he said two things. He said, one, this can only mean one thing. Jesus is coming soon. Wow. That was his response to Jewish testimony of faith in Yeshua. Wow. This can only mean one thing, and he knew his Bible.

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Covenant and Conflict podcast. It may have been a while since you’ve seen me here hosting the podcast that I think I actually helped create and then turned it over to Pastor David Bli, who’s really been the host ever since. But I’m honored to host today with a very, very dear friend of mine, a mentor in my life, someone who my wife Tabitha, and I really look to as even like a pastor, although he doesn’t use that title to us. And that is Rabbi Marty Waldman. It’s great to have you today, Nick Rabbi Marty, and good

To be with you.

Wonderful

To be here with you.

So there’s so many things we could talk about. Rabbi Marty and I met probably over 10 years ago when I began to be a donor and then volunteer help towards a Jewish ministry called the Messian Jewish Bible Institute. And then he kindly invited Tabitha and I to join the Messianic Jewish synagogue in Dallas that he and his wife Marlene established. So we were members there for three-ish years, I think, until the Lord led us to Gateway where we founded the Center for Israel. And now here we are. And I’m of course been along with him on the journey of towards Jerusalem council too. And so I’m honored to serve on the legal board towards Jerusalem council too. And we wanted to have a conversation today that’s sort of a part two with a conversation that David and Rabbi Marty had recently, and they got into quite a few different things.
But one of the more interesting pieces was the relationship between the Messianic Jewish community and the Catholic Church and how that has been so instrumental towards Jerusalem Council’s two vision for unity in the body of Messiah, the body of Christ. So Marty, where I’d love to start is just you grew up Jewish, you became a believer, you’re leading a Messianic Jewish synagogue. At what point do you begin realizing to have unity in the body between Jews and Gentiles? We have to engage with the largest stream of the Christian movement, which is the Catholic church. My first

Realization probably came about 30 years ago actually when we started towards Jerusalem council too, and we’re following that vision one, not the original members, but one of the members of our leadership council was a Catholic priest. I didn’t know where we were going with that because I was not necessarily a fan of the Catholic church. I hardly knew anything about the Catholic church. In fact, his name was Father Peter Hawkin. He turned out to be very good friend of mine in the end, and one of the nicest people that I’ve ever met, he was a scholar Catholic scholar, but he and I spent hours and hours together in conversation about the Catholic church because I needed to learn about the Catholic church. And I would ask him the tough questions. I said, why do you worship Mary? And of course he would explain it to me from a Catholic perspective.
I’m not sure I bought it all, but I was appreciative of gaining some understanding from a Catholic perspective. And so that was the beginning of my personal journey of accepting the Catholic church. And this is interesting because I think if I were to just think about the Catholic church or be presented about the Catholic church as a whole, which is almost 2 billion people or maybe 2 billion, that’s a lot of people. And I would’ve thought, what do I need that for? That’s just taking my time up and I’ve got so many other things to do. But it’s because I got to know one man in the Catholic Church on a personal and intimately friendly basis that I started to really learn. And I realized that if we’re going to ever have unity in the body of Messiah, especially between Christians and Messianic Jews, then we have to deal with the church. Forgive me for using this language, but we have to deal with the church that perpetrated the most evil against the Jewish community or the Messianic Jews in particular, which was the Catholic church. And Father Peter eventually was given permission by the Vatican at the time to stand up and confess that sin in public. Wow. I know you know this because of your own background, but most people don’t realize that the Catholic church does not sin.
And for someone to stand up on behalf of the Vatican and say that we sinned against the Jewish people and against the Messianic Jewish community, that was huge. It was huge. And not even many people have seen the video that was produced of him doing that. But we were in a room of about five, 600 down in Brazil, which you’ve been to. And I mean these Brazilians who were in this Messianic Jewish congregation, five or 600 of them, they just became quiet and began to weep. And when he was making that confession, it so touched them because many of them are descendants of Jewish families who were persecuted by the Catholic church in Spain or Portugal and mostly Portugal, and they’ve tried to reconnect with their Jewish roots and ancestry. So it was quite a huge breakthrough, not just for that congregation, but I think in general for anybody who watches that video and understands. So if you’re going to want to have unity, you don’t ignore the entity that cause the most harm. You actually go to that entity on purpose intentionally and try to gain some kind of reconciliation, which is difficult, difficult for them and difficult for us who were Jews,
Very difficult on both sides. So it had to be the Lord breaking our hearts to even enter into that sort of a thing.

Yeah. Well, I like how you mentioned that you just started with one person and you built a relationship with someone who obviously was a priest, but even for anyone else out there, starting with someone who is a member, a faithful member of the Catholic Church, building a relationship and asking the hard questions. I remember one time you and I were sitting in Miami at a board meeting for MJBI, and you were telling me this story, how you were on this long car ride with Father Peter, and you just peppered him with all of the questionable theology from where you sat. And his answers to you were clearly thoughtful and though you differed on some of the conclusions, the relational component is what allowed you to have those honest conversations and

Open doors. And Father Peter Hawkin was a unique man. He had his two highest goals in life were to help the charismatic wing of the Catholic Church and the Messianic Jewish community. And so he had, I mentioned earlier, he was a scholar, he had studied, deeply studied the Messianic Jewish community, the Jewish community at large, and the history that went on between the Catholic church and the Jewish community. So he was sensitive to the issues. Not every Catholic even knows that those issues exist or existed. And so in that way, he was unique. And I’m sharing that in case you have someone watching your podcast who says, oh, I’m going to go out and meet a Catholic person. Not every Catholic person even knows anything about the history of the Catholic church and the Jewish community and the Messianic Jewish community in particular.

Yeah, it’s really true. When you were quoting the numbers of the people that are estimated to be a part of the Catholic church, I wonder if they still count me. I’m sure they do. I grew up Catholic and I was confirmed.

If you weren’t excommunicated, then you’re

Still right. Yeah, exactly. Oh boy. I remember when you told me the story about being in Brazil and being on that trip with Father Peter and when that moment happened. So what happened right after that is you traveled to Argentina and you ended up meeting with at the time, a cardinal in Buenos Aires who was similarly open to the Messianic Jewish movement in Buenos Aires, right?

Yes. Lio.

Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that interaction.

Well, we spent significant time in Brazil and then flew over to Argentina to also hold some meetings and meet people on behalf of tourism council too. And so we were there for probably a week or so. I’m not sure exactly how long, but our very last meeting before I was flying back to the USA was with a cardinal, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, who’s oversees Argentina basically. And he wanted to meet us, particularly, he wanted to meet a Messianic Jew. He already had an Argentinian friend who was one of the rabbis in Bueno Aires who he had become close with. So he wanted to hear my testimony. We met with him. And the interesting part about this is the timing, because Pope Benedict, while we were in Brazil the day before, we were getting ready to fly out to Argentina the day or two before Pope Benedict came out on television. I remember this explicitly because Father Peter and I were eating breakfast before we were headed over to a meeting and we were watching, there was TV on in the hotel in the breakfast area, and we were watching, we were talking to each other, but then we weren’t watching the tv. But when the TV started announcing something about Pope Benedict that caught Father Peter’s attention immediately, and what was it, Pope Benedict was standing up in public and resigning his papacy.
And Father Peter, it was almost like his mouth dropped. He just could not believe it. I mean, the last Pope that resigned was probably 800 years ago. So they almost always go until they die. And just recently in Pope Francis case, but Pope Benedict resigned and Lio Cardinal Lio, who was a very humble guy by the way. He said, don’t call me Cardinal or Bishop. He says, just call me Father Lio. And when he came in, he was just dressed like a priest
Black with a white collar, black suit and nothing fancy. And he said, just call me Father Lio. And I said, what’s your first name? No, I’m just kidding. So he said, please tell me your story. And there were six of us in the room. I was the only Jewish guy as I recall. And so I began to share my testimony how I came to faith in Yeshua, which back then was still somewhat unusual. It’s a little bit different today, but still I began to share my testimony and he listened very attentively. And when I was through with my testimony, part of my testimony, by the way, is that both of my parents are Holocaust survivors, and they have an amazing story of how they survived. And so when I got through sharing my testimony, and he heard all this stuff about the surviving, my surviving parents, he said, anyone who hates the Jewish people or hates Israel cannot be a true Christian.

Wow.

This is coming from a cardinal in the Catholic church. And I mean, talk about hearing something I never realized I would hear from anyone in the Catholic church, but now it’s coming from one of the leaders in the Catholic church. Well, as soon as we were done with our meeting and I was going right to the airport and he was going straight off to Rome. But anyway, I’m fast tracking here, but let me just backtrack a second because it’s such an interesting story. You’ve heard it many times, I think. But so once we were through sharing testimony and shared about the vision of TJC two toward Jerusalem council too, it’s the second Jerusalem council. And once we got finished sharing all that, he blessed TJC two for us to take it into Argentina in particular and South America in general. And we were just about ready to go. I said, my heart started stirring. This is what happens to me when the Lord starts stirring my heart. And I said, I Father Bolio, could we pray for you? We knew he was going off to the College of Cardinals to elect a new Pope. I said, could we pray for you? And he said, yes. And immediately he lowered his head. We were all sitting down
Immediately, he lowered his head and he started praying. And I’m thinking, wait a minute. Something’s still stirring in my heart. And do you interrupt a cardinal who’s already praying? And so I said, father Lio, could we lay hands on you and pray for you? He looked up, he had his eyes closed. He looked up at me again this time he had to think for a minute before he said yes. And he said, okay, yes. And then he stood up.
It was very significant for him to have the hands laying on of hands. Right. Very significant. He stood up. We all stood up and surrounded him in a circle. I laid my hands on top of his head. I can’t remember if he was wearing a keeper or not, but I think he was. But anyways, I laid my hands on his head and started to pray. We were all praying, but I’m the only one who voiced prayer. And I said, Lord, I pray for Father Boggo that in his consideration of the future Pope, and I pray for all the cardinals that they will love the apple of your eye, Israel. Well, I think I’m mixing it up a little bit, but first I said, may they love you with all of the heart, soul, and strength, and may they love Israel, the apple of your eye and support the Messianic Jewish community. And I prayed some other things, but that those three things were the basic parts of the prayer. And we were done. And afterwards, we just were walking out to the elevator. He was on the sixth floor or something. We walked out to the elevator and I pushed the button to go down, and he stops me and I turn around and he puts his hands on my shoulders and looks me straight in the eyes. And he says, rabbi Marty, please pray for me.
And I got a tremendous burden to pray for. We left, and I went back to the States about a week later, or two weeks later, however long it took, I can’t remember. I think it was maybe two weeks, my son, Ari working, who was on our staff at the time, he comes running into my office. He says, dad, the white smoke, the white smoke. I said, oh, awesome. We’ll see how the Lord answered our prayers. And then about 15 minutes later, one of our elders comes in who was on staff, Dave Piles, and Dave came in and said, it’s Father Lio. It’s Father Lio. Wow. And I went, wow, just like your reaction. I went, wow. The Lord really did answer our prayers. And so this was Pope Francis, this is Pope Francis. So of course, he turned out to be a controversial pope because he’s so, I think politically and socially, extremely left or progressive. But in a way, it was kind of understandable because he grew up in Argentina, which was a little bit like that, and he cared for the poor. That’s what he did. I mean, this is the guy who, he was the Archbishop and one of the Catholics in Buenos Aires gave him a mansion like semi palace.

Oh wow.

Right on the river in Buenos Aires. And he immediately sold it and gave the money to the poor. Wow. He never stepped foot in it, didn’t live in it. And I mean, that’s the kind of guy he was constantly walking around the streets of Winters Aires and helping the poor and all that sort of thing, even as a cardinal. So that was his heart. He made some very controversial statements that got him in trouble and even caused us some heartburn in our relationship with him. But overall, I really believe to this day that he knew the Lord and that he actually really loved the Lord and wanted to serve him deeply. And he’s just a man like everybody else did as best as he could.

So during his time as the Pope, I know from being walking more closely with you over the last decade or so, especially in ministry, that him being in that role opened a lot of doors for the advancing of a lot of dialogue and a lot of key decisions. And you’ve been involved in quite a few of those.

Yes.

So where do you see the state of things now? We’ve got, there’s a new Pope in the Catholic Church, and what’s your outlook on the continued cooperation between the Messianic Jewish movement and the Catholic Church towards Unity?

Well, I think that is yet to be revealed. However, I think Pope Leo the new Pope, this is a very interesting fact about him. He already had a relationship, somewhat of a relationship, favorable relationship with the Jewish community at large. And so it was the president of one of the large Jewish organizations in the us. I can’t remember which one it was, but called him up and congratulated him. And he received that with Joy. And in his studies, he actually went, I think it was to Spurt College, which is a Jewish
College. I mean, it’s up in Chicago, and that’s where he grew up. And he lived for 10 or more years in Peru. But he was a Chicago guy. And so I think he’s favorable toward the Jewish community, and time will tell if he’s favorable toward Israel or not. I don’t know. And he also doesn’t have much of a history at all with the Messianic Jewish community. So we’re praying and hoping that the Lord will open a door for us in the Messianic community to meet with him and introduce the Messianic community as we have in the past with the past two popes.

I think we’re recording this in the middle part of May, but Dr. David Rudd, I believe, is in Rome right now.

He is.

That’s right. And continuing the dialogue, right?

That’s right. Yeah.

I know that one of the really exciting and unique things that’s happened with this dialogue, the Messianic Jewish, Roman Catholic Church dialogue that is to large credit Father Peter and the work of TJC two being a part of this and Mark Kinzer and many, many others, but where now you have people who are faithful Catholic members who have a Jewish background. Their parents were Jewish, their grandparents were Jewish, their believers obviously in Yeshua, members of the Roman Catholic Church, but they’re wanting to basically even have Hebrew liturgy, if I understand that correctly. And maybe give us a lay of the land on where things are at now and where you see them going as far as setting aside all of our theology here. If you’re a Jewish person who’s come to faith in the Catholic Church and you’re a practicing Roman Catholic, you’re a Jewish disciple of Jesus or Yeshua in the Catholic Church, give us a lay of the land of some of the advancements as we’ve been happening there.

Well, the Catholic Church, as I mentioned, were antagonists in terms of Jewish life and Jewish practice. And for centuries, many centuries, many, many centuries, the Catholic Church did not allow any Jewish practice. Even if you were Jewish and you became a believer and joined the Catholic church, they not only, they didn’t just shun Jewish practice. It was criminal in the Catholic church to practice anything Jewish as a Catholic, as a Jewish believer. But after Vatican two, that changed. So Pope John, I think the 23rd who called the Council, the Vatican Council, which lasted about four or five years.

This is the 1960s?

Correct. 1962 to 1965, let’s say. So he died in the middle of it. And Pope Paul, I think the eighth maybe took it over and continued the council to the end. But they created one document in particular, which is called Nostra Ate. And it’s funny because Nostra ate is the document that says, okay, it’s all right for the Catholic church to connect with people who are not Christians.

Wow. Yeah.

Well, so that included the Messianic Jews and the Jewish community, of course. And so it was still a struggle because most people, most Protestants that I know, think the Catholic Church is monolithic. Whatever the Pope says, everybody does it. It’s just not true. It’s just not true. And so it was a struggle for that document. Nostra Tate, and still is to trickle down from the Vatican and from Vatican Council too, down into everyday Catholic churches and in South America and other places. I’m thinking it probably has never even trickled that far. So that was a turning point for the Catholic Church. And in fact, under Pope Benedict, we met with Pope Bennet, I’ll share with you the origins of the Jewish, messianic Jewish and Catholic, Roman Catholic dialogue, which didn’t exist before. So we got a call, we had a prayer journey. TJ C two group had a prayer journey in Rome. And so while we were there on this prayer journey, we got a call from the Vatican inviting us. The Pope wanted us to ask us to come to the Vatican. He wanted to meet us, especially the Jewish members. And so we did funny to know this funny story with Father Peter. There were about six or eight of us who were walking together to the Vatican. Father Peter and I were walking together two by two, and Father Peter was a unique man. He was probably in his seventies at the time, or late sixties, early seventies. But he had this kind of baby face,
And he was walking into the Vatican with sparkles in his eyes, it was like taking a kid to a candy store or an ice cream store. I mean, it was like, wow, I’m actually going into the Vatican to meet the Pope. And that’s never happened to him before.

Wow.

So he was sharing this with me, and I said, father Peter, stick with the Jews. You’re going places.

I’ve used that quote a lot, by the way.

Yes. So anyway, we get in there, and at the time, Pope John Paul was very sick. It was his last year of his papacy. He was very sick. He was in and out of deep sickness. Well, something just came on him and he couldn’t come down. And so he sent Cardinal Ratzinger. Ratzinger,

Yeah.

Who later became the Pope, right? Benedict. Right. Benedict a year later. So we were there and I was sitting next to Benedict, like you and I are sitting here together. We were at a board table, boardroom table, and he looked at me and he said, please share your story. So I shared my story with him again like I did later on with Francis. But at the end of, and there were about three or four of us who were Messianic Jews on this side of the table. And so the four of us shared our testimonies and about how we came to Yeshua. And here’s another man. So most lay Catholics, and probably almost all Protestants are not aware that Cardinal Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict was an extreme scholar. He was a theologian and a scholar big time. So in his studies, he knew something about Messianic Jews, but never met one, never met any. And so here we are, he’s now hearing four Jewish men share a testimony how he came to Yeshua. And he said two things. He said, one, this can only mean one thing. Jesus is coming soon. Wow. That was his response to Jewish testimony of faith in Yeshua. Wow. This can only mean one thing. And he knew his Bible and what he said was exactly right.
We don’t say that so much as Messianic Jews. We don’t want people to think that we’re just being flippant or egotistical or egocentric. But for a Catholic, one of the top, he was the right hand man for Pope John Paul and Pope John Paul sent him to meet with us. And so that was one thing. He said, this can only mean one thing, that Jesus is coming soon. And the next thing he said is, this must also mean that God had something planned for the free church. These are the people outside the Christians, outside the Catholic church. They didn’t even call them Christians. They’re called the free church. And so because they were separated from the Catholic church, so it was quite extraordinary to hear these things from one of the top guys in the Catholic church, and it affected all of us. He had instructions from Pope John Paul afterwards, when we were through, all of us were through talking, and we had Father Peter with us on the other side of the table, and Johannes Auer and Brian Cox, who were two Catholics and an Anglican. And so he turns to, I think it was to Johannes Auer who was at that point, the right hand man of Cardinal Sherborne, who’s the archbishop of Vienna, Austria, who by the way, was on the shortlist to become the next Pope.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Quite influential. In fact, Cardinal Sherborne was the lead editor of the New Vatican Catechism.

Oh, wow.

Now, this came out probably 30 years ago now, but it’s new compared to centuries of the Catholic Church. And so in the new Catholic catechism, and here this is a Jewish guy talking to you about the Catholic church, but the new Catholic catechism had amazing changes that reflected Vatican two. And one of them was a complete switch of the interpretation of Romans 11, which said that the Jewish people are the chosen people and antisemitism is wrong, et cetera. I mean, this is the Catholic catechism. Now you think because all the Catholic boys like you go through catechism, but not many of ’em ever read that. Yeah, I don’t think I read that part. Unfortunately, that book is, that book is very thick. And so anyway, there are numerous places in it that are now changed and reflect a positive attitude towards Israel, not the current political Israel, but Israel as a nation that God created and as the chosen people, et cetera, et cetera. So that was kind of an amazing connection. And the Pope via Father Pope who became Pope Ratzinger, he turned to Johannes Auer, who was the right hand man of Cardinal Sherborne and said, I am appointing, the Pope is appointing, but he was speaking at Pope’s name. We are appointing Cardinal Sherborne as the official Vatican liaison to the Messianic Jewish community. Wow. This is the first time that I know of in history
That there’s any official appointment from the Vatican as a liaison or any connection like this to the Messianic Jewish community. At that point, there was another cardinal in the room, or we were sent down to his, yeah, there was another cardinal that met us there. And we went down with him. After the meeting was over with Ratzinger, we went down to this other guy’s room who was the Pope’s theologian, and we sat with him, an elderly guy. We sat with him in his room, believe it or not, we began to sing some hymns, even teach him some Messianic Jewish songs. And he loved it. He was also a cardinal. He loved it. And at that moment, the dialogue was birthed with this cardinal. He and Father Peter Hocken and Johannes Auer made a decision to birth the Jewish Messianic Jewish Catholic Dialogue, which is going on till today. So the future of it is unknown. If the Pope doesn’t, new Pope doesn’t change anything, the discussion will continue. The dialogue will continue. And it’s kind of an amazing thing that most Catholics don’t even know exists.

Yeah, that’s so true. I don’t think evangelicals know that exists. So the two things that Benedict, well, Pope Benedict before he was Pope Benedict said to you that were so interesting that one, Jesus is coming soon. And two, this must mean also that God is at work in the church outside of the Catholic Church, which is unbelievable. I don’t think it is coincidental that his eyes were open to that through the testimony of followers of Yeshua who are Jewish. And I think when we started the whole podcast here, that was, I don’t know if I said this before we hit record or not, but I feel like this is, the Messianic Jewish movement is truly the bridge between all of these disparate streams in the Catholic church. And I think Father Peter wrote his book on this to some degree, the glory and the

Shame,

Which is that if the shame of the church has been, it’s turning, its back on the Jewish people, the glory of the church will be the acceptance of its Jewish brothers and sisters who are believers into the fellowship. So Marty, in October, there’ll be towards Jerusalem. Council two will have its big summit in Jerusalem. God willing, God willing. And so please pray for that. By the way, it’s a big deal. The last one was canceled because of the Hamas attacks of October 7th in 2023. So this is really going to be a big step forward because it’s pulling in members from the body of Yeshua all over the world, also from the Catholic church to have a large summit and dialogue together. Because you’ve been having the Messianic Jewish, Roman Catholic dialogue one-on-one essentially. Right. But this is going to be, there’ll be a wider dialogue here.

Well, one of the very high level Catholics who’s also a cardinal, has already accepted our invitation to the summit. I’m glad you said God willing that it will happen because Israel is still at war and more airlines are flying in. But if anything critical happens that would close the airport, we would have to cancel the summit again like we did in 2023. I hope that doesn’t happen. I hope we can continue on with it, but there’s always that caveat.

Yeah. Well, as we end, there is real warfare over this. I think what Rabbi Marty said about the Pope’s own admission, that this must mean that Jesus is coming soon. And as you could imagine, even those of us in the evangelical tradition, there are different biblical impulses that we see, that we try to understand in part that would trigger Yeshua, Jesus’ return to earth to establish his kingdom on earth. And it’s interesting that what opened that up in the post mind was the Messianic Jewish movement being revived and being a witness to the church, both the Catholic church and the non-Catholic church. So I’m saying all that to say, please do pray. Pray for TJC two. This is a movement that is under intense spiritual warfare because as we can imagine, I think we talked about this on this podcast, anything that God loves or chooses the enemy hates.
And obviously the enemy will do anything to delay the return of Yeshua because then the rule of his reign on earth continues to so chaos and discord on earth. And so please pray for TJC too. Pray for Rabbi Marty and pray for this Roman Catholic messianic Jewish dialogue, which really is critical to unity in the body. And if you’re someone from our stream, the evangelical stream, who has a difficult time with the Catholic church and its history, I hope that today’s episode has encouraged you that if has had a difficult time with the Catholic church’s history, it’s the Jewish community. And really encourage you to think about the testimony from Rabbi Marty, that it was a relationship with one person that began something that led to meetings with the Pope that led to Rabbi Marty praying for and laying his hands on a future pope. And it’s just one moment at a time where we’re learning how to relate to one another in unity. And finally, I just want to end on the website for TJC two is TJC

Two

I.org.

Roman numeral two. Yeah.

Yeah. Roman Nu I I

TJ tj CT tjc I

I.org. Dot org. We’ll put it in the description. So go there. Look at the resources. The vision of it really is uniting the body for issue is return Jew and Gentile. So Marty, thank you. It was fun to relive that. Even I’ve heard you tell that story so many times, but every time I do I, I’m wowed by how the Lord has used you. And

It’s amazing how the Lord, by the way, I just want to emphasize, yes, the devil tries his hardest to foil the plan of God, but God is sovereign. I mean, God is not going to be delayed by the devil. And so I just want to encourage everybody, don’t start fearing the enemy, just fear the Lord. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Stick with the Jews. They’re going places right from Rabbi Marty’s lips. And that’s my ending encouragement to you all. God bless you each. Thank you for spending that time, this time with us. See you next time.