Special Message from Dr. Ben Carson

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Well, Candy and I are absolutely delighted to be uh here with you.

It was looking kind of grim for a while there, but the Lord worked it all out.

Uh we were stuck by the weather.

We were sitting next to a pilot and he had a map out of the storm.

And we said, why couldn't you just fly around the bottom of the storm?

And he said, the plane is not equipped with rafts.

So but the Lord worked it all out.

And uh so glad to be here and with all the other campuses and the online services.

But uh I want to start with a word of prayer.

Kind Father in heaven, we thank you for bringing us together in this setting where we have freedom to worship you.

And we ask that the words that are spoken not be mine, but yours, and that our minds be receptive in the worthy name of Jesus.

Amen.

Now before I start, I should uh make a little disclaimer.

Everybody makes disclaimers these days.

They say I belong to this board or this organization, so you have to take everything with a grain of salt.

Well, my disclaimer is I am not politically correct.

So I'm definitely not woke, but uh but having said that, I do think that our country is ripe for a great awakening.

Once again, you know, we've had several, we've had four religious awakenings in the history of our country, and they were all around the times of wars or pestilence, and now we have both.

So I think we are definitely ready at this point, and I think people have had a chance to really get a look at what happens when you reject the principles of God, and it's so clear right now, I don't know how it's gonna get much clearer than this, and when we look back on our history and how effective we were, uh you know you think back to George Washington.

How many of you have heard the story of the bulletproof George Washington?

Uh, a few of you have.

Well, it used to be in all of our history books, and then they took it out.

You know, George Washington was a courier for General Braddock during the French and Indian War, and all the couriers were shot to death.

Except him.

He had several horses shot out from underneath him.

He had four bullet holes in his overcoat, he had bullet fragments in his hair, but no wounds.

And some years after the war, still before he had become president, but he was back in the area, and one of the police chiefs, one of the uh Indian chiefs, who was elderly and close to death, said to his tribesman, Please take me to see this man.

And when he was in the presence of George Washington, he said, Sir, I am an expert marksman, and I shot you several times.

And my men shot you several times, and pretty soon I told them to stop wasting their bullets.

And I just wanted to meet the man who's protected by the great spirit above.

George Washington had great faith in God.

And of course, when he was down to his last battalion of soldiers during the Great Revolutionary War, and they were on Long Island, surrounded on land and water by the British, it was going to be the end of the war.

And the meteorological records demonstrate that a dense, mysterious fog fell in an area, stayed there all night, and into the next day, allowing his troops and him to escape.

Now, some people say it's just a coincidence.

Is it really?

I don't think so.

And, you know, these are these are evidences that God gives us, and when we were paying attention to those things as a nation, look at what happened.

We went from a bunch of ragtag militiamen to the pinnacle nation in the world in record time.

That was not a coincidence.

And then think about this: America and the American dream.

Does any other country have a dream?

Have you ever heard of a Canadian dream?

Or French dream, Portuguese dream?

No, nobody else has a dream except us.

And it is known by people around the entire globe.

This is the destination spot where people want to come because of those values and those principles that we espoused.

Now, there are some who want to say, oh no, America, they're terrible people.

Uh, you know, no one should want to live in such an evil place with systemic racism and unfairness built into their system.

If we were so terrible, why would people be forming caravans trying to get in here?

And once they got in, wouldn't they be saying, don't come?

You know, I mean, it is absolutely absurd.

Now, that's not to say that we don't have warts, because America is composed of people, and people are imperfect, which is why we need a savior.

But to say that something like slavery makes America unique demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge of world history.

You know, slavery has been a part of civilization since there's been written history.

Doesn't make it good.

It's still an evil institution, but it has been a part of mankind.

The thing that's unique about America is that we had so many people who vehemently oppose slavery to the point where we're willing to fight a civil war to get rid of it.

And that's what we need to teach our children.

And we need to be thinking about the positive side.

Well, you know, I had a dream as a youngster too.

I wanted to be a doctor.

I just love medicine from the very beginning.

Any story about medicine on the radio or television, I was there like a magnet.

I even liked going to the doctor's office.

I mean, I would gladly get a shot just so I could smell the alcohol swab.

I mean, I just loved anything to do with medicine.

And I love the stories about missionary doctors.

And sometimes they would have a missionary doctor talk about what was going on.

And people who, at great personal sacrifice, brought physical, mental, and spiritual healing to people.

They seemed like the most noble people on earth.

I said, that's what I'm gonna do, be a doctor, a missionary doctor.

And that was my dream from the time I was eight years old until I was 13.

Which, at which time, having grown up in dire poverty, I decided I'd rather be rich.

So at that point, missionary doctor was out, and psychiatrist was in.

Now, I didn't know any psychiatrists, but on TV they seemed like rich people, you know.

They drove jaguars, lived in fancy mansions, had these big plush offices, and all I had to do was talk to crazy people all day.

And it seemed like I was doing that anyway, so I said, this is gonna work out extremely well.

And uh, but over the course of time, you know, it migrated from missionary doctor to psychiatrist to cardiovascular surgeon to neurosurgeon.

And when I decided that I wanted to be a neurosurgeon, a lot of people thought that was a strange thing.

At that time, there had only been eight black neurosurgeons in the world.

But I can tell you a secret.

When God distributes talent, he does not do it on the basis of race.

So you don't have to ever worry about that.

And it was something that I really took to.

But if you'd seen me as a kid, you would have never imagined that this guy would grow up and be a brain surgeon.

I mean, I was a horrible student, probably the worst student you've ever seen.

The kids just teased me mercilessly, they called me horrible names.

And I remember once we were having an argument about who was the dumbest kid in the class.

And it wasn't a big argument because everybody agreed it was me, but but then someone tried to extend the argument to who was the dumbest person in the world.

And I said, wait a minute.

There are billions of people in the world, and they said, Yep, and you're the dumbest one.

Well, unfortunately, after recess, we had a math quiz, and you had to pass your paper to the person behind you, they correct it, give it back to you to teach you it, call your name out loud, you had to report your score out loud.

Not a problem if you got a hundred or ninety-five or ninety.

Major problem if, like me, you got a zero, had just had an argument about who was the dumbest person in the world.

Because I knew they would just laugh and have a good time at my expense.

So I started scheming.

I said, I know what I'll do.

When the teacher calls my name, I'll mumble.

And the teacher will think I said one thing, and the girl behind me will think I said something else.

So when she called my name, I said, uh.

She said, nine.

Benjamin, you got nine right?

This is wonderful.

I knew you could do it if you just applied yourself.

Class, this is a great day.

Benjamin has got nine right to have 30 questions.

But uh finally the girl behind me couldn't take it any longer, and she stood up and she said, He said, none.

Well, the kids were just roaring and laughter, they were beside themselves.

And if I could have disappeared into thin air, never to be heard from again in the history of the world, I would gladly have done so.

But I couldn't.

So I did sit there and act like it didn't bother me.

But it did, it bothered me a lot.

Not enough to make me study, but it bothered me a lot, you know.

And but but the person that bothered more than me was my mother.

You know, my mother came from a huge rural family, got married at age 13, trying to escape desperate poverty, had less than a third grade education, and discovered years later that her husband was a bigamist.

And obviously that resulted in a divorce.

And she's trying to raise two young sons by herself with no skills.

She started working as a domestic, cleaning other people's houses.

But that was just her cover because she was really a spy.

Because she was trying to see what makes these people so successful.

Why do they live in these beautiful mansions?

And she concluded that it was because they didn't watch a lot of TV and they read a lot of books.

So she came home one day and imposed that on us, and we were not happy.

I mean, in today's world, we would have called social services on her.

But she said we had to read those books.

We had to read two books apiece and submit to her book reports every week.

We didn't know she couldn't read them, but she would put little check marks and underlines and highlights, and I just hated it at first.

But after a while I actually began to enjoy reading those books.

And funny things began to happen, you know, because I was looking at words all the time.

I wasn't the first one to sit down in the spelling bee.

And I learned how to express myself better, grammar, syntax, all of my grades began to improve.

Within the space of a year and a half, I went from the bottom of the class to the top of the class, much to the consternation of the students who used to tease me and call me names, who were now coming to me saying, Benny, Benny, how do you work this problem?

And I'd say, sit at my feet, youngster, while I instruct you.

I was perhaps a little obnoxious, but it sure felt good to say that to those turkeys.

But, you know, I I had a complete revolution in the way that I thought, and particularly as I read about scientists and explorers and entrepreneurs and surgeons and people of great accomplishment, I began to understand that the person who has the most to do with what happens to you in life is you.

It's not somebody else, it's not some circumstance, it's you yourself.

You know, you think about the story of Joseph in the Bible, which is one of my very favorite stories.

I mean, here's a guy who got sold into slavery by his brothers.

I mean, that's a real bummer.

And but but what does he do?

He says, if I'm gonna be a slave, I'll be the best slave ever.

And he ends up overseeing the household of the captain of the Egyptian guard.

And then the wife of the captain has eyes for him and comes on to him, and he rebuffs her, and she tells a lie about him, and he ends up in prison.

And he doesn't say, Bummer, here I am doing all the things the Lord wants me to do, and I end up in prison.

He says, If I'm gonna be a prisoner, I'll be the best prisoner there is.

He ends up with a responsible position in the prison, begins to have his talents recognized, interpreting dreams, and ends up as the governor of the most powerful nation in the world at that time.

What does that tell you?

It says that life may not always be a bowl of cherries, but it's the attitude that you take toward it that makes the difference.

You can become a victim and you can say, Poor me, or you can do something else.

You know, you think about some of the stuff that's going on in our schools today, some of the stuff that they're teaching our children.

And can you imagine being a little kid in the United States today?

At first, still some people think you gotta wear a mask.

Well, how do little children determine whether they're pleasing the teacher?

They look at their face.

You can't tell that.

That's a real deficit in terms of sociological development, and then they're told that they may be harboring some horrible disease, and maybe it won't make them sick, but it might kill their grandmother.

Well, you know, grandmothers do get older and they die.

Now you got somebody feeling guilty about that.

That's pretty awful.

And then if they're white kids, they're told that you're evil.

And your parents and your grandparents and all your ancestors are evil, and you've caused all these problems for everybody else.

If you're a black kid or another minority, you're a victim.

And the system is stacked against you, you'll never realize your potential.

All of this is happening at the same time you're developing your self-image and your self-concept.

And if that's not bad enough, you may not be a girl or a boy.

I mean, think about this.

Isn't that child abuse what we're doing to these children?

It's child abuse.

And, you know, you stop and you think about what is going on in our society today.

You know, over 60 years ago, Nikita Khrushchev said to Dwight Eisenhower, your grandchildren's children will live under communism and we won't have to fire a shot.

What did he know?

What was he talking about?

He knew that all they had to do is gain control of our educational system so that they could indoctrinate the kids.

And then all they had to do after that is gain control of the media so you could spoon feed the adults what you wanted them to hear and deny them what you didn't want them to hear, and then replace faith in God with faith in government, and then raise the national debt to astronomical levels so that you could justify massive taxation and redistribution of wealth and complete dependence on the government.

Does any of that sound familiar?

That's exactly what's going on right now.

And it's so important that we, the American people, understand what is happening so that we don't fall victim to it.

The goal is to divide us, to drive wedges between us on every level, on the basis of race, sex, income, age, religion, you name it, driving wedge.

But the fact of the matter is, we the American people are not each other's enemies.

The enemies are those who are trying to divide us.

We need to learn how to recognize them.

We need to learn how to work together.

You know, the United States of America is an amazing place, and our diversity is not a problem.

In fact, every group in this nation has been very important to the development of this nation.

Take African Americans, for example.

Just take a walk down the streets of Dallas and look at all the things that were invented by African Americans.

Start with your shoes.

Jan Motzligger, a black American, developed an automatic shoe lasting machine which revolutionized the shoe industry throughout the world.

You step on that clean street.

Charles Brooks, a black man, invented the automatic street sweeper, those machines with the big brushes.

Down that street comes a big refrigerated tractor, trailer, truck.

Frederick Jones, a black man, invented the refrigeration system for trucks later adopted for airplanes, trains, and boats.

Stops at the red light.

Garrett Morgan, a black man, invented the traffic signal.

You can also tell how he invented the gas mass, saved lots of lives during the war.

While you're talking about the war Henry or Bradbury, a black woman who invented the underwater cannon, made it possible to launch torpedoes from submarines.

You'll see a beautiful black woman walking down the street.

The black man did not invent her, but you can use that opportunity to talk about Madame C.J.

Walker, a black woman who invented cosmetic products for women of dark complexion, was the first woman of any.

Any nationality in America to become a millionaire on our own efforts.

You'll walk past the hospital, Charles Drew, his contributions to blood banking, understanding the function of blood plasma.

Daniel Hell Williams, the first successful open heart surgery in the world, operative mortality rate less than 1.5%.

Look up at the surgical light, Thomas Edison.

You didn't know he was black, did you?

Well, he wasn't, but but his right hand man, Lewis Latimer, was.

You can tell how Lewis Latimer came up with the filament that made the light bulb work for more than two or three days, invented the electric lamp, diagrammed a telephone for Alexander Graham Bell, was a tremendous inventor in his own right.

Most people have never even heard of him.

He walked past the railroad tracks.

Andrew Beard, the automatic railroad car coupler, spurred on the Industrial Revolution.

Elijah McCoy, the automatic lubrication system for locomotive engines, had so many great inventions.

People would say, is that a McCoy?

Is that the real McCoy?

That's where the term comes from.

You got racist people like David Duke talking about the real McCoy, don't even know who they're paying homage to.

And I'm just barely scratching the surface.

But here's the wonderful thing about America.

I can take that same walk down the street for virtually any nationality and point out tremendous contributions that were made, and that's how we reach the pinnacle so fast.

Our diversity is not a problem, it is a blessing from God.

These are things that we have to understand, and it will make all the difference in the world.

You know, things accelerated very quickly for me.

College.

And uh, you know, I ended up at Yale, which as you know is a very liberal left-wing place these days.

But it was a wonderful thing for me because that's where I met Candy, my wife.

Candy, can you stay and let them see you?

So there can be some advantages to these left-wing places.

But, you know, the important thing is to make sure that we give our children a solid foundation because the world that we live in right now is gonna bombard them with all kinds of things.

And that's why fellowship also is so vitally important in what we do.

But, you know, I found myself uh at Johns Hopkins for my training, and in my last year of training, when I was chief resident, we had the grand opening of the neuroscience center at Hopkins.

And since Hopkins is sort of the modern birthplace of neurosurgery, all the big Whigs from around the world were there.

One of the big Whigs from Australia was there, and he took a liking to me, and he said, You should come to Australia to be our senior registrar at a major teaching hospital in Western Australia.

And I said, Australia?

I mean, you drill a hole from Baltimore, you come out in Australia.

I didn't say that out loud, but that's what I was thinking.

And I also knew that they had a whites-only policy, and uh, you know, I just kind of poo-pooed the idea.

And it seemed like every time I turned around, there was someone saying, Good eye, mate, how you going?

Every time we turned a TV on, there was a special on about Australia.

So, you know, Candy went to the library and did a bunch of research on Australia, and we discovered they did have a whites-only policy, but it was officially abolished in 1968, and this was 1983.

So we sold all of our earthly belongings and off we went to Australia, and all of our friends were saying, You'll be back in three weeks.

But little did they know we didn't have any more money, so we can come back.

But the biggest problem we had in Australia is keeping up with all the dinner invitations.

They love Americans, they would invite you over just so they could hear your accent.

And I would remind them, I'm the American, you have the accent.

But the second biggest problem is every time I sat down and started writing in a chart, invariably somebody would come along and say, Can I feel your hair?

And I would say, you can feel it, but it's gonna cost you 10 bucks.

But I always got back at them because I would say, I'm sorry, I can't remember any of your names because you all look alike.

But it turned out to be a wonderful experience because there were only four neurosurgical consultants in all of Western Australia.

And once they discovered that I knew how to operate, they kind of left me in charge of the major teaching hospital and they went out to the private hospitals.

And if I had stayed on at Hopkins, I would have been the low man on the totem pole and would have gotten to do all the stuff nobody else wanted to do.

But I was doing all these major cases, several of them a day.

So when I came back to Hopkins a year later, the position opened up for chief of pediatric neurosurgery.

Normally they'd go out and get somebody with a lot of gray hair and a big name.

And they said, Well, Carson's very young, but he knows how to do everything.

And that's how it happened.

You know, the Lord always prepares you for what he wants you to do.

But I gotta admit, I was thinking I was pretty special.

I mean, I said you grew up in Detroit, went to Yale, Michigan, Johns Hopkins, your chief of pediatric nerve surgery, the number one hospital.

At age 33, you are pretty tough.

And then along came this little kid from Georgia.

At age two, he was a prodigy.

Bible verses, he had them memorized.

But by the time he was four, he could no longer walk.

He could no longer talk, he was having all kinds of problems.

He was diagnosed with a malignant brainstem tumor.

And they saw many specialists around the country.

Everybody told them the same thing.

There's nothing that can be done.

Take him home, keep him comfortable, and let them die.

And when they came to Johns Hopkins, I saw him roll onto the ward on the stretcher, barely moving, barely breathing, foaming at the mouth, eyes looking in different directions.

I was thinking, what am I supposed to do here?

I looked at the CAT scan.

There was a big, ugly tumor.

And uh I said, This is a malignant brainstem tumor.

There's nothing I or anyone can do.

And they said, But doctor, the Lord sent us here because we would find a pediatric neurosurgeon who was a Christian, and the Lord will heal our son through him.

And I said, but I can't, there's nothing to be done here.

They said, the Lord.

And I said, okay.

MRIs were new at that time.

I said, let's do an MRI.

Maybe it'll show us something the CAT scan didn't show us.

And we did the MRI, I had all the neuroradiologists look at it.

They all said the same thing malignant brainstem tumor, nothing to be done.

Oh, how discouraging.

I told them, and they said, Thank you, doctor, but the Lord.

And I said, Okay, I'll tell you what, about one in a thousand times the scans are wrong, so I'll do a biopsy.

Took them to the operating room, went down, there was this big, ugly, grayish-red mask, took a biopsy, it came back, high grade glioma, a very malignant tumor.

And I took out as much as I dared, closed them up, went out and told the parents.

And I said, I'm sorry, you know, only the Lord knows how long someone's supposed to be here, what their purpose is, we'll understand it better by and by.

You know, all the nice things we tell people.

And I said, Thank you, Doctor.

But the Lord.

And I just, as I was walking away, I said, I just had never seen people with faith like that.

Fully expecting that he would get worse and deteriorate and die.

But over the next couple of days, the eyes started looking in the same direction.

He started handling his secretions.

I said, What's going on here?

Let's do another MRI, and we did.

There was still a big ugly tumor, but there was a little ribbon of tissue way up in the corner.

I said, Maybe this thing is not inside the brainstem, maybe it's just big and pushed the brainstem out of the way and crushed it.

And maybe we should go back in.

And the parent said, by all means.

And when I went back in under the microscope, the nature of the tumor had changed.

And as I piled away layer by layer, I got to the last layer, piled away.

There was a glistening white brainstem, intact, smashed and displaced, but intact.

Long story short, that boy walked out of the hospital and is a minister today.

And you know, one of the oncologists said to me, Ben, I've always been an atheist.

I'm not anymore.

But it wasn't really for him, it was for me.

Because, see, I thought I was doing all this stuff.

And after that, I realized it wasn't me.

I said, I know it's you, Lord.

From now on, you be the nurse surgeon, I'll be the hands.

And after that, amazing things began to happen.

All kinds of amazing cases.

I started doing the hemispherectomies, sort of brought those back.

That was my first 15 minutes of fame, and then intrauterine surgery.

And that was my second 15 minutes of fame.

And I said to Candy, you know, if there's a third 15 minutes of fame, our lives will change because the media is not stupid.

And they'll say, Isn't that the same guy?

The same guy and the same guy.

And the third 15 minutes of fame was the conjoined twins.

It was absolutely amazing how the Lord set you up for these various things.

But, you know, I was thinking that I would retire when I turned 61.

And I did.

But I failed retirement because, you know, I did the national prayer breakfast in 2013.

I was really surprised when they asked me to do that because I had done it in 1997 when Clinton was president.

And I talked about integrity.

And it was just before the Lewinsky thing broke.

And he was probably scratching and said, Does this guy know what's going on?

But I wasn't aware that anybody ever did it twice.

But some research demonstrated there was one person that did it twice, and that was Billy Graham.

And I said, That's pretty good company.

But I didn't know what I was supposed to say until the day of the prayer breakfast.

And obviously it resonated tremendously with a lot of people, and they were all saying, You got to run for president.

I said, I don't want to run for president.

What is this?

I said, if I ignore these people, it'll go away.

But it didn't.

Every place I went, there were people with blacks, run, been, run.

I have 500,000 petitions in my office.

I finally said, Lord, if you want me to run, you have to give me all the things that you need.

A Rolodex with all the important names, a lot of money, an organization.

Next thing I knew, I had an organization that was raising more money than the RNC each month.

It was absolutely absurd.

But, you know, I ended up as the secretary, and we were able to get an enormous number of things done.

You don't hear about a lot of them because they were such good things.

And particularly getting people to a point of self-sufficiency and the opportunity zones and the foster youth to independence.

I mean, there's a list that's as long as your arm.

And we had actually even come up with a solution for homelessness in Los Angeles, working with the mayor there, Garcetti, and even with Governor Newsom, believe it or not.

And then along came COVID.

But you know, the Lord will take care of these things.

He plays the long game.

We always play the short game.

But one of the things that became important after the election in 2020, I was going to retire.

I said, this time I'm going to succeed.

But seeing the direction of the country, I couldn't.

So some very talented people from HUD and myself put together the American Cornerstone Institute, which looks at the cornerstone principles that made us into a great nation, like our faith, our Judeo-Christian values, which teach us to love our neighbor, not to cancel our neighbor.

That's pure evil.

And liberty, such an important concept, freedom.

And during the first great religious awakening, the church played such an important role in making that something that was on the forefront for our forefathers to look at.

Freedom of speech, freedom of religion.

And then the third pillar, community, the ability to work together, to use our various gifts and talents, working toward singular goals.

What a difference that makes.

I mean, you think about World War II, D Day, all of those youngsters, 17, 18 years old, some even 16, going onto the beaches at Normandy, being molded down by machine gun fire.

Were they afraid?

Did they turn back?

Yes, they were afraid, but they didn't turn back.

They stepped over the bodies and they overwhelmed the Axis forces, knowing in many cases they would never see their loved ones or their homeland again.

Why did they do it?

Not for themselves.

They did it for you and me so that we could live in peace and freedom.

That sense of community, of unity, of responsibility.

They did that for us.

What are we willing to do for those who are coming after us?

We need to really think about that.

And then life from the womb to the tomb, the love of life and respect of life is what God is all about.

And then we have the Little Patriots program.

I call that the inoculation against indoctrination.

And when you get a chance, go to Little Patriots Learning.com.

There's a free teaching program, K through 12, to give our young people the real history of who we are and what we stand for and what our documents stand for.

And if you go to American Cornerstone.org, you'll see all the other multitudinous things that are going on.

Because we can't just complain about what's going on.

We have to get involved, we have to invest, because our country is being taken away from us.

And this country means so much for the world.

Because before the United States became a great power, if you know history, you know that despotic leaders were stepping on anyone who was weaker than they were and destroying them.

And as we get weaker again, you see those despotic leaders coming to the forefront again.

God put this country here for a reason.

And we need to lead the world in righteousness.

And then I'll just close by saying in 1831, Alexis de Tookville came to America to study it because the Europeans were fascinated.

How could this fledgling nation, barely 50 years old, already be competing with them on virtually every level?

That's impossible.

So he looked at our government and how it had a divided government, and it was a beautiful system.

And he looked at our business model and how it encouraged innovation and entrepreneurship.

And he looked at our school system and was duly impressed.

He could find a mountain man and a guy could read and a guy could tell him about the Constitution.

But the thing that impressed him most were the churches.

The fiery sermons that he heard from the churches that inspired a ragtag bunch of militiamen to defeat the most powerful military force on earth.

The churches that gave the people a sense of morality, of decency, of what is right and what is wrong.

And he concluded his two-volume set Democracy in America by saying America is great because America is good.

And if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.

Let us pray.

Father in heaven, we thank you that you have given us a place like America, that you have given a place like America to the world.

Let us not squander the opportunities that you have given us.

Let us live lives that lift up your name.

Let us never be ashamed of you.

Let us lead with you and not try to be like everyone else.

These things we ask in the worthy name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.

Amen.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you'd like to connect with us, text Connect to 71010 or visit gatewaypeople.com.

We hope you have a great week.