Joy Ellen Ng: He called and he said, “I need a new bag for my survival suit.” Well, that’s a pretty strange request, right? I happened to have an extra one. I said, “Yes, sure, I have an extra bag. It’s $12 and you’re welcome to come get it.” Well, before he got there, Kodiak Daily Mirror, our newspaper, arrived at my door and I was looking it over. The headline was about a boat that had sunk and the crew was rescued because they were wearing survival suits. One of those survivors was the guy who had just called me wanting a new bag for his survival suit.

[music]

[00:00:40] Gretchen Roe: Good afternoon, everyone. This is Gretchen Roe for the Demme Learning Show. I am so excited today to invite my friend, Joy Ellen Ng to talk to you about her adventures in Alaska. I had the privilege of reading her book, and it was one of the most compelling reads I have had in years. Joy and I met at a conference this spring and I’ve been waiting all summer to have this conversation. With that, Joy, will you introduce yourself?

[00:01:09] Joy Ellen Ng: Sure, I’m delighted to be with all of you. It’s been a few years since I’ve been a homeschool parent, but I know that many of you are in the throes of it and I love homeschooling. I still love talking about homeschooling. I love being with homeschoolers. I love encouraging homeschoolers. I love learning all the new things that are available to homeschoolers. It’s just a real pleasure to be with all of you today, for sure.

Gretchen thought maybe I should explain my background. This is actually the view that I see from my desk. We lived in Alaska for 25 years, but we are now in Southern Puget Sound on Anderson Island. I am actually in the conference room at our church because the internet is more reliable here, but my husband took that picture yesterday as we watched some baby seals being born on the beach right in front of our house. That was pretty cool.

[00:02:05] Gretchen Roe: I think it’s pretty amazing. That sets a picture for what Joy’s going to talk about just a little bit, because I wanted her to talk about her experiences of being an author. I wanted her to talk about her experiences of being in Alaska, and about being in the foundation of being a growing homeschool mom. Joy tells me that now that she’s not actively homeschooling her own children, her job is to encourage those of us who are continuing to homeschool along our own journey.

I think you’ll find lots of things to relate to as we talk today. Joy, my first question to you is, can you tell us a little bit about your path to becoming an author? Because this was not your first book, and now I’m anxiously awaiting your other book to arrive. Tell me about how this happened for you. Notice I didn’t say to you, I said for you.

[00:03:08] Joy Ellen Ng: I like to say that I am an unlikely military wife, an unlikely homeschooler, and definitely an unlikely author. I have learned that what God gives me to do, he gives me everything I need to do it. We had been in Alaska for 25 years, thought we would never leave. We loved Alaska. We were Alaskans through and through. My mother-in-law needed us, and she lived in Tacoma, Washington. When our last daughter went off to college, my husband retired for the second time. He first retired from the Coast Guard, and then from his second career, we decided that we were going to move down and spend time with my mother-in-law. We moved to Anderson Island in Puget Sound, which you can see is very beautiful.

I spent every other day with mom just sharing life. One day, my daughter, who was a student at George Fox University, called and she said, “Mom, my writing professor is an author. Can you get one of her books and read it and tell me what you think of her?” I proposed to Jimmy’s mother, my mother-in-law, who couldn’t see well because she had macular degeneration. I said, “How about I get one of Sarah’s teacher’s books and I’ll read it out loud to you, then we can tell Sarah what we think of her teacher.” A book that Melanie Dobson had recently released was Chateau of Secrets. It was historical fiction set in France during World War II.

Now, my mother-in-law was a World War II war bride from France. She was 16 when the Nazis invaded her hometown. She met her husband, my father-in-law, during the war. They were married right after the war. Then they went to Germany as part of the American occupation forces in Germany. That’s what we knew. That’s all we knew because she never talked about it. I started reading this book to her. As I read, I’d stop and say, “Mom, was it really like that? Mom, what were you doing when that happened? She started telling me her stories.” The interesting thing is she wouldn’t be recorded. If anyone else walked into the room, even if my husband walked into the room, she stopped talking. Somehow she trusted me with those stories.

One story led to another. I would take notes and go home and write up what she had told me. Then the next time I went back, I’d read it to her and is this right? She would make corrections and more stories would happen. We spent two and a half years sharing stories like that. I cannot tell you the incredibly close relationship we developed in the process of sharing those stories. In many ways, I validated her life. I said to mom, “Mom, your story needs to be told. Can I write a book about you?” She said, “Well, you can’t publish it until I’m dead and then you can make your millions.” You can see she was a character, right? But these stories were amazing. It was life under the occupation, and it was awful. Then it was just such a sweet love story of how they met in her uncle’s little butcher shop in France, and how she left everything she knew to go off with a man whose language she did not even speak, believe it or not, and made a new life in Germany. Amazing story.

Well, I didn’t really know how to write a book. I had all those notes that I had taken and rudimentary stories that I had written. I have a dear friend named Leslie Leyland Fields. Maybe you heard about her. She’s quite a famous author at this. She was in the process of writing a book called Your Story Matters. She had a retreat in Atlanta, Georgia, and where she was inviting some people that she wanted to– She handpicked us, and she wanted to go through all the premises she was teaching in her book and see how it played out with real people. I went for four days and she taught me how to write a book. She taught me how to set the scene, and make the conversation, and put it together in a compelling way. It’s called Quiet Courage. That title came because one day we were talking and she said, “I wonder how I had the courage to marry dad and leave France.” I thought, okay, that’s the title. We’re going to talk about your quiet courage to do that.

Then I wrote the book, had a wonderful time doing it. Oh, Jimmy took me back to France. I researched dad’s– He was already gone, but I researched all his military records. We went to France and Germany, visited all the places that they went. I really got to see the places where it all happened. Then when I was done, Leslie was very proud of me. She said, “Now you have to tell your story.” I said, “I don’t have a story.” She said, “Of course you do.” Well, I was too busy living my story to recognize that it was a story. I did. I discovered that I do have a story. This is one thing I learned. Everybody has a story and I encourage everybody to find and tell your story.

Corrie Ten Boom said that our lives are like a tapestry, and God sees the beautiful picture on top. What do we see? We see the hanging threads, the cross stitches, the knots. It’s a mess, right? I learned that when I stepped back and looked back at my life, I got a glimpse of that beautiful picture that God was making. I got to see, “Oh, that’s what he was preparing us for or that’s how he used that hard thing for good.” Though it will be heaven before I get to see the whole picture, I have much more appreciation of what God is doing in our lives and I understand his faithfulness so much better. I know that he’s been faithful in the past. He’ll continue to be faithful in the future. That’s how I became an author.

[00:09:28] Gretchen Roe: I think what I loved about the way you wrote is that I felt like I was sitting at a table with you having coffee and you were telling me the story. That’s a talent that is rare. I did get a little fussed at one night. Dinner didn’t happen here at the house because I was sitting on my back porch and the weather was glorious. I was too busy reading to realize, “Oh, how about peanut butter jelly, guys?” Because I was too busy reading. My youngest son, who just turned 20 a week ago, said, “Wow, you haven’t done that in years.” He said, “What book are you reading?” It was yours, of course.

[00:10:17] Joy Ellen Ng: I’m so glad you enjoyed it.

[00:10:19] Gretchen Roe: Tell me what it was like to be a homeschool mom, because we have so many families that we know who are military families. Not only do you have the– I don’t want to say added pressure. It’s just a different life. You’ve got all the things that you have to do militarily, but then you’ve got the compelling service to something higher. Not only your faith service, but the military service. Often you get to homeschool by yourself when your husband is off serving on the mission. How was that to be a mom homeschooling her children who often found herself by herself?

[00:11:11] Joy Ellen Ng: As I said, I was an unlikely homeschooler. Back in 1985, homeschooling was not in vogue. There was not a lot of support for homeschool moms. In fact, it was illegal in some places. Even in our social circles and in my family, people thought it was akin to child abuse. It was just not something we thought about. We were in Kodiak for eight years, the eight years that I wrote even there. We had a sweet Christian school there, loved it. That’s where our kids went. Never crossed my mind that I would ever homeschool my children. Then we got orders to leave Kodiak to go to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. We were to leave the end of August. We planned a big trip in between.

We were going to arrive in Cape Cod in October, not even knowing what town we were going to live in, and where our kids were going to go to school. What were we going to do for our children’s education? My husband said, “You’re going to have to homeschool the kids.” I said, “How can I do that?” He said to me very profoundly, “How much damage can you do in a year?” I go, “Really how much damage can I do in a year?” With the bar set very, very low, we began our homeschool dirty and never looked back, really. That’s how we got started.

[00:12:36] Gretchen Roe: How old were the girls when you started then?

[00:12:39] Joy Ellen Ng: First grade and fourth grade.

[00:12:41] Gretchen Roe: Wow. That’s a profound question that Jimmy asked you though. [unintelligible 00:13:07]

[00:12:46] Joy Ellen Ng: Right? I just didn’t have great expectations of things that were going to happen. I love my children. I loved reading to them. I loved learning with them. It turned out to be absolutely wonderful. One thing we did, so we traveled a long time, 40 days from the time we left Kodiak until the time we arrived in Cape Cod.

[00:13:08] Gretchen Roe: Wait. You drove from Kodiak to Cape Cod?

[00:13:13] Joy Ellen Ng: We’ve sold everything we owned except for what we had shipped. We flew to Anchorage, Alaska. We went to the Space A desk at Elmendorf Air Force Base. We said, “What planes do you have going anywhere? They said, “Oh, we have one going to Japan in three hours.” We said, “Okay, we’re going to Japan.” We got on that. We went and spent a week in Japan. Then we flew to the Philippines. They had military airlift command flights that went to the Philippines at that time too. We went there. Then we got a flight back to the United States into California. We rented a car, drove up to Jimmy’s parents in Tacoma, bought a car and drove across the country. It was a huge trip.

One of the gals asked a question about what they can do to enhance their RV trip in Alaska. I’m just going to tell you one thing I did on that long trip as a homeschool mom that was phenomenal. I had the girls make scrapbooks of the entire trip. They had to include every country and every state that we visited. Because of that, it made us notice all the details. What money do they use? What language do they speak? What are the crops here? What do people do for a living? We took pictures. We collected postcards. We kept ticket stubs and all those. We even pressed flowers. All those things went into that scrapbook. The kids, they mostly enjoyed it, though they were very unhappy with me when we drove across Rhode Island in 30 minutes and I made them include Rhode Island in their scrapbook. They said, “But we were hardly there.”

[00:15:01] Gretchen Roe: You were born to be a homeschool mom. You just didn’t know that at the time.

[00:15:05] Joy Ellen Ng: Well, those scrapbooks became prized possessions for sure. Then we arrived in Massachusetts. I’m going to tell you that in 1985, homeschooling was illegal in Massachusetts, but we were Alaska residents. I hung my hat on that and I kept going with the program we were using. I didn’t tell anybody, but it didn’t take long for a truant officer to knock on my door. I’ll tell you, God was good. It was not always like this, but when he knocked on the door, my house was immaculate. My children were sitting at their desks doing their schoolwork. I had all the visual aids for the day laid out on the table.

He told me who he was. With my heart beating wildly, I said to him, thank you so much for your interest in my children. Won’t you come in and see what we’re doing? When I really wanted to slam the door in his face. I know that God made me do that. He came in. I showed him our curriculum. He could see what the kids were doing. He said, “Well, I’m very impressed, but the superintendent is not going to like it. A week later, we got a letter from the superintendent giving us permission to continue homeschooling our kids that year. How cool is that? What if I had slammed the door in his face.

[00:16:24] Gretchen Roe: You don’t have to attend every fight you’re invited to, right?

[00:16:28] Joy Ellen Ng: But then I’ll tell you that as a military family, then we went to Puerto Rico. Everywhere we went, we never had to worry about school anymore because we took school with us. We could travel when my husband traveled. We knew what we were going to do when we got there. It was very less stressful for the children. We didn’t always homeschool. We were always open to what God has for our particular child at that particular time. If there was a really good a Christian school, we took advantage of it. We did actually put each of our children in a public high school for two years before they left home because we wanted to set them out slowly. We didn’t want them to just go off having never experienced the world. We did that.

[00:17:18] Gretchen Roe: I love the fact that you said that you would do for each child what was best for them. That was my husband’s and my philosophy. We’ve done a little bit of everything from private school to public school to parochial school to homeschool to charter school. We did it all. My kids were all successful. I think it’s good to be able to look back on that because you didn’t close the door to opportunity. Joy, you just said something about inviting that truant officer into your home. There’s a lot of those stories in your book where my first reaction would be, “Oh, no, we’re not going to do that.” You did it anyway. Starting a business in your home, tell me a little bit about that because that was– I was so proud of you when you talked about starting that business. But you didn’t even know all the areas that you were going to be able to serve when you started that business. Tell me a little bit about that.

[00:18:22] Joy Ellen Ng: This is how the business started. My husband was a search and rescue pilot in Alaska. Oh, they were terrible accidents. The weather is very extreme in Alaska. Storms come out of nowhere. The water is so cold. People die of hypothermia after just minutes in the water. Jimmy would come home after search and rescue cases. He would say, oh, if only they had a marine radio and would’ve called for help. If only they had been wearing a survival suit. If only they had had a life raft, we’d have been able to find them alive. He was especially concerned about our Coast Guard friends who had small boats, who had nothing except a life jacket on their boats. He suggested that maybe we could find a way to make safety equipment more affordable in Kodiak.

In Kodiak, everything was very expensive. We started, and he helped me a lot. He helped me a lot with researching the products and stuff, but I got a business license. I started at first just with special order stuff for marine radios, and survival suits, and life rafts. At first I just sold them at cost because I just wanted people to have them, and the benefit for us was that I could get them at cost as well. We immediately started getting better gear on our boats. That soon became unsustainable because there were other costs besides just the cost of the stuff. Sometimes the shipping was more, and yada-yada. Anyway, so we started marking things up just 10%. I was not going to get rich on this business. I did not want to get rich on this business. I just wanted people to have the gear.

Some of my favorite stories are young guys, college kids would come up to fish on a fishing boat. Numerous times I had them come to me and say, “I don’t have money to buy a survival suit. They cost hundreds of dollars,” a lot of money, right? Even at my discounted price. They had asked, “Can I have the survival suit and I’ll pay you at the end of the season?” I never said no. I never got stiffed. Always I had people come back and pay me. One of my– This is a great story. A guy called me and he said he had purchased actually a survival suit from me. He called and he said, “I need a new bag for my survival suit.” Well, that’s a pretty strange request, right?

I happened to have an extra one. I said, “Yes, sure. I have an extra bag. It’s $12, and you’re welcome to come get it.” Before he got there, Kodiak Daily Mirror, our newspaper arrived at my door and I was looking it over. It’s very short. It doesn’t take long to read it cover to cover. The headline was about a boat that had sunk and the crew was rescued because they were wearing survival suits. One of those survivors was the guy who had just called me wanting a new bag for his survival suit. How cool is that? When he got to my door, I handed him that bag and I said, “Oh, yes, this is a gift.” You are welcome to this. I’m so thankful that you’re alive.

[00:21:43] Gretchen Roe: Here you were in a place where– You did not grow up there. You grew up on the East coast. But you stepped into that environment, you saw a need, and you were still willing to go, “Well, I can figure this out.” I love that spirit.

[00:22:02] Joy Ellen Ng: Yes. It was hard to get fishermen at that time to buy survival suits. Many of them were really macho, didn’t think that they needed it. It was an expense they didn’t want to make. I literally walked the docks talking to guys on boats, trying to get them to buy them. We were most successful however, my husband suggested this, when he talked to the Fisherman’s Wives Club.

[00:22:27] Gretchen Roe: Of course you were.

[00:22:29] Joy Ellen Ng: Yes. Those women went home and made their husbands buy survival suits.

[00:22:33] Gretchen Roe: I bet they did. You were a wife whose husband was out in extreme environments doing remarkable things. You had a background that could relate to them so thoroughly. That’s pretty impressive as well. Tell me about halibut fishing, because I was so impressed that you were willing to go, “Yes, I can figure this out too.”

[00:23:03] Joy Ellen Ng: That was a dream of my husband’s, not a dream of mine, but you know what? I love supporting my husband. We love doing things together. God provided us with a boat in a miraculous way. There we were with a 24-foot cabin cruiser and some gear and we went halibut fishing. In those days, there were only certain days that you could fish for halibut. It’s different now. Now people have quotas and they can fish anytime during the summer until they meet their quotas. In those days, there was a big quota and anybody could fish. When the quota was met, you were done fishing.

It would be said they’d start out with six days fishing maybe, and then they’d tally up the number of fish that were caught. Then they’d say, “Okay, we can have another opening for three days, and then maybe one more day.” If the weather was bad, you had to fish because that was the only opportunity you were going to have. It wasn’t always flat, calm, and sunny when we were fishing. Sometimes that was pretty scary. I like to say that we have some of our very best memories commercial fishing and some of our very worst. But it was exciting. It was very exciting.

[00:24:17] Gretchen Roe: Look at all the things that you all accomplished because Jimmy was working more than full-time as a pilot and that was, I would say, you were his first love, but that was his first love other than you. Then you started a business and then you had children. Joy, you had a lot of irons in the fire. How did Joy keep her joy with all the things that you had going on?

[00:24:51] Joy Ellen Ng: There’s an underlying thing that was the hardest part for me, and that was the fear. I talk about that quite a bit in the book because there was a problem for me. I had faith. I was saved as a child, and I knew that God loved me, that he had a plan for my life. I knew that he loved my husband and my children. When we first went to Alaska, I would like to say fat, dumb, and happy. I was idealistic and oblivious to the dangers in Alaska. The first summer we fished, even when it got wavy out there, never dawned on me that what we were doing was dangerous. It was all good.

We had been in Alaska for about six months. It was the end of October. Jimmy had the duty. That meant he was hanging around the air station waiting for a call. One of our friends, another pilot’s wife, knocked on my door. She was looking for Jimmy. She said her husband, another pilot that we knew well, had gone fishing. They had a five-year-old son and they had taken the boys with them. She said, “I expected them home by now, but they haven’t come.” It’s getting dark and the weather has turned. She said, “I’m worried.” I said, “Well, don’t worry. Jimmy has the duty. He knows where they fish.” It was quite a ways away. it was a seven-mile drive across a mountain pass and then another 10 miles to the area where they liked to fish. It was some open ocean in between.

[00:26:24] Gretchen Roe: I should interrupt you and say a seven-mile drive that isn’t like seven miles on an East Coast domestic road either.

[00:26:34] Joy Ellen Ng: No. It was a dirt road over a mountain pass, yes, with switchbacks. Then there was a bay that was open to the ocean where the water got very rough. Then there are little islands with tall mountains and big trees on them that they fished in between in the straits there. We had run into those guys fishing over there often. Jimmy knew where they fish. I said, “Don’t worry. Jimmy knows where they fish. He’ll go get them.” Jimmy took off that night in that helicopter and through that mountain pass. I tell about it in detail in the book, but the bottom line is it was a very difficult search in very rough weather.

Their 18-foot Boston whaler had flipped end over end when they tried to anchor that boat in strong current. They were able to get one of the boys out from under the boat. They were not able to get Jake out. By the time my husband found them because of the miracle of a tiny spark. It’s actually amazing that they were able to find them in all those white caps. Almost crashed in the trees of the tall island nearby. Anyway, they were able to bring home those two dads and one of the boys, but Jake died. We gathered in the little– Oh, see, I’m going to cry even now thinking about it.

We gathered in that little chapel in Kodiak and we all cried together. We were thankful for the safety of the other three. I knew that they had just gone out fishing like we did and a terrible accident happened and the weather got bad. My husband almost lost his life in the crash. Suddenly I knew fear. My fear was not unfounded. A few years later, Jimmy found his best friend on the beach after his helicopter had crashed during a failed rescue attempt.

God didn’t always answer my prayers the way I wanted them to. There were many successful rescues, many of them. Jimmy is one of the most decorated Coast Guard pilots. He has two distinguished flying crosses among many other. Those are because he did some really dangerous things and God gave him a lot of successes, but not always. I struggled with fear. I learned that fear is inevitable, but faith is a choice.

[00:29:04] Gretchen Roe: Yes, I think that’s very good wisdom to impart. I will tell you those stories were compelling. I felt like I was there with them the way that you told them.

[00:29:16] Joy Ellen Ng: When Jimmy first started flying, we chose Psalm 139:9 and 10 as our very own verse. It says, “If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the remotest parts of the sea, even there, your hand will guide me and your right hand will hold me fast.” At first, those promises were very easy to believe. After I learned about the dangers and I became afraid, it was a little more difficult. I knew Jimmy was out flying. I would call out to God. I would try to picture that helicopter in the palm of God’s hand. I would have peace until the next time I would panic.

[00:29:58] Gretchen Roe: Sure. As long as he was the pilot, it’s not like it went away for you because every case, that’s what you call them, every case he went out on could turn into something wild very easily.

[00:30:13] Joy Ellen Ng: Right. I didn’t always know that he was on a case. He would go to work and he wouldn’t come home for dinner. I’d call the operations center and I’d wait until– He should’ve long since have been home from work. I’d say, “Is Jimmy coming home for dinner tonight?” They’d say, “Oh, no, he’s out the chain. Probably not today.” It might be a week until I’d see him. these were really long distances that he was flying.

[00:30:38] Gretchen Roe: In these last five minutes, what words of encouragement would you have for folks who are going to listen to our conversation together? Just tell them what you think you would like them to know.

[00:30:54] Joy Ellen Ng: The most important thing is to just give your life to Jesus Christ. He’s got an amazing plan for you. It’s not going to be anything like what you think it’s going to be. He’s going to surprise you all along the way. Don’t let that throw you because what he gives you to do, he’ll equip you to do.

[00:31:16] Gretchen Roe: Yes, absolutely. Joy, in these closing minutes, let’s talk one more time about your two books. The book about your mother-in-law is called Quiet Courage. Then this book that I read is called Even There. Both of them were really compelling. Where would people go to find your books?

[00:31:40] Joy Ellen Ng: They’re on Amazon.

[00:31:42] Gretchen Roe: Yes. Exactly.

[00:31:43] Joy Ellen Ng: You can just order them on Amazon.

[00:31:45] Gretchen Roe: I will say that in the show notes, I will include links to both books because I think that that would be wonderful.

[00:31:49] Joy Ellen Ng: Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. I like to tell people, if you like my book, leave a review.

[00:31:58] Gretchen Roe: A review. Sure.

[00:31:58] Joy Ellen Ng: If you don’t like it, don’t bother with the review.

[00:32:03] Gretchen Roe: Of course not. Joy, this has been such a great pleasure having the opportunity to talk to you. Was there a question I should have asked that I did not?

[00:32:16] Joy Ellen Ng: I wanted to just address, one of the listeners asked about that trip to Alaska that she’s going to take in the RV. I did want to mention the scrapbook idea because that’s really fun, but I also want to be sure that she knows that she needs to order the Milepost 2025 edition, or if she goes next year, the whatever is the most recent edition. That book tells you everything that there is on the whole road system in Alaska. It’s invaluable. I know that it’s available digitally, but I think only if you buy the book itself, but you don’t want to miss that book. It’s really helpful. Then take time to stop along the way. Stop at all the visitor centers and the wildlife centers and go for hikes and eat where the locals eat and talk to people. Alaskans love Alaska. Be sure that you-

[00:33:12] Gretchen Roe: They do, indeed.

[00:33:13] Joy Ellen Ng: -meet people and talk to them. Just take it all in.

[00:33:17] Gretchen Roe: They do, indeed.

[00:33:18] Joy Ellen Ng: My husband says, don’t feed the bears.

[00:33:20] Gretchen Roe: Yes, this is also very true. Don’t feed the bears. Joy, I want to say thank you, and I want to say thank you to Jimmy for being your technology behind the scenes today. I really appreciate his helping you make this happen. This has been a very great pleasure for me. I’ve looked forward to this all summer. Thank you all so much for being part of this journey. Thank you to everyone who joined us today for allowing us to come into your living rooms and allowing me to share this very special friendship that God allowed me to create by meeting Joy this spring in Anchorage. Joy, thank you so much.

[00:33:58] Joy Ellen Ng: Thank you for having me. I want to say anybody out there, I encourage you to find and tell your own story. If you do, let me know because I’d love to read it.

[00:34:07] Gretchen Roe: Absolutely. We will do that indeed. Joy, thank you so much for this time. I am grateful. You know what? It’s funny that you should say that because a couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of inviting a dear friend onto the show to talk about writing your own story. I will include that webinar in the show notes for everyone. Joy, thanks so much for everything. I do have one question here. This is from Lorette.

She says, “Thank you. I love this video. Joy is such a great and loving person. She’s family-oriented, loving, giving, kind, smart, and so much more.” Then she says, “Hi, Jimmy. I know you to be all those things because meeting you in Alaska was one of the greatest treasures I had this spring. Thanks, Joy, for everything.” Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We’ll look forward to coming into your living rooms again soon. God bless you all.

[00:35:04] Joy Ellen Ng: Thank you.

[00:35:06] Voice-Over: Thanks again for joining us. We’re glad to be a part of your educational community. You can help us grow our community even more by rating, reviewing, and subscribing to the show wherever you may be hearing this. Don’t forget that you can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. We’ll see you again next time. Until then, keep building strong foundations for lifelong learning.