Well. Good afternoon. Welcome to another episode of Covenant Eyes podcast. I'm Rob Stoddard, your host today, and we have a really special guest, special ministry that we've been partnered with for many years. Our guest today is Nate Larkin from the Samson Society. Nate, welcome to the Covenant Eyes podcast. Oh, it's a joy to be with you, Rob. Thank you for inviting me. Well, good. Well, Nate, if you wouldn't mind just taking a couple of minutes here. Just for those that may not know who Samson Society is, share a little bit about your ministry, and you know what you're doing there. Yeah. We, we call ourselves a mutual aid society for Christian men. Not necessarily a group for porn and sex addicts, although porn addicts are very much in the majority right now. That's my story. I came into the wonderful world of recovery through an addiction to pornography, and these days, am actually grateful for it. And although I begged God for years to take that away from me, he he refused to do it. I now think he had a larger purpose. That weakness of mine is the only lever in my life. It's big enough to force me out of isolation and into honest relationship with other people. Today, I'm grateful to have real friends who know me, and I'm not battling my weaknesses alone, and I have discovered a depth to relationship and friendship that I just it was unavailable to me until I was finally forced to face my ongoing issue with porn. Yeah, well, that sets a it can be such a common story. Unfortunately, I think especially with men. Certainly the isolation in the the battling alone. And that's why we love your ministry so much because it's so important to get guys together, get them surrounded by brothers who will walk alongside. And so, to that end, you have an event coming up here, really in just a couple of weeks. That's right. Yeah. Oh, this is for us. It's kind of the high the high event of the calendar. We do run, you know, regional events throughout the year and international retreats. We had retreats this year in Italy and Austria and England and Canada. But we're a US based ministry, at least for now. And our summit is being held in your backyard this year. We're actually coming all the way north to Michigan. We moved it a month earlier in the calendar last year we could join. Yeah, so we wanted some nice weather. But we're at a beautiful conference center just about an hour's drive from Detroit. We have a great teacher coming in to do the keynote. John Lynch is going to speak and then workshops by a bunch of great people, including, Sam Black from Covenant Eyes. Absolutely. I'll be there as well. And you know what? It's so we have a virtual version of the event for guys who can't be there in person. And for those who can come, they'll have the opportunity. A lot of them will be men who've met in virtual meetings. We run virtual meetings now in seven languages. And the summit I my favorite part of the summit when I get to go to it is when when I get to watch a man hug his best friend for the first time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's yeah, that is a great connection. And you're right, that is a it's a beautiful location down there. The fall colors will be happening here in Michigan a little bit. And so should should be a great weekend. So tell us a little more of the details. Starts on is it Friday night or Saturday morning? Yeah. No, it starts on Friday night, the 23rd of October. Yeah, yeah, we'll start with dinner. And, you know, we've got great accommodations. Guys can have their choice of, you know, how swanky they want their accommodations to be. Their singles available if they want a room to themselves. Or they can double or triple and be in a dorm, or if they even want to come in camp, they can do that great dinner. And then it'll start on Friday night with our first session with John Lynch. There'll be more to follow throughout Saturday, and then time for those who are at present in Michigan. Time then for some recreation in the afternoon and some deep personal work. And for those who can't be there during those periods in which the guys in Michigan are doing their personal work and group work. But guys who are joining by live stream will be treated to workshops that the that the in-person guys don't get to see. And those have already been recorded from just some great teachers. And there it'll conclude on Saturday with a concert by Josh Bales. And then, Sunday morning service will be out by noon. No. Excellent. Excellent. Well, so how do guys find either the virtual link or the sign up for the in-person conference? Both are available at the Sampson Society website at SampsonSociety.com. Go to the main page, click on Events and you can find it there. Great. And we will have those links in the show notes here. So look for that at the bottom. But Nate how did it come about. That Covenant Eyes kind of joined in partnership with this one. Yeah. You know we have we are in a very much parallel ministry. I've known about Covenant Eyes for years, and just so grateful that Covenant Eyes came along and gave us, for the first time, a really good tool for monitoring our online activity and enlisting the help of an ally. Somebody who, you know, when we start to drift. I have, I've learned in 28 years of recovery that it really doesn't matter how far down this road of recovery I go, I'm always the same distance from the ditch. So it's really good for me to know that somebody else who I've given permission to, has got eyes on where I am and can pick up on when I might be drifting toward the ditch. And I got to know Sam Black years ago. We've run into each other constantly throughout the years and at conferences and so on. Had the chance to travel with him. He actually came with us. We do a weekly or we do an annual one week walking retreat in England, and a Sam came a long one year. He's a good yeah. And when Covenant Eyes offered to come along as a sponsor to the summit, it was a godsend for us. I'm so grateful for your partnership. Yeah, well, we're looking forward to it. We're gonna have a number of people there, and hopefully, Lord willing, will be live streaming some things and getting the message out. So that's wonderful. Well, Nate, if there's some guys who are kind of on the fence and, you know, sounds like a good idea, but they're not quite there, you know, what would you say to them about needing to come take that step of really engaging in fellowship in walking with other brothers? It's amazing how we can talk ourselves out of the thing that we that's really good for us. The thing we know is going to be so good and we can we can put it on the back shelf. I think for me, when I do that, it isn't so much laziness and it isn't so much fear. It's very often shame. Yeah, a fear that I might be seen or that I might see something in myself that I've been trying very, very hard to ignore. Yeah. And of course, the longer I engage in denial and ignore that thing that's killing me and killing my family, time slips by and I'll only look back on regret if I don't do it. So save yourself some regret, brothers. Go ahead and do it. Well, great. This is just short. We wanted to get the message out here before the couple weeks they're up, but any final words about the event or Samson? Well, I will tell you that the registration deadline for the, for the in-person event is October 12th, which is just. Coming. Up a few days away. So yeah, waste no time. Well, good. Well, good. Well, jump on guys. You'll have a wonderful time. It'll be life changing. But, Nate, we appreciate you so much. We appreciate your ministry. We're looking forward to this event. And God will bring the right people. And he'll he'll move in some hearts. So we're looking forward to that. Thanks for the time. Joining us today. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Well, great. To our listeners again. We'll have all the information in our show notes. Thanks for watching this quick episode, but we look forward to to meeting you again in the next one. Thanks. Take care.