This is the Baymont podcast with Marty Solman. I'm his co-host Brent Billings. Today we are joined by Kevin Chandler, author of the book We Carry Kevin and founder of the nonprofit organization We Carry Kevin.

He grew up in the foothills of North Carolina and has a bachelor's degree in counseling from John Wesley College. He was the second of his siblings to be diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, but he left his wheelchair behind and traveled across Europe with friends for three weeks in a backpack. The subject of his book. He's gone on to inspire and enables so many others to find this kind of adventure through their own communities. Kevin, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. So Kevin, we got to ask gifters anything you would add to

that. I mean, that was a pretty good introduction. I want to add like sound effects and everything to that. But anything you would add to, you know, the finer things of life, what, what else do we need to know about you and your growing family and all of those kind of things? Tell us more.

Yeah, so I got married last year, which is a really awesome thing. Probably the best thing in my life that's salvation. I, my wife's name is Katie and yeah, we met when our, when my friends and I went to China, which is a follow up to our trip to Europe when we watched my real chair.

We just hit it off back in 2019 and our friendship grew into a marriage in 2020. So we had a fun little COVID writing and yeah, survive that. So we live in Fort Wayne and just, yeah, enjoying, enjoying life together.

So some other finer things I am obsessed with pairs, the fruit and I don't know, I feel like since you said the finer things I should mention something about cheese, but nothing comes to mind.

I do love that. I do love cheese as well.

Okay, maybe you can also share a little bit about how you know Marty or how you found Bama or whatever the connection is that brought us all together today.

Yeah, I am. So I learned about Bama from my friends, the fingerlies and my other friends, the dead, the Edmonds, Damon Edmonds and his wife.

They all were listening to you guys and a few years ago and even met Marty and everything and just thought, oh, this would be something that KVN I would enjoy both as a podcast and then also they wanted for us to meet Marty and it's been time with them.

So we started listening to the show starting way back at the beginning in Genesis appropriately and just moved on up from there and really really enjoyed it and benefited from it.

It's been fun, you know, in this first year and a half a marriage for that to be part of our dialogue as we, you know, when you're first married, you create shared experiences and shared terminology and things like that.

So it's been a joy to have the teachings of Bama be part of that. And so a few months ago, Marty was passing through with his family and we got to hang out and have a meal together and it was great. So here we are.

Yes, I can, oh, the fingerleys every time you say that name, my heart warms just a tad bit. Right. They're such good people. I remember meeting them. I remember her telling me about this Kevin character and his story and how she met him and his nonprofit work.

I remember her saying we had to like meet and I had to meet him and there was this other guy named Damon that she knew and I had to meet him and and that was that was, I mean, that was the story was incredible. That was all well and good.

And then we were along the way. Maria said something about how Kevin had this love of a good friend of his named Andrew Peterson, who is one of my favorite artists, like, and I immediately went, OK, well, that means we share a lot.

And I love the part of the finer things of life and in common. I love Andrew's music. I love his, his writing. We just throw links to his stuff in the show notes, Brent Billings. Yes.

But he's always been one of my favorite musicians and my, my kids have loved his wing feather saga. We named our dog Calmar.

Oh, that's where that name comes from. That's awesome. So, oh, yeah, just when when she said that, it was just like, oh, man, not only is this story amazing, but there are like all these personal things that we love together as well.

So I was really excited to be able to start texting back and forth with Kevin, then meet him in person. She gave me somewhere in the middle of that. She gave me his book.

We carry Kevin and we'll talk about that a lot today, but man, just some, just some great stuff in there. And I was really excited when I got to meet you this last year. I was a, my kids loved it. This is a great time surrounded. You're surrounded by great people.

And that was awesome. So good stuff.

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