Well, hello there, and welcome to the Pastor Mike Drop podcast. My name is Mike

Householder, and I am your host in an in desperate need of a haircut. I'm joined as always by my co-host, Emily Langpole.

Hello, Emily. And we have a distinguished, I'm so excited about this episode. Yeah.

We have a distinguished guest. My friend Simon Estes is here today. Emily, that's usually you. I just took your

introduction, didn't I? But Simon is, Iowa's favorite son,

an internationally acclaimed opera star, and Simon, we're so glad to have you here on this episode

of the podcast today. Thank you for joining us. I'm honored to be here. The only thing I have one

correction, I'm not a star. Quite often people say, how does it feel to be here. The only thing I have one correction, I'm not a star.

Quite often people say, how does it feel to be a star?

And I always say, I'm not a star.

The stars are in heaven.

God put them there.

And I'm just a human being who's been blessed.

This is why I love Simon Estes.

When we get together, and I'm blessed to be Simon's pastor,

and so we get together and we have these conversations,

and they always go deep, and they're always about scripture and theology

and all these things, and I thought,

let's bring this to the podcast and bring our conversations here.

So Simon, as I've said publicly at different events,

Simon gets honored a lot as he deserves, even though he doesn't think he's a star. He is Iowa's

favorite son. And in a very deserving way, he gets honored for his work, for his talent, but also for his generosity, his philanthropy.

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