Jim: This is iWork4Him
Martha: Where faith meets work and believers unleash their calling.
Jim: Have you ever heard a faith story from one of your local police officers? The local police are on the ground fighting crime and upholding the law day after day, but rarely do they get a thank you or letters of appreciation.
Jim: They certainly don't get a chance to tell their story before an audience very often. I don't know a ton of local police officers, but in Marionville, Missouri, I know all of them. We are blessed to have an incredible police chief and four amazing officers. One in particular is on our show today.
Jim: Dan Williams is with the Marionville, Missouri Police Department. Marionville is a town not too unlike Mayberry. We just add our own southwest Missouri flavor. Sure, there's crime, but for the most part, this is an awesome place to live. And in Marionville, community policing is not just rhetoric, it's the real thing.
Jim: So is Dan Williams a gunslinger or a pencil pusher, or is he both? Not the way you're thinking. Dan has an incredible story and an incredible future ahead of him, and perhaps after today's show, someone will help Dan get his work exposed to the world. Dan Williams, welcome to iWork4Him.
Dan Williams: Hi.
Jim: Great to have you with us today, Dan. Dan, we always start this off with every first time guest on iWork4Him. Tell us your Jesus story. How did you become a follower of Him?
Dan Williams: For me to tell the full story, it would take a lot longer than we have time for on this podcast. So I thought of how to try to shorten it down just a little bit. So I actually, going way back to the beginning, growing up, I didn't grow up in the best household.
Dan Williams: I had divorced parents and they just weren't the best example. Neither one of them really lived for Jesus. And by the time I was probably 14 years old, I found myself to be an atheist. And I started dating my wife back in, it would've been back in 2008, and she was a very devout Christian.
Dan Williams: And we dated for a little bit, and I always had this idea that she would change her views to match mine, and she felt the exact opposite. We dated for about, I'd say about nine months to a year or so, and then she actually broke up with me, but I continued to pursue her. And one day she told me that we just want different things, and I told her that I'm willing to change to be with her just 'cause I loved her so much.
Dan Williams: And she told me that if I wanted to go on a date with her, I can go to church with her on Sunday morning, and then eat supper with her, or eat lunch with her family afterwards. So I took her up on the offer. And I remember one day I went to youth group with her. I would've been 17 years old at this time.
Dan Williams: And the youth pastor there said, " we're gonna play a game called Stump the Pastor. I want you, I want everyone here to think of something that is in the Bible that they think contradicts what they've been taught, throughout their life or in school or something like that, and I'm gonna do my best to answer it using the Bible."
Dan Williams: So I immediately rose my hand. We're like, "Oh this is too easy." "Explain dinosaurs." And the youth pastor, without missing a beat, said, "I want you to open your Bible to Job chapter 40. There's two creatures listed in Job chapter 40. One's called the, the Leviathan, the other one's called the Behemoth.
Dan Williams: Read the description of those and answer it with an open mind." He said "The skeptic might try to tell you it's a hippopotamus or a crocodile", but he's "Really read the descriptions." So that's what I did, and the thing that stuck out to me about the Behemoth was it said that it had tails the size of cedar trees.
Dan Williams: And I'd always been, like, a fact-driven science person, so the only creature that came to mind was a large herbivore-type creature like a Brachiosaurus. So that was a... That was basically what started to open my eyes. I didn't become a Christian until about three years later. I ended up joining the Army, and I remember when I was in the Army, they were passing around a church sign-up sheet the first week that I was there.
Dan Williams: The first week I didn't sign up for it, because I thought that maybe I would get time to write a letter or relax or something like that while everybody else was at church. But everyone else loaded up on the bus to go to church, and the drill sergeants broke out the mop buckets and the cleaning supplies for everyone that didn't go to church. I stayed back and cleaned.
Dan Williams: So next week they were passing around the sign-up list, I wrote my name down to go to the Baptist church service. But somewhere along the way I was... Actually, I was at a Baptist church in Plainville, Illinois. It was the church that my wife's grandfather preached at.
Dan Williams: He started preaching about salvation and about Jesus and he was actually talking about- he was wanting to talk about something that Billy Graham talked about but he wasn't wanting to plagiarize him, so he gave credit to Billy Graham. But something about that sermon specifically just really drew me in.
Dan Williams: So after the church service was over, I went to him and said, "I wanna know what it takes to be saved." And he told me, he was like, "Why don't you come meet me at my house on Tuesday afternoon." So I did. I went over there about 5:00 or 6:00 o'clock or so in the evening, and he opened up his Bible and said, opened up his Bible to John 3:16 and said, "So this verse here says that for God so loved the world that He gave His one and only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life."
Dan Williams: And he said, "That's one way you can read it." He said, "Another way you can read it is for God so loved Dan that if Dan were to believe he would not perish but have everlasting life." And I just became so over, overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit. I broke down, goosebumps, and I started bawling my eyes out, and that's one of about four times in my entire adult life that I've cried.
Dan Williams: So I told him "That's what I want." So we sat down, we prayed, and I accepted Jesus into my heart, and completely turned my life around ever since.
Martha: That's amazing. You know what I love to hear, Dan, is how so many different people played a role in God's process with your heart to the point where you were ready to make that decision. And so thank you for sharing that, 'cause that's very transparent.
Jim: I love the fact that Lexi told you pound sand, you wanna go out with me? Yeah. You're coming to church, buddy.
Martha: You go, girl.
Dan Williams: That's pretty much what happened.
Martha: That's really good . So speaking of Lexi, tell us about your family today, just to let everybody know about you as a dad and
Jim: How the story ended.
Dan Williams: So yeah, we ended up getting married shortly after I, I became a born-again Christian, in May of 2012. I'd already proposed to her. She said yes. She told me after the fact that she wasn't going to marry someone that wasn't a Christian, though, so she was... She told me she was praying hard every single night that I'd be, that I'd become a born-again Christian- which it did happen about two months after I proposed to her.
Dan Williams: And we ended up getting married, legally got married in June of 2012, and that was there, there was a lot of stuff at play, mainly because she was going to college and wanted to get her name and stuff updated for college paperwork. But then we had our ceremony in August of 2012. So we've been married now for this'll be 14, 14 years.
Jim: Good job. Good job.
Martha: And you have a couple of girls.
Dan Williams: Yes, I've got a 12-year-old daughter who loves horseback riding, piano, dance, and I've got a nine-year-old daughter who really enjoys all kinds of sports, piano, and dance as well.
Martha: Awesome.
Jim: And they came to last week's board of aldermen meeting too, and they were super quiet. So again, kudos to you guys.
Jim: All right, so how in the world did you end up in Marionville, Missouri?
Dan Williams: I really don't have the best answer for that. My wife went to college in Joplin, and then we moved to Illinois whenever we started raising a family, and we wanted to raise our family next to our extended family. Couple years ago, we had a lot of crazy stuff happen where everyone basically moved away from Illinois.
Dan Williams: And we got to thinking that we wanted to move back down this direction, and we just started looking at the price of houses in Springfield and in Joplin and Branson and stuff. And whenever we moved in 20, I guess we moved in 2023, everything in those areas was really expensive, and we just kinda looked at the cost of living in Marionville, and it was much more affordable than all the neighboring cities.
Dan Williams: So we we went and checked out a house that... we checked it out online, didn't actually see it in person and just put an offer in just 'cause houses were flying off the market so fast during that time.
Martha: So practicality brought you to Marionville, but we really believe it's divine because we are thrilled to have you here, and we've seen you ministering in the job that you do. And so we're curious - 'cause we got a lot we wanna cover. 'Cause if you're watching us on YouTube, you see something behind Dan that you wanna hear the story about, but we're not gonna get to that yet.
Martha: First, we're gonna just talk about, I wanna know, did you always want to be a police officer who got his picture on the front page of the paper for busting somebody and getting a bunch of cash back? No, did you always know that's what you wanted to do, Dan?
Dan Williams: Yeah. I would say from a young age, I did. Whenever I was young, as young as I can remember, I wanted to join the Army. And then whenever I got a little bit older, probably close to my teenage years, I decided I wanted to be a police officer. So I ended up doing both. I turned 18. I joined the Army because I wasn't old enough to be a police officer yet. And then whenever I was, ended up as 24, got out of the Army I became a police officer.
Jim: So were you an MP in the Army, then?
Dan Williams: Yes. Yes, I did military police from age 18 until 24.
Jim: So how many years, then, have you been an officer? So you started at 18. You've been a-
Dan Williams: Yeah ...
Jim: you've been an officer a long time then already.
Dan Williams: Yeah, I guess that would be about 16 years all said and done.
Martha: Do the math. That's awesome.
Jim: So what do you like about the job the most?
Dan Williams: I would say the thing that I like the most about it is really just... 'Cause I have worked in very monotonous jobs and stuff where you do the same thing every single day.
Dan Williams: The best thing about being a police officer is every single day is different. I talked to one person that worked in a dentist office and she told me that she knew exactly what her schedule was gonna look like Monday through Friday every single week, and there's just nothing like that in law enforcement.
Dan Williams: Every single day is different. The job can change from even like minute to minute. I could be sitting there doing nothing, and then all of a sudden get a high priority call and have to respond to it.
Martha: So then the opposite side of that, what is the most challenging part of the job that you can tell us about?
Dan Williams: I would say the most challenging part, and this is something that I really didn't start practicing until maybe four or five years ago is trying to keep the job separate from my home life. A lot of officers will, they'll work on the job and then they go home and they'll talk to their friends and family about stuff that they do on the job, and they really don't ever truly take a break away from the job.
Dan Williams: So I'd say the most challenging part is just kinda keeping those two areas separated. And especially in small towns and stuff, everyone knows you're a police officer. So if I go out and about, then people wanna ask me questions about stuff that I saw on the job and different stuff like that. So it's just kinda hard to balance the, the home, the work and keep them separately.
Jim: And it is a challenge 'cause everybody does know you. As I mentioned in the, in the opening monologue, we've got five officers in town. There's only five of you, and that includes the chief, and everybody's gonna know you because you're going to church, you're involved in community events. People know Dan and Lexi. Plus, you're online and you're famous because of what we're gonna talk about next, your artwork.
Jim: But what's great is you work for an incredible Police Chief Webb. And he said when he was ... I got to know him during the run-up for the mayoral election, which I lost. But I got to know him, and he goes, "Jim, what I really wanna do is I wanna do community policing." I'm like, "What's community policing?" And he goes, "Kinda like Andy Griffith." So why don't you tell us community policing, 2026 style. What is it?
Dan Williams: Yeah. So essentially it's just partnering with the community to detect and deter crime. Obviously being a police department, we have five total officers. Most of the time we've only got one on at a time, occasionally two. We can't be everywhere at once, so if we build a good relationship with the community and build trust with the community, if someone sees someone walking around just the, the ordeal you held up the other day, someone saw on their camera something that looked a little bit suspicious, so they called it in.
Dan Williams: So it's basically just partnering with the community and helping to stop and prevent and solve crimes.
Jim: I was gonna say one more thing. One, i'm the chaplain of the fire department, so I'm often on calls jointly with you. And I had one family telling me about how you have gone over and above trying to help them find a solution for something that's going on in their household, and that's community policing.
Jim: It's not just, "What's the facts, ma'am? Thank you, ma'am." Yeah. It's not, Joe Friday. Wasn't, is that his name, or was it ... Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. You're actually getting involved with families trying to help them out, and we in Marionville appreciate that.
Jim: We also appreciate when you're a crime fighter extraordinaire. Front page newspaper a couple weeks ago with Dan solving a break-in, people breaking into cars. How many was it? 14 different cars break-in. Just phenomenal, and you busted it in days, which is fantastic. Nice job.
Martha: And you know what I wanna say, I just wanna kinda put a bow on this conversation about the community policing is that I saw the conversations happening on Facebook where people were putting pieces together. And I think that is a new kind of digital community policing.
Martha: Because people were like, "I have camera footage from my backyard, and I have this, and my neighbor saw this," or what, whatever, and it came together. And I think that's huge because everybody wanted to see the results, the ones that ended up getting on the front page, because you did actually solve it. How timely. It was very... It was kinda like an episode of a TV show. Yes.
Jim: Yeah. It was pretty close.
Martha: I know it doesn't always work that way, but we do really appreciate that.
Jim: All crimes are unsolved in 60 minutes or less.
Martha: They're not. They're not.
Jim: Yeah.
Martha: As Dan well knows.
Jim: Dan, as you look at it, how do you see your faith being lived out in your job?
Dan Williams: Whenever I - so I became a Christian before I became a police officer. Whenever I became a police officer, I decided that I wanted to use my job as a mission field. A lot of people think about missions as going somewhere else and proclaiming the gospel, but there's people in our backyards that need Jesus just as much as someone in Uganda or Africa- or Peru or something like that.
Dan Williams: So I decided whenever I first became a police officer that any chance that I got, I was going to tell someone about Jesus. And the, the unique thing about being a police officer, not that anybody needs Jesus more than others, but there's... I deal with drug addicts and criminals and even murderers occasionally, and I treat everyone the same. I'll preach the gospel to anyone that wants to, that wants to hear it while I'm working.
Jim: I love that, and I've seen it in action. Of course, we can't share those specific details, but I've seen it in action, and I love how you're living out your faith in your work. Superman had an alter ego. He was a reporter. You have an alter ego as well, and just as I said at the beginning of the, joked at the beginning of the show, are you a gunslinger or a pencil pusher? Really, you're both, just not in the way people are thinking. What talent has God been developing in you recently?
Dan Williams: So starting a little over three years ago I decided to start drawing. What I did was, I work night shift, and whenever I'm not working, my wife and kids are sleeping, so I got really bored at night, and I found myself just kinda like sitting on the couch and watching TV and thinking about stuff that I'd seen on the job, and I realized it wasn't healthy.
Dan Williams: So I wanted to do something that was both mentally, like, relieving to me and allowed me to be productive and create stuff with my hands. So I was watching a TikTok video one night, and I watched this person draw a picture of a bear. I've always kinda been a little bit on the artistic side, so I decided to sit- I went out and bought some paper and some pencils, and I sat down and draw, and drew a picture of a lion and fell in love with it.
Dan Williams: It's very therapeutic to me, so then I started wanting to just make every drawing bigger and better and more detailed ever since. So that's what that's what got the spark started in me for drawing and art and stuff like that.
Martha: That is absolutely amazing and probably maddening for some people that have studied art their whole lives, right? But we know that it's a God-given gift, and I think that's one of the ... and you acknowledge and recognize that as well. So I love the fact that, you ... Number one, I was thinking about this. It's like, okay, you couldn't - woodworking's very noisy. You couldn't - God opened the door for you to find something that you could do with your time to do those things that was quiet. At least your family probably thinks it's quiet compared to other things.
Martha: But anyway, I love that you just had that opportunity, and you walked into it, and now, three years later, I just can't even believe the kinda stuff that we've been able to watch you produce. So and I think one time when you told us how long it took you to do something, I had a whole new appreciation for what you're creating. Tell us about that process.
Dan Williams: Yeah it really depends on the size of the drawing. The bigger ones obviously take more time, but being a full-time police officer, a dad, and a husband and raising my family, that, that always comes before my, my hobbies and stuff.
Dan Williams: So I really only get about an hour to maybe two hours, maybe three hours if I'm lucky, per day to work on my drawings. So this one behind me is 36 inches tall, 60 inches wide. This one took me... I can't remember the exact amount of time. I don't exactly time them, but it was somewhere around 100 to 120 hours.
Jim: Wow.
Dan Williams: Obviously a smaller one takes a little bit less time, but I would say I spend on average anywhere from about 40 to 100 hours on, on a drawing.
Martha: So let's talk about the one behind you, and because you've also had to become a theologian in a sense, or a psychologist, like, all these things, because there's very m- there's a lot of inten-
Jim: A psychologist and a theologian?
Martha: Yes, because you're thinking about the mind, you're thinking about the heart, you're using scripture. What is the, what came to mind when you started making this drawing that's behind you right now? What's it called? Do you have a name?
Dan Williams: Yeah, so I called this one Mercy Falls.
Martha: Okay.
Dan Williams: And my process for whenever I think about drawings is I get just like a... it usually comes while I'm either listening to worship music or reading my Bible, 'cause most of my drawings are inspired by God or the Bible in some way. And I'll get an idea for a drawing, but then once I get this idea, I'll really zero in on it and I'll pray about it.
Dan Williams: And usually I'll get the idea for a drawing, and then it'll take me about a month before I finally get the final vision, before I even- ... before I even touch the paper with my pencil. But I call this one here Mercy Falls, and I drew earlier on, about February of last year, I think.
Dan Williams: I got this idea for drawing the first raindrop hitting the ground during Noah's flood. So I drew one, it was smaller than this, and I took it to an art auction in Joplin, and the art collectors there went crazy over it. And it, there was, at this auction, there was, like, probably 120 pieces of art there, and the one that I made, very first time ever drawing any- any time drawing a serious piece of artwork, and first time ever selling something, it became the second highest selling piece at the art auction.
Martha: Ah, congratulations.
Dan Williams: Thank you. But that was actually my favorite drawing that I made, so I wanted to redraw it, make it bigger, more detailed, and better. And so I redrew this one here. I call it Mercy Falls, and I wanted to do it with a two-part interpretation for it.
Dan Williams: I wanted to have a literal interpretation of being the first raindrop in the desert signalizing the first raindrop of the global flood mentioned in the Bible. And the thing that I felt was interesting about that story was rain is not mentioned in the Bible before the flood. So I don't know if it just didn't rain beforehand, or they just didn't mention it because it wasn't significant until the flood.
Dan Williams: But I just always thought it was interesting that in the Bible rain's not mentioned one time until- ... until the global flood happens. But I wanted it to be a literal translation of the first raindrop hitting the ground in the parched desert signalizing the first raindrop here.
Dan Williams: But I also wanted it to have a dual purpose behind it, and I took it to social media and one person said that they interpret it as basically someone who is in a drought or someone who's in a desert praying for rain, and then finally God gives it to them. This is the first sign of mercy.
Dan Williams: So I kinda thought it was interesting to have two completely opposite interpretations. Like one can be destruction and one can be mercy. So that's why I decided to call it Mercy Falls, because is mercy falling upon someone or is mercy falling away from someone?
Martha: A neat thing about art is that it is up to interpretation. And right away, Jim, I thought of a song that we learned years ago in youth group, Mercy is Falling - is Falling. From the '90s. And yes. But that very much symbolizes what I was thinking in my mind and my heart about this particular song that we know.
Martha: And for each person it can mean something different. So I'm just gonna real quickly, for those that are only listening, the sky is dark. There's a little bit open. There is one splash of a raindrop on a very dry ground that's very parched. And so it, it's powerful.
Jim: Kinda like southwest Missouri the last three months.
Martha: Yeah. There you go. So I am gonna put all of Dan's social media links in the show notes so that, our hope is that you as listeners will follow Dan, that you will maybe even get an opportunity to purchase some of his art, watch him-
Jim: To help support him as a small town community police officer.
Martha: That's right. And for his future artwork. But what a inspiration. I know we wanna talk about a couple of other pieces of artwork that you have, so if you wanna bring them, bring, put one of 'em up on the easel.
Jim: Bring Jesus back. Bring Jesus up there.
Martha: Put Jesus up on the screen, and then I wanna just also talk about, just for a moment, we had a devastating situation here in Missouri in the last year where several, we had fallen police officers from an incident.
Martha: And Dan, you spent, I don't remember, a weekend, whatever it was, and you drew pictures of each of those officers. And it was so powerful because you did it really fast, which is not normally, I know your ... it seemed fast because you did it right away. But you just have such a gift for seeing people for who they are and meeting a need.
Martha: And so that's just another one of the stories that I know has developed out of your artwork. So tell us about the one you just put up behind you.
Dan Williams: Yeah. This one here, And I meant to look this up before the podcast, I can't remember, but I was listening to the podcast that Josh Howerton's church does, and he had a guest on there that was, that had studied the Shroud of Turin for years.
Dan Williams: And up until fairly recently, I had always thought that the Shroud of Turin was fake. But then after listening to his podcast and then doing some own independent studies, like online and reading some books and stuff, I don't quite know that I... I believe the Shroud of Turin might be a historical artifact.
Dan Williams: So then I got to thinking about it as like the image that is impressed on the Shroud of Turin isn't a very clear or a detailed image, obviously. You can make out like where the eyes and the beard and the nose and stuff went, the hair and stuff like that. But I always thought, what if, what if someone took the Shroud of Turin and drew like a hand-drawn picture of it, made it as detailed as they could?
Dan Williams: So I decided to do that just based off my vision.
Jim: Not of the shroud, but of the person- Of what would be behind it ... that's behind the image on the shroud.
Dan Williams: Yes.
Martha: Yeah.
Jim: Correct.
Dan Williams: Yes.
Martha: So basically filling in the details.
Dan Williams: Yes. Yep.
Martha: Amazing.
Dan Williams: And I did a lot of studying about what a pers- like the average person from the Middle East would've looked like. And then since Jesus was essentially homeless, he traveled a lot, he spent a lot of time in the desert, i've added a lot of characteristics that we found on a homeless person's, you can see... i'm not sure if you can really see it on there, but I put a lot of sunspots and deep pores on his cheeks and stuff like that just to symbolize someone that would've been exposed to the elements a lot.
Jim: How long did it take you to sketch that one?
Dan Williams: This one was probably, I would say, close to 70 or 80 hours over the course of about a month and a half to two months or so.
Jim: You shared pictures in process of that on Facebook and, and I'm like, "Oh, my word. It's, like- ... alive." It's like Jesus is alive on that paper. It's such a gift. And what I have always found with my friends that are artistic, creative, artistic, that can actually create art like you, is you don't realize, there's one in a million people that could draw like that, because I can't draw a stick figure and get it straight.
Jim: So it's incredible. But the, the... You make Jesus look real. They said that he wasn't a man that was, he wasn't super great-looking. He was, he was a man of many sorrows. He wore it heavy, but yet you've depicted him as somebody approachable. And what's funny is there's a couple of other...
Jim: What was the name of the book, Martha? That the little kid who died and went to heaven, and then he came back and described Jesus, and then he met another girl who had died, and she had drawn a picture of Jesus. This is very much along, a little shorter hair in that picture, but along the lines of what people have said Jesus has actually looked like. It's fascinating, Dan.
Dan Williams: I have to look that one up. I never heard about that one.
Martha: Yes. I'll share about it, and I'll try to put it in the show notes as well once we look that up. But there, So let's talk about the third one, because I, w- we don't have time to cover everything you've done but you just started doing color, and so you said this is the first one that you did in color. And there's a lot of meaning, interpretation, I'm not sure, Dan, behind this one. So tell us where this came from.
Dan Williams: So this one was more based off my law enforcement experience, and I wanted to do something that was dip my toes in the surrealism versus just drawing realistic drawings.
Dan Williams: And I wanted to do something in color. And so went out, I went out and bought some soft pastels and some pastel pencils, and I created this one here. Basically, September was Suicide Prevention Month, so I wanted to draw something that that honored that and represented that.
Dan Williams: And again, I prayed about it quite a bit. I thought about what would someone, like what would be a good way to interpret that? So the first thing that came to mind was a, was like a big, healthy, strong tree that was damaged in some way. And the reason behind that, if you look at this just at first glance, you're not really gonna think much about it other than you just see a, a tree with green leaves and stuff.
Dan Williams: But I added a couple details to it. We'll start off down here at the bottom. The roots here are really exposed, and that is symbolizing that the foundation, the ground that it sits on is beginning to erode and wither away. So that's where the exposed roots come from.
Dan Williams: But then just above that you'll see a spot here and a spot here, and both of those symbolize, like again, it's barely visible from the outside, but anybody that's ever seen a rotting tree, like the damage that's done inside is much more noticeable than the damage that's done outside. But you just don't notice it unless you really pay attention to it or someone points it out to you.
Dan Williams: So these two spots here represent some sort of internal struggle that the person is going through. And then moving up just a little bit further, you see this knot right here. And anybody that knows anything about trees is the branches that are closer to the ground are the older branches.
Dan Williams: They've been with the tree a lot longer. So this one here is, would've been the first branch that the tree started to grow, and at some point during the tree's life, something happened to it and caused one of the earliest and biggest parts to fall away from him, some sort of exterior trauma. And I always like to think maybe it has something to do with the internal struggle that he was dealing with that weakened out that branch and something happened to it, the branch fell off.
Dan Williams: But obviously a very important part and very big part of the tree is no longer there. And, looking at it again, like I said, the tree is like very healthy, so people may not notice it unless they like really pay attention to the details. But then I drew a blindfold over top of it too, because I drew this one with a little bit brighter scene than my charcoal drawings.
Dan Williams: But if you put a blindfold on, whatever you're looking at around you is gonna be blocked by the blindfold, so he may not be able to see the full extent of everything going on around him. He's only gonna see what's ever, like directly in front of him. So that's where my inspiration for, for this piece came. It's basically representing the mind and the soul of someone that's dealing with mental health and having suicidal like thoughts.
Martha: Wow.
Jim: So much, and you had that in your head before you started drawing, which is just beyond me. Just beyond me. Yeah. But fantastic. We're so grateful that you shared all this stuff.
Jim: Dan, final question for you for today. Thank you first of all. Thank you for your service as a police officer, as a first responder. Thank you for your service as a husband and a father, and for letting God explode something new inside of you in your 30s. How should our listeners be praying for their local police officers?
Jim: Not in not every community that our listeners live in can they even approach an officer because it wouldn't be safe. But if they live in a small town, like we get the privilege of doing, or just even generically praying, how do you think we should be praying for our local police officers?
Dan Williams: You know- Police officers, they see a lot, they see a lot more than what your average person does, even in, even in small towns.
Dan Williams: Just think about every time you hear about a robbery or a shooting or a child abuse case or something like that. In Marionville we've got five police officers, so the chances of one of us having to deal with that are about 20% versus that kind of stuff is much lower if you're not in law enforcement.
Dan Williams: You're not gonna see that kind of stuff on a daily basis. So mental health really takes its toll on police officers especially. So I would say the best way that you can pray for police officers is to pray for their mental health specifically, and just pray that God will give them some sort of healthy outlet to process these things.
Dan Williams: Because a lot of police officers will turn to alcohol and just very unhealthy ways of dealing with trauma and stress. So just pray that God will reveal some sort of healthy outlet whether it be counseling or a hobby or something like that for them to be able to process their emotions and get help for their, whatever they're seeing on a job. Just that it doesn't affect them mentally too much.
Martha: That's such a good perspective. Thank you for sharing that. Because a lot of us don't think about the fact that you encounter things that none of us may ever even imagine is happening in our community or in a state, no matter where it may be, and there's broken people everywhere.
Martha: And you guys are often the first ones on the scene in those broken situations. So I encourage all of our listeners to do just that, to pray for your local first responders, specifically your police officers right now. This week, make that a commitment. And I know Jim and I are always praying for peace over our town and for everyone that's involved in responding, because it is an important part.
Martha: It's easy in a big city to get disconnected from that. So thank you for being honest and sharing that with us, and for sharing your art and just the, the gift that God's given you. We are very proud of you and excited to see the things that you create, and I hope you listeners will follow along and watch the journey as well.
Jim: Yeah, we couldn't wait to introduce our local police hero to the world that we have influence over, around, around the globe. There are people that are gonna see this in almost every continent, not Antarctica, 'cause there are no listeners there. There's no radio stations, but-
Martha: You can't ship to Antarctica.
Jim: You can't. But maybe there's a podcast listener there. But Dan, thank you so much for living out your faith in your work, for serving our community so well, and for letting God develop this new talent in you. Thank you, Dan Williams, for being on iWork4Him today.
Dan Williams: Yeah. Thank you, guys, so much.
Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers and our workplace, it's our mission field. But ultimately iWork4Him!