8 Year Old Interviews Blessing Offor

Jordan:
What about you, Noella?

Noella:
Well, were you born blind?

Blessing Offor:
First of all, good job, Noella. Good job. Do you know how adults ask that question? They go, “Were you born visually unable to…” They just jump through so many hoops to say the word blind. Kids are like, “Were you born blind?” And you’re like, “Yes.” Noella, never stopped doing that. You understand?

Noella:
Yeah.

Blessing Offor:
Speak your mind all the time. Okay. I wasn’t born blind. I was born blind in my left eye, and then I had vision in my right eye. And then when I was a little older than Jonah, I got shot in the eye with a water gun in the good eye, and it detached the inside of my eye. I know.
Noella:
Can it get better?
Blessing Offor:
Well, so they did a bunch of surgeries to try to make it better and fix it. So there’s still a little vision in there, but had they kept poking at it, they would’ve killed all the vision in it. So eventually I was like, “Guys, why don’t we just stop doing that?” And so we stopped doing that because sometimes you got to know when to stop doing things. Does that make sense?
Noella:
Do you still see a little?
Blessing Offor:
A tiny bit out of this eye, like a tiny bit in the right moments when I stand on one foot and I kind of turn… I’m just kidding.
Noella:
Well, can you see my dad yet?
Jordan:
Now we’re going start throwing different things out.
Blessing Offor:
She’s like, “Here’s a board. How many fingers am I holding?”
Jordan:
No, no.
Blessing Offor:
I can’t see your dad yet. No. But soon and very soon.
Jordan:
Seriously, I think, and especially this is why I was excited about having them here, as off the walls as it is, you probably get asked, I would imagine, the same questions from the same style of radio personalities on a regular basis so to try to do something a little bit different.
Blessing Offor:
I love good questions and I love… Because you know, you’ve done this, we can all autopilot the heck out of it. You know what I mean?
Jordan:
Yep.
Blessing Offor:
But when something makes you really think, it’s my favorite.
Jordan:
All right, Noella, what you got? Let’s go fire off some questions. Let’s see what you got for him.
Noella:
Well, are you friends with TobyMac?
Blessing Offor:
I am friends with TobyMac. Actually, he’s a really, really sweet man, and he is a jokester. And when you run into him, he always has something clever to say and he will poke fun of you. So he’s a fun guy.
Stephanie:
I love that.
Noella:
I wanted to know what his favorite fast food is.
Blessing Offor:
My favorite fast food. Ooh. Okay. That’s a good question. It depends on where in the country I am. So in Nashville, we have Nashville hot chicken or barbecue. So right on my street, there’s a place called Edley’s Bar-B-Que that I really love. Or Hattie B’s is the hot chicken.
Jordan:
The hot chicken.
Blessing Offor:
Yeah. Or for feeling very spiritual on any given day, it’s always Chick-fil-A.
Jordan:
Chick-fil-A. Any day but Sunday.
Blessing Offor:
Jesus chicken. What else, Noella?
Noella:
Do you like Wendy’s?
Blessing Offor:
She’s a reporter, this one. You know what? I can honestly say I’ve not had Wendy’s in a very long time, so I don’t even know if I like Wendy’s.
Noella:
Do you like McDonald’s?
Blessing Offor:
I also have not had McDonald’s in a very long time.
Jordan:
They got out of school a little early today. We surprised them with McDonald’s for lunch.
Blessing Offor:
Oh, love it. No. Do you know what I do like at McDonald’s? Whenever we do go to McDonald’s and I’m really hungry… I try not to eat McDonald’s, honestly. But the fries when they’re hot are amazing. But once they go down even two degrees, you’re like, “This isn’t good for me.” But as soon as they hand them to you, I could eat those. That’s my guilty pleasure.
Jordan:
Get in front of the… So we’ve been working with the kids. I’ll take it for a second. You’re really… And you’re open about this, which is awesome, but know Noella’s big question when she sees somebody, meets somebody, it’s is he or she a…
Blessing Offor:
A?
Jordan:
Say it. You can say it.
Noella:
A what?
Jordan:
What do you always ask about every single person. You can say it. What do you say?
Stephanie:
What do you ask about them?
Noella:
How old they are?
Jordan:
Okay, no.
Stephanie:
Oh my Gosh.
Jordan:
She literally will ask anybody, first of all, if they’re alive or dead.
Blessing Offor:
Oh, good… That’s good.
Jordan:
But she’s always quick to ask-
Blessing Offor:
Mainly alive.
Jordan:
Right. She’ll ask if they’re Christian. And you are really open about the fact that you surround yourself with just not believers, with non-believers as well.
Blessing Offor:
Yes.
Jordan:
And that’s a big question that the two of them ask as little ones are always like, “Are they Christian, are they not?” It’s okay to know that friends aren’t Christian, but you’re really open about that.
Blessing Offor:
Not only open about it, I would argue that we have to surround ourselves with as many non-believers as believers, because… I’m going to get biblical and nerdy on you. Ready, guys? Because in the New Testament, we’re told to be salt and we’re told to be light. And if you were in the brightest room ever, and you then turn on another light, does it really make much of a difference?
Jonah:
No.
Noella:
No.
Blessing Offor:
But if you’re in the darkest room ever, and you turn on the smallest light, doesn’t it make a world of difference?
Noella:
Yes.
Jonah:
Yeah.
Blessing Offor:
And that’s why you’re supposed to be light. Or if you eat a meal that’s really, really salty, it tastes kind of gross. It’s just like, “Ugh. Too much salt.” But if you eat a bland meal and someone sprinkles just a little bit of good sea salt on there, all of a sudden the game’s changed, right?
Noella:
Yeah.
Blessing Offor:
And so in order for us to be our most effective in bringing forward what we know to be true, we have to go to places where maybe the people around you don’t agree with you so that you can be the difference. So I grew up in parts of the country where… I grew up in Connecticut, in the Northeast where most people don’t go to church, but when you meet people that do go to church, they really mean it. They go to church because they want to, not because it’s what everybody does. So I loved it there because in particular, when I lived in New York, I’d say to my friends, “Hey, I’m going to go to church. Do you guys want to come?” And they’d be like, “Ew, why?”
And I’d be like, “Well, because it’s good for me and it helps me keep my heart and blah, blah, blah.” And they’d say, “We hate that, but we’ll see you at brunch.” So I’d go to church and then meet them for food afterward. And eventually once in a while they’d say, “Man, you’re serious about it. Why do you keep going to church?” And then they’d come to church with me. And it’s not because I made them or because I told them they had to or I threatened them. It’s just because they saw me doing a thing enough times and they saw that I meant it and they saw that for some reason it made a difference in my life.
Noella:
Did they turn Christian?
Blessing Offor:
A few of them do. And a few of them did become Christians, in fact. And you know what? A few of them don’t. But the point is I don’t have to worry about that. All I have to do is live my life and let God handle the rest so I don’t have to go, “Did I check so-and-so off the box?” Because it’s not my job. I just have to keep being me and the rest works itself out because God is way smarter than we are. Does that make sense?
Noella:
Mm-hmm.
Blessing Offor:
Yeah. So I can definitely tell you a few of my friends are Christians now from New York that were not before I hung out with them, but quite frankly, probably a lot more of them still are just doing what they’re doing, and that’s okay too.
Jonah:
Okay. What is your favorite Bible verse?
Blessing Offor:
Oh, okay. That’s a thinker. I’m ready. Do you know my favorite verse has always been, “Be still and know that I’m God,” Psalm 46:10. You know why? Is that yours too?
Stephanie:
Yeah, I have it tattooed.
Jordan:
She has it tattooed.
Blessing Offor:
Oh my God.
Stephanie:
I love it.
Jonah:
I… Oh, wait.
Blessing Offor:
Oh, that’s okay. So when I graduated high school, a friend of mine got me a bracelet that said that. And what I love about that verse is that it does two things. It says, A, “Be still.” So it tells you to rest. It tells you that you don’t have to do anything really. It’s done, it’s finished, et cetera. It says, “Be still.” And I think sometimes I personally forget to be still. Sometimes because I love running around and I have so much energy and I have so many things I want to accomplish, I forget sometimes to be still, just sit, just breathe. And then the second half of that thing is, “And know…” So in your mind, as you’re being still understand, appreciate, realize, “That I am God.” So Blessing’s not God, right?
Jonah:
Yeah.
Blessing Offor:
God is God. So that there’s so much packed into that verse that for me, I can marinate on that for a very long time. And that is my favorite verse.
Jonah:
Well, I don’t read the verse Bibles. I actually used to read this graphic novel Bible.
Blessing Offor:
Love it.
Jonah:
[inaudible 00:09:29] a bunch of things. And I know one of them was whenever Joseph got sold for slavery and stuff like that and his brothers pushed him down a pit and stuff like that, that I can definitely say that’s my second favorite one.
Jordan:
It’s his second favorite. It goes back to the dodgeball conversation.
Blessing Offor:
What’s your first favorite?
Jonah:
My first favorite-
Blessing Offor:
It’s like, “Get in this well.”
Jonah:
My first favorite is definitely the one where God splits the Red Sea-
Blessing Offor:
Ah, yes.
Jonah:
… so that… What’s his name?
Blessing Offor:
Moses and Israel can-
Jonah:
Yeah, Moses and the Israelites can-
Blessing Offor:
… get across.
Jonah:
Yeah.
Blessing Offor:
Yes. That’s a good one.
Jonah:
That’s definitely my favorite.
Jordan:
It’s funny that he brings that up.
Blessing Offor:
I wrote a song about that.
Jordan:
You did. That’s part of my Bible study today was Joshua. I’ve been reading Joshua. So they just went over the Jordan River, just crossed over the Jordan. I was like, “Hey.” Not even reading that on purpose, knowing that you were going to be here. It’s just funny how that all just lays in where, “Here we go.” It just happens that way.
Blessing Offor:
Look at God, guys.
Jordan:
What else are you guys thinking?
Blessing Offor:
What else you got?
Noella:
What’s your favorite ice cream?
Blessing Offor:
Oh, there’s a place called Jeni’s Ice Cream. Do you guys have Jeni’s down here?
Noella:
I don’t know.
Blessing Offor:
It’s in Nashville. There’s an ice cream called Brown Butter Almond Brittle and it’s my favorite ice cream. And there’s a Jeni’s Ice Cream at the bottom of my apartment building in Nashville and it’s very dangerous.
Jordan:
And you set yourself up pretty well. You’ve got the hot chicken.
Blessing Offor:
Oh yeah, right there.
Jordan:
You’ve got the ice cream.
Blessing Offor:
And barbecue.
Noella:
Why is it so dangerous?
Blessing Offor:
Because I have to avoid it every day. I have to not go in there all the time.
Noella:
Because you like it so much.
Blessing Offor:
Because I like it so much. Correct. Yep. She’s got that right. She’s got it. She knows the math.
Jordan:
So I’ve got a question. So go back to the Bible for a second and make you think maybe a little bit. I don’t know.
Blessing Offor:
Please.
Jordan:
So there’s so many obvious stories that we come across throughout the Bible. If there was one that you would like to know that you were there to witness out of all those different stories, what would be one that would be pretty cool to say that, “Wow, I caught a glimpse of that”?
Blessing Offor:
Guys. Okay, I’m going to nerd out. Oh, man. I think I can, right? It’s all Bible.
Jordan:
Sure.
Blessing Offor:
The woman caught in adultery. I know that’s really weird. But what I love about that story is how Jesus, A, they dragged this woman. “Look what she did, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Tell us to stone her.” So they think they trapped him. And I love this. Everybody always thinks they’ve trapped Jesus in something and they always want him to make this binary choice, this or this.
And so they go, “Well, she broke the rules so clearly we have to kill her now. So tell us to start stoning her.” So they’re like, “Confirm the law for us or are you going to tell us to let her go? And then make yourself a liar and say, ‘Okay, so you don’t want the law.'” So they think they have him cornered and he being the cool guy that he is, he starts writing on the ground. And man, how many people have said, “Don’t you want to know what he wrote?” So rather than picking this or this, he goes, “Okay, guys, whoever is clean of hand and spirit and soul and mind and all the things, whoever’s innocent, starts stoning.”
And I love that because he says, “You’re right. If you really want to obey the law, then let’s hold it up to all of us.” And all of a sudden they just kind of melt away because that’s all of us. And then he goes, “Hey, where are all your accusers?” And she says, “Well, they’re not here. They’re not here. And they’re not here to accuse me.” And then he goes, well, then neither do I accuse you.”
And I just think that’s so much of Jesus in a nutshell is this… And so much of what the world does today is that it wants us to pick things. It wants us to pick extremes of things. It wants us to say, “This is right or wrong.” And as people of faith, I always wonder why we don’t just look at Jesus refusing to take the bait. And why don’t we always refuse to take the bait because the world is just baiting us. And there’s so many ways it wants us to take the bait. And Jesus was not the taker of bait. He was smarter than that. And every time I watched that happen, I’m like, “That is so cool.”
Jordan:
Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s good. That’s really good.
Stephanie:
That’s really good.
Jordan:
Getting geeked out. I love it.
Blessing Offor:
I’m telling you.
Jordan:
But that’s powerful.
Blessing Offor:
Yeah.
Jordan:
I always try to think of that question because I think when I’m just in the Bible and I’m like, “Man, that’s something I would really like to have seen.” We were just talking about parting the Red Sea. How cool would it have been to be there?
Blessing Offor:
I should have answered something that cool. I’m like, “That time where he… Blah, blah, blah.” But I love that story so much.
Noella:
Yeah. I want to see if he gots any questions.
Jordan:
Set up in the microphone.
Noella:
I want to see if he gots any questions.
Blessing Offor:
Oh, do I get to ask? Do I get to ask?
Jordan:
We see how fast the tables have turned here.
Blessing Offor:
Oh, how the turns have tabled. All right.
Jordan:
He’s asking you. Pay attention.
Blessing Offor:
You ready?
Noella:
Mm-hmm.
Blessing Offor:
What’s your favorite subject in school?
Noella:
I would say specials.
Blessing Offor:
Specials? I remember specials. What specials? Music?
Noella:
Nah.
Blessing Offor:
“Nah.” Wow.
Noella:
Well, kind of. Well, kind of.
Blessing Offor:
Well, don’t backtrack now.
Noella:
Today I had music.
Blessing Offor:
Okay.
Noella:
It was really actually fun.
Blessing Offor:
She was like, “This time it was actually enjoyable.”
Stephanie:
Oh, that’s funny.
Noella:
Well, we are going to do a concert. Well, we’re doing Green Eggs and Ham.
Blessing Offor:
Okay, love it. Little Dr. Seuss action.
Noella:
Yeah, tomorrow’s actually Dr. Seuss’ birthday.
Blessing Offor:
What? Jonah, right?
Jonah:
Yeah.
Blessing Offor:
What’s your favorite subject? Please say music.
Jonah:
My favorite is music and-
Blessing Offor:
There you go. Thank you.
Jonah:
Music and gym.
Blessing Offor:
Gym, of course.
Jonah:
Yeah. Because the gym is like… After you do all these workout stuff, you get to do this run, which is just one of my favorite parts because I get to go full speed around the gym. My favorite part about the music is definitely the recorders. I’m actually learning.
Blessing Offor:
Are they still playing recorders?
Stephanie:
Yes.
Blessing Offor:
That’s awesome. Do you have to play hot crust buns?
Jonah:
Yeah, we have to do that.
Blessing Offor:
Yeah, you do?
Jonah:
We played [inaudible 00:16:22].
Blessing Offor:
Yes.
Jonah:
It’s like when you’re first starting to play a video game, you don’t know what to do.
Blessing Offor:
Yeah. You just kind of press things and see what happens.
Jonah:
Yeah. And then soon you get used to it and then you can start actually doing it.
Blessing Offor:
I’m glad the legend of the recorder is still alive and well because all of us…
Jonah:
Because that’s what happened to me with piano. And now it’s probably going to happen with my recorder.
Blessing Offor:
Yeah. Piano is way more interesting than the recorder, personally. I remember learning saxophone and I think all my neighbors hated me because it starts off like, “Blegh,” like a dying cow. You know what I mean?
Jonah:
Yes.
Blessing Offor:
And then eventually it gets smooth. But for a week or two, it’s not good. What grade are you guys in?
Noella:
I’m in second. Jonah’s in fourth.
Blessing Offor:
Whoa. That’s-
Jonah:
I’m about to go in fifth.
Blessing Offor:
Yeah, that makes sense.
Noella:
I’m about to go in third.
Blessing Offor:
That makes sense. That’s how that goes.
Noella:
I’m eight and Jonah’s nine.
Blessing Offor:
You guys, that’s such a perfect age to grow up together.
Jordan:
Thank you so much for your time, Blessing. It’s always nice to have you here.
Blessing Offor:
Noella, can I shake your hand?
Noella:
Sure.
Blessing Offor:
That was a five. I want to-
Jordan:
Shake the hand.
Blessing Offor:
There you go. Jonah. Bruv.
Jordan:
He’s coming around.
Blessing Offor:
Oh, that works too. There you go. Good to meet you. Good to meet you.
Jonah:
That was a hard shake.
Blessing Offor:
That was a good, manly shake. It was very impressive.
Noella:
<< Somewhere over the rainbow >> I keep on getting the skies are blue-
Blessing Offor:
It’s okay, friend. Keep going. Finish the song.
Noella:
I know like << Skies are blue >> and I forgot… I can keep [inaudible 00:17:59].
Blessing Offor:
Noella, when I come back, you will be a singer. Yes?
Stephanie:
She just shrugged. She goes, “Mmm.”
Noella:
I don’t know. I don’t think so.
Blessing Offor:
“I don’t think so.”
Noella:
Because I-