As we let this journey settle with our soul, it’s important to mention a few highlights that happened along the way.  All of them happened while in Los Angeles for our lunch with Oprah (did I mention that we were having lunch with Oprah?)…and all of them pulled us along a road that we may never have traveled had it not been for a little whisper and a lot of faith.

If we were Vloggers, we would have had the presence of mind to take you on this journey with our IPhone camera.  Perhaps if we had a better video setup, we would have captured more of the moment and more in the moment.  Canon? Nikon? Sony? If you have any cameras you are looking to test in the Vlog market, we’re your girls.  Instead, we are going to rely on our memory and our love of words to take you along this journey. Next time, we’ll be camera ready…because while most would believe that this is a once in a lifetime moment…we know that this is only the beginning.  So…here we go.

On Friday, we woke up early in our room at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills and felt amazing.  Instantly, I wanted the bed, the linens and the shower that I am pretty sure that I could live in forever.  You see, the shower has one of those rain features…when my shower grows up, I hope it’s just like that one.  While we are writing a whole piece on just the hotel experience at the Montage, I can’t help but include it within our recaps of our OYou trip because it was definitely a star within this star experience.  So, Friday brought us to Sony studios with a morning meeting with DeVon Franklin, Senior Vice President of Production for Columbia.  Seriously.  SERIOUSLY.  We arrived for our meeting just before 8am, were greeted in the parking area like VIPs and walked in to this amazing and grand Sony lobby to find Ryan, DeVon’s assistant, awake, smiling and directing us to the room that we were meeting in.  For about 15 minutes, we hugged and took photos with friends as many OWN Ambassadors arrived and got to meet in person for the first time.  We connected, reconnected, had some great coffee (we love Pete’s Coffee) and simply took in the whole experience…with each moment realizing that what was happening was masterful…and was truly produced by faith.

For those who follow the OWN network’s amazing Super Soul Sunday series, DeVon was on it this season talking about his new book, Produced by Faith.  The meeting was a bonus to our trip when Misty from our small OWN Ambassador group asked DeVon if he had time to meet with us while we were in town.  Like asking an old friend to get together, his response was, “we’ll make it happen.”  While he probably didn’t know who or what to expect on Friday, he came into the room with a light and an energy that just says, “I know good things are going to happen to me today.”  His smile filled the room.  His humble and heart filled words spilled into our souls and made us realize that there was more to this meeting than taking a photo or getting an autograph or shaking his hand. This meeting had a higher purpose…one that perhaps he didn’t even realize.

As he spoke to the group with unprepared words, it was as if his heart opened up and his faith took the stage.  He talked of how his meeting for Super Soul Sunday came to be…a result of a series of twists and turns that lead him to the road of meeting with Oprah.  He smiled and perhaps blushed a little as he spoke of meeting Ms. Winfrey for the first time and the advice he was given to “be yourself and bring your energy…she’s a quick read…just be yourself…”  He spoke of how his book, Produced by Faith, was important to him and the message that he’s trying to take out into the world.  “We are all light carriers in this world where so much darkness lives,” he told us. “This group…you are more than OWN Ambassadors. You are light ambassadors. You are faith ambassadors.”   Lingering words that stayed with me the entire trip… you are the carriers of the light.

As he moved through the room, as we realized we didn’t get a good photo with him, as we soaked in everything that had just occurred…we knew that in this moment something amazing was happening.  Afterwards, we all stayed together and were treated to a tour of the studios and the grounds…sitting in the sound room at the Barbara Streisand Scoring Stage where Judy Garland sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and fighting back tears as our friend, Prasanna, sang his rendition in perfect pitch… standing in the same sound mixing theater as Stephen Spielberg did to mix the music for Schlinder’s List and where Michael Bay found the right mix of what it sounds like at the end of the world for Transformers…walking through past buildings where Elizabeth Taylor, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland and more were schooled as young children…and grew into lives bigger than they could have dreamed.  This tour moved me through emotions as strong as the ones that DeVon had evoked earlier in the day.  Faith.  Faith is the very foundation of everything in life.  It takes that one breath of faith…one little step that whispers, “let’s do this…let’s take a chance…let’s make this happen…I know you can do this…” that propels each of us into directions that we may never have traveled if we didn’t listen to the whisper…and if we didn’t have the faith to listen to what it was saying…

I realized that perhaps this meeting at Sony Studios in Culver City where The Wizard of OZ found life and where epic movies have been produced for decades was perhaps producing a little more this morning than anyone could have imagined…  We are more than OWN Ambassadors.  We are light ambassadors.  We are faith ambassadors.  We are changing the world through inspiring others to find their light…to live their best lives…to find out what that really means.  DeVon Franklin, we can’t thank you enough for this meeting and this moment. We know that we will meet again. My sister and I know this deep in our hearts.  And next time we’ll get that photo.  It’s already done.

And with this wave of light, we moved into the day…the day before our Oprah luncheon.  Every moment of this trip couldn’t have been produced more beautifully…and each and every moment deserves to be the star.  Thank you DeVon for your time, your words and your faith in us.  Thank you God for putting this in our path.  This entire journey started 22 months ago with listening to a whisper and having a little faith…and we couldn’t feel more confident that we are in the right place…right where God has intended for us to be.  This we know…because we just do.