Blurry Creatures - EP: 423 Beyond the Edge of the World with the Wild Brothers

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

The Wild Brothers grew up where no roads, no hospitals, and no government existed. Hudson and Morgan Wild spent 17 years in the highlands of Papua, Indonesia, living among the Wano people, an animistic tribe of 1,500 gripped by fear of evil spirits, tribal warfare, and dark spiritual practices. Their parents landed by helicopter with a Bible and a burden. What followed is one of the most extraordinary missionary stories of our generation. The accounts they carry from those years sound like something out of the book of Acts.Neighbors watching demons enter their home. A meteor blazing through the jungle canopy the night before a pivotal Bible teaching. A deadly snake bite followed by a prayer that should not have worked but did. A vine suspended in midair by nothing visible. The Wild Brothers unpack the collision between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness with the kind of firsthand authority that only comes from living on the front lines.  This Episode is Sponsored By: https://rocketmoney.com/blurry — Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster! https://preborn.com/blurry — Visit the PreBorn! website or dial #250 and use keyword BABY to donate today. https://get.stash.com/blurry — See how you can receive $25 towards your first stock purchase and to view important disclosures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You know, we've heard the stories, Luke. Glowing eyes in the forest. Sure. You know, a portal opening up at the gas station. Fine. But paying $300 for a sweater? No, we don't do that. No, we don't do that.

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slash blurry for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's quince.com slash blurry for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash blurry. It's hard in the early days, though, because really, you know, when the gospel comes in, it changes a false worldview with the truth of God's word. But before you do that, you don't have the grounds to make change. And so we're there literally as outsiders welcomed in and we're here to observe and learn. And so one of the things that the one I would do, if a child, you know, firstborn dies, the second child, the mom would chop its pinky finger off. Soon after, you know, just chop it off right at the first knuckle and hang that up in the house. this is an offering to the spirit of the deceased sibling,

don't come and take the life of your younger sibling. The history of our earth is so different from what we can imagine. The Smithsonian that if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere was to go get it. I'm going to assume at least one person is right, because if one person's right to bust the paradigm, it all goes back to the fallen chair. And the problem with the modern day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop that's just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Herman event.

And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. All right, welcome back to blurry creatures. We're excited today. We're going deep into the jungle. We got the Wild Brothers in-house in the studio who are, they spent 17 years in the jungles of Indonesia. and how they make films and all kinds of created content talking about how the gospel goes to the most remote parts of the world. And you've got a grab bag of blurry stories in your brains. We're going to try to get some of those out of your minds because it involves all kinds of things like zombies, dinosaurs, giants, power stones, all kinds of weird stuff that lives in the jungle. But welcome to the podcast. Thank you for coming in here.

and we're going to try to extrapolate some of these stories in a cohesive manner. But what are your thoughts on Bigfoot? And then we'd love to get into your story, how you grew up. Wow. Sweet. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Classic question.

Man, I used to be like a super avid hunter and I loved going after like cryptic creatures. So from that perspective, thinking about Bigfoot, like we tracked a lot of cryptic creatures. And every time a physical animal leaves tracks, scat. like remains. So the idea of this giant bipedal ape-like creature wandering the U.S. and like no one is captured on like the iPhone or left like scat makes me think that it's definitely on the spiritual side, but I don't know. What are your thoughts? That's just coming from a viewpoint of a hunter. Yeah, I'm a firm believer in Bigfoot. What is it? I think that's still up for debate. I was actually having a conversation with my grandfather the other day and he knew a guy in work

who firsthand encounter experienced the Bigfoot phenomenon. Somewhere in Arizona, they made a film out of it called the Boggy Creek Monster. Are you familiar with that from the 70s? Yeah, actually. Actually turned into movies. So my grandpa knew that guy. And he swears by that, you know, from a firsthand encounter. Yeah, it was a legit experience.

Small world because friends of ours are the Robertsons, Willie and Corey Robertson. And actually they bought the rice that and they're actually remaking the film written by Chad and Carrie Hayes was on a show. We wrote the conjuring. No way. So this is like a legendary, like legendary story of a Bigfoot encounter. I think that did $20 million in the box office. And it was like a very simple docu-filming. We watched the trailer the other day and it was epic.

I mean, yeah. You know, so Bigfoot, yeah, I know it's legit. What it is, I think it's still, you know, it's a contentious subject. But there's definitely something to it. And I think more and more people are realizing that. Well, I will say it's interesting because like being over in Indo, we've interacted with islanders. like, oh man, we totally believe in mermaids.

Like, we've seen them. You go into the jungle and they're like, dude, there's like jungle people, you know, they're like Bigfoot's out here. Himalayas have a Yeti. We're just in Alaska and they talk about that Nanotuke, killer Bigfoot. And then, so I think they're, you know, spirits.

They just contextualize themselves to whatever the culture. It's on the coast. It's like a mermaid. If it's in the jungle, it's a jungle man, you know. What about the merman? What about the merman? There's a few of those. He loves that. He loves that. I haven't heard of any I feel like we're always just focused on the mermaids, which is understandable. I don't know.

I think it might be a race of females. Morgan and Hudson Wild. Yes. There's four brothers. Yes. You guys, we want to start with your story because you guys have a super unique upbringing. You guys are doing stuff on YouTube. You guys are content creators, which is super cool.

But you're, I mean, growing up as missionary kids in Papa Indonesia. And we were talking about this pre-roll. So I can sound smart here. But Papua New Guinea is one side of this massive eye. On the other side is Indonesia, which is Papua Indonesia. And you guys grew up in some of the deepest remote jungles on earth, living with the Wano people who are animistic. And I wanted to, I want to start with your story.

So our listeners can get an idea of like, you know, you guys, how you end up in the jungle, how your folks end up in the jungle, how you guys grow up there. And then we'll ask questions along the way. Yeah. And just talking about bringing the gospel to unreached corners of the earth. And then encountering some wild things as we've had on, you know, People on the show before, missionaries, you know, whether it be sub-Saharan Africa or, you know, other corners in South America running into witch doctors that levitate and, you know, all kinds of things that go bump in the night.

So, yeah, welcome, guys. Yeah, welcome. Thank you. It's a privilege to be here. We're excited. Where's the start for you guys? Yeah. Yeah.

I'm Hudson, Morgan, two of the four Wild Brothers. And yeah, we grew up pretty much off the edge of the map in the highlands of Papua, Indonesia. and it was a place so remote, it was only accessible via helicopter. So, you know, imagine total isolation, no government presence, hospitals, roads, stores, very, very remote and isolated. And the lot of people, we went into to live with them to be adopted into the tribe, learn their language and culture. And my dad's a Bible translator. So with the idea of learning their language, culture, translating the Bible, and telling them the good news of the gospel for the first time. So just, yeah, very isolated in the people group, we do.

we lived with were animistic, which means that their worldview comprised of their world spirits just ruled everything. And so their lives were just constantly in fear of manipulating evil spirits so life would go well with them. So that was kind of the context that we grew up in. How did you find them? Yeah, it's a great question. Through different mission agencies, they kind of have a pulse on different regions of the world and the needs there. And in the country of Indonesia, there's thousands of language groups, distinct language groups, and a lot of these people groups are isolated due to geography, and they have no one helping them. And so in a lot of these areas, the government is actually sympathetic to their needs because not only their spiritual needs,

but primarily physical needs, you know, they don't have access to like husband's saying, hospitals, medicine. And so, you know, infant mortality rates are sky high, and this life is very difficult. And so through different mission agencies, you can work with the government to work with these people. And in the eyes of the government, it's a plus because it's a humanitarian, you know, endeavor. And for spiritual causes, it's significant because it gives us an opportunity to present truth to them if they're interested. And the case of the one, pretty much the traditional route is our dad going in on a helicopter and just basically knowing there's a people group within this vast, wretched jungle, you know, we see huts, we see smoke landing on like a small rocky riverbed.

and then just going off into the jungle for three weeks with usually trying to find like a local guy that will take him and then just having an old school what do you even have he didn't even have like a GPS thing it was like a sat phone you know and find signal and say hey three weeks I'm going to try to be in this geographical location pick me up please come back and pick me up how do you know they're not gonna eat you're hostile you don't always in some places that some places that my dad traveled to he was the first you know western that anybody had seen and so the first appearance as he pops out you know women and children would go fleeing into the jungle just because they're so terrified. A lot of these places are that remote. But in the case of the Wano, yeah, there is a Wano man who lived in a town several days like, are we kike out and he had kind of assimilated himself into the town. He had learned the national language of Indonesian. And we knew that the Wano tribe had been asking for missionary since like the 70s.

Wow. And they had seen just the material blessings that come alongside with, you know, Westerners working alongside them in terms of like mediation. and sometimes creating a bush airstrip. And so for those reasons, they've been asking for people to come work with them since the 70s. And so when we got connected to that guy, he was kind of our entry point into the want to work.

And through him, we're able to initiate the initial relationships. So your dad, your dad goes in first and then we're, and then. How old are you guys when this is going on? Yeah, I was, I was five when we moved to Indonesia. And we're two years apart, stairs up down. Five, three, two and one. So, yeah, my youngest brother was born in Indonesia. From Florida.

Okay. in the panhandle. Yeah. Yeah, my dad was kind of a hippie. He was like a surfer dude. He just wanted to like get married, live on a boat and like sail around the world and homeschool their kids. Like that was his idea. But he came to Christ at the age of like 18 from a surfer buddy and then got plug into a church and was involved in like teaching a Sunday school class and was exposed to like an old school like missionary documentary that showed, you know, a family going in and showed that there's still like unreached, unengaged people groups in the world that because of their geographic isolation have no chance of hearing the gospel. And that blew his mind. He was like, I had no idea

there's still people groups like this out there. And so he was in a senior year with getting his marine biology degree. He stopped that. He was running his own charter business with my mom. They kind of shut that down and jumped straight into Bible school, missions training, had all of us along the way. And then went over to Indo, Indonesia. And that's where our youngest brother, Ash, was born. And then, yeah, started doing survey work, surveyed a bunch of different people groups, but the Wano people were extremely just, like, inviting and hospitable and said, like, we really want you here. And so mom and dad felt burdened, and the invite was there. And so moved our family into the jungle. And I think dad spent, what was it, like a month building like a little bush house,

just with the travel do, it's kind of going in with the posture of, we're in the jungle. Like, I didn't come from the jungle. I don't know how to live here. There's no Home Depot, no lows. you know, show us how to survive. And so the Wano really adopted our family into their tribe, came alongside us, helped us build our houses the way they built them. So literally with like axes, man, like our floors that we grew up on, our bark floors with like thatch on our roofs. We would just sweep the dirt through the gaping cracks on the floor.

You know, it was very rustic. What is the, what's the, what's the family style? How connected to the outside world of the Wana? Are they, I mean, because obviously if there's a man that lives in a town and there's a simulated, but I mean, how, if you have to go by helicopter, how, how much, of a connection do they have to the outside or the modern world? Like, or there are ideas of, do they, do they, you know, have any technology out there? Is it all, is it also very, I mean, when we first moved in, you know, they didn't. They all wore tradition and clothing. So the dudes

were gourds and like a little bum flap and the women wore grass skirts. And that was it. You know, Luke, there are many things that operate quietly in the background. municipalities, powers, and unwanted subscriptions to that streaming service that you bought during football season. And that's that one free trial you meant to cancel, but you didn't. Yeah, you need to exercise that. Yeah. One way to do that practically is Rocket Money.

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taking your money on your account every single month that you don't remember about. So before you start treating your bank account like a paranormal file case, go to Rocket Money and bring the hidden things into light, cancel those unwanted subscriptions that you no longer serves you, and take back authority over your budget. Yeah, and Rocket Money really helps you stay accountable too. It's got a very intuitive dashboard that tracks for spending, helps you stay on budget. And for me, it helped really me see where we were spending monthly as a family, decide to cut down on things or overspending on, you know, maybe on dining out. And also, it creates a custom budget for you. So you can really stay on track. It's like having

a personal accountant on your phone, on your, on your laptop that you can not only just tracks your spending, but also shows you how to cancel things that you are spending too much on or not using. It's probably saving thousands of dollars this year, to be honest. So this has been one of those tools that we continue to talk about and continue to love here on blurry creatures. Rocket money will even try to negotiate your bills for you and they'll deal with the customer service so you don't have to. So let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at RocketMoney.com slash blurry. That's rocketmoney.com slash blurry. Rocketmoney.com slash blurry. The one guy who was able to find his way out to like a town, when he was

really young, his family actually took him to a whole different people group, like a month's hike away. And then from there, he was able to kind of in his teen years, eventually find his way out to the coast. But that was kind of like a one in a million. So the rest of the people were, yeah, I didn't know the national language in Tunisian, didn't know anything about the outside world. You know, basically saw themselves as just us and the seven different people groups surrounding the other tribes. And they, and they, you know, things have changed like due to like 5G and like smartphones. And I mean, the world like. Bomber.

Yeah. I mean, oh yeah, it's incredible. It's incredible. The changes that have taken place in the last 20 years. like things have changed dramatically, but when we first moved in, yeah, it was very, it was very remote. And like, like, he said, weeks. Yeah, not pink hair yet. Thank goodness. But, but it was, you know, it would be weeks of hiking in order to get out somewhere. And oftentimes, just to be able to carry a supplies for that alone, it would be too much of an ordeal. So,

very isolated. But a lot of, a lot of the benefit to the government starting to make more inroads into the interior Papua. Because when we first moved in, the infant mortality rate was 80%. Wow. Like women would have kids and they would die, you know, usually between one and two from malaria and pneumonia. And so even just simple like Tylenol and antibiotics was able to, I mean, like save tons of lives. Yeah. So there's definitely benefit. You know, the harshness of their living condition was so poor. The tribe was, we calculated probably around 1,500 people for the entire people group.

So they had just been dwindling. And a lot of that was due to, you know, due to just their physical condition and how harsh and harsh life was. They were literally scraping an existence off a side of a mountain, but also is due to their worldview, and they were killing themselves off because of their fear of evil spirits and the intertribal conflict. It's amazing because they didn't have formal chiefs. They didn't live in large villages. The one were semi-nomadic, which is fascinating because not like hunter-gatherers, they would actually take huge sections of the mountain and garden, but they had not developed a way to create the ground fertile again. for the secondary crop. And so once that crop had produced enough food

and the ground was no longer fertile, they'd move on. And so they're semi-nomadic and so their houses are very simple. They're very much wanderers, and nothing is permanent. They wanna build stone structures, nothing permanent. So they're always moving. So five years in this place, 10 years in this place that we're moving on and so there's semi-nomatic. So it was really interesting because they just,

yeah, they left a very light footprint and had very hard lives, but incredible people, some of the most beautiful people, and their culture, their language, one of the most complicated languages we've ever encountered, far superior than any European language group. Their verbs can conjugate about 2,000 different ways. Wow.

So the complexity and the beauty of the language is astounding. Did you learn it? We did, yeah, we grew up speaking it, yeah, yeah. Give us a little taste. Yeah. Speak some Juwano. Speak some Juwano. Yeah.

We will, we know, not know, noed-we-we-we-we-we-werewana, What did you say? So I said, hey, thanks for having us. We're stoked to be here. That's awesome. Like they have a word for stoked? Say, what are your thoughts on? What are your thoughts on big?

There's level of stokes. Depends on the translation. That's right, yeah. Well, so yeah, I mean, before we get into sort of like, I really like to get into sort of what they believed and how the spirit world worked for them. But, you know, if you guys are young, very young, what is it like growing up, you know, on a bark floor in the jungle?

You probably don't know anything different. So that's just an advantage to that, right? But how is that? Do you guys? Makes modern life a little easier. Oh, man. I mean, like adventure was our middle name, you know? So we didn't have like electronics growing up.

We homeschooled. My mom is a super talented teacher, my dad as well. And so we had the most amazing education. But then to motivate us to like get through our math book was like, hey, after school, you guys can go play in the jungle, you know, which was just vast miles of like untouched diversion jungle. So it was a pretty epic child. And then our best friends were the Wano kids that we grew up with. So hunting with them, I mean, learning their ways or survival techniques, you know, setting snares in the jungle.

And then we were also a really avid entomologists. Like our favorite hobby was to find new things to science. So we literally have like all kinds of bugs named after our family. Really? As brothers. Like I got really into, you know, I mean, like weevils, like Triginotris weevils. It's super tiny weevil. It's like the size of a sesame seed.

but there's tons of new species. No scientists had ever been there. That's kind of wild. So you guys are, pun intended. You guys are finding and chronicling new... Are you friends with the... New creatures? New friends of those guys still?

Yeah. I mean, well, yeah, well, the Wanda people, especially, but we even, like, I was going to say, some of our best, even friends outside of, you know, the tribe were actually naturalist from Europe and all around the world, who we collaborated with to, you know, co-name, new insects, new butterflies. These old bearded guys from, like, Germany or Holland. It would spend their whole eyes, you know, they were the specialists on this one beetle or one butterfly.

And so it was a really neat childhood. And I brought a lot of the, you know, what couldn't be boring in school to life because it's like if you're studying science or, you know, it's like, well, hey, here's let's go out and, you know, make a new discovery. Well, and nurtured our, our love for the unknown. There's almost, there's like an addictive zeal to find something that's new to science. And like, it spurs you to venture further because you're like, like, what's up that mountain peak? Like, is there, are we going to find a new type of animal that? It's never been seen before. Yeah.

And so that really cultivated a love for cryptids and mysteries and discovery as well. So you learn the language. You get to know the people. You're probably going to start to hear more than stories about bugs. You're going to hear about everything weird and wild on the island. That's right. Totally. Yeah.

Yeah. The Wano people, they were amazing because they lived so close with the natural order. And so much of God's order is orderly. And they were incredible naturalist in the sense that, you know, every, every, you know, every type of plant had a property. that could be used, you know, whether medicinally or for this purpose or this purpose, you know, every, every bird had a unique name and a purpose, and they would, you know, decorate their septums with bird beaks and just, they had, they had such an appreciation for the natural world that we take for granted because we're not in it very often. Yeah. So it was,

it was amazing, but. Also dark. Growing up, we got to see really just the harsh realities of life and what it means to be lost and apart from Christ. And so it was heavy. What is their spiritual belief? Yeah, they're animists. And so they believe that everything around them is controlled by evil spirits. Territorial spirits, higher spirits, and everyone is malicious. They're all evil. And so really their worldview is just dominated by fear.

And from a specific bird, every type of bird could be a bad omen. How it flew across the trail was interpreted differently. Every rainbow, you know, we have these amazing rainbows in these virgin jungles. spectacular, almost on the daily. And they would see that and be like, man, this is a bad omen. They believed it was, you know, like the staff of their ancestors. And that meant someone's going to die soon. And so like everything that God created beautiful, they would interpret as, and this is a sign, this is an omen. And the oppression of the spirits was so strong. It was sad to see heartbreaking, really. And it causes a lot of, they believe that their women

can become witches. And so, you know, the deceiver, Satan from the beginning, he's been out to deceive and destroy mankind. And so growing up, we got to see that firsthand. The Juana were 1,500 people and really a dying-off people. Because if any of their young men or women died kind of prematurely got sick, and it seemed like not a supernatural cause, they would believe, man, one of our women while she was sleeping, her spirit came out and was a witch, wandering around, and it found one of us and killed us. So to preserve our people, like to save ourselves, like we need to find who this witch is. So divination was really, it was a common practice. Yeah, I remember even going out in the backyard in our neighbor, you know, up on his knoll, you know,

divining leaves and, you know, looking over his shoulder and asking questions, like, what are you doing? And they would take, you know, a certain type of leaf, cook it in a pit with hot rocks. And once the steam had all settled and everything had been cooked, you know, you know, it was unraveled very carefully, very gingerly, and then they would gaze into the leaves and each leaf was named in advance with somebody in the community. And they would go through every leaf and see which leaf was different, was still raw, was uncooked.

And you guys, that was the way that did. Reading the tea leaves. Every single time. I mean, without exception, there's one leaf in there that would be green. Which is so strange. Wild stuff. Why aren't all the leaves cooked? There's always one that one would be raw and they'd say, this is so-and-so.

to the lady. And then they would set a trap to kill her. And I mean, not far from our village. There's one time we had to go out to the coast for a, there's actually like a, there's like this little conference that our local mission team was having. And so we left for like a few days. And we came back and we found out that one of our, a dear friend, some of our neighbors, they had actually divined and decided that three women were responsible for the deaths of these certain young people in the village and they actually took it upon themselves to murder them. And so not far from our home up into the jungle, they had basically set up an ambush and they sent young people to warn them.

One of our, it was like our best friend. And he and his four brothers were orphaned very young. And so one of the women who was like a widow took him in, raised him, sweetest lady. We knew her, loved her. We knew our like our best friend and his brothers. I mean, we were best friends and did everything together. And he was the one that, you know, was part of this conspiracy. He went and told her, hey, people are coming. They think you're witch. They're going to shoot you. You got to come with me right now. And so he took her and the other two women and took him up in the jungle where there's an ambush waiting and just like filled him full of arrow. So. All right, Mother's Day is coming up. It's one of those moments where everyone gets to hang out

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And it's only at the beginning because that moment leads to real support, maternity care, baby clothes, all the things that a woman would need in that time. Diapers counseling so much more and get involved. Simply dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby. That's pound 250 B-A-B-Y or visit preborn.com slash blurry. That's preborn.com slash blurry. Do they ever turn suspicion on you guys being like the white people in the village? Will you guys ever like under suspicion for? That's a great question. Yeah. There was over the years, you know, people questioned, you know, why were we there. We were welcomed in. And immediately before we could present any kind of truth, all we did was learn their language and culture and

serve them through, through just showing, displaying the love of Christ. And a lot of that came through just serving them through medicine. So caring for them, we set up a little clinic and the first probably three hours of every day, my parents, that's all I do is medical for the village. And they saw their babies being saved. They saw that we loved them. And a lot of our, you know, our lives were a testimony to something different about us. That was very attractive. You know, the men would ask my dad, why don't you beat your wife? Like, we never see you beating her. Why? And why do your kids listen to you when you call them? Like, they were like assounded by that. Like, I was such a, such a radical thing. And, you know, I gave my dad an opportunity to share,

like, well, I love my wife. She's my friend. Like, why would I beat her? Or my kids are my treasure and they're my friends. And we're a family unit. And so all these things, the, the solid light of Christ was very appealing to them. They're interested. But there were questions over the years. I know some people, you know, they didn't have chiefs, but they did have, they would call them big men, the big men of the village. And they were like, you know, if a clan had like, you know, four brothers, they'd usually be like, they'd be considered big men. And they'd all had, they were polygamists. So they'd have multiple wives, usually. If you're a big man, you'd have, you'd have to be a big man. And your thighs would have to be ripped. A group in the wrong place. Yeah. You could be a big man. And so you'd be a big man. And so you'd be a big man. And so. And they had dreadlocks. So the bigger your dreads, the bigger, the big man you were. That could be more of a responsibility trying to take care of two women, though.

Yeah, I'm not saying I want that, but like, you mean, a big man, big lettuce is quite the allure. Yeah. Yeah. So from time to time, there was big men who conspired against, you know, and questioned why we're there. And the one were very boisterous. They wouldn't hide anything. So if they had a problem with you, you would know. And so there's always, you know, sometimes fight with us.

fights a breakout or people would get mad about such and such a thing and come to my dad. But we were threatened from time to time. But it would always like once they cooled off, it was never an issue. So how much of, we were loved and protected by them? Yeah. How much are you think of their faith was relegated to principalities and powers versus just like just superstitions passed down? That's a great question.

Yeah. Yeah. Everything they, they believed in their worldview was because they saw and interacted with it. So the territorial spirits all had names because. they knew these spirits. A lot of the communication that go between the principalities and them usually was like a shaman,

a witch doctor. And so we had a couple in our area and almost nightly, they would be tormented by these spirits that would come and tell them things. And with that, brought a lot of status in the village. Like we saw it firsthand,

it's, there's no telephones, you know, so in a three-day hike away in a village if someone passes away, it's going to take three days to bring the news. But the shaman, the witch doctors, they could get word of it like instantly like that night. Oh, this spirit came

and told me, this person died. And sure enough, three days later, a messenger brings news of it. And the village is like, whoa, like, dude, how did you know that? Like, you got power, yeah. So, yeah. So they saw things firsthand. They would, you know, have encounters with evil spirits in the jungle. Were they against you guys preaching the gospel? Did there become like some pushback, especially from the witch doctor. Well, it sounds like it took like three or four years for you to do it. Yeah, it was about close to five years before we started teaching anything. So let me ask you, I want to clarify it for our listeners too, because for me.

So when you say that since the 70s, the one we're asking for missionaries, they just wanted medical, right? They're not asking for, for, they want medical. Yeah, with the gospel. Two tribes away, there had been like a Western missionary back in the 70s. And they had seen, yeah, kind of transformation brought, the medical. And so that's deep down, that's what they were. that we were wanting and we're asking for, and then knew a Western missionary would bring that.

But all along, my parents explained, like, hey, we have this really important message. Really important message we want to bring you. That's why we're living here. That's why we're learning your language and culture. You know, we'll bring you when we're ready. Trust you for trust. And be like, hey, we're not just here to like white night and save you and give you this Bible.

And a lot of missionary activity that involves parachuting into a place and handing out a tract or trying to speak through the translator for an hour and then leaving. that in our mind doesn't qualify as great commission missions. That's not what Jesus wants us to do it. He wants us to make disciples who understand all that he's communicated and revealed. And so it extends far beyond evangelism. So we were there for the long run with the goal in mind of actually seeing an indigenous mature church replicate among this people group.

And so my parents under not just their own accountability, but through consultants, had a whole process of and language evaluations before they were even qualified to speak at a worldview hard level. because when you're trying to, when you're getting deep in the truths of God and you're actually trying to push back against the kingdom of darkness and communicate again, core truths of Christianity.

It's like you can't have the vocabulary of a five-year-old. People are going to think you're an idiot and they're never going to receive that. Like you have to be able to actually relate with them on a deep level. But beyond that, like you, what you were saying, you know, you have to be able to earn the right to speak.

And so years of serving them, living among them, watching them, you know, us growing up with the kids. Like we were like really adopted. adopted and beloved by the tribe. And so when it came time to first present truth from the gospel, they were interested, we had an audience. They were interested to hear what we had to say. It's hard in the early days, though, because really, you know, when the gospel comes in, it changes a false worldview with the truth of God's word. But before you do that, you don't have

the grounds to make change. And so we're there literally as outsiders welcomed in and we're here to observe and learn. And so one of the things that the one I would do, again, it's all about self-preservation. If a child, you know, firstborn dies, the second child, the mom would chop its pinky finger off. Soon after, you know, just chop it off right out the first knuckle and hang that up in the house. And this is an offering to the spirit of the deceased sibling. Don't come and take the life of your younger sibling. And so most all the want of people, they're missing, you know, fingers. Lots of digits from their fingers are gone. Sometimes three fingers. Never their thumbs, though, or, you know, always the thumb was allowed because you need that.

But a lot of the other digits would be gone. early days, you know, it was hard to observe that. I mean, it's a beautiful little newborn baby. And a couple of days after it's born, you know, they're coming to the medical clinic because it's fingers chopped off. And, you know, your reaction is to speak into that. Like, this is terrible. The parents are loving parents. They're doing this for the preservation of their child. And until you have God's word, a higher authority to speak into and say, now this is not right based on God's word, you don't have a voice or else you're just, the solo dude from the outside is coming in and saying You just hear, you just say their whole world view.

You know, so it was hard in the early days because, yeah, a lot of wife beating witchcraft, manipulation to self, you know, creating, making sacrifices, mutilation. I don't think a lot of people realize how, you know, the principalities work. It's a very legalistic structure depending on what principality you pick to serve. And I think the Prince of Peace that is such a defining term of what Christianity offers to people, you lay down that burden of all this legalism. And I think that whether you get in the new age and you go to Costa Rica and you start doing all, it's a bunch of rules. That's right.

You got to follow it specifically. And you got to like, you take all the burden of a God and you put it on yourself and you have to like figure it all out like some complex language. Yes. And like the gospel is such a freeing thing. And I think, well, I got, I don't, why would I serve God? It's like they have a misunderstanding of how much freedom is presented and how. Yeah, that's right. You know?

And it's crazy. It's interesting is in the case of this of like pioneer missions, what you really see is the, you really see the church, it's the story of the church militant obeying and fulfilling the Great Commission. And when you see the arrival of Jesus on the scene and you read about, you know, his ministry in the gospels, you see that he came in power and Israel was full of demons. And a huge part of Jesus's ministry was, you know, exercising these demons and casting them out. Yeah. And when confronted by the religiously, leaders and when charged with the case of, you know, casting him out by the power of Satan.

Jesus said, you know, can I, can a house stand on its own if it's divided? No. Right. You said, yeah, I'm not casting them out by the prince of demons, but if you see me casting them out by the, by the spirit of God, know that the kingdom has come. And so when you get into the teachings of Paul and you see that, you know, to be a believer is to be transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his son, Colossians 1, you realize that all of this is a spiritual battle. And what's interesting is that when we moved back to America about five years ago, our lifestyle didn't change,

but we saw such a lack of spiritual opposition, like the blurriness disappeared in a sense, like here in Nashville or in Florida where we live, and you go, what's different? Why don't we see more of that? And I think the reason is because when Jesus, I think he inaugurated the kingdom of God in his first coming, and when he ascended, before he sent it,

he said, all power in heaven, earth has been giving. to me and then he transferred that to his disciples, go make disciples of all the earth, you know, preach the gospel to all the nations. And so what you see is the church militant, it's actually taking back ground from Satan. Yeah. And in America, by God's grace,

we've had truth for a long time, for hundreds of years. And so you see that while they're still evil, while there's still cults and all sorts of mess stuff happening here in Nashville, right? You see that the enemy's been kicked out by far and large. You have all these churches.

There's witness. there's Christian witness, there's salt and light in this area. But when you're on the front lines of that battle in a pioneer missionary context, that is Satan's kingdom. And you're actually bringing light for the first time. And that's when sparks fly. You're taking ground. When it comes to investing, most people think they've got two options.

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investment advisory services offered by Stash Investments LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor, investing involves risk. Well, we don't understand the light and dark concept as Westerners because there's so much light here. Yes. We don't understand that like, if there's churches all over, people that aren't just that benefit from those churches. That's right.

Just being there. And you go into a remote place, it's super dark. You're the only light in that. And so you're, you kind of have to huddle together to survive. And a lot of people. It's oppressive. It's like, it is oppressive. You're the only ones.

A lot of people think, though, that, oh, Satan's strategy is in the West is that, you know, He doesn't want people, he doesn't want people to believe in the supernatural. So he just hides himself. And I don't think that's the case. I think he's partially true. Partially true, but I think he's been kicked out far by far and large. There's still pockets. And that doesn't mean that our neighbors are still unsaved and need to know the gospel, but it's different.

It's like, it's like we've, the church has taken territory and we're here present and there's witness and there's Christian churches. But yeah, growing up on the front, on the front line of that, it was like, it was intense because like Hudson said the opposition was real. And as a family personally in our own spiritual lives, like it was, it was, it was, it was, It was intense. Some of my craziest memories are right before we were going to present the gospel. And so in order to speak truth in a context where people don't even understand who the God of the Bible is,

you have to start with the beginning. Who is God? Who is Creator God? How has he revealed himself? What we know from his word is how he revealed himself. You know, the creation of man, our relationship with God, how is broken in the fall. You start with the beginning and you walk through the key redemptive stories throughout Scripture, leading up to the life of Christ.

so people can understand the Bible who God is in his redemptive story. And so as we started this process, and man, there's so much interest, the Wannerow Gathering, there was such opposition. I mean, you can almost feel the tension in the air. And our family, man, like had never struggled with malaria in those first four years, just started getting just hammered with malaria. There's almost like two of us sick with malaria every single week. It was just like on repeat.

And then you get better and you get hit with malaria again. And again, it was so brutal. And I mean, there's neighbors who had observed, they saw, like, demons, like, coming and entering our house. Like, they'd be up in the hill and be like, like, dude, we just yesterday, like, we saw something go into your house, you know. What were they saying? And just like a spirit or a fat creature or what? No, like an evil spirit. They're like, we saw it go into your house.

And we were, I mean, just being plagued with just dreams and all kinds of just, like, spiritual oppression. And the, the reliance we had to have on the Lord. And like the prayer was just was so heavy. It was so real. And it was really interesting though, seeing the Lord preserve our family, allowing truth to go forth, and then validate his message. And so one of my coolest memories is I think we're working up to Moses, right, in the Exodus. Yeah, I think we were right before Yahweh God descends on Mount Sinai. So you guys are doing like Bible studies.

Yeah, six days a week. Yeah, it started five. And then they were like, we want to hear more. So we started meeting six days a week and we were teaching foundationally. So leading up to this, in addition to language learning, once they got to a level of fluency, we started actually taking part of the scriptures and doing initial translation. So basically every key story that we wanted to communicate, we wanted to have God's word to back it up. So we weren't saying this doesn't come from me.

This actually, this truth came back to my answer. It's like, I'm not the one who's just bringing this to you. It's actually, there's a higher authority behind us. So we always wanted to have God's word present. Do they have a written language or do you have to create that? Oral culture. Oral culture. So you guys created your dad.

Yeah. My parents did. Could you create the written language? Yeah, yeah. So we had to do that prior to teaching. Create an alphabet and then teach the tribe like literacy. You just have to read right in their own language. Yeah, a fun fact.

Talk about an uphill battle. Like you don't have to assimilate and get the trust. You're like, we've got to create the written language from an oral language. These guys, I mean, are some of the strongest dudes. I mean, they just swing axes all day. Yeah. Their hands are so call so you can hardly, like, feel. And so you get them a pencil and they would just like snap it.

You know, be like, so they had to learn how to like gingerly hold a pencil. fine motor skills. And then you got to teach them out of like, right? I love how often you say gingerly. That's right. But what's incredible is that, what's incredible is that they are, they are equally, equally gifted and intelligent as just any, as anyone. And they picked up literacy rapidly. Yeah. And they, for him is a massive pride issue because they're like, this is incredible. Now we can, we actually are preserving our language and writing and we can pass down, they have a small library now, a medical manuals of God's Word. And it's like, and like, we're passing us on to our children. Like, this is a legacy. And the unto, the untold,

the untold, you know, thing about missions that secularist hate is that the truth is that from an anthropological perspective, missions, while there's been bad missions done over the centuries, missions by far and large, has been the main preserver of cultures around the world because it's actually given people access to not only truth and truth from scripture that actually frees them from self-harm, but also resources, like their own languages, you know, actually adopted into writing. There's so many people groups in the world that are vanishing rapidly today because they're all oral cultures and they're just be assimilated into larger

national languages and all the beauty and the interest, like the intricacy of their culture is disappearing. But missions actually preserves that because it actually gives people it actually honors their culture because we see at the end of the story in Revelation 7 that, you know, there's going to be believers from all these different tribes, people's tongues,

and they're all worshipping the lamb. And it's like, God is a God of diversity and he loves every people group, even a people group of 1500. Like they're created by God, they have unique language and culture, but he desires that they would know him. It gives ownership, too, of their own culture, right? Because now we can save all of this. But to answer your question about opposition, like, we, like, there's so much curiosity

to begin with as we started working through. And then we reached a point, yeah, we're right where God is about to descend on Mount Sinai. Moses is there with the Israelites in the wilderness. And, you know, there had been some division, you know, which doctor's talking to dudes and like, man, is this truth? Is this not truth? And we had a whole bunch of the Juana Warriors, like, take off into the jungle. They all went on, like, a big hunting trip.

And we're like, man, like, this is such a powerful story. Like, God is sitting on Mount Sinai. He's making a covenant with his people. Such a key redemptive story. Like, man, we wish everyone was here. And it was super cool because one of the night right before we were going to teach that lesson. We were all sleeping. But the next morning, like, we woke up and the whole village was just a buzz.

Everyone was just chatting. did you guys see what happened last night? We went up to the teaching, like, tent where everyone gathers. And I mean, everyone was there. And we were like, whoa, like, what happened last night? So it wasn't until after the lesson we taught, we started asking some questions. Like, you guys would not believe it. They were like last night.

We're all way down at the Yamo River, which is like the very bottom of the mountain on this hunting trip. And they were all just like camping out. And they all had their boats because it's right on the border of a different tribe. And they're always warring together. So anytime you go down there, there's like good hunting. but it's like the border so yeah

it's like you don't know who you're going to run into so they're totally decked out with like their paint and their bows

ready for any surprise and they're hunkered around their fire and it was late at night and all of a sudden overhead came this like crazy like meteor like bright shining

flaming rock that just like they said like it buzzed down over their heads it was like so bright that every leaf in the jungle was like visible and there's just crazy cloud of smoke

following this thing and like this rainbow wrapped around this, this meteor. And they had never seen anything like this. And they were so freaked out that they literally dropped their bows and their net bags, which that's like your, you know, your sidearm. Like you never drop, you know, your weapon. And your net bag has like all of your manly items. Your beetle nut, like your little comb for fixing your hair.

Like you don't just drop that. But they were so terrified. They literally could not think straight and just ran up the mountain. in the dark, you know, all the way back. And it's interesting because they, they watch the stars every night. I mean, they know the things that happen in the heavens. They know things in creation.

And they have stories about, I mean, they see shooting stars all the time. There's no light pollution out there. But it was such an event that, like, rocked them to the core that they instantly knew, like, this is a sign from the creator. Like, we don't know what it means, but this is absolutely terrifying.

And, like, we have to hear the creator's story. And so, to them like that was their interpretation like they saw this thing they thought the creator is like validating his word and he's trying to like shake us up and the way they described that too is so alarm is that it was so low passing and so large and like again like the aura of light again just like illuminated everything and just lit up the sky and there's no sound but it's just like absolutely terrifying and what's interesting is that there's there is a after after the math we're able to connect to some other folks later and there's actually a completely other

another tribe in the area who actually witnessed the same thing. And so these were like multiple witnesses, I witnessed this thing. But of course, we were thinking like, where's the impact zone? We got to go find this. Yeah, so anybody's going to crash. ABC said they're like, we don't know where it went. We don't think it crashed. But it's basically it scared them.

And it really challenged them to like reconsider their worldview. But it's interesting. Like my dad didn't correlate the two, but like later reading through Revelation and it describes like, you know, almost like the angel of the Lord as like this like bright. you know, just trying like the sun with like a rainbow around it and like this trailing, like this, this like smoke just kind of reminded him of exactly what the want to describe. And so he wasn't making any correlations, but just interesting, like, you know, was it an angel from the Lord, you know, that just like flew over them and rocked them? Or was it actually a physical meteor?

We're not sure, but the Juana warriors, I mean, these tough dudes that, I mean, they've all, like, killed people and they've seen war and, like, they're not afraid of anything. We're like, so rocked, like knees buckling that they came all the way back and sat through the lessons and were like, the Lord just spoke to us. Like we have to hear this message. It's interesting that they aren't afraid in the physical sense, but they're very afraid in the spiritual sense. The fear is like, right. Covering it reminds me that gods must be crazy when they're fearing the Coca-Cola bottle. You know what I mean? Like they don't, there's this spiritual fear that I think the principality puts over for submission. Well, and you know,

It's really interesting, but I feel like humans almost have an innate sense of knowing what's real and physical and what isn't. Yeah. Like one of our good friends who, praise the Lord, became a believer. He used to be this like really staunch, which doctor just never had a sleepful night in his life, just was always tormented by spirits. Came to know the Lord, totally transformed his life. But he was out hunting one evening. And he was way out by this river, across the river, went up. By this time, this was a couple years back, he had a flashlight, and was coming back down to the words of the river, and, like, you saw a dude smoking a cigarette on a rock, without a flashlight, just dark, and he was like, who's way out here at this time of night?

Like, let me go over and say hi. And he said, the way he described it was, like, a sense came upon him as he approached, and he was like, it's not human. He's like, I just knew. Like, I can see his silhouette. He's crouched, and he's smoking a cigarette. see the, because they all grow their own tobacco and they roll it in banana leaves.

Just ripping heaters in the dinner. Yeah, and he was like, dude, like this was something unnatural. So he instantly like put an arrow, notch an arrow in his bow, pulled a back, is ready to shoot this thing. And he said it jumped up. Eyes glowed. He's like, eyes just like lit up. And it started jumping up and down, like chanting on this rock.

And he's like instantly the river like a flash flood came like to distance me from the spirit. And he's like, I shot an arrow at it. like straight at it is like just like nothing and he took up he was so scared so flash flood just hit and all of a sudden the river just yeah like this thing this territorial spirit who he's like later i went to to go and examine the rock and he was like living up there in the jungle there's like places where people like sit like rocks wood and you do that over time and it becomes like almost greasy like it becomes like a place where you sit you can tell and he was like man that that thing must have sat there like every night for like years like it's a territorial spirit like that's his

sitting spot he's like you can just tell about the like the rock and that's where he sits the one of actually had they you know they had a they had a key term that encompassed all of evil spirits a word that they would use but within that there's a there's a hierarchy of spirits and about four different ones and it ranged from like again like a territorial spirit like that everybody knew about like you know like and that you know in that cave or on that rock you're there's that spirit and we're gonna you know we're gonna go around this area or at the base of the river you know we're gonna make a sacrifice, a little appeasement, so that we can, you know, trespass through. But then there'd also be, like, dead ancestors. And so they had a whole category,

like we're talking about like the shadow babies. Like we're going to chop off this infant's finger so that his shadow, you know, brother doesn't come to hurt him. So like they weren't superstitious by nature like, oh, there's a, you know, there's a evil spirit under every rock and every knuck and cranny. It was like very an elaborate system. They understood that there's different categories of spirits. They did different things. They had names. They had personalities. They had physical, you know, distinctives. And they could, you know, it was interesting because, you know, for them, my cousin said, everything was supernatural. Like, the integration of the spiritual end of the physical was just, was very fluid. Yeah. And so

the way that spirits manifest themselves sometimes is in a figure of a man. And he's, he's smoking. Like, what's up with that? Like, dude, you know, the spirit smoke? The way he brought that up to me too, I was in that he smoked in that movie. Wasn't, maybe? He smoked in that movie? Wasn't, never, remember that? I was out late at night hunting, though. And I, I was, I was out far. And it was probably close to midnight and I was on my way back home and walking through the village turned on my flashlight just didn't want to disturbing one and he saw him and he ran up and he was like hey Hudson he's like can I bar your troll cam I was like dude what'd you find he's like I have no clue he's like it's a little man a demon man out in the jungle and I know where he sits like can we get a picture

of him because he knew out his trail way into like histories and stuff and I was like a little I don't know if I want to dabble with that kind of stuff you know you can go too far um So, but just, yeah, super interesting. But some of their spirits, like there's one, one of their most famous is a woman. And she's like a spirit of the clouds, like a spirit of the mist. And she's pale white with red eyes, straight black hair. And her breasts are so long that she throws them over her shoulder to nurse her spirit baby on her back. Really freakish, like long fingers, like blue veins, like freakish.

And it's super interesting because. Because they've never seen a straight-haired person. You know, they've never seen a white person. You know, they've never seen someone with red eyes before. Like, some of the ways that they describe these evil spirits are beyond the realm of things that they know. Beyond the natural, right? Beyond the natural, right? They don't have a grid for a right.

Well, that's what I was going to ask you, like, how much do you think is superstition versus actual, like, a legitimate description of these principles? Entities or demons. Well, I mean, from what, from their worldview and what they've told us, everything has a, a reason, everything has a purpose, the different sacrifices they do have all been passed down and been direct instructions from these entities. So nothing is just, you know, like in the States, you know, we have old folklore of like spilling stalled or like it's bad luck if like what the cat walks under the bladder or something. You know, like superstition.

Yeah. They don't have that type of superstition. It's all, I mean, this like is direct teaching from these. It's grounded in something that's real. And sometimes, like, he was alluding to, like, even like certain bird calls, they interpret that different way. That could border on the edge of, like, just superstition. Like, I mean, there's probably nothing to that.

Or like the rainbow, you know, like, that's a creation of God's been twisted to be, instead of a promise of God, it's been turned into this evil omen, right? So there's certain things like that that definitely enter into the realm of the superstition. And what was, but there was a lot of the core tenets of their animistic worldview that were grounded in absolute truth. What was super fascinating was in the early days of teaching, the first time, and we talked about Satan and how, you know, he rebelled against God. He was cast out with a third of the angel that followed him.

And we attributed the evil spirits that they worship to these demonic powers. And when they learned the story of Eve and being deceived by the serpent and the intention of the serpent, like, you could just see the light bulbs turn on. They're like, Satan is always after to deceive and destroy people. And they would literally say, like, these are the stories of our ancestors. like our worldview, like the spirits are always out to destroy us. And they just like saw the correlation. What's been passed on to us has been to our own demise.

Like these are like this is from saying himself. Like he hates me. That's what I asked though. As you guys are like on teaching and unwrapping the story of the Bible, are there mirrors in their creation stories, mirrors in the and their, they're like, oh, this is similar. But you have a twisting because this is obviously like. under the dominion of.

There's certain some things. I mean, there's certainly some things. And what's interesting at the Wana is that they border a tribe of Western Donnie who actually had missionaries really since the 60s. And I mean, the Western Donnie were full on. I mean, cannibals, actually the Wano were two. Actually, they were all cannibals until the 60s. But what happened is that when missionaries first came in.

I got to tell a story here real quick. Interject. We've like literally hiked a mountain called Mount Cyclops. in search of an extinct echidna to find it. On the way, we found like new species of- A what has them? Akinna. Like, what is that?

An echidna, it's the only other mammal that lays eggs, like a potapus, but it's covered in spikes. It's like a spiky, porcupine. But it has a snout that's like this long, and it roots for like worms and stuff. But it's crazy claws. Yeah, that's it right there. Yeah, it has a pouch, it's a marsupial.

So a laser egg. Everybody knows the platypus. This is his friend, the Akedon. and nobody knows about. And he's the other superhero on the animal. We're like a mammal that lays eggs. Absolutely bizarre. So we're up on Mount Cyclops, like the summit camping, looking for this thing,

had found new species of other insects along the way. One of the, actually a beetle that we caught up there is named after me. My dad named after me. Exelina had Sony, which is a little crustaceous diving beetle. But we're up there camping, and one of the dudes that was with us was from another travel group. And we were telling stories. And he was like, yeah, I'm a cannibal. Like, yeah, I've eaten some people in the past.

and he was like you know I came to Christ and so obviously my worldviews shifted but I was just like like whoa I'm camping up here with the ex-cannibal yeah I just wild stuff out there there was was more relegated to like you know there's different varieties of cannibalism but it's like to you know a small piece of somebody especially a part of somebody to you know bring on their power like a ritual like I like eating people you know so it's but like I spent 17 years in the jungle and all I got was this diving beetle named after me Yeah. It's interesting how like spirituality works in terms of spreading the gospel in America.

Our show does well because people don't believe in the supernatural and the spiritual stuff. And so we're like, hey, there's Bigfoot's out there and all kinds of weird stuff. Oh, wow, you got to check this out. And then over there, it's almost like it's a bunch of electricians and you bring over a different wiring and they're all ready to go. That's right. Because they understand, oh, this is spiritual. This is my story. But this is, this is a better story of what I believe.

And I think that we're all fighting a different thing. And I think that for the first five years, it sounds like you're bringing a physical benefit of the gospel to the people, not a spiritual benefit yet. When does the spiritual benefit start to kick in? Because it sounds like they're getting healed and we're living longer and our babies aren't dying. Well, what's interesting is that, and it's so sad because you see that there's a lot of people who have a theology of like, you know, well, God's just going to say these people, you know, because he's merciful and he's patient. and he desires that, none would perish, you know. And yet you see the difference between general and special revelation.

And so, you know, the Juana were, they're surrounded by beauty. They're surrounded by God's creation. They're surrounded by spirituality. You know, they recognized that there were powers. And yet, and all of that, you know, they would never find God. And so, you know, it goes back to Romans 1.

It talks about, you know, all this was before people and yet they rejected it, you know, and they trade it for a lie. And they decided to worship creation. itself. And so, you know, general revelation won't save any tribe. It won't save any unreached people group. It has to be paired with special revelation, which is his word. And so that was really what we were bringing. And when, when things started to shift, it really, I mean, it started back with a promise that God was going to send a deliverer. I mean, that was just incredible.

I was so excited for them because they were like, you know, they, you know, felt the burden of the curse. And we described, you know, the fall of creation. So they were anticipating you guys coming. Or no. Oh, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. I was going to teaching.

Oh, it was time to teaching. Yeah. So, like, Genesis 3, like, like, the, you know, the first reference to Christ coming. Yeah. Okay. The seat of the woman. That really excited them because they realized that, you know, even though this misery and suffering had been, you know, turned on the earth.

And, like, they felt it again. Like, they worked literally digging their hands, like, you know, scratched living off the side of a mountain, you know, harvesting sweet potatoes, like, carrying firewood. Like, they felt the curse of the earth and how it grown and they hated Adam for it. but they also saw like God has planned to redeem. And so as we got, you know, plowed through the Old Testament and really, really explained sin and what it was, how is the defense to God, how we all need a savior, you know, how the penalty for sin is death.

Somebody has to die. You know, they were primed to really understand, you know, the reality of Jesus and how he filled that. And that's why it's so dangerous to jump straight to like John 316 when you're working with a culture, a post-Christian or a culture that's never encounter Christianity. It's like they're not primed to understand who God is, who Jesus is. And increasingly, increasingly in America, people on the street, they're in that boat. So if you approach them, you talk about God send Jesus, you can't just expect that they

understand what all those things mean. We're beyond Billy Graham where you can have massive crusades and just reference to those things. And everybody goes, oh yeah, I grew up in church. I know exactly what you're talking about. So the same thing with the Wano. As we started to get into the life of Christ, they were enamored with who he was, his power. And they recognized that he was God divine, he had a man. and he empathized with them in their suffering.

And we got through, you know, the death burial and resurrection. And it was incredible because I remember some of the first conversations, there was a guy who, you know, had been helping to translate these portions of scripture as we were going along. And so he was kind of privy to the end of the story before a lot of the other people. And I remember hearing, you know, dad shared stories about how, you know, he got through that story. And he realized he was like, wow, the savior is Jesus, isn't it? And like he is like he is a sacrificial land that John talked about. And he died for me.

Yeah, we didn't give things away. We just always talked about coming to liver. Yeah, we just kept it. Year seven, year six. Yeah, well, year five. You know, six days a week for three months took us to get through up to the ascension of Christ, from creation of Christ. But to answer your question, the beauty of the gospel is that it can penetrate any culture, any people group. And it only changes the heart. It only changes the sinful aspect of a culture. So, you know, whereas other world views, it imposes an outward change, a forum, legalism. And a lot of, a lot of, you know, anthropologists see, like, missions work as like, oh, you guys are like a bunch of colonialists. Like, you're taking it and you're imposing your own culture.

But really, we went in to live as closely with the one of people as we could. So, like, my dad had huge dreadlocks and a giant net hair. All of us have our septum pierced. We never wore shirts, you know, we did face page. We were almost one of ourselves. Do you guys put your nose rings back in ever or what happened? Oh yeah, yeah. If you give me like a pencil, I could probably stick it through.

But we tried to. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we're not. It's not shocking. You guys are both married. Did you guys take Juana wives or what? No. You just have to go to Starbucks and you'll see it.

Yeah. Do you ever date any wanna ladies in here out there? No. But we had a lot of men who wanted, who wanted us to take their daughters. Yeah. Some of our best friends that were girls, their dads are hoping. hoping but yeah but you yeah i don't work i don't think westerners realize you kind of have that like you know ivory tower view of every single culture out there's doing great and they're doing

awesome and they're surviving and they're happy they're happy by themselves we come in and we ruin it all exactly it's like no they're all dying it's much more nuanced than that they're killing each other they're cutting their the baby's fingers off they don't know it's it's it's that's what i'm saying the physical benefit of the gospel comes in and they start to slowly change so you're You're getting to a place where they're warming up to the gospel. It feels like the light and the dark are starting to compete for space. Absolutely. And that's literally the vocabulary that they used when they first heard the gospel.

They understood we got through the teaching. That's what they said. The light has come here. Like we didn't realize how dark and impressive this was until now we know truth. And that transformation was gradual. It didn't happen overnight. but the sin issues of the culture dramatically began to shift as husbands began to love their wives value their kids not beat them, stopped taking second wives.

And they're such a hot-headed people. Like we could be best friends, but you're a part of a different clan. I'm a part of a different clan. If my clan defends your clans, I'm going to shoot you. If you survive, we'll be chewing beetle nut and smoking tomorrow. You know, like they forgive and forget so quickly. but if anything happens, like loyalty and friendships just shatter.

It's only about clans. So they're always worn with each other. I mean, like, my parents have had to bandage up some crazy, like, arrow wounds and, you know, guys coming in with arrow sticking out of their sternums. And their master archers, right? Oh, yeah. I witnessed a removal of an arrow out of a guy's sternum, and that's what saved his life.

It was embedded deep into the bone. And he lived and he's okay. The Lord saved his life. It just like a millimeter to the side. It was just, you're going to have with an arrow sticking out? Yeah. Yeah. Is it like two hours at the mouth? I'm like, message, sir.

Is it like what you expect where, like, all of a sudden an arrow just flies out of the bushes and kills an animal and you're like, where did that come from? Are they? Oh, man. They are crazy accurate. Really? Yeah. They're arrows. They don't have feathers.

They're like five foot long arrows and just the weight of it carries it straight. We should have brought you some props. I totally forgot. Like our houses are loaded up with like arrows. And every type of arrow is different. They have like these crazy spike. arrows, the wood is really soft. And man, when it goes in and you pull it out, it just shreds you. And if you survive that, the shards left inside get infected. It's like a hollow point.

It's brutal. Yeah, it's brutal. So like, yeah, yeah. But the culture, the culture changed and shifted. Yeah. And we saw that so clearly. Like, it was, it was insane living with them pre-gospel and just, just witnessing their lives. I mean, we grew up with them. Extremely dark. Just scary. Beautiful people, but dark and scary. And then when the gospel came, how that absolutely transformed the people group and the culture and their mindsets. I mean, it was just, it was beautiful to see that the gospel is so simple. We literally only spoke a clear understanding of the gospel and how that transformed the heart of the people. So that didn't stop them from wearing their gourds and their grass skirts.

Right. It didn't impose like how, like, they dress or what they eat or how they garden, how they make their houses. But it did change their worldview and their outlook on all things spiritual. Now they wanted to live for Christ. and not for self. And I was just, did they get some amazing to witness? A lot of fear?

Absolutely. Yeah. Like, like there's guys who are, again, always oppressed by spirits in the night, like some of the most powerful shaman, the Lord saved. And he described, like,

he told my dad, like, Mike, you know, like they've loved me. And he's like, I slept so good last night. I've never slept this good in my life because I'm not bombarded by, by demons who are whispering in my ear

and telling me things and bothering me. And we saw, we saw some of these guys, I mean, like they were fierce warriors, like murders. You know, they are adulterers. I mean, you have some guys that have done some pretty brutal stuff.

They're coming to Christ and just like the tenderness of their hearts afterwards. You could literally see it on their faces, the transformation. And so for us, that was crazy powerful to witness. And then to see these dudes so empowered by just the simplicity of God's word that they became like on fire for the gospel. They're like new believers. I think it was like in that first year there's so much discipleship and maturity happened. And then just like a couple years later, they were like, we understand God's word. Like we have to go and take this to other people within want of territory. Like we have family members that are like three weeks away.

Like we have to go take this. So the church plan that we started in this one central village, you know, was, you know, weeks away from some others. Like, like they're all, we weren't, you know, just we weren't able to teach all the one-on-once. It was a small group of the population. But like Hudson said, after the church was established, we started two disciple people and there was maturity that was born.

They started taking upon themselves. Like, they were burdened for their family members. They were like, we got to share this with, you know, our brothers and everything else. One of like my biggest mentors, his name is Liku, just an amazing Bible teacher. But he was like always the black sheep of the whole village. Never could keep a wife. He had like four wives. They always left him.

Can never keep a garden. Super artistic. He's like your random outcast that's like super groovy and cool. Super gifted. Yeah. But like it just is never a big man, never a big man. but he was so rocked by guys who were in the gospel. And it was pretty soon after we taught that, like,

my dad and our coworker Tim instantly started passing on the baton. Now you guys have it. Like, we're going to equip you guys. And, man, the first time he taught to teach, like, his whole body was shaking uncontrollably. I remember that. He's just up there just, like, quivering like a leaf. But then a couple years later, he is, like, the most rock-solid theologian. Like any question you ask, he just has God's word to just back it up.

So epic. And he was one of the first guys that went out on, like an outreach, like a satellite church. Him, and there's like, you know, usually we send him in twos or threes. Their whole families with like a literacy worker, a clinic worker, usually in like, yeah, five family units we'd send out to like another part in the wanted territory. And these guys went so boldly within such opposition. There was one dude who hadn't seen his family since he was a kid. kid because he had death threats.

They're like, if you ever come back here, we will shoot you. Wow. And he felt so burden, he was like, is it wise? Do I take my family somewhere where I could literally get shot, like first time I see me? And he was like, man, like the gospel's worth it. Like I will give my life if I need to.

And then just go out boldly, dude, those satellite churches that they planted are just, it just was like on fire. It was like an Acts 1 situation where these Bible teachers that we were raising up. They were filled with the spirit, like just proclaimed God's word. You know, and a funny story about the same thing, starting Genesis, working the way through. This is the same format.

Did you guys finish the Bible? Was it all completely translated? Yeah. Or was it? The new testament. The new testament. Portions of the Old Testament. Yeah.

Funny story about Liku, because he's also like a co. Like he helps a lot of translation. And like all these guys now, like they, a lot of them have been equipped to like learn how to like type, you know, on the computer like on word. And like they're using, you know, phones now. It's a lot's change. But Liku, you know, he's missing. he's missing his pinky. Yeah.

And so, like, when he's typing, he, like, can't hit the A key. And so he's always like, he'll be like, oh, curse my mom for cutting on here. It's like, it's amazing to see that, like, you know, just all that come to bear is, like, the modern age with, yeah, you know. It's kind of interesting. Oh, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, like, when you're taking these people through the Old Testament and you get to a book like Leviticus, you're kind of having this meta moment of understanding, like,

why a book like that was written because you think ancient times were a lot like this. But the world was so dark that humans didn't even know how to function without the spiritual oppression. You're probably inventing all kinds of dark ways to live. You know what I'm saying? Like as a modern person reading a book like Leviticus, like as a Christian in the 20. Yeah, they can relate to a lot of the biblical story. They can, but we're like, what is this? I don't understand this.

The context is so different. Yeah. Yeah. Like how come it has to lay out these how to be a human in this detail? But you go to a place like that in the world. and you're like, this is life. Yeah. They have to like fully restructure their lifestyles.

Well, it was so cool when some of those first outreaches, they came back and kind of gave a report to like the mother church, you know, where they were sent out from. Just like modern-day missionaries. I sent out from a church, home church to come back, give a report. They came back after the churches were planted with just some radical stories. It literally sounds like something out of the Book of Acts where, like, down the lowlands, it's the swamps.

So we were up in the highlands. The swamps are like brutal. It's like malaria, death adders. These little small snakes are just, I mean, you get bit, you're toast. And they have stories of just like the Lord just moving powerfully. Like one dude, they were like in the midst of teaching. And there had been some opposition, some division. People were like, do we trust these guys?

Like, this is so different from our ancestors' story and worldview. Like, what do we do? And they had all gone gardening and a guy got bit by a death out of. And instantly, everyone starts mourning because you're like, you're toast. Like you're still with us. But there's no anti. You got like 15 minutes, man. It's like.

Oh, Godios, compadre. Yeah. And one of the bio-teachers, you know, elders that had been sent out came over and was like, just prayed for him powerfully just like, you know, like, Lord, you're in control of everything. Like, if it's your will, you can save this guy's life. If not, then that's your will. And, you know, let your will be done. In the hearing of everyone around.

And, you know, they're like waiting for them to like, you know, start bloating and go purple. And like, he's still breathing. Like an hour later, he's still with us. And, like, he survived. And the whole village is like rocked. And it was like two weeks later, they were continuing to garden because they're like tent makers. You know, they're going there and not mooching off of the village. They're having to provide for themselves and help out the garden.

And the way they do is they cut like half of a tree. They're the most amazing tree cutters. I mean, they're the sellers. They felt trees like crazy. There's lumberjacks. They're lumberjacks. It's just a handheld axe. I mean, cutting trees are like three feet around.

Like, just insane. So much work. But they'll cut them. such a way where they'll do that domino effect, the last tree, like a big tree, and it'll fall down and hit like five others and fell them all at once. It's just super cool to watch. But one of the trees got stuck. And so one of our best friends, he's like our age penguichi. He volunteered. He's like, I'll go climb up because it's pretty dangerous to cut a tree that's stuck and have that one fall. And you not fall, and it's pretty risky. But he was like, yeah, I'll go do it. So he went up.

turns out by chopping on the tree, like, it both started to fall. And so he's like 30 feet up in the air. And I mean, everything below you has already been bush hacked. And so it's like spears, you know, bad situation. Yeah. So he full on just like falls off the tree. And in mid-air, he sees a vine and grabs onto it. And like it stops his descent, like a foot off the ground.

Jeez. And he like gets down and he's like, like, what just happened? And he realized everyone is just staring at him. and then the vine just like falls in his hand. Like it wasn't attached to anything. Like there was nothing about it holding on. And he was like, what just happened? And everyone, they're non-believers, you know?

They're like, dude, that vine was literally suspended in midair by itself. Like, your creator God must have been holding on to the other end because there was nothing there. And, you know, open up an opportunity for him and just be like, like, yeah, he did. Like, that's what happened. That's right. You know, because I definitely wasn't holding on to the other end. Wow. Just super cool ways that, just like an axe, when Paul is going out in his missionary journeys,

it's like the Lord validates his messengers. And, you know, the miracles, they don't bring about a big name for yourself. Yeah. You know, power to yourself. They only validate, they validate the messenger and also the one who the message is coming from. And so it's just super cool for us. It's amazing to see, again, going back to the kingdom of God and the militant church and taking background from the enemy.

And like, you see that in real time. but you don't see full conversion. And in the case of the Wano, there was a massive awakening. And like they said, light has come here, but not everybody, like, received the light, you know, just like John talks about. And so there's still people who, like, maintained their animism, like, hardcore. And, like, one of our, he was like a village grandfather to us. His name was Bogu. And just like, I mean, we have so many memories.

Bogu was like, so many memories of him. He was the old man that we would go to. He's, like, half blind. His beard was never, like, washed in his life. Yeah, his beard was, like, so matted and gnarly. That's how I feel after six years of doing this. Sure, right? Being in the glory basement.

But he had all the cryptic stories. Like anything, if he had questions, we would go to Bogu because you'd ask him a question and he'd chase like five rabbits. An hour later, like, you still haven't gotten to the main point. Yeah. You've learned about like everything else. Exactly. He's got all this stuff in his head.

But he was one of the main shaman of our village and he was one of the ones most opposed to the gospel. And so we persuaded and pleaded with him to actually come and attend the teaching. and he would always refuse. He was like, no, thanks, but no, I'm not interested. And he was stay in his house and he never came. Well, because these spirits would tell him that it's not true. Like, do you not go like, this is, this is a fake talk.

Like, and he would, he was so convinced. He'd hear that. Yeah, and he had the power. People would bring, people would bring, you know, their children to him. Yeah. And he had the ability to, you know, almost, you know, on behalf of the child, you know, persuade the spirits to help the children. And he would take, you know, soul substance, you know, so a piece of hair, you know,

something from the person and do divination and all sorts of things and and you know these guys could like almost more stuff out of you yeah yeah like pull a spider out of your leg like your calf and you're just like wait what you know like really weird things where like all of a sudden he's like oh this is the root of it and you know he pulls like a feather out of someone and I don't know if that was a sleight of hand but everyone's like pull a feather out of people like just pull like random things is like there's an ailment here and like just extract something from the individual. Like, oh, this was the root cause. That's wild.

So he held, he held a lot of power in the village. He held a lot of respect. And when the gospel came in, it was a competing worldview. And his power status was threatened. And so he was, again, like a grandpa out. I mean, we loved him, but he refused to ever hear the gospel to the point of his death. And at the end of his life, my dad, a few years ago before he passed away, went to visit him. and he was, I mean, just so old and so frail, basically like a bag of bones, you know,

and it has totally blind now. His cataracts had gotten so bad. And just sitting in his house and just like wasting away. And my dad was just again kind of like, you know, just going back to truth and pleading with him to consider, because there's been, there's been a church now for a long time. And there's been so many opportunities. And everyone has like attempted, like all the church leaders have gone to him and attempted. Because we love him.

But to his death, he refused. And it was just so, I mean, I remember one time. We were just kids. I remember we were out. We were actually collecting butterflies, which again, in our mind is mainly sport populated, and they're like, so weird. But for us, it was like, hey, this is legit.

Like, we're, you know, in the spirit of Alfred Wallace here. We're going to make some new discoveries. But we were out butterfly collecting one time, Hudson and I, and we ran into old Bogu in the middle of nowhere. And he was by himself, and he didn't know we were there. And it scares to death because he was basically rambling and yelling at these spirits in the jungle. and just having, I don't know, he's having this whole conversation.

Like rebuking them. For not, I don't know what the situation was. If you had cast a curse on someone or they had displeased him in some way and he was ranching and raving about it. But it was, it was one of the scariest thing that I remember Hudson now. We literally hid behind a tree and we like traced back our steps and we took off there because he was flying around his old walking stick. And if we ever come back. If we ever come back on the show, we actually. have his walking stick.

So after he died, Bogu's wife actually took his, his sorcerer's staff, as it were. And, I mean, talk about the things that wives do. Do you know she did that stick? She chopped it down to her width to make a little walking stick for her. So she literally, like, broke his, like, wand, his, like stick in half, like, destroyed all its power and used it as a little walking stick. So my dad was able to actually bring the walking stick back and actually have it here. So if we ever come back on the show, I might have to bring it so you can have the sorcerer's

staff. But, but like, but like, you know, he was trying to have that in our office. I don't know, man. It's broken. Yeah. It's all good. I haven't really thought through that. We heard some stories.

Weird things start going on. We might need to, yeah, put it in a box somewhere. But, you know, it was, it was sad to see that. So there was that. You know, it wasn't like, it wasn't like, everybody converts. And it's like, no, it's like, there's always that tension. It's like some people come to faith, but not everybody. I mean, I think we talked about this a lot on a show.

Like, good endings aren't guaranteed. No, not at all. Whether you're being impressed by these spirits and some people just can't. Yeah. Depending on the principality and the power and the power. whatever's been has. There's not always an easy answer. And I think that as Christians, we, we tend to want an easy answer for everything.

Man, you guys really were accurately named as a family, the Wild Brothers, like, out there. The Lord knew. What about your, I mean, your parents had to be pretty trusting that, because, I mean, it sounds like a lot of these things can kill their kids out there, either whether you get in some conflict with the locals or. You get bit by a death out of it? Yeah. Yeah. Like, did you guys have any close calls?

You know, we were always really safe. Like, my parents, they, like, they let's have machetes. We used axes all the time. You're lucky machete. Yeah, that's right. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's what he got me for Christmas this year.

He's like, you don't have a machete. You need a machete. Yeah, seriously. I don't have my brother's machete. You need a hang one on the wall here. Yeah. No, like, we use them so often that when we transitioned back to the States in December 2019, right right before COVID, and I got my first iPhone.

I called it an urban machete. The urban machine. Because, like, you take your machete everywhere, it does everything. And, like, I felt defensive without a machete. I'm like, how do I navigate? But you really don't need one in a car. But, man, you use your iPhone for everything. Like, you need an Uber pickup or your GPS.

And so just as a good reminder, it's like a tool, not a toy, urban machete. And just like a machete, if it's not wielded correctly, can mess you up. But we had boundaries. We had boundaries. We had mom and dad. We always had to be within, like, your shot of the house. The older we got, the more liberties we had. When we were younger, we stayed a little bit closer to home.

We were the oldest, too, so we got more privileges to like hike further away and sometimes overnight places. But, again, my parents were very, very cautious. And they gave us an amazing upbringing in childhood because we grew up in such a dangerous and dark landscape. And yet they shielded us from a lot, prayed for us a lot, gave us room to experience, you know, and we saw a lot of the dark. but also protected us from a lot. And the older we got, we were privy to more and more that was going on and more liberties for adventuring and going further on camping trips and whatnot.

But that just kind of grew in proportion to our ability, our responsibility. Did the locals see a healthy family and respond to what they're watching? Yeah, totally. I mean, part of doing ministry, it's family ministry. Yeah. It's a family team. And so we did a ton of chores around the house just

enable dad to go out and learn language and do Bible translation. And we helped out a lot around the house to enable mom to do a lot of medical. So it's definitely a family unit all working together. I think that's part of the reason why the four of us are still working together as a team. We're like best friends. Yeah. Best coworkers. So it takes the family unit. Yeah. But I think that's like the vision of heaven. Yeah. You know, the healthy family is the kingdom of heaven. Yeah. That's right. And then the dysfunctional families are the ones that kind of go off and start these principalities. And you see that like, oh, yeah, the witch doctor has some powers.

Like, yeah, every dysfunctional family has a way that it functions. But everyone's loyal to this screwed up version. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. You know? Morgan, I was always a little bit older than us. So Morgan and I always, like, aspired. You know, to be like him.

Tammy was his name. Really good friends. He actually didn't become a believer. It was really sad. But in the early days, he noticed how, like, our mom. mom, like, loved on us all the time and also how she was so caring for some of the older women in the village. And that confused him so much because he's like, why be invested in the old people? Like, they're going to die. And he had asked my dad that, like, why does Livy, like, care on all the old people?

And so there's so many aspects about our family and how we functioned properly that did, that really gave, just made him curious. And so when the time to teach came, there was that curiosity of, like, we want to hear what Mike and Libby have to have to. to say, or what Mike, you know, because they live differently. Their family looks differently. They function differently. They're joyful. They're happy. And I think that is a huge draw for non-believers.

When they look at the lives of Christians, hopefully, hopefully this is the case. If you're like, you know, living wholeheartedly for Christ, your life looks dramatically different. Yeah. And the hardships of life that come at you. When we have, when hardships come, they go to you, you know, and they're interested. Like, they, they're see counsel from believers because they're like, you guys have something I don't, you know, and you're, you're, you're, you're, you're,

stable, for the most part, and consistent when like it's rocking. I want that. And so yeah, that was definitely a part of our brain. Yeah. And we were a part of even seeing like ministering to a lot of our friends because we were all totally fluent in Juana. It was almost like a heart language growing up. So when we did teach through the lessons, like a lot of our peers, we were like young teenagers at the time. Maybe not even that. Wait, it was 20. No, it was 2010. Yeah. So I was 10, you were 12. So like a lot of our peers had questions but didn't really know. who to go to, like, too intimidated to go up to my dad and ask, like, spiritual questions. And so they would come to Morgan and I. And so that was even part of the family ministry when we were

younger was as we're walking through these Bible lessons and then reach the gospel, being able to help provide clear understanding and kind of work through, like, what does it mean to be saved? And we'd help kind of bridge that gap. And when did you guys get back? And is the whole family come back? Are your parents still there? Yeah. My parents are still actively working in Indonesia. We, the four of us brothers, transitioned back right before COVID. So like we literally like, I think it was like a week after we landed. Great time.

We're watching Fox News and it's like and my grandparents house is like, oh, COVID-19. Like, what is that? I'm really happy because, I mean, travel. Ground Zero was in our home church. We had one of our families from church going to cruise. Literally. Yeah. And they came back with COVID and like, man, everyone like freaked out.

It was like they quarantined the poor couple for like, I don't know how many months. And church got canceled and everything was online. But for us, it was pretty chill because we're right in Florida. We have the beach. We have woods. And so, yeah. Was it just like you guys were kind of come of age and you were going to come back to the States or what was the school?

Yeah, we had already, I had already started. I actually came back earlier, started college. And then I moved back for two years, did online college and then came back to finish up. He had just, was just starting college. And it was kind of like, you know, just time to. I mean, we've been a lot of jungle. You got to simulate at some point. That's right.

You got to learn how to swipe the credit card. And you got to get your driver's license, all that kind of stuff. It's like you can't live over there forever. So we really needed to plant roots, you know, back here in our home country. One of the first times I, like, we came back, made a bank account. I got a debit card. And one of the first times I went to Walmart and like went to buy some stuff. And checking out, I remember it was so embarrassing.

I put my card in backwards and I could not get figured out. It was like. And then like literally had to have an tenant come over and be like, your card's the wrong way. I was like, gotcha. So there's a lot of little things like that. What was it like? Is it mega? Because you'd come back before.

Like, it wasn't like you were in the jungle for 17 years than here. But, like, is it still massive culture shock to be, like, back and not in? We'd come back every three, three and a half to four years for like an eighth month stint. So, like, Niceville, Florida is definitely home for us. Like, we'd always return to the same spot. Had a lot of our church family, both sets of grandparents there, cousins in the area, you know, just childhood friends. And so it wasn't much of a transition. You know, we see ourselves as Americans.

Right. Proud, patriots, we'd always, you know, identified as Americans, even living in, you know, in Indonesia for so many years. So we were excited to get back and kind of start a new chapter. As integrated into this culture in the jungle as we were, our parents did a good job raising us to understand, you know, the privileges of what it meant to be an American. And it was like, I mean, we grew up listening to lots of, you know, 70s and 80s music. It was Andy Griffith and the Brady bunch that gave us our world view of American. culture. So there's definitely some changes. When we got back, we're like, this isn't exactly like, you know, Mayberry. We had, you know, we did all, you know, through homeschooling

and I learned about American history. And it's like, when we got back, it's like, it wasn't like a massive shift. But there's definitely some catching up to do. And when my younger brother Asher went to go to the DMV to get his driver's license and they asked him, um, what race are you? You know, he was like, American. And they were like, but she looked at him and said, are you white? And he was like, yeah? She's like, okay. Okay. That's so weird. There's so messed up. Is the, really? Are you? Is the exit from, from the, for the family and your dad's, your parents are still working in Indonesia, but is it like, is the church planted and then vibrant and you go, hey, our work here is kind of come to an end? You started a fire. Yeah. Yeah.

a really good strategy going into church playing missions is to have an exit strategy. Like you're not supposed to be there forever. You've passed on the baton. So, you know, we reached a point where, like, literacy was indigenized. Like you now have teachers that are teaching literacy. And the clinic, you know, there's like fully, like, full-on nurses and, you know, almost doctor status that are just tribal dudes and women, but you know how to pass out medical supplies. And the church was flourishing. they had done four different outreaches and just like thriving churches in each one to the point where some of those like sent out missionaries came back to like the mother church and almost kind of

would rebuke the other church like it feels colder here than down in the lowlands like where's your zeal for the gospel guys and so just so much maturity and growth to the point where my parents were able to kind of step back and kind of enter more of an itinerate role and so they still go in and encourage and check on and my dad's still involved a Bible translation now a lot of our our friends, thanks to Elon Musk and 5G and everything else. It's like some of our guys have phones now. It's like even the other day, Hudson was calling a childhood friend, like literally from Indonesia, you know, and like, hey, talking. Wow.

So it's like the world has changed. Yeah, yeah. The world has changed. But we're still very much interconnected. I was actually in Indonesia last summer for two weeks, reconnected with some friends. So we're still very much connected. But yeah, it's been a great, it's been a great time of transition, you know, right, you know, planting some roots. We're, you know, married now, raising some families.

Finding out that you've taken your wife. US is full of mystery too, and there's some blurry things happening here. Like Skinwalker Ranch was such a fascination during like, that was a little bit post-COVID days we got into like that and we're like, ooh, yeah. Started listening to me blurry creatures. Oh, nice. Go.

Start realizing that America, there's still some discovery left. Yeah, we got back and we thought, man, like our age of discovery and adventure is over because like we're back here and they're naturalists, like every rock's been unreturned. And I was like, actually, no, there's still a lot of mystery. There's still a lot of weird stuff here as well. So it's been fun. Which we haven't even, we haven't even talked about. but that was one of the things that kickstarted us,

continue to make videos. Yeah, yeah. Because our whole childhood, you can actually go and binge our whole childhood. We, one of our hobbies was videos. So we have videos of all the guys that we talked about. Using like one of those? All of our adventures. One of those cameras right there.

A little bit more modern, but close to it. Yeah. We really wanted to kind of showcase our peers that our motto is following Christ as the ultimate adventure because we really got to see the Lord move in amazing ways. When we come back here, man, The church in many ways is so lukewarm. All of our peers grew up watching Disney, and the theme is like, follow your own heart. Do what you want to do, follow your dreams. And even the church in many ways has propagated that. What are you gifted in? What's your talent? Okay, go do that and then bring the

gospel with you. Whereas when you read through scripture, we see that a posture of like Isaiah is more appropriate. It's like, Lord, like here I am. Like, what would you have me do? And that's like the biblical approach. And so for us, we wanted to kind of bring adventure, the realization that fallen Christ is adventurous and capture that through tons of our outdoor adventures. So a lot of our most epic adventures like we capture on camera, like turn into reality series and to showcase the kids back in the States, man, following Christ is so fun. It's so cool. It's not a life of a void of adventure. But also to try to like normalize the Great Commission. Like again, we in our churches and our families, we aspire to be like the world in many ways. It's like nobody's talking about like taking the

gospel of the nations or doing hard things for God. It's like, oh, let's, you know, this, you know, broke to be a, I don't know, a football player or an astronaut. Like, those are like, those are like the stereotypes. And it's like, what if it's like, I want to grow up to be a missionary. Like, I want to grow up to actually do hard things for God. Like, that's, we have to normalize that in the church. Which, I haven't asked beforehand, so you guys can like cut this out if you have to, but is it, is okay to, like, promo, but. Yeah, we're going to do that. I was going to, I was going to wrap that up and ask you, but to your viewers, all the stuff that we've talked about and, like,

so much more is in my dad's book. He just published this called Beyond Beautiful, Finding Family at the Ends of the Earth. It is such a page turner, such an easy read, but gives a glimpse into yeah, Florida boy turned cross-cultural church planner and just everything that we experience from like hostile like guerrilla interaction from like, you know, guerrilla warfare dudes, almost getting captured in the jungle to all the blurry spiritual stuff, church planning. It just captures the first like five years of us being there. Absolutely fascinating. So, such a great read. Yeah.

Yeah, we wanted to give each of you guys a copy. A lot of this source material for this episode actually came from this book. If you guys, if you guys can offer like a coupon, I don't know if you guys can do that or not, but like for your listener, it's like a discount. Yeah. We can do that. Like wild blurry or something. We'll put it on our page too.

We'll put it in our library there. Yeah. It's a good read. It's cool. I mean, I've been thinking about, you know, just the concept of family throughout this whole interview and listening to your has a story. It's one where your parents.

had a very, just a very healthy understanding of how to like shepherd you guys, but to give you guys the freedom to figure it out for yourselves. Because I think a lot of times Western culture, you know, we're surrounded by hover mothers who just protect their kids from every single thing. But do you think about the existence in the world and the way God set it up, he trusts us to be like, yeah, the darkness is right there. But like you're going to have to figure out how to survive amongst it. And that's, you guys were modeled that, but that's like a bigger picture of how God set up creation to for us to be around the stuff and overcome it right and when we westerners we get to a certain age some more ideas come to us and then we abandon our faith because we didn't really have

any we were thrown out in the jungle so to speak to like figure it out live it out yeah totally and so you know you run up against the darkness and then you're like oh but it just it disguises itself differently and yeah well contrast is important because if you see the darkness you recognize that well there's also the light you know exactly We don't see that. You don't grow up and you don't have these experiences here. One of the things that I realize is that so many people ask, like, man, why are all these young people like leaving the church?

And like, man, they grew up in church and, you know, we're disciples. Went to Sunday school. And one of the things that really rocked us and challenged us in our faith and really provide a lot of, like, I think, growth in spiritual maturity early on was seeing our parents live out a really hard lifestyle. Like, we saw from an early age that their faith is genuine in and that like they're willing to lay their lives down and risk their family's safety for the sake of the gospel.

Like that's how much it meant to them. And so seeing my parents live it out made it so real. And we got to see firsthand. Yeah. I think a lot, I think our actions speak so much louder than words. And like I'm a dad up too now. And that's something that I'm always challenged with and thinking through like,

is my lifestyle confirming what I'm teaching and disciple my kids in? And if my only pursuit is a life of safety, and security, and if my priorities are, like, self and, like, family, but, like, not living out for Christ, well, then how is my son going to grow up hearing the truth of God's word, but then seeing my life, like, how is that going to model to him what, like, a radical lifestyle looks like? Because God calls us, he doesn't promise security or safety. Like, he calls us to go and make disciples. Like, the reason why he institute the church was to protect and allow Christians to flourish and mature, but also to see his

mission of like reaching the loss like that's what we're here to do is like to be ambassadors so like if i'm not modeling that to my son how do i expect him to go and do something radical like the lord could toy use them yeah but just i've been challenged in that way of like man we have to live we have to live our lives on the on the cuff of our sleeve so that like our kids see that modeled and we'll do likewise you know a huge a huge like misconception is that like kids can't cope in ministry on the mission field in other words like like if you take your family into danger like that's going to be to their detriment. And oftentimes the opposite is true.

It's like when you put yourself in the front lines, you challenge the culture, you, you know, forsake the world to follow Christ. It's like that's actually affirms the truth that you're trying to impart to your children. Like they get to watch you and experience that as a family lived out and it's like, and then they grew up like rock solid, you know,

because it's like, well, this is real. And my parents are actually, they believe it enough to actually live it out. And that's an amazing testimony. So. And one of the coolest things growing up over there, and we have a streaming platform called, Wow Brothers TV. And it's where we have tons of our original content, but tons of curated

content kind of focused around outdoor adventure and the Great Commission to normalize the Great Commission. But part of the thing that we're always encouraging our community to is that, man, the body of Christ is so diverse. And that was something we were, what was really cool, we were privy to see is that, like, there are so many people that work to see the gospel planted in Juana. It wasn't just like Mike and Libby going out, but that the body of crisis is so diverse. So missionary pilots, you know, town teams, our church that like financially and prayerfully supported us. Like there is people that helped train and equip my parents. Like, man, the body of Christ, like, he's the head, but we all play a part, you know, and finding that role is,

like, so crucial. And so that was something that we got to see really cool was like, it is one big team effort. You know, like it takes a ton of people to get the job done. But how cool, because we're all called to play like a part, you know? Not everyone's supposed to go over to the jungle, but like everyone's involved in summary. And not one part is greater than the other. That's the other thing. It's like, you might be on the tip of the spirit

of like, yeah, church planning among an animistic people group, but it's like the shaft of the spirit is equally important. And that's comprised of all believers. And so just to be a part of this mission is like, it's so exciting. It's really exciting.

Well, it's impressive on me too is that. It likes the old idiom, if you will or whatever. It's, you know, give a man to fishly for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll feed himself for his lifetime. And you got, you know, your folks and you guys did that. But then Jesus takes to the next level and says, I'll make you fishers of men.

So you guys went there not to hand out, but teach them. That's right. And then to write, to put the language and to translate the Bible. But then the next step of that is then you guys became fishers of men and taught them how to become disciples and also evangelists to their own people. There was no easy path. Yeah. It was going to be hard no matter what.

Yeah. Just put a lot of people don't want to do something hard. That's the beauty of how, like in scripture it's modeled, is that, a thriving church, like, it, you know, part of a thriving church is being able to multiply. Like, everything creation reproduces, grasshoppers, flies, people. Like, it's how things survive. Diving beetles. Yeah.

Excellina Hudson has to multiply so it doesn't get extinct. There we go. And the church is the same. Like, if we don't multiply, we'll just die out. We'll become extinct. And so that was a sign of, like, maturity in Wanaland was seeing that they're capable of, like, taking it further. And now it's what's really cool is they've reached a point where their tribe is now an example to the other tribes around them.

Because the Wana used to be fierce warriors. I mean, these guys were starting wars and killing people. Yeah. And now, I mean, they're still fierce. Wow. But they're docile. Yeah. And they're peaceful.

Yeah. And their tribes are like in their houses. Like what's happened? And even the testimony of other tribal groups are saying they describe it as light. Like there's light in Wannoland. And now they're saying, like, we want this. We want this for our family. It's like, what is this how you have?

And so the Lord is opening so much doors. It's like, where our parents, Mike and Libby, they were like, you know, a grain of, a grain of wheat that has now multiplied. And it's going to go way beyond them, you know. That's how we receive the gospel here in the States. People sacrificed to bring it to our ancestors. And in the one of the two, they was so neat that they really, like, they are amazed that a church in America would actually, like, collaborate. to make that happen. So like they feel so invested and connected to even our church in Florida. Because they're like, they're like, you're like, we're like, we're like, we're like,

you're our spiritual appearance. Like, you guys are the ones who actually commissioned people from your own body to come to reach us. Like, you love this that much. So all the way around the world is full circle. It's like, how beautiful is that. We've had like, like, um, like elders from our church or our home church. Yeah. We have support us all these years come multiple times. And it's always an amazing like reunion. Like the way that they want to receive them. It's like almost as if they've known in their whole lives. They're just like, you guys are like the church

that sound like Mike and Libby. Like, like welcome. Let's go. Now look, now we're sending out churches, you know, we're going even further.

And so, and that is the premise of my dad's book. It's finding family at the end of the earth. It's like, it's like our family are out there waiting to be waiting. It's like, you know, they're waiting to be brought back with the prodigal son.

Like, and they're just waiting and they're, they're waiting for people to go and tell them. So it's, it is a battleground. It is like, it is like, you have to be like girdled up as Paul would say.

and have the full armor of God because you are, you're penetrating just like a strong hold of Satan. What's beautiful is the gospel will prevail. Like Christ already has the victory. Like it cannot be stopped, but there will be opposition. And so that lifestyle is one that's just,

we've, you know, living in the world of missions, we've seen so many families and it can be crushing. You know, people can get burned out and leave or, you know, even have, you know, children that die along the way. Yeah. One of the recent Juano outreaches, one of the Juana church leaders who's out in there, he's preaching. It's like a new territory.

His youngest son just died a couple months ago, like super tragic, you know, and just like, man, the cost of going out into these hard places is super real. But even hearing his testimony as like, man, like the Lord took like his son, but like it's worth it. Like God is sovereign. You know, he's in control. We just have to be faithful. And he loves us. spare his own son.

So I can trust that he loves me in the midst of this, you know, this hard, hard thing. Super powerful. Thanks, brothers. Yeah. This is crazy. I mean, tell our listeners once again where they can follow along with you guys. And then I would love it if you would, like, close out the show one of you guys with the Lord's prayer and want on.

That would be, that'd be cool. If you can do it. Oh, man, I should have brought, I should have brought a translation of it. I don't think it'll be an exact. Yeah, that's fine. No one's going to know. No, no, no, that's right. I could be saying, who knows what.

You guys will just think that I'm deep and spiritual. There you go. That'd be cool. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the best way to find us would be on really our streaming platform. That's where we have all our original content. But also it's like a community. It's like a two-way lane.

So people can binge stuff if they want. But there's also like a safe social media platform called the Adventure Chat on our stream platform is called Wabather's TV. We have outdoor challenges. We have all kinds of ways. It's monthly live streams. Prayer for the Nations. Right now in Wabrithers TV, we're all as a community listening. through the Bible in a year, which is super cool.

Every new year, you make that resolution of like, I want to read through the Bible. What we're doing right there, Stranger Theology, we're reading through the Bible in here. Right here in front of Morgan. That's right on. There you go. Yeah. That's awesome. That's sweet.

Because it's so good. So, yeah, if people are interested, you can find us on Wilder's TV and then just our socials, the Wild Brothers, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. We're terrible about our socials, but you can follow us there and check along. Thanks for being here, boys. You're going to close us out? I appreciate it. Or more, do you're going to show them up, Morgan?

you want to go. Yeah, I don't know the Lord's Prayer in Wano, but let me think. You can try. Let me try. Let me try. Okay, let's pray.

Yeah, you know, katt, katt dig a jia, kakened, a dig, a doki, we wow.

Um, kakadik, I'm, my, no, I'm not, kind of, kind of,

I, I think, my, I'm not, that King Kim who had a lot of Erike. I, I know that I'ma

not going to that's a lot of that I'm going to that's a lot of that I, uh, I'madook, I'm not a

uh, yeah, I, kakadigah I. And, uh, not,

uh, We wow. Yahwehwa. Manoanoke. Let's go. Thanks, boys. How do you do? He did really good.

All right. Listen, hey, listen, what we're doing here is we're going to run this back. So we're going to have you boys back on. This will be a series. And we're going to get into all the wild, pun intended, experiences, everything from cryptic creatures to giants. Modern day, Natholum. Modern day, Nathlum, some legends from the jungle and perhaps even a dino. But you got to hold on.

on for that one, blurry folks. We're gonna we'll see you part two. Wow, right. Awesome. Thanks guys. I appreciate you guys. Thanks.