#1633 The Freedom Fighter - Justin Wren

So you've got you've got You've got another warrior, Christopher, it's Christopher. You've got another warrior on the show with you. Justin Christopher Wren. That kind of rolls off the tongue, don't you think it's good? Tiffany and Cook, Craig, Anthony Harper, Justin Christopher Wren. Anyway, Hey mate, welcome to the show.

and that really trans transformed my life. And it's been a fun transition of really trying to do community community empowerment, so not just commune development, but giving them opportunity and the people that I know that I'll become my second family, that they adopted me in that their tribe, the Pigmy people in Africa, the central Central Africa, the Congo bes and rainforest and Congo and you Ganda. Men they are up against in many ways insurmountable odds, but the way

they do it together is beautiful. It's incredible, and they overcome basically any challenge because they do it together.

but yeah, that's where I met you. I met you on Rogan so to speak, and I just love the almost the dichotomy of this big, terrifying, strong, violent, in a controlled violence way human being, who can you know, hurt people for sport and money and well, you know, for sport trying not to hurt at them but twe I guess, But also at the same time, this big compassionate guy that just loves humans and just wants to serve and wants to give and wants to protect and

wants to uplift. It's a real kind of dichotomy. Tell us about how you ended up in Uganda and you ended up meeting the pygmies and you ended up being part of their family.

eleven at a used VHS store. Actually it was a flea market, as we say here in the US, where to trash and stolen stuff, and and the VHS tape store also sold knives and BB guns and flying squirrels and iguanas. So I didn't never really know what I walked into. But when I found UFC two through eleven, I was like, these guys don't get bullied, and I thought, that's what I'm going to do. That's it's funny. I wasn't going to show this, but I have. I'm drinking from a teenage mutant Ninja turtles.

And yeah, So when I found MMA, I thought, this is it, this is this is what I have to do. This is my now, it's my identity. If I could transform into that, and I won't be bullied or I'll have purpose or significant So it was my outlet, my

original outlet and purpose and passion. But it got to a point where I was national champion wrestling getting my hand raised, and MMA had wrestled in Moscow, Kickbox in Amsterdam, fought at you know, the Hard Rock in Las Vegas as the main event and other other places and it was all cool and it was good. But for me, some reason, I get my hand raised that I think is this it is that all? And I just felt like there had to be something more, And so that

was that transition from finance. People are fighting for people. I started small, just I believe no active kindness, no matter how small. Ever, goe was wasted and I started with what was right in front of me, and that was a children's hospital I got invited to and it was a kid that was injured, but him and his family were fight fans and he watched me on The Ultimate Fighter. So started there, became an official volunteer, did that for a year, started the rescue mission for the

homeless in Denver. Then it was at Risk Youth group, like kind of inner city at risk Youth. Start showing him some martial arts, and then I would say about a year after sacrificing fighting, I left on a wind streak and I said, I need to get my life right because the suicide attempt, the addiction. I need to live a different kind of life. I'm not proud of what I was doing or how I was living. And it was like there was no joy. The addiction for me felt like I was in a rear naked choke.

And Tiffany would get this, but there's a body triangle where your one arms down and you need two hands to fight one hand on a rear naked but if they trap your arm in a body triangle and it's down by your waist and you only have one hand on two arms, it's almost impossible to get out of. But addiction felt like there's a body triangle with both arms and I couldn't fight at all, and I tried everything I could and there's no other way out. And for me, man, it was it was purpose through service

that I would say freed me. And so to get to the story of how I got there, Man, I'm not very religious, but I said a prayer, God, will what do you want me to do with my life? And I was saying it to the universe or whatever, and I didn't expect the clouds to part or to hear anything. But I can compare it to visualization in sports. At the Olympic Training Center for wrestling, we had sports

psychologists taking us through visualization drills. Before my fights. I'd go into a float tank and I would spend at least ninety minutes in there, sometimes two hours, and I would see the fight in my mind a hundred different times before I get up, and sometimes it happened just like it in a fight. And so, but this was not trying to go to a place to visualize anything. Wasn't he conjuring anything up. It wasn't like I had some preconceived notion in my mind of anything. And I

saw myself a movie in my mind. I'm in the forest. I'm walking down a footpath. I'm clearing vines and thickets out of the way. I'm walking and I hear drumming, and I'm curious, and I keep walking and I hear the singing that's kind of tonal or very unlike anything I've ever heard before. And I keep walking and I come into a clearing and I see these twiggan leaf huts that are in the shape of domes, and they have leaves laid over them. And I meet these people

and we don't talk, but we acknowledge each other. And the first guy, I see his coughing and I can see his ribs, meaning like almost like a skeleton with skin on, and I know that. But he's hungry, thirsty, poor, sick, oppressed and slaved that he called someone else's master. And I came out of that vision and I felt forgotten, Like the word forgotten came to me, like these people

feel forgotten or that's their identity, whatever it is. When I wrote it down, on a piece of paper, and I cried unlike I've ever cried at any funeral where all the funerals combined, or any heartbreak, and I was crying for these people to know who they were, where they were, And I thought, this is weird? Am I crazy?

I've done most every psychedelic ayahuasca and psilocybin and buffo and DMT and the list goes on and on, doctor guided most of the time, or ketamine therapy, all these things, and for me those were good or profound and sometimes spiritual. But sometimes I was chasing that in a way of like hoping to get some sort of experience, or maybe I'd even just say it was in some sense, in some way, even in the slightest it was it was manufactured,

it was chemically induced or whatever. This wasn't so my rational mind is like, did you just have some sort of psychotic episode or did you just have some sort of psychedelic reactivation? Did what's going on? How did that happen? And then who are they? Where are they? And I wrote it down and then I kind of locked it up, saying I'm not going to tell anybody this because they're anything. I'm crazy. It would be easier to tell them if

I was on mushrooms, right. And so when I I went to this event and some guy was speaking and he shared his story and he had lived with the Mossie tribe, the hunted lions, he lived with the Vanawatsu tribe, invented bungee jumping, he was friends with bear grills, and did survival training all around the world. And I'm like, this guy's cool and he's different and I'm never going to see him again. He's going to a different state. I'm going to a different state, a different place in

the US, so I can maybe tell him. And there was a lion for him, so I said never mind. I got a car with my friend. He started up the car and then I go, wait, I got to go tell this guy something, at least his number, or give him mine. And I walked back in and people have kind of faded out, and I go up to him, like, hey, may can I give you my number? I'd love to talk to you sometimes, and he goes, whit you got

somebody to tell me? Tell me now, and I'm like, uh, I don't know, and he's like, no, I've got time tell me. And so I started telling the vision, and before I'm even at the finish of it, he goes, I know who they are and I said what, and he goes, they're they're the Pygmy people. And I said who. And he goes, they're in the Congo Basin rainforest and you've gone to Congo eight or nine African nations and

I'm like where. And then he goes, I'm going in three and a half weeks and you should come with me. And I was like what. He goes, I got my plane booked, but my team three days ago. This is the same day I have the vision. He said, they canceled their trip. Well, the rebels took over the airport. There was no flights into it anymore. The US State Department said no one go there for any reason. People were being killed, all sorts of much worse things than that.

And I was like, hey, maybe we don't need to go now. Maybe we can push it back. Maybe maybe do this in a year from now when things calm down. And he's like, you know what you need it, you need to come and tell my wife. And so I met his wife. She was pregnant, she had a I would say a toddler as well. And I tell her and she tells me she told Caleb if he didn't get a sign, he wasn't going alone. Wow, And she goes, this is that, Caleb, you got to take this guy.

And I was like, whoa. And then I'm trying to tell him wait, let's wait. You're pregnant. You know it's not safe over there. And then they started coaching me killed and Jess said, if you don't go, you'll never know. You always wonder I could have, would have, should have happen? And if I wouldn't have taken him up on that I can try to sum up the story was saying one hundred percent of that vision came true with Caleb and another friend named Colin. Wow. They were grabbing me saying,

this is your vision. It was so surreal. I had to take a knee because I was weak in the knees looking out at the same exact thing.

He's got tuberculosis. Wow, And I just get weakened knees. I see the huts, I see the same people. I take a knee, and I'm like, this is a I know it sounds weird to share, but it doesn't make sense to me in my rational mind. But it happened. It happened.

They're drinking from their skulls before they go into battle, thinking that their bullets fly right through them, and all sorts of stuff. And I don't know if I posted that article or another one, but the guy that called me and said he would pay for my flight was a heavyweight that I had fought previously. It was my fight right before I went, and I had knocked him out. Wow. And he calls me with his wife and says, we're gonna pay for your trip to go.

I'm supposed to go. She said, I go sit over there, and she brings it to me warm like thirty minutes later, here's your passport. I'm like, what is this all kind of lining up and happening. And so I'll tell you the part that I really I normally don't even share this part on shows or podcasts, but this one I don't know if I've ever shared.

to do? This problem is huge. I'm small. I'm a big guy, but I'm small compared to the problem, right, And so I told Caleb, I go, dude, I don't think I can do anything. Here is it, but you had a vision. I'm like, man, I don't know. You know, if they can give me one thing practical, one thing that's sustainable, one thing that I can actually do, maybe I'll do it. And I'm like, but I need a sign of some sort. And he goes, are you are you crazy? You had a vision and it came true.

What more do you need exactly? And I said, I don't know. I go, I'll tell you the visual I get. Anyone I don't care who they are, could try to dedicate their whole life to this thing and it would be like empting the ocean with an eye dropper, And you know, would it ever make a difference? Would they ever notice? Would I ever notic? Would anybody ever notice? And he changed my perspective real quick, He said, bro,

you have the wrong perspective. He said you Every single one of those drops represents a human heart and a human soul in a human life. So yeah, it matters. Every single one matters. And I was just like, WHOA. So I said, okay, but man, if it would be really helpful, I she just got like one more thing

to hang on to. And he still thought I was it's crazy and kind of got frustrated with me, and the last day we were saying bye, and the chief pulls us over to the side and he said, everyone else calls us the forest people, but we call ourselves the forgotten. Same thing I wrote down on a piece of paper that's in my backpack. We call ourselves the forgotten. We don't have a voice? Can you help us have one? And then I thought I'm a special guy at all.

But he specifically asked me, and you brought up Rogan. I knew Rogan. I thought I have some sort of platform in a Western nation, we have free speech. I'm like, yeah, I can do that.

that was a responsibility that you were given. You know, that's like wow, Like, if that is what it is, whatever we want to call that, wherever that came from, if that's from God, if that's some spiritual download, if that's whatever that is man that is that is a It's kind of a gift and a burden all at the same time.

the sound of a bees hive in my ears. They can't get any I did go to a clinic that was down the street, but there wasn't even a bed, and they're trying to get IVS in me. They can't do it. All my veins are collapsing. They misdiagnosed me three times thought I had typhoid and instead I had malaria, where I might have had both, but my mom was like, come home. We got this whatever insurance or whatever it costs,

like just come home. Like there's good doctors here. But the thing I went directly back to was the vision. Like I had a vision, it came true. Now I'm here. Now am I going to run? And doctors in the Western world or the US at least, they don't know how to treat malaria very well? These people go through it every day, and so I'm gonna have a better shot here. So there's been times where yeah, we've raised quite a bit of money, but also like we're small nonprofit.

We have two people stateside and we have a team in Africa. But you know, whenever there's been one time and I don't think i've shared this egither that the board of directors they all love me, support me everything, but we have a big mouthpiece. But we didn't have like a full bank account, right, it was like almost nothing, and they're like, we might need to hand this thing off, or we might need to shut this thing down. They're

just like we had a vision. I had a vision, and whether we have to do two point zero in the organization, like we'll do two point oh, we'll start something else if we have to, or I will. And I think they needed to hear that because things are moving. Were trying to get our monthly donors up so we can plan budget scale because our biggest project ever's happening now.

And just to say the vision part, the original vision of actual work was thirty acres of land on two in two water wells, So two water wells and thirty acres of land. It has now become more than three thousand acres of land. Wow, that they legally own. It's eighty three water wells with eighty fourth being drilled right now. It's six hundred and fifty one people that have transitioned out of a literal life of slavery and into freedom.

But it's over fifty two thousand people that have gained access to clean water because they have access to the tools, and they have the education now the knowledge in their mind, and they've been empowered to be the change in their own community. So they drill the wells, they maintenance the wells. It's their business. And that's been job creation through sustainable agriculture and starting up farms and building thirty five family homes.

But it's those families that built them for themselves. And then now it's growing into a health center and a school and a community hub. And my meeting earlier today was about the sustainable fish pond with catfish and bee keeping. The beehives are on their way. It's just it's blossomed. It's really been cool.

the other, love one side and hate the other's. We this is a community project for building better lives for the Pigmy people and their neighbors. And so the clean water. I've been to the funeral at least five children under the age of five that were just because of water

borne disease that were the slave master tripes. So they're living on about a dollar to a dollar fifty a day, dollar to a dollar twenty five per day, and so they're facing extreme poverty when they can't send a child to school because that child has to collect clean water during the day or dirty water, but walking six miles for it or six kilometers let me say that instead. But because that's the actual fact. But when the wife can't go to work in they're single income family, yeah,

because she has to collect water. Or let's go even deeper into it. We've done studies or little surveys whenever you're a single income family, because the life has to go collect water. But now the breadwinner has to spend half of their annual income to treat the family. This is about a dollar one hundred and sixty five dollars a year on water borne disease treatment just to keep on survived, Like, this isn't to thrive. This is to survive.

You're taking the pills and you're washing it down with dirty water, which is going to make you sick again. So now you've got double income family and you're keeping it all. Yeah, because you have access to clean water and you can buy the medication to get the parasites or whatever out of your system.

has you know, I'm doing a lot of things. I could point my camera outside and you could see my my ice bath right there. You know. The theory, at least from whim Hoff is is a tropical disease. Get as cold as you can, as much as you can, Yeah, and as long as you can. And so I tend to think it's it's helping. It helps my mental health, it helps my body, it helps everything. I think I just got out of it not too long ago.

another surgery. I had cerebral malaria, so I had to take these pills that can mimic PTSD and so I had to basically poison my brain to kill the parasites in my brain, and then a shoulder surgery back on oxy again. I think I really felt the weight and responsibility, like I was failing them whenever I when I sunk back into addiction, and so that I would say added onto like shame and condemnation and other things like you have purpose now, how could you ever struggle with this again?

And you have something to live for? And they changed your life and basically they saved your life the first time? How could you ever let them down like this? So I've gotten to a much healthier place where like it's not on me, it's on all of us. And there's there's wa Healy proverb. If you want to go fast, go alone, If you want to go far, go together. It's like this takes it. I get to be the mouthpiece, and I do get to be boots on the ground, and I get to be the fundraiser and founder and CEO.

So there's there's a way of responsibility and make sure things go. But it's a it's a it's a real pleasure. So my thing with overcoming the process of overcoming addiction, I think is a daily one. But I've gotten to a place where I feel like I don't want to be in a Dangerson saying I'm good, But I've gotten to a place where it feels good to feel good. And it feels different this time, honestly. So the mind process there was like, hey, you can't just always give

it away. Yes, you also have to take some for yourself, fill your tank or be connected to the source. So whatever that source is, source of love or whatever, like, don't you just give it away allow some of that self love to come in itself. Really, I had to learn to love myself like my life depends on it why because it does. And then to face it all, feel it all, because that's where magic happens. And I

think that's the birthplace of miracles. And at least in your own life is like facing it all, feeling it all because you can. I think I saw probably a cheesy poster at rehabit right, it's like fear face or fear everything and run or face everything and Russ, you know, and you can take that as cheesy, but it's something to me at that time, and it's like, I've got to tackle this thing to become the man I want to be.

great leader. You can't be a great mentor or facilitator or whatever the role is. Yeah, that's why. And I think some people who are like you, that are compassionate and giving and you have a purpose bigger than yourself, sometimes feel guilty to look after yourself first, but you're actually looking after everyone else as well, because if you can show up and you're in a great space literally and metaphorically and physiologically emotionally, then you can serve optimally you know.

it's still going. Like when COVID happened, I was able to be boots on the ground. I wasn't able to go for two years. They're basically shut down two years, and well, are you kidding? This is like going into the rainforest or the mountains, Like how can I not

come into the country. But it was it was an opportunity for the team to show that they can thrive and still accomplish goals, and they made great strides, strides that whenever I went back, I was blown away at how much progress had been made, both physically like the structures and the water towers and solar and everything else. How they made progress like together and emotionally and as a tea, and how they gelled and became even stronger through it all. I was like, as a means, I.

after that, after fifteen. So probably from the very get go, I was an alcoholic, but I would say the addiction didn't set in until surgery and I got caught in the opioid epidemic where I had three doctors given me hundreds of oxy cotton at a time. Well, and so one would let me make sure that's correct, but I had one that would give me ninety one. They give me one hundred and twenty and one. Yeah, they'd give

me a hundred and eighty. It's not on hundreds, but I would in a month, I would have a few hundred. And it was I was told it wasn't addictive and I could operate a lot better than drinking. I was like, whoa, there's no hangover. And since I had a serious surgery and there was only a thirty percent chance I ever compete again. And this happened before my fight career. I

was living athletic training center. I just you know, it takes eight or nine days to get hooked on that stuff, and I had it for at least eight weeks or three months post surgery, and then they just kept giving it to me. They never they never backed it down.

So I became both I liked it because of the way it made me feel, but I also became chemically dependent and actually physically needed it in my system because when I didn't, I went through horrific withdrawals, meaning I was laying in bed, I felt like I was going

to shake. I would have to move the mattress back on the buck springs because of how much I was shaking, or I was sweating almost through the mattress, and I was eating a salad like good would fall off the fork because of how much I was shaking.

with another podcast. I'm not sure of his name, but I heard you just I would love you to share this story if you could briefly about so last time you went on Rogan, you reached out to him, correct me if I fuck any of this up, But you reached out to him and you went, I've got a story I haven't shared, and he went, come on, and you wanted to talk about your suicide attempt or you wanted to open that door around that suicide conversation and kind of got into the show with him, and you're

sitting there, and then you went, do I really want to open this door? Do I really want to have this conversation? And you said he was kind of throwing you the softballs, and you were kind of ducking and weaving and asking him stuff and just talking about shit that you didn't actually go on to talk about, and like you had kind of some level of hesitation, and then he essentially went, dude, what do you want to talk about? And then out of that the Brooklyn Bridge

guy and all of that. If you could, I just love that I sat there. I was blown away by that story.

before I Texas Joe and so come on. And so when I got in there, though, this is ill part of the pandemic, and at least the tail end, and someone in the studio tested positive that shouldn't have been around, probably, And so Joe got a little flustered, not flustered at down, He's just like, hey, his wife was going to bring him a care package. They're going to take care of them all this stuff, but like, hey, be be careful

because like we've got guests and things. So right when that happened, I started going aboard some reason, some reason that triggered. It wasn't anything big at all, It wasn't anything big, but for me it was like, you know what what am I doing? Am I really going to share this in front of the whole world and in front of Joe? And as a founder of a nonprofit like am I going to lose faith and trust and donors? And are they going to think I'm not the right guy?

And so I literally started going through highlight reels but I'd already been on the show eight times. This is my ninth time, and I'm like all the stories in my head in that moment, like we're all blending together. I think I did share that one. Yeah, I shared this one at that one And what do we gotten new in the tank? And where's the highlight reel I can just pull out of my ass basically, yeah. Yeah, And we sat down and I wouldn't do it. I

was determined to become the interviewer. Hey, I'm starting a podcast anyways, I'm going to interview Joe or something and and yeah. It then the thought came in my mind when Joe said, come on, man, because I was I think he could tell I was like sweat and that wasn't myself, And it was like, if it just helps one person, do it, you know, it's just for one do it just.

was like it's going to help one person. Go ahead, and I shared and I got off there and I thought all I could replay was I bombed, I bombed, it sucked, I'm never going to go.

Your request box it only holds ninety nine. It doesn't do a ninety nine plus thing. So you check it every hour and it's just like whoo and check it in and it's all new ones. Yeah. So I completely missed it until he was going to message me back again. And months go by. I go to the Conor McGregor, Dustin poort a fight. Dustin's raising funds for US. Manny Pack was there. He's raising funds for a Fight for

the Forgotten. And I go live on Instagram and they say, hey, scroll through here, You've got to see this message, and so all of the comments were, go read this one comment. So I scrolled up, looked at it, and it was this guy that said, on January twenty seventh, I was walking to the Brooklyn Bridge to jump off and take my life. But I got a notification on my phone Jor Organ dropped a new episode. I listened, thank you for sharing your story. It stopped me from jumping and

I was like, WHOA. So I read that told him to reach out. I would I would love to talk to you someday. He reached out and I saw the old message and I was like, holy smokes. So he connected once or twice months go by again and I'm on it. It's a gym here in the US and in Austin, and I'm working out and I'm leaving to go to jiu jitsu and I bled a little early and I hear footsteps running up on me and I turn around and I get bear hugged and it's a guy. It goes, I'm the guy, I'm the guy, and it's

a sweaty hug. And I came in helped me out. What's that mean? And he said the Brooklyn Bridge And I just grabbed him and pulled him back even tighter, even sweat air, and just hugged him. And we took a picture of me raising his hands. And he's a champ. And what's crazy about that is you know he was in New York. He used to work on Wall Street. Pandemic hits, he ends up relapsing, He ends up going from Wall Street to homeless and Harlem.

And so he said he was listening to it just to drown out his dark, dark thoughts because he knew what he was going to do. So him and I connect The next day, I speak out of rehab a treatment center. I share a little bit of my story. I see that he messaged me on Instagram again. I check it and he says, can you send me that picture of us together? I send it to him. But then I start talking and the young man the first question in the Q and A says, yesterday we heard

about vulnerability. Today we heard about synchronicity. Now I've wanted to be he said. He has always wanted to share that he wanted to be an MMA fighter, and now there's a MMA fighter who's being vulnerable sitting right in front of him in a rehab where he thought he was going to be like punished and stuff. So I'm like, hey, man, you want to talk about synchronicity and vulnerability, Like I got vulnerable and I said it was just for one. Well guess what, yesterday I met my one and that

synchronicity it happens. So then I'm walking out to the car and this guy runs up on me and i'd shared I shared one moment just because he had messaged me, and he said, ah, man, I'm embarrassed about my teeth. Nineteen teeth were damaged or missing and from the baseball bat. And I was like, well, hey man, you know teeth or small potatoes. We can figure that out. There's emplay, there's there's other stuff that can happen. I just messaging that.

I get to the car and a guy runs up on me and he goes, hey, synchronicity, I'm going to be vulnerable with you. Yesterday I was hired by a dentist who wants to restore people's smiles. Uh. He asked me to find the first guy. Chris might be the guy, and I'm like what, So we drive, I get in hit his car. We drive to the dentist office and

we tell him the story. He's the highest rated dentist in Austin five thousand and five stars or something like that, and he treats Hollywood people and we tell him the story, and he goes, I'm gonna fix this guy's teeth. He happened to be a triathlete. So I bring him to on it and we're working out, and I pair Chris and him and me together. So Chris is holding the dentist's feet while he's doing push ups. They're they're they're working out together, and we have this big surprise platform

right afterwards. And so right after he goes gets in the dentist chair, we celebrate, We throw him over our shoulders. We'd go that dude was a warrior. The next two days he sat in the dentist chair for ten hours straight. It was like a NASCAR pit crew changing tires and changing teeth and it was insane. You hat like a brand new smile that costs over one hundred thousand dollars, And that wasn't That wasn't the finishing part of the story.

Like I get invited by Teddy Atlas to go to New York days later and I'm like, Teddy, can I bring a friend? He goes yeah. So I'm like, Chris, if you want to go back to New York, like, what did the Brooklyn Bridge used to mean to you? Oh? It's iconic, it's home, it's it's our symbol as New Parker's I'm like, well, you want to go take back that ground because what does it mean to you now? He's like, it's the darkest place in my history. I'm like, let's go take back that ground and write a new story.

And so we flew up there. We did the same walk, we went to the same hospital, we did the walk, and while we're on the bridge, you know, he's a little bit of trembling, but hey, man, face it, I'll feel it all. That's where the magic happens and good stuff's going on from here. This is in your past. You know you got a new future. A guy stops us and ask Chris, is that justin Rinn from Joe Rogan's show. I got something to tell him And he's like yeah. So he starts telling me the story. I

won't use his name. He was in the US military, served with like Jocko Willink and some other guys and he tells me the story. On January twenty seventh, he was in Mexico, same exact town as me, and was getting ready to take his life, but since I named that place, he decided not to do it. Wow, And Chris just grabs him by the shoulders and goes, I

was right here, right here. Yeah, And I'm looking at these two guys because I'm like, well, Chris was my one, but you're the other one, and like, what you know, how does this stuff happen?

to do. But like for the story to impact Chris and the way it did like that took something else like that that moment Chris has asked me, he goes, what if there was a technical difficulty and it came out the next day? What if you were the guests the day before and they had someone else that day? I'm like, oh, whoa. And and then to be on the Brooklyn Bridge at the same exact time with the guy from that did tried it in Mexico, the same place I tried it where Chris was going to try it, Like,

it's just too many things to happen. So for me, I think God is love, and that was something really loving, a loving force, a force to be reckoned with, and a force to like change the course of my history and Chris's history and that other gentleman's history, like change the trajectory of our lives.

I'm like, I'm in a place of like tons and tons and tons of gratitude. Physically, We'll see if I ever get the fight again. I had a you know, comeback plans and gotten some stuff happened, got an injury, and uh, it might not be in the cards. And I'm okay with that because there's life after fighting.

it becomes ten bucks. If someone decides to give forty dollars a month, that will be doubled. So we're we're hoping to find people that can find a sweet spot between twenty five to forty dollars a month. And if we get one thousand, ten thousand people like that, we're not there yet at a thousand, so we'd love to get that number up and we'll be able to scale and grow. And if I showed you what the plans of the place we're going to build, it's going to

be one of the coolest spots in Uganda. And it's beautiful. It's beautiful And.

I had the only vehicle right, and so it's a two to two and a half hour walk to the health clinic. A mother with our baby went into labor early. The baby was turned the wrong way. We lost both the mother and the child. So they need a maternity ward there and that's what we're building. Turnity ward will also treat water borne disease in malaria. We have a nurse that goes up there three times a week already.

Now she'll build We're going to build her a staff house. Actually, there's gonna be multiple staff houses for the doctors, the nurses. And it's been beautiful. Man. We have the founder of Engineers Without Borders that's on our board of directors, but he is our director of Engineering and he's helping us do what he calls his legacy project, the thing that's his favorite things ever done.

things like, it's a beautiful combination. And anyways, it's maybe I'll get over there for a speaking engagement sometime. And I've seen some nonprofit founders do it from stage and they get all these opportunities with like big corporate giving. We've never really had that. We've we've survived off one time donors and that's been awesome. But now it's like, how can we do everything that's good?